The Transcript

Someone accessing a faculty printer in Phillips Hall changed its settings so three names in the machine’s address book were altered to vulgar and offensive statements. The attack was discovered March 7.

The three targeted professors were included: Paul E. Kostyu, associate professor of journalism, Susan Gunasti, assistant professor of religion and another professor who wished not to be identified.  The language used against each was homophobic in nature.

“There is a certain level of humanity that people need to be aware of, and I think the person who did this needs to understand the impact and gravity of their actions,” Provost Chuck Stinemetz said. “When something like this happens, whether it’s to our entire faculty or only just one, it’s just as important. I know Public Safety has a case open on this, and I have full confidence that they do their jobs to do everything they can.”

Gunasti said she believes that everyone is allowed to hold their own opinions, but the actions in this circumstance are not to be taken lightly.

“The brazen manner of expressing those thoughts is what scares me,” Gunasti said. “I consider OWU an open community, so to think that someone would do this threw me off and made me re-think the campus culture a little bit.”

Due to the ongoing status of the investigation, Public Safety declined to comment.

Assisting PS in the investigation is Information Services, who responded to the situation and reset the printer’s settings.

According to Brian Rellinger, executive director of Information Technology, the settings on the printer were restored to their original status within hours.

“This could have happened on or off campus, or (on) the printer itself,” he said. “We feel it was unlikely that it was done at the device and that leads us to believe someone with enough technical knowledge was able to conduct the changes remotely.”

Both Stinemetz and Rellinger said they are evaluating campus security measures, with Rellinger adding that two changes are being implemented, which will make repeating a similar act much more difficult.

“When I worked as a security guard, an officer once said to me ‘we spend 10 percent of our time trying to deter people from doing things, but criminals spend 90 percent of their time trying to figure out how to do it,’” Stinemetz said.

“Unfortunately, these issues do happen from time to time,” Rellinger said. “However, we work closely with Public Safety to reduce vulnerabilities and resolve problems.”

Gunasti said she hopes this incident will lead to reflection among the campus community.  Stinemetz agreed, and said he believes this is a rare occurrence, one not reflective of the OWU community.

“I hope that the person who did this will come to realize the wrongness of their actions, and will feel guilty about the damage they have caused,” he said.

Nine different groups of dedicated Ohio Wesleyan students and staff spent their spring break this year, serving communities across the world from New Orleans to Nicaragua.

The mission week each spring is sponsored by the University Chaplain’s office. Their website states that what they mean by mission is: “A chance to engage with different cultures, to meet brothers and sisters from this country and around the world as equals, to get to know and learn from each other,”

“A chance to offer the work of our hands and to pause and reflect on the experiences of each day,” and “A chance to humble ourselves and realize that those we work with have as much to give as we do, to understand that our contribution will be smaller than we’d like.”

This year the teams visited places like El Paso, TX, Chicago, New Orleans, South Dakota, St Louis, Florida, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Haiti.

“Every year, the agencies and programs we select for our Spring Break Mission Teams, both international and domestic, report back to us, “Ohio Wesleyan students GET IT like no other college team in the country,” said University Chaplain Jon Powers.

Powers said the selection of service locations as well as team membership is a very “rigorous process.”

“Associate Chaplain Chad Johns and all his team leaders do an amazing job of this, year after year,” said Powers. “From reports I have been getting all week, this year’s teams have been among the best ever – superb student leadership, excellent faculty/staff advisors and exceptional team members.”

Senior Rachel Vinciguerra was on the New Orleans Mission Team this year that works with St. Bernard Project (SBP) every year. SBP is an organization co-founded by an OWU alum after Hurricane Katrina, and it focuses on rebuilding homes so that homeowners can move back in after the storm.

“I think this year was the 9th OWU mission team to go to New Orleans and there are still many houses that need to be rebuilt,” said Vinciguerra. “It’s really overwhelming to just drive around the city and realize how much is left to recover and restore after Katrina.”

The New Orleans team spent the week working on a house in the primary stages of rebuilding. Vinciguerra said they were doing demolition and mold remediation, and had a lot of fun doing it. They also got to meet the Perry’s, the family who will be moving in to the home once it is completed.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about our trip,” said Vinciguerra.

“Each mission team each year is unique and I think even though things didn’t always go as planned on our trip, we had a fantastic group that dealt really well with changing plans and obstacles.”

Powers said he encourages students interested in a mission trips to have a look at the website that explains everything about it. He also emphasized what they don’t mean by a mission: “we don’t mean colonialism, imperialism, aggressive Christian proselytization or a touristy vacation.”

“Ohio Wesleyan students, faculty, staff and alumni, have been serving the neighborhood, the nation, and the world since 1842,” said Powers. “It’s in our bones to merge the classroom and the community into a living, learning laboratory of life-changing servant leadership.”

Vinciguerra said, “This program has meant so much to me at OWU and I know that some of my most valuable lessons and experiences have come from these mission teams.

“They demand so much of you and really change the way you think about and see the world. I can’t think of a better way to have spent my spring break the past four years.”

Local elections could swing the balance of power in Turkey after more than a decade of one party rule, according an Ohio Wesleyan University professor and native of Turkey.

Alper Yalcinkaya, an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, spoke about the situation in Turkey as the fifth installment of this year’s Great Decisions lecture series on March 21.

“What we are seeing currently is the biggest cultural and political crisis in recent Turkish history,” he said.  “The situation is so unstable that whatever happens there will impact the entire region.”

The influence of different religious thought used to be the main conflict for Turkey, which was founded on secularism.

However, the new challenges Turkey is currently facing are rapidly growing and, according to Yalcinkaya, stem from battling political parties and their influence.  He elaborated on this conflict, which he called the break up.

According to Yalcinkaya, this break up between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen movement brought bloody conflicts marring the opposing ideologies.

Since its creation in 2001, the AKP has held a majority of parliamentary seats. The popular vote for AKP has increased every year under the promise of stability, unity and tolerance.

Under AKP rule, Yalcinkaya explained, the “new Turkey,” emphasized the nation’s economical boom.

“Construction became the engine of Turkish growth,” Yalcinkaya said.

“If you went to Turkey within the last 10 years, the whole country would look like a construction site.  Housing projects boomed and skyscrapers became wide spread.”

Aggressive religious lawmaking, however, and censoring practices such as banning websites and controlling the majority of news reporting, created an opposition led by Fetullah Gulen, who is considered as the face of moderate Islam. As a result, his influence has grown with powerful support and financial backing.

“These upcoming local elections, particularly in Istanbul will be very telling,” Yalcinkaya said. “If AKP finds themselves losing support and votes, we can expect change. But if votes increase or remain steady we can expect a tighter regime.”

Dennis Laich, an earlier Great Decisions speaker, asked if the developments in Turkey could affect its foreign policy.

“Turkey is right across the Black Sea from Crimea, gets almost 60 percent of its gas from Russia,” Laich said. “I wonder which way Turkey goes over the next 12 months.”

Any prediction, Yalcinkaya said, will have to wait on the results of the elections. “However, I believe that ultimately they will follow NATO’s lead in Crimea.”

While the Early Childhood Center is a fundamental resource for the education department, many members of the Ohio Wesleyan University community are unaware of the day-to-day dealings of the brown brick building they pass everyday en route to the academic side of campus.

The Early Childhood Center strives to utilize unique, hands-on teaching methods in an attempt to capture children’s attention. 110 children between the ages of three and five attend the center on a part-time basis throughout the week.

Director and teacher at the center, Kellie Hall, said much of how the children learn is through hands-on activities that give them a chance to immerse themselves in the curriculum rather than just hearing about it.

“Unique to our school is our curriculum,” Hall said. “We utilize an emergent curriculum which means we pay close attention to the interests of the children and what is happening in the world around them.  We plan activities based on these observations, while also taking into account the state learning standards for early childhood.”

The center also offers, on average, a 10:3 student to teacher ratio in each class. This ratio is higher than the average classroom because of the OWU students who work at the center.

OWU students are able to work in the Early Childhood Center as student teachers, field study students, legacy education administrative interns, work-study students, psychology students, drama students, health and human kinetic students, Tree House volunteers, in StAP positions and completing community service for education classes.

Senior Tim O’Keefe works for the Center, and said he believes it is a crucial resource not only to students of the center, but students of OWU’s education department as well.

“The Early Childhood Center does a lot of emergence teaching with its students,” O’Keefe said. “If children start to express interests in a certain topic, then the teachers will integrate that topic into the classroom. For instance if children are discussing cars during snack time or during guided exploration, then teachers will incorporate cars as well as more lessons on transportation into their lessons. This style allows for the children of the center to be more engaged in lessons as well as show that the teachers of the center adapt to what their students are interested in.”

Current sophomore and Delaware resident Alanna Spalsbury attended the center as a child, and said she remembers “loving” her time there, and described her experience as being very “hands-on.”

“I remember having show and tell (one boy even brought his pet goat) and the teachers were always very compassionate and actively engaged with us,” she said. “Also I know we were active outside daily with there being a track in the backyard and many sensory areas like a sand box and seed station.”

Eight years ago, the International Student Ambassador Program (ISAP) was created to promote cross-cultural exchange and mutual growth by connecting Ohio Wesleyan University’s international students and global nomads to the Delaware Community.

Today, the program continues to grow at an exponential rate.

International students are recruited to visit local schools and give presentations on their respective countries and share aspects of their culture through music, dance or other means.

Senior Prabhjot Virk, head student coordinator for the program, said this year was very successful with four events and 17 OWU international student ambassadors, ranging from freshman to seniors.

“As a Global Nomad that went to an International boarding school I really understand and believe in the value of building cross-cultural relationships,” she said.

“The ISAP visits are a valuable experience for both the ambassadors and the children or members of the community we visit.”

The four events were held a different schools around the county including: Dempsey Middle School, Schultz Elementary School, Woodward Elementary School and Ohio Wesleyan’s Early Childhood Center.

Freshman Shaaref Shah said the program makes him feel “culturally diverse” and he wanted to be an ambassador so he could “portray Pakistan in a good light” in front of the OWU community.

Some of the ambassadors taught students how to dance to Bollywood music after their presentation.

Virk said one of the teachers from Dempsey Middle School emailed her the day after the event and thanking her for her presentation.

The email read, “My kids couldn’t stop talking about it and spent an hour after you left looking on the computers for photos of India and Pakistan.”

Seniors Priyanka Venkataraman and Krina Patel were ambassadors at the event held at Woodward Elementary School.

They arranged a coloring table and face painting for the children.

“It was really interesting to see how the children learned so much about the ambassadors cultures just by having conversations with the ambassadors while they were painting their faces,” Virk said.

Patel said she had a great time at Woodward.

“I loved being at Woodward and seeing the children so excited to participate in activities revolved around different countries,” she said.

“All of the kids had little passports that they would get stamped when visiting different countries, it was adorable.”

Virk said she believes the program has a lot of growth potential.

“My stamp on the ISAP program was to develop marketing material and make the community more aware of the program,” she said.

“We received a request from a nursing home this year, since all past ambassador visits have been to schools, I think that expanding the places we visit would lead to so much growth for the program.”

Additionally, Virk said being a part of the program has been a great experience for her.

“(It) has been very eye-opening and absolutely amazing,” she said.

“At every event we have had, you can actually see the children and ambassadors learning from each other. The Head Student Ambassador Coordinator position is an amazing opportunity for leadership, but, more importantly, it is an amazing experience to be able to facilitate cross-cultural exchange.”