Campus Life – Page 42 – The Western Howl

 by Shannen Brouner

The Journal spoke with Green Dot about their mission on campus and how students can become active bystanders to help diffuse high-risk or potentially harmful situations for others.

Bystander intervention involves indentifying high-risk situations and acquiring the knowledge, tools and confidence to act.

“Confidence holds a lot of people back from acting,” said Stephanie Delker, co-outreach coordinator for Green Dot, a club working to reduce power-based violence.

Bystander theory supports the idea that the more bystanders present in high-risk situations, the less likely they are to take action, she said. However, if even one person stands up, it gives others the courage to do the same.

According to Green Dot, being an active bystander can take many different forms. For example, if you are at a party and happen to see someone add any substance to an unattended drink, you could react by “accidentally” spilling the drink.

In a similar situation, if you saw a friend who had had too much to drink, you could make sure they get home safely, Delker said. Or if you heard a group of people verbally harassing someone you could tell them to stop. In any high-risk situation you can make a decision to do something, and this action, no matter how large or small is what Green Dot advocates for.

Delker explains that being an active bystander can also involve making simple choices about “stepping away from rape culture” and consciously avoiding language and actions that perpetuate rape culture in society.

For more tips about how to be an active bystander, view the October edition of Student Health 101, attend Green Dot meetings on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in Hamersly Library Room 107, or attend one of Green Dot’s bystander intervention trainings.

The Western Howl

Home » Campus Life

Landers closed as enrollment stalls

The closure of Landers was occupancy-driven, according to Associate Provost David McDonald. Last year, Gentle hall was shut down for the same reasons.

“We peaked and kind of stayed right there,” McDonald explained Western’s admissions trajectory. For the last four consecutive years, he added, Western’s enrollment has been relatively stable. “Last year was a one-student difference; you can’t get much more stable than that,” McDonald said.

Western lost 30 students from 2011 to 2012, but added one between 2012 and 2013 according to the Oregon University System (OUS) Institutional Research Services. This is a fairly stable trend, said McDonald; he calls this a plateau Western has reached.

Western’s retention rate for freshmen is 75.1 percent, compared with the OUS average of 82.1 percent, and Western’s graduation rate is at 51.2 percent, while the OUS has a 60.5 percent rate.

The goal, according to McDonald and Tina Fuchs, dean of students, is to have full residence halls on campus. When there are fewer people, shutting down one hall means that the others have higher occupany.

“It’s better for our students this way,” McDonald said. With Landers closed, buildings are fuller and students live in larger community groups.

“Students living on campus are highly successful academically,” said David Sundby, the interim associate director of housing. “That’s why we have that first-year living requirement.” Part of the goal, according to him, is to get freshmen connected to campus. “The best we can do is make the experience as positive as possible,” Sundby said.
With Landers closed, the Housing Office and Physical Plant have a chance to inspect that facility, said Fuchs; this is also a chance to evaluate the entire residential system.

“We want to take a step back, evaluate out facilities and see what it means for the future of housing,” said Fuchs. “What it comes down to is, ‘What are we going to do?’”
Landers was constructed in 1970, making the building 44-years-old this year. According to Fuchs, the rule of thumb is that a building has between 30 and 50 years of good use, so Landers is due for an overhaul. Nevertheless, it remains structurally sound.

“That’s a long time for a facility to be operating without major improvements,” said Fuchs.
A committee will be formed soon to decide what to do with Landers. They will be looking also at Barnum, Butler and Gentle Halls. Fuchs will be on the committee, as well as representatives from the Physical Plant as well as student representatives.

“Trying to build housing without student input, that would be ridiculous,” said Fuchs. “The goal is to get feedback going on.” She hopes to update one floor of Landers and then get input on the improvements before continuing.
According to Fuchs, the group will be guided in part by Western’s master plan, which gives some goals and objectives for housing, but won’t be tightly restricted.

“It’s a good roadmap for us to at least use as a guide, but I also recognize that we have limitations in terms of what we can do,” said Fuchs. Some of those are fiscal limitations, but there are also challenges in dealing with older buildings as well.
For example, Landers was constructed with cinderblocks, which makes full renovations challenging, since those walls are difficult to work with.

“This is not a decision that I would take lightly,” said Fuchs.
According to Fuchs, students tend to gravitate towards the newer residence halls on campus, Heritage and Ackerman, so it makes sense to shift everyone into those locations.

“We went through last year with a lot of empty beds in all our buildings,” said Fuchs.
Plans for the following year are made from projections that are based on numbers of applications for housing received each week. Over time, said Sundby, those estimates become clearer, yielding more accurate predictions for the future.

“More students leave over the course of the year than come in,” said Sundby. This attrition means that, even by the end of the year, fewer people live in on-campus housing; according to Sundby, that makes it important to start with fuller rather than emptier buildings.

The closure of Landers is projected to save Western about $200,000 dollars over the course of this year.

“It helps offset any other expenses,” Fuchs said. “We don’t have as much revenue because we don’t have as many people living on campus.”

The Western Howl

Home » Campus Life

SPEAK: Raising Awareness about Eating Disorders

By Katrina Penaflor

Nearly 20% of women and 10% of men on a college campus have an eating disorder

The organization, SPEAK, which stands for Students Promoting Equity, Activism and Knowledge, put together a special presentation Wednesday, Oct. 15, to bring awareness to students about eating disorders. The two speakers, Amy Hammermeister and Emily Swart, helped dismiss common misconceptions about eating disorders and shared their own personal insight.

The presentation began with a video of poetry slammer, Katie Makkai, defining the word “pretty”. Katie spoke with passion and enthusiasm and made it known that the word “pretty” should not define a woman and society needs to stop enforcing what they think makes a person “attractive”.

Following the video, Hammermeister, a professor of Nutrition and Human Sexuality, presented. She presented a PowerPoint on disordered eating and eating disorders. The difference between the two is that disordered eating, for example chronic dieting, is a precursor for an eating disorder. It can have severe health risks, like poor nutrition and low energy.

Commonly undiagnosed by doctors and physicians, disordered eating is typically not considered a severe enough condition or problem to be labeled a disorder. The issue with this is that not enough people receive the help needed when dealing with disordered eating. An eating disorder, as defined by Hammermeister is, “[a] psychiatric disorder that must be clinically diagnosed by a physician.” Some examples are anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating.

Eating disorders can be set off by a variety of triggers like family stress, off handed comments about a person’s body, unrealistic media images, body image or sociocultural values. Hammermeister provided some valuable information on ways to offset these triggers. Intuitive eating is one, respecting a body’s signals of hunger, gentle nutrition and learning to reject a diet mentality can all help a person make peace with food and keep their body healthy.

The next speaker was Swart, a receptionist at The Cottage and a board assistant. She gave an emotional and powerful talk about her personal experience with an eating disorder. She spoke openly about her battle with anorexia and how she was able to recover from it.

It took strength and support from friends and family to learn that, “self-care is not selfish.” Swart finds it important to bring eating disorders into the light, so that people can become more aware and knowledgeable about them.

Loving and learning to be comfortable with one’s body is immensely important, like Swart said, “life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks”.

Taking Action

Landers closed as enrollment stalls

SPEAK: Raising Awareness about Eating Disorders

Tools

Resources