Author: Dillon John Collins

Representatives from Honda North America came to speak to Ohio Wesleyan University students interested in internships at one of the company’s nearby plants.

Lindsay Rippingale and Sarah Pumphry, the two recruiters from Honda North America, spoke about the roles of each Ohio plant, the ‘culture of Honda,’ as well as the responsibilities of a Honda intern.

“Students who intern for Honda will be working roughly 20 hours per week,” Rippingale said to the three students who wanted to learn about the company.

Rippingale said interns will make a minimum of $14 per hour.

“In the fall and spring, we have about 58 interns working at our different plants, however, in the summer, we typically have over 100 interns,” Pumphry said.

“Many of the interns come from the Ohio State University, however, we also get a lot from the University of Toledo, as well as Rochester Institute of Technology,” she added.

When asked about ‘Honda culture’, Rippingale explained, “Everyone wears white uniforms, so as to represent equality – everyone in the company, from the president, to entry level associates wears an all-white uniform,” Rippingale said.

“So you could be walking down the hallway and might not be able to tell apart one of my colleagues from, say, the president of the company,” she added.

Attendance at the information session dwindled, with only a handful of students present. Professor of economics, Alice Simon, said the lack of attendance will not affect the relationship the university has with the Honda company.

“There are many reasons students may not choose to attend a particular event.”

Ohio Wesleyan University’s former chaplain, Reverend Doctor James Leslie, died Friday, October 31.

According to current chaplain Rev. Jon Powers, Leslie was the first full time chaplain at Ohio Wesleyan, serving from 1960 until 1988.

According to Powers, Leslie was instrumental in helping establish many current groups on campus, such as Horizons International, the Student Union on Black Awareness (SUBA), and The House of Black Culture.

“He and his wife, Betty, raised five children in their home, but if a student needed to get off campus, he would always give them a meal and a place to stay. He would always find room to help people,” Powers added. “He was very close to our faculty, as well as our students.  And he was very close to custodians and food service people. He knew everybody’s name.  He was deeply loved by everyone who knew him.”

Leslie will be missed by many professors at OWU. One of these professors is Doctor Mary Howard, professor of Sociology-Anthropology, who is on sabbatical this semester.

“What a kind soul he was! And yet, he was driven by a passionate sense of justice and helped to inspire the campus to action whether it was a protest about our own country’s support of dictatorships or apartheid in South Africa,” said Howard. “He was the first person I knew of at OWU who worked to get students involved overseas with his Crossroads Africa and the Africa University in Zimbabwe.”

According to Powers, Leslie was a world traveler. Powers said when Leslie was fourteen years old, he traveled with his father to India, and sat in a hut talking with a man named Mahatma Ghandi.

Ghandi was not only influential person Leslie met in his lifetime of service.

“At the graduation ceremony from undergraduate school at Boston University, Leslie sat right next to … Martin Luther King, Jr.. They were classmates and friends,” Powers said.

Larry Heinzerling, OWU class of 1962, also knew Leslie very well:

“Jim was a very special person and great support in a time of tumult in the country over the Vietnam War, racial segregation in the South, urban poverty and other key issues of the 1960s. I was Transcript Editor when he helped raise funds so I could go to Washington with other student leaders from across the country to meet with Secretary of State Dean Rusk to protest the war, we worked together to bring a key Vietnamese diplomat to OWU to spend time with students explaining Vietnam,’s culture, and shared many conversations on a multitude of topical issues.”

Heizerling added that Leslie married he and his wife in 2001.

James (Jim) Leslie is survived by his wife, Betty, and his five children, 10 grandchildren, and one great grand child. He was 89 years old.

Contrary to popular belief, the “messier” a river is, the better its health, fluvial geomorphologist Ellen Wohl, Ph.D. said in her Sagan National Colloquium lecture Tuesday.

“People often think that a messy river, one with downed trees, beaver dams, and all kinds of brush in them are bad, but in fact they are the healthiest kind of river,” she said.

Logjams, Wohl explains, are man made obstructions in rivers or streams to control or manipulate the flow of water or species.

“I’ve been camping and hiking along the rivers in Colorado, and this lecture taught me a lot of things that I had never even thought of,” said Delaware resident Bob Tannehill. “I never knew that logjams could actually benefit a river system,” he added.

Wohl said she hoped that her next project would be to study the river deltas in central Alaska on the Yukon River. However, she said that she was still waiting to find out if she would have funding from the National Science Foundation to fund her research.

“My most rewarding experience is when I go out in the field with a new group of grad students, because I get to collaborate with them to help them to use what they have learned in the classroom in the real world for the first time,” Wohl said in an interview after the lecture.

OWU history professor Ellen Arnold, organizer of this year’s colloquium, said she hopes Tuesday’s lecture gave students and Delaware residents some insight into what an in depth scientific lecture was like.

“Since this is a liberal arts school, I wanted to invite speakers from different disciplines to speak on a variety of different topics, all of which tie back to water,” she said.

According to the colloquium’s website, “Ohio Wesleyan University’s Sagan National Colloquium annually explores an issue of national and international significance from multiple educational angles. The Colloquium forges links between liberal arts learning and the lifelong civic art of informed, involved citizenship.”

The next speaker will be Sharon Day, who will be speakon the use of water in religion and ritual on October 21.

You can now order anything from any restaurant in Delaware, and have it delivered to your door.  

James Encracion, the founder of Delaware Delivered, said he has seven drivers who will pick up food from any restaurant in the city of Delaware and deliver it anywhere within city limits.

“My wife and I came up with the idea when we were trying to decide what to order for dinner,” said Encracion. “The only options for delivery were either Chinese or pizza.”

Encracion also said that he has spoken to several restaurants in town and has their menus available on the Delaware Delivered website for consumer convenience.

Junior Ruchi Kansal said she definitely plans on using the service to order food.

“Chipotle is so far away, and for people who don’t have cars, this will be a game changer,” Kansal said.

Kansal said there is nothing like the business in her home in Dubai, so the idea of the business model coming to small town Ohio “is pretty cool.”

There are several businesses around the country whose sole purpose is to deliver foods from restaurants that don’t typically deliver. One such business is BringMeThat.com, which serves several cities in Ohio.

However, the national site does not accommodate Delaware, giving Delaware Delivered a competitive advantage. They have a monopoly over the delivery industry.

“As a college student, and to be on a budget, it will be very helpful to have someone deliver food that isn’t pizza or campus food,” said freshman Brooke Butterworth.

“Coming from California to a more suburban neighborhood, the biggest change was adapting to the very different food scene in Delaware,” Butterworth said. “It has been challenging finding healthy, affordable food anywhere near campus.”

Anyone can order food by going to Delaware Delivered’s website. Their hours of operation are 10 a.m. until 10 p.m., and they will be able to take orders over the phone beginning at 9 a.m. Orders must be a minimum of $10, and a delivery fee is $3.95 plus gratuity. Customers will also be subject to a minimum of one hour’s wait time.

“I grew up in New Jersey, though I usually try not to admit that,” said English professor, Nancy Comorau.

Comorau has been selected by Kappa Alpha Theta sorority’s national headquarters as “outstanding faculty of the year,” after being nominated by the members of Ohio Wesleyan’s Theta chapter, according to OWU Theta president, senior Jordan Bernstein.

Comorau began teaching at OWU in the fall of 2009, where she specializes in post-colonial literature, “which covers the places in the world where the British colonized, and usually left,” she explained.

Before Ohio Wesleyan, Comorau got her undergraduate degree in English from Wake Forest University. After Wake Forest, she got her Masters degree in English at Villanova University. After Villanova, Comorau taught at the University of Maryland – College Park as a graduate teaching assistant, which is where she got her PhD.

“My plans are to continue doing what I’m doing,” said Comorau. “I’ve built a roster of postcolonial courses in the department,” she added.

Comorau will be leading her third travel learning course throughout Europe in May of 2015. She and her class, “Slouching Towards Empire: The Literary Politics of Ireland,” will be traveling to Ireland.

“We were just ecstatic that Dr. Comorau won outstanding faculty member when over 135 chapters sent in applications,” Bernstein said. She said that the ladies of Kappa Alpha Theta chose the professor who has had the biggest impact on the chapter.