Author: Amanda Ayers

The first event was a tree dedication ceremony held in front of the Krebs Family Fitness Center. Sid Hill, president and Tadodaho (spiritual head) of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, led the ceremony. His dedication focused on the themes of unity and strength within humanity. Our society is governed by natural laws, such as how animals live and how we uphold peace and contentment in our forests, he said. He stressed the importance of not taking more than we need. “Mother Nature provides for all of us,” he said.

“The tree of peace is a strong symbol of comfort, peace and contentment,” Hill said.

Hill discussed the importance of not going against the current.

“It is important to respect, cherish and acknowledge [Mother Nature’s] needs, so there is something for future generations to enjoy. It is up to us to keep up the earth for those future generations,” he said.

He also spoke of the interconnectedness of humanity and nature. There is no end to the roots, and like the floor in our house, everyone is welcome, he said.

“We are of one mind, heart and body, and we must protect each other and our trees,” Hill said.

Another highlight of the weekend was the “Health and Identity in Native Communities” talk and panel session held from 3:00-4:30 p.m. on Friday.

Ann Dapice, director of education and research at Native American non-profit organization T.K. Wolf, started by discussing problems in Native American society. She cited stalking, obesity, alcoholism, violence and cancer increases as major issues. She said that Native Americans have the highest unemployment, school dropout and alcoholism rates of any ethnic group.

“American Indians, especially women, are the most likely to suffer violence out of all races,” Dapice said.

Obesity has also become a large problem among Native Americans because the government only supplies them with lard and wheat flour. Native Americans are forced to make the best of their unhealthy options. 

“If the river [is] healthy, people are healthy,” said panelist David Arquette, director of the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force.

Most Native American diets consist of fish that come from the river. When hazardous waste sites contaminated the river, the Native Americans lost their main food source and were forced to consume foods high in carbohydrates. Arquette said this is directly linked to the increase in diabetes and obesity among people in his tribe.

“Unfortunately, most of the doctors on these reservations have been kicked out of their native states for malpractice, so they are not always qualified to prescribe drugs to people,” Aquette said.

Also, most of them are unfamiliar with Native American heritage and common diseases, so it is hard for them to treat the Native Americans. Tribes are trying to encourage more of their members to attain medical degrees so they can come back and help their own tribes, Dapice said.

The Bison head football coach, Joe Susan, was also present at the speech.

A traveling exhibit exploring the history of the Negro Leagues in baseball opened in the Bertrand Library, Level II on Oct. 12 and will run through Nov. 22. The opening of the exhibit kicked off a series of events exploring America’s pastime during the segregation era.

The exhibit is entitled “Discover Greatness: An Illustrated History of Negro Leagues Baseball” and has been on tour since 1993.  It includes many old photographs documenting African-American baseball players from the late 1800s through the 1950s.  The collection of photos focuses on the Negro teams that formed in 1920 and ended in 1960.

The Kansas City-based Negro Leagues Baseball Museum presented the exhibit.

“The Negro Leagues are an entry into understanding the history of segregation. A ‘great migration’ of black people from rural to urban areas occurred during this time period. In these urban cultural enclaves, leisure activities such as baseball were very important. Some argue that the integration of baseball was the first crack in the walls of segregation,” said Raymond Doswell, vice president of Curatorial Services.

Greg Krohn, associate professor of economics arranged to bring the exhibit and many speakers.

“I thought that [the exhibit] would be a way for many of us to learn more about the period of segregation in the United States and to recognize the accomplishments of the athletes that played in the Negro Leagues. The exhibition and speakers would supplement the study of the history of leagues and discrimination in my Sports Economics course,” Krohn said.

Planned events to complement the exhibit include speakers such as Hal Richman ’58 and Baseball Hall of Famer Monte Irvin. Irvin’s speech “Only the Ball Was White – a conversation on Black Baseball” was held in the Elaine Langone Center (ELC) Forum on Wednesday.

Upcoming events include “The Story of Strat-O-Matic Baseball and the Negro Leagues Players Set” with Richman, inventor of Strat-O-Matic Baseball, on Oct. 24 in the ELC Center Room at 7 p.m.  Attendees will play a game with sets of Negro Leagues and Hall of Fame baseball player cards.

“If It Ain’t Got that Swing: Black Baseball and Black Music in the Era of the Color Line” with Robert Cvornyek and Lawrence Hogan will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 2 in Bucknell Hall with a Jazz concert to follow. Cvornyek is a professor at Rhode Island College and Hogan is a historian of Union County College.

“I am looking forward to going to the concert and enjoying the music,” Samantha Lara ’13 said.

“Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game” will be held in the ELC Forum at 7 p.m. on Nov. 10 with Robert Ruck. Ruck is from the University of Pittsburgh and author of a book by the same name as his lecture.

The exhibit is open for another month, so there is plenty of time to enjoy the photographs and attend the sponsored events and speakers.

Recent changes have been made to the student employment process on campus to make it easier and more efficient for both students and employers. The student employment process on campus has been known to be slow and decentralized as, up until the beginning of this semester, there was no central location where students could search and apply for jobs.

“Overall, everyone benefits from a central housing place of available opportunities. The new process moves toward giving all students the ability to learn about campus opportunities, and to gain valuable work experience and money while they are here studying,” said Megan Adams, manager of recruiting, alumni relations and career services.

Effective Aug. 1, 2011, all student hiring is facilitated by the Career Development Center. The BRIDGE, an existing web-based employment management tool currently used by students for internship, externship and post-graduation employment searches, will centralize the employment process at the University.

“The BRIDGE will provide a vehicle to post all campus employment opportunities so that all students have one central place to see what jobs are available on campus,” Adams said.

This transition will also benefit first-year students because they can begin to familiarize themselves with the BRIDGE early, which will ease the process of their search for jobs and internships in the future.

“After talking to many departments about their employment process the students and task force found that the process was decentralized and needed change,” said Edward Loftus, director of the Office of Strategy Implementation.

Beginning last fall, the Business Process Review Task Force (BPRT) was asked to address the student employment system and to make recommendations that should be implemented by the Operations and Management Group at the end of spring semester. The student employment recommendations were researched and crafted by three people from the BPRT, as well as Professor Matt Bailey and his operations management students. They questioned various departments regarding the application processes and documented work flows which were used to find flaws in the employment process.

“Each employer had their own recruiting process for the students they were looking to hire and in this sense, it was very fragmented from department to department. One of our recommendations … was to utilize the Bridge to host on campus student employment opportunities. This enabled employers to reach a broader base of potential candidates while at the same time, allowing for easier access to potential jobs for students,”  said Matt Goll ’12, a member of the task force.

According to Adams, feedback since the changes have been implemented has been very positive. The process is easy, efficient and quickly provides large applicant pools, thereby ensuring more talented and committed student employees. Students are able to have a better awareness of the part-time campus jobs available to them. These jobs provide work experience, something employers value when looking to hire recent college graduates.

“This process was a great collaboration among administration and students to find flaws and create recommendations in the student employment process,” Loftus said. “It is important to acknowledge the fact that students collaborated and found a process they thought would be most effective and that now the BRIDGE, with a tab separate for campus employment, is out there and is an efficient resource for finding a job that is right for you.”

The BRIDGE now makes communication between employers and students easier by providing more detailed job descriptions, including more standards, official descriptions, and expectations. The new employment process provides vast improvements, benefits, and department collaboration which opens up jobs to a larger pool of applicants through a more clearly structured portal. Students can login directly through myBucknell/BRIDGE and click the “Jobs On Campus” link on the home page.

Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity hosted its annual Watermelon Bust, a philanthropy event to raise money for a charity of the winners’ choice, on the lawn outside of their fraternity house on Sunday.

Each sorority involved sent one or two teams to represent their organizations in a series of fun, yet challenging, watermelon-related relay races and events. Each of the 10 teams chose two Lambda Chi Alpha brothers to help coach them.

The first race was the “over-under race.” Sorority sisters lined up in rows and passed the watermelon over and under their heads. The team that passed the watermelon along the line in the least amount of time won the first round.

The “tug of war” competition, won by Chi Omega, was a crowd-favorite. One sorority competed against another on a huge tarp of broken watermelon. “This was the most fun event,” Mark Sabbas ’14 said.

The “wheel barrow race” involved one girl holding her partner’s legs while her partner tried to move a watermelon across a field and through the finish line without using her hands. The girls particularly enjoyed the sense of sisterhood and connection that this activity fostered.

The competition concluded with an eat-off. Each sorority chose one team member who ate a watermelon, as quickly as she could, with their hands tied behind her back.

There was also a spirit competition that was factored into each team’s total score. Whichever sorority cheered the most and loudest won this portion of the competition.

Kappa Kappa Gamma won the overall Watermelon Bust and split the winning philanthropy money with Lambda Chi Alpha. Both organizations will donate this money to the charity of their choice.

Creative thinking has to come organically and people have to let their minds work on their own in order to reach proper answers and compelling ideas, writer and journalist Jonah Lehrer said on Tuesday night.

Lehrer’s discussion was party of “Creativity: Beyond the Box” national speakers series sponsored by the University. His speech, entitled “Imagine: The Science of Creativity”, was held Tuesday Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Trout Auditorium.

Lehrer began his discussion by recounting the experience of Wagner Dodge who, along with only two others out of 16, survived the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire thanks to a spontaneous idea generation, which Lehrer called a “moment of insight.”

Scientists at Northwestern University use a word game called Compound Remote Associate (CRA) to study this “moment of insight.” The game presents participants with three words, such as “pine,” “crab” and “sauce,” and asks each participant to come up with a word that can be combined with each. In this case, for the three words given, the motif would be apple (pineapple, crabapple, and applesauce). By using machines that measure both where and when activity in the brain takes place, scientists discovered it is possible to predict whether an individual will have a moment of insight up to eight seconds before it occurs. These scientists also found that if a participant tried to consciously work out the motif, he would be less likely to solve the problem. The participant had to be calm and relaxed, an observation that led Lehrer to joke “the way to solve every creative problem is to take a long shower.”

“When Jonah Lehrer brought up the importance of taking a break when you hit a wall, I was able to easily relate. For example, when writing a paper, I take a break, listen to some music which usually sparks some sort of thought that allows me to continue writing, or start writing.” Sean Dougherty ’15 said.

Lehrer also discussed a phenomenon called “feeling of knowing.” He told the story of a man named Mo who was able to crack the formula for his lottery ticket in 2003 after he heard a persistent voice in his head saying he would be able to. Since that year, he has cracked 13 other lotteries. Lehrer calls this voice a “feeling of knowing.” Many people experience this phenomenon when faced with a difficult problem–it is possible to know right away if a problem is solvable or not, and approximately how long it will take to solve it.

Lehrer acknowledged that students can relate to this. “When you feel like you can’t see the answer in the foreseeable future, you should take a break. Trust these feelings of knowing,” Lehrer said.

Fifty years ago, the most notable scientific achievements were completed by single individuals, Darwin and Einstein as examples. But today the most notable scientific achievements come from group efforts. According to a study at UC Berkley that compared three groups attempting to solve traffic problems on campus, brainstorming within groups has been found to not work. This is because people worry they will be judged based on the poor quality of their ideas, which causes them to hold back.

Years of deliberation have finally given way to the official approval for the construction of classrooms, laboratories and faculty offices on the southwest side of the Bertrand Library.

The Board of Trustees officially approved the construction of Academic West on Tuesday, Sept. 27 and construction should begin in late March or early April of 2012.

“I consider the creation of new faculty offices and classrooms the single most important issue we must address in the University’s physical plant,” President John Bravman said. 

“This is a needed expansion in that lack of space for faculty offices led us not to be as competitive in hiring the best and brightest faculty,” Michael Davis ’13 said. “If a school like Bucknell plans to make the leap to the next level, it has to have facilities that are consistent with that vision.”

The University has been focusing on this project since 2006.Construction is supposed to last around 15 months and should be completed by fall of 2013.

The construction will be a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) project,an internationally-recognized certification for green building initiative.

“I would hope this project is a first step to Bucknell becoming a greener campus,” Alex Sandoval ’15 said. “I know that’s something I would have noticed when choosing schools.”

The estimated cost of construction is $24 million, and the University has received a gift of $6 million from an anonymous donor that will contribute to the fund.