the vancougar: december 4, 2008

8/14/2019 The VanCougar: December 4, 2008

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It’s the most wonderful timeof the year, or so we’re told. As westudents end our semester and theholiday season enters our minds,we oen get overloaded or over-whelmed. Or just plain panicked! So,what should we do to maintain oursanity—and get good grades—whilemaking sure everyone in your familyhas a nice holiday season?

Dr. William Meek, the campus

counselor proved to be an excellentresource for good answers on whatwe should do to survive this Decem- ber. I asked him what causes all thestress that we get this time of the year.The question may seem easy, but ad-dressing “the why” can shed light onmore specic causes and help us un-derstand why we can feel like we aregoing to explode.

“ P r e s s u r ecranks up for manypeople at the end ofthe semester sincethe major projectsand tests for classesare oen due,” saidMeek. “For many people, when the

stakes go up so does the stress level.Some of that is benecial, but it can become overwhelming and negative-ly impact performance.”

Obvious, yes, but sometimesoverlooked because our minds areso overloaded that we don’t take thetime to reect on the whys of every-

thingg o i n g

around us. Now

that we understand the why behind our pressure, lets see on whatwe can do about it.

According to Meek, “There area wide variety of techniques peoplecan use and easily nd online, butnothing will replace good planning,consistent performance throughoutthe semester, and the ability to thinkthrough the complex problems.

“However, ifthere is onething peopleshould try anddo…take goodcare of their

physical health.

Sleeping, eating well, and exercisingare extremely important for us dur-ing times of high stress, and those areusually the rst things we compro-mise.”

“Stay focused on what is im-portant, trying to remain pr es -ent-focused rather than past/future-focused.”

Sleep-ing and eating well sound

good, but is it really thateective? Yes. It may sound

crazy, but if you do take/nd/makethe time to do those things, you willnd yourself being more productiveand most of all, less stressed. Meekemphasized this point, “It’s never toolate to start eating beer, exercisingmore, and sleeping a good amount.”

What about the people out therewho are so overwhelmed that evensuch techniques would not be enoughfor them? Meek has advice for this aswell, “If anyone is at a more seriouslevel [of stress] then it could be im-portant to nd some help quickly—whether that is coming to see me fora few sessions to help cope with theend of the semester and stay at a highlevel of functioning, or moving to-ward something else that has workedin the past.”

The largest problem for studentsat winter semester’s end is the “double whammy.”

I l l u s t r a t i o n b y D a n i e l l e M o s i e r

HOME for the

HOLIDAYS

Recipes and More

The Eyes, Ears and Voice of the Students at WSU-V

n FEATURES, 18 & 19

By Jake KleinschmidtThe VanCougar

n SPORTS, 10 & 11

Sanely Managingthe Festivities andFinals Frenzy

VanCougar reporters Katie Wellsand Kati Hughes took the rooter bus to Pullman to bring you their report from the sidelines.

As the term comes to a close

things are picking up at the Van-Cougar oce. The Fall editorialsta are moving out and makingway for a new Spring editorialsta. Even as the nal issue of thenewspaper for this semester was being completed, Katie Wells andMichael Hatch were making plansfor the upcoming term.

On Friday, November 14, Ka-tie Wells was voted in by the WSU-V Student Media Board (SMB) asthe Spring 2009 editor in chief ofthe VanCougar. On the same daythe SMB conrmed Michael Hatchas the Spring ’09 managing editor.Both have been working for publi-

cations for years.Katie Wells has been the Van-Cougar’s Sports and Recreationeditor for the Fall semester. Shehas aended sports events, pho-tographed them, wrien articles,and laid out the sports section forevery issue this semester. In ad-dition to her experience here atWSU-V, she has had experienceworking for high school publica-tions.

As editor-in-chief, Wells hassaid that she plans to focus moreon “hard news” rather than fea-tures. “I hope to get the reportersmore involved with the studentshere so they get more quotes and

personal stories about campus lifeand less narrative style writing,”says Wells. “Hopefully soon thelines of communication betweenour sta and the campus as awhole will improve,” says Wells,“and we will be able to cover ‘hardnews’ as it happens.”

Wells also plans to try and im-prove readership of the newspa-per. “I want to continue movingthe VanCougar forward in a waythat gets more people interestedin reading it.” Aside from theseplans, only time will tell what ex-citing changes will come out of thepaper this semester.

Michael Hatch has workedin a number of capacities at theVanCougar for the past two years.Hatch’s previous positions include

copy editor, layout assistant, andweb editor. Hatch has said that hehas plans to improve the VanCou-gar website. “The big thing I’mgoing to be focusing on is a digitalVanCougar, which Greg and Katihave started,” says Hatch. “I wantto continue improving the Van-Cougar’s online presence.”

With news media in generalmoving towards an electronic me-dium, Hatch is planning to keepup with the times. In additionto improving the website, Hatchplans to improve campus con-nectedness. “I want to reach outto all of the departments to gatherinfo about events and fun things

happening on campus [as well as] beer inform and promote gen-eral on-campus enthusiasm,” saysHatch. “I also want to improvemanagerial structure and organi-zation.”

The outgoing editors are con-dent that Wells and Hatch will besuccessful in the upcoming semes-ter.

The position of Sports andRecreation Editor is currentlyopen now that Katie Wells hasmoved up in the ranks. Studentsinterested may inquire by e-mail-ing the new editors at [email protected] or by llingout an application and turning itin to the VanCougar oce.

By Kati HughesThe VanCougar

New editors take helm

In this issue:

Washington State University Vancouver December 4, 2008 www.vancougar.com

n A.C.E., 9

Apple CupPhoto Spread

Happy

Holidays

Handling Holiday Hassles

Katie Wells and Michael Hatch poseoutside o the VanCougar ofce justater they were voted in by the Stu-dent Media Board.

Can a tree give joy?

The Student Business Organi-zation (SBO) hopes you’ll partnerwith them in the business of mak-

ing Christmas bright for local chil-dren. In cooperation with the Van-couver YWCA the SBO has set up“Giving Trees” about the campus.

“The Giving Tree is a greatopportunity for WSU students togive back to the community,” saidSBO president Ashley Cormican.“The YWCA is in desperate needof gis especially with the econo-my the way it is today.”

It works like this: You stop by the “tree” and pick up a “gitag” that features a child’s rstname and a gi they would love tohave. The tag is also coded so thatthe gi will get to the right child.Gis range from about 50 centsto $25—a Matchbox car to a win-

ter coat perhaps. You buy the giand return it to the collection siteon campus and a child’s Christmaslights up!

Many of these children comefrom single parent homes withminimum wage incomes. We’re alla bit more strapped these days, butthink how good you’ll feel in giv-ing such a big smile this holidayseason. Why not stop by one of thedisplays and check it out? See thedisplay ad on the back page for lo-cations and more information.

Students can also get involvedwith the Student Business Orga-nization (SBO) by aending ourupcoming meeting on Tuesday,December 9th at 3:00 pm in VLIB

260.

“Stay focused on what isimportant, trying to remainpresent-focused rather than

past/future-focused.”

WICKED A Review

n Hassles, 5



December 4, 2008 3OPINION

I read the news today, oh boyAs I depart I want to recognize

and thank all of the great writers andartists that I’ve had the chance to workwith at The VanCougar. Remarkablepeople every one of them. A variety ofpersonalities, talents and strengths allmade the experience special. Some-times I mentored, sometimes I learned.What a wonderful exchange of ideas!

A special thanks to my co-editor,

Kati Hughes, and our advisor, DeanBaker. Both were essential to my sanity.Saying goodbye is never easy; movingon and leaving behind—dicult. But, Ido so with condence in the new editors(Katie Wells and Michael Hatch), fondmemories (mostly), and well wishes.

It will be interesting to see whatthe new editorial sta does with thisrag. Or, for that maer, what it be-comes in the next few years. The news-paper industry is changing, you know.There’s talk of The Columbian goingunder. Other dailies have folded ortransformed themselves into weeklies.

The fact is that most younger folksget their news online and through oth-er electronic sources; they don’t readnewspapers. The news-in-print as weknow it will likely soon come to end.

Sure, a few papers will morphinto something new—a local news-mag, or some ‘zine hybrid perhaps. Butmost likely there will be a convergenceof technology—streaming web-basedTV—that will deliver interactive, mul-timedia news content.

That means it’s time to prepare.The VanCougar, along with the DTCprogram, must look into the possibili-ties of new media—podcasts, blogs,facebook, twier, ickr, youtube…etc.As news reporters transform into “con-

tent providers,” new talents and skillswill be required. However, good newswriting, will always be foremost. Insome ways I wish I could be here to aidin the transition.

Let’s get physicalAnd speaking of transitions: Did

you take the Recreation Survey? WillThe VanCougar see the survey results?Will the raw data be released or somespin version? Student Governmentneeds to hear your voice on this issue.Do you really want to have $300 persemester added to YOUR tuition for a

Rec Center? Would you get that muchuse out of it?

We’re still a commuter campus.Many of us have jobs and families. Dowe have time? Most of us don’t, so whyshould we have to pay for it? Wouldn’tthe money be beer spent on academ-ics? I’m all for physical education, butdid you know the Salmon Creek Gold’sGym oers student memberships forless than $30/month (less than $120/se-mester). $300? Think about it. Wouldn’tthat be beer spent on parking, per-haps?

Pave paradise and put up a parking

lot And so, as I exit the Orange lotfor the last time I will breathe a sigh ofrelief. I will also oer up a nal prayerfor those le behind to shell out theirhard-earned cash for a place to park. [Iguess it could be worse, see the article“Worth the commute if it doesn’t killyou” in this issue.]

So okay, I’ve made my case, I’veset my plea; if change be in order it willhappen only with even-handed pres-sure from a good number of studentsspeaking out. I’ve heard the murmur-ings; now come out and make it of-cial—speak your mind! Parking feesaer all are part of our educational costand as such should be included in theprice of tuition. It makes more sensethan a Rec Center. Amen?

Four more things: 1) Tia Oster-gren won the hoody donated by theBookie for answering last issue’s ques-tion. The headings were rst lines fromthree Charles Dicken’s classics—A Taleof Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, andThe Pickwick Papers. 2) Those “ban-nering” union folks at the boom of thedrive—are we just ignoring them? Let’snot. [See the related article in this issueand, again, speak your mind.] 3) Kudosto WSU’s President Floyd for turningdown his proposed raise. I hope he’ll

get by okay on the $600,000 a year healready gets. 4) Do let our nation’s newPresident Elect know we want out ofIraq. Peace. Hasta la Vista!

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PUBLIC NOTICEHearing on Proposed Amendment to the

Washington Administrative Code--WSU Policy on Student Education Records

Washington State University will conduct a public hearing on revision ofWAC 504-21 – University Policy on Student Education Records on December11, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. in Lighty Student Services Building, Room 405, Pullman,WA 99164. Notice of this public hearing is hereby given in accordance withprovisions of RCW 34.05.320(4). The University intends to amend the WACrules in order to accommodate administrative and location changes and toclarify the procedures for student requests to dispute and seek amendmentto student education records. The University also intends to add graduateappointment and assignment to the denition of directory information.

The University will adopt the amendment based on the statutory authorityfound in RCW 28B.30.150.

You may review the proposed amendments in the Oce of Procedures, Re-cords, and Forms, Information Technology Building, Room 3089, or by goingto the website at hp://www.wsu.edu/~forms/ProposedWAC.html. You maytestify at this meeting. You may also direct wrien comments to Ralph Jenks,Director of Procedures, Records, and Forms, Rules Coordinator, mail code1225, Pullman, WA 99164; e-mail [email protected]; fax 335-3969.

Submit all wrien comments by 5:00 p.m., December 11, 2008.

Caffein’dKati’s curiously captivating

coffee-addled commentary

My time at the VanCougar iscoming to an end, and the sameis true for coee shops all overtown. Small café’s are currently being ground into the ground

by the recent crash in the econo-my. In my nal Caein’d article,I thought I would take the timeto call aention to the dire needof small businesses like many of the coee shops I review.

When I reviewed CremaDolce on 4th Plain Boulevardin Vancouver, it had been therefor years. Each time I wentthere for cof-fee and gelatothe place wasabuzz withactivity. Itseemed likethere were al-ways Clark Col-

lege and FortVancouver HighSchool students just hanging outthere.

It was a placeto unwind and relaxwithout having to dealwith the responsibilities of work/school or home management.“Everybody needs a third place besides their home and oceto relax,” says Greg Zschomler,editor in chief of the VanCougar.“The idea comes from Ray Old-enburg’s book The Great GoodPlace.” This atmosphere of the“third place” as Oldenburg puts

it, is in danger of being obliter-ated by the failing stock market.By the time I reviewed Cre-

ma Dolce, they had already dis-continued their gelato due tothe cost. I was told that peoplewere less willing to spend ex-tra money on Italian ice creamwhen they could get a carton of Haagen Dazs for the same price.One of the key aspects of CremaDolce’s uniqueness was the factthat they sold authentic gelatoalong with their espresso. Un-fortunately, in times like thesespecialty shops like Crema Dol-ce are some of the rst to go un-der.

I recently went to CremaDolce for a lile bit of studyingand stress-relief. Imagine mysurprise and disappointmentwhen I found the place empty,desolate and essentially gut-ted. There was not even a hintof the former coee shop, otherthan the sign on the building.It is truly a sign of the times. I

have heard unocially that afew of the other coee shops Ireviewed are on their way out of business. What does this meanfor our community’s “third plac-es”? Where will we go to relax inthese stressful times?

One thing is sure for WSU-Vstudents: our cafés will be hereas long as there is a demand.This means they will be aroundfor quite awhile, since studentswho used to go to Starbucks andare now pinching pennies spendtheir cash on campus.

While it may defeat the pur-pose to have your “third

place” away from homeand school/work atschool, the cafes oncampus have a totallydierent atmospherethan other campusspots. In the Cafeteriayou can get a variety

of dierent drip cof -fees if that’s your thing,and the espresso is topnotch. In addition to thequality of the coee, the

deals are great as well.Each day there is a dier-

ent special, and the prices arecollege-friendly. Pay with yourCougar Card and avoid the has-sle of spare change!

The Commons Café is a lit-tle bit more of a relaxed seing.The TVs and comfortable chairsin the same room make the caféseem a lot more laid back thanthe busy hustle and bustle of thecafeteria.

Have some time to kill anddon’t feel like you can study onemore hour? Grab a coee andplay some ping-pong in the com-mons. As far as conversationalatmosphere goes, what beerplace than your college campus?Everyone in the campus cafesautomatically have at least onething in common: Cougar pride.So talk shop, talk class, and talkcoee. Don’t lose hope for the lit-tle guy though. In time I’m sureplaces like Crema Dolce will beup and running again.

By Kati HughesManaging ediTor



Today’s question: Why

haven’t economists predictedthe economic troubles we’reexperiencing as well as somepeople (one person, anyway)can predict election results?

I refer of course toNate Silver’s Web site, www.FiveThirtyEight.com, whichcalled the presidential elec-tion long before the beer-known pundits and pollstersdid.

Silver didn’t come outof nowhere with his politi-cal projections. He’d beenworking a day job at Base-

ball Prospectus, which usesthe algorithm he inventedfor predicting baseball teams’and individual players’ per-formances. (He named thealgorithm PECOTA, whichstands for “player empiricalcomparison and optimizationtest algorithm.”)

So what? Here’s what:Silver’s PECOTA system pre-dicted that the Tampa BayRays, up until this year gen-erally believed to be the worstteam in baseball, would win90 games this past season.The Rays actually won 97

games (they lost 96 games in2007) and went on to play inthe World Series.

Baseball predictions areusually based on past perfor-mance of players and teams,in the form of statistics (winsand losses, baing averages,runs baed in, earned-runaverages, and so on). But Sil-ver used the “sabermetrics”system, which recognizesthat an individual player’s baing average isn’t really

going to tell you how manyruns his team will score and,thus, whether it has a chanceof winning a game. Since ballgames are won by runs,it’s more important to knowhow much a player will helphis team score—and to score,he has to get on base. So, us-ing sabermetrics, you woulduse the on-base percentage tomake more accurate predic-tions.

Back to politics: As I’mwriting, Nate Silver has justupdated his Web site to pre-

dict that Al Franken will winthe senatorial race in Minne-sota, currently in a recount, by 48, 120, 121, or 136 votes.(Other political commenta-tors have been predictinga win by incumbent NormColeman.) By the time thisissue sees print, we’ll knowhow right Silver was.

It’s not hard to gureout how he does it, becausehe provides a running com-mentary on his Web site aboutthe model and its predictions.He explains how he came upwith his four scenarios—vari-

ations between simple, grossand net models, and the useof LOTS of details that thepollsters haven’t paid muchaention to. Also, Silver rec-ognizes that, just as not all baseball statistics are the bestpredictors of a team’s suc-cess, not all polls are equallyreective of the way votersare really going to vote. In theMinnesota recount case, he’seven looking at which kindsof challenges the contestants

are going to use, and whichof those are more likely tosucceed.

And now, back to eco-nomics, not un-coinciden-tally Silver’s college major(honors, University of Chi-cago): Maybe someone willpersuade Silver to create amodel for predicting the eco-nomic future.

Or maybe some of theeconomists currently work-ing in the eld could improvetheir techniques. “Economicsneeds a scientic revolution,”

writes physicist Jean-PhilippeBouchaud in the Oct. 30 is-sue of “Nature” (volume 455,

page 1181). Economists have been basing their predictionson axioms (like the rational-ity of economic agents andeciency of markets) insteadof empirical data. These axi-oms are followed even whenthe facts don’t agree, whichis bad because “markets arenot ecient, [and] humanstend to be over-focused in theshort-term and blind in thelong-term.”

He suggests that mod-

els like those developed byphysicists to explain howshort-term changes keep sys-tems from staying in an op-timum state be applied toeconomic systems. Also, hewrites, it’s a good idea “to fo-cus on data” instead of “per-fect equations and aestheticaxioms.”

So maybe we’ve an-swered today’s question, af-ter all. Maybe it’s just that theeconomists who could createmodels with scientic rigorand predictive power are

more interested in baseballand politics—and who can blame them?

Why do you ask?

By Louise Wynn

The VanCougar4 ASWSUV

More Questions We Can’t Answer

As stated in the previousissue, this space for the nextfew issues will focus on thevarious forms that conser-vatism takes in America to-day. Perhaps the best knownof conservative categories isneo-conservatism. Like allgeneralized perspectives,there are many dierent a-

vors of neo-conservatism.Brevity, however, requiresthat this column cover onlythe more common charac-teristics of this conservativeperspective.

As its name implies,neo-conservatism is a reason-ably new category. Its foun-dations can be found at thered dawn of the Cold War asthe threat of the Soviet Unionloomed ever closer. To a de-gree, neo-conservatism is re-actionary. In contrast to thevehement secularism of the

Soviet Union, neo-conserva-tism is a strong proponent of religion, particularly Christi-anity.

Similarly, neo-conserva-tism holds that an unrestrict-

ed market is the best possibleeconomic system. Rush Lim- baugh—perhaps the mostinuential neo-conservativetoday—is the personicationof this ideal. One can hardlycome away from listening tohis show without thinkingthat he really believes thata completely unrestrictedglobal market would free allpeople.

Given its roots, neo-conservatism is particularlyconcerned with national se-curity. Ronald Regan—the

patron saint of the move-ment—personied this as-pect through his intensivegrowth of the military dur-ing the 80s.

Neo-conservatism isnot anti-big government.Sure, it is against welfare andsocialized healthcare, but,like liberals, it too has a deepseated aection for largegovernment. Perhaps no bet-ter example of this phenom-enon is President Bush’s “NoChild Le Behind” educa-tion plan, which essentially

allows the federal govern-ment to regulate education.

Neo-conservative doeshave conservative elements.Belief in private property, be-lief in an enduring moral or-

der, belief in prudent restric-tions on power—these areall conservative principles asoutlined in my previous col-umn.

However, neo-conser-vatism could be said to bethe least conservative formof conservatism today, name-ly because of its reactionarynature. For one, it is ideo-logical. “Free markets good,Restrictions bad!” wouldhave been the chant of theanimals in Animal Farm hadthey been neo-conservatives.

This is not surprising giventhat neo-conservatism grewout of an era of overregula-tion and socialism. Howev-er, it has resulted in neo-con-servatives caring very lileabout environmental issuesand the fate of communities.

Thus, in an era whencommunism is no longer anoutside force to be reckonedwith, the neo-conservativemovement has lost muchof its fervor and appeal. Inmany respects, liberals havegrasped the problems of mo-

dernity much beer thanneo-conservatives. Liberalscriticize corporate executivesthat run companies into theground and then walk awaywith a golden parachute.

Neo-conservatives—out of fear of appearing socialist—simply shrug and call it thenature of the market.

Liberals see there is aproblem with massive, dis-tant, corporate farms pro-ducing our food. Neo-con-servatives simply avoid thesubject. So in some ways,neo-conservatism has ad-mirable qualities, but it failsto fully address some of theways that modernity has ad-versely impacted the humaninstitutions of family, com-

munity, small scale business,etc.Next issue’s column will

look at agrarianism: a formof conservatism that tries toaddress the diculties of modernity more eectivelythan neo-conservatism.

The Sluice Box

By Matt Hunter

WSU Vancouver Librarywww.vancouver.wsu.edu/library

The views expressed in the

Opinions section are those o the

authors and do not necessarily

reect those o The VanCougar.

Neo-Conservatism:When conservatism becomes ideolical



December 4, 2008 5FEATURES

You are a student (at workon nals), and you have a fam-ily who expects your resources(time, money) for the holidayseason. And for some, familyisn’t something we prefer to bearound. Even if we do love ourfamily they can become a time

consuming pressure on our stu-dent lives.Again Meek addresses the

student factor: “The most com-mon things [in student stressare] related to fear. This can takemany forms—from academicperformance anxiety, fear of fail-ure, worry about disappointingpeople, concern about the future,etc. The pressure of classes andthe importance that is placedon grades kicks all of this into ahigher gear near the end.”

Then “for a lot of studentsthe holidays add levels of stressto the already pressure-lled se-mester. Some students use these

times as breaks to return to whatis most important in their lives.Others have holiday expe-

riences that return them to old,unhealthy paerns and theyhave unpleasant experiences thatmake working through the endof the semester that much moredicult,” said Meek.

“Holiday stress for stu-dents is much like holiday stressfor anyone else. If there is tensionor a lot of underlying problemswith family, bringing everyonetogether can be quite stressful,as are other things like buyinggis, having increased economicstrain, etc.

“One thing that is uniquefor college students is that as theirlives begin to change because oftheir growth at the university,they may have experiences atfamily gatherings where theynotice themselves being dierentor notice things about their fam-ily for the rst time. Sometimesthese are positive, but they canalso be frustrating and angerprovoking.”

Most importantly, don’t

let all of it get to you; there is arather simple solution if you canfocus enough energy into chang-ing your mindset. Meek’s clos-ing advice? “Staying focused onwhat is important—trying to re-main present-focused rather thanpast/future-focused, and actively

choosing to make the best of thesituations presented rather thanengaging in more destructivesituations can be good ways tocope.”

To recap: Orient yourgoals, sleep and eat right, getsome exercise, and don’t let thestress consume you. And neverforget, you are not alone, we alldeal with the same or similarstress. Happy Holidays.

ten a bean paste, or a salt-ed duck egg yolks substitution,ham, double-yolked duck eggs,vegetables, or fruit, is what brings their unique avor. Theyare said to be world renowned

and can also be found in severalChina town areas in the UnitedStates, especially San Francisco.

Within the Jewish culturein Israel, Sukkot—or Feast ofBooths—is celebrated as theirautumn festival. It is an eight ornine day celebration, dependingon where it is held, in which thepeople recognize the hardshipsand suering of the 40 year wan-dering of Moses and his follow-ers in their exodus from Egypt.

Small huts are made frompalm leaves and branches thatare to represent the huts the Is-raelites made in the desert. Theywill spend the festival period liv-

ing in the huts and feasting withfamily and friends.It is interesting to see what

traditions and celebrations havestemmed from dierent culturalhistory. One that I found in ourown culture is The President’sPardon, a celebration that is saidto have been started by Presi-dent Roosevelt in 1943 in whicha lucky turkey is designated to

be an honored guest at the WhiteHouse.

Jake the Rake:

“Jake and the Fat Man”

It wouldn’t suprise me if some people thought the song “JingleBells” wasn’t about a sleigh, but rather the sound a cash registermakes. To start, the economy may have brought the average per-sons spending down by $150 this year, but those people who didgo shopping this Black Friday tended to be more violent. This isevidenced by at least two key events that took place. Two peoplewere killed by gun re in a Toys-R-Us store, and one worker wastrampeled to death in a Wal-Mart. There have been many ngerspointed in all directions. Some people blame the companies for gen-erating so much hype about Black Friday, others blame Bush or eventhat ctional fat man, Santa Claus.

The fault lies with the people. Why would anybody who goesshopping on Black Friday? There are sales that can be exploitedall year long. If you shop on Black Friday you’re probably insaneor score less than 90 on an I.Q. scale. If it isn’t either of those thenits likely you do it for the adrenaline rush, and/or so you can brag

about it at the dinner table on Christmas Eve.Do not blame a company for what people do. Wal-Mart can notcontrol your mind to make you run over a man and kill him just be-cause you want to buy a Nintendo Wii at 5 a.m. You are responsiblefor your own rational thought. Or lack of it.

Worst of all, Black Friday seems to give people reasons to buya new toaster when they never really needed one. What happenedto the real meaning of the season? No, I am not talking about the fatman in a red suit. I am talking about the season of giving.

Yes, I beleive in the fat man, but not as an actual man. I beleiveas the month goes on, a general, kinder, more giving mood spreadsaround the population. To me, this is who good ol’ Saint Nick reallyis. Regretfully though, his power has been fading over the years.Instead of the “hap hapiest season of all” it is a season of greed and

bloodshed. At least the green (money) and red (blood) color themehas remained the same.

Political opinion by Jake KleinschmidtTheVanCougar

2009 Salmon Creek Journal Now accepting submissions of poetry, prose and visual art

salmoncreekjournal.com

WE’VE EXTENDED OUR DEADLINE!By popular demand, Salmon Creek Journal has extended its sub-

mission deadline to January 15, 2009. Students currently enrolled,

aculty, sta, and alumni at Washington State University Vancouver

are encouraged to submit their poetry, prose (fction, non-fction,

or essay), and visual art to be considered or publication in the 2009

Salmon Creek Journal .

2009 Salmon Creek Journal

The Literary Journal at Washington State University Vancouver

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS

JANUARY 15, 2009

Visit our new website for submission guidelines

& the submission form:

W W W . S A L M O N C R E E K J O U R N A L . C O M

Or contact us at:

[email protected]

n Hassles, cotinued from pg. 1

Javier Torres, 25, commutesto Washington State UniversityVancouver five days a weekfrom his home in Troutdale,Ore. A Political Science major,he transferred from Mt. HoodCommunity College where heserved as student body vicepresident. Even though heworks full time, his school ofchoice came down to money.

“I got more scholarshipsto come here,” said Torres, but

“what it really came down towas parking.” Fuel costs andparking add approximately$2,000 per semester to his edu-cational expenses.

He considered attendingPortland State University, butwith parking fees in the city,“It’s actually cheaper to go herethan downtown Portland,” saidTorres. He said that a parkingfees at PSU were $400 a year,

but that you could not alwaysget a space after you got a per-mit. Then you had to find park-ing blocks away in a parkinggarage for $10 a day. That couldeasily shoot costs up to $800 a

year, he said.

Driving his mother’s Sat-urn three days a week savessome money over driving hisown Lexus ES333, which heuses two days a week. Torresaverages $120 a week in gas forhis roundtrip loop from hometo WSUV, to work and back tohome. Even though he worksfulltime as a custodian for RexPutnam High School, he felt hehad to cut corners somewhere.That meant buying a grey lotparking pass.

At Mt. Hood “we never paidfor parking,” he said, walkingto his History 102 class fromthe north grey lot, a grey NorthFace pullover warding off thecold of the grey day. He boughthis parking permit the first daythey went on sale. “They weresold out the first day of school,”he said. “If you’re not there thefirst day you’re screwed.”

The park and walk from thelot to Multimedia ClassroomBuilding or AdministrationBuilding adds 15 minutes to his40-minute commute. “It’s okay,

but for what you pay it’s a littleinconvenient, I think,” he said.“If you get here early you’re allright.”

Worth the commute

if it doesn’t kill youBy Gregroy E. Zschomler

ediTor-in-Chief



The VanCougar6 NEWS

By Rosann BartelTheVanCougar

Happy Holidays everyone!Have a great break!

See you all on January 12th!

~Peter Sterr, ASWSUV President

From the President: Semester End

Workplace drama. Odds are if you’ve had a job, you’ve experiencedit. Maybe oce gossip has goen outof hand, your boss seems to pick on

you more thanothers, or some-one is persistentlyrude during ocemeetings. Whensubjected to suchworkplace hostil-ity and given fewor no options for justice, one mighttake maers intotheir own hands.This is the sub- ject of the bookGeing Even:The Truth About Workplace Re-venge—And How

to Stop It , wrien by WSUV profes-sor Thomas Trippand his friend andcolleague, Rob-ert J. Bies. I spoketo Dr. Tripp about the origins of the book, its content, and the research in-volved.

“Well, ten years ago, Bob said,‘Hey, we should write a book,’” saysTripp. They’d been studying work-place revenge for about ve years atthat point. “[the concept] was Bob’s

idea. He wanted to study this topicand invited me.”

They planned an academic book about it, but various compli-cations halted their progress. “Ten

years passes,

and then I get acold call out ofthe blue by thispublisher say-ing, ‘Hey, yougot any booksin ya?’ So, ‘Asa maer of factI think I do.’ Isaid ‘Hey Bob, Igot approached by this publish-er, and I’m notgoing to do this book withoutyou.’”

B o t hTripp and Bies

specialize inworkplace psy-chology andhave togetherstudied the

phenomena of workplace revengefor the past 15 years. They’ve inter-viewed nearly 300 people, many ofthem MBA students from Vancouverand Georgetown, where Bies teaches.They’ve collected about 800 stories,most of them situated in white collarseings, though not exclusively.

“We interviewed these people

and we would say things like, ‘Tellus about a time when you got evenat work, and what were you geingeven for, and why did you feel likeit was the right thing to do,’” Trippexplains. “We ran some experiments.

We did a lot of surveys, particularlywith government employees. [Inthe experiments and surveys] wedo things like give them personalitytests and so forth, at least for a coupleof personality traits, trying to see ifanything’s there.”

Some of their ndings? Men,younger people, and those who ex-hibit negative aectivity are morelikely to get revenge, and tend to bemore vindictive in their pursuit of it.But one’s personality is not a depend-able predicator of whether or not theywill get even at work.

“Personality variables and de-mographic variables combined nev-er explain more than about ve to

10 percent of it,”says Tripp. “So90 plus percentof it is somethingelse.” He cites sit-uational factors asa more reliable ex-planation, sayingthat variables like justice and powercan explain twen-ty to thirty percentof workplace re-venge incidents.

Based on theirresearch, the mostcommon types ofrevenge are so-

cial withdrawal,the exchange ofverbal insults,pranks, slackingo, and havinga bad aitude. A boss, meanwhile,might get revenge by making one dounfavorable tasks.The most extremeform of revenge they recorded waslitigation. Workplace violence is veryrare and was not factored into theirresearch. Dr. Tripp is explicit in thedistinction between workplace re-venge and workplace violence.

“Most workplace violence is

not revenge motivated, and mostworkplace revenge is not violent.I’m talking about mundane things,like badmouthing somebody. Theseare normal people who feel they arepushed to the extremes by extraordi-nary circumstances. I’m not talkingabout going postal. You go postal,man, you’ve got a lot more prob-lems.”

Tripp explains that most peopleget revenge because they don’t feelthat justice will be served otherwise,since there oen isn’t a system inworkplaces that eectively selesdisputes.

“A lot of the oenses for whichpeople are geing even aren’t illegal,”

Tripp says. “Insulting you in a meet-ing is not illegal. Is it nasty? Sure. Butit’s not illegal. So if you want justicefor that, where are you going to go?You’re going to have to do it yourself.We look at the wild old West, for ex-

ample, with the so called vigilante justice, where people just sort of set-tle scores all by themselves.”

He and Bies don’t promote re-venge, however, and oer alterna-tives for those who are consideringit.

“We have a list of counting to10. Does the oense and your cir-cumstances pass these 10 criteria? It’sreally hard to pass all 10. So, hope-fully that cools people o and theynd another way around.” They alsogive advice for managers who wantto prevent workplace revenge andpromote peace. But Tripp makes itclear that the book isn’t for employerswho seek to change their employee’s

personalitiesin order tocontrol their

behavior.“There’s nota lever or aknob thatyou havethat you canpull or twistto get the

behavior outof them thatyou want,”he says.Rather, theyadvise thatm a n a g e r s

alter theirmanagerialstyle. Trippstresses thatthe book ismore fromthe employ-ee’s perspec-tive, and isadvocatingfor their

welfare and an appropriate pursuitof justice.

As far as future books go, Dr.Tripp is open to possibilities. “I’vehad so much fun writing this book.We’re not writing to other professors.We’re writing to regular people. . One

of the most fun things for me to do isexplain things to others. That’s whyI’m a professor, I enjoy explainingthings. And books like this, it’s sortof a new way to explain things. Andyeah, I’d like to do more of it.”

The release date is January 26.Though the book is nished, otherdetails are still being ironed out,particularly where the book willbe stocked. But The Bookie has or-dered copies and Tripp will have abook signing at an alumni eventin March. You can also preorderit on Amazon.com. Ofcial site at:www.riendsogettingeven.com

Prof. Tripp book on revengeset for January release



December 4, 2008 7ARTS, CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

UPCOMING

EVENTS

MOVIE TICKETS ON SALE!Discounted Regal Cinemas tick-

ets will again be on sale in the

Cashier’s Ofce in early December.

Watch or dates and times.

WSU-V Choir Fall ConcertFriday, December 5, 12-1 p.m.

VADM 110 (Auditorium)

Come enjoy music from the South-

ern Hemisphere, admission is free.

WINTER ConcertFriday, December 5, 7 p.m.

FREE concert by the Vancouver

Community Concert Band

in Firstenburg Commons.

Rumble at the RoselandSat, December 6, 7 p.m.

Roseland Theater, Portland

Caged Promotions, LLC presents.

Tickets available at VSSB Cashier.$20.00, limit 2 per person.

ACE Arts, Culture

Entertainment

When “The Bourne Identity” ar-rived in theaters in 2002, it brought a newsense of urgency to the art of killing. Notcontent with mere explosions and obligato-ry gunshot wounds, Hollywood realized itwas not enough to push the human body to

the limits. Instead of injury, agony. Bonesdeserved breaking, limbs needed bendingat awkward angles, and blood needed toow.

Fans of Daniel Craig’s rst outingwill likely be pleased to see that he’s stillin top physical shape and still very much

pissed off. After losing the love of his life – the traitorous Vesper Lynd – in 2006’s“Casino Royale.”

He wastes no time getting down to business in “Quantum,” as the events re-sume where “Royale” ended. The mysteri-ous Mr. White, having been shot in the leg

previously, has now been carted to a seem-ingly secure location and survived a car chase through Italy.

The rapid-re events following that

initial confrontation will likely divide moreexperienced fans who prefer their martinisshaken from the younger fans who prefer their martinis spilled all over the oor.Gone are the days of double entendres, un-derwater cars, and henchmen with bowler hats and metal teeth. Everything here iscrammed together, gritty and grim, withBond racing from locale to locale in searchof the next target. Blowing through link after link, M (Judi Dench) has to remindBond to “try to not kill” anyone who could

provide helpful information.The plot is as frantic as the ght

scenes, following Bond as he envelopshimself in a murky mess. After targetingthe sinister criminal organization “Quan-tum,” in the tradition of other mysteriousnames such as SMERSH and SPECTRE,he uncovers a massive conspiracy by Dom-inic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) to controlthe world’s supply of a valuable liquid.

He is joined by Camille Montes (OlgaKurylenko) –– a ery woman with a tragichistory of her own.

“Quantum” is even more of a de- parture from the rest of the canon than its prequel. And purists are crying foul. Themusic, the gadgets, the larger-than-life vil-lains are all on vacation in the new millen-nium. In “Casino Royale,” Bond devotedsome time to wisecracking and chasing tail.This time around, it seems as if Bond hasdecided business and pleasure can’t mixanymore. Or perhaps, that his business has

become his pleasure.

Roger Moore, patron saint of 1970’s007 camp is said to have been troubled bythe scene in “For Your Eyes Only” wherehe kicks a car with an occupying baddie off of a cliff. While supportive of Craig in therole, he says he dislikes the new directionthe series has taken.

“I am happy to have done it, but I’m

sad that it has turned so violent,” he said.“That’s keeping up with the times. It’s whatcinema-goers seem to want and it’s proved by the box-ofce gures.”

So now that Bond’s growing painsare apparently at an end, it’s unclear whathe is going to do with the rest of his lifenow that he’s all grown up. If the movie’sconclusion seems to indicate that his “train-ing” is complete, is it possible to return toa less bloody, more detached Bond? Willaudiences respond to a quieter mission nowthat the bar has been set so high?

My cards are riding on “no.”

“Quantum” is more pain and more parkour

Business for Daniel Craig in “Quantum of Solace.”

P h o t o C o u r t e s y o f M G M

P i c t u r e sBy Collin Rickman

VanCougar STaff

The Twilight series. The criminallyoverrated, poorly wrien, borderline mi-sogynistic drivel that is beloved by peopleof all ages, from all over the world. Yes, I hated those books. I hated them so much,I devoured all nine zillion pages as fastas I could and kept stringent tabs on the

progress of the movie adaptation. Just asthe ‘heroine’ Bella is dimwiedly drawnto the vapid, melodramatic, bloodsuckingEdward, I’m unreasonably addicted to all

things Twilight.I saw the movie with my friend Dani-elle, another Twilight addict/critic. Aerviciously lambasting the books in manyconversations, we decided it was only t-ting to do this review together.DANIELLE: There was an inor-

dinate amount of shrieking andgenerally girlish reactions from theaudience, especially from one rowin particular when Edward madeon-screen appearances. They musthave all been on “Team Edward.”Having also read the books, I’ve gotto say that Edward just doesn’t do itfor me. I’ve been on “Team Jacob”since he appeared in the novels as aviable love interest (oops... beer not

give anything away!). I really wishwe could have seen more of him.ROSIE: Edward didn’t do it for me,

either, in the books or the movie. Inthe movie, he looked mildly consti-pated most of the time. And anemic.Bella was preier. Even though she’ssupposed to be so very Plain andOrdinary. Also, when Edward “spar-kled,” he looked like a sugar cookie.I guess many a fan girl was enragedabout that scene, because they lovedhow Bella and Edward had their ownmeadow and how “romantic” it wasin the book.D: Holy Cow! All of the vampires

looked overdone and constipated,except, maybe for Alice. Dr. Cullen

looked like he dipped his head in a

bowl of our. Bella’sfriend (Jessica?) de-scribed Jasper wellwhen she describedhim as “the one wholooks like he’s in pain.”I don’t remember ifshe describes him assuch in the book, buthe denitely matchedthe description!

I pictured Edward’ssparkling as beingmore like diamondsor beams from prismsshooting every-

where... not like hewas dusted with sug-ar and le under thelight in a pastry shop!R: Yes indeed! In

the book, the vam-pires were described(over and over andover again) as im-possibly, amazinglycrap-your-pants gor-geous, and in themovie they just looked powdery andsleep deprived.

I liked Movie-Bella more than book-Bella. Probably because wedon’t have to constantly hear her ir-ritatingly shallow thoughts. Reviews

of Kristin Stewart’s performance have been prey bad, but I thought shewas ne. To be fair, not even MerylStreep could pull o some of that dia-logue.

I loved the scene where her and Ed-die boy start making out on her bedand she is such a naughty vixen, he’sforced to push her away...and she’snot wearing pants. That happenedabout three thousand times in the book because Edward’s all perfectand chivalrous and you should to-tally wait until you’re a married vam-pire before you lose your virginity.D: Of course you should wait ‘til

you’re married. Otherwise, you’llsurely die! It’s funny that vampire

stories tend to be fantasies about

violence, rape, murder, and eternaldamnation, but Twilight is essential-ly a vampire story about abstinence.Then again, it doesn’t get too hot andheavy in the movie. I wonder whatthat would have raised the MPAArating to.

R: Yikes, I wonder how they’ll dothe fourth book! That’ll be...interest-ing. I hope they get a new director.I didn’t like all of the cheesy ash- backs. I guess the grainy sepia toneswere supposed to make them lookromantically archaic and totally cool,dude, but I just thought it was lame.Do we really need to SEE everythingthat a character says? Also, I pukeda lile when Edward said, “And sothe lion fell in love with the lamb.”They fall in love so abruptly in boththe book and the movie, and it’s justnot believable. Though I did like thechemistry between the actors.

By Rosann Bartel & Danielle Mosier VanCougar STaff

Thirsting for “Twilight”?

Thrilling Vampire/Human relationships in Twilight

P h o t o C o u r t e s y o f G o l d c r e s t P i c t u r e s

n Twilight, 8

P

h o t o C o u r t e s y o f t h e B o s t o n H e r a l d

P h o t o C o u r t e s y o f t h e D r e x e

l . e d u



The VanCougar8 ARTS, CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Game Review: Fable II

It seems like all western-style role- playing games (RPG) these days givethe player the option of evolving their character as good or evil. BioWare’s2003 Star Wars game, Knights of theOld Republic, brought this game me-

chanic to the mainstream by allowing players to make the choice of dark sideor light side.

Roughly a year later, Lionhead Stu-dios released an RPG by the name of Fable, which furthered the idea of ethi-cal choices that dramatically changedthe physicality of your character aswell as how people responded to youwithin the world.

Four years later, Lionhead Studioshas once again revisited the world of Albion with Fable II.

In Fable II, players once again arecharged with making good or bad ethi-cal decisions to further the story andevolve their character as they see ft.

Players begin their quest as a youngkid – be it male or female – in the poor district of a major city.

From the outset, players are pre-sented with decision-making situa-tions that will drastically change theway the character is perceived withinthe world. For instance, I was asked togo into a storeroom and clean out the

cockroaches for the shop owner for asmall reward. After entering the store-room, a man in the window informedme that he put the cockroaches in thestoreroom and that if I broke all of theshop owner’s supplies instead, then hewould reward me favorably.

Being the good-natured person thatI am, I decided to kill the cockroachesinstead of wrecking the supplies. After making the right and ethical choice,the shop owner paid me the moneyhe promised. However, the man thatwanted me to break the supplies gotangry by my good choice, and told methat I had made an enemy out of him.

That small decision made me a hero

in the townspeople’s eyes, but a villainin the eyes of the man I “wronged.”

Throughout the entire game, playersare presented with similar ethical situ-ations, some outright good or bad, andothers not so black and white. Over thecourse of the game, the player’s char-acter will physically change accordingto the decisions made. The good per-

son or bad person character dynamicmakes Fable the defnitive replayablegame.

Apart from the decision-making bythe player, the combat and presenta-tion of the game is top notch. Just likein the frst Fable, melee strikes, projec-tile weapons and magic are mapped tothree different buttons for a simple andeasy-to-use interface. The only prob-lem with the combat that I found wastrying to change from one magic attack to the other during combat.

Other than the minor magic issues,I had no other problems with FableII. Fable II has pushed the envelopein what it means to be a good or bad

character and I cannot wait until futuregames take the template used in FableII and push it even further.

By Beau Baxter Rosser aCe ediTor

Game Review: NinjatownWho would have thought that

such snuggly little ninjas could be sodangerous?

Southpeak Games’ Ninjatown is awelcomed addition to the NintendoDS’s line-up with its tower deense-style play mechanic and extremelyadorable art style.

For those o you out o the loop,Ninjatown stars the cute little ninjacharacters rom the Shawnimals toy

and plush lines. Things were goingne in Ninjatown until the neariousMr. Demon and his wee devil min-ions started to invade and terrorizethe town’s residents. Now, it’s up tothe wit and wisdom o the Ol’ MasterNinja to overcome the odds andkeep Ninjatown sae.

Players are charged with buildingNinja hut ater Ninja hut in order tostop the oncoming waves o weedevils. At the outset, the player hasthe ability to build two types o Ninja, both o which specialize inhand-to-hand combat. As the gameprogresses, new types o troops areincorporated into the mix.

When I began playing Ninjatown,

I could barely see any kind o strat-egy being used, and I was arbitrarilybuilding Ninja huts to kill o theenemies. As dierent types o Ninjabecame available or use, I ound thestrategic elements o the game allinto place. Each map was approach-able in various ways and breathedresh air into what elt repetitious.

Like other tower deense games

beore it, being able to build certaintypes o troops means the player willalso be assaulted by enemies withparticular weaknesses: the snowballthrowing “Ice-cream” Ninja can slowthe ast devils down, the Sniper Ninjatakes down the fying devils, and the

ast-moving Business Ninja is ideallyequipped to ght the slower mov-ing devils. However, once the playerrealizes the patterns and what-hurts-what play style, each encounter can

be easily overcome.As the player deeats enemies,

they are rewarded with cookies thatcan be used to upgrade the Ninjahuts, giving the Ninja o that hutmore power. Sadly, there is littleto no visual indication that a hut

is already upgraded or needs up-graded without tapping the hut withthe stylus. Having to tap each hutindividually while being attackedbecame a stressul procedure that

could have been easily overcomewith some kind o visual clue.

The game itsel is broken up withthe main action and user inputhandled on the bottom touch screenand the zoomed out map o theplayeld on the top. My main com-plaint with the map screen was theact that the developer only usedhal o the screen or the map. Theother hal is used to show the Ol’Master Ninja foating high aboveNinjatown in his hot-air balloon. It ’sa pretty neat graphic, but I eel that

space could have been better suitedas an expanded stats and map visual.For the most part, user input is

handled well with the stylus. Pickingthe appropriate Ninja hut to build,choosing which huts to upgrade,and selecting the Ol’ Master Ninjapowers work seamlessly with the sty-lus, but I ound moving the cameraaround the battle eld elt clumsyand slow. Sometimes, as I placedthe stylus on the screen or cameramovement, the camera would notreact as ast as I needed it to, result-ing in a ew more dead Ninja on myconscience. Luckily, the d-pad is us-able or camera movement as well.

I you are the type o gamer

that has no time or this holiday’sblockbuster console games, then Irecommend you pick up a copy o Ninjatown, sit down or about anhour a night, and enjoy the cutenesslevels beaming rom this solid, towerdeense game.

That’s right, I said it – cutenesslevels.

By Beau Baxter Rosser aCe ediTor

D: I don’t know... Movie-Edwardseemed like he belonged on an episode of “To Catch a Predator.” I expectedChris Hansen to show up any secondwith, “What are you doing with a 16 year

old human, Edward? I see here that you’reover 100 years old. Have a seeeeat.” Hedidn’t seem in love with her at all in themovie, just in pain with “blood lust.” Iget the whole ridiculous teenage lovething, though. I just think it’s irrespon-sible to pitch it to teenagers as somethingthat could conceivably happen. Yeah, it’sappealing to the intended audience, butgive me a break.R: Haha! Yeah, the whole, “You’ll fall

in love and it will be perfect and you’ll be together forever THE END” is so an-noying. I hate how Bella cares more aboutEdward than living. I hate how she hasno personality, no goals, no aspirations,no passion for life, except to be with him forever. It’s a terrible message to send to

young girls. And Edward is boring! Allhe ever does is whine. Jacob is beer. He’s

funny, endearing, and real.D: I agree. I think Jacob is the most

developed character in the entire series.Too bad we don’t see much of him. ...Ohwait, I’m supposed to be talking aboutthe movie ... I hope we see more of himin the next movie, though I might wait forthe DVD. As much as I loved laughingat the sheer cheese factor of this movie, itwas just a lile too much. A 500-odd page

book condensed to under 2 hours? Puh-leeze. It le no reaction time.

Edward: Say itBella: VampireEdward: Meet my familyRosalie: Why aren’t you hungry?Bella: I ate

Rosalie breaks a bowl, hilarity eruptsfrom the audience.

Dr. Cullen: How considerate. Let’s allplay baseball and run away from strangervampires who want to hunt Bella for anunknown reason unless you’ve read the books.R: I know, the whole “I want to eat your

human girlfriend!” twist probably makesno sense to folks who haven’t read the book. But I did like how the evil vampireswere introduced early on rather than ap-pearing out of nowhere at around page500, when Stephenie Meyer realized shehad to make something happen. I alsoliked how funny the movie was...even ifsome of (most of) the humor was unin-tentional. Like the scene when Bella slow-

mo struts into the classroom and the fan blows her hair all alluringly and Edwardcovers his nose. And I liked Charlie, too.Cleaning his gun.D: I think most of Charlie’s scenes

were intentionally funny (Hot damn!Rainier beer and guns!), but you’re right.

Most of the laughs elicited from the lmseemed to be completely unintentional.Either way, I enjoyed watching it, but Ithink it was mostly because I’ve read allthe books and wanted to see what theywould do with a movie version. I’m notsure someone who hasn’t read the bookswould understand or enjoy the movie asmuch. It wouldn’t make sense, for exam-ple, why Edward covered his nose whenBella walked in the class, but that’s all ex-plained in the book.R: Yeah, I thought it was a fun movie.

Cheesy, silly, annoying at times, butmindlessly entertaining. But I think myamusement had a lot to do with havingread the books. I’m not sure if I’d been asinvested otherwise.

Twilight continued from 7

P h o t o C o u r t e s y o f E n t e r t a i n m e n t W e e k l y



Something Wicked this way comes

Have you ever wondered whathappened in Oz before Dorothy ar-rived by a treacherous tornado andkilled the Wicked Witch of the East?Or where the Tin Man, the Scare-crow, and the Cowardly Lion camefrom? Have you ever wonderedhow the Wicked Witch of the West

became so, well, wicked? Or whatreally happens to the Wicked Witchof the West aer the infamous buck-et of water? The answer to all thesequestions lies within the brilliantBroadway musical Wicked.

Recently I traveled to NewYork City. While I was there, I hadthe opportunity to see the Broad-way musical Wicked—the backstory (told as a ashback) of howthe Wicked Witch of the West (El-phaba) became the Wicked Witch—

based on the best-selling book by

Gregory McGuire.Wicked is currently touring

throughout the United States ontheir national tour, traveling allacross America, “sweeping” thenation with catchy songs like thecomic “Popular” and the show-stopping nal “Defying Gravity”(wrien by multiple Oscar/Tonyaward winner Stephen Swartz),hilarious dialogue, and inspiringcharacters.

Wicked will be in Portland atthe Keller Auditorium from March4, 2009 to April 5, 2009. Tickets goon sale December 7, 2008. For moreinformation on dates, locations andmore go to www.wickedthemusi-cal.com or www.Ticketmaster.com.This is your chance to see the actionfor yourself. Don’t miss this excel-lent and exhilarating musical thatinspires and embraces individuali-ty, the power of friendship, and the

beauty of love.Note: This show sold out with-

in hours on its last visit to Port-land.

December 4, 2008 9ARTS, CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

By Vanessa Pr itchettTheVanCougar

By Will & Greg PET PEEvES

Will: Ya know Bro, Pet Peeves is a avorite target o ours in this column. We areboth pretty laid-back dudes, until we get that wasp o irritation buzzing around.Then we need to do some verbal swatting. Well, why don’t we step back a bit andtalk about… pets!

Greg: Me? I’d rather talk about peeves. However, pets are a peeve o mine—while not a pet peeve—being about pets I guess it makes it a pet peeve by deault.Obama is shopping a new White House dog, so okay, why not? You don’t own anypets do you?

Will: No. The ants that cohabited ell victim to careully and deliberately plantedtoxic snacks. The spiders are dosed with something stronger upon the instant o discovery. Or just gished. I no longer practice ‘catch and release’ with spiders, notsince that ninja spider jumped out o the cup onto my thumb. I’d trapped it in my‘Mickey 50th Anniversary’ mug. Promptly dropped the mug on the sidewalk whensaid ninja spider rappelled onto my digit. Spider survived. Mug did not.

Greg: Mickey on the mug? Truly a loss. Spider deserves to die! Anyway, I was notspeaking o the wild “squatting rights-shackin’ up” type o insect, nor o the rodentvariety that tend to move in during the winter, uninvited. I speak o intentionalpests—um, I mean, pets. (How’d that extra ‘s’ get in there?) Goldsh, cats, dogs,

hamsters and birds.Will: Lions, tigers and bears? Fortunately or not, my apartment doesn’t allowsuch without a hety deposit. However, I’m a cat person. They have such strongpersonalities, just like little ur-covered people. And I like their independent streak.Unlike dogs, you are not the center o a cat’s universe. The cat is. You are sometimesallowed to orbit. Like at lunch time. Or when a warm lap is required.

Greg: Cats, I believe, do deem us the vapid species. A dog, however, will lookup to you with admiration. I do like both. Do not understand goldsh as pets. Feed‘em, they poop, you clean the water, the cycle begins again—the sum o the entirerelationship. Rewarding, no?

Will: No. Unless you’re breeding them or bait (illegal in many states) or to pro-vide that same soothing random motion provided by a (lower maintenance) lavalamp. I’ve got a screen saver with a sh tank setting that is just as relaxing andmore entertaining. I can set it so some o the sh eat the others. Ha ha.

Greg: Really? I want that program! The best thing about it: no poop. Hey, speak-ing o sh as ood, didn’t you have a tank o piranha at Clark?

Will: It was just one piranha: Sid Vicious by name. Lived in the biology lab. He wasrationed ve goldsh a week. Morbid curiosity made me watch a eeding – once.First o, those goldsh knew they were in trouble the minute they splashed down.I’d never seen the domesticated critters blast around a tank so ast. Then ol’ Sidwould fick a n and there would be our sh. Blink, three sh, and part o a nfoating calmly and soothingly to the bottom o the tank. Sid was pretty seriousabout his eed.

Greg: Vicious shes eating shes, making shes viscous. Ewh. Now that wouldmake some good Suessian material. Okay, nu said; moving on. I’ve been thinkingabout a pet or Christmas. Did you notice that “Christmas arrived” last week?

Will: Dude, you’ve had your head in the books too long. It arrived the day aterHalloween, yo? But the problem with a pet as a git, is it is also a burden to the re-cipient. I they don’t want a pet, it’s not air to lay on them. You knew that. Now, as

ar as amusement, I get a kick out o watching the parakeets at PetSmart. I mean,they have SO much to do. They have to boss each other around, nibble woodchips,hang upside-down rom pegs, maybe balance on one oot and catch some Z’s. How-ever, I’ve noticed that the aviary or the critters is soundproo. I imagine i you hadtwenty parakeets in a cage in your house, the noise would drive you bonkers.

Greg: True, but they are so pretty. Much prettier than the erret we saw. Therehe was, all weaselly-like, erreting around in his cage. Way too hyper or me. I knowsome olks that have a pet squirrel that sleeps with them. I couldn’t deal with that.Squirreling around under the sheets…

Will: For the sake o your health, you should move out o reach until I can containthe urge to smack you over the head with a chair. OK. Yes, errets. They are enter-taining and quirky as well. But you’ve gotta keep ‘em caged or leashed. Like cats,they sleep a lot. Kind o like you.

Greg: Parakeets are somewhat active as well, but require less grooming andattention I would think. They’ll sleep, too, i the lights are out. Still, birds are a lot

like sh—not much aection. Mammals, save or rodents, seem more attentive totheir master. Could be an intelligence thing—maybe emotional. They’re recentlyobserved the mourning process o a mama gorilla at the loss o her young. You cansee it on YouTube, and it’s quite sad. I DO think that certain animals have eelings.Take Emo, my cat, so named or its early sel-disparaging personality (and its blondstreak). Anyway, a bird is what I think I want.

Will: You’ve certainly got the brain or it. Together, we provide a suitable mediumor the absorption o their waste. That is, this column makes or a dandy ‘keet cageliner. Alas, not or long though.

Greg: Yes, with my graduation this semester, we will no longer appear in TheVanCougar. However, there remain a ew back issues available in the newsroomshould anyone require odder or parakeet bingo (a game o betting on who’s col-umn is eliminated upon rst). And so, with these nal parting words, we say good-bye to our aithul readership.

Will: Up here on the hill, anyway. We’ll get together or more o these bird-

brained columns. For now: Sit! Stay!

WICKED A Review



The VanCougar10 RECREATION & SPORTS

One time, in Pullman... By: Katie Wells

The Subaru Forester was packed fullof bags and suitcases. The Hansens’ ‘MMBop’ was blaring from the speakers.Myself and three other brave adventurerswere on our way to Pullman for a footballand volleyball game. Kendal Mantzke,Kevin Guzman, Erik Beaulieu, and I wereready for the long and treacherous journeyahead. As we pulled out of the school parking lot in the WSU ofcial vehicle,I mentioned to my passengers that I’donly been in six accidents. Though it wascompletely a joke, the boys didn’t havefaith in my driving skills.

I believe we had been on the freeway

for about ve minutes, ironicallya few minutes after my driving recomment, when I unexpectedly slaon the brakes. Though I found it hilathat both Kevin and Erik almost hifront seats and Kendal and I alslammed into the dashboard, it wcomplete accident. A motorcyclist hathe brakes in front of me and my ligon the brakes turned into an all-out,stop. Turns out, I need to get the brakmy own personal car xed if the amoforce I usually use will stop a Subaruin its tracks. Well after that entertamoment of driving, we continued oway toward Pullman, singing alonColbie Caillat.

The next adventure occurred at

Nico Grasu kicks H

F i r s t T i m e F a n . . .Katie Wells: So you’ve never been to a football game before this one?

Kati Hughes: No, I have never been to a footballgame. My high school didn’t have sports.

KW: Interesting...Well, your first game ever was the Apple Cup. What was your first reaction when you walked out to the field?

KH: That it was a huge place. And very cold! AndI’d never seen so many people so riled up before.I was thinking to myself, all this for football?

KW: Well once the game started, did your reactions change? Did you get riled up?

KH: Yes I did! At first I felt like i was on a totally different planet because I couldn’t figureout why people were doing the things they did.But after I figured it out, I joined in. It was awe-some.

KW: [Laughing] That’s good to hear. So not only did you get a chance to be a fan at a game, but you were able to get down on the field and take pictures. How was that?

KH: I was pretty afraid of getting tackled, but

I’d like to think of that as just part of the ex-citement of being on the field [Laugh-ing].

KW: So how close did you come to being tackled? Did it seem like the players were gigantic?

KH: The thing is, when I’m looking througha camera, everything looks farther away than it really is. I’d think they were a cou-ple feet away, but when I’d take the cam-era down, they were very close! I wouldn’t say I almost actually got tackled, but Iwas afraid of it.

KW: Well it seems like you had a pretty good time at the game. What was your

favorite part? KH: The fact that we won. I was expect-ing to go and see a pretty, well, boringgame. Not boring in general, but since Idon’t know much about football, it wouldbe boring. Even though I didn’t know much about football, I got caught up in the excitement in the fourth quarter and OT quarters. Everyone did look at me funny when they’d score and I’d yell,“Goooaaalll!” Just kidding. But having the entire band chant “Fuji Film” as Iwalked by was an interesting experience.[Note: As press, you are required to wear aneon-green, Fuji Film vest on the field.]

By: Katie Wells

an interview with Kati hughes

1. Butch is always ready for a picture.2. Thousands of jingling keys accompaniedCougar fan cheers. 3. Reid Forrest, the CougPunter, waves around a towel as he cheers onhis teammates. 4. Fans go wild when RyanPerkins misses his FG to keep the doubleovertime going. 5. WSU Alumni were amongthe hundreds that stormed the eld after theApple Cup win. 6. It takes three Huskies to

bring down Logwone Mitz. 7. Deon Ford took down this UW player with few minutes left onthe clock. 8. To end the game and win it for the Cougars in double overtime, Nico Grasusuccessfully kicked his FG.

1.

2.

3.

4.

P h o t o

C r e d i t : K a t i H u g h e s



December 4, 2008 11RECREATION & SPORTS

nlyord

medioustheosts ahittapeads int of eadingour

to

gas

station in Oregon. People across the river just love the fact that someone pumps their gas for them. I, on the other hand, am nota fan. This tattooed and pierced gas stationattendant walked out to the Forester justin time to greet me, out of my car, at the pump. I realized that I was supposed to bein my vehicle still, but instead of actuallygetting back in it, I awkwardly stood nextto the man while he pumped the gas. As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, he askedfor the school’s debit card pin number. Myresponse? “Umm…yeah. I don’t actuallyknow that. Let me go call someone.” SoI spent the next couple minutes talking toEric Davidson on the phone so he couldtell me how to nd the pin number. At thistime, Erik Beaulieu was jollily cleaning

the millions of bugs off the windshield.I’m not exaggerating about the fact thathe was jolly. He honestly loved to cleanthe windshield. Anyway, we nally gotthe gas paid for and left. The gas stationattendant, I’m sure, was glad to see us go.

After this stop, we trekked on towardour nal destination while attempting tonot become hypnotized by the quicklyying bugs that continued to splat againstthe windshield. It was getting really dark,and none of us knew where we weregoing exactly. We were simply followingthe unreliable and sketchy MapQuestdirections. All of us had unanimouslydecided we were lost and seconds beforeexiting to turn around, we saw a helpfulsign. It read: Colfax. Colfax we knew.

Colfax was directly before Pullman.The road to Colfax is quite winding anddark. As we were rounding one corner of pitch-black darkness, we saw two giantcreatures on the side of the road. At thistime, Kevin was sleeping in the back andErik was dosing off. These elk, thoughon the road, were completely out of theway of the car. I simply wanted to slowdown to look at them. The brakes in theSubaru, didn’t agree. Once again, the car stopped instantly in the road. It scared theelk and left both Kevin and Erik stressingout. Oops!

We eventually made it to Pullman justin time to catch the volleyball game. Thefootball game the next day was prettyuneventful: it was the USC vs. WSU

game, so guess what? We lost. When itwas time for all of us to head back to theschool, we loaded back into the Subie and began our six-hour trip back. For somereason, we ended up driving in circles, inthe middle of Eastern Washington; let merephrase that, in the middle of nowhere for an hour. When we nally got back onthe right track, an unexpected hitchhiker tagged along. Well, it wasn’t a hitchhiker per say, it was more of a bird. This birdew in front of the car in an attempt toget past us; we all thought that the birdwas successful in his attempt. We werewrong. When we stopped in Kennewickthree hours after the bird incident, weall went into Walgreens to get food. Onour way back out to the car, something

caught Kendal’s eye. The poor little birdhad actually been sucked into the grill of the Forester. He looked so alive, so “in-ight”. He looked like a Roll’s Roycehood ornament in the way that he wassprawled out, spread eagle. None of uswanted to touch him, so, as cruel as it was,we left him there until we got home. Andhonestly, we left him there for someoneelse to clean up. So whoever had to buryour little bird friend, I’m sorry!

I personally enjoyed the trip to the gameseven though it was full of adventures. Asfar as the other three go, I’m pretty surethey had a good time…except maybe for the whiplash. And nally, for the bird,I think he would have rather stayed inPullman.

skies to the Dawg-houseA rush of crimson and gray swarmed the eld

after the double overtime win in the 101st annual

Apple Cup. Fans surrounded the exhausted playerswho were jumping up and down in the center of theeld, lacking the ability to contain their excitement.But why should they have? This rivalry gamemeant everything to these players. Having a one-win season, though better than UW’s 0-10 record,wasn’t good enough for the Cougars. Until the endof the third quarter, WSU was having a hard time

proving how badly they wanted this win. Wanting wasn’t going to get them the win though, earning itwould. And earn it they did.

With three minutes left on the clock in the thirdquarter, the Cougs scored their rst touchdown.Logwone Mitz had a 57 yard rush to score followed

by Nico Grasu’s rst of four successful kicks.Leading into the fourth quarter, the score was 10-7 Huskies. The nal fteen minutes of the regular game were lled with great rushes, long passes,

and luckily for WSU, missed eld goals by UW’sRyan Perkins and Jared Ballman.

As the minutes passed, the Cougars’ energy levelrose and they did everything in their power to stopUW from scoring. They succeeded. Still trailing bythree in the nal minutes of the game, WSU gained69 yards via four completed passes from KevinLopina. With each successful pass, the crowd

became more condent that the Cougs would makea comeback. The players must have thought so too.Knowing they were within range for a game-tieingeld goal, Nico Grasu was once again called tothe eld. As he prepared for his 28 yard eld goal,the Cougar fans went silent. Just as the clock ranout, Grasu sent the ball ying straight toward thegoal posts. Every head in the crowd turned to thereferee’s as they held up their arms. The kick wasgood. The game was tied.

The rst overtime quarter ended with back to back eld goals by both teams. The score was tiedagain, 13-13. Fans went crazy when the game wasthen sent into double overtime. UW had possessionof the ball rst and attempted another eld goalfrom 37 yards. Once again, with a disappointed sighfrom the Husky fans and a ear-splitting cheer fromthe Cougars, Ryan Perkins’ kick was no good.

A 37-yard kick, though proving to be difcult for Perkins, was a simple task for Nico Grasu. After 3hours and 12 minutes of football, the game was over.The hundreds of fans who joined the players on theeld made sure that the team was congratulated.Hugs, high-ves, tears, and cheers were seen andheard throughout the crowd. As many exited thestadium through the tunnel, a familiar cheer wasechoing loudly —“F**k the Huskies!”

Story and Photos By Katie Wellsrecreation & sports editor

5. 6.

7.

8.



Robots are everywhere. Thatis not some statement of paranoia,fearing world domination by someandroid species, but a statement offact. Robots and articial intelligentsystems serve us everyday. The term“robot”—from the Czech word robo-ta meaning “forced labor”—drumsup ideas of human-like machines, but robots—most present-day robotsanyway—are more oen than not just mechanical arms or remote-con-trolled wheeled devices that aren’tanything like humans. However, thatis changing.

Robots may one day come inevery shape and size—from micro-scopic medical micronanobots toincredible mammoth-like walking

or ying war machines. Some mayhave simple “minds” designed forone small, repetitive task; others mayseem brilliant, achieving human-likereason—or, perhaps, a superiority tohuman rationale.

These are all serious consider-ations under research and develop-ment worldwide at major universitiesand in industry. It’s not surprising thatWSU is in on the research. The WSU-Vancouver School of Engineeringand Computer Science, with degreeprograms in Mechanical Engineer-ing, Computer Science and ElectricalEngineering, is at work in the eld.Each degree has its own area of em-phasis in a wide-range of disciplines;many of them relate to robotics.

There are two main parts to ro-

botics: Hardware and soware. If ithelps, think “body” (the mechanical/

electrical stu) and “mind” (the pro-gramming). WSU-V has both under-graduate and graduate programs inMechanical Engineering and Com-puter Science. Electronic Engineeringis only oered as an undergraduatedegree at this time. Mechanical En-gineering and Electrical Engineering build hardware, Computer Sciencewrites the soware.

Dr. Hakan Gurocak (Ha-kahnGur-o-jock) is the Director of theSchool of Engineering and ComputerScience and serves as Associate Pro-fessor of Mechanical Engineering.He said that WSU-V’s MechanicalEngineering program has three dis-ciplines: Design and Manufacturing;Micronanotechnology, “essentiallyassembling atoms and molecules;”and Mechatronics (a term the Japa-nese coined to include studies in me-chanics, electronics, automation androbotics). The Electronic Engineeringprogram, he said, also oers threespecializations: Digital Systems;Electronic Devices and Materials,and Networks and CommunicationSystems.

Gurocak said that students learnabout existing technology and how tointegrate systems—computing, elec-tronics sensors and actuators—alongwith “soware [that] acts like a glue” bringing it all together. The sowarecreates an articial intelligence (AI)that, on a small scale “mimics humandecision-making.”

Robots, P. 13

The VanCougar12 FEATURES

Nov. 28, 2008—Christmas has descended like a jolly old man in a red suit

squeezing down the chimney. Unbelievable? Yes. True? Also, yes.The day aer Thanksgiving, the Vancouver Rotary Foundation’s Festival ofTrees kicked o month long holiday festivities. Thirty-seven themed Christmastrees decked the Heritage Ballroom at the Hilton Hotel at 301 W. 6th Street inVancouver, Wash.

Local businesses and non-prot organizations, including the WashingtonState University Vancouver Foundation, each sponsored and decorated a tree.Regaled in crimson and grey, WSU-V’s ocked tree showed true school spirit.WSU Christmas stockings, Christmas lights, and souvenirs representing our localuniversity covered the branches. Even the presents under the tree were wrappedin WSU Christmas paper.

Ballot boxes were stationed at each tree and, with dollars, people voted fortheir favorite trees. While visitors enjoyed the decorations, piano music, per-formed by Keyboard Sensations, lled the air. Throughout the weekend, vari-ous local talents took the stage.

A blue ribbon was awarded to the tree named “Tool Time (Dad’s DreamTree)” sponsored by Miller Nash, LLP. It was designed and created by LaurieCantonwine of LC Sewing. The tree sported saw blades, tools, and other as-sorted paraphernalia found at any hardware store.

Eight themed tabletop trees, as well as the larger trees, were set for an on-line auction. The money raised goes to support the Vancouver Rotary Founda-tion. The proceeds help “support scholarships and charitable grants in our com-munity and around the world.” According to Lea Pfau, Oce of Developmentand Alumni Relations, the WSU-V tree sold for $700. This money will be addedto the Rotary Scholarship fund.

And the jolly old man in the red suit? He could be spoed here and therewith his helper elves throughout the festival.

By Ruth Zschomler TheVanCougar

WSU Christmas Tree

at Festival of the Trees P h o t o s b y R u t h Z s c h o m l e r

By Gregory E. Zschomler ediTor-in-Chief

“Gobble gobble gobble!”Robots are here!

ASWSUV’s Thanksgiv-ing Dinner held the Thursday before Thanksgiving break wasa success, according to several

who attended the fully cateredevent.

“It was defnitely a suc-cess,” Eric Davidson, the Ac-tivities Director for ASWSUVsaid, “Almost 40 people werethere; everybody was fullyengaged in conversation, eventhose who didn’t know eachother.”

The price of admission wasa donation of three cans of foodto a local charity organization.

The dinner was planned primarily by Nikki Netland, oneof the members of the newly

created Activities Board, made

up of four voluntary positions.Michelle McIlvoy, the

Student Involvement Manager shared her enthusiasm about theevent. “It was great. The turnout was great. Good food. Good

good good!”The event also spurredinterest in “perhaps doing amedieval dinner in spring,” saidDavidson.

P h o t o s b y

M i c h a e l H a t c h

By Michael HatchTheVanCougar



Students learn how to write thesoware to “capture” human intelli-gence in a mathematical model.

“You might have a mobile robotgoing around in hallways…” he said,“How would it avoid objects? Hu-mans don’t even think about it; for a

machine it’s very challenging.”“Another recent application,”according to Gurocak, “are large re-search groups building prosthetics[that are] interpreting [bio-neuro] sig-nals.” He said the research at WSU-Vis interdisciplinary—a sort of crossstudy mix. Many of the applicationsuse “fuzzy logic,” an A.I. that “learnsfrom its own mistakes—almost likea toddler.” The undergraduate pro-gram is “concentrating on educatingengineers who can work in industryusing existing technology”—discov-ering new uses or applications forexisting know-how.

But some technologies are bound to go the way of the dodo.For instance in a recent article byEmi Endo in Newsday, Steve Pren-

tice, vice president and fellow atGartner—a marketing-research rmin Stamford, Conn.—states that thecomputer mouse’s “demise will behastened by the move toward 3D en-vironments, which encourage a morecomplex range of movements…and by the growth of multimedia appli-cations and manipulation, which en-courage a more natural interface.”

WSU-V is at work on such a de-vice. At the masters level researchis on haptics (Greek, meaning “thefeeling of touch and sense”). Guro-cak and his graduate students, Du-ruk Seakal and Graham Kryger, areat work on a haptic glove interface.A glove, he said that “helps you toreach inside a computer [generated]image and grasp [virtual] objects.”

Users wear a virtual reality [VR] hel-met and see these virtual objects.Normally, he said, “I can’t feel

the objects because they are digital.”With the glove, “You can actuallyreach out and have the sensation ofholding the objects” which is help-ful for assembly of objects into vir-tual prototypes. This project has cen-tered on creating smaller actuatorsso that the gloves become less bulky.The actuators they have created fea-ture magnetic uids that can lock atpoints of virtual contact using elec-tronic signals that change the uidsviscosity.

He believes such a glove could be used in medical training, designand as an advanced interface. Youmay be thinking about game apps—

certainly a possibility. The third gen-eration of the haptic glove is under-way. Graham Kryger is working on

innovations to make it smaller andlighter.

Prior to these studies and re-search the program developedsome walking robots, but nothingas advanced as the work of Hondaand Sony who have created bipedhumanoid robots like ASIMO (seewww.honda.com) who can not onlywalk and run on two legs, but climbstairs, interact with humans, navi-gate complex environments, rec-ognize people, gestures and voicecommands and much more. One daysuch robots may be in our homes.

But, all mechanic developmentsneed control systems utilizing com-puter programming. That depart-ment falls under the tutelage of Dr.Sco Wallace, Assistant Professor ofComputer Science at WSU-V.

Wallace said, “People tend toclassify AI in one of four catego-ries.” “Like Hakan [Gurocak],” heexplained, to “1) behave like a hu-man, 2) make rational decisions, 3)think like a human, [or] 4) think ra-tionally.”

He indicated the nuances comefrom the many schools of thoughtconcerning AI that include computerscientists, psychologists, philoso-phers and mathematicians. The dif-

ferentiations address dierent stan-dards and areas of interest. He saidsome wish to mimic “human deci-sion making” while others wish to

create programs for “making beerdecisions.”

He compared the two: one be-ing a closed-box system that is onlyconcerned with the results and an-other looking in the box to see how itthinks (what it does to get the result).Some want to “reproduce the human behavior, both good and bad,” hesaid. Such applications could be usedto predict actual human behavior ina given situation.

His goal, among others, is tomake AI safer and make the systemsmore robust. He asks, “What do wedo when we’re not even sure whatexactly it [AI] should be doing?” Ifcomputers are to make decisionsthey need to “have checks and bal-ances [put] into soware systems.”Aer all, robots with complex AI, leto their own development, might behazardous. Think HAL, from “2001:A Space Odyssey” and other sci- ro- bots that have evolved to take overthe world.

Marvin Minsky, at MIT, oneof the rst scientists to discoverand demonstrate that robots haveno knowledge of the real world,doesn’t see that happening. He hassaid, “AI has been brain-dead sincethe 1970s…the worst fad has been

these stupid lile robots. Graduatestudents are wasting years of theirlives…” [Mighty Robots, by David Jones] But others obviously disagree,

because lots of graduate studentscontinue to “waste” their time.

Wallace said that WSU-V is in-volved with “a bunch of the smallerschools in the Pacic Northwest[that] share expertise and curricu-lum” in studies of AI and computergaming. The group received a recent$382,000 grant from NASA to studyhow games can be used to teach AIand “as an experimental test bed forsome AI problems.” They collaboratevia “video conferencing, quarterlymeetings and through electronicsharing.”

In a nutshell, the two arms of theWSU-V School of Engineering andComputer Science, working togetherand with others, to develop indus-trial applications that will improvethe quality and safety of life with robotics, AI and other mechanical andelectrical devices both existing andfuture.

And, one day soon you maywear a glove and VR headgear thatwill immerse you, as a gamer, inyour game, giving you a true senseof object manipulation—you will notonly see and hear, but FEEL the expe-rience. Maybe that’s not as importantor loy as the goals of the school, buta side benet, none-the-less. Prey

cool science.

December 4, 2008 13FEATURES

Doruk Senkal, one of Dr. Guracak’s graduate students, demonstrates a haptic glove.

R O B O T S A R E e v e r y w h e r e !

In preparing the audiencefor the guest speaker in the latestChancellor’s Seminar Series, Chan-cellor Hal Dengerink said thatsome people had implied that Sen. John McCain was so old he didn’t

know how to use e-mail. As we age,“it’s possible that technology could become more important to us,” hesaid. He also noted his “smart”heating system at home could notethe ambient temperature and “de-cide” when to turn on so that thehouse would be toasty when hewas to get out of bed.

With that he introduced Dr. Di-ane Cook of WSU Pullman’s Schoolof Electrical Engineering and Com-puter Science. Cook hopes “SmartEnvironments” will aid peoplewith a whole lot more. She and herstudents are looking at how arti-cial intelligence (AI) might be usedin home and work environments to

aid in independent living for those

that might not otherwise be able todo so.

“I wanted to look at AI inno-vations,” said Cook, “I started awish list of what our homes woulddo.” Homes doing? That’s right. Dr.Cook set out to discover how ourhomes might recognize our pres-ence and the environment, learnour behaviors and needs, and re-spond accordingly. She noted thatsprinkler systems can access the In-ternet, check the weather to see if

rain is in the forecast, and “decide”if they will need to turn on.Cook pointed out the num-

ber of “intelligent appliances” wealready have in our homes—ev-erything from smoke and motiondetectors to robot vacuums andlawnmowers, even refrigeratorsthat keep track of their inventoryand “write” shopping lists.

To create a test bed in Pull-man, Cook began by wiring anapartment with various sensorsand remote control devices thatwould respond to the movementand needs of the student resident.For example, when the front doorwas opened a motion sensor would

convey a trigger to a light switch

and the light would come on. Notnecessarily anything groundbreak-ing, but the foundation for furtheradvancements.

Cook’s goal has been to create“an environment able to acquireand apply knowledge about theresident and the physical surround-ings to improve the resident’s expe-rience.” In the rst level this wasapplied to comfort and productiv-ity, in the second health and safetyand, nally, toward energy and

sustainability.When these systems are linkedto a computer that computer canrecord data and then mine the datafor frequent paerns. Machinelearning algorithms “use the infor-mation [to create] an automationpolicy,” said Cook. The sowaremodel can eliminate 76% of manualinstructions.

Such “smart environments”can assist the inrm, aged, andhandicapped to aain independentliving. Homes with smart featurescan be safer for these individuals by regulating water temperatures,turning o forgoen appliances,reminding the resident to take their

medicines and more. Additionally,

the computer system monitors themovement and task-completion ofthe resident. The information can be relayed to a remote location toreport their “well-being” to lovedones or caregivers. The informationcan even be used to detect paernsof dementia.

The “smart” apartment wasequipped for the modest fee of$5,000 though many other tech-nologies—such as RFID tags androbot assistants (such as Honda’s

ASIMO)—could drive costs upconsiderably, depending upon howhigh-tech these homes might get.

In the meantime Cook and herstudents seek to simply “keep olderadults functioning independentlyin their own homes [for] as long aspossible.” And that means keepingcosts aordable. Cook notes thatnearly one quarter of the U.S. pop-ulation will be 65 or older by 2045and we are unprepared to facilitatetheir needs.

Chancellor’s Series: Artifcal Intelligence

By Gregory E. Zschomler ediTor-in-Chief

Photo by Kyle Ralston

For more information about Dr.Cook’s research, please visit:

http://ailab.eecs.wsu.edu

Continued from Page 12



Birds are chirping this morning onthe southeast corner of the WashingtonState University-Vancouver campus. Butyou’d have to strain to hear them as heavyequipment growls to life.

“Hey,” a construction worker yellsfrom a rooop, “bring me that extra har-ness you got down there.” The smell ofmud, gasoline, and exhaust quickly over-powers the crisp morning air. This is not atypical scene on the WSU-V campus.

With the wind blowing and therain holding o, Triple Wellman Contrac-tors continue their work on the new un-dergraduate classroom building. The $15.7 billion dollar project began in January andis scheduled to be completed by the end of June 2009.

“Everything is on schedule to becompleted by the deadline,” foreman Dan

Reef says. The sounds of man-lis, sorters,and backhoes make conversation diculton the construction site. However, Reef’soce provides a quieter place to talk.

The oce is full with site plans,paperwork from more than 60 subcontrac-tors, and a continually ringing telephone.The project has presented challenges, Reefsays.

“The biggest challenge on this proj-ect,” he says, “is the lack of space for stor-age and parking.”

Seven portable buildings used foroces and storage sit on the 12-acre lotinside the fenced o area. The only placefor the portables is in front of the work-out room, thus blocking the Mount Hoodviews for people using the facility. That ir-ritates some of the people using the work-out room, Reef says.

“There wasn’t anywhere else to putthe portables,” he says. “I oered to painta mural of Mount Hood on the back of myoce.”

The burnt red brick of the newthree-story building also blocks views ofMount Hood for the Multimedia Class-room Building. So far, Reef hasn’t heardany complaints about that.

The exercise enthusiasts in the t-ness center may have to wait until this nextsummer to get their view back, but they canget out for a walk to enjoy the mountain.In addition to the building, constructioncrews also built disabled-accessible paths,connecting the lower and upper walkingpaths on campus. The paths are completeand open to the public.

The VanCougar14 FEATURES

KOUG radio continues tostream online while stu-dents at WSU-V work outthe logistics.

With the help of students atWSU-V, KOUG AM580 could be upand broadcasting with a student based team pushing it along byspring semester. Zane Wagner andSpring Atkinson have been hard atwork to revive KOUG radio. At thismoment, Atkinson is the only stamember of KOUG radio. She hasput together several meetings gath-ering about 20 students to discussthe future of KOUG radio. Atkin-son believes, “the best way to builda strong radio station is to involveas many students as possible.” This

is the belief of Wagner as well.Zane Wagner is one hopeful

candidate for station manager ofKOUG radio. His fate will be de-termined at the next Media Boardmeeting held on December 12th.The Media Board is made up of stu-dents, faculty, and media advisors.Chair of the board is Robert Chu,a WSU-V student and an ASWSUVsenator. Everyone on the MediaBoard is determined that KOUGradio to remain student-based.

The new preliminary businessplan for KOUG reads: “KOUG ra-dio should be an active entity oncampus that involves students andprovides a forum for the expressionof student ideas and concerns.”

Involvement with local bandsis on Wagner’s to-do list. This hasalways been a goal of KOUG ra-dio, but seldom ralized. In Novem- ber 2007, KOUG held a fundraiserwhere local bands serenaded at-

tendees while a silent auction tookplace—raising an estimated $500 to

support KOUG.While local bands are encour-

aged, so are mainstream artists.Wagner says, “As for music, I wouldlike to see a focus on local artists, but if a student wanted to DJ ashow that featured a certain genre(country, alternative rock, hyphy), Iwould absolutely encourage that! Idon’t think there should be any re-strictions on music genres.”

So what’s in store for KOUGradio? Wagner says, “I hope to seeKOUG broadcasting talk showsand news shows created by stu-dents, in addition to running liveshows with DJs.”

If you would like to get in-volved, send an email to [email protected]. The possibil-ities are endless: DJ’s, sound engi-neers, talk show hosts, advertisingor campus outreach.

By Shantel EricksonTheVanCougar

KOUG Radio coming together

New building goes up, blocks view By Shantel Erickson

TheVanCougar

What would you do if someonecame into your classroom and start-ed killing your classmates? Sucha question rarely enters our mind.We don’t think about it becausethe scenario is so rare that it’s al-most not worth mentioning. How-ever, it could happen, and Lt. DaveStephenson knows it. That is whyon Tuesday, Nov. 17, Stephensonshowed twice a video called ShotsFired on Campus: when lightningstrikes.

The video was presented bythe Center for Personal Protectionand Safety and is part of a largescale violence preventive programin Washington. The 20-minute vid-eo was aimed at preparing peoplefor that “what if” situation.

Shots Fired on Campus fo-cuses primarily on what happens before the police arrive becausemost of the incident is over beforethe police can get there. “Policecan’t respond before it’s largelyover, most of your survivability lieswith you,” said Stephenson. Thevideo is said to be realistic thoughthere was no blood or people seen being killed. However, there were“active shooters” being shownwalking around a campus.

The advice Shots Fired onCampus provides is priceless. Firstand foremost, people need to un-derstand that the gunshots heard inthe movie and the sound of real lifegunshots are very dierent. There-fore, if you think you hear whatmight be a gunshot, assume it is un-til you know for sure it’s somethingelse. The most important piece ofadvice this video gave was to trustyour instincts. If that is to followthe leader or to take action, do it.

You might picture your-selves in a classroom during anincident, but you could be in thehallway or outside. Think aboutwhat you might do ahead of time.The best course of action is to takeimmediate cover, process the situa-

tion in your head and then try to getout. When you are safe you shouldcall the police and tell them what’sgoing on. Don’t assume someoneelse has.

Sometimes you may not beable to hide and you may have toconfront the shooter. Work withstudents and other people to spreadout and work out a plan to “takeout” the shooter should s/he comeinto your hiding place.

The video ended with ashort question and answer sessionwith input and advice by Dr. Wil-liam Meek. He encouraged anyoneever suspecting that someone mighthave ill intentions or may be proneto causing violence to tell the WSU-V police or [Dr. Meek] himself.

The downside of what wasotherwise a fantastic video was theturnout. Most in aendance wereeither faculty or sta. This wasadvertised fairly well for studentsand would have been an excellenttool for them in case such a horriblething occurred. In any case it wasgood that faculty and sta aended because, as Dr. Meek mentioned, itis likely that the students will lookto sta as leaders during such anincident.

Shooting videonot given a shot

By Jake KleinschmidtTheVanCougar

P h o t o s b y G r e g o r y

Z s c h o m l e r



15FEATURES December 4, 2008

Upon arriving to the country of Belize,it became apparent that this was a place un-like any other. Traveling via a Royal Caribbeancruise ship proved troublesome due to the bar-rier reef surrounding the port of Belize, so wedropped anchor and boarded catamarans totake us ashore. It was then that I learned of themany wonders of Belize, and why locals say it isun-Belize-able.

Carlos, our tour guide, was no strangerto tourists. Aer introducing himself and hiscoworker Randy, he unloaded a barrage of fas-cinating facts about his native land. He began by thanking us for our business as, due to re-cent ooding at the end of hurricane season ap-proached, he has been unable to nd work forthe past month. “Belize is very dependant upontourism,” he said “so tell your friends aboutwhat a good time you had here, and tell themto visit Belize.” The ooding had also causedthe beautiful, clear blue water of the Caribbean

Sea to turn a grimy, muddy brown. The recentooding was also an inconvenience to my fam-ily because we had originally scheduled a cavetubing and zip-line tour through the jungle. Wewere told that the only road that goes to the oth-er side of the country was washed out by oodwaters from neighboring Guatemala. The onlyroad that goes to the other side of the country!As Americans this was a nearly intangible fact.Carlos was prompt in relating the size of Belizeto something we could fathom. “Belize is aboutthe size of Massachuses,” He told us, “but thepopulation of Massachuses is much larger.”Twenty time larger in fact, with a populationof a lile over 6,000,000 people, Massachusestowers over Belize’s mere 300,000 people. That’sabout twice the population of Vancouver alone!With this small of a population, it creates a venuefor a rich understanding of culture and commu-nity, which is a major part of a native Belizean’slife. We boarded our second boat aer securinga snorkeling trip in place of our original plans, but we were still discouraged by the murky wa-ter surrounding us. Carlos was not worried, andhe continued to explain the history, language,and geography of Belize.

He began by telling us that Belize wasmost recently known as British Honduras, al-though it was originally a Mayan country, be-fore the Spanish invaded it. These inuencesstill play a huge role in all that is Belize. One ofthe most notable and intriguing facts that Carlosshared, was in regards to the language. Belize is

the only Central American country where Eng-lish is the ocial language. “We learn English inschool, but we speak Spanish at home,” Carlosexplained. He also noted that many Belizeansare trilingual, as Creole (think New Orleans)is oen spoken. Creole is an amalgamation ofFrench and English, or as Carlos called it “badEnglish”. For the remainder of the boat ride,Carlos demonstrated his bilingual techniques by speaking in both English and Spanish per therequest of native Spanish speakers on the boat.

Our trip continued to our nal destina-tion of Rendezvous Island, a small island locatedabout 10 minutes from the mainland. Along theride, we noticed patches of trees growing spo-

radically throughoutthe ocean, and to oursurprise (and relief)the water returned toits expected beauty.Carlos explained thatthis color change was,in fact, due to the treeswe had been notic-ing. “These are man-groves,” he explained,“they grow their rootsdeep into the water,and they lter out allof the dirt.” There is a barrier of mangrovesthat grows right o thecoast of Belize, so pastthis barrier the wateris crystal for miles.The mangrove barrieris not the only one, aswe soon learned.

Prior to thistrip, I was told Belizewas famous for it’ssnorkeling, but I nev-er really considered it,nor did I comprehendthe urgency previoussnorkelers tried toconvey to me. Friendssaid, “Kayla youhave to snorkel in Be-lize!” It was not untilI jumped o the boatlike a wounded seal,with my ippers ap-ping and my gogglessuctioned to my face,did I understand. Be-lize is home to a bar-rier reef, second onlyto the Great BarrierReef in Australia. Sec-ond, well it must have been a prey close race, because this was an amazing sight. Belize, andits barrier reef was recently a topic of discussionon a Today Show series “The ends of the earth”.Belize is a place of growing ecological researchdue to the vast underwater ecosystem, and asa result, a site for conservational precautions.Measures are being taken to limit the amountof humans allowed to visit the reef, simply topreserve its beauty for centuries to come.We were safely led by Randy through the Ca-

ribbean Sea. The reef creates a huge wave in themiddle of the ocean, so it is necessary to havea guide for a safe trip. There is a break in thetide, and this is where we were led. Equippedwith my Kodak underwater camera, I snappedpictures le and right of sting rays, lobsters,octopuses, blue tangs (think Dory from “Find-ing Nemo”), and too many other sh and coralto name. Randy would dip down and coax outmore species of who knows what, and I was con-tinuously astonished. Feeling brave, I tried toimitate Randy’s diving moves, but I only man-aged to swallow a mouthful of salt water, andpossibly a few fresh pieces of seaweed. It was allin the name of a great adventure. As we opped

back on deck, Carlos proceeded to tell us thatthe reef is home to over 400 types of sh, andsome 300 types of coral. The trip was far fromover; our last stop, the Belizean Keys!

We arrived at Rendesvous Island, one of450 of the miniature islands that make up theBelizean Keys. This island is a popular touristdestination, as is it home to a water trampoline,restaurant, bar (of course), sand volleyball net,and what else but a monkey! Yep, a monkey. Thelocals call him Mojo (Powerpu Girls anyone?)

and he is quite popular. Once everyone got windof the monkey sighting, it was photo shoot time.Mojo posed high up in his tree, as many tried tocoax him down with bananas, but I’m sure hehas seen that trick before. Aer about ten min-utes the crowd dispersed and Mojo decided itwas safe to move to another tree. Amidst a vol-leyball game I glanced over to see him waltzingto an adjacent tree as if to say ‘And scientists sayyou all evolved from me!’

As the day wound to a close, I sat on alounge chair and recounted the day’s recentevents. I would like to honor Carlos’s request,and to say that Belize is a worth while trip, be-cause it is truly, 100% un-Belize-able.

Un-Belize-able: My trip to Central AmericaStory and Photos By Kayla Page

TheVanCougar

VJ Fleet [redux] came, saw, and conqueredOn November 22, the eorts of DTC

students in the Interactive Media courseand Canadian digital artists Julie Andreyevand Simon Overstall did not go unnoticed.

The performance, which includedthe seing up of projection screens on thehoods of three Honda CR-Vs and the show-ing of a 30-minute journey through Vancou-ver, took place at three locations. It startedat dusk in front of the Classroom Buildingat WSU Vancouver then moved on to theGrand Central Shopping Center and con-

cluded in front of the North Bank ArtistsGallery in downtown Vancouver.

One of the central aims of the projectwas to comment on the car culture of thecity, which was demonstrated by some au-dience’s refusal to exit their own vehicles tosee the performance.

Other passers-by shared their enthusi-asm for the project, one noteable responseincluding the statement that “if things likethis happened more oen, this town would be much more interesting.”

Three cars, three screens, one revved up show. For more info, visit vjeet.com

Photo by Gregory E. Zschomler



The VanCougar16 COMMUNITY

Sometimes it’s just easier not to care—to go along your merry way until some-thing catches up with you and life barrelsover you like a steamroller. Even if “whatgoes around” didn’t come around and getpersonal, the right thing to do is not: donothing.

There are WSU-V students and facultywho care about the right, the just, the fairthing. They are not content to sit idly byand merely watch while wrong or injus-tice prospers at the expense of the inno-cent. Instead they are the whistle-blowers,the cavalry, the “watchmen on the wall”looking out for their fellow citizens.

This semester the Center for Social and

Environmental Justice (hereaer referredto as “the center”) asked some probingquestions, confronting issues that somewould just as soon sweep under the rug.One of those issues has been the ongoinglabor dispute against WSU-V by the localcarpenter’s union concerning the subcon-tract hire of Delta Drywall.

Earlier this term the center organizeda forum to address the issue and invitedinterested students, faculty and sta to

join them in dialoging with the university(Capitol Planning), the union, the contrac-tor and subcontractor. Several students,three faculty members, a concerned citi-zen, and a union representative showedup. The contractors and Capitol Planningneglected or declined to send a represen-tative. In all, 16 persons were present.

One of the faculty members on handwas co-organizer, Desiree Hellegers whonoted that, “Capitol Planning at both Pull-man and Vancouver declined to send aspeaker.” Dave Smith heads Capitol Plan-ning and WSU-V.

Jason Sheckler, who was arrested oncampus for trespass while leaeting earlythis semester, was the guest speaker fromthe carpenter’s union. He presented manychanges and grievances against ChrisTroxel, the owner of Delta Drywall, citingunfair and illegal labor practices as well asshady business dealings.

“There is a continuous paern of ex-ploitation,” said Sheckler, “We need toset standards and dene these standardsfor all workers.” Some of the allegationsagainst Troxel have been: paying underthe table to avoid taxes and paying ben-ets; working laborers 40 hours, but onlypaying them for 18; under reporting thenumber of workers to the state in order topay less taxes; etc.

He said that laborers for Troxel com-panies either worked without complaintor ended up not working at all. He saidthat a real grievance process needs to beput into place so that workers are notafraid to stand up.

Concerned citizen Shellynda Mi-chalek, who’s husband has worked forTroxel, said that Troxel “preys o theworkers…hiring illegals” who are afraidto speak out. She cited his underhanded

tactics designed to avoid paying medical benets.

“I guarantee, if it was Hal [Dengerink]’sor Dave [Smith]’s daughter laying in thehospital,” she said, we wouldn’t put upwith this.

Sheckler presented a pile of documen-tation—the same documentation he pre-sented to Smith earlier in the year—out-lining the history of Troxel companies eth-ical misdeeds. He also presented a copy ofHouse Bill 2010 that outlines “responsible

bidder criteria.”Desiree Hellegers said the bill, “Ex-

tends considerable new desecration toagencies to dene exactly what a ‘respon-sible’ bidder is.” The bill was signed intolaw on July 22, 2007 and gives state agen-cies—including universities—the right torefuse the hire of a bidder on grounds ofirresponsibility regardless of whether or

not they meet the state’s lowest bidderrequirement. In other words the “respon-sible bidder criteria” law can trump the“lowest bidder” law.

Hellegers said that the university’s“position is they’re operating within theleer of the law.” The position of the unionand the club is that: one, that does notmean its right and, two, there is an out, ifthey want to take it.

“It’s a really pivotal moment for WSUto do the right thing,” said Hellegers.

Taj Mahon-Ha is a faculty advisorfor the Center for Social and Environmen-tal Justice. He cited the reason for raisingthis important issue, “In sheer reality thisguy [Troxel] gets the money and we takecare of the workers [through taxes and so-cial services]. Clearly the university isn’tgoing to pay aention…unless we standup and make a stink about it.”

“We here are all going to be work-ers…” said Mahon-Ha, “We’ll hope forsome semblance of worker’s rights.” Hesaid as university stakeholders we havethe right and responsibility to hold theuniversity accountable. He noted that“student activism creates change.”

According to Mahon-Ha WSU-Pull-man’s Progressive Student Union pres-sured the university into a policy against

buying apparel from companies utilizingsweatshops last year. On this campus stu-dents have lobbied for Fair Trade Certi-ed Coee.

Mahon-Ha noted that WSU’s mis-sion statement spells out 9 standards; theninth standard is ‘institutional integrity.’“This,” he said, “is not adhering to…highethical standards.”

Sheckler said that the carpenter’sunion will continue calling aention to

WSU’s aliation with and participation inunfair labor practices until they “removeDelta from the job” and set in writing apolicy of ethical hiring standards.

Meanwhile, Sheckler and the carpen-ter’s union are still ghting a legal baleover the university’s charges against them,the union is still bannering at the boomof the south entrance, and the universityand general contractor are still in contractwith the subcontractor, Delta Drywall.

To learn more about this issue or the Cen-ter or Social and Environmental Justice,Social and Environmental Justice Clubor SEJ certifcate program email: [email protected] or [email protected].

By Gregory E. Zschomler Editor-in-ChiEf

Center for Social and Environmental Justice:

Forum asks “What’s the right thing...”

Jason Sheckler speaks to a group of students about ethics in hiring practices at a forum sponsored by the WSU-VCenter for Social and Environmental Justice

P h o t o C r e d i t : K

a t i e W e l l s

The Center or Social and Environmental Justice catalyzescollaborations between WSU aculty, students and commu-nity partners to oster rigorous analysis o social, economic,racial and environmental justice issues and promote humanrights and confict resolution at local, national and global levels...



Many on campus are unawarethat there is a specic zone on theUniversity property in which freespeech can be fully exercised.Even so, the rules surroundingits use are ambiguous and are notcomprehensive, leaving Univer-sity policy open to interpretation.The existence of such also begs theobvious question “Why isn’t ev-erywhere on campus a free speechzone?”

The area designated the “OpenForum” zone in University policy(available online in the StudentHandbook) includes the cafeteriain VADM and the outdoor pavil-ion extending from the east wall ofthe cafeteria to the stone wall. Ac-cording to the WSU-V webpage,the zone is available for use from9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday throughFriday.

The University states that the“[o]pen forum areas may be usedwith administrative approval,for a specied period of time, bygroups and individuals, in accor-dance with [university policy] . .. .” In apparent contradiction, the

University goes on to state that it“supports each individual’s rightto peacefully express their viewand opinions for or against actionsor ideas in which they have an in-terest.”

The “free speech zone” aract-ed some aention at the beginningof the semester when three members of the Carpenters Union werearrested on campus for trespasswhile handing out yers with re-gards to the unlawful labor prac-tices of a subcontractor employedon campus. At the time of arrest,those handing out handbills werenot in the area designated as a freespeech zone. One of the Unionmembers arrested, Jason Sheckler,states that he and his fellow repre-sentatives were not informed thatthere was any such area until aerthey were arrested.

According to Sheckler, members of the Union had handed outyers on campus previously with-out incident. As a result, he ques-tions the ocer’s justication inarresting him. However, on purelylegal grounds, the action seems justied, so far as the law and Uni-versity policy are concerned. Uni-versity regulations clearly state

that “[p]ersons not connected with

the University are not authorizedto distribute handbills or othermaterials without prior approvalof the Facilities Use Commiee.”

In addition, the StudentHandbook notes that “individuals. . . who violate these regulations. . . will be requested to leave theUniversity property. . . . Failure tocomply with such a request willsubject such individuals to ar-rest.”

Therefore, even if Sheckler andhis fellow workers had known ofthe Open Forum Zone, they wouldhave had to submit paperworkrequesting the right to distributeyers to students and faculty oncampus. By requiring that outsideparties go through this process,the University discourages thefree ow of information and, in ef-fect, infringes on the right to freespeech.

For students and student or-ganizations that wish to engagein public speech on campus, cur-rent available University policy isambiguous and incomprehensive.Bylaws do not specically addressthe issue of individual free speech;clubs and organizations must get

approval from the Facilities UseCommiee or the Director of Fi-nance and Operations in order toset up tables or otherwise use theOpen Forum space, according tothe Student Handbook.

Under a section of the Facili-ties Use Policy titled “Advertis-ing Policies”, the use of chalk onUniversity sidewalks is prohib-ited. The term “advertising” isnot clearly dened; it does notnecessarily indicate publicizing aproduct for prot. For example,student government elections areaddressed under the heading of“advertising.” Therefore, are otherforms of free speech prohibited oncampus?

The ambiguity of University bylaws introduces the opportu-nity for subjective interpretationthat serves the interest of thosein charge of enforcing the laws.More importantly, the existenceof the Open Forum zone demandsthat we ask why the university,an historically liberal institution,embraces the idea that free speechcan be relegated to zones and thatit must rst pass through direc-tors and commiees before beingheard.

17COMMUNITY December 4, 2008

Free Speech Zone:Infringing on rights?

By Anita FlemingthEVanCougar

The newly re-formed Socialand Environmental Justice Club(SEJC) met on campus for the thirdtime on Wednesday, November19th, and plans to hold its nextmeeting on December 3rd. In ad-dition to the relatively mundane

business of club ocer appoint-ment and review of the club consti-tution, members discussed actionthat they would like to take to raiseawareness of the new club and toinstigate progressive change intheir community.

The most immediate is the on-going labor dispute with regardsto one of the subcontractors, DeltaDrywall Inc., which was hired towork on the new UndergraduateClassroom Building on campus.

Delta Drywall is one of severalsubcontractors hired by the gen-eral contractor, Triple WellmanInc., and specializes in drywall,metal stud framing, and acousticalceiling construction. Jason Sheck-ler, one of the three CarpentersUnion representatives arrested oncampus in August, commentedon the Union’s eorts and aims.He stressed that the Union is notadvocating that Delta Drywall bekicked o the project; also, Sheck-ler pointed out that Delta’s statusas a non-Union company is imma-terial to the Union’s eorts to makethe University and students awareof Delta’s business practices.

It is purely a maer of Delta’sfailure to pay area standard wag-es and benets. Members of theUnion are reportedly picketingagainst Delta at Willamee Uni-versity, where the company is also

being subcontracted.According to a report compiled

by the Pacic Northwest RegionalCouncil of Carpenters (PNRCC),the subcontractor and its sistercompanies have been involved inseveral lawsuits. In one instance,Finishers Corporation, one of Del-ta owner Chris Troxel’s half-dozen

contracting companies, declared bankruptcy in order to avoid pay-ing almost $100,000 as the result ofan insurance fraud conviction.

Of Troxel’s seven contractingrms, ve have gone out of busi-ness since 1996. The companiesalso allegedly violated minimumwage laws and consistently failedto report accurate working hoursfor their employees.

The report refers the reader tothe website www.closerlookatdel-ta.com. While it does not activelycite the sources of its information,it does include reproductions of le-gal documents pertaining to Trox-el’s companies’ lawsuits. It alsoprovides contact information forBen Basom, the Representative ofthe PNRCC. He can be reached at(503) 261-1862.

According to Sheckler, theCarpenters Union sent materialsto the general contractor, TripleWellman, when it rst heard thatDelta Drywall was bidding on the

job. The Union received no ac-knowledgment or response fromthe contractor.

The University, while acknowl-edging the Union’s statement, hasproverbially washed its hands of

the maer, stating summarily that

since the general contractor hiredDelta, there is nothing the Univer-sity can do. Sheckler begs to dier,contending that the University isfully capable of seing standards(and enforcing those standards)that will discourage companieswho engage in dishonest businesspractices.

The SEJC has draed a peti-tion which demands that the Uni-versity cease doing business withDelta Drywall and drop the charg-es brought against the CarpentersUnion members arrested for tres-pass while yering against Deltaon campus at the beginning of thissemester.

However, according to Univer-sity policy, the ocer who arrestedthem was well within his rights.The university’s Facilities Use Pol-icy states that “persons not con-

nected with the University are notauthorized to distribute handbillsor other materials without priorapproval of the Facilities Use Com-miee.” For more information onthe Carpenters Union arrests, seethe adjoining article about the on-campus “Free Speech Zone”.

While not the rst Social andEnvironmental Justice club on cam-pus, the current SEJC aims to focuson specic local issues of social jus-tice, particularly those that are rel-evant to students of the Universityand members of the surroundingcommunity.

Last year’s SEJC, accordingto the WSU-V webpage, aimed toprovide “environmental aware-ness and commitment through in-dividual oral group projects focus-ing on local and regional levels”,and reportedly focused on projectssuch as bringing fair-trade coeeinto the cafeteria.

As a response to the recent sex-uality-based incidents on the Pull-man campus, the SEJC is discuss-ing an on-campus reading of “TheLaramie Project”, a play based onthe 1998 killing of Mahew Shepa-rd. This would take place duringschool hours in the quad on the

south end of campus. In order forthe reading to be a timely responseto those recent events, the clubhopes to recruit participants assoon as possible. The SEJC is alsoconsidering a showing of a lmabout Mahew Shepard in the nearfuture.

Globalization and Latin Amer-ica are the subjects of a lm festi -val whose opening night will beon campus on January 22nd andwhich the SEJC is promoting inconjunction with the Portland Cen-tral America Solidarity Commiee,which has been active since 1979.The SEJC encourages other studentclubs to sponsor a night of the lmfestival, which will run three daysand include six lms. Students andclubs interested in doing so cancontact Amy Burton or the SEJC.

For inormation about joiningthe SEJC or inormation aboutthe labor dispute petition or anyo the other events mentioned,please contact Taj Mahon-Hat [email protected] or theSEJC at social.environmental. [email protected].

Social and EnvironmentalJustice Club for world change

By Anita FlemingthEVanCougar

Free Speech Zone



The VanCougar18 fEaTUrES

Decemberis a month ofc e l e b r a t i o n .From Christ-mas, to Hanukkah (Chanu-ka), and Kwanzaa, dierentreligions and/or ethnicities allcelebrate miracles of victoryand hope. All three celebra-tions mentioned here have in-teresting historical roots, andall three ght the temptationto swerve from those rootsinto the consumerism of themodern winter holiday.

HISTORYHanukkah is the oldest

of the three, and was rst cel-ebrated on the 25th of Kislev164 BCE. According to RabbiElizabeth Dunsker, “Chanu-kah is a celebration of twomiraculous events.” The rst being the military victory inwhich a Jewish army defeat-ed a superior invasion forceof Syrian Greeks under An-tiocus IV Epiphanes reclaim-ing their land and temple.

The second miracle wasthat the Ner Tamid (the eter-nal light), which must never

go out, was running out ofoil. Because of the war, no oilwas close by to keep it burn-ing, yet the oil miraculouslylasted for eight days until themessengers sent to nd theoil had returned.

Dunsker spoke of anotherreason for instating Hanuk-kah, “We have a very impor-tant Festival called Sukkotwhich takes place in the falland lasts for 8 days. The yearof the war with Antiochus,the Israelites were not able tocelebrate Sukkot in the fall.When they did celebrate it,late aer their victory, it be-came Chanukah.

Christmas, as well, has adeep historical background.The organizer of NW Colle-giate Ministries on campusand an associate pastor atCross Point Church, CharlieGrenade, expounded a lileon the origins of Christmas, “Anumber of dierent culturescelebrate December 25th,” hesaid. “It was a Greco-romanholiday, a Persian holidayand yolla.”

According to Grenade,

these other holidays predated

C h r i s t i a n -ity. December25th didn’t becomethe day for celebrating theadvent (meaning “coming”or birth) of Christ in the 300’sand 400’s. [Editor’s note: Thereare many opinions as to thedating of the Christian event,which corresponds to the Ro-man celebration of Saturnalia.Theories range far and wide, but most align the birth of Je-sus with a cosmic event (thestar) described in the Bibleand various phenomenon re-cording in history.]

The third holiday thatmany celebrate in Decem- ber is Kwanzaa. Dr. ThabitiLewis, who has organizedKwanzaa celebrations atWillamee University, saysKwanzaa “was rst practicedin the 1970’s by Dr. Karengaand members of his immedi-ate community in California,”he said. “Other communityactivists and organizations

soon followed in major citieslike Chicago and New York.”

FEASTS A feast of some sort is im-

portant to all three holidays.On the last day of Kwanzaathere is a big meal. “Many ofthe ideas around Kwanzaa areinuenced by West Africanharvest rituals,” Lewis said.“In fact, Kwanzaa roughlytranslates to mean ‘in-gather-ing.’”

Dunsker said, “Most Jewish Holidays have spe-cial foods that go along withthem and Chanukah is no ex-ception.” A common Hanuk-kah food is potato pancakeswhich can be prepared in averity of dierent ways de-pending on your family’s tra-dition. The primary food inIsrael for the holidays is “Suf-ganiyot” (sooof-gan-ee-yot)which is a kind of jelly lleddonut. There are eight nightsin Hanukkah, none of themmore important than the oth-er, any of them acceptable fora Hanukkah meal.

Christmas dinner is a

major part of the Christmas

t r a d i t i o nin America,

along with suchfoods as ginger bread, and

chestnuts. Candies and cook-ies are big traditions in manyfamilies. Usually ham or tur-key is served. Today manyfoods have been Christmas-ized for instance Christmas blend coees and teas.

SYMBOLS“The Chanukiah (meno-

rah) is the main symbol, andit is supposed to be visible,”said Dunsker. The menorahis a candle holder with ninecandles one of the nine is sep-arated from the rest. This can-dle, called the Samash, is usedto light the other candles oneeach day until on the 8th daywhen all the candles are lit.

The clearly visible andmost prominent symbol ofChristmas is the Christmastree. There are of course manyother symbols associated withChristmas today including

the symbol/legend of Santa.Today Santa is a story we tellchildren and a fat, happy manthat we frost onto our cookiesor stick in our yards.

“Santa Clause –SaintNicholas was really a saint,”said Grenade. “He was a richperson who ended up givingaway a lot of his possessions.Santa Nicolas is the Dutchpronunciation of Saint Nicho-las, and how we got the nameSanta.”

There are seven basicsymbols and two additionalones of Kwanzaa. “Many ofthe symbols such as candles,mats for fruit and vegetables[Mekka], and ears of corn andfruit focus on children as thefuture and the very notionof harvest celebration,” saidLewis. Kwanza also has itsown set of colors red, black,and green.

REMEMBRANCESThese holidays also share

the tradition of gi giving. InHanukkah and Kwanzaa thegiving is centered on children,and at Christmas it is a tradi-

tion for the whole family.

Each holiday encouragesits followers to remember acertain culture or historicalevent, and to strive for the fu-ture.

Chanukah at its very rootis a victory celebration re-membering a few brave peo-ple laid their lives on the linefor God and homeland. “Me-norahs should be placed inthe window so that every onepassing by can be remindedthat not every one does thingsthe same, and that we can beproud of our dierences,”said Dunker.

Christmas is a great vic-tory for Christians as well. Itis a celebration of the comingof God [Jesus] into humanesh, and his subsequent vic-tory over sin and death on aRoman cross for forgiveness.Grenade emphasized the im-portance of following Jesus’example of giving, not just atChristmas, but at all times ofthe year.

Kwanzaa has a list of sev-en principles one for each dayof the celebration. The sevenprinciples are Unity, Self De-termination, Collective Workand Responsibilities, Coop-erative Economics, Purpose,Creativity, and Faith.

Each of these is a remind-er to encourage practitionersto live out each principle intheir daily lives. Faith, thelast of the seven, also showsthe importance of victory. Itmeans, according to Lewis,“To believe with all our heartsin our parents, our teachers,our leaders, our people andthe righteousness and victoryof our struggle.”

Now that we have “thenew and improved” holidaythat encourages us to buyour happiness it is good tolook back at what these threeholidays are based on and re-member the things that reallymaer. Each, in essence, cel-ebrates a victory. So, whetheryou are celebrating a victoryof the past, present or futurehave a Merry Holiday sea-son.

Happy Christma-Hanu- Kwanzaa-Ka to you!

By Isaac MadsenthEVanCougar



December 4, 2008 19fEaTUrES

Working Woman’s Challah Bread

2 cups warm water or milk 2 packages dry active yeast6-7 cups bread our1/2 cup sugar1 t. salt1/4 cup oil1 egg

Dissolvethe yeast in warm(about 75- 120degrees F) water, andstir in the sugar and salt. Ten add

about hal the our and mix it up pretty well.Ten add the eggs and oil, mix, and then mix in therest o the our. Cover the dough with a damp cloth and put it ina warm, moist place until it rises to about double its original size.I you want to hurry, you can put it over the pilot light o your gasstove, i you have one. Or you can leave it in the ridge overnight.

Divide the dough into three pieces. Cut the frst piece intothree pieces and roll each o those into a 16-inch-long rope. Putthe pieces next to each other on an oiled baking sheet and braidthem. Do the same thing with your second o the three large pieces,making this braid about fve inches apart rom the frst one. Withthe last large piece, cut it into six pieces and roll each piece into 17-inch-long ropes. Make two braids out o these, and put one o themon top o each o the large braids. Pinch the ends and tuck themunder to make nice loaves.

Bake the loaves in a preheated 375-degree oven or about 35minutes. Brush the tops o the loaves with melted butter as they coolon a wire rack.

By Louise WynnthEVanCougar

1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs1 (14 ounce) can EAGLE BRAND® Sweetened Condensed

Milk 2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels1 1/3 cups aked coconut1 cup chopped nuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees F (325 degrees or glass dish). Coat13x9-inch baking pan with no-stick cooking spray.

Combine graham cracker crumbs and butter. Press intobottom o prepared pan. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumb mixture. Layer evenly with chocolate chips, coconutand nuts. Press down frmly with a ork.

Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Cut intobars or diamonds. Store covered at room temperature.

By Greg Zschomler Editor-in-ChiEf

Melt 2 tbsp sugar with a little water in a loa pan until the sugarcaramelizes. You can add some grated orange peel to make orangean, or almond extract or almond an, and so on.

Beat together:

4 eggs

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 can evaporated milk

1 tsp vanilla

Pour the beaten mixture into the sugar-coated loa pan and put

the pan in a large pan o water to bake at 350 degrees F or about 1hour 10 minutes

By Louise WynnthEVanCougar

STEP 1:

16 oz Fresh Cranberries Chopped Course10 oz Mini Marshmallows1 ½ C. Sugar or Splenda

Mix and place in Freezer overnight(Step 1 can stay in the reezer or two weeks beore you dostep 2)

STEP 2:

1 - 20 oz can Crushed Pineapple / Drained1 C Chopped Walnuts1 pnt. Whipping Cream whippedWith 1 tsp. o Vanilla

Mix and add to step one. Put back in Freezer. Tis can lastor a month.

By Katie WellsSportS & rEC Editor

Magic Cookie Bars

Maria’s Flan for Christmas EveCranberry Christmas Salad

Holiday Recipes from the VanCougar Staff



The VanCougar20 TAIL END

The VanCougar Bulletin To include a bulletin on this page, drop a fyer or a school or club-related event into

our “Bulletins” older outside VCLS 212 or email [email protected].

Free or registered student organizations!

DECEMBER 2008

Dec. 4: Winter Craft Night FirstenburgStudentCommons/7:00p.m. Gingerbread houses, families welcome.

Dec. 5: WSU-V Community Choir Concert AdministrationBuildingRoom110/12:00p.m.

Music from the Southern Hemisphere

Dec. 5: Collage / Altered Books MultimediaBuildingRoom107/12:00p.m.

Bring magazines or other images to cut up.

Dec. 5: Free Holiday Concert FirstenburgStudentCommons/7:00p.m.

The Vancouver Community Concert Band

Dec. 8: Resume Writing Workshop StudentCommonsRoom104/4:15p.m.

Free and open to students and alumni.

Dec. 10: Financial Aid 101 Workshop AdministrationBuildingRoom110/6:00p.m.

Blue Lot Parking for $3 for this event.

Dec. 10 & Dec. 17: Open Gym at Chinook BasketballOpenPlay/8:00p.m.

Free. Sign-up at Chinook Gym.

Announcing auditions for the

JUNIOR SYMPHONY OF VANCOUVER on Tursday, December 11.

Auditions are arranged by appointment only with application, availableonline at www.oregonchamberplayers.org. Te concert for this session

will be presented Saturday, March 14.

Call the JSV at (360) 696-4084 for applications and furtherinformation, and check out our website at

www.oregonchamberplayers.org

P.M.B.32,11500NE76THSTREET,SUITEA3,VANCOUVER,

WA98662

360-696-4084E-mail:[email protected]

THE GIVING TREEBetween December 1st and 15th in the lobby of the

Library, VCLS. VADM, and Firstenburg.

This is a wonderful opportunity to help families in oursurrounding communities have a blessed Christmas.

Brought to you by SBO and YWCA Clark County

Ifyouhaveanyquestionsorneedaditionalinformation,

pleasecontactErinDengerinkMadarang.(360)[email protected]@wsu.edu

the vancougar: december 4, 2008

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