Stars visit web site to honor Black History Month with stars

Stars visit web site to honor Black History Month with stars

Boston University’s Loci offers chat room with African American
artists

By Emily Forster

This month, the information superhighway has constructed several
new ramps.

In celebration of Black History Month, web sites throughout the
nation have been featuring events that focus on the commemoration
of important African Americans in history. As a result, several
important African American celebrities have joined the
superhighway’s traffic.

A particularly impressive route has been created by a Boston
University student-run web site, Loci. In collaboration with NBC,
the site has been attracting some of the biggest names in the music
industry. Celebrities, like Quincy Jones, Seal, Chaka Khan, Joshua
Redman, Aaron Neville, Barry White, TLC and LL COOL J, have all
devoted time to chat with users on this site.

"We have guests every weeknight for the entire month, and some
of them are fascinating," says Michelle Squatrito, events editor of
Loci and a senior at Boston University.

Since September of 1995, students have run Loci at Boston
University’s College of Communications. As college students, Loci’s
leaders knew that Black History Month should be featured on their
site in some way.

"Students are interested in their heritage and they are
interested in celebrities," says Ross Levanto, a junior in BU’s
college of Public Relations. "When NBC approached us with the idea
of having live chats with black celebrities, we knew it would be a
success."

Both NBC and Loci have benefitted from this unusual partnership.
The studio had the power to bring in the artists and their fans,
but didn’t have a large enough forum to showcase them; Loci had
free space available, but little pull.

As Squatrito explains, "It was a two-way relationship because we
have a large auditorium and they have a wide audience."

But just because it was easy for the web site to get the artists
hasn’t necessarily meant that the artists have been able to get the
web site. Not all of the celebrities have been computer
literate.

"Chaka Khan said she didn’t know anything about web sites," says
Squatrito, "and Quincy Jones said he didn’t know much either,
although he has his own web page."

But knowledge of the web has hardly been a requirement for the
celebrities involved. Loci site operators are always there to guide
the artists through the process. And typists for the chat sessions
take away any pressure the guests might feel about slow or
inaccurate typing.

"We have an excellent way of letting the guests feel comfortable
with a new medium," explains Levanto.

Once the guests are at ease, those who hit the Loci chat room
are free to ask that evening’s musician or group whatever they’d
like. But freedom creates problems.

According to Levanto, although most on-line chats involve
intelligent discussions, there are always a few people who ask the
celebrities uninspired, irrelevant questions.

"To some extent, (the freedom) is a disadvantage," says
Squatrito, "because (the audience) just want(s) to know about the
music."

But the students running Loci are confident that the celebrities
who are drawing in the crowd do not eclipse the overall theme of
the event. The site not only has information about the artists and
a chat room, but a timeline of African American music history
called "Significant Notes in History."

"Just by looking into the site," says Squatrito, "people are
gaining knowledge about where these musicians came from and the
other black artists that paved the way for them."

INFO: Loci is located at http://www.loci.com . Celebrities will
go on-line live every week night through February. Check the site
for times and dates of individual artists. See the Daily Bruin web
site at http://www.bruin.com for info on other Black History Month
web sites.

… With NBC, (Loci) has been attracting some of the biggest
names in the music industry.

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