Mount Hood

Freebie Friday fun resumes

By: Brianna Bonham
Staff Writer

Freebie Friday happens every week on campus and it is a chance for students to play games, win prizes, and even get discounts and freebies.

The event is put on by the Werner University Center (WUC) in collaboration with the Student Leadership and Activities Board (SLA).
The first Freebie Friday was Bingo Night during New Student Week.

Students collected stamps from many different clubs and organizations at Western and turned them in for Bingo cards. They then competed in a few rounds of Bingo to win various prizes.

Each prize had a theme such as “Netflix and Chill pack” which contained popcorn, candy, movies, and blankets. The “Game Night” pack had board games and candy. Students relaxed and had fun while earning free prizes.

This weekend is a scavenger hunt themed Freebie Friday where students can compete to win prizes for being the game’s champions.
The Grill, located on the second floor of the WUC, offers penny fries until 3 p.m., and Cafe Allegro offers penny espresso shots until 4 p.m.

The bookstore will also be offering a 30 percent discount on WOU imprinted items to those who participate in the scavenger hunt.

Students who want to be reminded each week about upcoming events that will be happening around campus can text “WOUWKND” to 71441 to receive updates by text weekly.

More information about Freebie Fridays and other student events can also be found on SLA’s webpage as well as in their office in WUC.

China to lift one-child policy for continued economic prosperity

By: Alvin Wilson 
Staff Writer

China announced late last month that the government will lift their one-child policy, which was put into place 35 years ago in order to prevent rapid population growth.

The one-child policy was introduced in China in 1980 and was implemented to reduce the strain on resources as the country’s population and economy continued to grow exponentially.

According to the Chinese government, the one-child policy helped prevent 400 million births, which they credit with raising millions of people out of poverty. Now, however, they risk running out of young workers to support their aging population.

Data from the U.N. shows that by the 2030, a quarter of China’s population will be older than 60.

The country’s leaders made the decision to lift the policy in order to counter the risk of losing their powerful workforce, but some demographers fear it is too late to completely prevent it.

The new policy will allow all Chinese women to have up to two children.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, the new policy will result in an estimated 23 million more births by the year 2050. If almost every woman in China decides to have two children, however, the number of new births could be as high as 100 million.

This won’t stop the change in China’s worker demographic, but it will give the Chinese government more time before they see a shortage in workers.

This new policy has been implemented slowly over the past few years.

Starting in 2013, couples could have two children if either parent had no siblings. Rural couples in China were already able to have two children if their first child was a girl, and certain ethnic groups were exempt from the one-child policy.

Lifting the child limit to two is seen by some as a big step forward, especially because the one-child policy had been in place for such a long time, but others think China’s government hasn’t gone far enough, claiming that the government shouldn’t control reproductive rights at all.

The future of music is self-distribution

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By: Darien Campo (Staff Writer)

I discovered Snowmine largely by accident.

Browsing the plethora of music on Bandcamp.com led me to their page, where I found a free download to their first album “Laminate Pet Animal” (a palindromic title.)

Curious, I downloaded it and found that Snowmine was just the right amount of ambient indie-pop I’d been looking for my whole life. I’ve since bought all of their music and consider myself a lifetime follower.

It was luck that I found Snowmine, since back then there was hardly any mention of them on the internet. See, Snowmine isn’t signed to a major record label – in fact, they’re not signed to any record label at all. It’s not that they can’t get a label contract, they’re actively avoiding signing on to a label.

If it’s only going to lower their exposure, why would a band decide not to try and get a record label? Isn’t that the ultimate goal of any musician?

Not quite, anymore. In more recent years it’s actually becoming quite common to see musicians around the globe sharing their music without ever seeing a record contract — all thanks to the internet.

With websites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, it’s easier than ever to upload and share your music without major backing. Thousands of indie artists choose a more direct way of selling music to their fans, using the internet to grow their fan base.

But it’s not just indie artists that have spurned labels, major bands are trying it as well.

In 2003, Radiohead, one of the world’s biggest bands, finished their six-album contract with EMI and they’ve never looked back. Since then they’ve released two albums, “In Rainbows” and “The King of Limbs” on their own website, with a “pay-what-you-want” pricing model.

Though it doesn’t guarantee as much exposure, bands like Snowmine appreciate the personal relationship to their fans self-distribution can give.

Their “from-us-to-you” campaign in promotion of their second album “Dialects” was a huge success. Fans enjoy dealing directly with their favorite artists instead of buying through a label.

The future of the music industry is coming fast, and it’s hard to tell if record labels are going to be a part of it anymore.

Like Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke told Time in a 2005 interview, “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one.”

“No Man’s Sky” preview

By: Ashton Newton 
Staff Writer

During E3 2014, I watched a live stream of the Sony press conference with hope that I’d see something breathtaking.

My wish was granted when I saw a space ship lift off of an orange planet lush with grass, trees, and dinosaurs, and blast off into space. The ship flew into battle; colorful ships zoomed by, followed by explosions and asteroids hurtling around.

A reddish planet appeared in the distance and the ship moved closer, right into the planet’s atmosphere, ready to touch down. This was my first glimpse at “No Man’s Sky” (NMS), and I was hooked. I became “No Man’s Sky’s” biggest fan.

Hello Games, a small British developer known for the iPhone game “Joe Danger,” is developing NMS.

At its core, “No Man’s Sky” is a game about exploration. The vast universe contains 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets for players to explore, some containing life and some not; “procedurally generated” meaning that not one planet is the same as another; each planet is unique and ready to be explored.

All life in the game is procedurally generated too, and when players make discoveries, it’s their duty to name the planets, creatures, and plants they find.

The overall goal of NMS is to reach the center of universe, and the closer to the center players get, the more difficult it gets to stay alive. No one knows what happens there, but Head Developer Sean Murray promises something amazing.

“No Man’s Sky” is officially due to be released in June 2016 on Playstation 4 and PC.

Hello Games has kept the majority of gameplay features and lore under wraps to make the experience for the player more enjoyable.

I’m eagerly waiting for June; NMS is looking to be the biggest and most ambitious game ever created.

Bond is Back: “Spectre” Review

By: Declan Hertel 
Entertainment Editor

Let’s begin with a disclaimer: I love James Bond. The suits, the gadgets, the villains, that theme song, the whole shebang. I especially love Daniel Craig’s run as Agent 007; in my opinion, he made the character seem more like an actual human being than any of the many others who portrayed Bond have.

“Spectre” is Craig’s almost-certainly final outing as Bond, and the film sees him going more rogue than ever before on an unofficial and mysterious mission at the behest of the now deceased M, played by Judi Dench (“Philomena”).

The opening sequence of the film starts with a long tracking shot of Bond in a Day of the Dead mask, following a man in a white suit, walking through a parade in Mexico City with a beautiful woman on his arm.

It’s quintessential Bond: sexy, dangerous, and indulgent.

We then move very swiftly through an exploding building, a foot chase through the parade, and a brutal fistfight in a helicopter over a mass of people gathered in the town square for the festival, complete with some serious aerial acrobatics.

It’s super intense, beautifully shot, and shamelessly over the top, serving as an excellent primer for the rest of the movie, which is all of the above.

Yes, “Spectre” is 140 minutes, but if you expected a James Bond film to be under two hours, you have some fundamental misconceptions about the franchise. That said, the grin on my face for the 140 minutes of the film could only be described as “really goofy.”

James Bond is pure fantasy, and “Spectre” provides a great deal of that fantasy. His world is a world of excess, decadence, and pure escapism.

The film mostly sticks to the established Bond formula, but I hardly think this is a bad thing.

Sure it gets a bit muddy at times, and Christoph Waltz’s (“Django Unchained”) excellent portrayal of the latest Bond villain is underused by a mile, but it hits its marks and hits them well, and I enjoyed every second.

I’ll be the first to admit that the Bond franchise’s treatment of women has never been stellar, but “Spectre” takes a step in the right direction.

It’s by no means perfect, but there’s definitely no deplorable conduct like some entries in the series have had (looking at you, shower scene in “Skyfall”).

The thing about James Bond is that he’s always a man of his time, yet as our world marches onward he’s a man out of time.

James Bond is still fundamentally the same as he was when he debuted with a different face in “Dr. No” those many years ago, but every installment changes him a bit. Craig’s Bond is the one I’ll miss most, mostly because he allowed us to see a man with darkness inside.

He was always the male fantasy that James Bond is at his core, but he also allowed himself to be vulnerable and scarred. That is what made him great.

I hope James Bond lives on after Craig leaves the role. But if it does not, I would be at peace with “Spectre” as the final entry. If you’re not a fan of Bond, this film probably won’t change your mind. But if you enjoy the franchise, you can’t go wrong.
3.5 of 4 paws

Back in black

By:Conner Williams 
Editor-in-Chief

After more than two dreadfully long months since the “Call of Duty: Black Ops 3” beta ended, the full game finally became available to play at 9 p.m. PST on Nov. 5, 2015.

And yes, I did count down the minutes until I was able to dive into the newest “Call of Duty” (COD) collaboration between Activision and Treyarch, the series’ saving grace.

Last year, when the yearly COD game was developed by Sledgehammer Games, whom had never worked on the series before, it received widespread criticism from the fan base over its new movement system, which involved jetpack boosters, speedy power slides, unlimited sprint, and the infamous exo-suit.

The production studios heard the outcry and adjusted the gameplay accordingly.

The first best thing that was done was getting Sledgehammer out of the picture, because let’s face it, “Advanced Warfare” was mediocre at best.

“Call of Duty: Black Ops 3” (BO3) offers gamers that traditional COD feeling that’s been missing since “Black Ops 2” (BO2), plus some welcome upgrades, of course.

The new movement system was designed to keep players on the run throughout the course of the map. This COD felt like it was designed to discourage camping, which is just fine with most players.

Players can now sprint for an unlimited amount of time, run on walls, quickly power slide long distances, and boost a short amount – similar to a double jump. The system was designed to chain different movements together in order to travel around the maps quickly and tactically.

To me, BO3 feels like BO2 mixed with “Advanced Warfare” without the exo suits that everyone disliked. Players can’t jetpack forever, nor can they become invisible, as was the case with some of the exo abilities from “Advanced Warfare.”

Zombies

Ah, yes. The triumphant return of the fan-favorite zombies mode. Personally, I think zombies mode is enough reason to purchase the entire game. I typically spend about five hours with a couple of friends attempting to decipher the endless clues, puzzles, and easter eggs hidden throughout the new zombies maps when they are first released.

The best part about it is that zombies is no longer about hitting the mystery box until you get a ray gun so that you can camp in a corner and blast away; there are intricate riddles that require a significant amount of time and trial-and-error in order to figure them out and advance throughout the story.

I don’t want to reveal too much, so I will leave it up to you to figure out how to handle the Beast (if you’ve played, you’ll get the reference).

Multiplayer

After the release of the beta back in August, the game developers made some serious adjustments to the infrastructure of the game to make this the smoothest multiplayer experience to date for a COD title. I have experienced zero lag or matchmaking trouble from the BO3 multiplayer servers.

The game introduced a new “Specialist” system, in which players pick one of nine Specialists to use as their class character.

Different Specialists are unlocked with increases in level. These Specialists have different abilities unique to their character. Each has a weapons class, which range from a war machine, to an explosive bow and arrow, and even a flamethrower.

Each Specialist also has an ability class that employs lethal abilities to give players the edge over others.

For example, the Rejack ability grants players the ability to respawn in the same area upon death without losing scorestreak progress, the Vision Pulse ability allows players to see every enemy on the map for a short duration, and Overdrive allows players to move lightning-quick for a short amount of time. However, players can only pick a weapon or an ability from their chosen Specialists, not both.

There is a solid array of weapons and perks to choose from, using the familiar ten-slot system for classes.

In addition, a new game mode has been added. Safeguard enlists players to escort a walking robot across the map and into enemy territory within a certain time limit.

The opposing team must stop the robot from being escorted, and can disable the robot for short amounts of time by shooting it, blowing it up, knifing it, and using any other method to inflict damage.

Safeguard is, by far, my favorite game mode. I posted a 68-14 match record on my favorite map of Redwood, in which players get to run around in the treetops of the Redwood Forest.

Campaign

BO3 brought back a feature that I have personally been missing and that has not been present since “World at War”: cooperative campaign.

Players can team up with a buddy to take on the campaign that is set in the year 2054. BO3 also added a new difficulty called “realistic” in which players and enemies take lethal damage from just a few shots. It is similar to playing in Hardcore mode.

After taking a brutal beating from an enemy robot, the protagonist undergoes surgery and becomes half human, half machine. The player receives an implant in the brain that allows him or her to perform certain cybernetic abilities, such as hacking enemy machinery and blowing up robots.

The campaign also has its own level-up system in which players can customize classes to use during levels. I have not finished the campaign yet, but it has been great so far, and the added ability to play with a friend makes it that much more enjoyable.

4 out of 4 paws.

Check out some video clips of me playing the BO3 multiplayer on our website, and add my gamertag (Cdubinite) if you want to play with me.

Week-long opportunity for cultural exchange

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By: Emily Pate
Staff Writer

International Education Week is Nov. 16-20, 2015; the theme is “Access for All,” and the goal is to bring different cultural perspectives, diversity, and experience to students.

I have studied abroad three times during the course of my studies at Western, and each time has been more beneficial than the last.

It’s a scary thing to tear out your own roots and see what you can learn from travel, but exposure to other cultures has made me look at my own life in a new way, and made me a better person as a result.

Amanda Summers, senior International Studies major, is the new Global Ambassador for Western’s study abroad office, and spent the last academic year studying at the University of Roehampton in England.

“It was phenomenal, magical […] all those good words you can use,” Summers said about her time abroad. She also said that even though we went to a country that spoke the same language, “it was culturally enlightening,” and encourages everyone to try to study abroad.

Sawsan Alismail, a graduate student from Saudi Arabia who is majoring in MS Ed English/Language Arts, has been studying at Western for ten months. She believes that international study helps a person to grow.

“It adds to my personality a lot by being open-minded, flexible, and accepting variety of people and introduces me to different cultures and costumes,” Alismail said. “Also, it adds more for my family, especially my children where they are exposed to different cultures.”

Alismail continued, “It also gives you the opportunity to examine the culture more deeply and have a fair judgment about it. This also may help you adapting some good manners, attitudes, and lifestyles or anything else.”

For various reasons, not all Western students can study abroad, but they can still get the benefits from multicultural exposure here on campus during International Education Week.

Sarah Nagel, Study Abroad and J Visa Advisor, said, “The purpose of International Ed. Week is a celebration of the fact that we are a global society, a global campus.”

Nagel said that through participating in International Ed. Week, “students gain a greater cultural competence, meaning they have a better understanding of the different cultures that are out in the world.”

The full schedule of events can be found on posters around campus, including in WUC, and on the International Education Week webpage.

As someone who has been shaped by my experiences abroad, I encourage everyone to participate in this rare opportunity for multicultural sharing and celebration.

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