Mount Hood

Freedom for the loo

By: Shaylie Pickrell
Freelancer

On the Western campus there are a growing number of locations in which we have all-gender bathrooms. The Equity Committee of the Associated Students of Western Oregon University are working towards making the bathrooms more visible and more comfortable for people who identify outside of the gender binary. Whether they’re using the restroom to make sure their outfit looks good or to actually use the restroom, it’s important to have a safe place for people in any situation. They recently added 20 more locations and hope to soon have a list or map available online, as well as in the Werner University Center.

All-gender bathrooms are family friendly, vary from single to multiple stalls and some locations even have showers available for use. These bathrooms are a way for those who identify outside the gender binary to feel safe and free from the pressures that can sometimes occur when having to use gender specific bathrooms.

If you have any questions about the growing locations of these bathrooms around campus, or simply would like to learn more about gender equality, you can stop by the Stonewall Center or email the equity president, Max Norr, at aswouequity@wou.edu. The Equity Committee is working very hard to make information about these locations more accessible around campus. In the near future, there will be updated maps around campus identifying different bathroom types and their new locations.

Things I want to highlight on the map:
There is at least one all-gender bathroom in every hall and in the most populated places such as the Werner University Center and the Hamersly Library.

Contact the author at spickrell15@wou.edu

The Art of Piercing

Piercings2Color

By: Megan Clark
Campus Life Editor

Body modifications, such as piercings and tattoos, are becoming increasingly popular as a way to further explore personal style.

Body piercing is an ancient art that has been around for a long time. According to The Human Touch of Chemistry’s website, nostril piercing has been documented as first occurring in the Middle East around 4,000 years ago.

Piercings have been used to signify sociopolitical status; in Rome, septum piercings symbolized a gladiator’s strength, while in Egypt, a belly button piercing signified godliness and was often worn by pharaohs.

In parts of Malawi and Ethiopia, women often wear discs in their lips that may act as a sign of social or economic importance in the tribe. Their lips are initially pierced with a small wooden peg in their teenage years, but they increase the size of the jewelry throughout their lives, the hand crafted clay discs used reach up to nearly eight inches in diameter.

This process of increasing the size of a piercing is called stretching or gauging and should be done slowly and carefully in order to not tear the skin.

While it’s not common to see people walking around with piercings as large as those worn by the Malawi and Ethiopian women, more unusual piercings, such as the septum and the philtrum (the dimple that sits above the cupid’s bow on the upper lip) are becoming more popular.

Now nearly every part of the body can be pierced or implanted with something called a “micro-dermal” or “dermal.”

While piercing involves taking a sterilized needle and inserting it through skin or cartilage, a micro-dermal involves cutting a tiny hole into the surface of the skin. This makes room for an anchor that goes below the skin and looks similar to a tiny screw with a flat base. The screw-end sticks out of the hole so that different heads (gems, studs, etc.) can be screwed on.

Dermals, however, have a high rejection rate and can easily get infected or ripped out since they are on the surface of the body.

You should be careful with most piercings, as getting infections or getting them caught on things is a very real worry. Proper care should be taken, even after the piercing has healed. The tiniest snag could result in an infection if not well-taken care of.

While piercings may hurt and could get infected, certain piercings have been thought to have medical benefits.

When the nostril piercing came to India in the 16th century it was believed that it would act as a form of acupuncture and aid in childbirth.

Recently, certain ear piercings called the “daith” and “tragus” have been believed to alleviate migraines, though little scientific research has been done to support this.

While these piercings may or may not have any health benefit, they have the added benefit of contributing to self-expression and personal style.

From choosing silver over gold to adorning with glittering jewels, piercings offer another jewelry choice that could add some sparkle to someone’s life.

The words of a loving friend

By:  Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

“He was one of the nicest, most selfless and caring people I have ever met. He was always there for his friends whenever they needed help,” said Emma Henry, friend of Brandon Lin. “Brandon and I were very close. We spent hours talking about anything and everything. We talked almost every day. He was a great listener and very supportive, every time I was upset or bawling my eyes out he was always there to talk, even when he couldn’t talk right at that moment he would always make sure to call me or text me when he was free just to make sure I was okay. He was super caring.”

On May 9, Western student Brandon Lin died after a car accident in Portland. Lin majored in interdisciplinary studies with a minor in literature. He lived on campus in Ackerman Hall and was preparing to serve as a peer mentor in the fall.

“It was easy to talk to him. He was always fun to be with. He made even the most simple and mundane task fun. His goofy nature always brought a smile to his friends. He was a great team player that was always ready for a new adventure,” explained Henry.

When asked what message Brandon left with his friends and family, Henry replied, “I think Brandon’s message would be ‘just do it.’ He was always very adventurous and was willing to try almost anything at least once. I think this would be his message because he had told me how before coming to Western he had a hard time making friends, especially at a community college, and also being on the shyer side,” explained Henry.

“When he first got here he was determined to make the best of his college life and have fun. By making a friend in his hall he was able to branch out and meet new people and try new things.
Whenever we would go out and try something new he was always the first to try it, he encouraged his friends also to be open minded and always try something new.”

“There are too many wonderful things and memories I wish could share about Brandon, but at the end of the day what I really want people to know about Brandon is that he was a very, sympathetic, sincere, reliable, generous and adventurous guy,” said Henry.

“He was very much loved by all his friends and family. To put it simply, he was a great son, brother, friend and guy. Although he may not be here with us physically he has left a mark on everyone he met and will always be in our hearts,” concluded Henry.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

Mad Hatter’s Dancing Tea Party

By: Jasmine Morrow
Staff Writer

The Mad Hatter’s Dancing Tea Party was an event put on for Western’s students by the Akerman Hall Student Government. The tea party was put on for anybody who wanted a break and wanted to enjoy themselves.

The Ackerman Hall Student Government played music while the tea-party-goers enjoyed their cupcakes and tea, but they also had a space for students to dance if they wished to. The committee members that put on the Mad Hatter’s Dancing Tea Party were: Morgan Montoya, Bridget Parker, Chase Culm and Ellen Moore.

Montoya, a first-year psychology major, organized the event, which was Alice in Wonderland themed. That being said, Parker, a sophomore biology major, is the President of the Ackerman Hall Student Government and helped Monoya decorate. They put on the event because they wanted some students to have some fun.

There were sunglasses waiting to be given to the guests and a small photo booth that tea-party-goers could get their picture taken looking like the Queen of Hearts. The table clothes were different colors, there were smiling Cheshire cats hanging on the wall, there were tea cups, flowers and clocks sitting on the table and pink plastic flamingos standing around the room.

One of the guests, Sarah Tran, a first-year biology major, said that she went to the event because she loves Alice in Wonderland, dancing and cupcakes.

“I would definitely go to something like this again, but it would have to be a different theme,” said Tran.

There were a handful of people that showed up at the very start of the event. As the evening progressed, more people started to show up. Everyone had a smile on their face, they were taking pictures of the decorations, with their friends and of the cute cupcakes. It appeared that the tea-party-goers were enjoying the evening.

Contact author at jmorrow16@mail.wou.edu

Researching Sister Genevieve Lantz

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

The current exhibit in Hamersly Library is one for the books. After four journals that dated back to World War I were donated to Western, student Max Norr, senior social science major with a history focus, got the chance to research them and turn them into an exhibit.

“They’re four journals that belonged to a nurse in World War I, named Sister Genevieve ‘Birdie’ Lantz, and she was from Canada,” explained Norr. “She moved to Boston to study nursing, and then when the war started, she went over to France with a Harvard Surgical Unit. [The journals] weren’t her diaries, she had her patients, from all of the wards that she worked in and managed, she had her patients write in them. So they would write their experiences, they wrote jokes, they wrote stories, they drew pictures, there’s some amazing art.”

“We knew nothing about Sister Lantz, except that her name was Lantz, because she wrote ‘G. Lantz’ in the journals,” said Norr. “The owners of the journals found them at an estate sale or an antique shop, they found these four books, and they were just looking for somebody to research them. So Dr. Jensen was like, ‘hey, this would be a really cool, I think you should research these. I think that we could make a really good practicum for it.’ So that’s what we did.”

“The goal was to create an online blog exhibit, website, type-thing , and I would find certain entries within the books that I wanted to research further, so I did five, and then one extra for Sister Lantz herself,” Norr said passionately. “I found one on the 1914 Christmas Truce, I did an exhibit on all the art that was in the books, one on propaganda and one on neutrality, and a few other ones. It was amazing because no one had ever seen them before. Nobody had ever researched these, it was all new information, all new material. So it was just me using Ancestry.com, corresponding with other researchers, I’ve talked to people in Australia, Canada, Britain, all these different people, I scoured newspapers for information about the Harvard Surgical Unit. No one knew about this stuff.”

After countless hours of research Norr created a blog called “The Record Keeper,” which you can visit at www.record-keeper.blogspot.com. The journals themselves were found in Klamath Falls, Oregon at an estate sale for one of Sister Lantz’s grandson or son’s home.

“She died in the mid-1960s, so she’s been gone for a while, but it was right here in Oregon. So that’s what’s really cool, we got to make that connection,” said Norr. “She came all the way from Canada, and France from all these different places and her journals ended up in Oregon.”

The exhibit will continue to be in Hamersly Library until summer break begins.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

Get to know a major

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

Western offers a wide variety of degrees that students can major in, many of which students don’t know are offered or know next to nothing about. This week, take a look at what receiving a Bachelor of Arts in humanities with a linguistics focus entails, and the fields of work it can lead to.

Rachel Gries is a senior at Western who is currently in the process of receiving a degree in humanities with a Linguistic focus.

When asked why she decided to become a humanities with a linguistic focus major, Gries replied, “I started doing English actually, because what I really came here for was linguistics. But I’m not really into lit and all that, and most of the English major is all lit classes, which is not great for me.”

“Humanities is just kind of like everything. Some of the focus areas you could do could be Spanish, communications, French, German, linguistics, philosophy, writing. There’s all kinds of stuff humanities encompasses,” explained Gries.

When asked what job she wants to pursue with her linguistics focus Gries replied, “I want to work for Google and work on speech recognition or speech to text.”

“Like with speech to text there are so many words, like merry. Am I saying merry, like joyful, or am I saying marry, like marriage, or am I saying someone’s name?” said Gries.

According to Western’s website the, “Humanities majors and minors explore that unique human creation, language–not only for communication but also in culture, literary art, and philosophical and religious thought.”

Some fields that can be pursued after study linguistics include: teaching English as a second language, education, language documentation, fieldwork, being a consultant on language and teaching at a university level. This is just a short list of the kind of jobs one can pursue as a career after studying linguistics.

When asked what her favorite class that she’s taken for her major was Greis replied, “I really liked Corpus Linguistics, which is like computerized. I put all of the text of Jane Eyre into a corpus, because I had to write a paper about it for another class,” explained Gries. “It was about the supernatural aspects of Jane Eyre. I went through the corpus and used an online tagger, so it finds every word related to religion or the supernatural. So, instead of having to reread the book, looking for every example, I can just search it.”
“I also loved the class Structure of English Grammar. It’s literally about how the English language works. Like, what’s a noun, what’s a verb. I really like the professor for it, and she taught really well, so I looked forward to going to that class. It’s taught by Cornelia Paraskevas.”

When asked why she thinks linguistics is important, Gries replied, “Linguistics applies to a lot of stuff. It changes the way you think about the words you’re saying. Imagine not being able to say ‘in this’ or ‘on that,’ it’s the littlest words that give us the most information about our language.”

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

21 and up

By:  Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

With a nice atmosphere and wide variety of cocktails and wine, the restaurant Crush Wine Bar and Tasting Room gives patrons a place to relax and have a drink. Even college students get tired of the bar scene, and Crush gives customers an opportunity to have a drink without yelling over music. This week I tried one of Crush’s signature cocktails called the Marionberry Whiskey Smash. The cocktail contained muddled mint, lemon, simple syrup, marionberry whiskey and blackberry puree.

When I first got the drink, I expected to be able to really taste and find the whiskey, but was pleasantly surprised with a much stronger taste of mint and lemon, with only a hint of marionberry. Honestly, the mint was my favorite part of the cocktail. Crush used mint that smelled so fresh, as if it had just been picked for my drink.

It took me back to my home laying in my front yard with my nose right next to the fresh mint growing next to our flowers. I’d take a mint leaf and chew on it. Distinctly tasting sweet at first, and then a strange earthy aftertaste. That’s exactly what I was tasting when I was enjoying Crush’s Marionberry Whiskey Smash. I assumed it would taste overwhelmingly like marionberry, but I was excited to taste nostalgia from my childhood in the form of mint.

I give this cocktail five stars and two thumbs way up because of its minty freshness and easy to drink qualities.

Crush Wine Bar and Tasting Room is open Monday through Thursday from 12-10 p.m., Friday from 12-11 p.m. and Saturday from 3-11 p.m. They’re located at 105 Main St. E., in Monmouth. If you’re of age, make sure to pop in and give the Marionberry Whiskey Smash a try.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

A day of celebration

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

On May 19, the Multicultural Student Union hosted their 26th annual Nuestra Fiesta Latina on Western’s campus. The event lasted all day for the community of Western to enjoy. During the day the Werner University Center’s plaza was filled with people who surrounded booths and food carts.

“During our day event, we had churros with ice cream, we had tacos by catering, carnival games that we put out, we had airbrush tattoos and a photo booth that printed actual pictures,” explained Katherine Macias-Torres, a sophomore psychology major and campus advocate for the Multicultural Student Union.

All of the food was fairly inexpensive, for instance the $2 tacos, but some lucky passerby-students received coupons for free churros or tacos. However, the carnival games, photo booth and airbrush tattoos were free to those who wished to enjoy their splendor. The Nuestra Fiesta Latina had three parts in total for the event. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Multicultural Student Union held the festival in the Werner University Plaza. Then from 6:30-8 p.m. they hosted a dinner with comedic entertainment and dancing entertainment and then to finish the celebration, the Multicultural Student Union hosted a dance, or “Baile,” to end the night with a bang.

During the dinner portion of the Nuestra Fiesta Latina, there was live entertainment in the form of Traditional Mexican Dancing and comedians.

“We usually have a mariachi band, but this year’s coordinators wanted to have something else, and something more interactive,” explained Macias-Torres. “So they decided to go with comedians.”

When asked why they think it’s important to have events like this on Western’s campus, Macias-Torres replied, “Because it helps students that identify in these different cultures. It helps them feel more connected to our community. I personally felt more connected last year. Not only did it get me involved in school, but it made me feel more connected as a Latina person, because somebody is acknowledging my culture and not only that, they’re celebrating it.”

“I think that it’s important to note that this event is for everyone it’s not just for Latin identifying people,” said Macias-Torres. “It’s open to the community, so you can come from anywhere and still participate in the event. A lot of people assume it’s just for one demographic, but it’s for everyone.”

Participants of the 26th annual Nuestra Fiesta Latina event got to fill up their stomachs, have some laughs and dance the night away. But in the process, they also got to celebrate and learn about different cultures.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

Helping Western students help others

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

On May 16, the Alternative Break Teams and Service Learning and Career Development Center teamed up to put on the Flea Market for a Cause on the Werner University Center Plaza. The Flee Market contained gently used, donated professional and semi-professional clothes for students of Western to buy.

“This event specifically is to help students who are trying to enter the professional world,” said Courtney Cunningham, a junior early childhood education major. “It helps them start off with a set of attire that’s going to help them be successful in the professional world. It really helps out the students, and we’re thinking of them when we hold these events. Like, ‘what do they need, what do they want and what is going to help them the most?’”

All of the money made from the Flee Market will go towards sending students from the Alternative Break Team to help in different countries around the world. Along with reselling clothes, the Alternative Break Team also made baked goods to sell.

“We have three teams,” explained Cunningham. “We have our Costa Rica team, a Peru team and a Thailand team. The Costa Rica team works with at risk youth, in one of the poorest communities in Costa Rica, and then Peru works with animal care and Thailand specifically helps with education. These events in general are to help our students who are on the teams, be able to go on these trips and experience these new things, and help people all over the world.”

If one felt like they missed the chance to donate or help the Alternative Break Teams travel around the world, it’s okay, because they are always accepting donations.

“This happens every year, so if anyone else still wanted to donate, they can contact Kathryn Plummer in the Service Learning and Career Development Center,” explained Cunningham. “She’s kind of the one running this. You could also contact any of the Alternative Break Team Leaders.”

All clothes donated now can be used for next years Flee Market for a Cause, so feel free to get rid of professional and semi-professional clothes that are no longer needed, to help Western students help others.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

Fighting to improve the lives of Oregon women and girls

By: Paige Scofield
Campus Life Editor

On May 11, Abby’s house hosted guest speaker Emily Evans, the executive director of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon, to present her lecture, “Count Her In.” The director of Abby’s House at Western, Dr. Aislinn Addington, introduced Evans to the full crowd of the Willamette Room, who were eager to hear the presentation.

The Women’s Foundation of Oregon’s “mission is to focus the power of women’s collective resources to improve the lives of women and girls throughout Oregon,” explained Addington. “The ‘Count Her In’ report is the first comprehensive research on this topic for more than 20 years, and now is the most expansive, actionable and inclusive analysis of Oregon women and girls to date.”

Evans explained that the “Count Her In” report was information compiled from different towns in Oregon.

“We made 14 different stops all around the state. We heard from a thousand women and girls. We had sessions in Spanish, Somali, Russian and we heard from a really good cross section based on race, education level, income, geography and age,” explained Evans. “What we heard was a really resounding understanding of what the challenges are for women and girls in Oregon. Turns out women and girls in Oregon know exactly what’s wrong, and what they told us matched up perfectly with the data.”

“If there is one thing, one single sentence that you take away from this session here today, it’s this: women and girls in Oregon are contributing an extraordinary amount to communities all across the state, and in return they’re facing some of the starkest gender inequities in the country,” stated Evans.

Evans wanted to begin with the great things that Oregon women and girls excel at in comparison to other states, rather than begin with the things they lack. So Evans began discussing the, “Eight to Celebrate,” which include: civic engagement, caregiving, minimal violent crime, highest rate of physical activities than any other state, education and health care jobs, generosity with money and time, elected at higher rates in public service than other states and Oregon girls met the state’s 2025 goal for college graduation rates in 2014.

Though these eight achievements are something to celebrate, there are still many things that need to be worked on to improve the lives of women and girls in Oregon, and those are “The Eight that Can’t Wait,” which include: violence against women, systemic racism, the cost of caregiving, gaps in reproductive health access, wage and wealth gap, economic fragility, mental health challenges and the public/private glass ceilings.

“These are the eight issues that rose to the top in three ways,” said Evans. “The first is there was a discrepancy between how men and boys in Oregon were doing, and how women and girls in Oregon were doing. The next is there was a discrepancy between how women and girls in Oregon were doing versus women and girls nationally. And the final one is that these eight were the ones that rose to the top in every single community we visited.”

The “Count Her In” report has put together a list of five things that every Oregonian can do to help make life for Oregon women and girls better, and they are, asking questions, voting, donating, sharing information and recognizing the struggles Oregonian women and girls face.

Contact the author at journalcampuslife@wou.edu

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