Category: Opinion

This letter concerns the quality of food provided by Chartwells dining services and not the racial insensitivity or lack thereof surrounding the Black History Dinner. I’d like to first focus specifically on the effort that Chartwells makes to remain accessible and flexible to the needs and desires of students before turning to the actual quality of the food offered on campus.

Chartwells Regional Manager Gene Castelli embodies accessibility. Talk to any member of the Tree House, to anyone with complicated dietary restrictions, to anyone who is interested in making a real difference in Ohio Wesleyan dining, and I guarantee they have spent some quality time working with Mr. Castelli. This past fall I referred a raw vegan friend (one of the most restrictive diets in existence) to Mr. Castelli. The regional manager and his staff worked with this student to make sure he was able to continue to follow this lifestyle while here at Ohio Wesleyan and to do so in the healthiest way possible.

Mr. Castelli and his staff are constantly reviewing student feedback in an effort to improve food quality. Chartwells is a business, they still need to remain profitable and prepare foods that appeal to the average student, however, that doesn’t prevent the organization from being receptive to student ideas. Mr. Castelli, from my experience, and the experience of many students on campus, is as receptive and dynamic as a regional manager can get.

Maybe you are only a casual eater. Maybe meeting with Mr. Castelli is a little too much for you. Maybe attending one of many lunches designed give students a chance to talk with the Chartwells management is outside of your comfort zone.

Even you, casual eater, can help shape the Chartwells dining experience. The organization is always pushing at least one survey to gauge student interest and satisfaction. There are drop boxes for customer satisfaction forms in Smith Dining Hall, Hamilton-Williams Campus Center Food Court and Bishop Café. If you don’t like something, you, personally, can do something about it.

For those who struggle to find something they like on campus, you aren’t looking hard enough. I understand that there are problems. However, I would urge students to explore and try new options.

The Healthy Bishop Station (to the left of the main line in the Food Court) has tons of healthy options and some really delicious and interesting stuff. In Smith there are interesting, always changing, options next to the deserts and down the line from the salad bar. Worst case scenario, you go to the “My Pantry” station and a member of the Chartwells staff makes you a delicious stir-fry and then you finish off your meal with a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats.

By spending some time trying new things and experimenting I guarantee students will find something they like. This is especially true for vegetarian and vegan students on campus. As a vegetarian myself I do feel like sometimes I have to look a little bit harder, but I genuinely believe there are always options. That said, often times vegetarians and vegans have it pretty easy. In the Food Court, out of 20 consecutive days, the Healthy Bishop Station served 29 vegetarian and 31 vegan dishes for lunch alone.
The Culinary Table (to the right of the main line) served 44 vegan and 36 vegetarian additional options in those same 20 days. I will admit that being gluten free here on campus is more complicated. However, I believe with some creativity and communication with the Chartwells staff, even those with the most restrictive dietary needs can find something great to eat.

Complaints are easy. There are clearly problems, and Ohio Wesleyan students are clearly cognizant of them. That said, I’d challenge the OWU community to do more than complain.
Addressing the problem is an important first step, but it’s figuring out logistically sound and sustainable solutions that can bring real change to campus. We have been given an incredible opportunity to be involved with our campus dining service. I urge all of you to contribute to the ongoing conversation between Chartwells and the Ohio Wesleyan community.

Jake Bonnell
Healthy Bishop Initiative Student Chair

I didn’t eat in Smith Hall the evening Chartwells served its “black history” menu, but when I heard what was served, it was almost too much to believe—I certainly have not been totally satisfied with Chartwells as a foodservice provider, but I didn’t think it would sink to overt racial stereotyping.

At the same time, I wasn’t at all surprised when I found out it was true.

Chartwells, in my opinion, is seldom satisfactory when it comes to providing Ohio Wesleyan students with quality service. The racist menu in Smith Hall is just one example of many unnecessary steps Chartwells takes that detract from the student experience in dining halls.

Menus like last week’s are undoubtedly appropriative—they purport to “honor” or “appreciate” a culture without any apparent regard for authenticity or input from actual members of that culture.

I’ve seen this in Smith Hall many times, and the example of the attempt at Indian food sticks out in my mind. Pita bread and naan, I’ve been told, are two different things.

I realize Chartwells management is not consciously trying to offend or hurt anyone; but regardless of the intent, these menus still perpetuate inaccurate cultural stereotypes. They could avoid issues like last week’s by consulting black students before making the menu, rather than asking for their input afterward.
Doing so would be an actual appreciation—or at least a step toward it—rather than an attempted one, and would likely make the food more authentic and appetizing.

It seemed this used to be common practice, though—Chartwells Supervisor Beverly Coleman was involved in “Soul Food Nights” in Welch Hall before the foodservice there was discontinued. I can’t help but wonder why her input was not asked for in this most recent instance, and why the name was changed. Much controversy could have been avoided had those things happened.

This is not the only way in which Chartwells is problematic, however.

Nearly every lunch or dinner I eat in the Food Court coats my plate with a rather thick layer of oil or butter. I avoid Smith Hall because the food there often leaves me feeling bloated and ill.

Chartwells often purports to use local and fresh ingredients, so I previously couldn’t help but wonder why I had such a negative physical reaction to the food.

Evidence is contrary to these propositions, though. Eggs are rarely fresh from the shell; rather, they are a pre-beaten liquid mixture that’s easy to quickly scramble.

I’ve seen grill workers in the Food Court spray a layer of oily cooking spray on each individual black bean burger they were cooking. The chicken is often rubbery and undercooked.

These are not my definitions of “fresh.”

Additionally, my vegetarian friends are often left with little to no eating options besides salad. Nearly everything contains meat or is cooked in some sort of meat-based stock. Gluten-sensitive students, faculty and staff have issues, too—besides bagels, pizza, cookies and bread, there’s little that doesn’t contain an allergen for them. Vegan options are even more limited.

To me, Chartwells has much room for improvement.

Perhaps some of the responsibility lies on us as students—Gene Castelli is always open to comments and complaints, and welcomes members of the OWU community to suggest how Chartwells can improve his service.
Don’t hesitate to do so. I don’t think I’m the only one who is tired of feeling lethargic after a meal on campus.

Mr. Castelli, consider this my open letter to you as someone you and your company serve. I hope you’ll take these things to heart, and that you’ll listen to my peers with the same sincerity.

Noah Manskar
Editor-in-Chief

By Tim Alford
News Editor

Off-campus housing has been a tough and controversial issue in the three years I have been at Ohio Wesleyan. However, last year the university continued going completely residential and did not have an off-campus lottery, as I have heard there has been in the past. We all came back to school this year to find many of the houses and apartments students lived in on Oak Hill Avenue, Spring Street, Park Avenue and Sandusky Street occupied by Delaware residents or left empty.

I am trying to find what the benefits of this policy actually are. Sure, “residential campus” may sound great on a pamphlet high school seniors receive when they are applying to schools. It gets the university more money out of room and board. I have heard many arguments that it is supposed to bring the campus together, as well. But is it what students really want?

This question was answered for me during the course of an interview I did for my profile story on Public Safety Officer Jay McCann that ran in the Transcript last week. McCann says he has talked to students from every culture, concept, clique, social group, “you name it,” and 80 percent of them say they want to live off-campus their junior and senior year.

Why should McCann’s word be taken in this situation? He has been with Ohio Wesleyan for eight years. He generally works the night shift, which naturally puts him in contact with students on the social side of campus, not the academic. McCann seems to make it a point to talk to students when he sees them on his shift. Students seem to trust McCann enough to talk to him about what their complaints are.

I think the common misconception is that students want off-campus housing just to hold parties. Of course, off-campus houses help give the university some aspect of a social life that is not a university-sponsored event.

But, according to McCann, the top reason students say they want to live off-campus is so they can rent and start learning how to be independent. I’m going to have to agree with McCann that it is definitely healthy to want to learn to be independent.

But that option seems to be off the table. So now we have to look for a solution. The university wants to make everyone live in the dorms. The social scene has been lacking probably because students don’t always want to attend university events or go through the hassles of registering one themselves. What now?

The solution McCann has offered, which he calls “the 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about”, is an on-campus club. That’s not necessarily an on-campus bar, but an on-campus club. Chartwells would handle the limited amount of alcohol to be served – if any – and the club would be for students only. McCann thinks the perfect place for this would be in Pfeiffer Natatorium because there are no neighbors that would be bothered and it has direct access from the JAYwalk.

It would be much safer for students than going to the bars downtown to dance because students would not have to walk on Spring Street to get home and only OWU students would be allowed into the club.

Unfortunately, McCann has yet to find someone with money to listen to him about this idea.

I think this idea, or some form of it, needs to be talked about more. There has been something missing with the social life at Ohio Wesleyan in recent years. The community has not seemed to be there outside of everyone’s social group, fraternity, sorority, or SLU. This campus needs something get everyone excited and involved.

I hope the administration considers talking to students more about what they want to see improved on campus. We have had a lot of great improvements over my three years here. Stuyvesant Hall looks fantastic, the gym has never been better and the JAYwalk has received some nice renovations. But I still think there is work to be done.

I hope McCann’s ideas get heard by someone. He definitely has a different insight by the nature of the job he does. I encourage students to stop and talk to McCann when you see him riding around on duty. There was so much more conversation we had when I rode along with him that I did not have room for in one story.

I also encourage someone from the administration to ride along with Public Safety on a shift sometime to see what campus life is like after 5 p.m. and not at a basketball game or dining hall. The ride-along itself was interesting outside of all of the conversation we had.

Despite all of my critiques, I am still extremely happy and blessed to be at Ohio Wesleyan. I just want to see this university continue to grow and improve in ways the students can have more fun in safer environment after I graduate.

By Jane Suttmeier
Photography Editor

It took me a while to figure out why I keep having problems with Ohio Wesleyan’s policies, but it all seems to be clear now. I have a car. Normally, for a teenage girl, that statement would be a dream come true—shiny red car sitting in the lot with a big red bow.

Instead, that shiny red car has glue stuck to its windows and remnants of a neon orange sign proclaiming ignorance. In the windshield wipers are specks of some 20 tickets that have been broken down by weathering over time that occasionally fly up and out as I’m driving to give a quick reminder of my poor life choices—or should I say parking choices. That front tire is a little bit soggier than others; drooping from its many punishments given by hard, cold metal bars.

They call them boots. I don’t approve of the word given to that awful orange metal restraint. I like boots. I wear boots constantly. My car, on the other hand, should not be. My poor car, my poor wallet, taken advantage of by the “man.”

You know those safe, “you probably won’t get attacked by a townie if you park here,” spaces right outside of my dorm late at night coming back from the library? Those six or seven spaces that are available in the dimly lit parking arenas of Hayes and then cross through to the other side, where there are eight or nine more in Smith? “Why are these spaces empty?” I wonder.

Is it that all the other journalists like me are out late working on a story? Or is it because no one wanted to pay for a parking pass that they were going to have to upgrade later on for a rough estimate of over $500 by senior year? Maybe it’s because students who actually live in those dorms can’t even park there because those spaces are allotted to people of superiority to them, those superior B-parkers that never show up. Or maybe Public Safety is too worried about the safety of their parking than of their own students.

I wonder, is there an officer whose job is solely stalking the spots, waiting and watching for that one student who parks in the Hayes circle to get a notebook and waits for the door to close to ticket her car. When do they have time for this?

I wonder if tickets are like their tips. Or the administration’s tips, as if their pay isn’t more than satisfactory with what they charge us to go here.

Why else would they spend so much time charging students for all their worth for an ability to drive onto a slab of concrete with paint by number lines?

But some can get away with it. Maybe they got a B pass given to them by a student who went abroad.
Four unpaid tickets, it’s a boot.

Four boots, it’s a tow.

I’m guessing Public Safety doesn’t have a secret tow truck, so they have to call one in. I saw the tow man one time, stalling creepily on the side of the lot, much like a hungry vulture preying the on owner’s sanity and pocket cash. It’s the circle of life, really—the circle of Hayes, or that ominous Stuyvesant lot that seemed heaven-sent. In reality, they crammed all the Cs into an abandoned lot behind a creepy house that may or may not be a SLU. But who knows the real truth?

Emily Lias, a freshman this year, is just one of the many victims. “There is not a fair amount of C parking spots close to the dorms,” she said.

Lias, who has had around nine violations, thinks it’s time to take a stand. “I don’t agree with them booting the cars and towing them after three days when they don’t alert you that there is a boot in the first place.”

It looks like it’s not just my pretty red car with a pretty hefty bill from OWU Public Safety.

By Tim Alford
News Editor

This week is an exciting time for all of the fraternities on campus, as we get to extend invitations to men to join our brotherhoods. In this time of things to come, I reflect on my experience of receiving a bid and what being in a fraternity has meant to me.

Coming to Ohio Wesleyan as a freshman, I had absolutely no intention of ever joining a fraternity. I only knew them from television shows and movies and did not have any interest in joining one. I had my group of friends in Smith Hall. Why would I ever need to join a fraternity?

One of the first fraternity men I met was Spencer Meads, who was the president of College Republicans at the time. While he had mentioned Phi Delta Theta (Phi Delt) and invited me to lunch a few times to talk politics, I never really thought much about joining.
By the end of my first semester, a harsh reality began to set in about my current group of friends: they were all transferring. Many of them were football players from out of state, as far away as New Mexico and Texas.

I didn’t really want to leave OWU. I was a leader in many clubs and organizations, and had found my major of politics and government. Leaving didn’t make sense to me, but without my group of friends, it would be tough to stay.

A few weeks into the second semester, I got invited back up to Phi Delt for lunch. Spencer was still the only person in the house I knew, but that day, they gave me a bid to join the house. I was stunned but excited to have received the bid. I thought that maybe this was exactly what I was looking for to stay at OWU.

The next week, I signed my bid and officially became a pledge of Phi Delt. Not knowing anyone in the house or anyone in my pledge class made me nervous, but I knew it was going to be the only shot I had at staying at OWU.

Throughout pledging, I expected to learn about the fraternity. I expected to learn the names of some of the guys in the house. I even expected to become decent friends with some of them. What I did not expect was making true, lifelong friends in the pledge process.
This started just by getting to know the guys in my pledge class, and then grew to everyone else in the house. By the time I got initiated, I had become close friends with every guy in the fraternity.

I have lived in the house for almost two years now and have never regretted joining. I have served a full term as vice-president of the house as well as other various positions and committees.

Living in Phi Delt has given me a group of friends that have helped make me a better person. Though positions, I have learned how to work with people and manage the house. While we all have great times at socials and mixers, some of the best times are just going from room to room to talk, watch a show or play a video game.

So, to those of you receiving bids throughout this week and this weekend, I want to encourage you to really take time to consider joining. Ask questions to brothers in the fraternity. Get into contact with alumni who have been involved with Greek life.

Ask the brothers if you can come and join them for some meals or come and hang out over the weekend.

Express any and all concerns and questions you have to the brothers.

Remember that fraternities do not just hand bids out to anyone. You were given a bid because they legitimately want you in their brotherhood.
I’m proud to be a part of Greek life and I’m excited for anyone who may join. (I’m even more excited for the group of guys who are about to sign bids to Phi Delt.)

It is going to be a great semester for whole Greek community.

By Avery Winston
Transcript Contributor

Look at the people who are nearby you—what do they look like? You can tell a lot about a person from looking at them, but can you tell what they believe in? Some might say yes because said person is wearing a religious symbol on their neck, on their shirt or even as a tattoo on their body.

I say you cannot, because no specific mannerisms, characteristics, skin color, hair color, eye color, accent or what have you can make you believer or nonbeliever. Belief, or lack thereof, is invisible to the human eye.

Some may be thinking, “What about the people I see wearing a religious symbol around their neck, on their shirt, or even have a tattoo that is religious in some way?”

I have friends who wear said symbols around their necks, on their shirts or have them tattooed on their bodies, but they do not believe in that religion at all. Why, then, would someone wear it or tattoo it on their body?

Some people like the message a certain verse may give, whether they believe in it or not. Some people may believe a cross, a star and crescent or even a Star of David are really cool designs and they want to have a shirt, necklace or tattoo of said thing.

Religion has become a label more than anything. There is rectitude with being a believer, so if you take the label as your own, people will usually think more highly of you. People tend to have common misconceptions of nonbelievers, whether it is that they are immoral, anti-religion or what have you. If you took time to get to know some people who are not believers, you would realize those misconceptions are not true.

You now realize how belief, or lack thereof, is invisible. This is what I want to talk about. It’s easy for people to see someone who is a different sex, or who has a different color of skin than them; some may even make the same argument for sexual orientation, but we all know that is not always true.

People tend to watch what they do and say when they can see someone nearby who they may offend. Since belief, or lack thereof, is invisible, how can you watch yourself around certain kinds of people and be inclusive of those people who do not stand out?

We could start with the idea of interfaith dialogue. A lot of interfaith groups have been very inviting of nonbelievers to join their conversation which is really a good thing. The issue is in the name “interfaith.” People do not think of nonbelievers as people of faith, so when they hear “interfaith,” nonbelievers are going unnoticed due to faulty language.

After the Newtown Shooting, there was an interfaith prayer vigil in the Peale Chapel, and after President Obama was inaugurated, he attended an interfaith prayer service at the National Cathedral the next day. Because of this, I am convinced that interfaith stuff is for people of belief. I have no issues with interfaith dialogue and events, but if we are to be included, I would rather the name not be exclusive and prayer not be involved.

You read or hear in the news about the Gay Rights Movements, the abortion debate, gun control laws, immigration reform and even stuff regarding religion. Do you ever see or hear the news talk about nonbelievers? Have you have heard of the Reason Rally? I’m not surprised if you have not, because it was hardly covered in any major news source.

On March 24 of last year, 20,000 people assembled on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. to stand up for their rights as nonbelievers. It was known as the largest secular gathering in history, and it was a milestone in the secular movement. You see stuff in the news about abortion and gay rights rallies—but not this.

We are the invisible minority because we don’t stick out, and we live in a country that is primarily Christian. I personally believe that if you are Christian in this country, you automatically are privileged in many ways. If you think that is not true, just look up the “War on Christmas”—this is how poeple are responding to others wanting to be included in our society and culture.

The fact that most of our politicians are Christian affects a lot of laws and policies in this country. People ignore the part of our Constitution where it says that the government it supposed to neutral when it comes to religion and how it affects laws and policies, and that is not happening. It is affecting laws that pertain to abortion, marriage equality and separation of church and state. It was also responsible for laws that put segregation into place and laws that prohibited certain people from voting.

Nonbelievers are fighting against these kinds of things right now to make sure that religion is not being used to oppress people at the federal, state and local levels.

I am sure no one knows that this is happening, of course, because we are invisible to society. I am also sure that a lot of people think “how can someone be good without god?” People may also not know that there are actually people who are recovering from religion like people recover from drugs and alcohol. Some people are traumatized by religion, and these things are not known by anyone. But why? People are too busy judging people by what they can see with their own eyes.

Everything we see and go through is invisible, and I am sure if they could see that someone is a nonbeliever, then they would judge you for that, too. Trust me; I have seen plenty of it in my own life.

The Equal Rights Amendment sought to create a constitutional protection against sexual discrimination under the law. From Alice Paul’s first draft in 1923 to the bold efforts in the 1970s and early ’80s, it met an untimely grave in 1982, falling three states short of ratification.

30 years later, it’s time to bring the ERA back to life.

Gender discrimination is still an issue. Women, on the aggregate, still only make 77 cents for each white male dollar. The number is even lower for women of color—about 70 cents for black women, and about 60 cents for Latina women.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) ceased to exist because of Republican opposition to its inclusivity of undocumented, Native American and LGBT women; it still has yet to be reauthorized.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s edict demanding equal combat opportunity in the military was met with sexist screeds from officers and lower-ranked soldiers.

This is not okay.

It’s not okay that women have lower workplace opportunities than men; it’s even less okay that those opportunities are further restricted for women of color.

It’s not okay that the most significant method of legal recourse victims of gender-based crimes disappeared at the turn of the year.
It’s not okay that it’s taken so long to lift the combat ban, and that it’s still meeting resistance.

The ERA would not cure these problems, but it would assuage them. It would make things like biological essentialism in policy, wage discrimination and letting important legislation like VAWA fall out of the law illegitimate.

Some argue gender separation is good—men and women are biologically different, so why not treat them differently? Some express concern that a legal protection against sexual discrimination would mean the abolition of separate bathrooms, since the Supreme Court has declared public facilities cannot be “separate, but equal.”

The High Court has indeed ruled that sexual discrimination is not as insidious as racial discrimination because of the biological differences between men and women; so sexists have a lower standard of legal scrutiny to meet than racists. But to me, that is not okay, either.

This doctrine’s foundation is the denial of the fact that gender is socially constructed, just like race is. The Jim Crow era’s bigoted arguments were based on a similar denial—racists felt people of color were inherently inferior, so they wrongly treated them as such.

But they were wrong. It’s common knowledge that these attitudes are incredibly racist and violative to people of color. In the same way, biological essentialism is sexist and violative to women, as well as people who don’t identify within the gender binary.

This is not to compare the struggles for racial and gender equality, nor to excuse the feminist movement’s abhorrent racism. To make such a comparison or excuse would be offensive to the immense number of people still oppressed by the racist society in which we live.

The ERA would simply give legal protections against sexual discrimination that exist for racial discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Explicit constitutional prohibitions on both racism and sexism would lay a foundation for an intersectional system of law that acknowledges and addresses the ills of racial and sexual oppression together rather than treating them as mutually exclusive.

A petition on We The People, the White House’s official medium for public exercise of the First Amendment, is gaining momentum in putting the ERA back onto the national radar. It has 20,609 signatures of the 25,000 necessary for an official executive response.
Sign this petition. It’s accessible through a quick Google search. Add your name and share it with your friends.

By getting the ERA out from its shallow grave, we will make a large step toward the just society that we’ve been trying so desperately to achieve since our nation’s foundation.

Noah Manskar
Editor-in-Chief