Mount Hood

Scare season returns

By: Matthew Oldfield
Freelancer

The fall season comes with pumpkin patches, rain and changing leaves. This is also the time for all the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween to begin showing up out of the shadows, creeping up on those who are unaware. That’s right, the season of Haunted Houses is back and ready to scare anyone daring enough to go inside.

If you’re someone who enjoys going to creepy old houses, or walking along a dark trail, then maybe these sights are for you. For all you haunted house people, The Oregon School of the Deaf, in Salem, is hosting The Nightmare Factory for the 29th year in a row. This year’s theme is the zombie-filled Infected Nightmare. The special haunted tour will be $10.00 from Oct. 7 to 8, however, the rest of the show dates will be $15.00 for general admission. If you’re looking for a really good scare, their $20.00 Pitch Black event will occur on the last two nights of the show, Nov. 4 and 5, will be a truly terrifying experience.

Another haunted house that’s just a little farther north is Milburn’s Haunted Manor, located just outside of Hubbard, Oregon. Guests can face the imaginative horrors of Milburn’s manor in either one of two parts: “The Manor”, “The Dark” or guests can dare to do both. General admission is only $10.00 for one part, or $15.00 for both. For those who wish to go, but feel this might be too frightening, you will be pleased to know that this is more of a PG-13 type of haunted house.

If you’re looking for something closer, with more of an R rating scare, look no farther than Corvallis’ own Haunting of the Majestic. The Majestic Theatre in Corvallis will transform for four nights only into a haunted house at the end of October. The 18+ haunt is on Oct. 28 and 29 with a much more family oriented haunt on the 30 and 31. Prices will be hard to know until those dates come closer, but you can still check out the Majestic’s website for more details as the dates draw nearer.

These are but three events happening on this side of Oregon. There are far more haunted houses around the area if you’re brave enough to find them.

Contact the author at moldfield14@wou.edu

All hands on deck

By: Paige Scofield 
Campus Life Editor

cps-rebecca-colorWestern’s Campus Public Safety Officers have always gone above and beyond when helping those who are in need. Whether that’s finding a stolen bike or escorting students home, they treat each task as equally important. Despite this, how could they strive to be better? How could they extend a hand of help to everyone and anyone who contacts them? Campus Public Safety Officers want to communicate with every student and faculty member to the best of their ability.
As some may know, Western is well known for its American Sign Language program and is home to a community of deaf and partially deaf individuals. In the fall of 2015, Campus Public Safety Director Rebecca Chiles was contacted by College of Education faculty member, Brent Redpath, to do a presentation on Western’s Campus Public Safety for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Faculty.

“In that gathering, we began to discuss ways that deaf and partially deaf faculty, staff, students and Campus Public Safety could better communicate. An idea was brought to me by College of Education faculty, Kara Gouranis, that she had a couple of students who were willing to teach us at Public Safety some basic American Sign Language. Two students, Petra Schenfeld and Cassie Owens, began meeting with us in late fall 2015. They were patient and understanding with us and we have made some progress,” said Chiles.

The officers involved in this training include: occupational environmental safety officer Allen Risen with 27 years on the force, officer Scott Tennant with five years, officer Trever Jackson with nine years, administrative office assistant Angela Barry with two years and Director Rebecca Chiles also with two years of experience.

“Both officer Tennant and officer Jackson have used American Sign Language with students on a couple of different occasions since we began taking the classes,” Chiles added.
Campus Public Safety also announced on Western’s website, wou.edu, that they have created a deaf and partially deaf text line.

The Western website instructions states,“The user simply sends a text message to the specified number and the text will be answered by our Campus Public Safety staff. We encourage deaf and partially deaf faculty, staff and students to use this number for all communication with Campus Public Safety, such as, emergencies of any kind, door unlocks, report a crime or suspicious activities, etc. If you are part of the Deaf/Hard of hearing community and would like the phone number for this service, please feel free to contact the Office of Disability Services at ods@wou.edu or Public Safety at safety@wou.edu and we will do our best to answer any questions you may have.”

Above all, Campus Public Safety is doing their best to make sure every student and faculty member at Western feels safe and heard.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@mail.wou.edu

Where you can write on walls

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

On Friday Sept. 23, the Richard Woodcock Education Center became open to the public. Construction for the building began last year and was completed before the 2016 school year started. Before the ribbon cutting, the crowd gathered around the building waiting for the speakers to present. Among those speakers was Oregon’s Governor, Kate Brown.

When taking the podium, she endlessly complimented the university and all the steps that we’ve made to further our education curriculum. She spoke with true sincerity and graciously complimented Western again by stating, “Educators trained at Western will contribute to Oregon’s goal of building an education system that meets the needs of all students.” The last to speak, of course, was Richard Woodcock.

Western News stated that during his time at Western (then called the Oregon College of Education), Dr. Woodcock served as an assistant professor of psychology and the Reading Clinic director from 1957 to 1961. Dr. Woodcock strives to bring teachers and students together from all walks of life by using education as something that brings people together.

Once the speeches were complete, Gov. Kate Brown and Dr. Richard Woodcock cut the red ribbon, officially opening the Richard Woodcock Education Center to the Western campus and public.

The building itself is filled top to bottom with technology. This includes SMART Boards, avatar simulations and live-streaming connections with real classrooms in the surrounding areas. Not to mention, you can write on the walls; many of the classrooms and study areas have whiteboard walls that allow you to use them as you please. Even if you don’t have a class in the Richard Woodcock Education Center, go take a look and see the wonders for yourself.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

A new kind of sit-in

By: Burke De Boer
Sports Editor

The NFL preseason ended and games are now serious. The trial-and-error month is forgotten. Except for one moment.

Colin Kaepernick remained seated during the national anthem. I didn’t think much of it at the time, figuring he needed as much sitting practice as he could get. The San Francisco 49ers are a mediocre-to-bad team with Blaine Gabbert their mediocre-to-bad quarterback. This left Colin to fight practice team wanderer, Christian Ponder, for the backup’s seat on the bench.
Ponder had a good preseason too.

I figured Kaepernick wouldn’t throw a pass this year and I haven’t changed my mind. However, his protest will be intrinsic to the sports annals of 2016.

We’ve had a hot summer, folks. Philando Castile was killed by police while trying to show his license and registration. Alton Sterling was pinned to the ground and shot for selling CDs. Terence Crutcher was shot while holding his hands in the air.

Protests spread, often turning violent. Five police officers were killed in Dallas.

And the Democratic Party nominated a member of the old guard, whose 1990s party ramped up the War on Drugs. This escalation disproportionately affected blacks who, today, make up 40 percent of the American prison population despite being 13 percent of the general population, according to the U.S. census.

Kaepernick has brought all this summer heat into the football stadium, using his platform to bring attention to a people he feels this country has left behind. For largely the same reasons that Johnny Cash wore black, Colin Kaepernick now sits. Other players have followed suit, raising fists and kneeling.

But football is a conservative institution. Sports generally teach conservative principles from a child’s first youth league. Across the country, kids are brought up from peewee sports to blue collar work or military service.

It is in this spirit that the military has been evoked to condemn players sitting. The flag is very personal to a lot of people who have known or served alongside men and women who died protecting what the American flag represents.

It represents a country founded on the ideals of freedom. Which especially includes the freedom to critique. It is only through free democratic discussion that a country can grow. As anyone who’s played a sport knows, it is only through critique that you improve.

Whether or not you agree with his method, and whether or not you think America is already the greatest country in the world, the fact is America can still be better. The gulf between government and black communities it’s supposed to represent is one more problem that’s going mainstream.

In the hot summer of 2016, it seemed unlikely that Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback would ever be discussed by any sports panel. And then the hot summer went pro. Would Ray Lewis and Shannon Sharpe have discussed life in African-American communities on Fox Sports 1 without Kaepernick’s controversy? Certainly not. But now that discussion has come to America’s conservative institution.

Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu

Link to attach to “according to the U.S. census” in online publication: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html

Exploring the final frontier

By: Zoe Strickland
Managing Editor

In 2024, just 55 years after the moon landing, we could be setting foot on Mars. Despite it being a mere eight years into the future, Elon Musk, CEO of aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, is convinced that he will be able to send a rocket full of passengers to Mars.

Traveling to Mars wouldn’t be an easy feat; the process would involve creating a vessel that is reusable, while also developing a way for the vessel to refuel while in orbit.

On Sept. 27, Musk spoke at the 67th International Astronautical Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico about his long-term plans for eventually colonizing the fourth closest planet to the sun.

In a video of his speech released by Bloomberg.com, Musk spoke about the logistics of how often we would be able to send new people to Mars, “The Earth-Mars rendezvous only occurs roughly every 26 months”.

If we can only send rockets to Mars every two years, how long would it take to fully colonize the planet? “If we say the minimum threshold for a self sustaining city on Mars…would be 1,000,000 people… and you can only go every two years. If you have 100 people per ship, that’s 10,000 trips…From the point at which the first ship goes to Mars, it’s probably within 20 to 50 Mars rendezvous. It’s probably somewhere between 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization on Mars”, Musk said in his speech.

The idea of going to Mars could soon be a reality, but achieving self-sustaining life on Mars will still be a long-term work in progress.

Despite how alluring the concept of colonizing a new planet is, SpaceX, as well as other privatized companies that are looking into creating spaceships, is hitting a major roadblock when it comes to making their plans a reality: proper funding. Receiving sufficient funding for space exploration has plagued both public and private space exploration organizations for years. According to Musk, part of curbing the funding issue is to try and find a way to allow for more than 100 people to be sent in a single rocketship. By finding a way to allow more passengers, he hopes to eventually decrease the amount that one has to pay to be sent to Mars from $10 billion, to a mere $200,000.

Though SpaceX’s plans put them at the forefront of innovative space technology, they would not have made such significant strides without the work done by public aeronautical agencies, such as NASA, who have provided contracts and funding to SpaceX.

NASA’s continuous efforts to further space exploration take form in the information gathered by Spirit and Opportunity, the two Mars rovers that were sent to explore the planet. The two rovers have provided information that has been integral in deciding if Mars would be a habitable planet; the Mars rovers have discovered water, as well as gathered information regarding the atmospheric make-up of the planet.

Contact the author at journalmanaging@wou.edu.

“Rogue One” merchandise hits shelves

 

By: Ashton Newton
Entertainment Editor

Disney is well aware of the massive fan base that Star Wars has. Hundreds of thousands of people from all ages adore the series and, subsequently, are fully prepared to throw their money at it. With last year’s reboot of the Star Wars franchise, Disney announced that a new Star Wars film would be released every year until 2020. One year will be a part of the trilogy; the next will be a standalone story. Disney has also started an annual tradition called Force Friday where all the upcoming film’s merchandise will be released.
Force Friday of last September, prior to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, was a massive success. Fans flocked to stores all over the world to get their hands on toys, clothes and more for the new film.

Disney is continuing the tradition for the newest film “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” which releases this December. This year’s Force Friday took place on Sept. 30. Stores such as Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us had special displays set up featuring all the new merchandise.

Toys R Us opened its doors at 12:01 a.m. for eager customers who couldn’t wait to get their hands on the new merchandise. I was one of those customers, standing in line for an hour before the opening with about 40 other people, a lot of whom brought lawn chairs and blankets and were there hours before me. Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Rey and a Scout Trooper were even there to take pictures and get people excited.

When the doors opened people went crazy grabbing items and piling them high in their carts. Employees were handing out free t-shirts and posters as well.

As for the new merchandise, Disney released a large amount of action figures for the upcoming film, as well as updated figures from previous films, such as an updated version of Kylo Ren. Due to the limited quantity, people were especially interested in the Toys R Us exclusive six inch Hovertank Pilot. I had to fight for that one. Other items available included a replica Stormtrooper helmet, new Darth Vader masks, a Bluetooth speaker that looked like BB-8 and many new Funko Pop bobble heads.

Not all of the new merchandise is from the upcoming film. The animated TV show “Star Wars: Rebels”, which just aired the premiere of its third season, received many new figures and bobble heads as well. Sphero’s remote controlled BB-8, which was released on Force Friday last year, received an upgraded wristwatch that allows users to use hand motions to control BB-8 and essentially use the force.

Lego also had a large amount of new sets for the upcoming film showcased. Five new sets are now out on Amazon and at other retailers, all brand new vehicles from “Rogue One”. Lego also released three new buildable figures.

All the new merchandise is out now at Toys R Us, Target, Wal-Mart, F.Y.E and more. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” comes out on Dec. 16.

Contact the author at journalentertainment@wou.edu

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