Category: News

By Emily Hostetler
Transcript Correspondent

Colleges Against Cancer (CAC) will unite the campus to walk for a cure through the Relay for Life program.

On March 22, teams of students, faculty and staff will gather in the Gordon Field House, where at least one person from each team will be walking laps for 18 hours.
Junior Jessica Martin, president of CAC, said the organization has been planning Relay for Life since September.

“This event means creating more birthdays,” she said. “It’s a really powerful event to show people the small part of the journey a cancer patient would go through.”
This year, the theme for the event is “holidays,” and each team has to pick a holiday to plan fundraising events around.

“We thought holidays would be fun because people can have fun with it,” Martin said. “We are planning an Easter egg hunt, caroling and a Halloween dress up contest at the event.”

Martin also said one of her favorite parts about the event is the annual cross-dressing contest.

“We always have a cross-dressing contest with (professional) drag queens and all the contestants are encouraged to cross dress and have a pageant,” she said.

While there are many events to keep students awake and active during the event, there will also be a Luminaire ceremony, at which candles are lit, and memorials for Jeffrey Thongsawath ’10, who recently died from pancreatic cancer.

Junior Jija Dutt, team development recruitment chair for CAC, said she is really happy with how the year of planning the event has gone so far.

“I am most looking forward to everyone coming together,” she said. “We have all the fun stuff and ceremonies like the Luminaire to honor people who have lost their lives and are battling cancer and take moments to be thankful.”

Meghan Feran ’06, American Cancer Society staff partner to the Relay For Life of OWU, said there are 23 teams signed up to date—the most OWU has ever had—with over $6,000 raised for the cause.

“Seeing collegiate committees collaborate and pull together such a life-saving event out of selflessness and passion to the cause in the fight against cancer is simply amazing,” she said. “The committee is small but mighty and doing a phenomenal job.”

CAC is a national organization committed to implementing programs in colleges aimed at eliminating cancer.

The organization is a main sponsor of Relay for Life and holds events such as the Great American Smokeout to encourage people to stop smoking and focuses on raising awareness about all cancer types.

“Freshman year I lost my mom to Leukemia,” Dutt said. “I had to fly back home to India… I came back all charged up and ready to be involved. While we are still here and still have time to do something about it (cancer) we should.”

Dutt said cancer can be unpredictable, which is one of the scariest things about it.

“Something like cancer should be important to everyone,” she said. “It affects people in more ways than one. You never know who is going to be touched by it.”

Martin said she joined CAC because her mom survived Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia as a child and because of that she has always been really passionate about cancer.
“I’ve seen the effects of cancer and I really believe that if dedicate ourselves to research, we will find a cure,” Martin said.

By Emily Feldmesser
Transcript Correspondent

On February 18 the “I Love Female Orgasm” event, sponsored by Sisters United (SU) and the Women’s Resource Center (WRC), was presented to Ohio Wesleyan students, male and female alike.

Hosted by sex educators Marshall Miller and Kate Weinberg, the event “combines sex education and women’s empowerment with a hearty dose of laughter,” according to the program’s website, to “illuminat(e) the subject of female orgasm for everyone.”

“Events like this put women’s health and pleasure on people’s radars, and help educate all of us on healthy sexuality,” said senior Kamila Goldin, a WRC intern.

“I think programs like this are important to have because it’s a form of sex education but its fun at the same time. I think the fact that they made it fun made it more enjoyable for people,” said sophomore Mariah Powell, president of SU.

Junior Madeleine Leader, vice-president of SU, said their role in the program was marketing, student involvement and providing the financial backing.

“It wasn’t too difficult to get this program to OWU, thanks to the support of Sisters United and WCSA, who helped secure and provide the funding or else it would have been too expensive,” Goldin said.

Leader also said OWU is very open to different kinds of events, which is why it was easy to get this event to campus.

One aspect of this program was that it was a part of the Panhellenic trilogy events. According to senior Amber Callen-Ward, Panhellenic Council president, trilogy events require at least 75 percent of each sorority chapter to attend programs “that we believe will be educational or informative for our community.”

“I would say that many women were excited by the event, which can seen by the fact that all the sororities had over 75 percent of their chapters there,” Callen-Ward said.
Leader said because “Female Orgasm” was a trilogy event, attendance was quite high, but “there were so many people that came by their own volition.”

Powell said she noticed the event was so full, that students were sitting on the floor in order to be a part of the talk.

Fraternities were also required to send 75 percent of their members to this event, which the organizers were glad to see.

“I would hope that the males who attended this event learned more about the female body and they became more comfortable talking about sex,” Powell said.

Goldin said she hoped the event “underscored the importance of consent and communication in sex.”

Freshman Kristina Wheeler said she thought the event was “fantastic.”

“It put a spotlight on the often taboo subject of female sexuality,” she said.

Goldin said she thinks the information presented is important to disseminate for two reasons.

“The first is immediate: it makes life better,” she said. It makes it easier to communicate with partners. The second reason is because most cultures are horribly disrespectful to women. By focusing on female pleasure and empowerment now, we hope to affect the culture of the future.”

By Sadie Slager
Transcript Correspondent

With a new system of daily or weekly custodial checklists posted throughout common areas and dormitory bathrooms, students are told who cleaned their bathroom, when they did it and which duties were performed.

In many common areas and buildings cleaned by the Ohio Wesleyan Aramark Custodial Department, pink flyers outline days the spaces are cleaned and differentiate between deep cleaning and regular cleaning.

Deep cleaning procedures include dry mopping of floors, emptying of trash, dusting of surfaces and cleansing of fixtures.

In student bathrooms, custodial services are responsible for replenishing toilet paper, cleaning the shower, emptying trash, wiping down surfaces and mopping the floor. Once custodial workers have finished these weekly tasks, they leave a checklist with the date, time and their signature.

Freshman Ann Sharpe said she is satisfied with the current state of custodial services. She said her bathroom is “cleaned thoroughly each week” and always has sufficient supplies.

“We currently have 8 rolls of toilet paper ready to be used,” she said.

Sharpe said when she and her suitemates leave belongings out in the bathroom, the custodial services staff leave a reminder and give them a second chance to clear the room.
“When we forget to take our belongings out of the bathroom she usually writes a note that she’ll be back the next day to clean if we remember to clear out our things,” she said.

Sharpe said OWU is unique in that weekly custodial services are provided for each student’s room.

“I feel like I can’t complain about our cleaning services because most of my friends at other schools have to clean their own bathroom,” she said.

Sophomore Saige Bell said the cleanliness of her bathroom depends on whose job it is to clean it that week.

“One person doesn’t give us enough toilet paper; one does,” she said. “Sometimes I think they check things off on the checklist that they didn’t really do. The walls of the shower aren’t always cleaned.”

Sophomore Sam Weeks said her bathroom is not always cleaned frequently because she doesn’t always completely clear the area of personal belongings.

“They always leave a note saying they couldn’t clean because I had stuff in the way,” she said. “But I don’t get why they can’t just clean around it.”

Weeks, who now lives in Stuyvesant Hall, said she was more satisfied with how her bathroom in Smith Hall was cleaned last year.

“My bathroom in Smith was always cleaned wonderfully,” she said. “I think it depends on who’s cleaning.”

Weeks said while some spaces are always well-cleaned in the dormitories, she would like to see some more changes.

“I feel like the common areas in Stuy are cleaned very well, and the common bathrooms,” she said.

“I’d like them to clean around the stuff I have on my sink and not skip the days they’re supposed to clean. And I don’t have enough toilet paper.”

By Hannah Urano
Transcript Correspondent

The modern foreign language department continues its search for two full-time French professors as finalists visit campus.

According to German Professor Thomas Wolber, it’s been a long process of trial and error that the department hopes will end successfully before the end of the academic year.
When French professors Margaret Fete and Susanna Bellocq died last winter, Susan Binkley and Adela Lechintan were hired as visiting assistant professors to fill their spots.
Meanwhile, Wolber said, the department was in the early phases of finding permanent replacements.

According to the faculty handbook, it is university policy to hold a nationwide search to fill tenure positions.

“In my opinion, it is always preferable to have a tenure track position over people who come and go,” Wolber said. “You want continuity, you want stability, you want someone who is totally committed and does not always have one foot in the job market.”

According to Wolber, the Academic Policy Committee approved the department’s request to hire two new professors last fall and job descriptions were distributed nationally: one for a metropolitan French literature professor and another for a Francophone studies professor.

Francophone studies involve non-metropolitan French speaking areas including the Caribbean, Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America and Southeast Asia.
“We have many French students,” Wolber said.

“We didn’t want the program to die. I think it is fair to state that the university is very committed to maintaining French and seeing the program rejuvenated.”

According to Wolber the university has since received almost 100 applications for each position. A search committee “narrow(ed) down the candidates,” conducted interviews and brought the finalists to OWU.

Six candidates have visited or will visit the university in the final leg of the job search, three for each position.

“We are close to the end of the search,” Wolber said. “We have excellent candidates; we are happy with the quality.”

While on campus, each candidate gives a “scholarly presentation” to the search committee that’s open to students. They also have a chance to meet with students at an informal lunch.

Sophomore Kerrigan Boyd is not a French major, but has met with many of the candidates, as she is a member of the MFL student board.

“Most of the candidates I’ve talked to seem like their areas of study would fit quite well with the Ohio Wesleyan cross-disciplinary learning philosophy,” she said. “Even though I’m not a French major, it’s still important to me to find a professor that would fit well with the department and help it grow as a whole.”

Wolber said it is important to him students’ opinions are heard.

“I think student sentiment is always taken very seriously,” he said.

“If that were not the case I would not be very happy. Students need to be heard. Ultimately our business is all about the students, I think it would be unconscionable not to consult them.”

Junior Nora Anderson, who is majoring in French, said all of the candidates she’s interacted with “are lovely people and they have much broader takes on the Francophone world than I’m used to, and I’m glad to see that.”

“I’m excited to finally get permanent faculty, and I hope to work with them next year,” she said.

By Cecilia Smith
Transcript Correspondent

Students in Small Living Units may be less likely to leave Ohio Wesleyan due to increased campus activity and a heightened sense of community, according to members of the SLU community.

Many SLU residents said they would have transferred if they had not been able to be a part of the community.

Senior Erinn Colmenares, a resident of House of Thought (HoT), said she definitely believes SLUs have a higher retention rate within OWU, partly because students who decide to live in SLUs are already less inclined to leave.

“It’s like a commitment,” she said. “We make a series of subconscious agreements during the interview process. It’s like, ‘OK, you seem really interested and we’ll see what you’re like.’ By interviewing and us accepting you, the people we interviewed still have the power to say no. I’d say that happens more than people leaving school when they’re already living in (a) SLU.”

HoT lost one member this year, though not for reasons related to the university itself, according to senior Mikala Back.

Dale Swartzentruber, associate dean for institutional research, said 87.2 percent of last year’s sophomores returned in fall 2012. He also said in an email 93.2 percent of juniors returned as seniors in fall 2012. Overall, the university’s retention rate between the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic years was 87.4 percent.

Senior Aubrey Alamshah, who has been an RA at Hayes Hall for the past two years, said most of the upperclassmen she has known who’ve left OWU did so because they either failed out or had difficulty paying tuition. Alamshah said students in SLUs might have an easier time with acadmics at OWU.

“I find that people who join SLUs tend to be more committed and more focused on academics,” she said. “I think the good thing about SLUs is that they force (the students living in them) to be more accountable. I think there’s a sense of responsibility that people in SLUs have that makes them more committed.”

Back said living in HoT gave her a bigger sense of community than she had living in the dorms on campus.

“I lived in the dorms the past three years and it wasn’t horrible but I didn’t know people very well,” Back said. “I never really felt like I identified with my roommates in the way I identify with the people here. And being in the dorms, it’s easier to be a homebody but here there are new people coming in the house every day….If you live with one roommate who’s a great roommate it does a lot for your college experience but if you’re living with 10 good roommates it does even more.”

Colmenares said living in a SLU is like interviewing for a dream job.

“There are the jobs that you’re thinking of seeing how it goes, the jobs you want to leave and the jobs where you know you want to stay,” she said. “Living in a SLU is kind of like the job where you know it’s not like you’re saying you’ll do it but you’re already thinking of leaving. It’s not like working at McDonald’s.”

By Noah Manskar
Editor-in-Chief

Ohio Wesleyan’s tuition will increase 3.5 percent next year from $38,890 to $40,250, according to a Jan. 29 announcement from Dan Hitchell, vice-president of finance and administration and treasurer.

Hitchell said the increase is a result of rising fixed costs like lights, heat, power, facility and technological maintenance, and library expenses.

“Even when we’re aggressive in cost containment, some things will go up and cost more,” he said. “You walk around a college campus and it’s like running a small city.”

According to Hitchell, the rise is low compared to other Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) institutions—the highest rates of increase as a percentage of current tuition are around 5 percent, while the lowest are around 3.

OWU’s rate of increase has declined 3.2 percent since the 2006-2007 fiscal year, from 6.2 percent.
Tuition for the current year is the cheapest of the Ohio Five—OWU, Denison University, Kenyon College, Oberlin College and the College of Wooster—but is the sixth-most expensive of the thirteen GLCA schools. Earlham College ranks just above OWU, with a tuition cost of $39,200.

Sophomore Ibrahim Saeed said he thinks the university “hasn’t really given a proper explanation” of the increase.

“It was so strange, and there are a lot of things that go unexplained,” he said. “But sometimes you don’t want to argue with it because it is what it is.”

Saeed said his expenses as an international student, in addition to tuition, have increased—the rate for his health insurance went from $1,000 to $1,500 since the 2011-2012 year.

University President Rock Jones said the President’s Office makes an annual report of “the needs for the upcoming year” and “the expenses related to those needs” to the Board of Trustees, which ultimately determines tuition rates.

Jones said salaries and benefits for faculty and staff also contribute to growth in expenses, which the university is trying to keep down, along with the aforementioned fixed costs.

“We’re trying to be as energy-efficient as we can,” he said. “We’re trying to look at ways to use purchasing to make the least expensive acquisitions, but still have the quality of materials that we need. A couple of years ago we had significant reductions in administrative staff as a way to hold down cost. We’ve not had significant program budget increases in recent years.”

Hitchell said one way to cut costs is to evaluate which staff duties—accounting tasks, for example—can be automated and completed more efficiently.

This allows “higher order” jobs to be done faster without hiring new employees.

He said this kind of “creativity,” rather than “cost containment” alone, is what the university will need to keep tuition from increasing at a higher rate.

“Cost containment means we’re going to just spend less,” he said. “Creativity means we’re going to spend better and achieve more with what we spend.”

Jones said the university attempts to offset increases with financial aid, the budget for which is “much larger than it was six or eight years ago.”

One reform to the financial aid system has been an increase in the amount awarded through Schubert scholarships for prospective honors students.

Recipients receive a base amount of annual scholarship money and get a chance to earn more at one of two competitions early in the spring semester.

The base funding for the class of 2015 was $17,000 per year; the class of 2016 saw an increase to $22,500. The former’s Schubert funding didn’t increase with tuition. Jones said this was because the program had been changed to have a larger base amount and less additional money from the competition.
Saeed said he thinks the university administration should adjust aid for current students to assuage the tuition increase.

“I think if they’re going to increase tuition like that, they should increase other things, like increase our scholarships,” he said.

Despite such reforms, Jones said he thinks the university will need to keep rates of increase for tuition low in the coming years.

“I think that families are doing all they can, and we have to be careful to not push tuition too high,” he said. “We have to balance the increases in aid against the increases in tuition, so reducing the increase in tuition also increases the amount of additional aid money that’s available.”

Hitchell said he thinks keeping increases down is essential to the “mission” of schools like OWU.

“The challenge for higher ed is going to be how we deliver that mission and accomplish more with what we do spend,” he said.

Saeed said he wonders what the future of tuition will look like at OWU if increases continue.

“It’s weird, because when you’re a sophomore you think, ‘What am I going to be paying my senior year? What are the freshmen going to be paying their senior year? If my kids go here are they gonna be paying 80,000 a year?’” he said.

By Noah Manskar
Editor-in-Chief

A steel pipe 18 feet long lay on Chappelear Drama Center’s main stage among bare set pieces. A group of seven or eight stood and stared in amazement at its sheer size; two more admired from the catwalk about 30 feet above. All were growing tired—it was getting close to midnight.

Attached to the monolithic rod was a two-foot crossbar, which had to attach to the edge of the catwalk—known as the grid—so the larger piece could hang down above one of the theater’s entrances. It was one of four special lighting apparatuses designed and built specially for “The Passion of Dracula,” the Ohio Wesleyan Department of Theatre’s latest production.

The goal was to get the obnoxiously giant contraption suspended in the air. To do so, it had to be raised 30 feet off the ground first.

The light crew stopped its staring and tried to pick up the pipe. The result was a much less patriotic and much less successful reenactment of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.

After a brief conference about how best to complete the job, the crew decided a rope would be tied around the crossbar so they could hoist it up to the grid. It was, miraculously, successful—now the pipe just had to be lifted over and attached to a railing about four feet high. Its incredible length made this a Herculean task.

Margaret Knecht, “The Passion of Dracula’s” master electrician and the crew’s fearless leader, supervised from about 15 feet in the air from the Genie, the department’s resident utility lift. The pipe dangled above her head, the crew holding it in a tenuous balance. Her eyes were alert—she was ready to dodge the thing if she had to. She was admittedly a little scared. But she loves moments like these, because they bond the crew in a way nothing else can.

“At the time, I was terrified that people were gonna fall off or it was gonna fall and hit me or something terrible was gonna happen, but we look back on it and we’re like, ‘We almost died that night!’ and we laugh. Bad situations turn into good things, and if you have the right attitude, anything can be fun—even sucky midnight calls.”

Margaret is a junior at OWU from Chardon, Ohio, with an endearingly raspy voice. She likes to wear a lot of black and drink a lot of two-percent milk.

Her first theater experience was as a Jet in “West Side Story” at the age of 6, but she doesn’t consider herself a “theater baby”—someone who was born and raised in the theater.

She joined her high school’s drama club with her older brother as a way to meet new people, and discovered a love for both technical work and performance. She worked on crews for “Nickled and Dimed,” “My Fair Lady,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Noises Off,” and acted in “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Steel Magnolias” and “The Sound of Music.” She hated “The Sound of Music.”

“My dad calls it ‘Sound of Mucus,’” she said. “It’s really funny.”

In high school, Margaret wanted to be a marine biologist, but decided to pursue theater after a conversation with her high school drama teacher Mrs. Horbath, who introduced her to stage management. She fell in love with management and production in high school because she “loved being in charge”—something she didn’t get from performing.

“It was great in a superficial way to be on stage and get the applause and things like that,” she said, “but I found it more fulfilling to me to be that person behind the curtain that made everything run, that made every aspect of the show come together—the actors, the sound, the lights, everything. I loved being that person, and that might be a little egotistical, but it’s the epitome of what is magical about theater to me—that you can take words on a paper with a script and turn it into a spectacle, or a play that moves people, or just something entertaining. You can just take something so small and make it so big.”

Margaret stage-managed “The Fairy Queen,” the baroque Shakespearean musical spectacle OWU produced in the fall. It’s a stage manager’s job to help the director with anything he or she needs, settle disputes among the company, make sure everyone knows when to be at rehearsals, write a report for each rehearsal and a plethora of other duties. This meant Margaret was in the theater from before 7 until after 10 each night for rehearsals—even earlier and later during tech week, the hellish polishing period in the week leading up to opening night.

Additionally, Margaret had to do what’s known as calling the show—communicating to every member of the crew what to do during the performance and when to do it. “The Fairy Queen” had over 175 light cues, moving scenery, special effects (like a flash pot that almost caught the lead actress’s costume on fire) and myriad other technical elements. Margaret knew every one, backwards and forwards.

Theater puts her under a lot of stress, and can be physically and emotionally taxing. But she said she loves it, simply “because it’s theater.”

“The thing about theater that I’ve noticed, at least for myself, that even the times that I hated it and the times I was extremely stressed out, underneath it all I still loved it,” she said. “I would rather be stressed out about theater than stressed out about schoolwork.”

For Margaret, this zeal is something she can’t put into words. Despite all it takes out of her, it gives something back that she can’t describe.

The only reasons she can give for sacrificing so much are those five syllables: “because it’s theater.”
“I could tell you it’s about the community or about the problem solving or about the fulfillment, but those are just symptoms to the overall disease,” she said. “Those are great, but the passion that I have is something that I can’t explain.”

Margaret came into the department intending to do a performance concentration, but realized she only enjoyed it for the “wrong reasons”—applause and the thrill of performing. Technical work brought her a different, less superficial kind of fulfillment, despite the initial “egotistical” pleasure of being in charge; so she made the transition from getting a lot of recognition to nearly none.

“That hurt—not hurt, but that was a little bit of a twinge for a little while,” she said.

“But I’ve progressively gotten over it, because I would rather—not even just get praise—but I would rather be recognized by my peers in the department than the audiences. Because I loved being that person that people felt that they could count on, because I feel like I’m a pretty trustworthy person. So being able to be there for this department and being able to help the show run and being recognized by my peers—people that I actually want their respect, and their respect actually matters to me.”

Margaret didn’t abandon acting completely—she appeared in the infamous “Mame” her freshman year, and played Madame Desmortes in last spring’s “Ring Round the Moon”—so she occupies a unique position in the eternal feud between actors and “techies.”

The two distinct groups often quarrel because they each form tight bonds over the course of rehearsals and late-night calls. While both come together as a cohesive unit to put the show on, Margaret said, they exist in separate spheres.

“Sometimes it’s like, ‘Techies unite! Actors unite!’ And techies will take jabs at actors, and actors will take jabs at techies,” she said. “We’re under a full community. I don’t want to make it sound like we’re segregated. I’m both an actor and a techie, and it’s really fun to make jabs either way.”

Kristen Krak has bridged the gap between techie and actor, too. She stage-managed the 2012 One Acts, a collaborative production by the Directing and Playwriting classes, as a freshman. It was much less demanding than “The Fairy Queen,” but still required gaining a good deal of knowledge on a steep learning curve.

More recently, Kristen’s stuck mostly with acting. She played Hermia, one of Shakespeare’s Four Lovers, in “The Fairy Queen,” and will star as Wilhelmina in “The Passion of Dracula.”

Kristen is a sophomore from Granville, Ohio. She loves cats, plays guitar and has a small nose piercing, a popular body modification among the theater department.

Kristen said she started dancing around age four. She gave her first ballet recital when she was five, and got her first acting experience as the Mouse Queen in a local production of “The Nutcracker.”

Being on stage from such a young age made performance natural for her. She wanted to go into genetics in high school, but her youth pastor’s wife—like Margaret’s Mrs. Horbath—made her realize theater was her true passion.

Her parents questioned her decision to make such a drastic change, and she still hesitates herself—as one who describes her “inner nature” as caring and nurturing, she sometimes wonders how she is “directly helping people” through theater.

In her senior year of high school, Kristen worked with a special education class of developmentally disabled students her age. She befriended a 16-year-old autistic girl named Lauren, who didn’t talk much, but often amazed Kristen with what she could do—once, she spilled a jigsaw puzzle onto the floor and solved it within five minutes.

“Like, it was a huge puzzle,” Kristen said.

“And she just sat there and just twisted them, twisted them, picked up another piece, twisted them—I just stood there open-mouthed, like, ‘Did she do this? Has she done this puzzle before?’”

Soon after working with Lauren, Kristen started volunteering at a theater program for autistic children. The staff would rehearse a fairy tale with a younger group of 8- to 12-year olds, and a high-school age group would practice a portion of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Kristen worked with a boy there named Jake. To help him memorize his lines, she read one to him while he was coloring and he’d repeat it. He would never look at her while they rehearsed, so she thought he wasn’t retaining anything.

“And I did it again, and did it again, but he still wasn’t paying attention to me, and I was like, ‘Alright Jake, tell me.’ And he just looks at me and spits out the whole monologue. I was like, ‘Point proven. Point proven.’”

Kristen said she’s read extensively about how working with characters can help children with autism like Jake and Lauren improve their communication skills and deconstruct “social barriers.” These sorts of programs are the answer to her question about how theater can help people.

“My two greatest passions in life are theater and autism, and it just so happens that they fit together very nicely,” she said.

Kristen finds working with characters liberating for her, too—the opportunity to be someone else makes it less intimidating to perform, even when performance is so natural.

“I don’t mind giving a presentation, but if I have to get up and talk about myself, that’s when I get nervous,” she said. “…But when I’m another person, when I’m playing a character, then I really don’t have a problem with it.”

Acting gives her the opportunity to have an extraordinary existence for a short time, an escape from her “solid, mediocre, decent life.” It’s a way to live in extremes and “be somebody exciting.”

But it can also put things in perspective. When she was a freshman in high school, Kristen played Emily in “Our Town,” a metaphysical play by Thornton Wilder about “life and looking back on life.” When she was in the show, a boy in the junior class at her school had just died in a car accident.

The play’s theme of life’s impermanence was jarringly relevant to these events—Kristen remembers crying after rehearsal one evening.

“I don’t think I would have gotten as much out of that play if that hadn’t happened like that,” she said. “But it really affected me and struck me and reminded me—the whole moral of the story was very true at that point…. I think it gave me the ability to help others, too, at that time, other people in my high school.”

The show made her realize how cathartic and healing theater can be for anyone—not just members of the company, but those in the audience, as well. A well-executed drama can make a viewer feel as if they’re not alone in a dark situation, and a good laugh at a comedy can cheer them up.

“I think that’s exciting as an actor—how is what you’re doing going to affect others?” Kristen said. “I think that’s a huge part about theater, is the effect that you reveal is the impression, the thoughts.”
As much positive power being in character has for Kristen, having to let go of a character has a lot of negative power for actors—especially Matthew Jamison.

“The day after the last performance I wake up and it’s like I feel like I’m gonna die, like my life has no purpose anymore because this thing that I have sacrificed for and put my whole entire being into doing is done, and it’s horrible. It’s a horrible feeling.”

Matthew is a junior from Houston, Texas. He spent the fall semester in Europe, and he thinks in lists.
For Matthew, the thrill of performing makes up for every sacrifice he makes for the theater. He describes it as “ephemeral”— “It lasts one moment, moment to moment, and it’s never exactly the same way again.”
This ephemeral nature of theater is why he wouldn’t let his parents watch the recording of his performance in last fall’s “Dear Brutus.”

“Because it becomes something—it’s not the play we did,” he said. “It’s something different. It’s not ephemeral once you film it. It’s like a completely different entity.”

Matthew was very much the theater baby Margaret wasn’t—his parents loved theater, and one summer sent him to a one-day musical theater camp against his will. In the end he loved it, and went back for every remaining session.

As a child, he acted in local community theater, where he was “exposed very early to drunken, naked adult actions, most of them gay.” He also worked in a few professional productions when children were needed, like “The Wizard of Oz.”

Community theater, he said, helped him learn a good deal about acting while avoiding “the nonsense of doing theater”—overstretched budgets, tight deadlines and poor “artistic choices.”

Matthew was exposed to that nonsense as a junior in high school, when he participated in New York’s Broadway Theater Project, a program run by professional directors and choreographers. He expected insightful advice that would help him on his way to a BFA in theater performance; he got something very different.

“It was miserable, because everyone was very jaded, like, ‘Yes, I’m a Broadway casting director and that gives me the right to be an asshole to everyone.’ So it was very mean-spirited, and it was like, ‘This is how you do musical theater, and any deviance from this is wrong, and you’re a bad performer if you deviate from this.’”

He recalls a particularly bad session with Frank Wildhorn, who composed “Jekyll and Hyde” for the Broadway stage. Wildhorn talked about how he wrote a song for that show simply because his producers wanted a piece audiences could recognize. This sort of selling out, capitalizing on theatrical art, is what Matthew calls “shitty theater.”

“I don’t wanna perform in shitty theater. I love musical theater, but I like a very small number of musicals. So yeah, I’d love to perform in musicals all day, but I don’t wanna perform in ones that are being produced professionally….(B)ecause it’s all based on money and bringing in people, so I would be a performer, but I can’t make a living performing the things that I want to.”

Some in the OWU theater department call Matthew a triple threat—a performer who can sing, dance and act exceptionally well. Despite this, he wants to teach rather than perform for fear of being sucked into this “shitty theater” as a means of sustaining himself—plays that aren’t shitty to exist, he said, but they exist in warehouses and aren’t a viable career path. So the faculty at OWU inspires Matthew to achieve his goal of professorship.

“I kinda wanna be like a mash up of Bonnie and Ed—do literature but also theories…I’m really into educational theater, too, and Bonnie does that. But my favorite parts of both Bonnie and Ed.”
Bonne Milne-Gardner is an accomplished playwright and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
She is Ohio Wesleyan’s resident expert on playwriting, dramaturgy, theater education, arts management and other subjects, according to the university website.

Ed Kahn began his theater career after working as an engineer. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. from Tufts University. He teaches Directing and Theories of Performance at OWU.

Matthew said the faculty’s openness and expertise make them easy to work with in shows and serve as models for the kind of teacher he wants to be. They’re flexible, but not too flexible; they know what they want for themselves as directors, but are willing to make the student’s experience as close to ideal as possible.

“They are open to giving you the experience that you want within the framework that they want,” Matthew said.

Gus Wood does not feel so fondly.

“I honestly feel like at least some of the faculty here has forgotten their first priority at an institution of education, which is education,” he said.

“I feel like when a show goes up, or when a show’s going up, they’re so focused on doing the job of the show that they lose track of the fact that we’re all trying to learn from that process.”

Gus is a junior. He does performance poetry, and had the nation’s second-best haiku in 2011. The destination of his daydreams is Milk World, a universe where everything is made from dairy products.

Gus was first drawn to theater because of its power to make him cry. When he was young, his sister acted in “A Christmas Carol,” and the actor playing Jacob Marley made him burst into tears. He pursued it throughout high school and fell in love with theater as an art form, as “the most honest, engaging, powerful thing I have ever experienced.”

Gus’s freshman year was when “Mame” happened. “Mame” was a disaster.

“All you essentially have to do to elicit a Pavlovian groan from anyone in this current stock of theater majors, junior and above, is say the word ‘Mame,’ and there will be a groan so palpable that you can grab it, strangle it and ask it questions,” Gus said.

“Mame” is a 1966 musical by Jerry Herman; Elane Denny-Todd directed the OWU production in the fall of 2010. Rehearsals started at 7 p.m. and had no designated end time, so the cast had no idea when they would be allowed to leave. The show was also “technically demanding,” Gus said—“We had a staircase, for Christ’s sake.”

Elane is one of the OWU faculty whom Gus feels has lost a sense of collaboration with her students over the years.

“You have an idea of the show,” Gus said of some experienced directors, “and it’s a very concise, narrow, complete idea—it’s even a good idea—but if anyone has something that isn’t that idea, it kind of throws a wrench in your machine and you have to think about it, and that bothers some people.” Elane, according to Gus, is someone it bothers.

Gus feels the cast must claim some responsibility in such situations, that it would be possible for a group of upperclassmen to approach a director with ideas of how to make the experience better for the company.

But most don’t say anything because they’re “(s)cared of making waves, scared of causing problems for themselves later.”

One step out of line could have lasting effects on one’s career.

“Because one ‘Hey, I think you might wanna check yourself on that,’ could turn into ‘Hey, I’m not gonna cast you in that show next year,’” he said.

Gus said directors in the OWU department often make shows feel like work rather than a learning experience, and it often becomes hard to separate the stress of producing a show on a deadline from academics.

“(T)hat atmosphere pervades into the classroom, because the guy who yelled at me last night about how I don’t know how to focus a light is trying to teach me something else the next day,” he said. “Like, that level of impatience is still gonna be in my mind, and I’m not gonna want to ask questions, and I’m not gonna want to ask him to go over it a third, fourth, fifth time even though I need it.”

Gus came into OWU as a theater major and English minor. He’s now reversing the two, dropping theater to a minor and pursuing English fully. He said the way the department teaches its students isn’t conducive to learning for him. He said he spends most of his class time “either competing with the people in my class, or…feeling inferior about the things I don’t know.”

“(H)ow they could’ve kept me here is just understand that I, personally, as a student, need to fuck up nine times before I get a really good tenth time,” he said.

For Gus, theater at OWU has crreated a lot of good memories—many of his friends came from theater, and his contemporaries have become “like a family.” The department simply showed him that his future is in a different place, doing something else.

“Honestly, for me, I feel like I would’ve gotten here eventually,” he said. “This place made it go a hell of a lot faster…. I’m not walking away from this department howling and cursing and spitting and shitting. I am extraordinarily grateful for the good experiences, a tad resentful and regretful about the bad ones, but I’m not about to hold anybody more accountable than myself.”

Gus still believes in theater. He believes in its power as art, and the “sense of expression and vulnerability” it offers. And he believes in its power to send a message.

“This is gonna come off a Hallmark card, but none of us would be here if we didn’t feel we had something to say, and since everyone here has something to say, ideally—and I believe it’s true of this department, at least to some extent—if everybody believes they have something to say, everyone is willing to listen to somebody else.”

Caroline Williams is a freshman from Hudson, Ohio. She often wears a rainbow beanie that one of her friends sometimes steals off her head. Her biggest inspiration is her mother.

She started doing theater her sophomore year of high school—when she was still an introvert—doing sound with her friend Rachel, who she “sat in the corner with and didn’t talk to anyone with.”

She continued to do technical work, and interacting with the community in her department built up her self-confidence.

In her junior year she auditioned for and got a leading role in one of the school’s plays. This was the first time she had ever gotten “a big head.”

“But I think it was kind of good for me to have a big head at that point, and I think it’s easier to go up and come down a little bit than to just get myself to the regular point,” she said. “So I think it was nice to be coming down from having way too big of a self-esteem and figuring it out—I think I needed that, ‘cause it was a big step to think anything great of myself, ‘cause I had a really low self-esteem early in high school and before high school.”

Caroline is doing a tech concentration in theater at OWU, but she took Elane’s Beginning Acting class this past fall. There she learned how words are just another of one’s actions on a stage, and how every action—including speech—is significant.

“You don’t just move for the sake of moving,” she said. “You move to say something.”

Caroline is also an English major, so this was a difficult idea for her to grasp—she was used to thinking words were something inherently more powerful than movement. But her experience in theater has helped her learn that different people “understand the world” in different ways.

“(W)ords and theater—that is my way of understanding the world, and getting ideas. If I have a feeling about (something) in my personal life, or about social justice, I would write a play about it, and that would be how I send a message,” she said.

“Or I might write a poem about it. Some people, in terms of understanding the world and why we’re here, they do that through math equations, and that’s how they understand the world, and that’s what they feel is important. And I think that’s just as valid—if how you feel you can understand why we’re here and what’s around us, if that’s through physics or chemistry, or anything, that’s just as valid and important as me seeing it through a theatrical production in front of me, or someone who sees it through color on a canvas.”

Caroline worked on the second OWU production of “8,” a play by Dustin Lance Black about the legal battle against California’s ban on same-sex marriage. As an activist for marriage equality, she felt it was an important message to send, but she doesn’t feel theater should force the audience to think a certain way—it must “walk a line of getting people to agree with you,” but shouldn’t push them over it. Because of her respect for different understandings of the world, this is something Caroline said she’s going to be careful of.

“I think that what I’ll have to really think about in what I’m doing is not trying to get people to believe things, but telling them the truth and then maybe they’ll come out of it believing the same thing as me, or at least having an opinion,” she said.

“Because I’d much rather come out of a show thinking completely opposite of what I think that being indifferent about it.”

Caroline feels, though, that theater has an inherent power to bring such daunting social issues close to home and make them intensely visible to an audience. Because theater focuses in so tightly on human relationships and experiences, it makes it easy for the viewer to see a story up close and relate to it.
“I think theater often zooms in on the individual emotions of people in a situation, instead of just a broad statement about what happened,” she said.

As something that focuses so closely on individuals, Caroline thinks the theater is a place where one has to “be able to put yourself out there and be a little weird,” to establish an identity as an individual.
But at the same time, it’s welcoming—everyone has a place.

Caroline thinks these open arms should be carried through the auditorium doors because they’re so universal.

“I think it’s kind of been a really nice starting point for a lot of people that I’ve known, of being able to find a place in something,” she said, “and then taking it past theater and being like, ‘I can find a place other places, too. I have things to add, and people value me.’”

Caroline was on the light crew for “The Passion of Dracula.” She was there holding onto that pole for dear life with everyone else—without her, it would have likely knocked Margaret off the Genie. She was the anchor, and when she faltered, someone had to take the weight for her.

She was there, and she had a place. Everyone did.

By Hannah Urano
Transcript Correspondent

On Feb. 1, University President Rock Jones announced, “with a sense of great enthusiasm and excitement,”the selection of Charles Stinemetz as Ohio Wesleyan’s new provost.

The provost is the vice-president for academic affairs and is one of five vice-presidents that report directly to the president.

Specifically, Stinemetz said, he is responsible for the “academic division” of the university, which includes Academic Affairs, Athletics, Libraries and Information Services, and the Registrar’s Office.
Director of Athletics Roger Ingles was a member of the search committee, which he said did an outstanding job of vetting candidates and put a lot of time and effort into the search.

“Obviously I am thrilled of our hire and support it 100 percent,” he said.

Stinemetz said his experience at OWU began in the early 1980s as an undergraduate majoring in botany and chemistry.

He served as interim provost during the last year, and before that worked as dean of academic affairs at the university since 2006.

“I have always valued the inclusive culture of Ohio Wesleyan,” he said.

“It is a place that is willing to listen to different ideas from varying perspectives and formulate informed views. This has not changed since I was a student.”

According to Stinemetz, students today are more committed to helping others, both academically and personally, than when he was a student.

“This is a very admirable trait that my generation came to much later in life,” he said.

Barbara Andereck, interim dean of academic affairs, said she is pleased with the appointment and believes Stinemetz’s knowledge of OWU will be valuable as he works with the other vice-presidents at the university.

“He has extensive and excellent administrative experience,” she said.

“He works well with a very wide array of people, he understands and appreciates how the university operates and he has a deep commitment to Ohio Wesleyan.”

Director of Libraries Catherine Cardwell shared Andereck’s sentiments, saying that Stinemetz knows how to be effective with various constituencies on campus and build consensus when making important decisions.
“He is deeply committed to the OWU community and making it a great place to study and work,” she said.

Ingles said he believes Stinemetz will bring a balanced approach to academics and athletics to the position.

Stinemetz said he is excited to have the opportunity to work with the faculty and staff to continue providing the strong academic experience that OWU is known for, while also exploring new ways to promote unique educational opportunities for Ohio Wesleyan students.

“Related to this goal, I am interested in promoting the use of new technologies to enhance the learning experience of students without detracting from the close faculty-student interactions that take place in the Ohio Wesleyan classroom,” he said.

Cardwell said she supports this goal, and thinks it will be successful in “improving the conditions of academic buildings and creating flexible, contemporary classrooms and study spaces that support a variety of teaching and learning needs.”

To Andereck, the university is in the process of exciting changes, many of which Stinemetz helped facilitate.

“His continued leadership will allow further development and exploration without losing momentum,” she said.

By Spenser Hickey
Assistant Copy Editor

Chartwells’ Feb. 6 “Black History Dinner” in Smith Hall has sparked some controversy.

On the menu was pulled barbecue pork, collard greens, baked beans, and macaroni and cheese.

Gene Castelli, Chartwells resident district manager, said the celebration was no different from the special Mardi Gras menu, and that holidays have foods associated with them, like Memorial Day’s link to hamburgers and hot dogs.

“Food creates memories, creates emotions that are tied into certain events throughout the year,” he said.
Castelli said Chartwells chefs picked out the food, but he didn’t know who was directly responsible for determining the menu. He said Chartwells Supervisor Beverly Coleman prepared similar menus for Welch Hall in previous years.

When Coleman was in charge of the themed menus, they were called “Soul Food Night.” Castelli said she used her own recipes in those instances.

Senior Andrew Dos Santos, co-president of Black Men of the Future, heard the menu was being brought back and worried about what foods would be on the menu. He considers the most recent menu a stereotype of the African-American community.

After seeing this year’s menu, he said he doesn’t think it’s okay.

“When (other students) see this food, they think this is what black people eat,” he said.

Senior James Huddleston, co-president of BMF, said he’d prefer if the menu had been called “Soul Food Day,” as in the past, instead of “black history,” since soul food is “an actual genre of food.”

Sophomore Garrison Davis said the menu didn’t offend him because it was in Smith, which he thinks tries to please all cultures, but fails.

Castelli said he hadn’t heard anything from African-American students, but that he and Chartwells would be open to criticism.

“(I)f the African-Americans don’t like it, if they came to me and said, ‘We don’t want you serving this food,’ we’d go, ‘Hey, what do you want to see us serve?’” he said. “We’d ask for input.”

Castelli said he thought allegations that the menu was “racist” are “ridiculous.”

“Food isn’t racist,” he said. “People are racist, but food isn’t racist.”

By Spenser Hickey
Assistant Copy Editor

The House of Black Culture serves as a focal point for educating the Ohio Wesleyan community on Black history and issues, as well as a meeting place for the African-American community.

Named after Butler A. Jones, the University’s first African-American professor, the House of Black Culture was founded in 1970 by Pete Smith and Barbara McEachern Smith.

Smith and McEachern also started the Student Union on Black Awareness.

In 1970, there were only around 40 African-American students at Ohio Wesleyan, according to a Connect2OWU article on the Smiths.

HBC, known then as the Black House, was a “safe haven” for African-American students, said junior Lehlohonolo ‘Lucky’ Mosola, HBC’s Resident Adviser.

“Now, though, it’s used much more as a community meeting place for students in general, but specifically students in the African-American community,” Mosola said. “It’s certainly a focal point for the community now more than any kind of a protection.”

Terree Stevenson, Director of Multicultural Student Affairs, said she thought it has “the same [role] today as it was historically, and more so.”

She said it still serves as a safe haven for students to feel physically, emotionally, mentally, culturally and spiritually safe, as well as a programming space and historical reference for alumni who lived there.

“I think it’s a symbol of a long-standing opportunity for the university to create and support a place for students of color,” she said.

Mosola, currently in his second year at HBC, said he joined the House because his high school program provided little contact with other African-American students, something he wanted to make up for at OWU.
“After my freshman year, I got to know somebody who lived here, and I joined BMF (Black Men of the Future), which is a student organization I met a lot of people here through,” he said.

Freshman Jerrell James, who applied to live at HBC next year, said he sees it as “a common ground” where he can be himself.

Aaron Cameron, also a freshman, said he thinks it’s “a place where people can meet and converse and basically just have a good time, live life.”

Senior James Huddleston, HBC resident and co-president of BMF, said he sees the house as a place where he can let his guard down.

He credited living there with encouraging him to focus on academics.

Junior Shelby Alston said her sister, a graduate and former HBC resident at the time, introduced her to the house.

“I just instantly fell in love with this house,” she said. “It’s just this atmosphere is so welcoming and so open.”

She said many residents, past and present, are “big influences on this campus” as upperclassmen and African-Americans making “an impact and a difference.”

Junior Madeleine Leader said she’s excited to join HBC and live with people who “practice what they preach, and who live for what they’re passionate about.”

At the same time, she acknowledged that there is “a struggle” identifying with the African-American community as a white person, offering her Residential Life application to live at HBC as an example.

She said she’s been involved in activism for racial equality her whole life and is a member of SUBA and Vice President of Sisters United at Ohio Wesleyan.

“Being around people like this, you realize what you’re fighting for and why it’s so important to celebrate our differences and come together and keep fighting for them,” she said.

Leader said she identified with “being attacked for the person you are at your core” since she was ridiculed as a child for being a Jew.

She said there is “zero awareness” of how often students use racially-charged words.

“I’ve heard plenty of white students say the n-word to each other,” she said. “It’s just the obliviousness to what this community is about, especially on this campus, because they’re fighting for something, but the only thing they ever think about for BMF or the house is their parties. That’s offensive to me.”

Alston said being the House of Black Culture carries a certain stigma among the general community.
“I’ve heard people saying they’re afraid to come here, or will they get hurt if they come here [or] all we do is party,” she said.

“It hurts to see that this house has such a rich and unique legacy, and people only focus on the negative stuff or the stuff they see us for, like, ‘Oh, they throw awesome parties,’” she said.

“Well, what else have we done, besides parties, because we’ve done so much, and do you forget the events we’ve put on?”

Events they’ve held, she said, included a lecture by Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American high school students who initiated desegregation by attending a formerly all-white Arkansas school. Alston said Roberts “captivated the audience.”

While HBC was formed as a SLU, it made the transition to being a heritage theme house this year.

Mosola said the change came due to the SLU renewal process.

Each year, SLUs must apply for and earn renewal from the university or be shut down; however, Mosola said “the school said pretty much unequivocally that they weren’t going to shut the House of Black Culture down.”

This made it unfair for HBC, which wouldn’t be shut down, to be in the same category as houses that could be shut down. This distinction led to unnecessary work for HBC members.

Despite the change, Mosola said, practically it’s “very much similar,” but the house does less programs now, since not all members are required to plan individual events.