Category: Uncategorized

 Somer Dice

Contributing Writer

The student organization Common Ground has begun circulating posters to initiate conversation among students about the divide between Greek and non-Greek affiliates.

The campaign, called “Imagine a Bucknell where … ” is part of a campaign to call attention to groups that “are sometimes taken for granted by the campus community,” said Ana Aguilera Silva ’14 of the Common Ground Staff of 2013.

Student staff members Silva, Xander Vining ’14 and Anthony Gomez ’16 said in an email to The Bucknellian that there is a common feeling among University students that “Greeks are prevalent in our community and dominate the social scene, while Independents are just here to study.”

Common Ground began advertising to draw attention to the program and encourage students to explore cultural and social issues on campus.

“Greeks and Independents aren’t getting along. We’re just trying to show them we’re all the same,” retreat facilitator Stephanie Gonthier ’15 said.

Common Ground is a student-run diversity immersion retreat that takes place during Fall Break and is designed to expand students’ worldviews surrounding issues like gender, race and socioeconomic standing.

The Common Ground staff said that future posters in the campaign will feature tokenism as well as other racial, social and cultural issues at the University.

Jonestown Speaker

Laura Crowley

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the Jonestown massacre held the record as the deadliest massacre in American history, with 909 fatalities in 1978. Despite this fact, it has received almost no attention in comparison with other tragedies. On April 3, journalist and writer Julia Scheeres discussed her new book “A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown” in her talk “Narrating Jonestown and the Peoples Temple.” This lecture was part of the spring lecture series, Jonestown: Reconsidered, that sheds light onto the tragedy that is brought to the University by the the Griot Institute for Africana Studies.

The Jonestown Massacre resulted after religious leader, Jim Jones, hoaxed hundreds of his church members into moving to Jonestown, Guyana to volunteer their services to locals and to live in an idyllic socialistic society that would be free from the malignant forces of race, class, gender and so forth. The good-doers were soon in trouble, as their charismatic leader, Jim Jones descended into madness and drug addiction, according to Scheeres. The volunteers were prohibited from leaving the intentional community of Jonestown and tortured to the point at which they agreed to suicide.

Scheeres was moved to write her book due to several parallels she saw between her life and the Jonestown story. Scheeres, who grew up in Indiana not far from Jones’ church, was sent to reform school in the Dominican Republic along with her adopted African-American brother. Both Scheeres and her brother experienced what she described as physical and psychological punishment.

Like the survivors of Jonestown, Scheeres struggles with demons from the past. Now an adult, Scheeres has moved to Berkley, Calif. in an effort to seek progressive thinkers like herself. While writing her book, Scheeres sought out several victims and witnessed how each survivor grapples differently with his past. One victim named Stanley is now in a mental hospital because, according to Scheeres, his present life fails to satisfy him as he experience in Jonestown, in which he sought to live in perfect socialistic harmony, as the “heyday” of his life.

In her book, Scheeres retells the story of five of the victims of the massacre, in an effort to present a humanistic view of the massacre. According to Scheeres, this approach “felt good” as she was finally able “to give these people a voice,” people who, she stressed, were not unlike you and me. Too many accounts of the story, she said, focus on Jim Jones and ignore the viewpoint of the hundreds of victims. Unlike other authors of the massacre, Scheeres described Jones as “boring.”

Additionally, Scheeres holds that too many accounts of the massacre view the event as a “mass-suicide” when it was really a “mass-murder.” The victims of the massacre didn’t simply “drink the kool-aid” as most people would argue. Rather, they were subjected to physical and psychological torture until they were so worn down that they consented to suicide. The victims of this massacre, Scheeres said, were not victims of themselves or of convoluted utopian thinking, but were strictly victims of Jones.

While members of the cult suspected Jones may not have been of such reputable character prior to the massacre, the members of the church in Indiana would “dismiss the quirky things he said because he would do so many good things for community.”

“A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown” presents us with a tale of suffering, manipulation, race and tragedy. The lecture series will continue on April 10 with “A Response from Students in the Jonestown Class” in the Terrace room at 7 p.m. and on April 17 with a lecture titled “Jonestown: Yesterday and Today” at 7 p.m. in Hunt Formal.  Stephan Jones, who is one of the children of Jim Jones, will host the latter event.

Choreographer’s Showcase Performance

By Laura Crowley

This weekend, students will perform dances that range from modern, jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop and Irish dance in the annual Choreographer’s Showcase. This dance performance is directed by Samantha Gosnell ’13 and Catharine Cipolla ’14 and features dances choreographed by students and professors alike.

While professors do contribute to the performances, the event largely reflects students’ personal work.

“The Dance Department allows [dancers] to operate autonomously,” Elyas Deen ’13 said. “They allow us to explore concepts important to us. Yet efforts from other members of the community are still present, as alumni guest artists and dance faculty have contributed to the choreography.”

Choreographers were selected by members of the dance department: Associate Professors of Dance Kelly Knox and Er-Dong Hu, and Assistant Professor of Theatre & Dance Dustyn Martincich.

According to Cipolla, the dancers were selected in an audition that consisted of “a warm up, combinations across the floor and then a final short combination made up of a few phrases of dance.” In the end, students were asked to improvise in order to show off their personal styles. After watching the dancers, students of the Dance Composition class, the student choreographers and faculty members selected dancers. Dancers from the Bucknell Dance Company are not allowed to participate in the dances, yet they do comprise some of the choreographers.

“The dancers in the Dance Composition class have never choreographed at Bucknell before,” Cipolla said.

The novelties in the performance will bring “new ideas, themes and creativity to each of their dances” Deen said. The work that will be presented is a “kinesthetic representation of how we understand our world and relationships with others, from the joyous to the somber,” Deen said.

This representation is extended to costumes that were selected to best match the themes of each dance piece. According to Cipolla, the costumes vary by piece since each dance tells a different story.

“Each semester presents a unique experience because there are different dancers, different choreographers and different motives,” Cipolla said. 

The performance will be held in the Tustin Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 and may be purchased at the Box Office or at the door in cash.

W. Morris Fierman

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives recently passed a measure to privatize the state’s liquor stores and sell wine and spirits permits to private vendors.

The measure, pushed for by Governor Tom Corbett, passed the house without a single Democrat voting in favor. The bill will now move to the State Senate and is likely to be heavily deliberated.

Pennsylvania is home to some of the most stringent controls on the sale of wine and spirits in the nation. The state is one of 18 to maintain a monopoly over the sale of such beverages.

“We do need to modernize our alcohol sales system and there is much we can do to accomplish that without putting 5,000 state workers out of work, putting hundreds of family-owned beer distributorships out of business, increasing alcohol-related deaths and crime and selling a state asset that generates hundreds of millions of dollars for our general fund,” Democratic State Representative Phyllis Mundy said.

Controlling the sale of wine and spirits has provided a steady source of revenue for the cash-strapped state, though Corbett has said that he believes the sale of permits to vendors as well as future taxation would balance out in the end.

Most supporters of privatization claim that controlling wine and spirits sales is not a vital state function and that the current system is outdated.

State Senator Gene Yaw, a Republican whose constituency includes the University, said in an interview with The Bucknellian that the main concern for constituents was convenience. People wishing to purchase alcohol must go to a state-run store, while in most states they can do anywhere alcohol is sold.

Mundy also agreed that her constituency was telling her that convenience was a priority. The measure passed by the House allows for beer distributors to have priority in buying the 1,200 licenses that will become available. Grocery stores, which were given the ability to sell beer in 2010, will be able to stock wine but not spirits or malt beverages.

Washington state passed a measure last year to privatize its liquor stores and consumers have noticed a significant spike in prices due to taxation by the state. Reuters reported that prices were about 10 to 30 percent higher statewide after the privatization plan was carried out.

When asked about the effect privatization would have on prices, Yaw said “I don’t know. I’ve heard both sides of the argument.”

As for the possibility of the bill passing the State Senate in its current form,  “No,” said Yaw.

Morgan Slade

Contributing Writer

Curator, to curate, curatorial. I was unfamiliar with this role, practice and verb until I delved deep into my art history major. In my field of study, it refers to the act of organizing, taking charge and pulling together works of art to create a finished product–an exhibition.

In the context of the University, it is something that every member of the class of 2013 has done during his or her four years here. Whatever your discipline, you have effectively navigated through this University with the ability to arrange all of these pieces into something that makes sense, that fits your curatorial taste.

This curatorial taste may have taken some time to develop–after all, the first exhibition is rarely the most coherent and successful.

Most of us came to campus in August 2009 as young and inexperienced curators. Maybe you didn’t get to choose your exhibition space. You wanted to show in the newly renovated, swanky halls of McDonnell or you preferred the more historic, cozy feel of Larison. Whatever the case, you made due; you familiarized yourself with the security guards (RAs), learned the lay of the land and organized the space with an arrangement of colorful new friends and acquaintances.

As you continued your work, you began to take on more responsibility by joining clubs and intramural teams, essentially committing yourself to a few more exhibitions a year. Some of us even chose to curate letters across our chests (i.e. joined a Greek organization).

Each year, we are promoted to a higher and higher position of responsibility, but at the same time, we assume a greater sense of independence, taking liberty in how and where we organized our lives.

While some continued to hone their skills on campus, others decided to travel their exhibitions abroad to Cape Town, London, Florence and China; some taking their colleagues along for the ride.

Soon enough, we become authorities in our fields. We know the ins-and-outs of each gallery and each object from the permanent collection.

Like any notable curator, we take from the world around us–our professors, our peers, the environment–but we still manage to make it our own. We also rely heavily on the curators that have assumed these roles before us: the alumni that have built this foundation and will continue to be mentors, familiar faces and symbols of achievement.

But like any exhibition, there is a duration. A time for enjoyment, to gather meaning from this specific composition of similar yet different components at this specific time in this specific location.

We will move onto the next exhibition, the unknown, and will leave behind the campus that we have molded and formed for the next set of curators.

The exhibition may be archived, but the individual works and artists that made them will travel to different cities like New York, Chicago, London or Hong Kong. Many will come back here to work, to reminisce and to visit children that follow in their footsteps; maybe soon and maybe 30 years from now.

The class of 2013 fits nicely into this plot of land in Lewisburg, Pa. The walls of this figurative gallery may be painted over, but the memory of our class will be forever imprinted in the audience’s eyes. Who curates? We do.

4. Finish cooking for five more minutes, stir in parmesan and enjoy!

Ben Rees

Screenwriter Extraordinaire

Some things in life simply stump me. I don’t understand the vastness of the universe, I cannot fathom why anyone watches Conan O’Brien and, for the life of me, I have no idea why I went to college instead of becoming a screenwriter. My father told me I’d be wasting my academic talents, and my friends said I would never make it. Well, to silence all the naysayers, I have outlined my masterful manuscripts for your benefit so that my loving fans may sing my praises. Action!

Screenplay #1: Submerged under the filthy streets of New York, inhabiting the dark underworld of the sewers, lies the most terrifying man to ever have taken the Hippocratic Oath. Some nights, when the moon is full and the stars are eerily dim, he emerges from the pest-ridden tunnels, only to prey on his next victim. Can’t you feel your skin throbbing? Doesn’t that strange bump on your back pulse at an increased rate? Well, keep your shirt on, because the deranged dermatologist of Manhattan is coming to drain your sores. Introducing: “The Exorcyst.”

Screenplay #2: This fall, get ready for the documentary sensation of the year. It is a tale of our current economic hardships and the tough times we all endure. It encourages productive, proactive behavior, and attempts to make sure nobody gets left behind. It is entitled “Ferris Bueller’s Four Years Off: Unemployment Hardships in America.”

Screenplay #3: Men, fear not the consequences of crying. This tale of boyhood sorrow will infallibly yank at the heartstrings of every man, woman and child alike. There is no greater heartbreaker than the misery of a poor, poor boy who lost his favorite childhood possession. This Christmas, come see the heart-wrenching film of the year that is guaranteed to blow you away, “Gone With the Wind: A Tale of My Favorite Baseball Cap.”

Screenplay #4: “The Lord of the Rings: The Don King Story”

TV Pilot: MTV’s “True Life” only scraped the surface of America’s deepest, darkest secrets. Why focus on what you are when you preemptively explore what people might possibly become? This week, on “True Life … Maybe One Day, If Things Go My Way,” we explore little five-year-old Tina. See her play with those ABC blocks? Well, maybe one day, if things go her way, she could become a teacher.

Little Ralphie always wanted to make a name for himself. All of a sudden, he began mounting Beanie Babies on all the walls in his house. He must have a dream that he wants to attain! Catch him next week on: “True Life … M.O.D.I.T.G.M.W., I Kind of Want to Be a Taxidermist Someday.”

Who says I don’t have talent?

Peterson Creek: the Platypus Place

By: Caroline Confort, Mackenzie Smith, Danielle Post

 

            Have you ever heard of mammals that lay eggs? They are called monotremes and there are only three species of these animals left in the world today. The best known of these three species is the platypus, found only in Australia. With webbed front feet, and a duck-like bill these animals have dark colored fur that is denser than a polar bear’s! Platypus are mostly nocturnal, sleeping in burrows during the day and swimming and foraging in the water at night. When they forage, they close their eyes, ears and nose relying only on their bill which has receptors to detect minute electrical signals from their prey. Typically they eat aquatic invertebrates and occasionally small fish and frogs. These characteristics make them well suited for their habitat of river banks and lake sides.

Unfortunately, natural predators are not the only threat to these monotremes. While they are considered to be common in Australia, platypus habitat is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Water pollution, river damming, and live stock grazing continue to pose serious threats to habitat. More specifically, live stock grazing causes run-off of fertilizers and animal feces into platypus habitat. The addition of these substances into the water can cause nutrient levels to rise disturbing to the natural ecosystem. However there is increasing evidence indicating that this rise in nutrient levels is not always detrimental to the platypus. This moderate increase supplies an excess of food for the invertebrates that platypus prey on, creating a steady and reliable food source. Certain fishing methods including yabbie (freshwater crayfish) traps have also affected populations in the past. Land clearing and bank erosion decrease vegetation within their habitats; a substantial amount of vegetation is necessary for the platypus to line its burrow to protect its eggs from flooding and predators. In addition, surrounding vegetation provides shade, cooler, well oxygenated water, increases prey populations, and creates burrowing opportunities within its roots.

Peterson Creek is a well known platypus habitat near the town of Yunguburra in the Atherton Tablelands of northeast Queensland, Australia. Though cleared for farming and agriculture in the early 1900’s, more recently a restoration project of the site began in 1998. Today the natural ecosystem as a whole is recovering successfully and its trails are frequented by hikers, runners, and platypus enthusiasts.

In order to assess platypus populations in Peterson Creek, we conducted a visual monitoring survey. Our group of 19 students with synchronized watches recorded any platypus sightings in a continuous portion of the creek that stretched 814 meters. The study took place over a period of 3 days for 4 hours total. 3 hours of data were collected in the early evening and 1 hour of data was collected in the early morning. For each platypus sighting we recorded the time of day, time spent above and below the waters surface, and direction the animal was traveling. This information is important because time spent under water usually means the platypus is foraging and dive times can be an indicator of ecosystem health. All data collected were also pooled and analyzed to determine the minimum number of individual animals seen.

In a study done by Milione and Harding, it was determined that relatively shallow, slow moving, water is preferred habitat for platypus. The sections of Peterson creek observed in our study consisted almost entirely of this ideal platypus habitat. By comparing data on the time of sightings and the direction each platypus was headed, we conservatively estimated the minimum number of platypus in the sample section of the creek to be 5 individuals. In a study done by Kruck it was determined that decreased dive time relates to high foraging success. A small ratio of time underwater to time on the surface indicates high prey density. In the study it was found that there was higher insect levels in the streams that experienced agricultural runoff, and these sites found platypus dive times to be the lowest. Our study found the average ratio of time spent underwater to time on the surface to be 4.49. This ratio is relatively low, indicating that platypus in Peterson Creek do not have much difficulty finding prey when foraging.

Our study demonstrates that Peterson Creek is a suitable habitat for platypus populations to thrive. As more studies are being done, more evidence is appearing that platypus are increasingly inhabiting areas that are affected by farming and urban runoff as compared to areas of natural undisturbed vegetation. This may be caused by increased sediment and nutrient runoff that increases food resources for the platypus in streams and lakes. More studies must be done to determine if there are any negative effects of high runoff levels, but for now the platypus are safe and will remain an Australian icon for years to come.

 

 

W. Morris Fierman

News Editor

Despite a national trend of colleges and universities struggling to meet new requirements to deal with instances of sexual misconduct, several years of changing policies have put the University ahead of the curve.

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Universities’ policies have been forced to evolve by a series of court decisions that made schools liable for dealing with and preventing sexual assault.

A 2007 suit filed against the University of Georgia initiated a precedent which placed the responsibility for responding to and actively preventing sexual misconduct firmly in institutions’ hands. A Federal Appeals Court ruled in favor of a student after she was  raped by a fellow student who had a history of being removed from other schools for several sexual assaults.

Since the University of Georgia suit, cases at the University of North Carolina, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Washington resulted in rulings against the schools and were filed specifically under Title IX. The Department of Education officially stated in April 2011 that it would be reinterpreting Title IX to include sexual assault as a form of gender-based discrimination.

University administrations have met the new legal obligations with varying amounts of success.

In early January, Senior Writer for the Daily Tar Heel, the student-run newspaper of the University of North Carolina, Caitlin McCabe was approached by two female students claiming that they had been sexually assaulted and were treated poorly and unfairly by the university administration. One of the students told McCabe that during her hearing in the university’s ‘Honor Court’ one administrator asked her why she had not simply broken up with her long-time boyfriend that was sexually and verbally abusive. She also believed that the members of the court implied that because of her psychological distress and a past suicide attempt, her account could not be trusted.

In a telephone interview with The Bucknellian, McCabe, whose coverage later attracted national media attention, said that her university has since hired several new staff members, including a “Title IX coordinator and a sexual assault investigator,” in an attempt to fix the broken policies, though so far there have been no additions to the slideshow about sexual assault shown to first-years during orientation for several years.

Mishandled cases such as this one come along with a national trend of changing conversation about sexual assault. Many universities have struggled to update programs and policies in the face of federal pressure to do so.

According to Director of the Women’s Resource Center Tracy Russell Shaynak, the University has been both supportive and proactive in working to make cultural changes that prevent sexual assault, and more changes are yet to come.

The Women’s Resource Center will soon be hiring an Interpersonal Violence Prevention Coordinator to oversee further improvements to sexual misconduct education programs at the University. Their salary will be paid for from a grant to the University from the Justice Department for $300,000, awarded to the school in the fall of 2012. The grant, which was applied for with the help of several administrative departments, professors and students, was a good indication from the federal government that the University’s efforts were moving toward the needed changes, according to Shaynak.

Considering the administration and President John Bravman’s actions on the issue of sexual assault, “I think we are very much headed in the right direction,” Shaynak said.

Students involved in the Speak UP Bucknell program, a program designed to educate students about sexual misconduct that is now entirely student run, have tended to agree with the University’s campaign.

“I think other schools shy away from publishing things like the Campus Climate Report, but they need to acknowledge the problem before anything can be done,” Laura Even ’14, a peer educator in the Speak UP program, referring to a report on student experiences at the University that includes a study of sexual misconduct on campus.

As The Bucknellian reported earlier this month, the number of reported instances of sexual assault was around five percent higher at the University last year as compared to the national rate, according to a survey of the student body conducted by the American College Health Survey. Those numbers, however, only include students who have reported being sexually assaulted to University officials.

Associate Professor of Psychology Bill Flack has conducted extensive research along with a team of University students that has tracked the number of sexual assaults at the University since 2002. Flack reported that the previous semester’s anonymous survey of 364 female sophomores, juniors and seniors revealed that 49.1 percent of female students were sexually assaulted during their time at the University. A survey of 251 male students found that 11.6 percent of men admitted anonymously to committing a sexual assault. Those numbers, which have stayed relatively consistent since Flack and his students began the research, are “significantly higher than the national numbers.”

When asked to think of a possible reason as to why this was, Flack said that he suspects “part of the reason we have such a high rate is that, and this is speculation, there are such unequal power relationships on campus” between men and women. Fraternities have houses while sororities do not, Flack added, and sororities usually do not have control over who is placed on registers or guest lists.

“It’s also usually boys who are mixing alcohol into that punch, which is, by the way, the most common date rape drug,” Flack said.

It is also not clear that the higher numbers are endemic of a small, liberal arts school like the University. The similar research of a colleague of Flack’s at Middlebury College in Vermont has yielded much lower rates of sexual assault than on this campus.

As for the University’s new Speak UP program, only in its first year since implementation, it will be several years before any change in numbers will happen–even then it will be difficult to definitively attribute any change in the overall rate of sexual misconduct to the program, Flack said.

No conclusive scientific research has yet surfaced about what works best at reducing sexual assaults in colleges. Some of the fiercest debate involves whether or not the preventative education programs being adopted by many universities will be effective in addressing the problem.

Another criticism of a program like Speak UP is that it is heavily bystander focused; that is, it attempts to train bystanders to prevent sexual assault.

“We need to find a way of telling boys not to rape,” Flack said, though he conceded that perhaps the best solution would be instruction by parents about consent long before students arrive at colleges.

“We are taking a blunt instrument to something we don’t understand [with the Speak UP program],” Flack said. “We don’t yet know how the student intimacy culture works,” referring to the changing social habits of college students and the rise of the ‘hook-up.’

Either way, “we are doing a much better job than we used to,” Flack said.