Katherine Tinder sat in the packed Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium on the night of Oct. 14 while the Syracuse University campus was on lockdown due to an Orange Alert.

In the auditorium, Tinder said she heard people “cheering because they used this opportunity to get their midterm canceled.” Close by, law enforcement was searching Oakwood Cemetery for suspects of a shooting a few miles off-campus. The victim of the shooting was 15 years old.

“I was very disappointed by the campus after the shooting,” she said. “People’s reactions were embarrassing.”

Now, Tinder, a junior television, radio and film major, is co-producing a documentary about youth violence in Syracuse that is specifically targeting SU students. The Syracuse Youth Development Council (SYDC) and Delta Kappa Alpha, a professional on-campus film fraternity, recently partnered to create the documentary.

The upcoming film will be DKA’s first film production since the organization officially launched last summer. The documentary will feature the stories of youth and community members who have been personally affected by local violence, Tinder said.

The SYDC also launched its programming this semester. Earlier this month, SYDC hosted a teacher panel on youth violence and safety around the same time as the shooting.

“It was sad (the shooting) made people want to come out more, because they finally realized it’s an issue that happens around us,” said SYDC co-president Rachel Brown-Weinstock.

The SYDC works with six other youth-oriented student service groups. Together, the organizations work to solve some of the larger issues facing the community, as well as make a bigger impact on the lives of the youth, Brown-Weinstock said.

She added that the group is hoping the documentary shows that the youths in the film are very human, and that they are impacted by the violence. The community can’t be fearful or have the impression that the young people are inherently bad, Brown-Weinstock said.

Sarah Grabman, a DKA founder and co-producer of the project, said she hopes the documentary will change students’ perception of the outside communities and their unwillingness to venture off campus.

“They don’t take the time to understand [the communities],” Grabman said. “We’re taking that approach of not assuming that we know fully what it’s like so we can provide that knowledge to students.”

Increasing awareness about these off-campus issues is an important goal for SYDC and DKA, Brown-Weinstock said, and she hopes that increasing awareness will lead to engagement, a sentiment shared by DKA.

“It’s amazing how little you have to do to create a big impact,” Tinder said. “If you go into the city and work at an afterschool program for 30 minutes instead of watching Netflix, that helps increase these youths’ chances of graduating.”

Tinder said it has been difficult to approach the documentary production because this is a sensitive issue for many people in the community.

“We are trying to talk to as many people as we can, but we don’t know how the community flows and we don’t know the politics,” Tinder said. “It’s kind of scary because you need to try to shape a voice that is respectful and representative of the community as a whole.”

Since this is its first production, DKA wants to collaborate more with the surrounding communities on future projects. Tinder said the organization is honored to be associated with the SYDC and its efforts to increase awareness about youth violence.

The tentative date for the documentary screening is Nov. 19 in Schine Student Center Room 304 ABC.

Published on October 28, 2015 at 10:10 pm

Contact Alexi: ajmccamm@syr.edu