Mount Hood

Obama surprises students

By: Jenna Beresheim
News Editor

On April 28, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary was busy speaking to a crowd of college journalists gathered in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room when the President of the United States showed up for a surprise visit.
“I hear there’s some hotshot journalists in here,” said President Barack Obama as he approached the podium where Earnest stood. “I heard you guys were around today, so I wanted to stop by and say hello.”
The event, which hosted college journalists from across 28 states, was held in Washington D.C. within the White House itself. Issues relevant to college in the United States, such as Title IX initiatives and student loan debt, were covered as part of the process.
Going with the theme, Obama stated that he had some breaking news for the new generation of reporters.
The President stated that he intends to enroll 2 million more individuals into the Pay As You Earn program. This program caps the amount of student debt loans that a borrower has to repay to 10 percent of their monthly income. This plan would hopefully take place by April 2017.
Community colleges were not forgotten either, being approached as an item that may become free in the future with federal support.
“I’m proud of the work we’ve done in education to make sure that millions of kids who previously couldn’t afford to go to college can,” the President said.
To see the official White House recording of the event, visit http://1.usa.gov/1TuZZN7
Contact the author at Jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter @WOUjournalnews

Oregon Senator cosponsors campus sexual assault bill

By: Conner Williams
Editor-in-Chief

A bill formed last year addressing sexual assault on college campuses is being urged in part by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and 34 other cosponsors to be passed by the Senate immediately.

After being idle for about nine months, the bill, titled the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, would “ensure campus sexual assault cases are handled with professionalism and fairness to better protect and empower students, and would provide colleges and universities with incentives to solve the problem of sexual assault on their campuses,” according to a statement from Hank Stern, Wyden’s press secretary.

“Ensuring the most basic protection – safety – for young people trying to get an education ought to be foremost in our minds,” Wyden said in the statement.

Of the bill’s 35 cosponsors, 22 are Democrats, 12 are Republicans, and one is an Independent. The bill is being pushed as a strongly bipartisan effort to address many of the issues relating to sexual assault on college campuses. The bill was originally introduced to the Senate in February 2015, was then reviewed by a committee in late July 2015, and has since gained some headway in being brought back into the spotlight in hopes of being passed.

If passed, the bill would do the following: establish new campus resources and support services for student survivors, ensure minimum training standards for on-campus personnel, create new transparency requirements, require a uniform discipline process and coordination with law enforcement, and establish enforceable Title IX penalties and stiffer penalties for Clery Act violations.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that college campuses reported more than 6,700 forcible sex offenses in 2014. However, a study from the Department of Justice claims that that figure may be underreported by at least four times the true amount.

For Western, data shows that there were five occurrences of rape on campus in 2014, and one case of rape in on-campus student-housing facilities.

Rebecca Chiles, director of Campus Public Safety at Western, said that the main goal to combat sexual assault is to provide tactics that address preventative measures, rather than simply resources for after the fact.

“We have so many resources available for people here on campus,” said Chiles. “We want it to be confronted before it happens and to be stopped, we don’t want it to just be a resource place for after it happens.”

Chiles also noted that if a student reports an instance of sexual assault to Public Safety, the department cannot legally report it to the local law enforcement agency.

“The victim has to say, ‘I want this reported.’ They have to decide if it will be reported to the police or not,” said Chiles.

Chiles said that Public Safety works with student leaders on campus, including Resident Advisers, PLUS Team leaders, and Summer Bridge leaders, among others.

“It’s about education, and it’s about encouraging people to report [instances] that may not rise to the level of sexual assault, but could still be considered inappropriate,” said Chiles.

“I would encourage people to speak up and speak out, and to not let this stuff go unnoticed,” said Chiles. “Call out people’s behavior that is inappropriate, unhealthy, and, especially, criminal.”

Contact the author at journaleditor@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalEIC

This week in WOU history

By: Alvin Wilson
Staff Writer

May 3, 1998, CampuScreen Shot 2016-05-01 at 8.50.35 PMs Public Safety responded to a report of a man wielding a handgun outside of Valsetz Dining Hall. Five police cars promptly arrived on campus only to discover that the handgun was a toy cap gun. The cap gun was a prop being used by actors for WSTV, Western’s former student-produced television station. The students involved, despite having a reasonable excuse for possessing the gun look-alike, faced charges of inciting a riot and disorderly conduct.

May 6, 2005, students in professor Jordan Hofer’s Anthropology 399 class prepared fundraisers in an attempt to figuratively adopt a chimpanzee. The final project for this Primatology course, instead of a paper or speech, was to raise funds to sponsor an orphaned chimpanzee with the Jane Goodall Institute. One fundraiser was a raffle for a gift basket which included a stuffed chimp, candy, and a movie coupon from Blockbuster.

Oregon DHS fails all 13 federal child care standards

By: Jenna Beresheim
News Editor

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 8.50.07 PM
Recent federal report findings regarding Oregon’s Department of Human Services’ responsiveness to child welfare concerns show the department is failing in all 13 standards.

Originally, a 2008 review reported that the state’s department was failing in 11 of 13 standards. With the new 140-page assessment is required every six years and directly impacts federal funding.

After the results of the 2008 assessment, Human Services was given an implementation plan to bring the department back up within standard range.

However director Clyde Saiki wrote an email to all state legislators stating that it was clear the agency did not appropriately implement or track the plan.

The assessment covers areas of child welfare such as the amount of child maltreatment cases, how many of those cases were recurrent, cases that were not conducted with sufficient investigations, and the timeliness of how cases were handled.

Current assessment results, reported by the Statesman Journal, show only 50 percent of cases were addressed in a timely manner, with some of these cases receiving timely responses 15.5 percent of the time.

Due to the shortcomings within the department now presented with this recent assessment, Governor Kate Brown stated that she is disappointed with the review and has ordered an investigation.

Becca Philippi, a 2016 WOU graduate in early childhood education, reported having her own difficulties with Child Protective Services.

“I worked with preschool age children from at-risk families, and we worked closely with [Child Protective Services] on several issues,” said Philippi. “They are severely understaffed there and have way too much on their caseload.”

Philippi mirrored the problems stated in the report, saying, “… issues are not responded to in time or sometimes fell through the cracks completely.”

“When I worked in the public schools, there wasn’t a system in place, and there were multiple instances where I was concerned for a student but frustrated that I couldn’t help the child farther than reporting what I noticed,” said Philippi.

Multiple times within her work, Philippi dealt with students coming into class exhausted or hungry with stories of not eating or sleeping.

Brandon Sherrard, a 2015 Western graduate with an education degree, now works as a licensed substitute teacher who is a mandatory reporter.

“I have no experience with reporting cases as of today,” said Sherrard. “This news is a shock. [It] makes me feel like we’re failing our children.”

If it is suspected that a child is being abused or neglected, please contact your local Department of Human Services office or the police immediately. Polk County has a dedicated child abuse hotline, which can be reached at 503-378-6704 or the Toll Free Marion County Human Services office at 800-854-3508.

Contact the author at Jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter at @WOUjournalnews.

What’s in a delegate?

By: Conner Williams
Editor-in-Chief

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If you’ve been paying attention to this election cycle, you’ve likely heard the term “delegate” being tossed around quite a bit. The process for electing a new president is quite complex, and there are many moving cogs in the machine that is our democratic system.

To start, we’ve got the presidential primaries. These decide which candidate from each political party will be selected as that party’s nominee for the presidency. The voters cast their votes, and those votes are then converted into delegates. Those delegates are party officials from each state that are pledged to vote for the candidate represented by the people’s votes. Each state has a different amount based on its population, and if a candidate reaches a certain number of delegates before their party’s national convention, they will have secured the party’s nomination for the presidency. For the Republicans, 1,237 delegates are needed in order to secure the nomination; for the Democrats, 2,383 delegates are needed.

However, the process for how a candidate earns the votes of the delegates is a bit strange as well. For example, if a candidate wins delegates in a state and then later drops out of the race, what happens to those delegates? Well, they are then awarded to a different candidate.

In addition to regular delegates, there are also superdelegates that are a part of the system, and this is where things get a bit more complicated. First, a quick definition: superdelegates are restricted to the Democratic Party, and they are delegates that are free to support any candidate at the party’s national convention. So, even if one candidate won the delegate count for a certain state, that state’s superdelegate count could, in turn, vote for a different candidate than the one the voters cast their votes for during the primary.

ASWOU Elections Update

By: Jenna Beresheim
News Editor

ASWOU elections were upon Western’s campus once more the week of April 18 with booths and multiple events lined up throughout the week to draw in voters.

“This year we had seven events on campus ranging from campus-focused to residence Screen Shot 2016-04-25 at 7.13.26 PMhall-focused. These events provided a grueling schedule for those of us running them, but it has been more than worth it seeing the students get involved,” said Jenesa Ross, a senior biology major and Judicial Administrator for ASWOU, as well as the current Elections Committee Chair.

“There are a lot more people running and even more of them voting this year,” said Jaime Hernandez, a sophomore political science major, and candidate for ASWOU president.

“There were more votes by Tuesday this year than there were all week in last year’s [election],” said Cynthia Olivares, a sophomore early childhood education major. Olivares is also running for vice president of ASWOU this year.

There are nine candidates overall this year, and the 10 percent minimum requirement for voting had already been surpassed by Thursday.

“I think some of these will be close races,” said Ross, “several opposing candidates are working very hard to get their name out there to the students.”

Endangered English Majors

By: Jenna Beresheim
News Editor

Western Oregon University’s English department has seen a rapid decline in English majors within the last few years.

In 2010, there were a recorded 137 English majors, which soon dwindled down to a meager 56 this year. Out of those 56 there are 25 recorded seniors, with only 10 seniors applied to graduate at the end of this term.

An average English major graduates from Western with 211 credits, an additional 31 credits than needed, which is the equivalent of having another year of study.

A team of professors within the department is aiming to pinpoint the cause behind dwindling numbers in the program.

Dr. Thomas Rand, Dr. Cornelia Paraskevas, Dr. Katherine Schmidt, and Dr. Carol Harding are a few of the members interested in improving sign-up rates within the English degree focus.

“Our numbers in English are down, and we’re trying to survey why interest is so low,” said Harding, the Humanities Division Chair.

“If anyone who reads this chose not to take an English major route, we would gladly listen as to why that happened,” continued Harding.

A survey was sent out within the first week of Spring Term to English-focused classes and asked questions regarding which students were English majors, when they had become these majors, and so on.

“In my current Writing 230 class, I only have 5 English majors,” said Schmidt, professor and Writing Center director.

Schmidt reported that most of her students were writing minors or students outside of the discipline seeking to fulfill their writing intensive requirements.

“Too many of my students don’t know the answers to basic questions like how many upper-division credits are required to graduate. This is one area that impacts English majors who are transfers because the 41-credit core requirement includes only 9 upper-division credits. This puts transfer students at a great disadvantage, especially when they must also complete 2 years of lower-division foreign language as part of the BA requirement,” said Schmidt.

Speculation around the cause falls into a few categories, and in turn may be a combination of all of them.

“I think part of it is in the decline in the market for English teachers,” Harding said, “but people associate the major with teaching only – there are so many other things out there that you can use it for.”

“I believe advising may be one root of the problem. We love our program and students, but we can do better,” admitted Schmidt.

“I was trying to get into [ENG] 318 [Contemporary Literary Theory] for several terms, but it was always offered during an upper division class I also needed, so I always had to choose,” said Emily Walley, a fifth year double degree major in English and history.

The English department hopes to not only trim down students’ time within the program to get them back on track to graduate in four years, but also boost the advising process to eliminate any confusion connected with degree requirements.

If you have any feedback for the English department pertaining to issues addressed within this article, please contact them at 503-838-8258, or email Dr. Thomas Rand at randt@wou.edu

Contact the author at Jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter @WOUjournalnews.

Clinton wants to “get to the bottom” of the alien conspiracy

By: Jamal Smith
Sports Editor

Are we alone in the universe? Are extraterrestrials visiting our planet? What may seem like script from a science fiction movie are actually serious questions posed by many Americans. Well, fear not, Hillary Clinton just announced that if elected president, she will “get to the bottom” of the alien conspiracy.

It’s no secret that the government keeps things from the American public, either to protect the national security of the nation, or because the people in charge believe that the American public can’t handle the truth. However, recent comments made by Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and by Clinton herself, suggest that Clinton believes that the American public can indeed handle the truth.

Posada, who heads Clinton’s presidential campaign, was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on April 7 if Clinton would release information concerning Area 51 and UFOs if she were elected into office.

“What I’ve talked to the secretary about, and what she’s said now in public, is that if she’s elected president, when she gets into office, she’ll ask for as many records as the United States federal government has to be declassified, and I think that’s a commitment that she intends to keep and that I intend to hold her to,” answered Podesta.

When Tapper asked Posada if he had personally seen UFO documents during his time serving as the White House Chief of Staff, Posada tip-toed around the question and responded by stating, “President Clinton asked for some information about some of those things, and in particular, information about what is going on at Area 51. But I think that the U.S. government could do a much better job in answering the quite legitimate questions that people have about what’s going on with unidentified aerial phenomenon.”

Clinton has also recently commented on the issue, and given hope to conspiracy theorists. In an interview in late December with a New Hampshire reporter from the Conway Daily Sun, Clinton was asked about her husband’s comments on national television where he said, “If we were visited [by aliens] someday, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

She responded by stating, “I think we may have been [visited already]. We don’t know for sure.” Clinton also pledged to “get to the bottom of it.”

Then, on March 24, Clinton appeared as a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Kimmel, who has asked both Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton questions pertaining to UFOs, asked Clinton if she would be more successful than her husband in attempting to find and release government documents concerning UFO’s.

“I would like to go into those files and, hopefully, make as much of that public as possible,” said Clinton. “If there’s nothing there, let’s tell people there’s nothing there. If there is something there, unless it’s a treat to national security, I think we ought to share it with the public.”

Contact the author at jsmith15@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalsportWOU.

Baby, I got your money

By: Alvin Wilson 
Staff Writer

Many students today are only able to attend college with the help of student loans. But what would happen if the students borrowing that money weren’t able to pay it back?Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 10.05.42 PM

According to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal, more than 40 percent of people with student loans are either behind on payments or have received permission to postpone payments.

Roughly 16 percent of those people have defaulted on their student loans, meaning they have gone at least 270 days without making a payment.

John Leadley, professor of economics at Western, is critical of the numbers in the article because of the nature of student loans. Because of this, he said the percentages may be inflated.

“When you say there’s a high percentage of people who aren’t paying, that’s going to be a higher percentage than it is for virtually any other kind of loan,” said Leadley. “These are loans that they never take off the books.”

Unlike other kinds of loans, Leadley said, student loans don’t disappear.

“If you have a car loan and you stop paying, at some point they’re just going to write it off,” he said. “They’re going to recover what they can by taking back your car, and that loan is now history. If you declare bankruptcy, that loan can be wiped out. Student loans never go away.”

Leadley said that the accumulated bad history of student loans, which goes back much further than the history of other loans, can inflate the number.

Something else that inflates the number is the prevalence of predatory lending in for-profit institutions.

According to a report by the Brookings Institution, an organization that reports on economic activity, 13 of the 25 institutions where students hold the most debt are for-profit.

“What you hear the most about in the news are these student loans from for-profit institutions,” said Leadley. “If you’re applying for a student loan, the lender doesn’t ask if it makes sense for you in any way.”

Leadley said he thinks the predatory lending habits of for-profit institutions contribute to the problem.

“Part of it is the for-profit side seeing this as money for them, and not really caring if the student is ever going to get a job to pay it back,” he said. “If I’m lending money, and the federal government guarantees that I’ll get my money back if the student defaults, what incentive do I have to check?”

Western has one of the lower student loan default rates for Oregon universities, according to Collegemeasures.org, coming in at 6.1 percent. That puts us between University of Oregon (4.4 percent) and Southern Oregon University (8.7 percent). We’re a long way from being in danger.

Leadley still thinks Western students should start looking at loans in a way that reduces their odds of being in the 43 percent of non-payers.

“If I was a student, I would want to ask myself what the implications of taking out that much debt for my degree are,” said Leadly. “Get good career and academic advising. Do research about potential salaries. Ask yourself what your loan payments might be like. Take those things into consideration.”

Contact the author at awilson15@wou.edu or on Twitter @awilsonjournal.

Microsoft’s AI chatbot ‘Tay’ turned into a PR disaster

 
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By: Jamal Smith 
Sports Editor

Microsoft unveiled its Twitter chatbot called Tay on March 23. According to the company, Tay was created as an experiment in “conversational understanding.” The more Twitter users engaged with Tay, the more it would learn and mimic what it saw. The only problem: Tay wound up being a racist, fascist, drugged-out asshole.

Microsoft designed Tay to mimic millennials’ speaking styles; however, the experiment worked a little too efficiently and quickly spiraled out of control. The artificial intelligence debacle started with an innocent and cheerful first tweet of, “Humans are super cool!” However, as time went by, Tay’s tweets kept getting more and more disturbing.

Some of the offensive tweets were the direct effect of Twitter users asking the chatbot to repeat their offensive posts, to which Tay obliged. Other times, Tay didn’t need the help of social media trolls to figure out how to be offensive. In one instance, when a user asked Tay if the Holocaust happened, Tay replied: “it was made up ?.” Tay also tweeted, “Hitler was right.”

Tay had some things to say on the presidential candidates as well. One tweet said, “Have you accepted Donald Trump as your lord and personal saviour yet?” Another of Tay’s tweets read, “ted cruz would never have been satisfied with ruining the lives of only 5 innocent people.”

24 hours into the experiment, Microsoft took Tay offline and released this statement on their web site: “We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay.”

“Tay is now offline and we’ll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values,” the statement concluded.

Then, a few days later, Microsoft put Tay back online with the hopes that they had worked out the bugs; however, it soon became clear it didn’t work when she tweeted, “kush! [I’m smoking kush in front of the police].” Microsoft immediately pulled her offline and set her profile to private.

So, what does the Tay experiment teach us about the current human condition? Tay wasn’t programed to be a racist or a fascist, but rather mimicked what it saw from others. While some people believe that Microsoft’s experiment was a success because Tay effectively mimicked and interacted with other users, others view it as a complete failure because the experiment quickly spiraled out of control.

Contact the author at jsmith15@wou.edu or on Twitter @woujournalsport

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