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Defense puts forward different attacker in Nicholas Eber trial

By Ellin Youse and Noah Manskar
Editor-in-Chief and Online Editor

On the first day of the trial of Nicholas Eber, the Delaware man charged with attempted murder and three other felonies for allegedly stabbing former Ohio Wesleyan senior class president Anthony Peddle ’14, his defense attorneys argued another man, Matthew Costello, should be the suspect on trial.

In his cross-examination of three Delaware Police Department officers Tuesday in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, defense attorney Joel Spitzer argued there were links between the May 3 stabbing at the Chi Phi fraternity house at 216 N. Franklin St. and another incident at a nearby convenience store.

Three hours after leaving the Chi Phi house that morning, officer Joseph Kolp said he and officer Mark Jackson responded to a call reporting a man in a deep blue hoodie with blood on his face had entered the United Dairy Farmers store at 123 W. William St., went to the bathroom and tried to sell the cashier his cell phone. The cashier told officers she assumed the man had been in a fight.

In reviewing the footage from the store’s security cameras, it was unclear who the man was and whether he had blood on his face. Kolp told Spitzer store employees said there was no indication of any blood in the store.

Later that morning, around 6 a.m., Kolp saw a man who fit the description of the person at the store walking on Sandusky Street. He identified him as Costello, adding he consented to a search and was “very cooperative.”

Kolp said Costello explained the blood on his nose was from a pimple that he had “cut off.” When prosecuting attorney Doug Dumolt asked Kolp if he suspected Costello was involved in the stabbing, he said no.

Eber was arrested May 8 after police found a green sweatshirt with lettering on the arm that matched the description of the one Peddle’s attacker was wearing in his apartment on N. Washington Street on May 5. There were spots on the garment that may have been blood, DPD detective sergeant John Radabugh said in his testimony.

That led to a more thorough search permitted by a warrant, in which police found shoes that were later found to have blood on them and three other sweatshirts that matched the assailant’s.

Additionally, a knife was missing from the knife block in Eber’s kitchen, and the detectives could not find a one that fit the space.

He was eventually indicted on charges of attempted murder, felonious assault, aggravated burglary and tampering with evidence.

When Radabaugh and detective David McQuigg first questioned Eber at the Chi Phi house on May 3, McQuigg noticed a “significant cut” on his arm, Radabaugh said on the stand. Eber told them he got it from a glass he broke doing dishes in his apartment, which is about three blocks southwest of the crime scene.

One of the sweatshirts police found in the second search had a hole in the sleeve similar to the location of the cut on Eber’s arm.

On the first visit to the apartment, officers found a broken glass in the sink and shards of glass around the sink, including some that appeared to have brown droplets on them. They also found a trash can in his bathroom filled with bloody bandages.

Eber’s charges require the prosecution to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Eber committed the crime.

Judge Everett Krueger instructed the 12 selected jurors and the appointed alternate that if they are not “firmly convinced” Eber attacked Peddle after considering all the evidence presented in the courtroom, they must acquit him.

A reasonable doubt, Krueger said, is one by which “an ordinary person would be willing to rely and act upon it in the most important of his or her on affairs.”

The jurors visited the Chi Phi house Tuesday morning to view the scene of the crime. The trial is expected to continue through Friday.

Blankets needed as cold closes in

Free Store 2.1 — Photo: commongroundfreestore.org

“The closer we get to Christmas, we are seeing more and more need,” said Lori Falk, executive director of the Common Ground Free Store, located on Central Avenue.

The store provides a variety of items and warm meals free of charge to Delaware residents in need.

Since January, the store has helped 5,000 different families and served between 15,000 and 18,000 meals, all provided by volunteers.

Falk said the hardest step for people in need is getting in the door.

“We never know why they come,” Falk said. “Everyone has their own story.”

Falk, who has over thirty years of non-profit management experience, said 15 percent of their patrons cannot read or write and 10 percent to 18 percent are homeless. The store is a non-profit with a budget of $115,000 a year. It is primarily funded by individual donors and has partnerships with 33 churches.

Deb Whitney, who describes herself as “a garden-variety volunteer,” said blankets, towels, sheets, housewares and children’s clothes are in particularly high demand.

“Those things blow out of here fast,” she said. “We never have enough of that stuff.”

Donations must be in good enough condition that you would give the items to a friend or neighbor, and the store does not accept furniture. Whitney said people sometimes return children’s clothing they got at the store that their children have outgrown.

“They want to be sure we have the opportunity to give them to other patrons,” she said.

Freshman Ellen Sizer began volunteering at Common Ground Free Store this semester after visiting with her UC 160 class. She said she “fell in love” with the place.

While volunteering, she keeps track of the items patrons take and interacts with them, which is why she visits as often as she can, she said.

“I love the whole communal factor of this place,” Sizer said. “I like connecting to the people and interacting with them. It is truly a special place in that way.”

For information about how to get involved, either donating or volunteering, those interested can visit the Delaware Common Ground Free Store website, commongroundfreestore.org, or like the Common Ground Free Store’s page on Facebook.

In defense of the concept of privilege

By Ashley Biser

Last week, professor Erin Flynn shared in The Transcript “Notes on the concept of (white, male) privilege.” In his piece, he argued the concept of privilege is problematic, not because it does not exist, but because it is “a potentially poor basis of political response to those painful and all too familiar patterns of injustice.”

I applaud Flynn for airing these concerns and discussing the concept of privilege in The Transcript. But he is wrong — both about what privilege is and the political work it accomplishes. First, the basic definition: privilege is not primarily about what an individual deserves; it is the idea that by virtue of one’s membership in a particular social group (men, white people, straight people, able-bodied people), we accrue as a group systematic advantages that are unavailable to those who are different. In this sense, privilege is not a theoretical concept, but a fact. For example, by virtue of the fact that I am able-bodied, I can navigate the world more easily than those who are not. I can watch Netflix without wondering which movies will be captioned or whether there will be people like me represented in them; I can get to my classrooms without worrying whether there is an elevator in the building; I can visit a new city and expect to be able to use public transportation easily. Because I was born able-bodied, I do not have to think about these advantages, but they are still operating in my favor. While each instance might seem insignificant, over time, these advantages add up—making my life easier insofar as I am not constrained by physical disabilities. This does not mean that I will never encounter obstacles, some of which will be based on other aspects of my social identity, such as my gender. Nor does the concept of privilege imply that my life will be free from pain and sorrow. But the pains and sorrows I experience will be based on my own particular life circumstances, not on the basis of being disabled. The concept of privilege just asks me to acknowledge that I live in a system that is designed for able-bodied people and makes life harder for those who are not part of that group. Hopefully, once I acknowledge that fact, I will be better equipped to fight for a system in which all people can flourish — regardless of physical ability.

According to Flynn, the problem with describing these advantages in terms of privilege is that implies that all experiences of white (or male, or heterosexual, or able-bodied) privilege are the same. But surely, we can see that not all able-bodied people have similar experiences of the world. An able-bodied woman will experience privilege differently than an able-bodied man. Just as a black woman born to a wealthy family will experience the world differently than a poor white man — just as will any two white, straight, able-bodied, cisgender men. As Hannah Arendt reminds us, “we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives or will live.”

Flynn worries that the concept of privilege covers over these individual differences and obscures the fact that sometimes “class transcends race” (and vice versa). But the point of recognizing privilege isn’t to set different experiences of discrimination up against another and vie for who is most oppressed; the point is to recognize the intersections between various forms of oppression and never fool ourselves into thinking that we are immune from prejudice. Just because I do not believe I am prejudiced against those who are disabled does not mean that I do not benefit from the systematic ways in which able-bodiedness is privileged in our society. We have to resist the age-old tendency to set oppressed people against each other and instead recognize that many forms of injustice share similar roots. The question isn’t who has it worse, but how can we make it better.

Moreover, in his desire to recognize the “richness, variety and complexity of social life,” Flynn misses the fact that it is precisely this experience of being recognized as a unique individual that is denied to those who are not white, male, heterosexual, upper-class, able-bodied, etc. In fact, it is a privilege to be treated as an individual, with a specific life story, deserving of recognition. It is precisely this experience, of being judged on one’s own merits — and not assumed to fit into a mold fashioned by prejudice — that those of us interested in justice, like Flynn and myself, desire for everyone.

In his post, Flynn also wonders what happens when we see basic human rights — such as the right to be free from physical coercion or harm — as privileges instead of as rights. I understand his concern; the language of rights is powerful. To speak of violated rights implies that everyone deserves physical security, not because some magnanimous entity has decreed so, but simply by virtue of our existence. However, for those to whom they are denied, rights do not exist. So long as African-American men are more likely to be shot by the police, women’s bodies can be subjected to medical procedures without their consent and transgender persons are disproportionately victims of violence, the so-called “right” to be free from physical coercion or harm is a dangerous myth. In a different context, marriage is not a “right” so long as only heterosexual couples can participate in its benefits. The concept of privilege draws our attention to the disjuncture between right and privilege — emphasizing that what might appear to be a right is not universally experienced as such. So long as “rights” can be categorically denied to entire sectors of our society, we cannot call them rights; they are simply privileges accorded to the few in the service of protecting those in power.

The concept of privilege also forces us to recognize that rights aren’t the culmination of struggles for justice. Don’t get me wrong. Legal rights are a crucial component of a just society. But the concept of privilege draws our attention to other myriad, sometimes seemingly trivial, ways that racism, classism, ableism, chauvinism, homophobia, etc. seep into our lives — even once legal rights have been secured. Take, for example, my experience of able-bodied privilege: is it a “right” to watch Netflix? Is it anyone’s “right” to see people like themselves represented on screen? No. But these privileges are nonetheless significant. My ability to easily access information affects how I can participate in the world, and the presence of people who look like me on television sets the parameters for what is considered “normal” and socially acceptable.

According to Flynn, the concept of privilege focuses on attacking what some (privileged) people have, rather than fighting for the rights others lack. In this sense, he worries that the concept of privilege might become tinged with what Nietzsche terms ressentiment—a “potentially toxic mix of resentment and envy” that embodies the desire to somehow strike back at those more powerful than ourselves. Flynn worries that calling people out on their privilege “becomes just a way of lashing out and ridiculing, of feeling a sense of superiority which one does not experience as socially real, by demeaning or lowering the status of another.” To some extent, I can see his worry. If the concept of privilege were simply a means of belittling the successes of powerful individuals, it would, indeed, be a vengeful concept. But, again, privilege is not about individual accomplishments and deserts. It is a concept designed to help draw attention to the systematic ways in which life is easier and more just for some and not others. All of us lead very different lives within the context of societal structures, filled with our own personal challenges and accomplishments. Nietzsche develops the concept of ressentiment to think about how those who are weak and undeserving react toward those who are stronger and bolder. What the concept of privilege teaches us, however, is that no matter how strong and bold and deserving someone is, some people have more obstacles to overcome than others.

Considering that Nietzsche excelled at questioning our most deeply-held assumptions — about God, morality, freedom, etc. — it seems to me fitting to think about the concept of privilege as doing similar political work: provoking us to rethink our basic assumptions about what is fair and just in our society. The purpose of recognizing my own privilege as an able-bodied, white, cisgender woman, is not to take away from my (or anyone else’s) accomplishments, but to help me better empathize with those whose experiences are fundamentally different than my own. At best, “checking” my privilege means that I make sure to listen more carefully to those who have historically been silenced and work more diligently to dismantle societal structures that contribute to white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, and class privilege. At the very least, I need to be aware of my own participation in perpetuating injustice. The language of privilege serves as a reminder to do so. I don’t deny that the concept can sometimes ruffle people’s feathers and engender unproductive conversations about guilt. But that is why it is powerful; unless we are uncomfortable, we will not act. For my part, the time to give up on the concept of privilege will be when privilege ceases to exist. The discomfort that all of us feel in recognizing our own privilege (be it racial, class, gender, etc.) is precisely the point.

Ashley Biser is an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan. Her expertise is in contemporary political theory, and she teaches such courses as Democracy and Its Critics, Classical Issues in Political Theory, American Political Thought, and Political Theory, Science and Technology, as well as the introductory politics and government course.

OWU’s composting program does a disappearing act

Students had the opportunity last year to compost their food and paper waste in The Marketplace. However, this year that program has gone away due to location and inefficiency.

Student interns, juniors Ellen Hughes and Reilly Reynolds, and other volunteers sorted through the trash twice a week to make sure materials that were not compostable were removed.

The university would have been fined if there was non-compostable materials sent to the composting company, Eartha Limited, Hughes said. Most of the common items they had to remove were chip bags, plastic bottles and even metal forks and spoons.

The head of Eartha Limited said it was not efficient to have a lot of paper waste according to Gene Castelli, the resident district manager of Chartwells at Ohio Wesleyan. They wanted more organic food waste.

“It was great that we had a composting program at all, but it really wasn’t working that well by the end,” Hughes said.

The students used the garage in the lower level of Ham-Will as a home base to sort through the trash, but lost that space when the weight room moved there.

“They needed to put the weight room somewhere so we had no place to do it,” said Castelli. “Another side is the university didn’t like students picking through garbage.”

Even though this initiative ended, Dining Services still works to compost and eliminate waste behind the scenes in both The Marketplace and Smith Dining Hall.

They have two programs that aim to eliminate waste pre-production and post-production: Trim Trax and Operation Clean Plate.

Trim Trax occurs in the kitchens as they are preparing food, such as cutting up tomatoes. Instead of throwing away parts that cannot be used, they put them in certain Trim Trax containers that will then be compostable.

Operation Clean Plate occurs in Smith, in which they compost excess food from students’ plates when they return them to the kitchen.

However, this would not work in The Marketplace because they do not use durable plates and the students are responsible for throwing away their trash.

The majority of the waste in the food court is paper products, not food and so wouldn’t make too much of a difference said Castelli.

Some students are still contributing to the effort, however, especially at some of the Small Living Units (SLU). Reynolds, also the moderator of Treehouse, said her house has a composting pile in their backyard. It contains mostly fruit and vegetable peels and will turn into dirt overtime.

Reynolds advice was for students to be aware of what they are throwing away each week and to buy less packaged things.

Verne Edwards, an ‘angel on the shoulder’

Ohio Wesleyan faculty, staff, alumni and Delaware residents will honor Verne Edwards, the former journalism professor who set higher standards for his students than many of their future editors, on Nov. 22 in the Benes rooms at Hamilton-Williams Campus Center.

Edwards, who died at 90 on Nov. 4, joined the OWU faculty in 1952, teaching courses and serving as The Transcript’s adviser until his retirement in 1986, according to a statement from University President Rock Jones. In that time he mentored many of the university’s most successful journalists, including Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award winners.

“If we judge educators by the success of their former students, then Verne Edwards stood at the top of his profession,” Jones wrote.

Edwards thought the best trained journalists should have “the broadest understanding of the world as possible,” said Tom Jolly ‘77, a former student of Edwards’s who is now an associate managing editor for The New York Times.

He was known to give his classes pop quizzes about current affairs — for example, asking them to name the Supreme Court justices, or the capital of a particular foreign country. If students failed, it wasn’t uncommon to see the same quiz again the next day.

That philosophy of broad knowledge continues to undergird the OWU journalism program today as it did in Edwards’ tenure. When Jolly was a student, he said, he took relatively few journalism courses for the major. Current journalism students must take at least eight courses of the 15.5 units required for the major outside of the department.

Edwards placed great importance on fairness in reporting without fear of offense or favor, a principle that influenced Trace Regan, whom he hired to the OWU journalism faculty in 1983. In working with Edwards, fairness became essential to how he dealt with students and what he taught them in the classroom until his retirement last year.

As The Transcript’s adviser, Edwards was famous to students for marking up each issue of the paper with a red pencil to point out mistakes, writing an “F” next to egregious errors. He was a tougher editor than any of his students would ever have, Jolly said, but with his high standards came invaluable lessons they would carry throughout their careers.

“He’s kind of that angel on your shoulder,” Jolly said. “He’s a presence reminding you what’s expected, what’s fair, what’s right, what’s wrong.”

Edwards was also an active and engaged citizen of Delaware, said University Chaplain Jon Powers. He served as an assistant to the publisher of the Delaware Gazette for 12 years after he retired from teaching, and would write “sharply focused” columns about local and national issues.

“He wasn’t a partisan,” Powers said. “He was more of a statesman.”

Edwards’s memorial service is set for 2 p.m. on Saturday in the Benes Rooms of the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center.

WCSA treasurer now an appointed position

Starting this year, the treasurer for the Wesleyan Council of Student Affairs (WCSA) will be appointed by current WCSA members, instead of elected by the student body.

Sophomore treasurer Sam Schurer said the change was made because an election was “a little bit too risky.”

“We wanted to avoid anyone being elected that wasn’t necessarily qualified, and so this is just kind of another level of security,” Schurer said.

Junior Emma Drongowski, newly elected vice president, said the treasurer needs to have special knowledge of the software WCSA uses and know general accounting. In the past, treasurers have not always had the necessary expertise and “the position suffered for it.”

The decision to make treasurer an appointed position was made about a month ago during a full body meeting, though the idea was “tossed around” for awhile, said senior President Lauren Holler, who was the treasurer two years ago.

She said having to run in an election can be intimidating for students, and in past years sometimes only one person ran for treasurer.

“Seeing that there’s not a lot of candidate turnout for that position, generally we thought it would be better to make it an application so that maybe more people would be encouraged to apply,” Holler said.

Typically, WCSA members hold their positions from January to December. Schurer said he was appointed at the end of last semester because the previous treasurer, Connor Latz, is not on campus this semester.

Holler said having to replace Latz halfway through his term did not really impact WCSA’s decision to appoint treasurers from now on and said she believes Schurer has done a great job as treasurer.

She said having a treasurer who has experience with making budgets is important because WCSA has three different budgets to make: one for clubs and organizations, one for special initiatives, and one for WCSA’s operational expenses.

“We would really like to just get cleaner, more precise budgets,” Holler said. “We feel that if there’s someone who was appointed who has different qualifications or better knowledge of excel, or things like that, they might be able to do that.”

Schurer said it is becoming even more important that WCSA funds be handled properly.

“The number of students we have is going down, so the amount of money we have to work with is going down,” Schurer said. “Meanwhile, the number of active clubs on campus is going up, and so, especially with that tightening, we wanted to make sure everything is being done responsibly.”

Schurer said WCSA had been considering developing an internship for someone who would “handle everything on more of an accounting end” but they decided to not do that this year, so the WCSA treasurer remains an unpaid position.

The application for WCSA treasurer can be found at wsca.owu.edu and should be submitted to wcsaexec@owu.edu. The deadline is Nov. 21.

Global Grab: ISIL beheads fifth captive, Japan’s economy shrinks

The Issue: ISIL

Over the weekend, the Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of Peter Kassig, an American aid worker. He was the fifth Western hostage the group has killed and the third American, according to the Washington Post. The New York Times reported he was beheaded in retaliation for airstrikes carried out by the United States in Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama and the United States government confirmed the identity of Kassig and the authenticity of the video. “Mr. Kassig was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group,” Obama said in a statement.

Kassig was captured in eastern Syria in October 2013 while traveling in an ambulance, the Washington Post reported. During his captivity, Kassig converted to Islam while sharing a cell with a devout Syrian Muslim and changed his name to Abdul-Rahman. Kassig founded an aid group to help Syrians that were in the middle of the country’s civil war, according to the Associated Press.

The AP also reported Kassig served in the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. He was captured doing relief work with Special Emergency Response and Assistance, a group he founded after his discharge from the Army.

Now, the BBC reported, “Western intelligence officials are trying to identify Islamic State militants seen in the video…using facial recognition software to identify those involved in the mass beheading, matching their real names and origins to their adopted battle names.” It’s reported one of the militants is French and another is British.

The Islamic State is currently holding two women, one a 26-year-old American, according to the Washington Post.

The Issue: Japan’s Economy

While the rest of the world is recovering from the devastating 2008 recession, it seems as though Japan has unexpectedly fallen back into one in the third financial quarter, the New York Times reported.

Japanese cabinet officials said the economy shrunk by 1.6 percent in the three months to the end of September, compared with a year earlier, the Washington Post reported, the second straight quarterly drop. “Economists had been expecting the statistics to show that the economy had grown by 2 percent in the quarter.”

There is a possibility of an economic stimulus package, according to Reuters, but Japan’s Economy Minister said it would “be heard to craft an exceptionally big package because of the need for financial discipline.”

Reuters also reported some economists are thinking growth could improve in the October-December quarter.

Newcomers take on veterans in WCSA election

The candidates for the Wesleyan Council of Student Affairs’ highest offices have some similarities. All four are juniors, all are in Greek organizations and they presented three-point platforms with their respective running mates at Monday’s debate.

But they differ in prior experience with the Council. Jerry Lherisson and Emma Drongowski, running for president and vice president respectively, have both held a WCSA position since the spring semester of their freshman year. Their opponents, Sergio Orozco for president and John Wainwright for vice president, are making their first foray into student government

Wainwright said he thinks he and Orozco being newcomers gives the election, in which students will vote Friday, a “fun dynamic.” They bring “new ideas and new blood” to WCSA, Orozco said.

“When people complained about what the school’s doing wrong and no one’s do anything about it, I just felt I can do something about it, and I really want to do something about it,” he said.

Their platform consists of three specific goals: extending Beeghly Library’s hours, starting a recycling intiative to clean up Fraternity Hill, and working to allow seniors to live off campus as long as they have a 2.75 grade point average and no “charges or convictions” against them, Wainwright said.

Lherisson, WCSA’s current vice president, and Drongowski, a class of 2016 representative, continue a pattern of the body’s members moving to higher positions each year. The past three presidents sat on the executive committee, made up of the top officers and the class representatives, when they campaigned for the position.

Their platform centers on the overarching goal of improving Ohio Wesleyan’s retention rate, both by bolstering programs for first-year students and working with financial aid personnel to assauge students’ financial difficulties, and increasing student engagement with the university’s administration.

They plan to work with administrators to increase new students’ enrollment in university courses, such as UC 160, “The OWU Experience”; as well as FreshX and the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs’ pre-orientation programs. These latter two help retention, Lherisson said — 87 percent of students who go through them graduate from OWU in five or fewer years.

WCSA should focus on “ramping up” opportunities and resources already available to students rather than creating new ones, Drongowski said, debating via Skype from Cincinnati, where she has been campaigning for state legislature candidate Micah Kamrass. She said she and Lherisson would encourage students to engage with key issues facing the university through faculty committees and departmental student boards.

The pair’s movement up the Council’s executive hierarchy is typical, according to current WCSA president Lauren Holler, a senior. She said the last time two candidates for the top offices came from outside the body was her freshman year, so she is “excited” to see Wainwright and Orozco do it again.

“Once people are involved in WCSA, they start to learn the inner workings of it, they find their niche, they find out how (they) can make a difference on campus,” she said. “So to me it kind of makes sense. Once you get involved, if you’re ambitious and have things you want to get done, you want to move further up the chain.”

The winning candidates will start their administration in the midst of conversations about changing OWU’s smoking policy and forming a gender-inclusive housing policy. They will also be the first to select a treasurer from a pool of applicants since WCSA made the job an appointed position.

Sophomore Lee LeBoeuf is continuing another trend as the third consecutive unopposed candidate for secretary. Holler said she thinks other potential candidates might have been “intimidated” to take on LeBoeuf, a current class of 2017 representative, because of her WCSA experience.

The Council’s election cycle is shorter this year, with votes for executive officers and class representatives a week apart with a week of campaigning before each. The hope was that the more condensed cycle would “keep the energy going,” Holler said, increasing the number of voters participating and candidates running for positions.

This article was corrected to say that WCSA treasurer is not a paid position under the new appointment process.

Voter ID laws damage American democracy

Voting is exciting for me. Odd, I know, but I’ve loved it ever since my mom took me into the voting booth in 1996, when Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and Ross Perot comprised the field for president. Granted, I probably shouldn’t have been allowed in, but my mom was heavily pregnant with my sister and I was only three years old. Ever since that experience, I looked forward to voting.

I remember the first time I voted. I had just turned 18, and I voted in some judicial race. I didn’t know the candidates (which I’m ashamed to say) but I still voted because I had been looking forward to it for 15 years.

However, some people do not have the luxury to vote. Wait, what? I thought the right to vote was guaranteed by the United States Constitution! Well, you thought wrong. In recent years many states, including Ohio, have enforced voter identification laws. This means in order to register to vote or even vote, people need to show a valid form of identification.

For some people, that’s not a big deal — there are driver’s licenses or state-issued IDs. For others, it’s quite hard to obtain those pieces of identification. They need to take off of work and go to the DMV and wait in line, sometimes for hours, in order to get it.

These laws target low-income, minority or elderly voters, who happen to vote Democratic. And as of October 13, there is some form of a voter identification law in 31 states.

I recently had a run-in with this law. I still vote in Wisconsin, and there’s a pretty big election coming up. Being in Washington, D.C., this semester, I filed for an absentee ballot in the middle of August. However, I still haven’t received it, even though one of my friends had.

I called my town hall and found out I couldn’t get it until I sent in a copy of my identification. Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t know Wisconsin had a voter ID law. I was shocked and furious. Luckily, the woman was nice enough to tell me I could just email a picture of my ID and then my ballot would be on its way.

I hung up, and then called my friend to vent about this unfair law and how I almost wasn’t able to vote. Then, just my luck, Wisconsin’s voter ID law was struck down they next day. I was very happy, to say the least, but I couldn’t help but think — what if I didn’t call my town hall and the law wasn’t struck down? I wouldn’t have been able to vote in this election, which will shape Wisconsin’s future.

The point is this: in the United States, everyone is guaranteed the right to vote. But some states are trying to make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. What kind of democracy does that make us?

Headdresses in the wrong places

By Karen Poremski

Halloween is a special time. I celebrate it through some of the older practices of the holiday—for me, it’s less about candy, and more about remembering my beloved dead, those relatives and friends who have passed. It’s a chance for me to thank them and tell stories about them and laugh and cry a little because I miss them. It’s a time to remember that love crosses the boundary between life and death.

But, of course, most people associate the holiday with trick-or-treating, parties, costumes. I love this aspect, too, and have fond memories of celebrating in the Castro district in San Francisco, and of taking my son out for trick-or-treating when he was younger.

I also become anxious, this time of year, about people dressing up as American Indians. This year it seems especially problematic as more people realize that sports teams should not be using Native mascots.

I feel less and less tolerant, these days, of seeing people wearing fake headdresses. A couple years ago in November, I caught something in the news that rendered me speechless. Actually, truthfully speaking, it made me sick to my stomach. The incident? A Victoria’s Secret fashion show (which apparently was also a television special). At the end of the show, a model dressed in bra and panties meant to simulate turquoise-studded animal skins walked down the runway in fringed buckskin high heels, behind her a slide proclaiming something along the lines of “Happy Thanksgiving.” She was also wearing an enormous headdress, so long it dragged on the ground.

There were many things wrong with this picture—the mixed-up use of visual signifiers of tribes from different regions who are very different from each other; the fact that the model looked like she was starving; the fact that the image sexualized Native women when Native women are the victims of sexual violence, usually perpetrated by non-Native men; the fact that Thanksgiving was being used to market faux Indian underwear costumes. But the thing that upset me the most was that headdress. Because I know what it’s supposed to mean when someone wears a headdress.

Thanks to OWU’s support, I have done research on the Rosebud Reservation, home of the Sicangu Lakota nation, and I’ve accompanied many spring break mission week teams to the reservation. In those experiences, I have met men who earned the right to wear a headdress.

Every feather in a war bonnet is there for a reason; it has nothing to do with decoration. A man has to have a history, a lifetime, of doing important and brave things for his people in order to put on that piece of regalia. And it’s not just about battle, about taking up arms against an enemy. It’s also about standing up for what’s right, about sacrificing for the good of the community, about being generous. When a man wears a headdress, it signals that he is a great leader, but also serves as a reminder to the wearer that he is responsible for taking care of his community.

I associate the Lakota headdress in particular with Albert White Hat, Sr., who was a great chief of the Sicangu Lakota, and who met many times with OWU students serving on service trips to South Dakota. He was one of a handful of people who established Sinte Gleska University, a tribal college, back in the 1970s. He worked very hard to bring back his Lakota language, which he had been beaten and ridiculed for speaking at school. He and a handful of others were responsible for bringing back Lakota ceremonies after they were no longer illegal, starting in 1978. (That’s not a typo; American Indian ceremonies were illegal until 1978.)

Chief White Hat did all of this at great personal risk, and with great personal sacrifice. He worked, his entire lifetime, to bring his people back to pursuing a way of life informed by Lakota philosophy and values, among them: personal responsibility, service to the community, and respect for self and others. He made life better for people on the Rosebud Reservation, and he shared his work with my students and me when we came to South Dakota.

This year at Halloween I will be remembering Albert. He died in June of 2013; it seems more recent than that. I still have trouble believing he’s gone. When I speak to my beloved dead, I will thank him, and maybe share a joke with him. (He loved telling jokes.)

If, as the mascot proponents claim, we wish to honor Native Americans, I propose some alternative ideas to dressing up in costumes. It comes down to thinking about our relationships, to asking questions like these: What is my relationship to Native people—or, better yet, to a particular Native person or group? How do I see them and think about them? What are my responsibilities to Native communities?

A better way to honor Native people, especially at an institution of higher learning, would be to read works written by Native people about their lives and concerns, their joys and gifts. (I have a list of favorite authors as long as my arm, but some of them include Susan Power, Winona LaDuke, LeAnne Howe, Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, Taiaiake Alfred, Louise Erdrich, Heid Erdrich, Linda Hogan, Phil Deloria, Joy Harjo, James Welch, Gordon Henry, Eric Gansworth, Jodi Byrd, Penelope Kelsey…) Great work is being done on the Native Appropriations blog, and the American Indians in Children’s Literature blog. Look for videos by the 1491s, if you’re in the mood for comedy. And if you like hip-hop, look for Frank Waln’s work on SoundCloud or YouTube.

There’s a whole world of enlightening and enjoyable work being done by Native people. There’s honor in engaging with that work and learning from it, opening up to what it’s teaching. There’s no honor in donning a fake headdress.

Karen Poremski is an associate professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan teaching Native American literature, women’s literature, early American literature and composition.