Author: Gopika Nair

Starfish to facilitate student success

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief 

An upcoming software program might be the solution to improving Ohio Wesleyan’s retention rates.

Starfish is a software meant to help students achieve success during their time at OWU by providing an interface for faculty and staff to keep track of students.

The program, which will be implemented this fall semester, will help students communicate with their professors, advisers and other student services on campus with ease, said Brian Rellinger, chief information officer and associate provost for academic support.

In addition to Rellinger, six faculty and staff members contributed to the acquisition and implementation of the software: Dwayne Todd, vice president for student engagement and success and dean of students; Brad Pulcini, assistant dean for student engagement; Lynda Hall, professor of psychology; Kirk Rustin, senior systems analyst; Josh Alvarez, systems analyst and Jim Stull, director of Sagan Academic Resource Center.

“Students are able to receive feedback from faculty on their academic performance and use the referral feature to connect with a librarian, the Academic Resource Center, tutoring and other services,” Rellinger said.

Starfish is also meant to help faculty by letting them schedule appointments with advisees or students, in taking attendance and expressing concerns.

Sixteen faculty members have been testing out the software since March and gave feedback, Rellinger said.

Larry Griffin, department chair and professor of music, was one of the early adopters of the system.

Though Starfish features components similar to Self-Service, Starfish is “a major update with more benefits,” according to Griffin.

While Self-Service provides students with the ability to register for classes, add or drop courses and view grades, it doesn’t connect students with other services on campus, such as the Writing Center or Counselling Services.

“This software is designed to limit the number of students who fall through the cracks,” Griffin said. “It’s all designed so that we can always have access to information about the progress of students.”

Faculty will also have an easier time viewing the courses students have taken.

“In the music department, I have a lot of science and music double majors,” Griffin said. “Often times, students will be more focused on the science requirements and not paying attention to the music components.

“So with Starfish, I will be able to see what they’re doing on the science side and what progress they’re making to complete their music degree.”

Though there might be a learning curve for faculty and students to figure out the system, Griffin said it is user-friendly.

Katherine Glenn-Applegate, associate professor of education, was listed as one of the early adopters of the system, but said she had been unable to access the software.

Because of the changes the music department’s curriculum underwent, Griffin said, “It’s possible our data was updated more so than other departments … so we were diligently working with IT to plug everything in. I think if the other departments on campus work with IT, they’ll be able to address any issues.”

New laundry service introduced for students

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief 

To most, doing laundry is a tedious chore, but for two Ohio Wesleyan students, it’s a means of making bank.

Sophomores Jack Cherry, a marketing major, and Jackson Markley, a finance economics major, have introduced Unload, a laundry service aimed at students who are pressed for time. The service can be purchased each semester for $300 or as required for $15 per load, according to Unload’s website.

Markley, who was a member of the lacrosse team as a freshman, said he found it difficult to make time for basic tasks such as laundry, especially when he was away for games and often didn’t get back to campus until late at night.

“[Laundry] was just a time consuming thing that I wished I could pay somebody else to do and my roommates were more than willing to help out,” he said. “I noticed a good majority of students here are athletes who are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities, clubs and they’re swamped because they know they have to put a lot of different things on their resume.”

Currently, three students have purchased the laundry service for a semester and five have purchased the single-load option, most of whom are athletes.

Because each residence hall includes five washing machines and five dryers, Markley said he plans to do one person’s load at a time to avoid mishaps. Students will also get their laundry done the same day the put it out.

Prior to starting the business, Markley contacted Dan Charna, assistant professor of economics, who helped them review their plan.

“He had us [devise] a business plan to make sure this is going to be something that’s profitable, that it’s going to be something that will actually be able to maintain itself and be reputable,” Markley said.

Charna said, “If they do what they say they will do (pick up in a timely manner, do a good job washing, deliver when promised), I think the student body will really support Unload.”

If the service is successful, Markley and Cherry would sell the business to a rising sophomore, who would then sell it to another student and the cycle could continue, which is something Charna said has worked on other college campuses.

Markley and Cherry also got in touch with Megan Ellis, administrative director at the Woltemade Center for economics, business and entrepreneurship, who helped their business get approved by the school to ensure they could use OWU’s washing machines and dryers.

After approving their business plan, the school also offered Markley and Cherry grant money, through which they had the opportunity to get a loan without having to pay any interest.

“So exactly what they give you is what you need to give back,” Markley said.

For more information about the Unload laundry service, visit www.unloadthat.com. 

Emeritus professor Marty Kalb discusses his art career

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

As a college freshman, Marty Kalb planned to go into the hotel business. “I never thought I would be an artist,” he says.

But today the Ohio Wesleyan University emeritus professor of fine arts sits on a bench in the Richard M. Ross Art Museum, surrounded by pieces of his artwork, ranging from realistic depictions of tides surging ashore to abstract landscapes bustling with color.

More paintings hang in other sections of the museum, and Kalb notes the distinctions between them—some are done on paper, others on canvas. From structured geometric pieces to monochromatic images capturing the horrors of the Holocaust, the paintings featured in the museum for the “Marty Kalb Retrospective” are a fraction of the work he has done in his lifetime.

Kalb worked in hotels during high school and enrolled as a hotel management major in college. But after realizing the career was limiting in terms of lifestyle and intellectual involvement, he dropped out of the program after two weeks.

“I made up a major,” the Delaware resident says. “It was called agricultural psychology, and I said my minor was bovine counseling, and there was no such thing.”

Kalb spent the next three and a half years completing basic graduation requirements and taking courses that piqued his interest. But after being told he couldn’t graduate without a preference in a particular subject, Kalb decided he liked art and took courses to complete an art education major.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University and, under the guidance of his mentor Charles Pollock (brother of Jackson Pollock), decided to pursue a graduate degree in art.

Yale University offered him an invitation to study graphic design and, after getting a degree, Kalb attended University of Berkeley, California.

“That was very nice in the sense that it exposed me to a totally different environment than the East Coast or the Midwest and, at that point, figure painting was very well thought of in California,” Kalb says. “It was also a time that was extremely exciting politically [with the] free speech movement and Vietnam protest movements. … My life then was very much involved in making artwork.”

At the time, Kalb’s art featured political imagery influenced by Francisco Goya, the Spanish painter who created a series of images dealing with war called “The Disasters of War.”

Following graduate school, Kalb taught at University of Kentucky for a year before coming to Ohio Wesleyan, where he taught for 40 years.

“I was not a product of a liberal arts education,” Kalb says. “I went to large universities and, when I came here, I came from a much larger university. … I didn’t think I would really feel comfortable in a small setting like this, but it turned out to be the absolute best choice in my life as far as professional work as a teacher goes.”

During his tenure, Kalb posted a sign on the wall behind his desk so that when students talked to him, they read: “I like you, now let’s talk about your work.”

“The point of that sign was to say to that student, ‘I care about you as a person, and I want to share my feelings with you about what you do, and what you do doesn’t necessarily have any effect on who you are in my view,’” Kalb says.

Discussing the evolution of his own artwork, Kalb says he has continued to incorporate the same concepts—the movement of visual elements accompanied by a stable entity such as “the contrast between organic and geometric or a flow that seems accidental and then a deliberate placement of an element that is clearly something that is contemplative.”

With the 50-year retrospective exhibition, Kalb says his goal is to show the range of art he has been interested in creating. Plans for the exhibition started around three years ago, and the pieces displayed were selected jointly by Kalb and Tammy Perakis Wallace ’02, assistant director of the Ross Art Museum.

Each section of the museum features different artworks from figurative art, to landscapes and seascapes, to the Holocaust Series.

“When you walk in and experience all of this, you get a pretty good representation of what I’ve been about,” Kalb says. “Is it the best representation of that work? I don’t know. I suppose I’d have to do five or six of these things to figure out which one is the best. But it does have work I’m proud of.”

Many of Kalb’s paintings are from locations he’s photographed while traveling in the United States, Caribbean, China, Japan, and South America. His next planned trip is to Scotland and, though his work hasn’t used references to that country yet, he notes that the ocean plays a significant role in the culture of island countries.

“I think the things that are interesting to me most now are the seas and oceans and the way waves move with the effect of wind and crashing on rocks,” he says. “So wherever I go, I take photographs of things that relate to that.”

Though Kalb says he has been fortunate to travel broadly and see artwork from different cultures, traveling to faraway lands isn’t the only way to find inspiration. Kalb has a group of paintings based on walking by the Delaware Run and another piece inspired by what he saw within half a mile of his house.

“It’s a question of opening your eyes and asking yourself, ‘How beautiful is that?’” he says.

The “Marty Kalb Retrospective” will be on display from Aug. 18 to Oct. 8 at OWU’s Richard M. Ross Art Museum, 60 S. Sandusky St.

The New York Times’ mistake brings attention to diversity issue

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

That flimsy, yellow square blanketing your McDonald’s burger patty? It’s supposed to be there, despite how unnatural it may look.

But everyone knows that.

The “blobs” in your bubble tea, on the other hand? A much stranger concept, at least according to a recent article published in the The New York Times’ entrepreneurship section on Aug. 16. The original headline, the one that appeared in print, read, “The Blobs in Your Tea? They’re Supposed to Be There.”

Writing headlines isn’t everyone’s forte—I get it, no judgement—but the Times’ initial headline warrants a brash question.  Did anyone in the history of ever actually wonder whether the black tapioca pearls in bubble tea were inedible?

Despite the questionable headline, the article brought attention to a much larger issue.

Frank Shyong, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, tweeted, “This NYT boba piece, despite being comically late and breathtakingly stupid, is exactly why we need diverse newsrooms.”

Backlash over the article prompted the Times to change its headline. This time, the title was, “Bubble Tea, Long a Niche Favorite, Goes Mainstream in the U.S.” An improvement on the first headline, but the revised version carries the implication that bubble tea has only just gone mainstream, which people were quick to point out.

Julia Wong, reporter for The Guardian U.S., tweeted, “Does anyone who works for the New York Times live in New York?”

For the final time, the Times changed the article’s headline, which now reads, “Bubble Tea Purveyors Continue to Grow Along With Drink’s Popularity.” But it wasn’t just the headlines that drew criticism from the readers; the original article itself described the drink in a manner that made it seem odd and exotic.

Times’ business editor Ellen Pollock addressed the criticisms the article drew, chief among the statements being, “readers thought we described the drink, which was created in Taiwan, as strange and alien, and especially took us to task for the use of the word ‘blobs.’”

One reader, Bo Hee Kim, was quoted in the editor’s note as saying, “The language used in this article, from ‘exotic’ to ‘Far East’ and the unappealing nature of the word ‘blob’ to describe a drink well-known to many Asian and Asian-Americans unintentionally alienates this population from reading this article.”

Noting readers’ complaints, the Times revised the language used in the article. Changes were made, mistakes were addressed, but the harm was done.

Whether people like it or not, the U.S. is an amalgamation of different cultures. Now more than ever, different perspectives matter, be it in the media we consume or the media we create.

The news media, especially internationally-recognized publications such as the New York Times, have to take caution not to alienate or exoticize things that aren’t American.

WCSA Today: New textbook resolution proposed

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

Ohio Wesleyan students could eliminate textbook costs in the future.

The Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs (WCSA) proposed a resolution to provide more affordable textbooks at its full senate meeting held April 24. Senior Ryan Bishop and sophomore Nick Melvin presented the resolution to the Senate.

Bishop, chair of the Student Inclusion Advocacy Committee, and previous WCSA Vice President Sam Schurer discussed the possibility of introducing open source textbooks for more than a year, Bishop said.

The resolution suggested allocating up to $20,000 to fund a WCSA Library of Textbooks, which will allow students to rent textbooks for up to four hours from the library.

“The reason why we’re not certain on the sum is because not all faculty have actually submitted their requests for textbooks for fall 2017, but they will over the summer,” Bishop said.

But the proposed sum was based on cost estimates of textbooks and supplementary materials from fall 2016, which amounted to $57,000, according to Bishop. The current resolution proposes providing textbooks for most 100- and 200-level courses.

Melvin, class of ‘19 representative, said he and Bishop discussed that one of the drawbacks of their proposed resolution is that textbooks are constantly updated.

Macalester College and Miami University both provide textbook reserves.

Bishop added, “For sure, there are books that will need to be updated and we will communicate with faculty to get new versions of those textbooks on reserve. This is not something we’re proposing, but Macalester’s Academic Affairs Committee allocates $10,000 every semester to expanding and updating its library.”

Freshman Greg Margevicius, class of ‘20 representative, said though the overall idea of putting textbooks on reserve in the library is a good one, he questions how often library reserves are used.

Sen. Gretchen Weaver, freshman, said the bill is a good use of the student activity fee.

“If we can spend so much money on President’s Ball and other events throughout the school year, we can surely put some books in the library … [so students] don’t have to spend so much money on books,” Weaver said. “And it is accessible to everyone since they can’t take them home and it’s only four hours.”

President Chris Dobeck, junior, said the plan is to vote on the textbook resolution at WCSA’s last full senate meeting, which will be held at noon on May 1 in the Crider Lounge in Ham-Will.

Budget Committee approves fall budgets

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

Ohio Wesleyan’s clubs and organizations requested $200,668 for the upcoming fall semester and the Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs’ (WCSA) Budget Committee funded $110,470.

President’s Club planned to bring Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker, to kick off OWU’s 175th anniversary celebration. Because of lack of available funds, the Budget Committee funded the club $33,000 for a speaker, said treasurer Kristen Nooney at WCSA’s full senate meeting on April 17.

“We could only fund a certain amount and we figured alumni and other departments could help contribute to this if they [want to bring Gladwell],” Nooney said.

Overall, President’s Club requested $112,425 and was funded $55,168 to cover the costs of events such as the annual President’s Ball.

Additionally, the Campus Programming Board received $40,000 and Small Living Units were granted $7,000 for the fall semester. The total student activity fee remaining for next semester is $208,000 and the amount available for allocation to clubs and organizations is $119,400.

WCSA also pays for the subscription of The New York Times and USA Today, both of which can be picked up for free from the Atrium in Ham-Will, Nooney said. Currently, 35 copies of each are available. But because not enough people pick up copies, WCSA is reducing the amount to 18 next fall.

“I would vouch for a few more [copies],” WCSA member Michael Barr, junior, said. “I know enough people who do grab The New York Times every single day and I would consider myself one of those people. I think it’s important to have a source of news at this point in time that can be accessible to anyone.”

Dwayne Todd, vice president for student engagement and success, added that WCSA doesn’t pay for newspaper copies that go unread.

WCSA President Chris Dobeck and Vice President Michael Sheetz also drafted an initiative to reduce the cost of break housing for international students and students from the West Coast. The letter, addressed to President Rock Jones, suggests that the administration consider granting all students free housing for breaks that last less than 10 days.

In addition, the senate voted to sign a proposal for the Ohio Wesleyan Sustainability Plan, which is currently supported by Tree House and the Environmental and Wildlife Club.

The next WCSA meeting will take place at noon on April 24 in the Crider Lounge at Ham-Will.

Saudi Arabia remains in a state of transition

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

If global warming becomes a major issue or alternate fuels are developed, Saudi Arabia’s economy will suffer, according to a former energy consultant.

To diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud drafted the Saudi Vision 2030, said Rand Guebert, a former Oilinvest B.V. consultant. The objective of the vision is for Saudi Arabia to be “a pioneering and successful global model of excellence,” according to the Vision 2030 website.

Guebert said Salman is trying to get Asian countries to invest in his country to diversify the Saudi economy, while helping Asian countries diversify as well. Guebert and Melinda McClimans discussed Saudi Arabia in transition as part of the Great Decisions lecture series March 3 at the William Street United Methodist Church.

Saudi Arabia faces many challenges, such as oil production, water scarcity and national defense issues, and has been in a state of transition for the past 60 years, according to Guebert.

Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938, years after Iran (1908), Iraq (1924) and Bahrain (1932).

Before the 1960s, Saudi Arabia produced about 1 million barrels of oil a day because of low demand. But by the 1960s, the demand spiked. As a result, Saudi Arabia began producing 10 million barrels of oil a day, Guebert said.

In the early 1980s, Saudi Arabia competed with Russia and the U.S. and oil prices dropped dramatically.

“One of the things to remember about this production is it’s very cheap,” Guebert said. “Saudi Arabia is the lowest cost oil producer in the world and costs about $5 a barrel.”

In the 1980s, however, the price went up to nearly $40 per barrel.

“All of a sudden, [the Saudis] had huge amounts of money coming in,” Guebert said. “So this transformed what was still a desert society.”

Today, the price of oil per barrel is $53, but in the current economy, that price isn’t pro table but it is stable, according to Guebert.

Saudi Arabia spends almost 10 percent of its annual revenue budget on national defense, which is nearly twice what the U.S. spends, Guebert said.

McClimans, assistant director of the Middle East Studies Center at The Ohio State University, focused on Saudi Arabia’s religious perspective.

Saudi Arabia is the heart of Islam, McClimans said. Though Islam started as an Arab phenomenon, it has expanded to Persian and Turkish territories and is now a multicultural religion.

McClimans, who lived in Saudi Arabia for a few years, said the country’s government is grounded in “pure Sharia law.”

But there are caveats, McClimans said. For instance, during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims are required to fast, if someone needs to take medication with food, that’s permissible.

“[What I found most interesting] is that Saudi Arabia’s under pressure to get into the modern world,” said Oluf Kongshaug, a local retired Presbyterian minister. “Now that the U.S. is producing more oil, what’s Saudi Arabia going to do if they don’t have us as a customer?”

Political pendulum shifts in Latin America

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

By many indicators, Latin America has the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world.

Some have termed Latin America’s uneven distribution “the birth defect of in- equality because it dates back to at least colonization,” said James Franklin, professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Franklin discussed Latin America’s political pendulum as part of the Great Decisions lecture series March 10. He used the analogy of a pendulum to explain the back and forth trends of the recent political shifts in Latin America. Because of the legacy of inequal- ity in Latin America, political systems were weak. When Latin America countries gained independence, the region experienced “cha- os without centralized control,” Franklin said. He compared Latin America’s post-in- dependence era to that of Afghanistan’s and Congo’s current situations.

Later, as Latin America became more stable and urbanized, large groups of people remained unrepresented and inequality persisted. From the 1930s to the 1950s, a new type of leader, the populist, emerged, Franklin said.

“They carried some of the characteristics of the caudillo, the forceful man in charge who would come in and set everything right,” Franklin said.

Populists were nationalistic and decried foreign powers, especially the U.S., and foreign businesses, arguing they were trying to manipulate Latin America, according to Franklin. Populists believed in an activ- ist government, promising to work for the people.

The Cold War era, in particular, was important in Latin American history. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, who led the Cuban revolution, promised that revolution would put an end to region-wide inequality.

But the revolution as the solution for inequality proved false, Franklin said. In most cases, plans to overthrow the elite failed and poor peasants were caught in the cross re of civil wars.

The 1980s and 1990s saw major changes in Latin America, including the rise of democracy. More recently the pendulum swung toward neo-liberalism.

Chile and Brazil are examples of a successful shift to neo-liberalism, where growing economies followed a market-oriented approach. But in many other countries, neo-liberalism led to unemployment. The poor continued to believe they weren’t being represented by anyone in the capital, Franklin said.

Populist leftist leaders, such as Hugo ChĂĄvez and NicolĂĄs Maduro (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador), came into power with the inten- tion of helping the poor.

These leaders railed against corrupt elites, neo-liberalism and the opposition, Franklin said. They were also critical of the news media. The public had concerns about corrup- tion, growing signs of authoritarianism and weakening of checks and balances within the populist leaders’ countries. But the leaders lowered poverty and inequality rates while in power.

“Research in comparative politics shows that people with a more stable economic environment … tend to put more emphasis on things like honest government and rights and freedom,” Franklin said.

Ken Doane, of Delaware, said he learned a lot about the countries in Latin America from Franklin’s talk and it made him curious to learn more.

“The difference between the neoliberal left and ultra-left and how some countries have gone back and forth between the two [was interesting],” Doane said.

WCSA TODAY: Bill Nye budget denied due to cost

By Gopika Nair, Editor-in-Chief

The Environment and Wildlife Club (E&W) requested $75,000 to bring Bill Nye to Ohio Wesleyan for Green Week.

The Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs’ (WCSA) Budget Committee denied the request. E&W wanted to bring either Nye or local lawmaker Andrea Torrice.

“The Budget Committee decided [Torrice] was a better fit for Green Week,” said treasurer Kristen Nooney at WCSA’s meeting on March 20.

Overall, E&W requested $81,753 and the Budget Committee funded the club $3,816 for Green Week, which will be held from April 17 to 22 to promote sustainability and other environmental issues.

The club also requested $670 to attend the Midwest Student Coalition for Climate Action Conference.

The conference is being hosted by Denison University and provides a platform for the Ohio5 schools to discuss different sustainability issues, Nooney said. The Budget Committee funded the club $637 for the conference.

Additionally, members of the senate discussed a bill to amend the constitution’s language on the election of a treasurer as well as a bill to amend the constitution’s language on the quali cations to be considered for the treasurer position.

WCSA’s Academic Affairs Committee will also host an academic forum March 30 prior to course registration.

The next WCSA meeting will be held March 27 in the Crider Lounge in Ham-Will.

Q&A: Recent graduate and aspiring dancer, Jeremy Griffin-Jackson, talks OWU and future plans

By Alanna Henderson, Managing Editor

Q: Tell me a little about yourself and what your years were like at Ohio Wesleyan.

A: I’m originally from the Detroit, Michigan, a recent OWU graduate as of December, and I spent my three and a half years at OWU devoting myself to my art, which is dance. I participated in the New York Arts Program and each year I participated in Orchesis, OWU’s dance company. While in New York, I worked for a company named Gibney Dance as a center intern. I handled every day operations and maintenance tasks.

Q: What’s your background with dance? How long have you been dancing and where?

A: I originally started as a self-taught hip-hop dancer and received my first formal training in postmodern dance when I arrived at OWU. My favorite dance class at OWU was Choreography and Composition I. I’ve been dancing for as long as I could walk.

Q: Who inspired you to start dancing?

A: Watching my older cousin dance growing up inspired me to explore the art form more. Then, watching music vid-
eos of Usher, Michael Jackson and Chris Brown furthered my love for the art.

Q: What is your favorite type of dance and why?

A: I enjoy Krumping because it allows me to free myself completely and extinguish any negative feelings I have at the time.

Q: What was the process of getting your own dance class offered at OWU?

A: The human, health and kinets department wanted to involve more alumni in teaching activity courses on campus, so I was approached by Wendi Kay who thought I was qualified for the position due to all of my performances and exposure on campus.

Q: Have you taught any dance classes before? What do you hope you to take away after teaching a course?

A: I have taught small lessons and composed choreography for the school’s dance company but this is my first stand-alone class. I hope to learn the most effective way to teach people movement while also spreading my love of dance to other people.

Q: What should the dancers expect to get out of this class? Do you have any goals?

A: Students who take my class should expect to have fun, learn some new dance skills and learn about working out in a healthy manner. My goal is to help people figure out alternative ways to be active and fit while teaching something I love.

Q: If you could dance with anyone, who would it be? What song?

A: If I could dance with anyone it would be Usher and we would dance to “El Chapo” by The Game ft. Skrillex. I would want to dance with Usher because our styles are similar and because I would to join his backup dancers and tour with him some day.