Tag: Franchesca Nestor

Got Lots to Say? Do it in 3 Minutes

By Hailey de la Vara

Transcript Correspondent

hhdelava@owu.edu

In its fifth year, Ohio Wesleyan’s I-cubed lecture series drew a standing room only crowd last week just like it has in previous years.

Faculty presenters challenged the audience to think outside the box, while they stayed inside the three minutes each was allotted to teach their favorite subjects.

The Ideas, Insight and Imagination lectures this year featured students’ favorite nine professors who aimed to give insight on their expertise in their academic fields. The Benes rooms was packed.

One professor said after the presentation that it was the hardest thing she had every done.

The speakers this year included Mark Allison of English, Kira Bailey of psychology, Phokeng Dailey of communication, David Markwardt of zoology, Stephanie Merkel of comparative literature, Franchesca Nestor and Pamela Pyzza, both of politics and government, Tim Roden of music, and Chris Wolverton of microbiology and botany.

The nine speakers all aimed to give students a small insight of their own academic passions.

Senior Zhanna Caldwalder was most intrigued by Allison’s speech. “I loved Allison’s speech because I love reading, and I felt like I could relate to everything he was saying,” Caldwalder said.

Allison’s lecture, “Hitchhiking to Nowhere,” discussed how utopian societies paved a way for imagination in reading and life. Allison based his three minutes on the idea that nowhere has the best of everything.

“Utopia is the good place that is no place,” he said.

Other topics ranged from political communication to Mozart to plants growing on Mars.

Students gained new knowledge about a variety of topics.

Senior John Keller was intrigued by the variety of speakers admitting that last week’s program was the first he had attended since coming to OWU.

“I’m an English major, so I came to listen to my professor speak,” Keller said. “But after hearing all the speeches, I was very impressed by how much each professor knows and cares about their fields. It was very interesting to listen and be a part of this event at OWU.”

In the spring semester, the I-cubed lectures will feature student speakers.

OWU’s department of politics and government encouraging voter participation among students

By Garrick Bostwick, Transcript Correspondent

The Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU) department of politics and government offer to help students vote early in the 2018 mid-terms despite historically low turnout among young voters.

OWU’s Arneson Institute for Practical Politics and Public Affairs will offer students transportation to voting locations in Delaware by way of shuttle service. This comes during a critical point in American politics as Congress could tip either way after this year’s mid-terms. Many political analysts believe that if more Americans aged 18-25 voted then Democrats would gain a significant advantage in Congress.

The manager of the Institute’s student involvement initiative for the 2018 mid-terms, Franchesca Nestor, hopes students will take advantage of the opportunity provided. According to Nestor, the Institute was not started due to the low turnout of young voters in previous elections.

“One of us takes steps to make sure students are involved in politics” Nestor said when asked about other times the Institute was involved in getting students to the polls. This is in accordance with the Institute’s politically unbiased goal of encouraging students to vote, started by its founder, Professor Micheal Esler of OWU’s politics and government department.

“We aim to give as many people as possible the opportunity to vote and help those with absentee ballots” Nestor said.

Students such as Joe Antal are taking advantage of this opportunity as he is using an absentee ballot and will take a shuttle to deposit his ballot.

“I don’t have a car so if not for these shuttles I wouldn’t have voted like many people my age” Antal said.

While Nestor is concerned about the low turnout of younger voters in previous elections, she is more so concerned about voting on a national level. She claims that the introduction of voter identification cards and other such requirements for voting deterred people from it and hopes that early voting can counteract this.

Only in the past few years has early voting been offered in Ohio and Nestor hopes more students will go to the polls because of this. According to her, early voting opens the opportunity to vote as it is easier to fit in more peoples’ schedules.

That said, there are still requirements for voting in Ohio beyond registration to vote. At the polls one must provide a form of state-issued identification such as a driver’s license or an identification card issued by the state of Ohio. If either of those can’t be provided a copy of a utility bill from OWU can be used as well.

All of this was detailed in an e-mail sent out by Nestor to the student body, informing them the time when shuttles leave for the polls and what must be done with absentee ballots. The remaining shuttles will leave Nov. 6 at 8:10 a.m, 2:10 p.m and 4:10 p.m