The Transcript – Page 72 – This is the archive of our old website

WCSA constitution may be revised

WCSA crest. Photo courtesy of the owu website.

As the semester winds down, senators continue to work on projects outlined at their last full senate meeting that were designed to effectively spend leftover funds.

At the Nov. 30 full senate meeting of the Wesleyan Council of Student Affairs (WCSA), vice president Emma Drongowski, a senior, said work on the projects will continue next semester.

She also briefly explained to the senate what happened at the last faculty meeting when faculty voted to not allow several students into the meeting.

Drongowski said the decision only applied to that specific meeting. At the next meeting there will be a new vote to decide if guests should be allowed in.

She said if closing the meeting off to students “becomes a trend,” there will be a discussion about other ways students can access information regarding what decisions were made.

The main topic of new business was introduced by junior Caroline Anderson, chair of the Administrative Policy Committee (APC).

APC has revised the WCSA constitution, and a bill to accept the revisions will be voted on next week by the full senate.

“We put in new sections that we felt were more appropriate for WCSA in terms of our function,” Anderson said.

Parts of the constitution were clarified and reorganized, and there was a section added about committees.

Drongowski added that “some cool charts” were also put in.

“It has changed nothing we do in practice currently,” Drongowski said.

Eleventh annual Economic Outlook Conference held

By: Evan Walsh, Transcript Correspondent

Panelist Ben Ayers. Photo courtesy of the OWU website.

Folks pay a lot for financial advice.

Ohio Wesleyan students who attended the eleventh annual Economic Outlook Conference on Nov. 17 didn’t have to. This Tuesday, a panel of prominent economists led a lecture and answered curious students’ questions about the future of the economy.

Students like junior Brooks Gilmore, an OWU Economics Management Fellow, were pleased they went.

“I’ve come every year I’ve been at OWU. I’ll come next year, too, because I think this is an opportunity for students to take advantage of a learning experience outside of class,” Gilmore said.

Like the name might suggest, the Economic Outlook Conference anticipates what we can expect our economy to do at a local, national and global level.

Their projections for economic success were predicated primarily on the rising levels of employment and the Federal Reserve controlling hyper-inflation to maintain the strength of the dollar.

Panelist George Mokrzan. Photo courtesy of the OWU website.

Each of the three panelists were genuinely optimistic about the immediate and long-term success of the economy.

However, during the question and answer part of the conference they came to a disagreement about the extent to which the economy will grow and the effects of government policy.

Senior economist at Nationwide Economics Ben Ayers, compared the national gross domestic product with changing levels of employment.

His research validated his suspicion that employment and GDP are those forces most responsible for making our economy a consumer economy.

George Mokrzan, the director of economics at Huntington Trust agreed with Ayers’s assertion that employment across the country has helped the recovery process. Still, he noted that regional improvements in the “rustbelt,” as it still mistakenly called, are actually ahead of the national average.

Panelist Mark Schweitzer. Photo courtesy of the OWU website.

Mark Schweitzer, senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, was the last to present. He touched upon some of the previous comments with respect to the Federal Reserve policies that control the economy’s pace of recovery.

“The Volcker Rule and other monetary moves will slow inflation without hurting consumption,” Schweitzer said.

Some stuck around to speak with the panel members for their insight as professionals.

“Employment prospects for students are much higher now than they were a few years ago,” Mokrzan said. “There is still a premium on higher education, so stay in school.”

The conference, held in the Benes Room, was put together by the Woltemade Center with members of the economics department moderating.

Jour Board calls for transparency

By: OWU Journalism Board

As members of the Ohio Wesleyan Journalism Student Board, we strive to uphold the Journalism Code of Ethics–one of the staples of this code being to report the truth and to minimize harm while doing so. It is never a reporter’s goal to misquote or exploit comments made; in fact, it is the exact opposite. As journalists we strive to understand. The decision to leave students out of the November 16 faculty and staff meeting is something we cannot comprehend.

Based on the precedence set by Verne Edwards, students at Ohio Wesleyan deserve to know what is discussed at faculty and staff in meetings. We understand the right of faculty to issue an executive session, however it must be justified. In this instance, the faculty neglected to conduct such a session yet still denied the entry of students.

True transparency between the university and students is hard enough to come by. It’s imperative that students are not barred from attending the meetings in which their education is discussed. It’s understandable for faculty members to want to be able to speak freely, but students do not need to be excluded for this to occur.

A faculty meeting is news. A faculty meeting in which students are excluded is news. As journalists it is not only our duty, but our passion to cover such events. Those who happen to be subjects of an issue do not have the right to determine whether or not it is newsworthy.

You’re only human

It’s nearing “that time of the semester” again. The weather’s getting colder and gloomier. Stress is visible on the face of every student. Anything with caffeine in it is flying off the shelves and out of the fridges at the Thomson convenience store. Mid-November is the beginning of the end-of-the-semester struggles, and the urge to give up and say “screw it” to all of your work is stronger than ever.

Well, I’m here to say, “Don’t give up.” Seriously, don’t. Don’t give up your mental health and sanity. Don’t give up on sleep and square meals. Don’t sacrifice yourself for an A instead of a B, or a B instead of a C. Don’t sacrifice valuable, limited time with your family this Thanksgiving by locking yourself in your room for a week to write an entire paper.

I’m not saying you should blow off your schoolwork. After all, tuition isn’t cheap and you’re here to learn the knowledge and skills you’ll hopefully need in your post-grad career.

I’m saying that sometimes you need to prioritize yourself and your health over squeezing in an extra hour of studying or writing a tenth draft of your paper. Like most things in life, preparing for exams is all about balance, and personal time needs to be part of that.

Basically, don’t let your academic goals get in the way of everything else in life. You may be a college student, but you’re also a friend, a family member and a human. Remember that.

Nobel Prize winner, OWU alum Sherwood Rowland honored

By: Ross Hickenbottom, Transcript Reporter

The Heritage Day display for Sherwood Rowland.

Ohio Wesleyan alumni all over the world have received awards in recognition of their accomplishments. Whether for sports, science research, education, politics, social activism, literature or entertainment, these awards are prestigious. But one award trumps all the rest: the Nobel Prize.

Frank Sherwood Rowland, class of 1948, received the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his cooperative “work with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their impact on the Earth’s ozone layer,” according to Connect2OWU. In other words, he proved to the world that mankind can (and is) depleting the ozone.

During his formative years of research he was affiliated with the department of chemistry at the University of California, along with Paul J. Crutzen and Mario J. Molina, his co-winners.

The school community celebrated the 20th anniversary of Sherwood’s award on Nov. 13. The celebration was named “Noblest Achievements: Environment Echoes of Sherwood Rowland” and was held in the atrium of the HamiltonWilliams Campus Center from 12-1 p.m.

Sherwood was a member of Delta Tau Delta, the men’s basketball team and was the sports editor of The Transcript during his time at OWU. With this in mind, OWU chose junior Evan Katz, a member of Delta Tau Delta and senior Ben Miller, a journalism major, to speak on Rowland’s behalf.

In his speech, Katz shared some unknown and impressive facts about Sherwood, including the fact that “Sherwood Rowland entered the first grade at the age of 5, skipped the fourth grade, entered high school at 12 and graduated a few weeks before his sixteenth birthday.”

In an interview at the 2005 meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, Sherwood described his post-high school graduation decision to attend OWU, “After graduation from high school in 1943, almost all of my male classmates immediately entered the military service,” Rowland said. “However, because I was still well under the compulsory draft age of 18, I enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan and attended the university year-round for the next two years. During these war years, only 30 or 40 civilian males were on campus, plus about 200 naval officer trainees and 1,000 women. With so few men available, I played on the university basketball and baseball teams and wrote much of the sports page for the university newspaper.”

A model man for many, if not all Ohio Wesleyan students, Sherwood Rowland’s contributions to the world remind us all of our potential.

Now, Delaware. Next, Oslo?

Orchesis takes the stage at Chappelear

By: Gopika Nair, Assistant Copy Editor

Ares Harper, Hilary Quinn and Jeremy Griffin-Jackson practice for this year's Orchesis performance. Photo by Trent Williams. — Ares Harper, Hilary Quinn and Jeremy Griffin-Jackson practice for this year’s Orchesis performance. Photo by Trent Williams.

After nearly two months of rehearsals, the Ohio Wesleyan dancers can finally rest their feet.

Students of OWU from the department of theatre and dance have been working toward staging Orchesis, the annual contemporary dance concert, since the first week of classes, said Rashana Smith, the artistic director of Orchesis and a professor in the theatre and dance department.

The show debuted on Nov. 13 on the Main Stage in Chappelear Drama Center. Additional performances were held on Nov. 14 and Nov. 15.

Orchesis featured 24 dancers and comprised eight pieces created by students, faculty and a guest choreographer. The individual pieces explored a variety of themes.

The show opened with “Migrations,” a piece choreographed by Jill Becker, the guest choreographer. Becker created the dance in response to the crisis of migrants fleeing war zones and seeking refuge in the west, according to her program note.

“I am moved and amazed by stories of the risky journeys people are taking in the hopes of having better, safer lives for their families.”

Some other themes that Orchesis explored included depression and the socialization process and its implication on women, which were choreographed by juniors Maddie Presley-Wolff and Diana Muzina respectively.

In addition to featuring original music, this year’s Orchesis is also the product of a collaboration between the theatre and dance department and the music department for the first time in years, said Smith.

The show concluded with Smith’s piece, titled “Effort of Interface,” which featured all 24 dancers.

Junior Trenton Williams, one of the dancers, said he hoped people understood the concepts of each piece.

“Nowadays, the rise in technology has made us more connected to our phones than to each other, and I really hope the people who attended Orchesis leave with a sense of awareness of this lack of connection,” Williams said of Smith’s piece.

Sophomore Alexia Minton, choreographer of the piece “Solitude of the Soul,” said part of the appeal of “Orchesis 15/16” was that it invited the audience to contemplate psychological, sociological and political issues.

“I think the greatest challenge I faced throughout the entire process of this show was trusting myself and having faith in my own choreography,” Minton said. “When creating anything, sometimes it can be hard to appreciate your own effort/artistry.”

Now that Orchesis has come to an end, Minton said she is thankful for the opportunity to work with and learn from her small cast of dancers.

Williams also said that though Orchesis was demanding, he would consider doing it again next year.

“At this point, I have sixpack abs and strong calves,” he said. “It was a long experience, but it was definitely worth trying something new.”

Faculty: you need to talk

By: The Transcript Editorial Staff

At their Nov. 16 meeting, members of the faculty voted not to allow student representatives, including a Transcript reporter, into the room. Following the online publication of a story covering that decision–the cover story of tomorrow’s issue–many students, alumni and faculty began engaging in discussion on social media sites and in comment section of the story on The Transcript’s website. Some accusations were made, some facts were disputed and many members of the OWU community expressed their discontent. And the faculty needs to talk about it.

Let’s get this out of the way first: why are faculty upset about student presence in their meetings? The faculty are not enemies of the first amendment, they are not conspiracists or villains. In fact, plain student attendance at faculty meetings is not the issue at hand. Faculty are upset because OWU business, their business, has appeared in the Delaware Gazette on more than one occasion.

Since the first gathering in September, the Delaware Gazette has been publishing all Transcript coverage of the monthly faculty meetings. You can also find these two stories on The Transcript’s website. You see, The Transcript has a sharing agreement with the Delaware Gazette; any story or photo we publish, they have the right to use. And vice versa. It’s important to note here that even if the Delaware Gazette did not have the right to use our exact stories, any information published online would be available to them. If they wanted to write a story about the meetings using our online or print coverage as a source, they could. That’s how the media works.

Some members of the faculty are concerned that allowing Transcript reporters to cover the meetings, and thereby allowing the Gazette to do the same, might compromise the privacy of the forum: faculty will not be willing to share their real thoughts or feelings for fear of being quoted in a newspaper, and perhaps more importantly, OWU’s private dealings will be made public.

Faculty with this mindset believe that there should be an official meeting space for internal discussion. And they believe that that meeting space should be at the faculty meetings.

At The Transcript, we believe students should be given the privilege of knowing what the faculty decide in their meetings. We are as invested in this school as they are, and information between the two groups needs to be shared. That’s why we have the Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs (WCSA) to represent our interests to the faculty and administration. But we have The Transcript to keep the powers-that-be honest. Journalists represent the student body as much as WCSA does. And to only allow WCSA into the meetings would be to trade one administration for another.

Here’s the problem: faculty need to decide whether student representatives (all student representatives) can be allowed into the faculty meetings. And if they allow The Transcript, their meetings will be public, period.

OWU student harassed, followed by unknown suspect

By: Cuckoo Gupta, Transcript Correspondent

An OWU student was briefly stalked and harassed by an unknown man who followed him from Rowland Avenue to Smith Hall on the night of Nov 3.

The man, allegedly 18 years old, is a native of the Delaware community. He yelled profanities at and physically pushed junior Andrew Smith.

“I had never seen the man before that evening,” said Smith. “He said he was disgruntled about being arrested after getting in a fight with someone.”

The man was accompanied by a friend who “looked as if he did not want to be there,” said Smith.

He tried stopping his aggressive acquaintance “multiple times.”

“Based on the victim’s report, it appears to be a case of mistaken identity,” said Richard Morman, an investigator for Public Safety (PS).

After entering Smith Hall, Smith called PS, who contacted the Delaware Police Department (DPD). PS works “closely with the Fire Department and Delaware Police to keep the community safe,” according to their website.

Smith was satisfied with PS’s handling of the situation, and said he felt “safer” once he was with them.

Director of PS Robert Wood said, “We take many steps to help ensure safety. We have a 24/7 public safety presence on campus. And we partner with DELCOM (our county’s central 911 center).”

“PS officers also provide escorts to students who are alone or have a specific reason to be concerned for their safety,” Wood explained. “We have emergency phones located at various spots on campus that can be used to reach us.”

The emergency phone has been used “very few times” in the past 10 years. The student escort system also has been seldom used.

Wood said that most of the times officer escorts are requested for convenience more than for safety.

“It is important to remember that regardless of what the PS department and administration does, individual decisions we make every day have a greater impact on our individual safety,” Wood said.

The student life webpage has a number of instructions on safety tips and measures that can be taken by the students and staff, in situations like Smith’s. The tips range from reporting any suspicious activity or safety incident immediately to securing yourself in a safe place and staying sheltered until you receive an all-clear message.

*Free t-shirt not included

cartoon 21 — Binge-Watching Addiction by Blake Fajack ’16.

Bishop Ballers back in action

By: Ross Hickenbottom, Transcript Correspondent

NCAA basketball is back, ladies and gentlemen, and the Ohio Wesleyan University men’s and women’s basketball teams are ready to tip it off the right way.

The men’s team, led by NCAC Freshman of the Year Nate Axelrod, now a sophomore, looks to repeat as NCAC champions and improve from last season, where they went 226, 162 in the conference. After a heartbreaking loss in the opening round of the NCAA tournament to St. Olaf College, an appearance in the 2016 tournament is on their todo list, along with bringing another conference championship back to OWU.

Axelrod, who averaged 16.2 points a game last season, looks to improve his personal play, as well as team chemistry to contribute to the hopeful upcoming season.

“I think we all have high expectations for ourselves this year, considering our success last season and how much we’re returning,” Axelrod said.

As far as returning players go, the Bishops have an abundance of talent returning to the squad from the 2014 season, including senior Claude Grey, who led the team in scoring and junior Ben Simpson, key defensive contribution to the effort, who led the team in rebounds, steals and blocks last season.

“We should be very successful this year, much like last year,” Simpson said, “however, we definitely have a target on our back this year.”

“We’re a big game on everyone’s schedule this year,” Simpson added.

The women’s team returns from a 15-13 season, 97 in the conference, which is not ideal for their level of plays. After being knocked out of the NCAC tournament by Wittenberg University, the ladies’ season was over in a bitter fashion.

On top of that, after graduating, five seniors, including LaNiece McRae and Sarah McQuade, who led the Bishops last year in multiple categories, the younger, less experienced players will have to boost their contribution to the team this year in order to achieve success.

Junior Taylor Dickson believes the underclassmen will do just that.

“We definitely have a strong, promising underclassmen presence on our team this year. Our newcomers worked extremely hard over the summer and have proved since stepping on campus that they have the drive and work ethic to get better and compete at this level,” she said.

Dickson, who played in all 28 games last year will look to contribute a lot to the team’s winning

effort, along with junior Megan Kuether, and the two seniors of the team, Kelly Still and Hanna Fedorka. Dickson, Kuether, Fedorka and Still are the only returning players with varsity letters, so this year’s success will rely heavily on the contribution from the younger, more inexperienced players.

Wellwishers will fill the Edwards Gymnasium this year, in hopes that not one but both of the OWU basketball teams will see their hard work come to fruition.