After graduation, most students leave Marion, Ind., but one Indiana Wesleyan University graduate wants to establish an intentional living community within the Marion city limits to be inhabited by IWU grads for years to come.

Emily Hathway (alumna ‘11) graduated in December with a degree in nursing and membership in the John Wesley Honors College. Through her experiences in the honors college, Hathway said she developed interest in intentionality through community.

“The honors college has always talked about this belief that we are formed by our habits and practices in our lives into a certain type of person,” Hathway said, “and that we aren’t just brains on a stick, but we are embodied people who don’t just learn through sitting in a classroom and hearing things, but we also learn through doing and experiencing.”

Last semester, Hathway began attending Gethsemane Episcopal Church in Marion. She said, in September, the church offered her a house to use as an intentional Christian community. Years ago the house stood as a furniture store. Now, it’s called “The Incarnation House.”

“We want to embody the life of Christ,” Hathway said. “We want to live in the midst of this Marion community and do life with people there.”

Hathway said she wants members of The Incarnation House to cultivate stability in the neighborhood. The residents of the house will commit to two years of living together, and Hathway said she hopes long-term relationships form with those living in the surrounding neighborhood. But being better neighbors isn’t the only growth that Hathway wants to see.

“We’re not just going to be outreach-focused because that’s not helpful if the internal community isn’t healthy,” Hathway said. “We believe that, as the internal community is healthy, it will overflow into the neighborhood.”

This idea for creating an intentional community didn’t occur to Hathway overnight. After visiting The Simple Way in Philadelphia, Pa., her freshman year, Hathway visited communities in Georgia, Ohio and Kentucky. Eventually, Hathway completed her senior honors research project on intentional community.

Aaron Morrison (sr) decided to conduct his senior project this school year on human capital retention in Grant County, or how many students stay in the county after graduation at both IWU and Taylor University, Morrison said although his data are not yet conclusive, he has noticed a pattern.

“More people that graduated from [IWU and Taylor] leave than stay,” Morrison said, stating job availability as a main factor of lower graduate retention.

Morrison also said this intentional community is the first he has seen for graduates in Grant County, according to the data he has compiled from the mid-1990s through 2010.

Hathway said The Incarnation House will hopefully house five or six men and women from IWU and TU. In order to be considered, a person needs to find employment in Marion, or at least volunteer in the community. The person also needs to commit for two years and engage in agreed-upon community habits and practices.

The applications are due April 13, with interviews the following week and a final decision on April 25, just before IWU’s graduation. Hathway said members should start moving in during May.

“I think whoever comes, we want to honor the gifts that they bring, for sure,” Hathway said. “We are looking for someone who wants to be committed to living and loving in this way.”

Hundreds of Indiana Wesleyan University students participated in LoveFast, a meal
donation program, from March 26-28.

Jeff Dunn (sr), who led the event this year, said 241 students donated 1,011 meals and 1,247 points this year.
LoveFast first began in 2009 under the direction of students from the John Wesley Honors
College. Dunn was a freshman when it began.

“It was an idea that the Honors College Students Association came up with, just a way for
people to fast from a meal and pray for the local community,” Dunn said. “And then we decided,
alongside of that, it would be great if that meal that people fasted from could then be donated to
the community since that is who we are praying for.”

In the first year of the program, students could only donate and fast from one meal.
The year after that, LoveFast didn’t occur due to another meal donation program. Dunn said that
program ended up not happening, so no meal donation happened in 2010. Then, last year,
Dunn said the maximum donation expanded to five meals per person and an unlimited number of points. All of the donations go to St. Martin Community Center.

“And we’ve had students from the Honors College Student Association volunteer at St. Martin
and work with the food pantry, so with that experience, we just had more of a connection with
them,” Dunn said, “and so we talked to them and they were very helpful and we stepped into that so we just kept that up.”

In order for the program to happen, students needed permission from Pioneer College Caterers
to exchange the meals and points. Even though Chris Lampson, resident district manager, wasn’t working for Pionner at IWU in 2009, he wanted to keep the exchange program intact.

“Whenever they started it out, we thought it was a good thing to partner,” Lampson said. “Students wanted to do something for the community, and so we have been doing that for the last few years.”

Rather than sending money to St. Martin, Lampson said Pioneer purchases non-perishable goods with the money that results from the donated meals and points. Lampson said the amount of money per meal derives from the plate cost, overhead, labor and miscellaneous charges. So the final amount of money still has to be processed. However, it is certain that one point equals one dollar, according to Lampson.

“We go and buy that amount of food, bring it on campus and then we set it out front,” Lampson
said, “and then they have some kind of ceremony and invite St. Martin’s representative here and
students will sit out front [of Baldwin] for a day so people can actually see what they did.”

Next school year, Dunn said he hopes the leaders of LoveFast will set more specific goals to
build off this year’s result.

In the realm of sports media, working for ESPN is a dream for aspiring broadcasters, producers, journalists and many others. This stays a dream for most, but a select few receive the opportunity to work with one of the top sports networks. Indiana Wesleyan University student Matt Lippman (sr) is among the few.

Lippman, a media communication major, worked at the NFL Scouting Combine Feb. 27-29 in Indianapolis. Indianapolis-based satellite uplinking company Midwest Uplink hired him as a freelancer for the weekend. This company links video and audio to television networks that need footage of an event. Lippman said he usually shoots video, but ESPN wanted him to collect audio for the combine.

“So, whenever I go do a shoot, I have no idea what I’m going to do,” Lippman said. “I just go in and just be willing to put myself out there and really just do anything.”

After an internship last summer, Lippman said he started to enjoy freelance television. He interned with a freelance videographer who had worked with Midwest Uplink. Through that internship, Lippman gained contacts that ended up hiring him for the combine.

“Whenever I go to these different shoots and I have my connections from my internship, whether it’s with cameramen or whether it’s with audio, when it comes down to it, they are great people,” Lippman said. “They teach me because they know that I’m just starting out, and they know I’m not supposed to know everything right now.”

Dr. Randall King, IWU’s Communication Division Chair, said students getting these chances to do freelance has occurred sporadically in the past, but Lippman received an exceptional opportunity.

“Matt has really grown, particularly in the last year, and his internship was a big part of that,” King said. “As a visual storyteller, he’s really grown as far as being able to understand what’s needed and just take good direction.”

Throughout the combine, Lippman captured audio for press conferences, live shoots of events and analyst discussions. Some of the ESPN analysts that he worked with included Adam Shefter, Todd McShay and Chris Mortenson. Lippman said working with well-known television analysts was shocking and surreal at first. After getting over this shock, he said that it was all business.

“We had live hits probably every 30 minutes or an hour,” Lippman said. “It just depends when ESPN needs something or whenever there’s a big conference going on of Andrew Luck or any of the other top prospects.”

In addition to Luck, Lippman worked on set when Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III had an interview with the analysts. He said working with the analysts and players while still being in college turned into a great opportunity, as well as a fun one.

“One of the coolest things that I would probably say is just being able to be in the press conference room because there were maybe about 200 to 300 cameras in there,” Lippman said. “It was just a cool aspect to see everything behind the scenes. What you are seeing on TV is totally different than what’s happening in actually real life.”

Men aren’t the only ones engaging in the game of rugby at Indiana Wesleyan University this spring. A team of women have embraced the game and are joining in camaraderie as the newly founded Lady Jackalopes.

Last semester, Jessica Bruni (fr) and men’s team co-founder Nathan Sayegh (jr) met to discuss the possibility of creating a women’s rugby team. Bruni played rugby in high school and wanted to continue at IWU.

“I really missed the sport,” Bruni said. “I wanted to play again so I had the perfect opportunity to play.”

On Jan. 30, Bruni and Sayegh organized an interest meeting for women on campus. Bruni said about 30 students looked to potentially get involved. She also said the vast majority of women who came to the meeting had never played rugby before.

“My goal is to teach everyone how to play, first of all,” Bruni said. “We also really want the team to be a ministry to the people we play and the people we come in contact.”

Similarly, when Sayegh helped organize the men’s rugby team last year, only three members had played before college. He said it only took a month before the first-time players grasped the concept.

“It’s just getting down all the little small details, kind of like in football, where they have a bunch of really picky penalties,” Sayegh said. “There’s stuff like that in rugby too, but getting down the general idea and being able to go out and play your first game is pretty quick to pick up.”

Cassandra Dueñas (so) said she has never played on a sports team of any kind before, but wanted to try out rugby to stay physically active. Dueñas also said it seemed like a “hardcore” sport that she would enjoy.

“At first I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I am going to hate this’ and once I was learning how to tackle and all that stuff, I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually really fun,’” Dueñas said. “Even just already on the first day, talking to some of the girls, it’s kind of nice to be on a team.”

Lady Jackalope Mariah Miller (so) played basketball and danced in high school. She said the idea of belonging to a team again excites her.

“It was just really nice in having that camaraderie,” Miller said. “I’m outgoing so I like to get to know people more, and when you are on a team, you just naturally get close to people.”

Sayegh said starting up the team in the spring season brings friendlier competition and more flexibility rather than the fall which rankings and tournament brackets.

“Spring, you are kind of free to set up whatever you want,” Sayegh said. “So we can build in the spring and then essentially legitimize in the fall and have a set schedule.”

Sayegh said that Ball State University, Purdue University and Grace College are three teams in the area that agreed to play against the Lady Jackalopes. Additionally, they hope to hear back from Indiana State University and Indiana University. The Lady Jackalopes’ first scheduled game is April 21 against Grace at Matter Park.