At approximately two o’clock Wednesday morning, lightning reportedly struck Indiana Wesleyan University’s campus on the sidewalk beside Reed Hall and a tree by Bowman House. Residents all across campus described hearing the strike, and woke up to a hole in Reed’s sidewalk and damage to several trees in the area.

By Ali Cravens & Ben Middelkamp

Due to decreased enrollment, IWU now has an excess of faculty and staff members in relation
to the amount of students. In response to this disproportionality, IWU has presented a one-
time voluntary severance package to its workers, offering six months pay with no benefits to
all full-time employees with 12 or more years of service to IWU, upon their discharge from
employment.

Ever since Duane Kilty, vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer, was
introduced to Marion College in 1985, the budget, student enrollment and faculty have steadily
increased.

After several years of significant growth on the residential campus, “[Indiana Wesleyan
University] made the decision to increase the size of the physical campus and employee
base, in anticipation of this continued trend,” according to Kilty’s recent article for the weekly
communication within the management team.

The school then took on several construction projects and hired nearly 200 additional faculty
and staff members.

However, due to economic downturns and instability, IWU enrollment has declined. Today, the
budget exceeds $210 million, endowment is almost $100 million and there are about 1,000
faculty and staff members, according to Kilty’s article.

The opportunity to decrease faculty and staff members with the severance package was
introduced at the Jan. 25 town hall meeting. According to an email from Kilty, 22 employees
elected to take the package. Out of these, three were from the College of Arts and Sciences,
three from the College of Adult and Professional Studies, one from the School of Nursing and
the remaining 15 were support staff from throughout the university.

“The changes will not increase the student/faculty ratio and will not negatively impact the quality
education that students receive,” said Kilty in an email. “We wanted to create a positive way of
decreasing employment.”

One employee who took the voluntary severance is Lynette Adsit, financial aid secretary. After
hearing about the package, she decided it was a good opportunity to leave Marion and move to
be with her sister and niece in Milwaukee, Wisc.

Adsit’s sister has medical problems, including having two knee replacements as well as other
surgeries. She moved her sister from North Dakota to Milwaukee in 2009 to be with Adsit’s
niece. Now, she said she can help ease the pressure off her niece by taking care of her sister,
as her niece has a full-time job.

In addition, Adsit will get Social Security money, as she turns 65 next February.

Adsit has worked for IWU since it was Marion College back in 1979. She worked on different
buildings around campus as an interior designer. She has a degree in this from Ray Vogue
School of Design in Chicago.

The parts of campus she helped design include: the Commons balcony, the John Wesley
Administration Building, Baldwin, the original Noggle Christian Ministries Building and the old
president’s home.

After years of interior designing for the school, she decided to take a full-time job with financial
aid in 2000.

“I loved all my students,” Adsit said. “I liked customer service. I liked the parents – interacting
with them on the phone, doing anything I could to relieve the anxiety. But just being part of the
campus and the camaraderie of the campus. It’s kind of like being the mom to a lot of students
whose parents live out of state.”

Adsit said once she moves to Milwaukee, she wants to stay active, whether it’s volunteering at a
humane society or creating watercolor and oil paintings like she has in the past.

By Ashley Nossett

“When you smile, my heart skips a beat, and when you sing my world becomes more beautiful.
You are just too perfect.” This is one of hundreds of posts made by Indiana Wesleyan University
students to their crushes on the Facebook page IWU Secret Admirers.

Since March 29, students have been anonymously sharing their feelings through an online
survey website. The administrators of the IWU Secret Admirers page then share these posts
with their Facebook followers. This page adds another to the growing list of anonymous social
media accounts at IWU.

The two female administrators of the page answered questions about the origins and intent of
IWU Secret Admirers, requesting their names remain anonymous.

“Basically I saw the saw the [secret admirer] pages from Ball State and IU and I was like, ‘Oh,
why doesn’t our campus have something like this?’” said the original administrator of the page.

After a discussion with the overseer of another popular campus Facebook page, IWU
Confessions, the administrator decided to start IWU Secret Admirers, censoring the posts
enough to ensure appropriateness.

Last week, the administrator said she briefly shut down the page so she could find another
person to help run things. The page reopened later that day.

IWU’s Marketing and Communication Department, which monitors both IWU Confessions and
IWU Secret Admirers, is pleased with the relatively positive content on the latter.

“I am kind of impressed with some of the honest and open discussions that are taking place on
that forum,” said the department’s communication specialist, Trevor Persaud. “So I think if that’s
what happens on there, then it’s pretty beneficial.”

Those in the department are relieved that students have remained mostly respectful on the IWU
Secret Admirers page, stating that it is not their job to shut down any Facebook pages.

“It’s always going to be up to Facebook,” said Erik Fisher, the department’s social media
manager. “If somebody feels harassed, they have the ability to go to the page and mark that
they feel harassed or offended or whatever. If enough people do that, it’ll happen, but it won’t
happen through us.”

The page’s administrators are also encouraged by the fact that most people are taking a
positive attitude in the content being posted.

“I think that a lot of people have gotten out their funny ones about their guy friends or girl
friends,” the original administrator stated, later adding, “A lot of people have been taking on that
encouraging mindset. … I don’t even have to direct it that much.”

Despite the page staying mostly positive, the second administrator believes that some people,
while enjoying the fact that someone admires them, get bothered by the knowledge that
someone is still watching them.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I have a secret admirer, but they’re watching me constantly,’” she said.

Everything on pages like IWU Secret Admirers and IWU Confessions remains entirely
anonymous. According to the IWU Secret Admirers administrators, neither of them have any
access to the names of the people posting.

The Marketing and Communication Department, despite monitoring the pages, also respects
the privacy of the users, saying workers would never share posts on the pages to get people in
trouble.

Persaud said the most the department would do is, if someone on a page like IWU Confessions
were addressing a serious problem, contacting Dr. Jim Lo, dean of chapel, and requesting
prayer for the person.

With statements ranging from “you’re the bomb diggity” to “I liked you yesterday, I liked you still.
I always have and I always will,” IWU Secret Admirers’ popularity continues to grow, with now
more than 800 followers.

“It feels like you are paralyzed from the eyes down. Really, you just can’t do anything but look
around. Your eyes can move, but your body can’t,” said Jacob Quick (so).

With this vivid image, Quick may have summarized the views of most Indiana Wesleyan
University students toward the climax of the school year: final exams.

Around this time of year, it’s not a surprise to hear IWU students casually throw around the “s”
word in normal conversations: “stress.”

According to Dr. Nathan Herring, IWU’s director of disability services, who teaches psychology
classes and has counseled students at the ends of semesters, some stress is expected for final
exam week. Herring said most courses are back loaded, meaning they have more assignments
near the end of the semester than the beginning.

“There is an inherent amount of stress and anxiety that comes at the end of the semester. Some
of it is completely unpreventable on the students’ part. There isn’t really anything they can do
ahead of time to reduce it or stop it from happening,” said Herring.

And, like Quick illustrated, stress and anxiety take a definite toll on the body.

Dr. Keith Puffer, psychology professor, has noticed a major trend in his 22 years teaching at
IWU.

“Physically, I would argue that it can wear down your immune system. I just see students getting
sick over and over at this time of year,” said Puffer.

Herring agreed, also adding stress can have other physical effects, such as headaches,
digestive system problems and muscle aches, to name a few. But stress doesn’t only affect
students physically, but cognitively as well, according to Herring.

“Extreme stress and anxiety or prolonged stress and anxiety cuts off your access to short-term
memory, so it gets harder to memorize and learn information,” Herring said. “It also is harder
to access long-term memory, so when you are writing an essay, it’s hard to access all the
information you need for it.”

Worst of all, Puffer also said nurturing a relationship with God can be more difficult during the
end of the semester.

“Stress can, for some, de-prioritize time with God. Meditation, mindfulness with God, prayer —

these can get minimized because it’s not the immediate priority that you have,” said Puffer.

But it’s important to remember, as Herring said, only some of the stress that students carry with
them is actually needed. Jake Rupp (so) thinks many IWU students get too wrapped up about
their schoolwork at the end of the semester.

“I just understand that projects will get done. Even though they may have to be done late into
the night, they will still get done,” said Rupp.

Aside from Rupp’s mentality of accepting the circumstances, Herring has a few more tips for
students looking to bypass their biannual tsunami of stress.

“Start working on bigger projects earlier. If you have a major research project due at the end
of the semester, at some point earlier in the semester, do some of the research for it,” said
Herring.

Herring also suggested a concrete goal of going through notes from each class every day for
five to 10 minutes.

“That way, when you get to actually studying for the exams, you are remembering the material,
not relearning it,” said Herring.

When he gets bogged down with grading, Puffer said that he “never says no to a nap,” and also
increases the amount of time he exercises.

Dr. Betty Jane Fratzke, chair of the Division of Behavioral Sciences, even suggested sucking on
peppermint, because it is a soothing substance.

Rupp also reminds his fellow students not to ignore their social lives.

“It helps to fit in time with your friends, especially because you are winding down to the end of
the semester, and you aren’t going to see them during the summer,” said Rupp.

Herring agreed with Rupp, and summed everything up by giving three keys to avoiding
excessive stress at this point in the semester.

Herring said, “Being really intentional about eating healthfully, keeping a consistent pattern of
sleep and keeping a balance between academics and social life, realizing that you can’t do all of
either one.”