Mount Hood

“Education Is” A conversation with Kylie Roth

As part of a new weekly Journal column, Nathaniel Dunaway meets with Western Oregon University students to discuss their lives and their experiences in the world of higher education. In doing so, he hopes to find an answer to the question: what does it mean to be a college student in the 21st century?

 

I’m from Dallas, so I actually live at home and commute here. I save a lot of money that way. My sister did the same thing, went to WOU, lived at home, and moved out after that. Sometimes my dad will be like, “are we just a hotel?” because honestly I’m not always there. Leave at 7:30 a.m., get home at 8 p.m., that’s a normal day. But I get along with my parents; I’m very lucky to have a loving family.
I’m a senior, and I’ve gone here all four years. I came in not knowing anything of what I wanted to do. I was undecided, didn’t know my major or anything. I think it took me longer to get involved. I was wandering through LACCs, where no one really cares why they’re there; and living at home; I was still connected to my Dallas community. It was difficult to know where to invest my time.
Now I feel really involved. I’ve found where I fit. I work at the Child Development Center as a teacher’s aide, I’m a WOU ambassador, I’m part of an honors society for psychology students and I’m an officer for the National Society of Leadership and Success.

I’m interning in Salem right now so I’m involved there. It’s a practicum, so I get credit for it. It’s at Family Building Blocks, which is an organization whose main goal is to prevent … child abuse through therapeutic class or parenting classes. I spend about 13 hours a week there, mainly in the classrooms. Prevention for abuse really happens between ages zero to three.
I don’t exactly know what I want to do yet, but I want to somehow work with at-risk children or children with disabilities. Working with kids is really fun; you never know what they’re going to say. I asked one little girl, “Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?” and she’s like, “I’m gonna be an entomologist,” and I personally did not know what an entomologist was, and she said, “It’s a person who studies bugs, specifically insects.”

There are those great moments all the time, but it can be challenging at times, too. You have to learn how to talk differently and correctly, to affirm and empower children, but also to let them see consequences. It’s been a great experience.
Dr. Brannan in the Psychology department always says “college isn’t for everyone, but education is,” and I agree with that.

I value higher education very highly. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I do think some form of education, may it be trade school or some form of learning, makes you more open-minded. And I don’t think open-minded means you have to accept everything, but that you’re able to see everything.

In high school, thinking back, a lot of teachers would say “don’t let money matter when you pick a college,” but that was a big deciding factor. I think it’s worth the cost, but you have to be proactive about it, financially. The way I’ve approached my higher education, debt is not actually a concern for me. I feel very privileged that I’m in that boat.

Education in any form should be for everyone, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be college. I’m planning on taking a year off after I graduate. I’m still not sure about grad school. I don’t know yet. My goal is just to get employed in something that I enjoy, and have it hopefully help guide me from there.
Transcribed and edited by Nathaniel Dunaway
If you’re a Western student and would like to be interviewed for the Portraits of a University column, contact Nathaniel Dunaway at journalentertainment@wou.edu

Western hosts 14th annual cross country championships

BY JENNIFER HALLEY
CAMPUS LIFE EDITOR

The men’s and women’s Cross Country team competed in the 14th annual Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) championships where the women placed seventh and the men finished eighth, on Saturday, Nov. 1.

David Ribich finished first for the Wolves in 25:56, which awarded him 26th place overall. The next Wolf to score was Zach Holloway in 27th place, with a time of 26:01.

Josh Hanna clocked in at 26:43 in 47th place. David McLeod, Riley Anheluk, Parker Marson and Joe Soik finished the Wolves’ scoring.

“The conference meet, we fell a little short finishing 8th; don’t know how or why but we did,” said Ribich. “We are bouncing back and continuing to train hard. Now is the time of cold season and it’s more important than ever to stay healthy and practice the best we can.”

Alaska Anchorage won the team title on the men’s side as well as swept the top three finishing spots.

Stephanie Stuckey was the first Wolf to finish in the women’s 6k, with a time of 21:47, which gave her a 21st place finish. Rachel Crawford was close behind in 26th place, with a time of 21:55.

Bailey Beeson and Nicole Anderson finished in 45th and 46th place with times of 22:36 and 22:37. Kolby Childers, Debora De Leon and Rachel Shelley finished the Wolves’ scoring.

“I am not excited about how we placed at conference,” said Stuckey. “I thought we ran our hearts out; but the results did not show it. It doesn’t mean we sucked; it just means we have to and can do better. I think the extra time to train is incredibly beneficial and will give us enough time to lay out a solid foundation to bring us up to our best for regionals.”

On the women’s side, the team title, as well as second and third place, was separated by just two points, the closest race in GNAC history. Simon Frasier won the women’s title with 62 points.

The men’s and women’s team travel to Billings, Mont. for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) West Regional meet on Nov. 22.

High rate of bike theft exposes weak lock-up methods

BY ALLISON OPSON CLEMENT
NEWS EDITOR

A spike in reported bicycle theft has prompted Campus Public Safety (CPS) to warn students to secure bikes properly and register them in case they are stolen and
recovered.

“It’s starting out big,” said Allen Risen, interim director of CPS. There has been seven bike thefts reported on campus to the Office of Public Safety this year: one in September, six in October.

“That was enough to say I need to notify campus,” said Risen. “Each year we do get a number of bicycles stolen, but the way it was going this year, that’s why I sent out the email.”

Ordinarily, according to Risen, CPS will receive between 10 and 20 reports during an entire school year.

According to the Monmouth Police Department (MPD), during the same period, (Sept. 20 to Nov. 6) seven bikes were stolen in 2013, and nine this year, a small increase. Sgt. Kim Dorn said that some fluctuation is natural. Some of those may overlap with those reported to CPS for Western’s community.

“Some of them are just taken as a joyride and we’ll pick them up,” said Risen. “It’s amazing how many people don’t call us to say it’s missing.”

CPS recovers more bikes every year than are reported stolen. Officers take possession of any abandoned bikes and log them in as found property.

They also compare the bike to an updated list of stolen bikes, a three or four page list kept in official vehicles, to see if it has been reported yet.

“We try to get as much information as possible from thevictim,” said Dorn for the MPD, adding that owners should always file a report, so that their bike can be returned if found.

“It’s so very, very important to know the serial number.” A serial number can be entered by the MPD into a national computer system for stolen items.

If the bike is listed as found anywhere else, it can still be returned to its owner. Chances of recovery go up if the bike is reported as stolen, said Risen, and also if it is registered.

CPS currently has fifteen bikes from this year and last. During the summer, the Housing Office may report abandoned bikes left on campus to CPS, whocan take possession of them if theowner does not claim them.

Fallout shelters? A history lesson of Western Oregon University

By Jennifer Halley

A former central hub for the public in case of nuclear threat, Western Oregon University established fallout shelters on campus to keep people safe if need be.

Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, the threat of nuclear attack was imminent and the Federal Civil Defense Administration, now known as Homeland Security, named Oregon College of Education (OCE) – what is now Western Oregon – a headquarters for people seeking a safe haven.

To prepare for an attack, OCE designed a variety of fallout shelters throughout campus containing food such as crackers, carbohydrate supplements, giant tubs of water that paired as toilets and other supplies to keep people alive until the threats were over.

According to Tony Kment, assistant director of the Physical Plant on campus, only buildings made out of concrete could be subject to a fallout shelter. Many doomsday websites also say that fallout shelters need to be built with materials that offer strength and support in order to withstand the gamma rays and radiation.

Fallout shelters were prominent in that era as the Federal Civil Defense Administration instructed homes and businesses on how to create shelters, according to U-S-history.com. Instruction pamphlets were published as guides for families to build home shelters.

It was intense time for the government as they fought to respond to heightened public anxiety that coated much of America, the article added.

Kment, who was a child during the Cold War, remembers doing drills at school – such as ducking under his desk or a cafeteria table – in case an attack was ever to occur.

“It was scary for a young kid during that time,” Kment said.

In 1974 an article was written about the fallout shelters in OCE’s student newspaper, called Lamron2.

The article, written by Liz Alcarez, describes the campus fallout shelter locations that still exist today, but are being used as storage.

According to Alcaraz, one fallout shelter is in the lower floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences building. Two others are in the basements of the library and Administration building. Many of the mechanical rooms in the residence halls, as well as in Maaske Hall, the education building and the Food Services building could have been used as shelters as well.

Some of the signs used to announce where the fallout shelters were located are still posted around campus. These signs alerted students and staff as to where they could go if an attack occurred.

In the education building, a sign can be seen on the double doors of the mechanical room. Beyond its doors are the boxes of crackers, candy and bins used for water and waste.

“Down” – Portraits of a University

Portraits of a University:

As part of a brand-new weekly Journal column, Nathaniel Dunaway meets with Western Oregon University students to discuss their lives and their experiences in the world of higher education. In doing so, he hopes to find an answer to the question what does it mean to be a college student in the 21st century?

 

This week, Psychology major Adam Pettitt offers his thoughts on the value of the college degree, and the stigma surrounding depression in America.

 

I’m a dual major in biology and psychology. This is my fifth year here. I actually went to University of Idaho for a year, then I took two years off, and I realized after those two years off that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I knew that I wanted to help people. So because of that, I came here. I applied a week before school started.

There are six grad schools I’m applying to this year. But I honestly don’t expect to get in, just because clinical psychology programs are notoriously hard to get into. They have a one-percent acceptance rate. So they have about three-hundred people apply, and three people get in. I want to go to Yale, Harvard, UNC, University of Texas, UCLA and Duke. But honestly, the number one place I want to go to is Yale, but it’s not because it’s Yale. It’s nice that it’s Yale, but… the way these programs work is that you’re not applying to a program, you’re applying to work with a person, in their lab, doing research. I want to look at the genetics of depression.

My first year here, all of a sudden, I just got slammed with depression out of nowhere. I was twenty-one at the time, and either you’ve been through depression and you understand what it entails, or you haven’t. I think that before, when I thought about it, I thought “oh, somebody’s just sad,” but it’s so much more than that. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a descent into someone you’re not. When I was down there, there was no being happy. It’s something that if you don’t have the right tools -and even if you do have the right tools- it can be so hard to dig yourself out of. It’s incredibly devastating to the people who encounter it.

I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, and he told me everything would be fine. I went through ten different anti-depressants for a year before anything ever worked for me. It was the worst year. Anti-depressants work in the way that you have about a four to eight week window before they can even have an effect. Finally I found one that worked, and it was like magic. I actually had a graph on a big whiteboard, for my own edification, where one was the worst that I’d ever felt and ten was the best and five was completely apathetic and neutral. So every day I’d say, “ok, this is where I’m at,” and slowly the graph would get higher and higher, and all of a sudden, five wasn’t my top anymore, and at the six or eight week mark, I realized “oh, this is how life is supposed to be. This is how I used to be.” It was like waking up from a dream.

The way anti-depressants are prescribed is… basically it’s a flow-chart. Basically, if you’re lethargic and depressed, then you get prescribed this kind of anti-depressant. And what ends up happening is that when one doesn’t work, you switch to another kind, and switch to another kind, until you finally find the one that works. There’s actually a flow-chart in one of my textbooks, literally a flow chart. And I was at the end of the chart, right before MAOI’s, which are the oldest type of anti-depressant, and electroshock therapy. So I’m really glad I stopped there. I thought… it’s 2014. How do we just have a flow-chart for prescribing this? There has to be a better way. So I started looking into the genetics of depression and the genetics of anti-depressant response.

On my mom’s side of the family, my uncle killed himself. A lot of people on that side of the family suffered from depression. There is a genetic basis to it. I started doing research on how certain people with certain genetics will favorably respond to certain anti-depressants. That’s when I realized that this is what I want to do. What I went through, nobody should ever have to go through. I would not wish that on anybody. If I could be the one who helps people, to prevent people from becoming depressed, from getting down there… and also using the genotype of people who do suffer to discover which anti-depressants will work for them and which won’t. I think that it can be done. It’s going to take a lot of collaboration across the disciplines, from psychology to biology to neuroscience, but I think that it can be done, and that it should be done.

There’s a general lack of knowledge about mental health in this country. If there is this genetic basis, if there is –as it’s simplified in the media- this chemical imbalance in people, then it’s not people’s fault that they’re depressed. It breaks my heart that people have to endure depression while there are all these stigmas against it. Things are starting to shift and change, but it’s going to be a battle before depression becomes something that’s acceptable and understandable as an actual health disease rather than a purely mental disease.

We should be able to tailor and individualize treatment for people, so that after one anti-depressant doesn’t work, one treatment doesn’t work, they don’t give up. I didn’t make the choice to stop trying, but there are people out there who do. It’s not going to be one-hundred percent figured out, but it’ll be better than a flow-chart.

 

 

 

 

By Adam Pettitt,
edited by Nathaniel Dunaway

 

If you’re a Western student and would like to be interviewed for the Portraits of a University column, contact Nathaniel Dunaway at journalentertainment@wou.edu

Football shows strength in victory against Simon Fraser

 

By: Freelancer Jacob Hansen

 

“It makes my job a whole lot easier when you have a dynamic player to throw to, yet alone two of them to throw to,” senior quarterback Ryan Bergman

 

With back to back touchdowns thrown to redshirt freshman wide receiver Paul Revis in the fourth quarter, the Wolves were able to secure their second Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) win against the Clan of Simon Fraser University, 27-16 during homecoming week on Oct. 25.

Western Oregon (4-4, 2-1 GNAC) struck first and fast against Simon Fraser (2-6, 2-2) during the Wolves homecoming game. Senior quarterback Ryan Bergman started off the game with a 35-yard touchdown pass to senior wide receiver Tyrell Williams. Bergman completed 18-of-42 passes for 332 yards on the day and four touchdowns. Williams and Revis combined for 286 yards and three touchdowns on the day, making their presence known throughout the GNAC.

“It makes my job a whole lot easier when you have a dynamic player to throw to, yet alone two of them to throw to,” said Bergman.

Paul Revis was named the GNAC’s offensive player of the week for the first time in his career. He leads the Wolves and GNAC with 902 receiving yards and nine touchdowns. Revis is ranked third in division II for all-purpose yards averaging 205.1 yards per game.

“It’s a great honor to be acknowledged by the league and hope to earn many more in my future,” said Revis.

It was the Wolves’ defense that forced the Clan to field goals instead of touchdowns that really gave our boys in red the upper hand. Redshirt sophomore defensive back Danny Hankins led the Wolves defense with seven solo tackles and an interception. The defense allowed only one pass to be thrown over their head for 51 yards in the second quarter, which would be the last score before the half.

The Wolves came out of the half strong, finishing a drive with a one-yard touchdown pass from Bergman to junior wide receiver James DePew, putting the Wolves up 14-10.

The Clan answered back with two drives that would both result in field goals, giving them the two point advantage at the beginning of the fourth.

Bergman and Revis answered again when they connected for a 94-yard drive with a 29-yard touchdown pass to put the Wolves up 21-16.

A 54-yard touchdown pass from Bergman to Revis would wrap up this homecoming victory for the Wolves.

The Wolves travel to Glendora California to play the No. 25-ranked Azusa Pacific University Saturday, Nov. 1.

“Whoever wins this game will be the conference champs,” said head coach Arne Ferguson.

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