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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

Arbor Day Traditions take Root

By: Jenna Beresheim
News Editor

The Arbor Day Foundation boasts Western Oregon University as one of five Oregon campuses to be declared and certified as a Tree Campus USA award recipient. In order to be awarded, five standards must be met.

These five standards are: a campus tree advisory committee, campus tree care plan, campus tree program with dedicated annual expenditures, Arbor Day observance, and a service learning project. Western’s University Tree Advisory Committee is led by Paul Finke, who started off the ceremony at noon.

The committee gathered together for the Arbor Day observance on April 8 and consisted of staff and students alike. The large group clustered near the north entry to campus and listened as Kristin Ramstad of the Oregon Department of Forestry presented her thoughts on trees on campuses, as well as the poem “When I am among the trees” by Mary Oliver.

From there, Ramstad introduced President Rex Fuller and awarded the campus with the Tree Campus USA award. In commemoration of the event, and Arbor Day 2016, a sugar maple tree was planted by the members of the committee.

Next, the group was led around campus to three specific legacy trees out of the total 11 on campus. At each tree, a student presenter explained which tree it was, the scientific names, and some fun facts such as whether the tree was poisonous or endangered.

First seen was a black walnut tree at the northern entry, which Kylee Wiser, a fifth year biology major, explained had often had it’s bark chewed on by Native Americans wishing to alleve toothaches.

The second tree, a Southern catalpa, was located in the Grove near Ackerman. Phillip Van Ginkle, a fifth year psychology major, explained that although the roots were poisonous, the fruit and leaves were not.

“I can attest to that – I had one in my yard when I was growing up, and I would always taste the seeds. They taste awful, but they’re not poisonous. I would not recommend trying it,” said Ginkle.

The tour ended at a petunia tree behind The Cottage, where light refreshments were served as Kathrine Stender, a third year Horticulture major, spoke about the tree and why the Arbor Day event is so important.

“The use of trees on campus for not only beautification, but learning, shows that their presence is vital to the school,” said Stender.

Contact the author at jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter @woujournalnews

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