Month: October 2012

Categories
News

Stop the Hate rally moves community

Brianna Marshall
Writer

“No one is born hating another person; this is a learned event,” Cindy Peltier of the Community Alliance for Respect and Equality said.

These powerful words served as the theme for Bucknell’s 14th annual Stop the Hate Rally which was held on Tuesday, Oct. 2.  Peltier was one of many speakers to discuss issues of hate-related violence and the measures that must be taken in order to eliminate discrimination and prejudice within the Bucknell community and beyond.  Stop the Hate is a national endeavor that was founded in 1998 to encourage nonviolence while promoting acceptance and tolerance of all people.

Organized by Tracy Shaynak of the Women’s Resource Center and Rabbi Serena Fujita, Bucknell’s Jewish chaplain, Bucknell’s Stop the Hate Rally featured multiple activities in support of unity and equality. Participants gathered at the Elaine Langone Center and marched together to the Olin Center, the event’s main location.  A wide range of presentations followed, representing multiple media including spoken word, poetry, and singing.  The presenters used these art forms to express their feelings and reactions to the hatefulness within society.

“Without tears, without anger, and without fear…I said to myself, ‘this is me’,” said Michael Green ’13.  His performance was one of many “This is Me” spoken word presentations.

The formal ceremony concluded with a performance by Beyond Unison on the science quad.  Stop the Hate Rally participants gathered with glow sticks, fostering a sense of community and establishing an atmosphere of peace and security.

Categories
Arts & Life Campus Events Review

Uptown to be new Fall craze

Anna Jones
Writer

Throughout September, Uptown, the University’s on-campus nightclub, has hosted many different events, such as a poetry slam, a dueling pianos performance, Sunday Night Football games, a club night, Trivia Night and more.

The year started off strong on Sept. 7 when Uptown partnered with WVBU to showcase student musicians and groups. This received much support from the student body.

“[Uptown] would like to have more students performing … in the future,” Uptown Manager Steph Wyld ’14 said.

Next, on Sept. 14, the Stadler Center for Poetry hosted their Poetry Slam at Uptown.  More than 100 people attended, including students from Susquehanna University who were also able to participate.

“This is one of our favorite events because it exposes students’ creative side and is really entertaining to attend,” Wyld said.

She reminds everyone to look forward to the second Poetry Slam of the semester on Nov. 2, as well.

Over Family Weekend, the Midwest Dueling Pianos made an appearance at Uptown. They played everything from Billy Joel to Bruno Mars, and even took requests from the audience. 

“Groups of students and families came out to see this entertainment … and we would like to make this an annual event,” Wyld said.

Club Night, on Sept. 28, was a dance party co-sponsored by the Latino Dance Corner, and more than 100 people showed up. The dance group led a workshop on Latin dance technique and DJ Ian Hackett ’15 kept the crowd dancing all night. Emilie Ratajczak ’15, Assistant Manager of Uptown said free soft drinks and snacks were served to the guests. Ratajczak also said that people actually had to be asked to leave at closing time because the event was so popular. The party was a huge success, with most people rating the event as a four or five on a five-point scale on the event evaluation.

Finally, NFL Sundays, happening all throughout the season, continue to be a big hit as always. Students watch the games on a large projection screen while enjoying the comfort of Uptown’s multitude of couches and free snacks. Another perk of watching the games at Uptown is the season long raffle of official merchandise. Fans can enter their name every quarter and winners will be picked at the Super Bowl Party in February.

“I love Uptown because it’s a great way to meet all sorts of new, interesting people in a very fun atmosphere,” Ratajczak said. “There will be plenty more dance parties in the future [along with] trivia, karaoke and pub nights.”

The first Pub Night for 21+ will be held on the Oct. 19, followed by Bison Haus on the 20. During Homecoming weekend, Vertical Horizon will be performing a free concert at Uptown.

“[The club] is really trying to bring back live bands … and [we] hope this will be a great success,” Wyld said.

Lastly, a jazz café is an event to look forward to in November.

Be sure to like the Facebook page (“Uptown Nightclub at Bucknell”), and to stop by the club sometime soon to enjoy it for yourself.

Categories
Arts & Life Columns Humor Rees' Pieces

Rees’ Pieces: Poor Planning?

Ben Rees
Columnist 

I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do wholeheartedly believe in a good plan. I respect well-thought-out endeavors, and I truly relish when someone throws a bit of humor into the mix. This sounds vague, but in every good plan, there should be something funny. For example, on a main drag right by my house, there are three businesses built from right to left as follows: St. [insert saint name here]’s Animal Hospital, Burger King and a discount fur mart. Let that sink in. Sick/dying animals, sub-par meat and a discount fur mart. Whoever in the city offices let that combo happen deserves a bottle of wine and a chocolate cigar. There is no way that this ordering is an accident, and I can prove that my strange town is not the only place where hilarious establishments remain incognito.

Look around campus. There are plenty of areas that are too strange to be accidents. Take a gander at President Bravman’s home. It is a beautiful piece of property that is exceedingly well maintained, but when I look at it, I seem to remember the importance of the phrase “location, location, locomotion.” The train that runs right behind it goes no faster than three miles per hour, which is clearly justification for its aggressive horn sounding.

We all know that the statue in front of Vedder looks like a penis. Everyone sees it, and everyone should be over it; however, someone needs to explain to me why administration put this phallic structure in front of a dorm. Living in Smith as a sophomore, all I heard most nights were entire halls walking back from registers at 10:30 p.m., giggling about the huge rock member in front of their building. If I haven’t yet proven to you that upperclassmen are far more capable of being mature around something like a large, onyx penis, then you must be hardheaded.

The Christy Mathewson gates are hugely sentimental, and they clearly have a place in the history of this campus. That being said, what are they keeping out? Isn’t the purpose of gates, to close something off? This is the first set I have seen that isn’t even connected to a wall. I know that it means a lot to walk through the gates, but isn’t that phenomenon somewhat stifled by my ability to simply stroll around them?

Somebody please explain the abdominal alcove in the gym to me. I’m not much of a frequent exerciser, but on the rare occasions I drag myself to the Krebs Family Fitness Center, I have trouble comprehending the area dedicated to bettering my core. They gave us the Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs and a foul set of gym mats for an exercise that everybody wants to do before they saunter home in their sweaty Greek crewneck t-shirts.

Before my position as a columnist is revoked, I just want to reiterate my message: look around for once. If, while walking outside, you take the time to objectively gaze at things, you will undoubtedly notice happenings and structures that were once foreign to you.  There are some really funny things going on in the world and trust me, a huge stone phallus and some disjointed gates are hardly the cream of the crop.

Categories
Arts & Life Books Review

“The Casual Vacancy” falls short of Rowling’s Harry Potter series

Carolyn Williams
Writer

For millions of fans who have been waiting five years for the next novel from J. K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, her first work for adults, “The Casual Vacancy,” will be a bit of a disappointment.

In a drastic departure from the world of magical face-offs between good and evil we’ve come to expect from her, Rowling has chosen to write about a conventional, albeit imagined, British suburb called Pagford. In this seemingly idyllic vestige of simpler times, generations of families live within walking distance and everyone knows everyone else’s business. So, naturally, the small town is thrown into a tizzy at the unexpected death of Barry Fairbrother, and the subsequent empty spot on the Parish Council this death occasions; the formal term for such an opening is the titular casual vacancy.

But surprise, surprise, Pagford isn’t quite as nice as its shiny veneer would suggest. Due to an extremely unpopular land sale in the 50s, its borders include an addiction clinic and a subdivision of government housing called the Fields, which the painfully polite Pagfordians simply want nothing to do with. Chairman of the Parish Council, Howard Mollison, (an obnoxiously pompous figure, complete with simpering wife/lackey), sees his opportunity to finally do away with those pesky blue collar families, now that his greatest political opponent, Fairbrother, is out of the picture. A general struggle between many supporting characters ensues for the open council seat, and we are introduced to about 15 separate but interlocking characters who partake in the drama, ranging from the spunky but crass Krystal, a teenage resident of the Fields, to Samantha Mollison, the chairman’s sarcastic, bored daughter-in-law, to Gavin Hughes, whose unbearable timidity has him vacillating for most of the novel between an unhappy relationship with his social worker girlfriend, and an unrequited crush on his recently deceased best friend’s widow.

One of the biggest problems with “The Casual Vacancy” is Rowling’s obvious desire to distance herself from her past writings. Pagford is rife with drug addicts, adulterers, angsty teenagers and general unrest, to a degree that’s just unrealistic. Parts of this suburban setting and fairly mundane plot line are reminiscent of Tom Perrotta (“Little Children”), America’s suburban writer-du-jour. But, honestly, Perrotta does this setting much better; he makes suburban malaise and domestic disputes believable. Sure, the all-too-perfect façade of suburbia hides lots of secrets, but this is extreme. Every house on the block is not concealing stolen computers or bags of heroin. Pagford is a weird cross between “Weeds” and Wisteria Lane, a kind of Bermuda Triangle for paranoia and creepy secrets.

At least we can imagine the coronary Aunt Petunia would be sure to have if surrounded by so much juicy gossip. Between the stifling storyline and plodding pace, it would be a relief to see the loathsome Dursleys again–at least we know they’re good for a laugh. All in all, though, it’s admirable to see Rowling writing again after setting such an impossibly high standard with the success of Harry Potter, we also know quite well how very capable her imagination is, and “The Casual Vacancy” definitely falls far short of the mark.

Categories
Arts & Life Featured

Live from Lewisburg: Q&A with Kenan Thompson

Christina Oddo
Arts & Life Editor

Arts & Life Editor Christina Oddo ’14 sat down and talked with Kenan Thompson after his stand-up performance, part of the 2012 Center Stage event, which took place on Sept. 29 on Sojka Lawn.

What is one of your funniest memories from when you were on “Kenan and Kel?”

“There are a lot. I remember one time me and Kel went to the mall just to see if anyone would recognize us. And we like stood in the middle of the mall for like an hour … nobody ever did [recognize us] … that was one of the dumbest things ever to try and test how famous we were. That’s what you do when you’re young.”

What is the best part about being on SNL?

“SNL is a special place. The main thing … is the alumni. It’s like going to college. I never graduated from college. I went for a couple of years and things didn’t go according to plan, so I ended up leaving. But being attached to all of those names … where we walk into our offices there is the wall where there’s a head shot of each cast member from the beginning. To walk through their history every day is unbelievable.

On the other side, being an actor, you don’t have to worry about your next season necessarily … it doesn’t happen [on SNL]. The main thing that I love the most are the people I work with. My cast mates are some of the greatest people I’ve met. We all have a very similar understanding of what we’re doing. We spend a lot of time together so we are very close. [They are] people I’ve known for 10 years now.”

Who is your role model?

“A lot of people. Really, really smart people intrigue me. It’s hard to pick one role model. When I was a kid I would be like ‘Bill Cosby!’ But I’m grown up now and I’ve read about art and literature, and I’ve been a few places. I look up to Obama, he’s the first black president … that’s huge, whether or not you agree with the issues at hand. As far as role models, my mom is one. I look up to my wife all the time, my family, the people who know me for being myself, instead of being who I am on TV. It’s kind of different; I’m a little laid back. I look to these people the most for honest reactions.”

What is your favorite part of your job?

“I’ve been myself. For 20 years, pretty much; it will be 20 years next year. A lot of the roles I’ve played have been in the vein of comedy so it’s been easy for me to just be me. What’s funny to me, even though it’s a different version of myself–like I am a little quieter I guess–I still get to be my sense of humor. That’s been my main blessing.”

What did you enjoy most about performing on campus?

“I loved it. I’ve never done an outdoor show before. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. You could hear me. People were active; they were participating. The drive down was unbelievable. Fall foliage is just starting to come out. A lot of cops–I didn’t like that–but we made it. It just seemed like a magical night.”

Categories
Arts & Life Columns Cooking Corner

Cooking Corner: Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins

Katie Mancino
Columnist

Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins

38 calories, 1g fat, 6 carbs, 1g protein

This is undoubtedly the best mini-muffin recipe yet and, possibly my favorite recipe ever! They are extremely delicious, packed with chocolate chips and the whole-wheat flour makes them extra hearty. Try making a double batch (or mix and match different mini muffin flavors available on my page piecesinprogress.tumblr.com/minimuffin) and freezing them four or five at a time in Ziploc bags for perfect on-the-go snack packs. These would also make fantastic regular sized muffins; you would need around three to four mini muffins worth of batter for each regular sized one.

Ingredients

  • 1 Tbsp Land O’ Lakes Light Butter
  • 1/2 cup Truvia Baking Blend
  • 1/4 cup Silk Light soymilk
  • 1 egg white
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips


Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F (177 C).
  2. Cream together butter and Truvia until it makes a thick paste.
  3. Add soymilk, egg white and vanilla and mix well.
  4. Mix in all of the remaining ingredients.
  5. Spray mini-muffin tin with nonstick spray. Scoop one heaping tablespoon of batter into each cup so that you make 22 mini muffins (I find it helps to divide the batter into sections first).
  6. Bake 8-10 minutes until golden and enjoy!

Makes 22 mini muffins

Categories
Opinion

Friends’ exes are not off-limits

Justin Marinelli
Staff Writer

One of the most annoying moral dilemmas is when you have the opportunity to hook up with a friend’s ex. On one hand, the urge to satisfy your animalistic desires runs strong. On the other, you don’t want to induce any possible tension between you and your friend (even if you think that what you do is none of your friend’s business).

Granted, some rules exist to help you navigate such a situation, but relying on phrases like “bros before hoes” hardly provides a solution to all situations you could find yourself in. What we need is a definite line to be drawn that cannot be crossed. Allow me to set that line.

Many would consider a time limit to be a reasonable thing to gauge appropriateness of the situation. After all, getting into a relationship with a friend’s ex two years later is far more reasonable than waiting two weeks, right? I disagree. Time isn’t the issue; it’s whether your friend is over the person you’re interested in or not.

More specifically, whether your friend is over their ex dictates exactly what action you can take. If they’re really over their ex, there’s no problem whatsoever, even if it’s just been a day or so since the break-up. If they aren’t, things get tricky. Most people would argue that pursuing someone at such a time is a completely unacceptable action. I’m a bit more lenient in my view. While many consider it a mark of disrespect for your friend to date or hook up with their ex, especially if he or she isn’t over them, there is no good reason for this to be so. Still, you want to keep your friend happy, so it makes perfect sense to not let him or her find out if you’re doing anything behind their back.

Am I condoning going behind your friend’s back to get with their ex? Only if you don’t let them find out about it. It’s none of your friend’s business what you decide to do with another person, but if your friend would be hurt by your actions, then it would be a good idea to be discreet. No need to upset him or her needlessly.

Now, would it be more ethical to completely avoid dating or hooking any of your friends’ exes? Absolutely. However, what is acceptable doesn’t have to be the height of morality. As they say, all’s fair in love in war.

Categories
Opinion

Negativity defines presidential campaign

El McCabe
Writer

Negativity is a popular theme in society today. Everywhere you turn, there are news stories about traumatic events, natural disasters and even which celebrity couple recently split. For some reason, negative stories catch people’s attention, sell magazines and newspapers, and fill up time on news blocks. However, what publishing, campaigning and other companies fail to realize is that constantly immersing yourself in negativity has dangerous potential to trickle down into all aspects of your life, such as social and political involvement.

This preoccupation with negativity is a salient issue this year with the November election quickly approaching. Election strategies over the last few decades have been centered on “digging up dirt” on the opponent rather than on the actual issues–a fact turning many voters away from the polls altogether. For example, if a candidate is caught having an affair, many voters who do not respect cheaters will change their votes to his opponent or decide not to vote at all. Candidates are human beings that make mistakes like everyone else, and going back and forth ragging on one another will only create negative perceptions about the political process and voting.

Politics and the election process should be about choosing the candidate that is going to look out for the best interests of the people, not about who has the cleanest record. Just because a presidential candidate has made mistakes in his/her personal life, does not mean that he or she would make a bad president. Likewise, those with clean records may have just gotten lucky and not been caught, and due to these variables I firmly believe that the private spheres and public spheres of these candidates’ lives should be kept separate.

Unfortunately, negative publicity has already started turning the tide of the election this year and has swayed the opinions of many voters. During the process of choosing the Republican candidate for the 2012 election, many of the prospective candidates turned against each other to win the primary. This forced Republicans to choose the “least worst” of the candidates in the negative light they were portrayed in and has caused many Republicans to dislike all the options for the presidency.

Now, although it is inevitable that these politicians will continue to duke it out until November, we as voters still have the power and time to change the outcome of the election. Choosing a president blindly and out of bias will only hurt our country in the end, and we need to look past the negative. I understand it may be difficult to avoid feeling hopeless with so much negativity everywhere, but it is crucial to remember that no one is perfect and to vote along the lines of who will improve society.

Categories
Opinion

Old friendships weakened despite social networking

Justin Marinelli
Staff Writer

We live in the most connected and communicative time in history. We have the capability to communicate with essentially anyone we’ve met across the course of our lives. Why don’t we? Remember your high school graduation, when you totally told all of your friends that you’d stay in touch? If you don’t remember, trust me, you did. How many do you actually keep in touch with?

I certainly remember believing I’d keep in touch with my high school friends a lot more than I’ve ended up doing. It actually fascinates me that this happened. I suppose somewhere along the line I got caught up in my new life at college, and it took me until now to do some introspection.

At any moment, I could get on Facebook and send a message to essentially any of my high school friends that I promised to stay in contact with. Yet, I don’t. I keep in touch with only about two or three of my old friends. Not because those were the only people I really cared about, but just because that’s how things ended up.

At the end of the day, a fair number of my friendships have faded because of a lack of contact, but not all of them have suffered that fate. While most friendships will get weaker with a lack of contact, some connections run too deep to fade. While this isn’t true for the overwhelming majority of friendships (I can count on only one hand how many people I have this relationship with), those few I have would have carried on just the same, even if we didn’t have the option to keep in touch through technological means.

In a way, I suppose you could say not keeping in touch is the best way to find out who you really feel a close connection with. Still, applying acid tests like this to find out this information is a bit of a harsh way to treat your friends. At the end of the day, fostering relationships takes work, even if it’s just a relationship between two friends. We have the opportunities and the tools we need to keep in touch with old friends. It would be quite a shame not to use them. Here’s my challenge to you this week: get in touch with an old friend you haven’t talked to in years this weekend. Catch up, rekindle the friendship and remember how things used to be. I know I’ll be doing that.

Categories
Opinion

The art of dating lost on college campuses

Ginny Jacobs
Contributing Writer

You don’t have to be on campus for very long to know about the unusually large number of University students who marry each other. As a group, we boast about this high percentage, as well as at least consider the option of joining the four-year-long wait list to be married in Rooke Chapel. However, similar to just about any college, if you go ask the average student about the campus dating scene, the most common answer you will get is, “What dating scene?” Few people are actually in relationships and the notion of going on an actual date is outdated. The word “dating” is not in the vocabulary of many college students. It seems like a relic from the college days of our parents, almost on par with words on the verge of extinction like “pinning” or “going steady.” For most students, the formal date has been replaced by friendship, the one (or multiple) night stand or serious relationship.

One recent study indicated that most of today’s college students are not dating in the traditional sense. Instead, they are either engaging in casual sex or in serious relationships, with almost nothing in between. Dating on college campuses has been replaced by what’s commonly called “hooking up,” according to a recent nationwide study of more than 1,000 college women by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). Respondents define the term this way: “a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don’t necessarily expect anything further.”

Why have we as a collective group switched from the conventional dating style over to this new “hook-up culture?” Kerry Cronin, a professor of philosophy at Boston College, recently gave a talk to students on this very subject and why we are no longer dating. She says she got into this topic about seven or eight years ago when talking with graduating seniors about the things they felt like they missed out on. From this, she found that a large portion of students had never gone out on an actual date throughout their college careers and regretted it. Cronin claimed she detected a sense of both, “wistfulness and anxiety among the students over the thought of graduating without having developed the basic social courage to go on a date.”

Cronin went on to argue that the hook up culture is a shortcut to fitting in socially, to having social status. We all want to tell a story at weekend brunch, where the stories are usually about who hooked up with whom, and hooking up is a way to do that. Feeling a part of something is an incredibly important part of college life. Going in and out of this hook up scene is usually motivated largely by a desire for connection, but this desire is often obstructed by a lack of courage. The difficult thing is having the simple courage to ask somebody if he or she would want to sit down for an hour and talk.

Additionally, most University students have a very limited amount of time to spend on any social activities. Most do not want to put the time or emotional effort into a committed relationship while still in college, and feel the need to concentrate on future goals. Dating is only further complicated by ambiguous language such as just talking, hooking up, friends with benefits and open-relationships, all terms used to avoid the dreaded concept of commitment. These semi-relationships relieve some of the pressure of a real relationship by allowing both people involved to leave their options open.

But who wants to graduate from college with an armload of “open options,” but no beautiful memories? Maybe it is time for our generation to rethink dating. College is the time when we are supposed to move beyond our comfort zones and acquire a variety of experiences. So why not, just one time before you cross the stage on the quad, try something truly exotic and frightening and go out on a real date?