A year in pictures

From the photographer

Looking back at all the events from this year for this spread, I quickly realized what a wonderful year this really was. The student tech fee mess, budget cuts, flooding and other crazy shenanigans aside, I think it’s important to stop and remember to enjoy the positive memories again. For me, working in the AS Review office has given me newfound respect for writers, event coordinators and all the students who come to events. Without you all, I wouldn’t have any reason to work as hard as I try to. Thanks again.
— Erik Simkins

All photos by Erik Simkins.

No Comments / Jun 08.09 / 06-08-09 / by leaders

Building better connections

By Shawna Leader/The AS Review

The organization of the AS Environmental Center will be changing next year. The Environmental Center, which was previously a part of the AS Resource and Outreach Programs, will be converted into the Environmental and Sustainability Programs. This new department will include the Environmental Center, the Outback Garden and the Alternative Transportation Coordinator, said Vice President for Business and Operations Virgilio Cintron.

The office will be managed by an Environmental and Sustainability Programs associate director.  This position will take the place of one of the coordinator positions in the Environmental Center. The associate director will manage the Environmental Center, which will have one coordinator instead of two, Alternative Transportation and the Outback. They will work closely with the Sustainable Food System coordinator, new Associate Director and current Environmental Center Co-Coordinator Kayla Henson said.

“Hopefully it will be able to focus the office and add some cooperation,” Henson said.

Having a director to organize the different offices will prevent issues such as double-booking events and will foster cooperation between the offices, Henson said. Ideally, this will lead to a more comprehensive office, she said.

For example, the new director will facilitate meetings between the offices to improve coordination, she said. The meetings will help the offices verbalize their ideas, work together, support each other and plan better events, Henson said.

Event collaboration is one potential result of the unification of the offices, Henson said. She gave the example of an educational event that would combine a workshop in the Outback with an environmental speaker brought in by another office. Or Alternative Transportation could have participants take a bus to a hike sponsored by another office.

“If there’s more collaboration between events, someone may have the opportunity to learn about something they normally wouldn’t have,” Henson said.
According to Cintron, the Environmental Center didn’t fit in the ROP because its programming is very different from that of the other ROP offices. Because of increased emphasis on and student interest in sustainability, it makes sense to create a center surrounded by environmental  and sustainability positions, he said.

“Everything’s really spread out, so maybe by having this centralized location where you have more of a coordinated effort between these offices…[will] maybe create more cooperation, so hopefully students will get more involved in that area, which it seems like students want to,” Cintron said.

According to Cintron, the discussion about where the Environmental Center belonged had been going on for about three years. Putting the EC in the ROP was a quick fix and it worked, but ultimately the EC has its own unique programming and needed its own associate director, Cintron said.

Even though the EC will no longer be a part of the ROP, Henson emphasized that the connection should not be severed completely. There were some cosponsored events that were a success this year and the new office will continue to do some cosponsored events with the ROP, she said.

“We hope to continue to work with the ROP … This just makes a little bit more sense,” Henson said.

The new office will begin next year with a publicity campaign to let people know how they can get involved and what the office does, Henson said.
Joining these various offices under one title will hopefully make the offices more focused and accessible to students, Henson said.

“It’s really exciting that a new office is being formed,” she said. “It’s a real opportunity for growth.”

No Comments / Jun 08.09 / 06-08-09 / by leaders

Looking ahead in the AS

By Matt Blair/The AS Review

Virgilio Cintron
AS VP for Business and Operations

The AS Review: You’ve clearly taken a proactive approach to the current budget crisis. Do you believe this process is the best way to go about finding solutions?

Virgilio Cintron: What I did this year was clean things up. I think for a number of years people hadn’t really been looking at these charters, committees or processes that we were actually using. We may have been using a specific process for something, but it wasn’t written on paper. There were a lot of things that were conflicting. So I was trying to move the organization into more of an assessment model … A lot of this year was about creating that structure and changing the culture of the AS. There were committees that hadn’t been looked at in ten years. Ten years ago the AS was a very different one than we have today. I believe that should be done every year because that’s what’s going to best represent students.

ASR: Now that you have a year of experience with this job, does it make it easier to continue revising the AS as opposed to starting anew?

VC: I think it’s both a continuation and dealing with new problems because new things are going to come up next year. Especially since being in the actual budget cut, it’s easy to be in the fiscal year before the budget cut. That way I won’t say “we’ll worry about that next year” or “we’ll plan for that.” We’re actually going to be a part of the budget cut … I think it helps to have continuity, just because many of our positions roll over year after year after year. So people start again at the same place the other person may have started.

ASR: As VP for Business and Operations, you are a direct tie between the business side of the board and students. Going into next year, what are some of the things that you’re thinking about, knowing that tuition will likely go up, financial aid might go down and it’s going to be more difficult to afford to go to Western?

VC: One thing that I’ve been focusing on is student fees. That’s something we can look at and see what students are wanting and needing as well as what funds we’re currently getting … Do we need to raise them in order to get these needs or can we get them with the resources we already have? We do the legislative stuff and we go out there and we lobby for students, but at the end those decisions aren’t really made by us. They’re made by external factors. So we can lobby all we want but there’s things here that we can do to try and maintain some level of the programming we have without having to raise fees continually. So this year, [AS President] Eric [Lowe] and I worked on fee processing. We capped the increase on the Student Tech fund and gave away some of the AS money so that other departments could also start decreasing their areas, but also keep a level of service. I think innovative stuff like that will be important next year. It’s something that I think I will be working on more with my position because student fees are something I feel that we can control. Even though the legislative force is really important, I feel like that’s something we can control right here at home and help alleviate some of those burdens.

Hallie Anderson
AS Productions Pop Music Coordinator (Position Pending)

The AS Review: How are do you feel about the responsibility of being AS Productions Pop Music coordinator?

Hallie Anderson: It’s a little intimidating. I think Hunter [Motto] and Brittany [Smith] [the current ASP Pop Music coordinators] and everyone else that Hunter has worked with have solidified Pop as an office. They’ve made it pretty big, so it’s a little intimidating to step into those shoes. Hunter’s been doing it for three years; he’s good at what he does. So hopefully we can keep the program going up to the same caliber that they were able to.

ASR: Do you have any plans for next year?

HA: We’re throwing out ideas of people we’d like to contact, but it’s always really difficult to get that one artist on that one date. We’re starting to look at what weekends would be good and [have]established the groundwork, more or less, but we haven’t started contacting the artists or anything.
ASR: Why did you want to take on the job as coordinator of ASP Pop Music?

HA: I want to be an event coordinator that works for a company doing large festivals or big concerts, so I think Pop is more tailored to my specific interests. It relates more to my future. I’m really glad I had the opportunity to do Special Events [Anderson’s previous position], because it adds diversity to what I’ve done and hopefully it will help next year for Pop Music because we can come up with some out-of-the-box ideas in concerts or publicity.

ASR: How do you think you’ll go about selecting the artists to perform next year? Will there be student input?

HA: On the Web site, there is a box where students can put in “this is the artist I would like to see.” They can also sign up for our mailing list there. … Bellingham is very lucky on where it’s placed. It’s between two huge cities, Seattle and Vancouver, which both get a lot of large acts, so we can route, book or pick up off dates on a tour, which definitely helps us to get those names that normally a market like Bellingham wouldn’t get. So that’s helpful and looking through student requests or talking to people about who they’d want to see.

Josh Foley
AS ROP LGBT Alliance Asisstant Coordinator

The AS Review: This is your first salaried job as an AS employee. Why did you choose to seek employment with the AS?

Josh Foley: The LGBTA is something that I feel is a very powerful entity on campus and I just wanted to be a part of it and make it even more of a powerhouse while helping the campus through that. It’s a great resource and I think it can be utilized even more. That’s why I wanted to be a part of it, so that I could rework some things from the inside and really get the name out there. I felt that I could support a lot of LGTB students.

ASR: What kind of things, specifically, do you hope to utilize?

JF: I want to do a lot more community building. The LGTBA has a lot of events and that’s really awesome, but I think we need more social events and more mingling amongst communities. We can connect with different organizations and clubs. The [LGBTA] programs coordinator and I have talked about doing a lot more out in the community with high schools and trying to encourage other students to go out and be a part of Bellingham, more than just Western’s campus. We want to do a lot more with community in general; community in the sense of building a better LGBT community and also building community between clubs and connecting to the greater Bellingham community.

ASR: Come this time next year, what do hope to have accomplished within the LGTBA?

JF: I hope that I’ve created a campus where LGTB identity is very visible and very accepted. We’re going to work a lot on accepting the queer community from the inside—from an LGTB perspective because there’s a lot of separation within the community—but also I want the school to feel safe for everyone. I want people to come to our school specifically thinking, “this is a good school for LGTB students.”

Jonathan McConnell
AS Publicity Center Graphic Design Coordinator (Position Pending)

AS Review: Next year you’ll be AS Publicity Center Graphic Design Coordinator. How do you feel about that job?

Jonathan McConnell: I’m more of the public face, more involved in client interaction for the Publicity Center, which I enjoy. I want to continue to support and be helpful, to actually encourage the relationship between the Publicity Center and other offices within the AS and other departments within the university.

ASR: What about the fact that you’ll be managing other graphic designers? How will you manage their creative abilities?

JM: I’m just finishing my senior sequence of design—I just finished a graphic design major—and I’m applying for, effectively, an extra year as a bachelor of Fine Arts student. I think within the major I’ve worked with other students and their creative process and their school projects. Not necessarily managing them, but I’ve had the experience of working with some of the students that work here on a school level. But I do have that experience of standing back and saying, “okay, this is your work but I think it can go in that direction. It’s better if it goes in that direction.” As far as having a staff, I think it’s a great avenue to grow in my own abilities to manage people.

ASR: What can we expect from the graphic design (in the Publicity Center) next year?

JM: I think the quality of work will be superior even to this year. This year has been a great year, but with returning staff, returning designers and only having to bring in a couple of new people, I think that the quality of work will be awesome. With those returning people it will be awesome work, on time … I think that’s something we’ve previously struggled with.

No Comments / Jun 08.09 / 06-08-09 / by leaders

Get psyched!

by tuli alexander/The AS Review

Psychology students can finally exhibit all their hard work at PsychFest 2009 when they present the research projects they’ve been working on throughout the year or quarter. Their opportunity will be from 9 to 4 on June 5 at the Academic Instructional Center in rooms 203 and 204.

PsychFest is a way for students and faculty to get together to showcase the research they’ve been doing outside of the classroom, said psychology professor Kelly Jantzen.

The tradition of PsychFest began in 2003 with the club Psy Chi, who decided to put on a conference in the psychology department, said psychology professor Kristi Lemm.

The students did such a great job, Lemm said, that the faculty decided to make it an annual event.

Students can sign up to give poster presentations, in which they use posters to outline and summarize the research they’ve done. Generally consisting of one to four students per research project, these posters are condensed in a way that can be easily understood rather than reading an entire academic paper and trying to interpret it, said James LeDuc, the student representative on the PsychFest committee.

While there are usually around 20 to 30 poster presentations, approximately eight students give talks. Many of those are graduate students but there are typically one or two talks that are given by undergraduate students, Lemm said.

Undergraduate senior LeDuc will be giving a talk this year about a study he and a research partner did on correspondence bias, also known as fundamental attribution error.  The idea is that humans will interpret the actions of others regardless of the motivations behind those actions.

For example, if you see someone commit a violent act, your initial interpretation of that person is that they’re violent, regardless of the reasons why they committed that act, LeDuc said.

Another talk will be given by senior Lara Schiss. She and a research partner studied rejection sensitivity and its relationship between self esteem, social support, romantic relationships and emotional distancing during social interactions.

Using data from a two-year study that focused on how blood pressure was related to different personality types and social upbringing, the partners found no evidence supporting their hypothesis that people with higher rejection sensitivity would report more emotional distancing during social interactions.

They did, however, find that people with higher rejection sensitivity have lower self esteem and social support. But there wasn’t support that people with higher rejection sensitivity would be less likely to be in a romantic relationship, although Schiss said that people who are constantly looking for rejection would be affected by how they formed and maintained relationships.

The keynote speaker this year is Dr. Ross Thompson, a developmental psychologist at University of California, Davis. He will be giving a talk titled “Making a Human Connection: Parent-Child Conversation and Psychological Understanding.”

Thompson was the doctorate mentor for Rebecca Goodvin, a developmental psychologist at Western. She said Thompson will be describing a body of research that he’s been working on for a number of years. His research in child development is particularly important because he works to apply his findings to public policy problems regarding children and families, Goodvin said.

Although all psychology majors are required to take research classes, they don’t have to present their findings at PsychFest, said Jantzen. Participation is voluntary.
Students are typically hesitant to present their research because they feel that their work is a lot less refined than the work of professional psychologists, LeDuc said.
“There’s always the fear that you’re going to get something wrong,” Schiss said.

While PsychFest is intended to mimic a professional psychology conference, it’s in a low-stress environment, said Jantzen.

“Nobody’s there to critique one another. Instead, it’s a way for students to show off to faculty and to get help from them,” he said.

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

ESC awards night

by Shawna Leader/The AS Review

The Ethnic Student Center (ESC) will be hosting its annual awards ceremony at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 5 in the Viking Union Multipurpose Room. Dinner will be served at 6 p.m. and the ceremony begins at 6:30. Afterward, there will be a dance in the Multipurpose Room from 8:30 to midnight.

The awards ceremony precedes the ESC, said Michael Vendiola, ESC coordinator. It was previously held by the Multicultural Services Center, the predecessor to the ESC. Later the ESC started to organize the event, Vendiola said.

For the first time, the five ESC Scholarships will be awarded at the event. Additionally, other scholarships, such as the Bellingham Diversity Scholarship, will be given.
The event is also an opportunity to celebrate the past year and say goodbye to the graduating students, Vendiola said. For example, there will be a video presentation reviewing the year.

“We’re going to recognize our graduates for the past academic year and summer quarter,” he said. “We’ll be recognizing all the ESC clubs and all their efforts for the past year.”

One award, the Academic Success Challenge, will go to the ESC club that has made academic success a top priority within their organization, Vendiola said. At the beginning of the academic year, the clubs are offered the challenge of earning the award, Vendiola said.

Ways that clubs can earn the award include interacting with the Career Services Center and the Tutorial Center, forming study groups and programming events that involve academic speakers.

“It’s not based on GPA, it’s based on the organization prioritizing academic success in whatever means they find necessary,” Vendiola said.

Vendiola cited the event “Platanos and Collard Greens” as an example of an academic endeavor put on by a club.

“Anything that teaches you about your culture and identity…anything that enhances your intellect” counts as an academic achievement, Vendiola said; the award is not limited to coursework.

Clubs compile a list of their accomplishments for the year and the lists are reviewed by Vendiola and the awards planning committee, Vendiola said. The award is meant to acknowledge the accomplishments of the clubs that are beyond programming.

“It’s really this idea of focusing on things greater than programming … we wanted to provide an avenue to recognize that,” Vendiola said.

The awards banquet is $10 for Western students with ID and $17 for the general public. The dance is free for people who attend the awards ceremony, $3 for Western students with ID and $5 general.

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

STAND up for a cause

by A. Ivanhoe/The AS Review

Western students combated genocide last week with a series of events aiming to educate the Western community on human rights crises around the world.

The project, “This Week in Genocide,” was  presented  by the AS club STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition (WWU STAND), Western’s student chapter of a national organization Genocide Intervention Network (GI-NET) created in response to the Sudanese government’s slaughter of civilians in its Darfur region on the basis of their ethnicity.

“The whole idea of this week is to explain genocide and human rights issues, which are a really hard thing to comprehend,” sophomore Tyler Dixon, WWU STAND’s advocacy coordinator, said. “Even if you can understand, it’s thousands of miles away and you feel like there’s nothing you can really do about it. But there really is.”

According to sophomore Erica Olson, WWU STAND’s public relations coordinator, the motto for the week is “A human rights issue is everyone’s problem.”

The events included a discussion panel featuring Western professors Ray Wolpow, a Holocaust expert, and Kathleen Young, an expert on the 1993 genocide in Bosnia, as well as Seattle filmmaker Jen Marlowe, who spoke about Darfur and presented clips from her upcoming film “Rebuilding Hope: A Documentary Film About South Sudan.”

In a separate event, Carl Wilkens, one of the only Americans to remain in Rwanda during its 1994 genocide between warring Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities, discussed his personal experiences with genocide and his philosophy about the attitudes that either create or preempt the requisite conditions for ethnic warfare.

Wilkens, a former high school teacher, headed the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International in Rwanda when the conflict arose. In the years since his return, the demand for him to speak about his experiences increased, so he founded World Outside My Shoes in 2008 to devote himself full-time to speaking engagements, according to his Web site.

“Stories are our most powerful weapons,” Wilkens said. “Unlike other weapons, they have the potential to end a fight with two winners.”

Wilkens’s speech was followed by a screening of the film “Hotel Rwanda,” a dramatization of the Rwandan genocide from the point of view of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina.

WWU STAND also screened the award-winning documentary “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo,” chronicling the ongoing human rights crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The film, directed by Lisa F. Jackson, won the Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

On Saturday, WWU STAND also held a “5K Fun Run for Women in Congo,” raising money for Women to Women International’s Congo program, an organization that helps Congolese rape victims rebuild their lives.

“In Rwanda, a bunch of Hutus fled into the Congo and a leader of the Tutsis has declared war on Hutus in Congo,” Olson said. “They are raping and killing people and Hutus are raping and killing people and the government of Congo is unofficially raping and killing people.”

According to Olson, the genocide is funded by Chinese cellular phone manufacturers, who purchase minerals originating in the Congo from Hutu and Tutsi rebel groups.
“Congo has all these minerals that go into your cell phone, but Congo doesn’t get the money from them because they’re smuggled into neighboring African countries and then sold to China,” she said. “American companies say they get cell phones from China,” and claim ignorance on the origin of the minerals contained in them, he said.

A fact sheet produced by STAND claims that 5.4 million people have been killed in the Congo since civil war broke out in 1998, and though the war nominally ended in 2003, cease fires have been ignored and “negligence by the international community … has created conditions for a status quo in which rape, killings, displacement and conflict-related deaths characterize everyday life.”

“Rape has been a tool of war,” WWU STAND Advocacy Coordinator Tyler Dixon said. “When you rape a woman, you destroy the social fabric of that village because women commonly get shunned by their husbands for fear they’ve been infected [with HIV].”

“Women just don’t say anything. They’re afraid to speak out. Sex is a taboo, so it’s not talked about,” he said. “Adding fuel to the fire is an extremely large majority are affected by HIV and AIDS.”

WWU STAND also put on a benefit comedy show called “Burma Comedy Night” featuring Western student comedians Jim Allan and Paul Beeman and the sketch comedy group the Dead Parrots Society. Between the laughs, WWU STAND members spoke about ethnic-based killing in Burma, the Southeast Asian nation known as Myanmar by its government. The military junta, which has retained power since a successful coup in 1962, deposed a democratically elected government, has targeted the Karen and other minority populations in eastern Burma for extermination, according to STAND.

“The government will randomly go into a village and burn it down and kill all the people who are trying to get away,” Olson said.

News of Burmese atrocities has come mostly from Karen refugees, who have fled into neighboring Thailand. Burma, which has made great pains to isolate itself from the rest of the world, does not allow international journalists to enter its country.

Burma is lately in the international spotlight because the junta has put Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on trail for violating the terms of her house arrest after allowing an American, who swam to her home, to stay overnight, according to the Associated Press (AP). Suu Kyi, who has been an outspoken advocate for democracy and peace, has been under house arrest for most of the time since her National League for Democracy won a 1990 parliamentary election in a landslide, taking over 80 percent of the seats, which the junta has refused to recognize. According to the AP, it is the only time Burma has held a national election since the junta assumed power.

WWU STAND also set up a mock refugee camp called “Camp Darfur” on the Humanities Building lawn to provide information about the Sudanese genocide in the context of other historical genocides. Students wrote uplifting messages of hope on the tents used in the camp, which will be sent to refugees in the central African nation of Chad, which shares a border with Sudan. Club members also promoted the Genocide Hotline, 1-800-GENOCIDE, a GI-NET program to connect people with their elected representatives to advocate for decisive action in countries that commit genocide and other human rights offenses based on ethnicity.

“The International Criminal Court (ICC) has put out an arrest warrant on Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, for crimes against humanity, so he forced a bunch of non-governmental [aid] organizations to leave Sudan,” Olson said. “But a few have recently been allowed back in by the Sudanese government. … One of the biggest problems is you have to get the government’s consent before you can go in and help the people.”

“The ICC indictment is a big step in the right direction to stopping this,” she said.

WWU STAND has been at Western for about three years, according to Olson. Different members of the club volunteer to research a particular region affected by ethnic violence. Their expertise is used to develop events to educate the Western community about genocide taking place around the world. The club also hosts an annual benefit concert, with proceeds going to organizations that help people affected by genocide.

“We send our money to the Genocide Intervention Network because they have projects on the ground in those countries but STAND does not,” Olson said. “Other times [we donate to] the organization that seems to be doing the most work, the most good on the ground.”

Last quarter’s benefit concert raised money for UNICEF Sudan, which sends food aid to refugee camps in Darfur, Olson said.

Another benefit concert is planned for next year, she said.

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

The search for a summer job

by Shawna Leader/The AS Review

Summer is nearly upon us and you know what that means: days at the beach, few or no classes and time to relax.

…Oh, and something called a summer job.

Job competition, along with the depressing economy, make Bellingham a dicey place to find a job, said Caryn Regimbal, manager of Western’s Student Employment Center, located in Old Main 275.

“I believe it’s more competitive this year than it has been in previous years,” Regimbal said, although she noted that there are still several job postings on the Student Employment Web site (www.finaid.wwu.edu/studentjobs/). She advised students to check the site continuously.

“Our numbers, in terms of postings, have been up in the past month,” Regimbal said.

Finding a job in Bellingham is not easy, freshman Meagan Acdal said. She is staying in Bellingham this summer, taking classes and hoping to get a job. So far, she is applying for positions in retail and at restaurants.

“They’re the only things that are available,” Acdal said. “I’ve applied to at least 10 to 20 places already and I’ve only been interviewed three times.” She described an interview that she went to in which 10 people were interviewed and only two were hired.

Regimbal noted that a recent article in the Bellingham Herald stated that unemployment in Bellingham is up. According to an article dated from May 20, unemployment in Bellingham was 8.6 percent in April, a drop from 8.8 percent in March. But, according to the article, the numbers of people looking for work and employed have decreased by 750 and 460 people, respectively.

Despite this, Regimbal said that the Student Employment Center will continue to let employers and students know of the services the Web site provides.
“One would think that with the economic downturn there might be local organizations that aren’t hiring as many [students] but we continue to do outreach to employers to remind them that we’re still here,” Regimbal said.

This outreach includes sending e-mails to employers that remind them that the Student Employment Center is a free service for employers wishing to post their job offers online.

“We have a database that we are able to search to see who has posted positions recently,” Regimbal said.

Junior Sean Goldsmith found his summer job because he knew people at Marymoor Park, located in Redmond, which is where he will be maintaining soccer fields and creating new trails. But he told stories of friends who are not so lucky.

“I think it’s ultra-competitive [in Bellingham],” he said. “I have one friend who’s applied to 38 different areas and hasn’t gotten any of them. He’s a perfectly competent guy but the job market here, it’s small.”

Goldsmith found a great deal of information about his job online and suggested that students turn to sites such as Craigslist for job opportunities. Other online job listings can be found on the Bellingham Herald Web site (www.bellinghamherald.com) and Echo (www.findcareersnow.com/index), Regimbal said.

Regimbal suggested that students have an active, updated resume ready to e-mail to potential employers if requested. She noted that many students have not updated their resumes since they applied for college and need to account for their college activities and accomplishments.  Regimbal suggested stopping by the Career Services Center, located in Old Main 280, for assistance with revamping a resume.

Regimbal encouraged students to be proactive in their search for a summer job. There’s nothing wrong with calling an agency that has appealing jobs to see if anything is available, she said. Sometimes this works out better than waiting for someone to post a job, she said.

Regimbal also advised students to be flexible with their search. Sometimes a job that may not seem very desirable can provide an opportunity for skill development, she said.

For example, a barista has to master several skills, such as multitasking and interacting with the public, which are great skills to have on a resume, Regimbal said.
“Having a work history, no matter what the jobs are, is very important to moving into your career,” she said.

Some students are forgoing Bellingham altogether and finding jobs elsewhere. Freshman Xan Dammarell will be returning to her hometown for the summer to work the same job she had last summer.

“I know I’m going to get a job at home. Why would I stay up here?” she said, adding that her roommate has applied for several jobs and is still unemployed.
The Student Employment Center’s Web site lists jobs from cities beyond Bellingham and from other states, Regimbal said.

“Students may not realize that we list positions around the state … and beyond Whatcom County,” she said.

Above all, Regimbal said that students should be open to new challenges and opportunities when searching for a summer job.

“Getting outside of your comfort level can be a real growing experience,” she said.

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

The return of the sun

Photos by Erik Simkins and Jonny McConnell

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

Less stress in the finals mess

by tuli alexander./The AS Review

It’s that time again: finals. Although there is no way to keep from stressing during dead week and finals, it’s important to take time out to relax.

Taking a study break is actually going to make your studying more effective than just cramming nonstop, said Wellness Outreach Center (WOC) Lifestyle Advisor and Coordinator of the Stress Less Program Tabitha Englebright.

Everybody has their own way of relaxing, Englebright said, but some simple methods she recommends include progressive muscle relaxation, a breathing exercise through the diaphragm and visualization.

Even just counting to 10 can help people remove themselves from stressful situations, she said.

But a person doesn’t have to do anything to relax. In fact, meditation is about doing absolutely nothing, said Brooks Hassig, co-leader of Meditation Club.

Our thoughts are responsible for our stress, Hassig said. Meditation helps us to stop worrying and thinking and helps us to relax by taking us out of the moment.

“You are not your mind. You’re also not your body. But we spend a lot of time with our thoughts and our body but meditation is a state of just being,” he said.

People should bring all their doubts, stress and worries to Meditation Club because these are also all the things that they can leave behind, Hassig said.

Exercising several times a week is important to help you handle stress, according to the pamphlet “5 Smart Steps to Less Stress” that can be found in the WOC. To incorporate a little stress-free activity between cram sessions, throwing a Frisbee can be relaxing and enjoyable, depending on the level at which you play, said Kim Gladow, captain of the Western ultimate Frisbee team.

“It’s hard to be angry and play Frisbee,” she said. “You don’t play if you’re pissed off. … It’s a happy sport.”

There are multiple ways to throw a Frisbee. The most common is the backhand throw, which is usually the one we learn as kids, Gladow said.

Then there’s the forehand throw, which is used most in ultimate Frisbee games because it’s such an adaptable throw The player doesn’t have to be in a specific position like they do when throwing backhand.

The hammer throw is released over the top of the thrower’s head. It goes really high up and becomes an upside down blade that can be really hard to catch, Gladow said.

“Playing Frisbee is also a really fun way to meet cool people because people are generally always willing to let others join in,” said Gladow.
Yoga is another way to improve stress management.

As an experience that combines the mind and body, yoga focuses on building strength and flexibility while at the same time emphasizes the balances between the mental and the physical, said Ashley Bice, a power yoga instructor at Western.

“We store a lot of stress in our bodies. We normally just sit with it and don’t work it out like animals do in nature,” she said.

The mental aspect of yoga teaches people to better handle stress and deal with it in stressful situations, Bice said.

“It also allows us to take a break. We can leave our problems behind for a designated time and pick them back up later with a more rested, balanced mind,” she said.
People can expect to start off a typical power yoga class with some deep breathing and centering exercises and then progress into flowing movements and some standing and working poses. Those are followed by some deep stretching and a final relaxation.

Beginning yoga incorporates a similar structure with less emphasis on standing and working poses, Bice said.

“If you come to yoga with the intention of relaxing, you need to really focus on that intention because it’s really easy to let your mind wander off,” she said. “But you need to have a certain amount of mental determination to do so. And that takes practice.”

Englebright said that it has been found that if people relax daily, their general stress tolerance is higher and it takes more to stress them out.

When a person gets stressed out, their cortizol levels go up. Cortizol is the hormone that’s released from our adrenal glands that is responsible for our fight, flight and freeze responses, Englebright said.
Cortizol is great for survival, but unless we’re actually in danger high levels of this hormone can cause us to gain weight, get sick or develop chronic high blood pressure, Englebright said.

An experience of stress looks like a bell curve, Englebright said. People typically function at a normal level that peaks at a stressful time. But instead of going back to its original level, it dips below it, much like the body crashes after a sugar high, she said. That dip is usually the reason we get sick after finals, she said.

Although there’s no way to avoid stress at these times, students need to try not to let it get out of hand, she said.

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders

Ask Ivanhoe

by A. Ivanhoe/The AS Review

Dear Ivanhoe,
How do you keep a club going from year to year?
— Concerned Club

Dear Concerned,
Your astute question highlights one of the biggest challenges for fledgling clubs in the AS: continuity. Every year the AS recognizes more than several new clubs, but even as those are born, others languish for lack of membership, organization and purpose. This is not a unique phenomenon. Startup business enterprises, non-governmental organizations, political groups and social gatherings of all stripes come and go every year. What is it that gives an organization staying power? Unfortunately, there is no infallible formula for turning a new AS club into an enduring, stalwart student institution. I shall, however, illustrate some of the mistakes that have, in my observation, doomed many an organization to languish in disarray and irrelevancy.

The Close-Knit Clique Club was doomed from the very start. Its membership consisted of a group of students who were already friends before the club began and they made no earnest effort to include other students in their activities. A large proportion of its membership had the same declared major and was set to graduate the same year. Needless to say, the club’s activities were so narrow in scope that even if a new student had joined the group from outside the requisite social circle, she would have found that they played like a big “in-joke” that she could neither appreciate nor enjoy. Eventually, the majority of the Close-Knit Clique Club all graduated and the small remainder of its membership lost interest in keeping the club going, so that was the end of that.

This club failed to understand the virtues of diversity and inclusiveness. Had they sought the participation of students with different backgrounds, majors and class standings, they would have found not only that they had bolstered the quality and scope of their activities with influxes of valuable new perspectives, ideas and connections, but also that they had augmented the quality of their experience at Western and built important relationships that would have proved invaluable to them later in their lives and careers.

In practice, even the club that has a focus on a particular discipline must be willing to ask itself how it could include students from outside its own discipline in ways that are meaningful to both the club and its new recruits. For example, Western’s Engineers Without Borders recruited students majoring in Spanish because they are working on a long-term project to build a laundry facility for a community in Guatemala. In fact, they welcome any students who are interested in helping communities in need, regardless of their aptitude for engineering, because they recognize that their project has value to students who have never taken an engineering class and that those students can also bring value to their project.

Another club that was not to foster an enduring legacy was the Poorly Defined Club. This group of students had a pretty good idea what they wanted to do when they started their club, but after they did it, they found that they had no consensus about what to do next. Some wanted to plan an event, while others wanted to form a discussion group and still others wanted to organize a trip. Since the club had never made clear what its purpose was at the start, each member’s ideas for the future of the club were as good as another’s. Unfortunately, their disagreement on the subject led to the fracturing of the club and ultimately its rapid demise as potential recruits were rightly confused about what joining the club would entail.

The founders of the Poorly Defined Club ought to have set out a clear mission for their club from the outset. A single sentence or a short paragraph would have sufficed to communicate to its potential recruits the reasons for the club’s existence, what the club values, what it does, in general, to support its values and what they should expect upon joining. A short, easy-to-remember name that communicates the essence of what the club does and represents can help brand one’s club as one worth remembering. Being able to explain clearly and briefly what one’s club does, in terms of both its overarching vision and its practical, day-to-day activities, will ensure that no one joins with misconceptions or illusions about what they are getting into. Having a short, uncomplicated document that can be passed along from year to year setting forth the club’s purpose and values, what it does and how it makes decisions, should help not only to stave off future discord but also to establish a reputation that a club can build upon.

The John Doe Club was in a precarious position because John Doe—its founder, president and chief organizer—seemed to have most of the ideas and do most of the work for the club. While Mr. Doe’s vision and ambition are admirable qualities in a student leader, his tendency to micromanage the club’s activities left little room for collaboration among the club’s members, whom he saw merely as worker bees in aid of his own goals. In doing so, he created such a cult of personality around his club that one had a hard time imagining the club without him. As a result, he all but assured that his club will not outlast him. If Mr. Doe had instead encouraged ideas beyond his own and fostered a spirit of partnership that allowed every member the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to the club, then he might have left behind a constructive and functioning institution rather than a flock of sheep in want of a shepherd.

Finally, there was the Go-It-Alone Club that had marvelous ideas but depended only on itself to see them through. It relied solely upon its own membership to achieve its lofty goals, which it managed for a time, but only to the level of mediocrity. It had a dreadful time juggling all the planning, publicity and fundraising for its events because, quite frankly, its members were all students whose time and energy were divided by their studies and their personal lives. When a prospective new member attended one of its meetings, it was so full of planning and procedural minutiae that she felt the club had neither a starting point nor a fun experience to offer. Not only did this daunted student decide not to join the team but the existing membership dwindled due to overwork and boredom. The Go-It-Alone Club had forgotten three important things: firstly, that the AS has a wealth of resources available to them, including publicity; secondly, that there were other clubs and AS offices that would gladly have offered their assistance on their projects; and finally, that students generally join clubs when there is the prospect of having a good time. The club that wants to secure a lasting legacy must become familiar with all the offices in the AS and what they do. It will find that a tremendous amount of work can be saved by allowing people—who are paid with money from student fees—to lend their support to its effort. The club must also look for opportunities to network and collaborate with other AS clubs and offices, and perhaps even clubs and organizations from outside Western, since it might find that those can offer new and better skills, resources and perspectives. Some clubs use online networking software, such as Facebook and Blackboard, as tools for communication within and among their organizations.

Finally, the club must never lose sight of whether it offers a rewarding experience to its membership. When a club becomes chiefly procedural it loses the ability to attract and retain members. Some clubs have separate meetings, one reserved for the banalities of bureaucracy and procedure (generally attended only by elected officers and diehards) and another reserved for social functions like discussion and brainstorming, where even the newest recruits feel welcome, have opportunities to contribute and, most importantly, have a good time.

I will only add to the foregoing to emphasize that one’s fellow club members are people of greater depth than their club identification may imply. It may aid one’s pursuit of continuity to commit to occasional gatherings for the express purpose of simply “hanging out” and learning about one another, perhaps quarterly. Moreover, try to make it tradition to do this at least once during the summer, even though many members may be unable to attend, in order to reaffirm a sense of camaraderie and purpose for the coming year. When one tries to recruit fresh faces in the fall, one must make sure to introduce oneself to new students, sharing something deeply personal about one’s motivation for joining the club and trying to discover common values and glimmers of passion. If sincere, this common ground is the sturdiest place on which to build strong working relationships and abiding friendships that, when it comes down to it, are far more important than any AS club will ever be.

—Ivanhoe

Things Every Club Should Know

Student Activities Advisor Casey Hayden suggests that each club should keep a slim binder of general information about the club and AS resources to pass along from year to year. This information will be of great help to future club leaders, who can hit the ground running without having to reinvent the wheel every year. Here is some of the most important information to pass along:

Student Activities Advisor Casey Hayden (VU 431)
Assistant Director of Student Activities Lisa Rosenberg (VU 425A)
The AS clubs gurus with the knowledge and wisdom all clubs should seek.

AS Publicity Center (VU 411) — http://publicity.as.wwu.edu/
The place to promote your club and its events.

AS and VU Web sites
Resources — http://www.as.wwu.edu/clubs/resources/
General Forms — http://www.as.wwu.edu/clubs/Request Forms — http://www.as.wwu.edu/business/Reservation Forms — http://vu.wwu.edu/reservations/People — http://www.as.wwu.edu/directories/

No Comments / Jun 01.09 / 06-01-09 / by leaders