By Siobhan Mulligan, Campus Carrier Features Editor

CONTRIBUTED BY JESSIE GOODSON

Freshman Jessie Goodson poses as Luna Lovegood in the archway at Ford.

For many Berry students, the immediate response to seeing the Ford complex for the first time was “Wow, it looks like Hogwarts.” This, of course, refers to the wizarding school of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, a franchise spanning seven books, eight movies and now a stage play – and that’s not including spin-offs. The series has become a cultural touchstone for our generation, so universal that even those who haven’t read the series are still familiar with its plot and characters. The next movie of the Harry Potter franchise, a prequel titled “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” is set to be released on Nov. 18 this year and has longtime fans thinking of the journey the series has taken. With the first book coming up on its 20th anniversary next year, it’s possible to look back now and see the effect this boy wizard has had on our lives.

Freshman Jessie Goodson’s first Hogwarts robe was a hand-me-down from her brother. Her family have been fans of the series for as long as she can remember, and over the years she’s had the opportunity to meet several actors from the films, including Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Michael Gambon (Dumbledore), and James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George Weasley). While she hasn’t attended any Harry Potter fan conventions, she’s attended DragonCon annually for the past five years and went to A Very Potter Celebration at Universal Studios two years ago. Goodson finds joy in the shameless enthusiasm of the other Harry Potter fans she’s met at such events.

“There’s a lot of people who love Harry Potter, and it’s really exciting to see how passionate they are about it – especially everyone wearing the robes and being themselves,” she said. “Especially at a convention or at the Very Potter Celebration, no one’s afraid to go all out and just be who they want to be.”

This is one of the biggest life lessons Harry Potter has to offer, said Goodson. It encourages readers to be themselves and go after their goals without fear. For Halloween, Goodson dressed up as Luna Lovegood, an eccentric character who particularly embodies this motto.

Senior Sara Hess commented that as she’s attended different conventions over the years, she noticed the Harry Potter fans are a steady presence at the conventions even if other fandoms fade in and out of popularity. In fact, the first Harry Potter convention – LeakyCon, first started in 2009 – became so popular and attracted so many other fandoms that it underwent a name change to GeekyCon in 2014, with LeakyCon splitting off to become a smaller, more Potter-focused convention again.

Hess herself never made it past the fifth book in the series. She picked up the second book in 8th grade, read up until book five, then found it too serious for her age and stopped. However, she says she would love to go back and finish the series when she has the time, and she loves the movies. Hess is also the secretary of the Berry College Alternate Realities Club, an organization created for Berry students to connect over and share their love of pop culture like Harry Potter. At the beginning of each year, she says, freshmen introduce themselves with their name, year, major and their Hogwarts house, as a way of connecting to the common ground of Harry Potter that most BCAR members know and love.

With the series’ popularity, perhaps it is unsurprising that scientists have researched the way it influences its readers. A July 2014 article published in the Journal of Applied Psychology detailed a series of studies led by researcher Loris Vezzali on the way reading Harry Potter affects empathy in children, teenagers and adults. While studies had been done previously on how stories about friendships between members of mainstream and marginalized groups could increase empathy in children, Vezzali and his team specifically focused on the effects of Harry Potter as an example of a more entertaining and easily accessible book. The books showcase Harry’s interactions with fictional marginalized groups like werewolves and house elves, but the researchers found that Harry’s positive attitude towards these groups influenced reader’s attitudes as well. When readers strongly identified with Harry Potter (or strongly did not identify with the villain, Lord Voldemort), they also tended to become more sympathetic to real-life groups – in this case, immigrants, refugees and members of the LGBT community. Perhaps what Albus Dumbledore says in the final book is true: “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

One organization that has taken this message to heart is the Harry Potter Alliance, started in 2005 by activist Andrew Slack. Slack began the organization to focus the enthusiasm of Harry Potter fans – and the lessons they’d learned from the series – for activism. The HPA has mobilized fans worldwide to bring attention to human rights issues, deliver thousands of books to libraries across the globe and, in 2008, conducted a major campaign to pressure Warner Bros. to only use certified Fair Trade or UTZ sources for their Harry Potter brand chocolate after allegations rose against their previous sources for numerous human rights abuses. In 2014, Warner Bros. notified the HPA that they were switching sources according to their demands, marking a historic success in fan activism.

When asked about the message of Harry Potter, Hess remarked that it shows children and adults alike the power that they have to change the world. Reading the series, characters of all ages and all walks of life unite against a threat to the entire world – and win.

“It was like a proof that we can handle big things. We can make a difference,” said Hess. “And I think that’s really what impacts people.”

For an extensive timeline of the Harry Potter fandom, see this week’s archived issue of the Campus Carrier.