>>by Jennifer Muir>>
Editor in Chief

Ours was a world of false perfection and security.

The ideas of what it meant to be an American, a woman, a black person or a student were picturesque abstractions that rarely encompassed the idiosyncrasies of our surroundings. We ignored our reality for the illusions of security, aesthetic perfection, intellectual superiority and happiness that made us comfortable.

We walked past the homeless woman on the streets, not ignoring her existence, but compartmentalizing her significance in our “social utopia.”

Then, on Sept. 11 when terrorists attacked New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania, our self-image crumbled along with the twin towers, and the thunder of their fall echoed throughout the nation.

Now we face the reality of the world we live in. It is startling and uncomfortable, but little by little, the homeless woman is beginning to look beautiful.

This issue of Currents magazine explores the images that surround us as students at Pepperdine. Our stories document the nature of those images—how they manifested and thrived.

Then we break them down.

We ask if Pepperdine measures up to the images it creates. We document students’ struggles to maintain their cultural identities in an image-oriented world. We show music’s importance (or lack thereof) in global club scenes, and then we show students’ struggles to create sounds that are more real. We enter the minds of those who create the image, and examine the art and philosophies behind that.

Every student who contributed to this publication—the writers, musicians, artists, designers and those who simply encouraged its realization—has a similar ideology. They have dedicated their lives to breaking down their images and embracing reality in its most raw form.

This magazine tries to show their struggle.

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