Category: News

By Tim Alford
News Editor

It has only been a few months since voters across the country went to booths and voted on candidates for all offices of government. However, it will not be long before the campaign signs and television advertisements start up again to mobilize voters for the midterm elections in 2014.

With every election comes the analysis of voter turnout data, a way to review how many voters actually show up to vote on Election Day. Analysis of this data can show trends, increases and decreases in voter turnout depending on the year and what offices are up for election.

Ashley Biser, an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan specializing in contemporary political theory, identified four factors that can influence voter turnout in any election: institutional factors, election profile factors, luck and socioeconomic factors.

Institutional factors would include things such as if the state offers same day registration, if early voting is available, if there is automatic voter registration and even the factor that voting day is not on a weekend or a national holiday in America.

“We’re one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t have a national holiday for voting, or that doesn’t have it on weekends,” she said. “…and part of that has to do with the fact that voting in the United States is so much of a state issue and not a federal one. It’s a lot easier to put in place those kinds of rules when you’re dealing with a more unitary system or it can come straight down from the federal government and not be so much at the state level.”

For the election profile factors, Biser said those who study politics know general (presidential) elections tend to have higher turnout than midterm elections because of the attention they get and because there are sometimes big issues on the ballot to be voted on.
The greater attention would also lead to more get out the vote efforts by various campaigns to try to increase voter turnout. Luck factors, such as what the weather is in a given area, can also influence election turnout.

Socioeconomic factors include variables like whether or not the parents of the voter voted themselves and the income levels of the person can also influence if the person goes to vote.

The Data

The voter turnout data used in this story is from the United States Elections Project, which, according to its website, is an information source for the United States electoral system with the mission of providing timely and accurate election statistics, electoral laws and research reports to inform the people of the United States on how the electoral system works, how it may be improved and how they can participate in it.

This data comes from the research of Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University and a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. The United States Elections Project website can be found at http://elections.gmu.edu/.

McDonald cites different ways to calculate the voter turnout rate depending on what portion of the population is used on the United States Election Project website.

The voting-age population (VAP) is found in everyone residing the in the United States 18 years of age and older. The voting-eligible population (VEP), on the other hand, encompasses the population that is eligible to vote, which eliminates non-citizens, felons and mentally incapacitated citizens.

He indicates on the website that VEP statistics are a more valid calculation for use over time and across states. The VAP statistics can be problematic when applied to states because the number of ineligible voters (felons, for example) is not uniform across different states.

Additionally, the data was condensed further into VEP highest office turnout rate, which is how many people voted for the highest office on the ballot (the governor or senator for midterm elections, and the president for general elections).

These statistics are turned in by every state; therefore, the traditional numbers reported of people who voted in elections, according to McDonald’s website.

National Turnout Rates

The data from the graph on McDonald’s website shows a decrease in the national VEP turnout rates of about 12 percent from the 1960s to the 1970s. While specific percentages were unavailable for the years prior to 1980, this decrease is clear on the graph. Since 1980, the percentages have steadily increased to percentages close to what they were in the 1960s and 1970s.

Biser said some of the drop could be attributed to general dissatisfaction with the government.
“…I think in general we see a sort of frustration with government, and I think it’s a frustration that many people can understand, with the real question about, ‘What are these people doing that’s going to affect my life?’” she said.

“There’s an incentive to be a free rider and to let other people, the people who are really invested, to let them be the ones to do the work.”

Joan McLean, an OWU professor of politics and government and former political advisor for Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, said this drop could be partly due to the differences in the electorate. As the country passed laws giving younger people and minorities the right to vote, this increased the size of the electorate. However, she said it generally takes a generation for new members of the electorate to develop the habit of voting.

“So, I would speculate that could account for some of the decline, and then the bounce back could be that the issues of importance to these two voting groups, minorities and young people, have gotten much more play in the last decade or so,” she said.

“Then, when you see with the Obama campaign appealing to both of those groups, it begins to set a pattern of interest because we know what people do early on in their voting life is what they do later on.”
For general election years, the national average stayed within the low to mid-50-percent range in the 1980s and the 1990s.

The only exception is a spike in the 1992 elections, where the national average jumps from 52.8 percent in 1988 to 58.1 percent in 1992 and back down to 51.7 percent in 1996.

The 1992 election was the year when Bill Clinton ran as the Democratic Party candidate, George H.W. Bush ran as the Republican Party candidate and Ross Perot ran as an independent. Biser said Perot running as a third candidate could have had an effect on turnout.

“I think that it was a heavily contested election,” she said.

“There were choices and there was a third candidate, and that makes things more interesting. Our system is not designed to have third candidates do well. It’s designed for a two-party system, and it’s going to encourage a two-party system. I think another institutional factor is…often times places that have more parties on the ballot have higher turnout because you feel like you have more choices.”

The next major jump in the national average comes in 2004, where the VEP goes up to 60.1 percent. The percentage stabilizes and the final data available from the 2012 elections is a VEP of 58.2 percent.
McLean said the spike could have been due to amendments for same-sex marriage bans on state ballots in 2004, causing many more social conservatives wanting to go out to vote to get the amendments passed.
The national rates for midterm election turnout, however, are much lower than the presidential election years. Biser cited reasons why this is so much lower as well as the impacts statewide elections can have.
“I think there’s a lack of understanding in terms of the impact that statewide elections can have,” she said. “If you look at the Tea Party, if you look at other sort of movements, they’ve actually been very effective in local elections.”

She said the Christian Right, a right-wing political group, has been extremely effective in local contests like school board elections. She said local elections are also important because they give candidates practice in running an election.

“I think that a lot of times we only focus on the bigger elections when, in fact, there is a lot of underground work going on at the local level that we should pay more attention to,” Biser said.

McLean agreed with Biser’s notion of a lack of understanding in the impact of local elections.

“…Midterm elections, you have to be more deliberate in one of two ways: you accept the civic responsibility that voting is important or you’re moved to vote because one of the issues or candidates is important to you,” McLean said. “…The government that has the most impact on day-to-day lives is the local and state. Yet, it is the least paid attention to when it comes to voting and voter turnout.”

There is also less of a difference between the high and low points in turnout from 1982 to 2010, the years the data was available. The national average was at its high point in 1982 at 42.1 percent and at its low point in 1986 and 1998 at 38.1 percent.

Ohio Turnout Rates

While Ohio VEP turnout rates for general elections had jumps in the same years as the national rates, the Ohio percentages are consistently higher.

National turnout rates hovered around the mid-50-percent range for most of the period between 1980 and 2000 with an increase to the low 60 percent range from 2000 to 2012. Ohio rates, however, started in the mid-50-percent range and increased to the mid-60-percent range in the years 2000 to 2012.

The closest the national turnout rates came to Ohio’s rates from 1980 to 2012 was in 1980 when the difference was 1.9 percent. From that point on, Ohio turnout rates were 2 percent or more above the national rates, even getting as much as 6.7 percent higher in 2008.

McLean described why Ohio being a swing state in elections can impact voter turnout percentages.
“Swing state means that it’s politically divided and open to voting, so you’re getting both party’s candidates,” she said. “People think their vote counts.

“We know people are more likely to vote when they think their vote counts or makes a difference.”
Biser agreed with McLean, going back to Ohio’s swing state status being a major institutional factor.
“What makes it (Ohio) a battleground state has to do with the electoral college, and so I think it makes sense that since your likelihood of having an impact on the election is much higher,” she said.
“We said in Bush versus Gore in 2000 that…all those questions about, ‘Will my vote count?’–that’s a really important question in swing states, and so I think that a swing state, one you know isn’t going to go one way or the other, makes a difference.”

This holds true for midterm election years, as Ohio’s VEP rates stay in the low-40-percent range from 1982 to 2002, only dipping below 40 percent in 2002 at 38.80 percent.

However, the major difference comes in the jump after 2002 with VEP rates going up to 47.5 percent in 2006 and dropping slightly to 45 percent in 2010. The national rates did not experience a jump nearly as large as this in midterm election years.

McLean said part of the reason for some of the different jumps for Ohio and the National VEP rates for midterm elections is Ohio featuring a gubernatorial election in midterm election years. Not all states elect a governor at these times, so highly contested races for governor could be a reason for Ohio’s higher VEP rates in midterm elections.

Moving Forward

While the data shows the voter turnout rates have been steadily increasing since the 1980s, there is still only roughly 60 percent of the population showing up to vote nationally in general elections.

McLean said there are a few factors that could influence whether there’s an increase in turnout.

“Clearly, people have to think that voting matters and that they have choices,” she said. “…It would be very hard to guess the impact that political partisan politics and the election nearing politics is going to have. When you have high voter turnout, you have people who believe in the system.”

From a campaign and voter mobilization perspective, both Biser and McLean commented on the impact of get-out-the-vote efforts and technology.

Biser commented specifically on how after Republicans lost in 2008, the party learned they could not just rely on their base and that the Obama campaign had done a great job in terms of the ground efforts to get people to go vote.

McLean said technology has allowed for more sophisticated voter targeting and tracking for campaigns.
She said the down side to the all of the technology and voter mobilization efforts is “voter contact fatigue,” which could ultimately hurt the campaigns if they bother voters too much.

More to the Story

While all of this data points to voter turnout percentages increasing, there are still many factors to consider. One such factor, Biser said, is the use of VEP rates as opposed to VAP rates.

“This is already a smaller subset of people and that doesn’t include the people who have been disenfranchised through felon disenfranchisement and all of those things,” she said.

“I think that’s actually a really huge problem. I understand the reasons for it, but I also think that if you look specifically at the racial dimensions of felon disenfranchisement, it is a huge problem for civil rights in this country.”

There are many more factors that can be explored through this topic, such as looking at specific socioeconomic factors, using a median of national voter turnout rather than an average and comparing each state.

There are many reasons people show up to the polls some elections and not others.
While this covers the broad idea of the changes and truths about voter turnout rates, there is much more to the story to cover why many of the changes in turnout occur and what it means for the future.

By Elizabeth Childers
Managing Editor

While Ohio Wesleyan offers an array of majors in several departments – 93, according to OWU’s website – over the past five years, and according to the current declared majors, there are four who seem to draw in the most students: Zoology, Psychology, English, and Economics respectively.

These four departments being the most popular are significant in showing the diversity at OWU. Though the university is known for its science programs (OWU is one of the few in the country to offer zoology as a degree and as a separate department, which is a large draw to prospective students), the four departments with the highest number of students with declared majors are as diverse as what 93 majors would suggest. All four of these programs are also listed by the Princeton Review as some of the top ten majors in the country.

“Be warned, however, that these are not necessarily the degrees that garner the most demand in the job market,” the Princeton Review writes. “More importantly, they don’t lock you into a set career path. Each major offers unique intellectual challenges and develops skill sets that will be applicable to various careers.”

The four departments listed here – zoology, psychology, English and economics – are all very different routes of education, but all seem to do the same thing: preparing students for a wide array of different jobs focusing more on the skills and thinking styles taught by each discipline.

Zoology

Zoology currently has the most number of declared students, with 94 as of this month. The department is home to several pre-professional programs such as pre-vet and pre-med as well as home to a general Zoology degree.

The department’s chairperson, Dr. Ramon Carreno, said they have a prevalent number of prospective students come in to both sit in on classes and speak with members of the department. OWU is one of the few universities who has a department specifically labeled zoology, and Carreno said that’s definitely part of the lure for new students to come and take a look. Prospective students come from all over the country and from overseas.

Depending on what type of degree students pursue in the zoology department, students can have different expectations about their curriculum. Pre-professional programs in zoology tend to have a much stricter set of pre-required classes as opposed to a general zoology degree, Carreno said. Often times, if students change their directions in the zoology department, they either move from a pre-professional route into a general zoology degree, or leave zoology altogether to join a different department either in the social sciences or humanities.

“We don’t work as a training facility for future employees to have some sort of skill they can use working somewhere,” Carreno said. “Our biggest priority here is to train our students as thinking scientists. Our intro courses strongly emphasize the scientific method and the laws of science and thinking like a scientist.”

The introductory courses for zoology focus on the idea of applying fundamental principles of science to fields where the students find their interests. “So when you take ornithology, clearly you will learn the birds very well from our world class Ornithologist Ed Burtt,” he said. “You will learn the birds and be able to understand the diversity of birds, the systematics, the evolution, ecological factors, conservation, and where birds fit into the world, etc. When you take a course such as my Parasites and Immunity course you will learn all of the major parasitic influences that exist in the world from a human and veterinarian perspective. But all of this still comes back to the scientific approach.”

Many students in the zoology department have been involved since their freshmen year. Because OWU’s zoology department is so alluring, many freshmen who come into the program stay in the program. It is rarer, Carreno said, for older students to trickle in after taking a zoology course or two. It isn’t unusual for students in zoology to double major at OWU.

Carreno recalled a student who had graduated a few years ago who was both a zoology major and a theater major. “That was one of the more unusual ones,” he said.

Zoology majors from OWU end up in several different types of jobs all over the country.

“We have students who go on to be veterinarians, we have students who become physicians,” Carreno said. “A lot of our students go off to graduate school. We have students who end up in dental school, or become teachers. Some of our graduates end up teaching in elementary schools and high schools. And we do have a reasonable number of students working in zoos and a lot of our current and graduate students are at the Columbus Zoo and all places around the country. There are a lot of different possibilities.”
Because Zoology is a popular department at OWU, Carreno said there is sometimes a certain pressure about class enrollments. It isn’t unusual for a class to have a waiting list, or for introductory classes to have 30 to 40 students enrolled.

“In my experience, it tends to fluctuate from year to year across campus,” Carreno said. “But, I think in Zoology, generally, there is a pressure in most semesters for enrollment. We are challenged to deal with that with the resources we have available. We occasionally open additional sections of courses, sneak a few more spots into courses that are otherwise capped.”

Labs, he said, won’t have a full 30 students in them at any time. Lab sizes are small, capping at 16 for more upper level courses and at most 18 for an introductory course lab. Often times, these larger classes are separated into two smaller sections for lab times, such as having two sections of 15 meeting at different times as opposed to one large lab.

Carreno said zoology is a department where collaboration with other departments on campus is required and happens “100 percent of the time.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around biology alone,” he said. “All of the sciences depend on each other, like chemistry and physics…Our rapidly expanding and currently in development neurosciences program is a classic example. We have biologists who work in physiology and fields related to neuroscience. The physics department now has a neuroscientist working in it, and psychology as always had a neuroscientist there. Our closest relative, which I guess is one way to put it, is the Botany/Microbiology department.”
The zoology department currently has nine tenure track professors along with a few assistants for teaching and part time professors who cover for medical emergencies. Carreno said the department is relatively a young one, with all but two professors joining after 2000. Carreno said he sees the department as very modern and forward thinking and it “comes with a tradition of active scholarship and is going to be quite strong for decades.”

Carreno also said faculty members in the zoology department has kept strong research ties to former labs as well as maintained connections with newly visited labs and labs the department plans to be working with in the future.

“When someone graduates from here, they should be a well rounded and well trained biologist who is familiar with the diversity of life around them and who can put themselves in a research setting right away and be able to carry out the pursuit of scientific knowledge,” Carreno said. “From a less philosophical perspective, these students are well rounded enough to meet other requirements they might face.”

Psychology

Psychology is close behind zoology, with the second largest number (87) of enrolled majors currently on campus, as well as in the past.

“Psychology is popular nationally, so the fact it’s a big draw on our campus isn’t too surprising,” the department’s chairperson, Lynda Hall, said. “But I also think we have a relatively flexible curriculum, that’s just how our curriculum works, so a lot our majors are double majors and I’m going to guess for some department’s that’s not necessarily true.”

With only three courses required by all psychology majors, this does show how Psychology can definitely be flexible. Beyond those three classes, which are Psychology 110, a psychology stats course, and research methods, students are free to pick classes that fulfill certain categories for their majors.
“We require nine courses for the major, which is fairly low,” Hall said.

Many prospective students visit the department for OWU ‘prospie days.’

Students take a few different paths into the major. While there are students who visit before attending OWU, come in their freshmen year and proceed to follow their interest into psychology, it is also common for students who take Psych 110 as an elective, which is very popular, and decide they wish to transfer to psychology before declaring their major. Hall also said there are students who come to OWU fully intending to major in psychology, but discover it’s not what they expected and move to a different department.

“We approach it as a science and I think the methods of mastering the material are very comparable to the study methods for the natural sciences and some students aren’t expecting that and aren’t too fond of it,” Hall said.

Because Psychology is such a popular major, Hall said it can be a tension for the department when scheduling students in classes.

“One of the problems for us is we try not to close students out, but then classes can get large,” she said. “Being able to balance and being responsive to student’s needs and helping them get through the curriculum at their pace, but then also not letting classes get too large. That has always been a tension for us.”

There have been a lot of changes in the Psychology department faculty wise. Hall said semesters when they department has been “understaffed” has been more stressful than others when trying to create a balanced schedule.

“The good news there is, we’re close to fully staffed,” she said. “Next year, we will be, and that is a first time in a long time so we’re very excited about that because then it will be easier to do both: to offer classes in a way where students can register for classes when they need it but also without having the class sizes be quite so large.”

The Psychology department has eight teaching positions, and will have nine teaching faculty next year. They are located in the basement floor in Phillips, but use most of the classrooms in the whole building. Classes also are in other buildings as well.

“We follow the guidelines of the American Psychology Association, which encourages us to have a breadth in the curriculum,” Hall said. “We think it prepares students for life after graduation the best. We also find students who go off to grad school programs which are extraordinarily specialized but don’t want students who have already specialized, they want people who have had a good breadth in classes so they’re ready to specialize.”

As a result, many students are prepared for a different array of jobs, and end up in occupations ranging from teaching to human resources. Many psychology majors also major in economics, another top major at OWU, and use their degrees in the business world. Students also go into medical and law school.
“We’ve been very successful to placing students in doctorate programs…and we’re placing people in highly competitive programs,” Hall said. “Many more go into masters programs, social work programs, and social health programs.”

While many psychology majors go on to graduate school – Hall said probably a third would be a good guess – many do leave OWU and jump right into the workforce, either not pursuing a graduate degree or taking a gap period before moving on to their masters or PhD. Students who don’t go on to graduate work go into the business world or go into marketing. The way the psychology program is set up at OWU, students are prepared to work in environments where being able to communicate is key.

“Our department is active in community activities, like committee work,” Hall said about her department’s interaction with other departments on campus. “For me personally, that’s been a big way of getting out of the department and interacting with others. It’s one aspect of committee work I value a lot.”

They also participate in StART, the program for freshmen students to get them settled in at OWU. The faculty of this department also gets involved in summer science research programs on campus, which also get them involved with the natural sciences.

“It’s funny, as small a campus this is, we can get so engrossed in department business that it’s easy to be more separated than I think you intend. I’m pleased we do as much as we do; I wish there were more opportunities to do more. The biggest limit is there are only so many hours in a day.”
Hall is hoping, as great as it has been to have new faculty members come in and see their new ideas, that the department settles down for a while.

“We’re looking forward to being stable (faculty wise) for a little while,” she said. “We would like to develop our facilities. One of the challenges making sure we always are up to date on technologies and lab facilities. That is something we will be focused on.”

By Cecilia Smith
Transcript Correspondent

The Delaware Community Market will be on the ballot for next year’s off-campus food point program.

Junior Alex D’Amore-Braver, a House of Thought resident, has been campaigning to get the Community Market on the off-campus food point list as his house project for this semester.

The Community Market, located on East William Street, sells local food and gives some proceeds to charities.

D’Amore-Braver has been tabling in the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center to raise awareness for his goal.

“It’s just been strategizing and laying down the groundwork,” he said. “My goal is to make sure the Community Market makes it out of the nomination stage and actually on the food-point program.”

According to D’Amore-Braver, the Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs (WCSA) recently voted to put the market on the ballot for next year. He said the project came from his interest in food issues.

“I’ve read that people are getting away from the source of their food,” he said. “…I would like it in general if people were eating more fresh food and supporting the local economy.”

Because the Community Market is about a mile from the school, D’Amore-Braver said part of his project will include arranging transportation to and from the market, which he hopes will increase patronage from the community. He said he thinks many potential patrons “are the people who aren’t aware of it and who haven’t been there.”

Freshman Mili Green said she didn’t know about the Community Market, but said she would vote to add it to the off-campus program.

“There are times when you need a real meal, you know?” she said. “It would be nice to make it on my own without spending real money.”

D’Amore-Braver said voting for the program will take place in the middle of April.

By Rachel Vinciguerra
Transcript Correspondent

Economics Professor Robert Gitter told students Thursday that one of 20 workers in America can say they were born in Mexico.

Gitter spoke about Mexican migration to central Ohio as part of the Norman J. Gharrity Lecture Series, put on last Thursday at noon by the Department of Economics.

The series is in honor of Gharrity, a retired economics professor who taught at OWU from 1962 to 2005. According to the pamphlet distributed at the lecture, Gharrity had a particular interest in deepening understandings of relations between nations and especially differences of how economies function.
Junior Andrew Paik, student chair of the economics department, said it is part of his job to find speakers for the Norman Gharrity Lecture series.

“It’s designed to promote learning outside of the classroom environment and provide interesting lectures about economics and management for our students,” he said.

He said Gitter selected the topic of his lecture, titled La Travesia A Delaware Y Columbus: A Look at Mexican Migration to Central Ohio.

Gitter said Gharrity was invited to attend on Thursday, and he wished he could have been there.
“I have learned a lot through him,” Gitter said.

Gitter said he wanted to approach the topic of Mexican migration to Ohio from four perspectives: as an economist, as a historian, in relation to public policy and through the lens of current issues and concerns.

From a historical perspective, Gitter said the quotas established for immigration to the United States between 1890-1920 were set based on statistics from 1830-1890.

“I think it’s interesting how laws are passed and what ends up happening can be quite different,” he said.

By the 1940s, the Bracero program had been implemented to bring Mexican workers into the United States for periods of 6 months during World War II, Gitter said. During that time, the U.S. government deported Mexicans through the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Department of Labor was stamping their papers and sending them back because there was a need for a workers.

“Then in 1965, LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson) signed the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Gitter said. “And that’s still a law today.”

The Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the established quotas and dramatically increased the number of people who were allowed into the country.

Gitter said the single most important factor for an immigrant to gain entry to the country today is family reunification. These people will also migrate to places where the cost of living is lower and where their friends, family and townspeople have settled.

“Mexican migrants, then, tend to be more concentrated,” he said.

Gitter said places like California and Texas were the main destination states for Mexican immigrants until the 1990s; but since 2000, that is changing. Today states like North Carolina and Ohio are also major destinations.

“It’s not that they go right from Mexico to Ohio,” he said. “The story is usually, ‘I left Mexico, went to California and wound up in Ohio.’”

He said there are three main concentrations of Mexican migrants in Columbus today: on Broad Street, near the airport and on Morse Road.

Paik said Gitter’s reinforcement of how close to home these issues are struck a chord with him.

“Latin American migration has continued to become a more and more important issue for Americans, not just in California and Texas, but all over the country,” he said. “With immigration reform on the table and the evidence of increasing migration to Ohio…I found the lecture very relevant.”

Gitter said he predicts Mexican migration to the United States will slow as education and political systems improve across Mexico. He also said Mexican migration in the United States will continue to flow to central Ohio.

The lecture ended with a brief set of photographs showing the Latin American presence in central Ohio.
From the Jalisco Market, the Mexican grocery store in Delaware, to pictures of taco trucks in Columbus, Gitter said Mexican populations around Columbus have increased in the last ten years, some with an entrepreneurial bend.

“And the food in the taco trucks is a lot better than Dan’s Deli,” he said.

Junior Rachel Tallmadge said she attended the lecture as a student of economics who was interested in what Gitter had to say.

“I thought the lecture was really insightful and well done,” she said. “I took away from it how difficult and dangerous the labor is that is typically available to Mexican immigrants in the United States.”
Junior Katie Buckingham also attended the lecture because she said she wanted to learn more about Mexican migration.

“I’ve heard him speak on this topic before,” she said. “I thought it was really interesting and well-balanced. I’ll definitely be more aware of the makeup of my surroundings now.”

Paik said the turnout was better than they had expected and even better than the turnout in previous years according to senior Alyssa Ferrando, the outgoing chair.

“I account that to the topic of the lecture since we’ve been using the same type of advertising methods for the last few years,” he said.

Paik said economics department secretary Lisa Garvin should be credited with the success of the lecture, along with other board members

“She was extremely helpful in planning and organizing the event,” he said.

Paik said the event was a success and that he found himself comparing Gitter’s lecture to similar experiences of his friends at OWU.

“One of my acquaintances, who happens to be Guatemalan and also undocumented, lived in one of the areas Gitter described and experienced a very similar form of migration that Gitter described,” he said. “I think this lecture helpful students to understand the experiences of these immigrants.”

By Emily Feldmesser
Transcript Correspondent

April 1 brought a bilingual poetry reading by Spanish professor Juan Rojas for the release of Rojas’ new collection, “LUZ/LIGHT.”

Accompanying Rojas was his editor, Ivan Vergara, and his translator Jennifer Rathbun, a professor at Ashland University. Rojas has named his work “transfronterizo,” or “transborder,” poetry because he’s constantly crossing borders, both physically and metaphorically.

Rojas said he has poems written in “Spanglish,” a mix of both English and Spanish, and even some written in Portuguese.

“Poetry is usually written in one’s mother’s language,” he said.

Rojas said Vergara, editor of Ultramarina Editorial, asked him to publish a collection of his poems when he was living in Portugal. Vergara was working on a collection of his own, so Rojas convinced him to publish them together.
When either Rojas or Vergara read their poem in Spanish, Rathbun would read the stanza back in English to the audience of approximately 100 people comprised of students and people from the Delaware area.

The stories would range from his hometown of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, or about his time in Portugal.

“In order to talk not just about my experience (of being an immigrant to the U.S.), but in everyone’s experience, and to give a voice to those so called ‘undocumented’ immigrants is that ‘LUZ/LIGHT’ begins to happen,” Rojas said about his inspiration for his new collection.

Rojas said this poetry session is a celebration of language, which was in turn organized to celebrate the release of his new collection.

Junior Hazel Barrera, president of VIVA LatinoAmerica, said it’s important for students to see what other publishers are doing and how creative they are.

In between the poems, Rojas would tell stories describing the background of the poem he was about to read.
“I began daydreaming about being a poet since I was in elementary school in my hometown of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico,” he said.

“I used to read many Spanish and Latin American authors. I wanted to be like them, travelling, reading and writing.”

Freshman Emma Drongowski found the differences in the poems being read in two languages to be very interesting.

“Although the poems were perfectly translated, the rhythm and essence of the poems did not translate perfectly,” she said.

Freshman Nick Fonesca enjoyed how expressive both the poets were in their readings.

“When Vergara spoke, he used much imagery and accented emotion, while when Rojas spoke, I felt like he was telling a story,” he said.

After the reading, Rojas and Vergara had a bookmaking workshop, in which participants decorated the covers of “LUZ/LIGHT” and were able to keep their creations.

By Emily Hostetler
Transcript Correspondent

Volunteers from the Habitat for Humanity Chapters of Ohio Wesleyan and Delaware County volunteers are teaming up to build the county’s first homeless shelter just a few blocks from campus.

The new Family Promise House, located on 39 W. Washington Street, will be open to homeless families in the area and will provide shelter, food and support services to help families become independent again.
Sophomore Austin Daniels, OWU Habitat president, said the house is the largest ever built by the volunteers.

“(The shelter)’s going to better the community and provide stable support for struggling families,” he said.

Last Saturday, OWU Habitat members worked with Delaware County Habitat members to put siding on the Family Promise house.

Sophomore Jonathan Rodriguez, OWU Habitat treasurer, said he and the other volunteers wanted to make sure the job was done correctly so the siding wouldn’t break over time and end up hurting the people they are trying to help.

Rodriguez said he “felt great” when the group finished.

“We got a lot done and despite the fact that it was very cold and hard work, it was exciting to see that much progress in only four and a half hours,” he said.

The volunteers will continue their work on the Family Promise house this Saturday as their last build of the year.

According to the Family Promise website, 109 requests for shelter were turned down last year; and three to five families, including some Delaware County families, are denied shelter in Columbus every day.

“There is a lot of poverty in Delaware County and it is important that there are places like the homeless shelter and soup kitchens to help people who are in need,” Rodriguez said. “Students can help a lot by volunteering their time at to help build or staff places like these and Habitat does a really great job at giving students the opportunity to help out those in need.”

Daniels said Habitat had just been re-established last year after its disbanding in 2008-2009. Leadership is currently undergoing the “trials and tribulations” of trying to get a stronger base on campus.

“(Habitat) is a principled organization centered about the core idea of creating awareness and promoting equitable options for families,” he said. “A common misconception is that families get houses for free, but in reality, they have to pay for their houses, as well as pay in ‘sweat equity.’”

While volunteers aren’t at build sites, they also work at Delaware County’s Habitat ReStore at 305 Curtis St.

The store provides Delaware families with affordable repairs and renovation materials, according to its Facebook page. Daniels said the money Habitat brings in at the store funds operation costs and future building projects.

By Taylor Stoudt
Transcript Reporter

At 9:30 p.m. on Friday, March 29, students working as lifeguards at the Meek Aquatics and Recreation Center received an email from Aquatic Director Michael Kroll informing then of the cut in hours at Meek and Edwards Gymnasium. For some students, this was less than three days’ notice that they would no longer have a work-study job.

The Federal Work-Study program is a program offered at Ohio Wesleyan for students who qualify for financial aid. Through the program, funded by the federal government as part of the U.S. Department of Education, students earn money for their education by working for the school.

Each year OWU receives a certain amount of work-study funds that they then distribute to students who qualify. Students are then given the number of hours they are required to work in order to fulfill their federal work study and receive their financial aid.

According to a written response from Facilities Director Dustin Rudegeair, the cut in hours is a result in the failure to properly budget student employment funds and the number of work hours given to students.

“The cuts that have been made recently are due to the amount of student employment funds remaining in this year’s budget,” Rudegeair wrote. “While it is unfortunate that these cuts had to take place this year, we are still proud of the fact that between Meek and Edwards we were able to provide nearly 100 students with an on-campus job throughout most of the school year. We have also already identified ways to prevent this from happening in the future(.)”

In the email Kroll sent to students Friday evening, he included the changes to Meek’s hours of operation and the need to redraft the work schedule.

“By re-doing the schedule it will make the cuts more uniform across the board and hopefully will not result in guards being let go entirely, however I cannot guarantee this,” Kroll’s email read. “The schedule will be done by seniority (based on semesters worked at Meek, not student status).”

Meek will no longer be open from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., will be open from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. only on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the SCUBA class, and will now be closing at 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and closing at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. These changes have not yet been posted on the OWU website.
Sophomore Hannah Snapp is one of over 30 students affected by these changes. She said the university did not offer the guards who were cut any other work opportunities.

“Guards who lost all their hours were offered to stay on as substitutes,” she said. “Our entire staff had federal work study, according to my boss.”

Snapp was working an average of 10 hours a week for her work-study and has had her schedule reduced to five hours. She said this is a problem because she has not yet earned the work-study amount the university allocated her.

“Overall, our staff feels very forgotten, in a way,” Snapp said. “We have one of the largest staffs on campus, but we weren’t given a large enough budget or any real notice. I don’t think the school should be able to do this in the middle of the semester when it will be nearly impossible for students to find alternative work if they need it.”

According to Snapp, the federal work-study budget for the pool did not accurately reflect the realistic amount of lifeguards required to safely run the facility.

“(T)his is the school not treating its student employees fairly,” Snapp said. “We jump through a lot of hoops to work here to begin with from payments being months behind to the ridiculous system implemented to actually hire us.”

In addition to the cut in lifeguard hours, work studies for desk attendants in the Meek lobby and Edwards lobby have been eliminated entirely.

When asked to be interviewed about the cut in hours, Kroll and strength & conditioning coach and weight room supervisor Seth McGuffin did not respond to requests for comment.

By Taylor Stoudt
Transcript Reporter

The fact that sexual violence is something that impacts everybody is one of the many important messages that Take Back the Night (TBTN) aims to convey.

TBTN is an international event and is annually hosted at Ohio Wesleyan by the Women’s House (WoHo). The campaign is organized to focus on rape and sexual assault as human issues rather than exclusively women’s issues.

The event, held last Thursday evening in Bishop Café was filled with survivors of sexual violence sharing their stories and the loving and undeniable support of an audience with tearful eyes and hands held over hearts.

The speak-out portion of TBTN consisted of stories told by both female and male students of first- and second-hand experiences with sexual assault and rape at all ages and committed by all genders.

The speak-out is a way of breaking the silence for victims who are living in a society in which it is too often seen as unacceptable to talk about experiences with sexual violence.

“I would say that the most important outcome (of Take Back the Night), at least in my eyes, is letting survivors know and physically see that they aren’t alone as they so often feel and breaking the silence regarding this issue, because we live in a culture where it’s not okay to talk about it,” said senior Paige Ruppel, current WoHo moderator.

“Every year I think all the members of the house have several people come up to them and say thank you and express that it was a very powerful event for them whether or not they have been directly affected by sexual violence or not.”

Junior Gus Wood, a current WoHo resident, also feels the speak-out is of great importance to the event.

“I think the catharsis and sense of relief that telling the trauma out into a room of people who see the speakers as the beautiful and amazing survivors they are is the most important part (of Take Back the Night),” he said.

“I feel that the speakers come away with more than the listeners. Some have been silent their entire lives and needed a community that cares to finally feel able (to speak). With every speaker brave enough to share, though, there is a listener finally hearing these stories, finally seeing these problems and maybe finally finding the courage to work on ending violence.”

Prior to the sharing portion of the speak-out, members of Chi Phi talked about what men can do and ways that men can help prevent sexual violence. These actions included not viewing men only as offenders, but as “empowered bystanders” who can speak up against sexual violence and homophobia; refusing to fund rape culture by not being consumers of propaganda and media that “portrays women in a sexually degrading or abusive manner”; and leading by example for younger generations.
Following the speak-out, attendees congregated on the JAYwalk to light candles for victims of sexual violence and participated in the tradition of a march, during which empowering chants were recited. The march traveled through campus and concluded at the House of Peace & Justice for a bonfire.

“The bonfire has always happened at P&J,” Ruppel said.

“It’s always been a way to show the support between the houses for this event.”

Students convened around the fire for a moment of silence after which messages and prayers were written on pieces of paper and thrown into the fire.

Bill Withers’s “Lean On Me” was sung and students embraced one another to show their emotional and physical support.

by Elizabeth Childers
Managing Editor

“Once upon a time, in the summer, Greta ran away. She was barefoot and she just went outside, took her scooter, and without telling anybody, and without wearing a helmet, she just went away. And we called the police and we found her on (Euclid). It had a lot of traffic, and she was either going to or coming back from the pony farm, which she loves.”

Rosie Gruber relays this story her twin sister as she sits on the floor, pausing in her attempt to make a perfect ball out of the play and moon dough mixture she had created. She giggles after she tells the story, and assures her sister it’s true.
“I was in the squad car,” Stephanie Merkel, the girls’ mother, explained, “looking for her, and when we found her – actually, someone called and said there’s a little girl, she’s not answering – she was soaking wet from head to toe. She had been in someone’s pool or sprinklers. We don’t know where she was. That was hard.”

Stephanie’s daughters, Greta and Rosie, are nine years old. Rosie has dark, straight hair and brown eyes. She’s dressed in a red jumper and floral print tights. Greta is blonde with blue eyes and is a little bit bigger than her sister. She’s dressed in a blue sweater and jeans. Their differences do not end with their appearances: Greta is autistic; Rosie is not.

“I’ve never lost her for that long,” Stephanie continues. “It was forty-five minutes –it was crazy… I went inside, because she went out without her shoes on, so I went in to get the shoes, I came right back out, and the kid was gone…she’d hopped on the scooter and just disappeared. I didn’t see her down this street, or that street. She was just really fast. I didn’t know what direction she went in. But they have a registry in town where you can register your special needs kid, and in any case, they kinda know who Greta is.”

*

Stephanie Merkel and her husband, Franz Gruber, met as graduate Students at Cornell University. She was 38 when they decided to have children, so Stephanie and Franz decided to use a fertility clinic.

“I was surprised I wasn’t having more,” Stephanie exclaimed as she looked back to the days of her pregnancy. “In fact, at the clinic I was at the secretary asked how many I was having. I told her, ‘Just two.’

“I taught that semester,” she continued. “When it started, I was six months pregnant. And at that stage, with twins, you’re really as big as you are at full term. By the beginning of that October, I was on bed rest. It’s funny how you think you’re going to be able to do it. But my students also didn’t appreciate it. It was hard because it was in the middle of the semester, and it’s not really quite the same class without the professor.”

As Stephanie spoke, her daughters sat with her, playing with a Play-Doh machine that cranked out different shapes, like fish. Greta sat next to her sister across from her mom, holding the dough in both hands, but she stared off into space, her brow slightly creased as if deep in thought.

Suddenly, she sang, “Way down yonder in the paw paw patch!”

It was loud, but not off key. Stephanie paused in what she was saying to repeat the line to her daughter, and then continued to describe her child’s early years. Greta was diagnosed with Autism when she was 23 months. Autism is often discovered at a young age, at any time from birth until about two years of age.

“One of the reasons we may not notice that children develop autism in the early years – some kids you can tell at birth – but other kids they notice later, like in the first two years because they have an overgrowth of synapses, which account sometimes for the gifts they have,” Stephanie explained.

“At first, I didn’t notice a difference between the two,” Stephanie said. “When she (Greta) was about sixteen months, she started doing unusual things.

“I remember I would be reading or working…and after about twenty minutes – she’d be playing on the floor beside my desk – I’d look down and see she had made the most interesting arrangement of circular objects. She had found all the circular objects in the plaything…and she had made a pattern that was about ten-foot-long snake. It was very patterned, like by the size of the rings. At first I thought, ‘Okay, that’s kind of interesting,’” she laughed.

The next sign Stephanie noticed was more alarming, but common sign of autism. “She (Greta) developed language right along with Rosie, but at one point, she lost the words she had learned. All the first basic words just stopped. She started to do repetitive things…Instead of playing with dolls, she would line things up. Instead of playing with toys, she would line them up in patterns.”

It was these behaviors that prompted Stephanie to have her daughter tested. Since Greta’s diagnosis, Stephanie and the rest of the family have endeavored to help Greta and be a part of her world. Stephanie enrolled her in a school in Columbus for autistic children with a student-teacher ratio of 1:1, with the help of a $20,000 scholarship. The commute, though, took a toll on her.

“I would drive all the way down, almost to OSU, and she got off at three, so I had to leave at two…” she said. “It was 100 miles a day.”

Stephanie said the school was a great help in Greta’s early development, especially its use of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy.

“It focuses on making them pay attention and help them learn to follow direction,” she said. “She would get fresh people every hour. But they would make her stay on task.”

Greta’s development therapy didn’t stop there. Stephanie and her family participated in the “P.L.A.Y. Project,” a program set up by Dr. Rick Solomon in 2001. Stationed in Ann Arbor, Mich., the program focuses on helping parents with autistic children learn to play and interact. Stephanie said someone from the program would film her and Franz playing with Greta once a month.

“We would use his play techniques, which were geared toward engagement,” she said. “To getting her to pay attention, staying with us, and to really get her to have fun and laugh. It’s very difficult to play with an autistic child, especially when they’re young.”

Rosie recalled one game the whole family would play. “We did this thing called a hot dog bun, where we rolled someone up in a rug.”

“We’d roll Greta up in a blanket,” Stephanie corrected.

Rosie continued. “And we’d pretend to squirt mustard on her and eat her. You did it for me, too.”

Stephanie agreed: the whole family would play games like this. It was one Greta really enjoyed.

“It was really strange, being filmed, and then the films would be sent back,” Stephanie said. “The film would be sent back and there would be comments with it, like, ‘Too slow!’ or ‘She should do this instead,’ or ‘That’s no fun!’ It was trying to teach us how to play with Greta and how to develop her emotional response, which I think was pretty important at her age group. I think it made her a pretty happy kid.”

The P.L.A.Y. project said it focuses on four key components in “helping parents become their child’s best P.L.A.Y. partner,” including Diagnosis, Home Consulting, Training and Research. The project is based on the National Academy of Science’s recommendations “for the education of young children with autistic spectrum disorders.” Basic components are beginning intervention between ages 18 months and five years, using intensive intervention several hours a week, having small play partner to child ratios, being engaging and having strategic direction.

“One of the main things that was important about that program was just joining her in what she likes to do,” Stephanie said. “You go into their comfort zone. Once you’re in there, you kinda play with them…Instead of playing with a toy car, she would just spin the wheels. So if you got down there with her, and you spin the wheels, then maybe you could get her to roll the car. And then, she’d roll the car, and then we’d create some kind of obstruction she’d have to deal with. So that was for hours and hours. I spent a lot of time those early years being autistic myself.”

*

Greta sang another line then: “The bow, the bee, the day!”

Stephanie repeated the phrase to her daughter, absently brushing the girl’s hair back from her face. Greta didn’t react to her mother, but continued to cut up pieces of Play-Doh with a pair of scissors shaped like an elephant, then tapped them against the varnished wood table. She began to sing another song.

“She likes (when you repeat what she says back to her),” Stephanie explained, Rosie added, “That’s what she wants you do to.”

“Sometimes, if you don’t do it, she gets upset,” Stephanie said. “…She’s a pretty good little musician and she plays the piano…The funny thing about that is she wants you to sing what she’s singing. Greta has a pretty good ear for pitch, so if you don’t sing it right, she can get pretty upset and she’ll make you sing it again until you get it right.”

Several times during the evening, Greta stood up and approached the vertical piano sitting in the corner. The first time it was pleasantly surprising to hear the distinctive notes of “Figaro, Figaro” pounded out on the keys. Then, as fast as she’d approached the instrument, she was off again.

“Greta, do you want to give a concert?” Franz asked from his seat on the floor. “Want to play Clopity Cloop?” He then told his wife, proudly, “She really stayed with it, for an hour yesterday. She played it about ten times.”

One of Greta’s talents Stephanie and Franz believe came not just from autism, but from her father as well, is her talent with singing and piano.

“And she pays attention when I sing and direct,” Franz said, his arms making the motions a choir director would. “She’s in the choir at school. She does it to herself. When the tone goes up, she goes up; when the tone goes down, she goes down.”

“She likes to play and she has a nice little voice,” Stephanie said over her daughter’s music. “My husband and I are looking for someone to give her lessons.”
“She knows hundreds of songs!” Rosie said proudly.

“Greta has a hard time singing with the group sometimes, though,” Stephanie said. “They’ll be on stage and Greta will just walk off with her fingers in her ears, and she’s like, ‘No.’ You just have to be down with that.”

While Rosie goes to the Columbus Academy, the same school where her father teaches Latin, Greta goes to the neighborhood school, Smith Elementary.

“For first grade she went to Smith School,” Stephanie said. “They have a special program called the Star Room. It’s designated for kids with autism. Half the time she’s in a regular classroom, the other half she’s with a one-on-one specialist. I don’t think she’d be able to do it if she hadn’t had those two years at the special school…”

The Star Room at Smith Elementary is the only program like it the Delaware City Schools District. While many of the school’s special needs facilities have a “converted-closet” atmosphere, many schools send their special needs children to Smith for its interactive classroom.

The Intervention Specialist in charge of the program is Danielle Korte, who is in her first year at Smith Elementary. She is young, with straight brown hair and a big friendly smile. She is immediately welcoming to anyone who enters her classroom, and was enthusiastic about her students. The children in the Star Room program also have help from three instructional assistants, one of which is Sharon Huff, a good friend of Greta’s family. Students in the classroom are on a wide range of the Autism Spectrum.

“…Honestly, when you have a student with autism, you never know what that student is going to be like until you meet them…I have students who I only see once a week, and they’re in the general education classes the rest of the time,” Danielle said. “And then I have students who spend half their day in here, as well. It varies.”
Greta is one of the latter kind of students. The classroom is divided into sections, and Greta follows a visual schedule to get through her daily tasks. There is a section for “Teacher Work,” where the kids do assignments in math, science and reading.

“Greta is a very smart girl,” Danielle said. “It’s different in the fact she may not be able to communicate everything she wants to tell you and what she’s feeling, but she has those emotions like any other kid.”

Both Greta’s family and Danielle agree Greta is also a very artsy student. As well as playing and listening to music, Greta loves to color and paint. “Repetitive motions calm her,” Danielle explained.

Stephanie, Franz and Rosie have also experienced Greta’s zeal for coloring.
“Greta has gotten into a phase now where she likes markers and lately she’s been reverse highlighting any text she finds in the house,” Stephanie said, demonstrating the motion of Greta blocking out lines in a book. “So magazines, books….she likes to take dark marker and mark out the print. All kinds of books. I just have to keep an eye on that.”

Greta has even taken her coloring skills and demonstrated them on some of Stephanie’s student’s papers. On those occasions, Stephanie contacts students to get extra copies of papers.

Rosie also had stories about Greta’s coloring endeavors, and how she can get annoyed at her sister when she gets hold of a book from school.

“I take books home from my classroom library because I love reading, and she finds them and she colors in them,” Rosie said. “I have to hide them in my backpack for a long time before I get up the nerve to return them.”

Franz then told Rosie to show off Greta’s work in one of his books, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot. While the cover and sides were fairly intact save some green marker, several inside pages were scribbled with green and black marker. The damage ranged from small patches of text blocked out to whole pages.

“She loves the glossy pages,” Franz noted, flipping to the center of the book, which had several pages of photos.

Rosie snapped the book shut and set it aside. “Yeah, Greta colors a lot.”

“She’s pretty thorough,” Stephanie added.

When it comes to school, Greta had subjects she likes and subjects she didn’t.
“She doesn’t like math that much,” Danielle said. “She loves to read, which, I mean, Stephanie Merkel, I think we all understand where the reading comes from in her family – they’re all so good at that. Math is a challenge for Greta, and also, just getting her to do more of those social greetings and more interacting with her peers.”

In addition to reading, Greta was a good speller. Stephanie said sometimes Greta will hear a word and spell it over and over.

Other sections in the Star Room include spaces for sensory breaks, where the kids can break up their work by playing with toys and tactile things, as well as swing, jump on a trampoline, draw and color at an art table, play interactive games on educational websites and rest in a quiet area.

The students get a predetermined amount of time in the sections, and Danielle will set a visual timer for each one. The point of the visual schedule and visual timers in the classroom is to keep the kids on track.

“Some of the kids would constantly go from station to station to station if we let them,” Danielle explained. “The timers and the schedule keep them focused and help them regulate.”

Danielle said it took Greta quite a while to get used to her being in the classroom. Greta has been part of the Star Room since first grade at Smith, and her old teacher retired at the end of the last school year.

“Greta wouldn’t even read me a book to me the first month of school,” Danielle said, laughing at the memory. “…I’d sit with her and we’d try to do our work and she would look at me like, ‘Who, who are you? This isn’t Mr. Stanton’…It took some time, and it does. It takes time to build that relationship, and it does with any kid. But with a kid…who has autism, it takes a little extra time to establish that relationship and for them to know what your expectations are… I think that was the base thing: letting them know my expectations and having them understand it.”

Danielle emphasized that her students are unique, but are also like any other kid.

“I know there’s a stereotype of a person with autism, but every person is different,” she said. “There may be some same underlying characteristics, but I can’t emphasize enough how different each of them are. Greta is very good at the arts, and loves music and is great at playing music, but not all of my kids like to do that or anything like that. It’s a challenge when you meet them trying to figure out what their needs are, what they need to be successful in this environment.”

Autistic children may be challenged to interact with others.

“That’s another characteristic of autism,” Danielle explained. “Maybe not really having good eye contact. So, instead of talking, she’ll be looking (around) while telling you what she wants…Greta usually has to be prompted more to interact with the other students. She’s very happy in her smart mind, and she knows what she wants to do…She’ll skip the formal greeting and tell you she wants to go color.”

When asked if there is any bullying problems with her special need students, Danielle is happy to say it’s not very common.

“Third grade here at Smith is really great for that,” Danielle said. “I think it’s because they’ve all known Greta (for a long time) and that’s made a big difference, and in growing up with them.”

At the beginning of the school year, Danielle decided to speak with the general education classrooms about autism and how students with special needs are just like them, they just do things differently. She was pleasantly surprised at how few questions the children had for her.

“The kids were like, ‘Yeah, we know all of this already, which was great,” Danielle said.

Danielle smiled as she tried to remember some of the best memories she has from the past months of working with her students.

Suddenly she laughed, and described one specific moment with Greta. “One of our sensory things we do for a break is playing with shaving cream,” Danielle began, “And we’ll just write words in it, maybe her spelling words, to make it more academic. I was playing with Greta…and Greta drew a cookie. I don’t know how the topic of cookie monster came up, but I said, ‘Cookie monster,’ in a voice trying to impersonate the Cookie Monster and Greta just looked at me…just looked into my eyes and said, ‘Cookie,’ trying to do the exact same voice. It was amazing. It was a moment with Greta, and I told Stephanie I did start crying because I had never had that. She just looked right in my eyes and it was clear as day that she was just like anyone else. It was just really cool.”

Danielle then recalled a moment when three of her students were on the classroom swing, three boys, each from a different grade. “They were all on the swing together, and they were just laughing. I love it when they look just like everyone else and totally normal kids and you just look at them and you know that’s what we’re doing this for, for them.”

*

Greta continued to move around the house, sometimes stopping in to the room to see how her mother, father and sister would doing. She would say something, which towards the end of the night was the repeating of the words, “Jell-O Jigglers?” and then walk off again, most times towards the kitchen.

“Greta is more of a gross motor kid,” Stephanie explained after Rosie told the story of Greta getting on her scooter and riding away. “She bikes, she likes to climb trees. She’s a good ice skater.”

Since giving birth to Rosie and Greta, Stephanie said she’s met a lot of families with autistic children. A lot of the families often had twins where one or both of the children were autistic. She believed it was due to the fact twins are often born early (her own were born eight weeks ahead of schedule), and premature birth can be one of the risk factors for autism.

In her interactions with these other families, Stephanie has noticed certain common traits these children share: they are fearless.

“It’s another thing about her, she really has no fear,” Stephanie said. “Now, it’s not so bad, but when she was younger…I felt like if we didn’t end up on the six o’clock news, it was a good trip…I watched her constantly. If we went down to the farmer’s market down on Sandusky Street, I always had to have her by the hand because I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t just spontaneously walk into traffic.”

Along with spontaneous swimming pool rescues and an occasional naked child, Stephanie also said, “It’s never boring with Greta.”

When it comes to having friends and playing with the neighborhood kids, Stephanie said in the winter it’s a little more difficult to do.

“It’s better when it’s warm outside when the games are more like climbing trees, roller skating. But when it’s like the girls sitting around and playing Barbies, Greta just can’t join in. But in summer, the kids are all over and Greta is there with them. The kids are very sweet to her.”

Though Greta was unable to tell stories like her sister Rosie, Stephanie was still able to get details from Greta’s days at Smith.

“Greta does a lot of echoing, of things she hears, so I’ll get snippet of the school day,” she said. “Greta loves any chicken nuggets of any kind, and the kids at school are always giving her their chicken nuggets. So Greta will come home and say, ‘Do you want a nugget?’ ‘Do you want my nugget?’ Or, ‘Do you want a push?’ Everybody knows Greta loves to swing, so if Greta comes out to recess and all the swings are taken, the kids make someone get off.”

Greta’s days don’t just end when Stephanie picks her up at school. “We have a little break right now, but she does equine therapy. This is her third year, and she goes and she brushes the horse and cleans the horse’s hooves, and then it’s time to ride…On Thursdays she does a sort of occupational therapy, where they teach her to self regulate more, exercises to music, drawing to music, things like that.”

Though there are some places Stephanie knows Greta wouldn’t want to go, or would upset her, she doesn’t try to limit the places she takes her family.

“I don’t like to make assumptions, ‘We can’t go there,’” Stephanie said. “In general, we just try it and if it doesn’t work out, we just bail.”

Some of the harder things to gauge are movies. Often Stephanie will end up hanging out with Greta outside the theater while Rosie and a friend or cousin finish the show. Stephanie said she strives to end most of Greta’s outings on a good note, so Greta “feels successful.” Stephanie found the “playing by ear” is the best way to see what Greta is up for and what she isn’t.

This past fall, Stephanie and her family attended a Notre Dame football game. It was a good trip, Stephanie said with a smile. They were able to sit through the first half of the game and the half time show when Greta started to show signs of being “done.” They spent the rest of the game on the grounds of the school, walking and playing while listening to the game. It was a fun, successful outing for Greta.

Greta came back into the room and stood in front of her mother. She smiled, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said emphatically, “Jell-O…Jigglers?”

Stephanie remembered they made the treats earlier in the day, and Greta was hungry. Heading into the kitchen, she mentioned Greta enjoys being in the kitchen with her, helping her cook by stirring and cracking eggs.

*

Both Rosie and Greta take a seat on the island while Stephanie gets out plates and the green jello that has been poured into a Madagascar-themed mold. Both girls enjoyed their treat, and then Rosie went to finish homework while Greta ran back to the living room to play. “Poop, ew, poop,” Greta repeated, over and over, laughing all the while and smiling. She stood up from the coffee table and ran out of the room, continuing her mantra.

“…I think her third grade peers like to teach her fun words,” Stephanie speculated.
Greta came back through the room, holding her mother’s phone and watching videos. She doesn’t stop in the living room, and instead continues to some other part of the house, leaving Stephanie and Rosie to play.

After a moment, Stephanie said “Greta will probably buzz in and out,” and she left the room to go check on her.

While Stephanie and Greta are out of the room, Rosie spoke about how her Girl Scout troop is selling cookies.

“On my cookie list,” she said, “my favorite is the thin mints, and there’s one called ‘Samoas’ that I haven’t tasted yet, but I think they’ll be my favorite.” She paused for a moment, and then asked, “Would you like to buy some cookies from me?”
She was able to sell a box of thin mints before her mother re-entered the room.
Stephanie has been a professor in the Humanities-Classics department at Ohio Wesleyan University since 1998. She teaches full-time, and her classes include Myth, Legend and Folklore; The Devil, the Hero and God; and Great Books of Russia: The Russian Enigma.

Very often, on the first day of class, Stephanie will tell her students that there will be occasions where class is cancelled, and on some of those days, it will be an email on the morning of class. As a faculty member with two small children, especially one with special needs, there are times when she is unable to come to school, be it one of her children becomes ill or there is a delayed start at their schools, or even a snow day.

“It’s not like I have to ask the provost.” Stephanie explained. “As a professor, you have a lot of flexibility with your hours. I would schedule to have all my classes done by noon… I try to keep it to a minimum…”

Stephanie agreed to the description of her home and professional life as a balancing act.

“It’s a huge challenge,” It’s like I have two full time jobs,” Stephanie said. “It’s easier now, because they’re both in school, but when they were small, it was very hard when they were two or three, because Greta had so many appointments. I taught a full load of classes, and many years I chaired. Now I look back and think, ‘How did I do it?’ Well, I had help. I had really good students who watched the girls all the way through, who are still good friends with them.”

Stephanie described one of the greatest challenges was the late nights she had with Greta. “Greta went through a period of a couple years when she didn’t sleep at night. And she could go two days without sleeping. Those were the hardest times, when she was three or four years old. She would just stay up. Now, occasionally, maybe once a month, she won’t sleep. That’s really typical with autistic kids, that they have sleep problems. Her brain just would not shut down and she’d stay awake.”

While Ohio Wesleyan has a community preschool called the Early Childhood Center for children who are three, four, and five years of age, “I think we could do better,” Stephanie admits. “I think it’s very hard just to have a child at Ohio Wesleyan, let alone a disabled child. It’s like, our ECC…their sessions just don’t line up with the classes. The session will get out in the middle of the class period. There are a lot (of) things I think we could do better there.”

Stephanie also discussed how having young children affects her participation in her department.

“Academics have a low birth rate anyway,” Stephanie started. “We don’t have a lot of female faculty members who have children, and I happen to be in a department where people don’t have children….There are lots of things I can’t do. If there’s an evening event, it’s not easy for me to find a sitter. I can’t just grab the high school student down the street. It takes me two or three months to train (someone).”

Rosie paused in her play to add, “One time, I had to babysit Greta. That was just this past Monday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day). It went pretty smoothly.”
Stephanie began to explain why. “My husband is a Latin teacher, and they had a contest in Columbus. He wanted to take the girls-”

“On our day off!” Rosie interrupted, sounding indignant.

“The girls didn’t want to go down to Columbus. And I’ve never done this before, but I taught and I left them here for an hour.”

Rosie then reminded her mom about the five dollars she was owed for watching her sister. Stephanie agreed, and pointed out Rosie now had a witness to the debt.

“I can’t really do the learning trips,” Stephanie continued. “The dean has asked me to take a trip to Russia, and it would be great – I’d love to do it, and it’s something I’ve done in the past, before I had children. But now I think, ‘How could I go for two or three weeks? Who would be me?’ It just wouldn’t work out, not now, with Greta.”

“In my experience, I have colleagues who don’t have children and they don’t really understand, ‘Oh, you can’t meet at three.’ Or when school lets out. I get a lot of eye rolling. It can be frustrating. Or, have someone say to you, ‘You really shouldn’t talk about your daughter.’ I had someone say that one time.”

At this statement, both Franz and Rosie ask who had told her that, and why would they suggest Stephanie shouldn’t speak about her child with special needs. “Because they felt like, that’s something they shouldn’t know about it,” Stephanie speculated, not appearing overly concerned about it. “That I shouldn’t mention it because it’s my life. I thought about it later and it’s a almost like someone knowing you have a drinking problem and it’s like, so long as we don’t hear about it – just don’t tell us about it, we don’t need to know.” Stephanie chuckled this last statement, and waved her hands in a, ‘Stop, no!’ motion.

“I think it’s mainly ignorance,” Stephanie continued as they continued to ask why the statement was said. “If you don’t have children to begin with, and then, even people to have children it’s difficult for them to make the next leap and think, ‘Well, what’s it like to have a disabled child?’”

Greta came back into the room, and her and her father sat at the piano. Franz helped his daughter play “Clopity Cloop.” Greta also played “Silent Night” on her own before she sat back down at the table to pick the play-doh back up.

“I don’t think it’s just Wesleyan,” Stephanie said while she helped her daughter put dough in the plastic machine. “It’s academia in general; we could do a better job at accepting that part of academic’s lives, for men and women. It’s a valuable use of your time, and could make you a better teacher.”

*

We went to the fair, Mary (the sitter) was with us and when we came home, Mary said, ‘Did you notice all those people looking at us when we came out of the barn and Greta was upset?’ and I said, ‘No, I didn’t notice at all,’” Stephanie laughed as she recalled what she said.

Stephanie leaned on her kitchen counter while Rosie got ready for bed and Greta sat at the table, snacking on some cheese. Absently, Stephanie fiddled with the bag of shredded cheese.

“Yeah, people look,” she said with a gesture.

“Especially now that Greta is older, she doesn’t act the way a nine-year-old is expected to act. When the kids are small, any three-year-old or four-year-old is going to have a meltdown. I really don’t notice it; I guess it doesn’t really matter to me. I mean, my kid has autism.”

Rosie ran into the kitchen, and asked for help with her homework, then spontaneously decided she didn’t need help. Stephanie suggested they get ready for bed. Greta stood up and ran after her sister.

“There are times, when we go to church, I get the eye,” Stephanie continued. “But what can you do? You can’t wear a sign that says, ‘My child’s autistic.’”

Rosie ran back into the kitchen, and then sat on an empty stool, spinning around in her pajamas. Stephanie put the cheese back in the fridge, and Greta sat back down in front of her empty plate.

“We don’t do things, like go out to restaurants,” Stephanie said. “Very rarely. It’s just not something that would fit with us.”

As she spun to and fro on the stool, Rosie said, “We go to Buehler’s a lot!”
Stephanie nodded and said, “The waitresses know us there, so they know when we sit down, Greta needs something to nibble on, and they’re pretty fast…We can’t go to Olive Garden: the ambient noise is just too much.”

Stephanie suddenly laughed and said, “We have pretended that we’re famous, and that’s why people are looking at us. That part really doesn’t bother me.”

“I don’t do that!” Rosie yelled. “You do that, I hide under the table!”

Greta began singing, “Opals and bonobos,” while Rosie and Stephanie spoke, and when Stephanie didn’t read it back to her, she put her hand on her mother’s face to get her attention. Stephanie sang it back.

“There are unexpected things that you can’t plan for,” Stephanie continued.

“Like someone in a costume that she doesn’t like, or the opposite that she basically goes after. Some places she won’t get out of the car. And it’s, ‘Okay, we’re not going to do that.’ Most of the time, it works out okay.”

In the other room, Greta tapped out a few more notes on the piano.

As the night ended, Franz concluded, “She needs to be happy in order to learn. If she’s sad, or angry, she just can’t focus. She’s a pretty happy kid.”

By Emily Feldmesser
Transcript Correspondent

Women’s Week, an annual Ohio Wesleyan institution, concluded Saturday evening after a week filled with events celebrating and advocating women’s issues.

Senior Megan Cook said Women’s Week and the companion activities are completely dedicated to many different issues that relate to women.

Cook said Women’s Week has been held every year since the 1960s and 1970s, when it was called Feminist Fortnight.

Sophomore Kyle Simon said Women’s Week programs are relevant to the world as well as the OWU community.

“It’s important to have Women’s Week because we still have people on this planet and students on our campus who are still unaware or opposed to treating women equally,” he said.

Cook said it is easy to forget women here and around the world still face a lot of inequalities.

Freshman Zoe Morris said being in a privileged environment causes people to forget about such problems, and this week helps to remind them of the struggles others face.

Junior Gus Wood said the programming reminds students and others that such struggles are still going on.

“It’s easy to assume women’s issues aren’t as important as they were in the origins in the women’s movement,” he said. “This week shows what we have done and still need to do.”

Women’s Week had events ranging from an appearance by slam poet Andrea Gibson to student performances and the popular “Take Back the Night” event.

“Take Back the Night” is an event that lets rape and sexual assault survivors speak about their experiences in a safe environment.

“Take Back the Night is an important event to have now so that people gain a better understanding of what events like Steubenville mean in a smaller, more relatable context,” senior Alex Crump said.

Cook said the event helps raise awareness of the local impact of sexual violence and empowers survivors.

“It’s impossible to deny that sexual assault and abuse is a very real problem, even on our campus, but there is also so much power in speaking out and knowing that none of us is alone,” she said.

Wood said recent events in Steubenville, Ohio; Delhi, India; and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are important to remind people of what progress society needs to make.

“We live in a world that, in many ways, was built for men, and empowering all genders to work for equality is essential,” Cook said.

“Women’s Week is a reminder of all the changes that are still needed, but also reminds us that we’re all in this together and that there is hope.”