The Transcript – Page 122 – This is the archive of our old website

Thinking like a runner

After a strong finish at the OWU Invitational, both the men’s and women’s cross country teams look forward to an exciting year.

The men finished second out of ten and the women fourth. Top runners for the Bishops include junior Zak Geiger, sophomore Kaillie Winston and Freshman John Sotos. All of OWU’s top runners finished in the top ten.

Many people have completed a 5k race before. But try running it under twenty minutes, which is what Winston did on Saturday, finishing with a time of 19:30.

“With many races ahead, we needed to run smart. I am happy with our performances at this meet and excited to see how we will run later.”

Mentally preparing for one of these races can be a challenge. Winston says her strategy is to remind herself that she’s been through worse.

“Mentally, I prepare by reminding myself that I trained for this and if my workout last week didn’t kill me, this race probably won’t either,” she said.

Winston said a couple times that it is still very early in the season and how excited she is for the upcoming races. “Again, this is only the beginning of a fun season.”

The next race for both the men and women team is on Sept. 6th, at the Denison Invitational in Granville, Ohio.

Men’s soccer rallies to return to national stage

Year in and year out, the Ohio Wesleyan Men’s Soccer program is a strong contender for national titles, with two already under their belt.

Ran by Jay Martin, the “winningest” coach in any NCAA division history at over 600 wins, the Bishops have enjoyed constant success and two national championships.

Big expectations follow this kind of success. The players expect to be extremely competitive and win not only the NCAC, but also the national title. For a team customarily ranked top 10 in NCAA Division III, starting the season ranked eighth is nothing new.

“We know how much pressure there is on us,” said junior midfielder Ricardo Balmaceda.

“But that’s why we come here, to this program. We like it.”

Martin’s Bishops went 18-0-2 last year, the sixth undefeated season in OWU Men’s Soccer history. However, after getting a bye in the first round, the Bishops were defeated at home by the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Fightin’ Engineers.

“It was crazy when they lost last year,” said Lindsay Reed, a senior forward for the Women’s Soccer team.

“They outshot Rose-Hulman by like 30, it was really frustrating.”

The spirits couldn’t be higher in the locker-room at the Jay Martin Soccer Complex. Last year’s defeat has been forgotten, and the team is looking to make a deep tournament run once again.

“I think they’ll be as good as they want to be,” said Martin of his players. “We always have great players. It will come down to being mentally tough and having fun.”

After a heartbreaking overtime loss at Calvin College on opening night, the Bishops have bounced back with three consecutive victories, with two shutouts and six goals scored. This includes a 2-1 overtime victory at Hope College.

“It was tough at Calvin, it was raining and we had a couple of players cramp up,” Balmaceda said. “We were a lot looser at Hope. We had fun, and we won as a result.”

This past weekend the Bishops recorded two 2-0 victories, against Mary Washington University and Guilford College, respectively.

A fusion of function in new exhibit

Chris Kahler's "Two Decades," now on exhibit at Ross Art Musuem. Photo from Communications — Chris Kahler’s “Two Decades,” now on exhibit at Ross Art Musuem. Photo from Communications

Alumni bring together furniture and paintings, create interior design dreamland

The Ross Art Museum featured two contrasting exhibitions of two of Ohio Wesleyan University’s own alumni: Jim Zivic (’83) and Chris Kahler (’91).

The alums were gifted with the Distinguished Alum Exhibitors award—the highest honor OWU gives to its alumni.

The event began with a presentation by Kahler in Edgar Hall’s room 121. With 23 years of experience in painting, Kahler presented his work in the dimly lit but packed classroom of faculty, students and members of the community. His pieces were displayed in a slideshow as he talked about his experiences as a student at OWU.

“It was a very important time period in my life,” Kahler began.

“And many amazing things happened during those four years…and it made me use this as an opportunity to look at (my) work and how to evolve.”

The painter, who is in his 16th year of teaching at Eastern Illinois University, talked about the influences of various professors from his time at OWU and at Northwestern University, where he attained his Masters of Fine Arts.

He also marks a 3-month excursion to the prominent Vermont Studio Center—the largest international artists’ residency program in the United States—as something that influences his work.

Kahler mostly featured acrylic and watercolor paintings. He often uses a tremendous amount of layering and sanding to create the pieces. Additionally, the work is often inspired both by architectural plans and biological microbes or cell development.

“I get lost in the paintings…I don’t want to know how they end.”

Zivic takes a different approach to his artwork. He cites his influence from the Rust Belt town of Dover, Ohio, and his blue-collar heritage. Zivic is not a painter, but a craftsman.

The works featured in his presentation often involved industrial metalworking and use of leather or even coal. Currently a resident of upstate New York, Zivic’s clients included the former Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed and Gucci designer Tom Ford.

Zivic presented his work at the gallery to give the full effect of what he creates—from doors, light fixtures, and chairs made of leather or aluminum to nightstands made of polished coal.

“One thing that I figured out was that I am the ‘greenest designer’ in the world,” he said jokingly to the audience.

Zivic has been passionate about energy issues—in particular the effects of coal mining and fracking in the United States—for over 20 years. From his own record, he claims to have saved over 55 tons of coal through his incorporation of the rock into his designs.

He is also different from Kahler in that he began working directly in the field after attaining his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Ohio Wesleyan.

Works by both artists will continue to be on display at Ross from now until Sept. 21.

In order to thrive, The Transcript needs students

If you’ve ever picked up a Transcript and looked at page six, you probably think that we editors have a lot of opinions. Well, we do.

We’re journalists by trade, and that comes with a whole lot of reading, writing and, most of all, listening. We’re trained to listen for every side of the story, and as we consciously do that, we sometimes take sides.

That might sound kind of bad coming from the editor of a paper, right? I mean, aren’t journalists supposed to be completely unbiased messengers? Isn’t that one of the fundamental pillars of everything we’ve been taught all these years?

Yes, it is.

But we’re also human and we have human thoughts and human feelings. We know how to check them at the door when it comes to reporting, but we can’t help but to have them. And when we have an entire opinion page to fill on top of our feelings, we use them to fill it. Feeding the beast that is The Transcript’s sixth page is an unfortunate reality of our weeks. We get editorials from non-staffers once in a blue moon, but usually we end up pulling together last-minute copy ourselves. Columns should not be last minute decisions.

The opinion page is representative of our commitment to serve students with a safe place to advocate for wants and needs and to bring awareness to various issues. To me, a paper without an opinion page isn’t doing it’s job, but us keeping it afloat internally isn’t making the cut, either.

This page of the paper is not for us. We have seven other pages we are responsible for filling. This page is for you.

We are a student newspaper in both the worst and best ways. We make a lot of rookie mistakes, but we make them because we are on our own. We are so independent that we aren’t even allowed to have a booth at the club fair. The student newspaper at any institution is intended to promote discussion on the ideas and the trends you want to hear about in the paper. We are produced by students for students, and we strive every day to represent you in an open forum.

But we can’t exactly do that if we aren’t hearing from you.

Whether it’s a piece on an adviser that did your organization wonders or a demand to see more transparency from the administration, I know you have opinions just like me and our editorial king, Noah Manskar. I don’t care if it’s a rant about how inconvenient this construction on campus is or a rave about the food court’s salad bar makeover. I just want you to write about it.

We can’t give you what you want if you don’t tell us, so tell us. Tell us in a letter to the editor, in a guest column or even by responding to us on Twitter or Facebook. Tell us what you want us to improve on or what you want the school to improve on. I know you have it in you.

As mentioned above in Noah’s editorial, OWU clearly has no problem with opinions. If you using an anonymous forum to hide behind your opinions, you’re a coward. You aren’t contributing to making OWU a better place. You’re making it worse.

Take the time to write an opinion that matters. Be brave. Be brave enough to start controversy for the greater good.

I look forward

No excuses: Yik Yak has got to go

I am angry this week. I am angry because an app called Yik Yak is causing a lot of people pain they don’t need.

For those unfamiliar with it, Yik Yak is like a fusion of Twitter and the short-lived OWU Confessions. Users can post anonymous messages that others can see based on their location. Because OWU is such a concentrated area, if you get onto Yik Yak on campus the posts are most likely from students.

I’ve heard many say it’s good cure for boredom. It’s also a cesspool, a place where people can voice their most odious thoughts without consequence.

Yik Yak posts have referred to the House of Black Culture, one of few designated safe spaces for students of color, as a “crack house”; equated favoriting a tweet to an invitation for sex; and scrutinized international students for doing things domestic students do regularly simply because they’re “foreign.” Not to mention the post that said, “Let’s be real we all hate black people don’t we?”

I could go into every reason why these — and probably a good 75 percent of OWU’s Yik Yak posts — are socially harmful and have tangible deleterious effects on the people they’re about. I’m not going to because the message is out there. People who have directly experienced the oppression these posts perpetuate have told us about the power words have do harm and condone violence in myriad settings. But apparently it hasn’t sunk in.

How many times do we have to have these conversations?

How many times do people have to publicly recall their experiences with racism on campus and in Delaware, or with sexual violence at the hands of other students, for us to understand that these problems are not amorphous or external to our community?

For how many events about race or gender or multiculturalism must faculty offer extra credit for everyone here to understand that saying these things is not okay, and that removing your name from them doesn’t absolve you of your complicity in oppression?

Tell me, how many times? Because I am tired of seeing and hearing and reading these things, and I don’t even have to directly deal with their social, physical and psychological effects on a daily basis.

Until it sinks in, for every post about how women who have a lot of sex are undesirable, a woman who’s been raped is told she had it coming. For every time the House of Black Culture is called a “crack house,” a black student is called the n-word while walking down the street. For every time an international student is scrutinized for going about their life, one is isolated by a friend group.

There is no excuse for this sort of behavior within our community. It is not funny. It does psychological harm and creates an avenue for other kinds of violence.

There are some concessions to be made. Yik Yak users consoled someone who posted that they were having suicidal thoughts. Some posts combat the vitriol. And some students may not have had the opportunity to learn about these things for one reason or another. I was there once, too.

But I learned, and the fact is that there are so many ways to learn within and without the classroom. There is no reason not to take advantage of them.

If you didn’t know the kinds of things that go on Yik Yak hurt people, now you know. Delete the app. Don’t jump into the cesspool. Don’t give any merit or attention to marginalizing speech.

This won’t make the verbal and physical violence disappear. But we can no longer go without condemning it. Enough is enough.

Beach Bash raises funds for diabetes research

With music in the air and the grill sizzling, Friday afternoon was filled with energy at Delta Tau Delta’s Beach Bash philanthropy event.

Students sat in the house lawn, some watching, others waiting for their turn to compete for beach volleyball glory.

Delt’s annual fall philanthropy event featured a beach volleyball tournament and a cookout for those in attendance. Teams paid a $30 entrance fee, with all funds raised going to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Delt also sold t-shirts and bracelets to help raise awareness and funds.

“For us the biggest goal was to raise awareness for our cause,” said junior Tad Bustin, Delt’s philanthropy chair and the organizer of this year’s and last year’s events. He said 14 teams competed and they raised between $400-$500. Both these numbers were around the same as last year, but Delt members did notice more students in attendance overall.

While this year’s bash had many similarities, there were some new things Delt did differently. Due to predictions of a rainy Saturday, they decided to reschedule to Friday from 4:30 p.m.-7 p.m.

“Even though we had to reschedule, I think that ended up working out better for us.” Bustin said. “A lot of the students that came out said it was more convenient to attend after classes rather than noon Saturday. We also avoided conflict with Saturday’s block party, so the weather ended up being a blessing in disguise for us.”

Sigma Phi Epsilon won the tournament, defending their title from last year. After the tournament concluded, Delt hosted a dance party.

According to Delt Vice President Taimur Elahi, food point donations were collected at the door during the dance party. They won’t be converted directly to cash for JDRF, but will be used on food for future philanthropy events.

“Delt always has this event really well organized,” said junior attendee Miranda Ames, a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. “As someone who knows the struggle that goes into planning a philanthropy event, we appreciated how smoothly it was run.”

Bustin said raising awareness can be more of a challenge than expected.

“Hopefully next year we can promote even more and at the bash itself put more of a focus on promoting JDRF,” he said. “While I’m glad everyone had a good time, it will be even better to couple that enjoyment with awareness.”

‘Moby-Duck’ author opens 30th Sagan National Colloquim

By Miranda Anthony
Transcript Reporter

Thursday at 7 p.m., national bestselling author Donovan Hohn presented “The Blind Oceanographer: Lessons from the Hunt for Moby Duck” to students and faculty members in the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center, launching Ohio Wesleyan University’s 2014 Sagan National Colloquium series.

Founded in 1984 by university President David Warren, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the series, which aims to weld liberal arts learning with community involvement by actively engaging students in issues of national and international concern. Ellen Arnold, Ph.D., assistant professor of history, has chosen this year’s colloquium theme of H2OWU: Water in Our World, in which students will explore water from various perspectives and disciplines.

“It promises to be an exciting and engaging semester,” Arnold said.

“(And) a clear reminder of the values and virtues of the kind of broad, interdisciplinary, and engaged educational experience that Ohio Wesleyan prides itself in.”

Hohn’s presentation focused on the recurring theme of “the limitations of the human eyeball as an instrument of revelation” within his non-fiction, national bestseller “Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them.”

In his book, Hohn said, “It wasn’t that I wanted, like Cook and Amundsen and Vancouver and Bering and all those other dead explorers, to turn terra incognita into terra cognita, the world into a map.

“Quite the opposite. I wanted to turn a map into a world.”In a region known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, on Jan. 10, 1992, an entire shipment of 28,800 bathtub toys—including 7,200 rubber ducks—was released into the ocean as a result of tempestuous weather conditions; and, overtime, the toys drifted in many directions, washing onto shorelines all over the world.

Hohn, who was an English teacher at the time, first learned about this occurrence from a student’s paper. Contacting Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who published the story in The Beachcomber Alert!, Hohn soon found himself embarking on a journey, where he, alongside oceanographers and environmentalists, would retrace paths of the lost bath toys, tour the Chinese factory in which they were made, and search for those that had yet to be found.

“The challenge that I set for myself and what I look for,” Hohn said, “is a way to tell a story that avoids simplistic debunking or simplistic sensationalism.”

Claiming that much of what we see is through the lens of another’s camera, Hohn explains the biases often found in photographs of nature, and, more generally speaking, in environmental journalism.

“It is the norm,” Hohn said, “that seeing is synonymous with knowing, but photographs can be deceiving. Our eyes aren’t enough. We need to read the natural world as well as see it.”

Hohn’s assessment of photography particularly sparked the interest of sophomore Cindy Hastings, who, following the lecture, was one of many students and faculty members waiting in line to speak with Hohn.

“It’s really interesting how photographs often separate the truth from the context surrounding them,” Hastings said, “and then separates the portrayed reality from the actual reality.”

In a later interview, Hohn credits American writer Annie Dillard for inspiring him to explore the relationship between sight and knowledge and its complexities through her essay Seeing, which begins with an anecdote: Dillard recounts hiding pennies—as a small child—for strangers, evolving into a metaphor for the act of “seeing.”

“There lots of things to see,” Dillard wrote, “unwrapped gifts and free surprises, if only we care to find them.”

Burst pipe shuts down Smith dining hall

Chartwells resumed services Tuesday after repairs

A Delaware sanitarian’s surprise inspection of Smith Hall’s cafeteria got a surprise of its own when a second floor pipe burst, leaking water through the ceiling.

“We really don’t have control over anything like that – nobody does, to be honest,” said Chartwells’ Dining Services Manager, Deanna Park. Due to the leak, they closed Smith for dinner on Monday, Sept. 8.

The Buildings and Grounds staff was repairing the pipe while the sanitarian was assessing Smith dining hall, according to Park. When they fixed it the sudden increase in water pressure burst the older pipe, placed above the cafeteria’s ice cream station. Three ceiling tiles were knocked out as water leaked through, pooling on the floor.

“The fitting was replaced this morning, the affected areas have been cleaned and the ceiling tiles have been replaced,” said Buildings and Grounds Director Peter Schantz on Sept. 9.

“The area was functional again before noon today.”

While Chartwells made the decision to close voluntarily, Delaware sanitarian Karie Sanders was still at the site and discussed the issue with them.

“We try to work closely with facilities when they’re going through moments where they need a little extra assistance to help get things back on the right path,” she said.

With Smith dining closed, Chartwells opened the Faculty Staff dining room in Hamilton-Williams Campus Center as an additional place to pick up food, and opened seating in Bishop Cafe.

While sophomore Robyn Madrishin was working and not affected by the change in options, she noted that the school seemed well prepared, saying there was extra food in Hamilton-Williams.

Park noted that they were able to cook food in part of Smith cafeteria and take it to Hamilton-Williams to help with the additional amount of students eating there.

With the repairs finished Sept. 9, Sanders returned to check the repairs to the pipe and how it was affecting service, and again on Sept. 11 to check progress on several code violations she found – five critical violations and nine standard violations.

“Critical means they are linked to or could be linked to causing foodborne illness, so in that case we get those corrected on the spot, which they were corrected on the spot,” Sanders said.

Sanders has been inspecting Smith Hall for seven and a half years; inspections are unannounced to Chartwells and generally occur every six months. Violations lead to return visits.

“We do corrective action as soon as possible…some of those were corrected before the sanitarian left,” said Park.

“Also we work in cooperation with Buildings and Grounds, they’re helping to get any parts needed, we’re making additional changes to that and we will be re-inspected and we fully anticipate everything to be corrected at that point.”

She emphasized, as did Sanders, that the inspection and pipe break were simultaneous but separate occurrences.

“We had the health inspection, which is normal, we receive one every six months, and we had this added crisis, if you will, that occurred totally coincidental,” said Park.

“They still would have been open (if the pipe hadn’t burst),” said Sanders; if the pipe had continued to leak they would have recommended that Smith close but the code violations did not require it to close.

She had seen similar code issues in the past, all of which were addressed. In the past year the only student complaints received by Delaware General Health District (DGHD) in regard to Smith dining involved improper hand washing.

“We work pretty closely with Ohio Wesleyan,” said Sanders.

“And when we run across those situations, there’s several ways that we can handle them,” said Stephanie DiGenaro, program manager of the Health District’s Food Protection and Public Safety Unit.

“There’s a lot of different ways that they can comply with food code,” she said.

Park said that Chartwells has responded to the violations, which include improper temperature control, surface cleanliness and equipment condition. The dining hall is also receiving assistance from Buildings and Grounds, who also helped clean up after the pipe break.

Chartwells workers are required continuously to check their cooking temperatures during their shift to ensure against undercooking food.

Chartwells also has independent, third party representatives visit their locations to check the conditions in their dining facilities separately from the local health department.

“It was just really funny timing that the pipe burst while the health inspector was here,” said junior Leslie Alton, who staffs the front desk in Public Safety’s office.

Downtown restaurant fire under control

A firefighter about to enter Amato’s this morning. Photo by Spenser Hickey

A fire inside Amato’s Woodfired Pizza at 6 S. Sandusky St. is out after firefighters from the Delaware city, Orange Township-Lewis Center and Tri-Township Fire Departments responded to a report of smoke coming from the roof.

Delaware Fire Chief John Donahue said that the fire appeared to have spread from the pizza oven’s smokestack into the restaurant and they were checking inside.

Some firefighters entered the building in full protective gear, with oxygen tanks and breathing masks. At one point firefighters had assistance from a drone that provided a view of the top of the building.

Numerous Delaware police officers were also on scene, helping direct traffic and perform other tasks. There were four fire engines – two from DFD and one each from the other departments, as well as two DFD ambulances, four police cars and several other DFD vehicles.

Dean suggests extracurricular ‘balance’ following survey

In a student engagement survey conducted in the spring of 2013, 65.9 percent of responding students indicated that they were involved in five or more clubs or campus organizations. The survey had a 30-percent response rate from the pool of 1635 students — Ohio Wesleyan’s total student population — and 63.2 percent said they hold one to three leadership positions in a student organization.

The amount of time necessary to dedicate to five extra curricular raises questions about the amount of stress laid on students in that position, even if they are taking the bare minimum 3.5 units of coursework for a semester. Dean of Students Kimberlie Goldsberry said she advises students to use discretion when taking on commitments outside of their academics.

“I would always recommend working toward some reasonable balance in all things,” Goldsberry said. “Not all activities take the same amount of work. You could be leading and planning events or just going to the meetings once a week…the quantity of obligations doesn’t say everything.”

Despite their busy schedules, the students seem to be enjoying the work they’re doing. 79.3 percent of students in the survey indicated they were involved in their organizations because they enjoyed the activities involved, even though 85.6 percent reported a “heavy academic workload” as a “key limitation for being involved” in those activities. Dean Goldsberry attributed this, at least in part, to differences in the way people handle a crowded work day.

“I do better when I’m busier, it makes me motivated to plan and schedule around what I have to do,” Goldsberry said. “Somebody else might find that too constricting, so it can be a challenge to strike that balance.”