Mount Hood

Identity Theft event structures discussion around identities

Bailey Thompson | News Editor

Although it can be difficult to completely understand how another person feels, one valuable first step is to talk with them. This is something that Triangle Alliance — Western’s LGBTQ+ social club — and Heritage Hall Government orchestrated on May 23 in the Richard Woodcock Education Center.

Their event, Identity Theft, sought to open a conversation with the campus community about the ways that both sexual identities and gender identities can influence a person’s life — and, more specifically, the way that myths about these identities can be harmful to perpetuate.

Six panelists, holding a variety of LGBTQ+ identities, dedicated their time to talk with members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as their allies, about the unique perspectives that they have gained because of their identities and their other life experiences.

Throughout the course of the panel, a wide range of topics were addressed — from stereotypes about certain identities, to people who are questioning their identities and more.

All in all, the consensus of the group was that these experiences and the discovery of these identities were things that varied from person to person, even if there were a number of common themes running throughout the group.

For instance, when the panelists were asked about when they knew that they identified as something other than heterosexual or cisgender, some of the individuals stated that it was a long process for them to come to this conclusion, some said that they felt confident in their identities from an early age and still more said that they were not sure that the identities that they currently held were the ones they would always identify as.

Related to this, when the panelists discussed their coming out stories, if they had come out to their families at this point in time, their experiences varied, largely depending on how accepting they anticipated their families would be towards them.

The panelists also spent time discussing stereotypes that have impacted them on a day-to-day basis. Among these, panelists shared that it was difficult for them to not fit into the mold that others expected them to — whether this is bisexuals in hetero-passing relationships who feel invalidated in their bisexuality, transgender people who feel the need to dress a certain way in order for people to respect their pronouns or something else along these lines.

On the flip side of this, however, the panelists also shared that there is nothing wrong with enjoying things that may be stereotypical of people in the LGBTQ+ community.

Nearing the end of the panel, when an audience member asked the panel about ways that she can support her sister as someone who has grown up in a religious household, the panelists were clear in their responses: what LGBTQ+ youth need is love and support. While they may not always get the kind of support that they would hope for, having people affirm that they will always care about them can go a long way.

If students at Western would like to attend Triangle Alliance to learn more about this and meet new people, they can visit Triangle Alliance’s Facebook page to determine when they will be meeting during Fall Term.

 

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

BonnaWOU takes the Grove

Caity Healy | Editor-in-Chief

On May 23, the clouds parted as three bands took the stage in the first-ever BonnaWOU festival hosted by SAB. Each band that was involved was local: Jimmy Wolfson, The Ferenjis and Chromatic Colors. Taking place in the Grove from 5 p.m. until about 8 p.m., students and members of the community brought their blankets and made themselves at home on the grass.

Each band performed their set as the sun was shining brightly above the stage that was set up outside. Every band came with their own style, which made it accessible to everyone — there was music that just about everyone could enjoy. All were welcome; some took it as an opportunity to do homework with a show, some just sat and watched and others got up and danced. People came and went all evening as it was a free event, until the music faded that evening with the sunset as a backdrop to a picture-perfect night.

 

Contact the author at howleditor@wou.edu

Photos by Caity Healy

Dr. Oberst retires from Western after 32 years

Bailey Thompson | News Editor

After 32 years at Western, Dr. Sharon Oberst is within her final month as a dance professor and the dance chair for the university. Looking back on those years, Dr. Oberst reflected on how much her position — and the dance department as a whole — have changed over that time period.

“I came in in 1986-7 as a substitute for a dance teacher who was in the hospital… but the lovely division chair at the time liked me and what I was doing and what I brought to the program, and so he created a position for me,” said Oberst. “My job has changed a lot because when I came in there was just the two of us.”

To compare, the dance department now consists of six faculty members, each of which specialize in different styles of dance.

In the time since she has been here, Oberst noted that her position has transitioned from teaching almost every class to being largely administrative and teaching a few specific classes like ballet, which is her specialty. And, moving to the future, Oberst shared an exciting update regarding the future of her position.

“Tim Cowart is going to take my position,” said Oberst. “I’m actually very excited about being able to hand things over to Tim because I think he’s going to bring a lot of fresh energy and fresh ideas… it’s going to be a whole new direction and a whole new direction.”

Cowart currently lives in Pennsylvania and works at Desales University, but he has also taught and choreographed at Western on a couple of occasions — even as recently as two years ago — so he will have some experience as he goes into his new position at Western.

When asked about her feelings about retirement, Oberst had a simple answer:

“I am delighted. I have really loved being here. It’s been a great place to work and there are no bad feelings, but I’m tired … I’ve pretty much been teaching since I was 14 years old. So, I’m ready. But I hope that I’m going out still being enthusiastic and involved.”

When Oberst retires, she would like to do some travelling with her husband and work on some research that she is hoping to publish. She will continue living in Monmouth, both because she enjoys it and because her children live in Oregon as well.

Finally, when asked about what she will miss from her current position, Oberst wasted no time with her answer.

“The students. That’s why I went into this in the first place is that I love to teach, and I love to choreograph on the students. That’s the joy,” said Oberst.

Oberst’s contract at Western ends on June 15 after commencement.

 

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photo by Bailey Thompson

Western hosts its first ever Out of the Darkness Walk

Bailey Thompson | News Editor

In spite of the rain that threatened to spoil the event, Western’s first Out of the Darkness Walk for suicide prevention was a shining example of what can happen when a group of people come together to support a cause that they believe in.

While Out of the Darkness Walks are not new events in general, this one was special because it was the first one that had ever been hosted in Monmouth. Organized by the WOU Wellness Advocacy Group, spearheaded largely by Tim Glascock and Shaylie Pickrell, this event was held on May 17 at Main Street Park.

When people arrived, a number of booths from Western and other local organizations greeted them, offering both their support and resources to attendees. Amongst these groups were WOU Food Pantry, University Housing, Abby’s House, Student Health and Counseling Center and Lines for Life, which is a crisis call center based in Portland.

Kicking off the event, 15 Miles West — Western’s acapella group — performed a number of hit songs as people mingled, visited booths, got registered and picked up their ceremonial beads.

Next, Ryan Price, Oregon and Idaho Area Director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, introduced the featured speaker for the event, a Western Oregon University alumnus named Cody Welty who has shared his story even on platforms as big as NBC’s Today Show.

“It’s really good to be back in Oregon and in Monmouth,” said Welty, a current doctoral student at University of Arizona researching strategies to prevent youth deaths by suicide. “Those of you who do know me probably do know me because of my experience at WOU, either as a writing tutor, a psychology student or hopefully just a friendly face of someone you saw on or near campus.”

Welty then expressed his hope in sharing his story at this event.

“It’s a story of sadness, it’s a story of hope and most importantly it’s a story of recovery. And it’s a similar story to what many of us who are here today may have experienced,” said Welty.

Welty then discussed the way that his connection to suicide began: he was a normal, even successful, high school student who spent years masking the depression that he felt inside. Being a 4.0 student and a three-sport athlete with a supportive family and good friends, he felt that the external image he put out into the world did not match the reality of his health.

“I thought, ‘I’m a man. I can’t talk about how I feel or share this with anyone.’ And so, I shoved it away,” said Welty. “I took all those concerns and pressures and pushed them down somewhere where I could never talk about it.”

From this point, Welty remembers being in a health class and realizing how many of the symptoms of depression and anxiety were things that he had experienced — but he continued to push it down. Eventually, though, this came to a head, and Welty attempted suicide.

“At that point I think I hit my lowest. I felt that I was so much of a failure that I couldn’t even kill myself,” said Welty.

After recovering in the hospital, Welty shared with his parents that he had a new goal.

“I remember telling my family that I wanted to do my best to make sure that there were no other kids like me who felt that they were alone and couldn’t talk to anyone,” said Welty. “Depression doesn’t look like it’s a photo in a textbook. It doesn’t look the same for everyone. I knew it was time to put a face to an illness that they knew about.”

At this point, Welty started going to middle and high schools, sharing his story with kids. And the message that he conveyed to them was the same as the one that he shared at the walk.

“We are not hopeless, we are not powerless and we are not weak,” said Welty. He also impressed upon people that “we can all check on a friend or a loved one. We can all ask for help when we need it… And we can all do our best to help end suicide.”

After his speech, the crowd went through the traditional bead ceremony where people shared stories of different people in their lives who have either struggled with suicide or who have been lost to suicide — partners, children, siblings, parents, self, friends or service member/first responder. With each category, participants were asked to different colors of beads to signify the different connections that they had to suicide, aiming to build a community of support in the process.

At the close, attendees all marched from the park, through Western’s campus and back to the park.

“The walk is really a great time to come together, connect and share your story,” said Price.

 

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photo by Bailey Thompson and Ashlynn Norton

Multicultural Student Union Hosts 28th Annual Nuestra Fiesta Latina

Bailey Thompson | News Editor

With festivities spanning 13 hours, the 28th Annual Nuestra Fiesta Latina was a day filled with celebration of Latin culture. Hosted by Western’s Multicultural Student Union, this event on May 17 had three main phases: the festival, the dinner and entertainment and the baile.

Overall, the goal of the event was simple.

“We strive to promote diversity and cultural awareness throughout the community and campus of Western Oregon University,” said Julissa Chacon Lopez, a sophomore and the freshman advocate for MSU.

To do so, the organization started their event with a festival in the Werner University Center Plaza. This event, which lasted from 11 a.m. -2 p.m., featured a quartet of musicians from Cuba and the United States called Son de Cuba. As this group played music from a variety of Latin genres, students could also enjoy some churros, get an airbrush tattoo, participate in a jalapeño eating contest and more.

Later in the evening, the party moved into the WUC for the next phase of the event: dinner and entertainment. This portion of Nuestra Fiesta Latina was themed for the Mexican state of Michoacán, a region with over four million people on the west coast of Mexico. To celebrate this area, all of the dancers were from Michoacán, monarch butterfly decorations adorned the room and the dinner that they served was also a specialty of Michoacán.

“We wanted to bring in our own culture from Mexico, and we wanted to bring food and music so people can feel a little bit closer to Mexico,” said Chacon Lopez. “So today we had corundas, which is a Michoacán tradition.” Along with this, guests also had the option of a couple of meats, rice and beans.

As guests began eating, they could enjoy live music from Mariachi Los Palmeros. Then, after they had finished, the Mexico en la Piel Dancers performed a number of routines as attendees continued to enjoy the bounty of food.

In between each of these dances, the two coordinators and emcees — Chacon Lopez and Jasmine Sosa, junior and social membership director for MSU — raffled off a number of piñatas and smaller prizes.

When reflecting on what it took to put this event together, Chacon Lopez recalled the many months of work that had gone into hosting such a large-scale program.

“It took since the beginning of the school year when we got an exec board … we separate the whole group into coordinating different events, and this was Jasmine and my event,” said Chacon Lopez. “So, we’ve been planning this since the middle of January.”

The final phase of the event took place an hour after the dinner had ended. The baile, or dance, was an opportunity for community members to let loose, dance and enjoy the musical tastes of DJ Sonido Kora. Back in the Pacific Room, the baile lasted until 1 a.m., a full 13 hours after the festival had begun. After a long day, Nuestra Fiesta Latina had concluded its festivities, but Chacon Lopez hoped that the impact would extend beyond the day.

“There’s a good amount of diversity on our campus, and a lot of them are Latinos and Hispanics,” said Chacon Lopez. “So, we just like to bring the community together as well as others. And it’s just a beautiful thing.”

 

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photos by Bailey Thompson

International Night: Taking Western around the world in one evening

Caity Healy | Editor-in-Chief

For many students at Western, while Monmouth or the surrounding areas may be where they live, it isn’t necessarily what they’d call their “home.” And for some of these students, “home” is somewhere outside of the U.S. To give these students an opportunity to not only share a piece of their culture, but to give them a way to feel home away from home, Western hosted its 48th Annual International Night on May 10.

Before the festivities could begin, International Club had to put in work to make the event as extravagant as it was.

“My team, friends and club officers have helped so much in planning and getting things together for the event,” said Berlyn Buncal, president of International Club. She also added that putting it on took “a lot of work, coordination, communication and trust.”

When the doors opened at 5:30 p.m., the Pacific Room in the Werner University Center began filling with the faces of students, families and staff from all over, ready to experience a night packed with dances, songs and socializing. Welcome to a meal consisting of food from several different countries, the audience grabbed their plates, found a seat and waited for the performances to begin.

For those involved, this night meant a lot to them. It wasn’t only a way for them to show what the club has been doing, but a way to feel connected to the places they call home.

“International Night is a night where I get to learn about different cultures all parts of the world,” said Buncal. “It is an important night to me because we all miss our home, I miss my home. I want to give a chance to all our friends and students a chance to experience home in some sort of way, and we do that with our foods, performances and fashion show.”

And from there, the show began. The audience was presented a show consisting of 10 different performances. Western’s African Dance class performed a dance called the kpanlogo; student Zeya Gao sang a solo performance of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”; Jay Archer performed a violin piece he titled “Ghibli Songs”; Ruijiaming Yang sang “Can’t Love You Enough,” accompanied by Kenneth Soh on guitar; Hawai’i Club performed a dance to “Lei Ho’oheno”; Binit Shrestha played guitar and sang “Kanchi Nani Blues”; Yilei Zhao sang “Eternal Love”; A group of four girls called Heart Dust performed an upbeat dance to “Kill This Love” by Black Pink; Hermanos Del Valle performed a dance titled “Marinera Norteña; and to finish it off, Fili and Family danced in a performance titled “Samoan Sivas.”

When the performances came to a close, the fashion show commenced. Strutting the stage donning the clothes of several different countries, the performers took to the stage in twos. Showing different examples of what each country’s traditional clothing looks like, including the apparel of Mexico, China, Ethiopia, Germany, Japan and more, the models kept the audience in all smiles.

Finally, as this event fell on Mexico’s Mother’s Day, each mother in the audience was asked to stand. Then, those involved in the event delivered a rose to each standing audience member, a gift from the International Club.

At the end of the night, there was a closeness felt amongst many in the Pacific Room, even if they were strangers only hours ago.

“We get to draw closer as a family because we show so much respect for one another and we can represent that throughout the event and our lives,” explained Buncal.

 

Contact the author at howleditor@wou.edu

Photos by Caity Healy

Educators walk out for Student Success Act

Bailey Thompson | News Editor

Rising early, joining together and donning red shirts, Oregon educators in Portland, Salem, Eugene, Medford, Bend and Klamath Falls made a statement on May 8, 2019. With thousands of teachers, students and community members going out into their neighborhoods throughout the state, their message was clear: pass the Student Success Act.

“The Student Success Act is a bill that is designed to start making up for the disinvestment in education that began in the early nineties with Measure 5. It would reduce class sizes, it would provide mental health care, it would provide pre-k funding — it would really do a lot to change our schools and to start to get them back to where they belong,” said Ben Gorman, English teacher at Central High School. “It’s not the end of the road … but this is a real excellent start for our students and what they need.”

On the day of the walkout, a large number of Central School District teachers got up early to stand outside CHS, then go to a larger event in Salem and finally come back to CHS at the end of the day. Community members honked continually in support for those holding signs.

As of May 8, this piece of legislation had passed through the Oregon House of Representatives; however, on May 13, it passed through the Oregon Senate, as well.

When speaking about the motivation for this school walk-out, Gorman shared the sentiment that had led many teachers to protest.

“So often teachers are just so exhausted by a very difficult job, and they say to themselves, ‘I need to focus on my own kids, and I can’t focus on politics of how to support my kids,’” said Gorman. “But we’ve gotten to the point where teachers are saying, ‘Enough is enough. I can’t possibly do this.’”

After educators had protested in a similar way on President’s Day without any reaction from the legislature, Central Education Association President and math teacher Laura Waight described the shift that took place.

“The conversation began to transition to ‘how do we get the legislators’ attention?’ And the only way: shut it down,” said Waight. “Shut it down and show them that we’re willing to take an unpaid day to show them how serious we are.”

While some people may be opposed to the Student Success Act for fear of their taxes raising, Gorman shared why this fear is unfounded.

“One of the things you’ll hear is ‘this is going to be a tax increase on the people in our state,’ and that’s just false. In fact, if it passes, this will be a tax cut for your average Oregonian,” said Gorman.

“What the Student Success Act has done, which is historic in Oregon, is to ask corporations that make a million dollars or more in the state of Oregon for a small tax on that money,” added Waight. “The same corporations which were against something like this (with bills in the past) are now for it — Nike, Powell’s, HP, and some other big Oregon companies are now saying, ‘please tax us because we see the result of having underfunded schools.’”

In the end, both Waight and Gorman asserted that support for students is something that should be a universal goal — not something considered partisan — even if you believe it should be done another way, as approximately 25% of teachers in the district do.

“We can’t say that standing on the street corner or going to Salem is going to change anything, but what we do know for sure is that if we continue not to do anything, then nothing will change,” said Waight. “We have to change the game.”

The final step before the Student Success Act is passed is for it to be signed by Governor Brown.

 

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu

Photos by Bailey Thompson

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