The Transcript

September 24-30

Sept. 24 3:15 p.m. – Public Safety dispatched to the Jaywalk after a report of a suspicious person. A search of the area failed to locate the subject.

Sept. 24 6:15 p.m. – an injured Smith Hall resident was transported to Grady Hospital by Public Safety.

Sept. 25 9:35 a.m. – a resident of 30 Williams Drive reported his bicycle missing from the house storage room. The bike was later recovered from the Stuyvesant Hall bike rack.

Sept. 25 3:30 a.m. – ARAMARK housekeeping personnel reported the theft of money from vending machines in the Science Center restrooms. Investigation is ongoing.

Sept. 27 1:55 p.m. – a Welch Hall resident reported the theft of his bicycle from the Welch lawn area.

Sept. 28 1:20 p.m. – Public Safety dispatched to the Hamilton Williams Campus Center after complaints of an older white female yelling at students. The individual was issued a no trespass warning.

Sept. 30 4:18 a.m. – Public Safety dispatched to Bashford Hall on a report of suspicious persons in the building. A search of the building failed to locate the individuals. The subjects had caused minor damage to the building. Investigation of the incident is ongoing.

Sept. 30 2:40 p.m. – Public Safety dispatched to 9 Williams Drive on a report of damage to a parked vehicle.

By Noah Manskar
Transcript Correspondent

The Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs and the Student Involvement Office has recently streamlined the process through which they officially recognize student organizations.

Dana Behum, assistant director of Student Involvement, said student organizations must apply for recognition by the end of the second week of each semester.

The application requires a roster with at least 10 members, a list of executive positions with descriptions of their respective duties, a constitution and bylaws, and a form signed by a university adviser.

Behum said the requirements and application deadlines for recognition are now better publicized and more predictable than before.

The administration also created a packet of forms for applicants to complete that did not previously exist, including a template for a constitution and bylaws.

She said the administration tried the changes in the spring and fixed the “hiccups” before this semester.

“Getting a schedule to the process has made it easier,” Behum said.

Behum said applicants often receive follow-up questions from a committee, composed of a member of the WCSA Finance Committee, a general WCSA representative and a Student Involvement representative, asking them to clarify certain pieces of their application.

Upon recognition, organizations receive benefits from the university, including WCSA funding, space reservations and university van usage.

Senior Iftekhar Showpnil, who is going through the process to register Ohio Wesleyan’s Better Together club, said his organization received such questions regarding their executive positions and the club’s name.

He said he thinks the process is “pretty straightforward,” but puts the majority of the burden on the organizations.

“It’s mostly on the organization to write out the constitution, define the executive positions and elect the executive board,” he said.
Showpnil said he was still unsure of the application deadlines, so he thinks the university could communicate them more successfully to new organizations.

“There is not much information unless you actually go and look for it yourself,” Showpnil said. “I think it is reasonable, because if you’re passionate enough to start a club, you should be motivated to go look up all the details and stuff that is necessary.”

He also said he thinks a rolling application process would be preferable to a single deadline each semester, since it would allow new organizations more flexibility.

“For it to be a rolling process, I do realize that it has to be a little bit more work on (the administration’s) part, but it would be better for student organizations in general,” he said.

Sophomore Avery Winston, president of OWU Freethinkers, said getting recognition “can be kind of tedious,” but the process is fairly simple.

“You get enough people, get your paperwork filled out, have an adviser and you’re pretty much set to go,” he said. “That’s pretty much the basis.”

Behum said the process is so thorough because WCSA wants to ensure new organizations have a good foundation before giving them funds.

“WCSA members are cautious to make sure that people are well intentioned with a club and that they’re not just forming a club to receive funding,” she said. “They want to make sure that the organization has a more broad approach than just spending money. So it’s a thorough partnership, I’d say.”

Winston said procuring WCSA funds can be challenging but he understands why the process is in place.

“Obviously you’re getting money to spend on your club and they obviously want people to be responsible with it,” he said. “It seems tedious, I guess, but at the end it’s pretty important to go through certain processes to know what you’re doing.”

Showpnil said receiving funding is one of the most crucial benefits of recognition for organizations such as Better Together because they need funds to plan projects and host events.

According to Behum, organizations must meet certain requirements after recognition to remain in good standing with the university.

These include attending a seminar on using OrgSync, the university’s form sharing and organizing site, attending university leadership events like OWU Summit and GoOWU and each member of the organization maintaining a GPA of at least 2.0.

Behum said WCSA regularly reviews organizations to ensure they’re meeting these requirements and decide how much funding to give them.

“They do a significant amount of review and I think they do a good job of disbursing funds evenly amongst groups, but being a group doesn’t necessarily equal a guarantee of funds,” she said.

Winston said being in good standing with the university makes it easier for to get funds, and the requirements are beneficial to both the university and students.

“They try to help you out with being a leader, and knowing what you’re doing with your funding and knowing how to keep track of people in your group,” Winston said. “It helps you out with learning how to plan events and everything else that a club really entails.”

Showpnil said he thinks the biggest obstacle for new organizations is finding a strong member base.

“The most challenging part is to get people excited and involved so that you can have a governing body, which would allow you to register your organization,” Showpnil said.

“The process requires you to have some sort of member support, some sort of body already set up, so that they know that it wouldn’t fail right away if they approved it. I think that’s a good thing, because it pushes us to get more structured and more organized than just a one-man club.”

Winston, who took over Freethinkers last spring, said it’s been hard for his club to rebuild a member base.

“It can be stressful if you have a hard time finding a good base of people,” Winston said. “You really want to get it off the ground, but if you don’t have the numbers you won’t be able to do it.”

By Emily Hostetler
Transcript Reporter

While global economics surpass world boundaries through the internet and social media, economic success may lie in picking the right problems and finding solutions.

Last Friday, Clark Winter ’73, president and founder of Clark Winter enterprises, spoke about making sense of global economics in his lecture “The Global Economy Going Forward: Making Sense of Apparent Nonsense,” as part of the 2012 Robert L. Milligan Leaders in Business Lecture series.

According to Winter’s website, he has worked internationally as an investor and commentator on global financial markets and as a chief investment strategist and spokesperson for global investment firms.

Winter said boundaries determine trade and commerce which have migrated to the internet. When people want to buy things or check a price, they go online rather than to a catalogue or store.

“New boundaries have been determined by something absolutely unprecedented,” Winter said.

“Social media has cut across all known boundaries of empowerment and authority.”

He said when boundaries move, there can be amazing disaster or opportunity.

“Some things are wrong, some things are right,” he said. “Be aware of picking the right problem. Too often you get accustomed to answering a problem simply because you have an answer.”

Winter said a lot of the losses the U.S. has had in the last five years are from the unwinding of minor profits from assets.

Singapore, Korea, most of China, Google and Apple didn’t play the minor assets game and they are free of debt.

“The clear path to prosperity is excess leverage. They (Singapore, Korea, China, Google and Apple) congregated talent,” he said. “Leverage is still wildly available on the planet. It’s not just of money but, it’s of people.”

He said that Google gathered special talent to take society’s inevitable money-makers that were dysfunctional for a number of reasons and then make those systems functional.

“Pick a problem that’s comprehensible, that’s simple, that makes sense,” he said.

Winter said it is important to have clarity, purpose and understanding of how you reallocate size of inevitable cash-flows.

While using of the example of Sony and Apple, Winter demonstrated how simplicity can be useful in order to keep the economy moving forward through job creating exercises.

Sony has hundreds of products that can’t hook up to each other while Apple has only a few products that can intercommunicate and have different horsepower options.

“Think about how many things don’t work and think about being a solution provider, and bringing the efficiency to that,” Winter said.
Winter explained how people would spend much more money on lottery tickets if they could be online instead of having to physically walk somewhere to buy tickets.

This would once again remind future entrepreneurs how valuable the Internet can be.

Senior Rachel Piskos, an economics management major, said she agreed with a lot of what Winter said.

“I learned how important technology is when crossing boundaries,” she said.

Winter emphasized how important it is to realize opportunities even if it doesn’t seem like an opportunistic time.

“Change occurs when disaster strikes or when opportunity subtly screams,” he said. “It’s when the passive verb tense takes over, there’s a lack of accountability.”

He said that it is this lack of accountability that is occurring in the current election period.

Senior Laura Finkler, an economics management major, said she appreciated Winter’s use of politics in his lecture.

“He said he didn’t want to talk about politics, but when he did, he made sure to say something about both parties,” Finkler said.

Winter said that the job of politicians of the western world is to see the nation’s economy as a finite amount of resources. He compared this with sharing pizza.

He said people want to try to give and take slices out of a set number of slices of pizza which is much more complicated than making the pizza in the first place.

“Would you rather bake pizza, or divide pizza? You want to bake pizza. It’s a much better to own a pizzeria than to try to divide the pizza,” he said.

“That’s what China did. They said they wanted to own the means of productions rather than divide.”

Winter’s relatable analogies and frequent jokes allowed students, faculty and visitors to become engaged in his lecture on “apparent nonsense.”

“It was good for a Friday afternoon. I got extra credit for my senior seminar in corporate strategy, but the lecture was entertaining and better than some other lectures I’ve attended,” Piskos said.

As a B.F.A graduate, Winter understands the importance of the liberal arts and urges people to think of what mathematics, art, science and all of the subjects have in common, rather than how they are different.

“Some people walk into a messy room and see a golden opportunity,” he said.

“Some people see golden opportunities and only complain. What’s the rhythm, what’s the harmony, what’s the unanimity?”

While Winter’s lecture was based on the global economy, he included other topics and lessons that could correlate with global economics.

“I thought he would talk more about economics, but he didn’t. He didn’t ramble and it was a nice change,” Finkler said.

By Carly Shields
Transcript Correspondent

Bryant Terry, a food activist, “eco-chef” and author, spoke in the Benes Rooms on Sept. 24 about “Food Justice at the Intersection of Food Politics, Poverty, Public Health and the Environment.”

Terry grew up in Memphis, Tenn. with a family that had the privilege of having nice food and homegrown vegetables all the time.
His grandfather had an urban farm where he grew fruit trees, vegetable plants, spices and herbs in the back yard.

But when Terry went to high school, he didn’t want to be the one kid bringing in fresh produce for lunch every day so he was peer pressured into eating fast food for every meal.

“I quickly became lethargic, overweight and had uncontrollable acne,” Terry said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with my family.”
It was not until a friend of his showed him a song, “Beef” by Boogie Down Productions, that raps about fast food and processed meat in this country that everything changed for him.

Terry became a vegan at that point in his life and began his “life calling” of teaching people how to eat and cook healthy food.
Terry was inspired by African culture and the relationship food has with culture.

“Food is such a powerful tool to bring people together,” Terry said. “The goal of my work is unity.”
Terry focuses his food activist in urban cities and on African Americans in the U.S.

Terry is also interested in “sustainable, fair, clean food systems” and justice for farmers and the consumers.

“Look at yourself, look at what you want out of your life and embody that through your diet,” Terry said.

Terry said that about 30 percent of Americans are obese.

Terry became very attentive to food and the importance of healthy food when he realized that the younger generation would die sooner if we continue this unhealthy pattern.

“There is a stigma with those who are obese,” said Terry. “They are blamed by the media and others when a lot of (obesity) is genetics.”
A 2005 Berkeley College statistic reports that America spends one million dollars every hour on ads that sell unhealthy foods and beverages.

“38.2 million African Americans between the ages of two and 19 are obese compared to Caucasians of the same age,” Terry said. “It’s a lack of access to healthy food.”

Food deserts, which are districts that have limited access to healthy foods but instead, have access to fast food restaurants and corner stores are the villains to large rates of obesity in African American society Terry said.

In the late 1960’s in urban cities in America, affluent Caucasian Americans were fleeing from the cities to the rural areas of the country, taking super markets and health stores with them.

Corner markets, liquor stores and convenient shops served as grocery stores for those who were left behind, which were mostly African Americans.

Corner markets still remain as the dominant markets for most people living in non-affluent areas of cities today.

These markets also charge people 50 percent higher prices than super markets because of the limited access to lower prices.

Terry got his graduate degree in history at New York University and focused on black civil rights. The Black Panthers from the Civil Rights movement believed communities should be self-reliant.

As a result they fed over 10,000 people every day in cities so kids would have breakfast before going to school.

“It bothered me that there was a kind of apartheid in the food system in New York City,” Terry said. “If you lived in wealthier parts of the city, like Soho, you had opportunities to 15 different olive oils but if you lived in poorer areas of the city you had nothing.”
Terry also spoke about the importance of eco-friendly food and how to grow it.

Terry hosts a television show called “Urban Organic” where he interviews friends and teach the viewers about sustainable agriculture in urban cities.

A topic they have discussed is aquaponics, which is a sustainable way to grow food by combining aquaculture and hydroponics together by growing your produce in water tanks and getting its nutrients through the fish waste.

This sustainable way of farming does not require a lot of space and materials, making it a easy way to farm in urban cities.

Terry is also very active and interested in local farming for local communities.

He says this will increase healthy diets and decrease food deserts.

Senior Grace Wallace said Terry helped her realize how local food can combine local people’s talents to can create healthy diets and new opportunities for communities.

“Local food is important because the people can come together and implement their own skills (for example, someone who is a skilled gardener partnering up with an irrigation specialist to devise an organic garden),” Wallace said.

“The more people who combine their efforts towards a nutritious diet, the more alternatives they will have.”

Terry also started an organization called “Be Healthy” which teaches people how to cook sustainably and easily.

Terry said he found it important for college students to know how to cook when they are forced to cook on their own and how important it is to know what they eat and how much of it they eat, like processed food, sugar and fats.

“An important way we can dictate the health of our food is to cook it ourselves,” Terry said.

Terry has three cookbooks that teach people how to eat healthy by using less meat and more vegan diets.

“People have this idea that vegan and vegetarian food is bland and boring,” Terry said.

Junior Katie Buckingham changed her mind on vegan diets because of Terry’s lecture.

“I think his take on ‘vegan soul food’ is really interesting and makes healthy, vegan food much more accessible and appealing to people,” Buckingham said.

“When people are talking about healthy, clean food I normally only see thin, blond, white women, but I liked that his video featured a community garden and restaurant which was ran by people from mixed cultures.”

Terry’s cookbooks are a blend of soul food, African American food, organic food and vegan recipes.

“To reduce African American food to slave food is inaccurate,” Terry said.

“Soul food is only one part of African American’s diverse food… Foods are culturally relevant to people, that is why I put a lot of emphasis on African American cuisine.”

Not only is Terry a chef, author and show host, but he is also a food activist, who is curious and interested in the way food policies work in this country.

Terry said the country needs to be more invested in change, including farmers, community members and the consumers.

“What I find exciting are local policy changes,” Terry said.

“We need to be driven by the people who want the change, who are the local farmers and local community members.”

“They are the ones who know what’s best for local communities, not the people who come in with no ties to the community and act as if they know what’s best for them.”

“The people in the community are running the projects and their goals truly reflect what’s being done in their community,” he said.

By Sadie Slager
Transcript Reporter

Bamboo dragonflies and non la were among the most popular authentic items sold Sept. 24 through 28 as a part of Vietnamese Culture Week.
The Vietnamese Student Association sponsored a sale of items they brought back from Vietnam to raise money for their organization and for Agent Orange victims.

Freshman Hoang Tran, vice president of the Vietnamese Student Association, said the group sold traditional Vietnamese dresses, artwork, bracelet, bamboo dragonflies, traditional straw hats called non la and figurines of Vietnamese transportation called xich lo.

Tran, an international student from Vietnam, described a xich lo as a bicycle with a seat attached to the front.

He said xich los used to be a very popular form of transportation in Vietnamese cities.

“Most people use cars now, but they still have xich los,” he said. “They are mostly used for tourists.”

Tran said he and other students from Vietnam acquired the items over the summer from traditional Vietnamese villages and brought them back to OWU.

It was the Association’s first sale of this kind, but Tran said they hope to do it again next year.

“We want to see the results from this year’s sale to decide if we will do the same thing again next year,” he said.

After the sale members of the Association modeled traditional Vietnamese dresses at OWU’s International Fashion Show on Sept. 29.
The Association also plans to hold a Vietnamese food festival in October, which will have traditional Vietnamese dishes for other OWU students to purchase and taste for themselves.

Tran said the Association consists of about 30 students, five of whom are not Vietnamese. One of these students is freshman Natalie Wood.

Wood said she is friends with Vietnamese students and this inspired her to join the student group.

“I love Asian culture anyways, so I wanted to get involved with the club,” she said.

Wood said she helped with Smith’s pizza delivery service to raise money for the Association.

Tran said the Vietnamese Student Association has trouble getting enough funding from WCSA, so they must earn money for their endeavors in different ways, such as pizza delivery.

“Most of the money we raise is for Agent Orange victims,” he said. “We hold Agent Orange Awareness Week in the spring as well.”
Tran said the Association raised over $300 last year for Agent Orange victims.

Freshman Khanh Le said he got involved with the Vietnamese Student Association through other Vietnamese students he met when he came to OWU in the fall.

He said he has noticed there are a lot of Vietnamese students at OWU and attributes this to OWU’s good reputation in Vietnam.
He said his sister attended OWU about seven years ago, but he knows many other people who learned about OWU at university fairs in Vietnam.

Tran said some Vietnamese students study abroad in the United States with a program called “VietAbroader” and learn about OWU through that experience.

He also said that OWU always has a representative at college fairs.

“Many high school students went to fairs and heard about OWU that way,” he said.

“Then they called OWU contacts for more information about the school and realized it had a good reputation.”

By Spenser Hickey
Transcript Correspondent

With the elections five weeks away, the OWU election task force’s voter registration efforts are in full swing.

After the success of last week’s Channel 10 visit, the Task Force and the Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs hope to keep registering students until the Oct. 9 deadline.

At their weekly meeting Sept. 24, senior Anthony McGuire, president of WCSA, announced plans to cooperate with TurboVote, an online system designed to facilitate out-of-state voting. According to their website, TurboVote “makes voting from home as easy as renting a DVD from Netflix.”

McGuire said that TurboVote was the easiest system for the task. According to ‘Student Profile’ statistics from the OWU website, approximately 37 percent of students are from out-of-state and stand to benefit the most from the TurboVote access.

Junior Ariel Koiman, co-chair of WCSA’s Campus Relations Committee, said that until now they had only been able to register Ohio residents. Thru TurboVote, anyone can register and fill out a ballot as long as they eligible to vote in the US.

The decision to use TurboVote was made after significant consideration by the election task force, an informal group of WCSA members (McGuire, junior Carly Hallal, vice president, Koiman and sophomore Maria Urbina) and university staff (Joan McLean, professor of politics and government, Nancy Rutkowski, assistant director of Student Involvement, Cole Hatcher, associate director of media and community relations and Sally Leber, director of the Columbus Initiative).

While the Channel 10 visit was planned primarily by the Student Involvement Office, Koiman and WCSA worked behind the scenes to get the word out.

According to Koiman, Channel 10’s visit led to around 70 students registering to vote, which given the student body size is “fairly massive.”

According to Rochelle Young, Channel 10’s executive producer of special projects, 54 registration forms and 36 absentee ballot requests were filled out on campus, the most of their tour.

Koiman stressed increased awareness of the need to vote.

“As the long as we have the opportunity for people to register, that’s what’s important,” he said. “We don’t want anyone saying ‘I wanted to register to vote but I couldn’t’. That’s what we’re doing this for, so if somebody wants to they can.”

Currently, the tabling will be done by WCSA members, though Koiman has reached out to the Greek organizations on campus.

While Koiman said he welcomed the help of Channel 10 and campus organizations, he was less enthusiastic about a recent visit by the Ohio Student Association, which tried to register voters on campus without notifying the task force or the SIO.

If they had notified SIO, Koiman said, they could’ve cooperated with the election task force.

According to organization representatives Ben Jacobs and James Hayes, the Ohio Student Association was founded last January by students “wanting to tackle campus issues across the state.”

While the College Republicans were not involved in the voter registration efforts, junior Tim Alford, president of College Republicans, said the club is excited to see OWU students taking an interest in the elections.

The College Democrats were approached for comment but according to Chaplain Jon Powers, adviser for College Democrats, the organization is on a hiatus as their leaders are studying abroad this semester.

WCSA will be tabling to register students until Oct. 9, the Ohio deadline for voter registration, and will continue to raise voting awareness with other events until Election Day.