by: Dr. Rusty Hawkins
Postdoctorla Teaching Fellow – John Wesley Honors College

Last month nearly 400 members of the IWU community piled into the Globe Theatre to watch “The Help.” For more than two hours, these people were treated to images of physical and emotional violence, labor exploitation, and intense racial bigotry from one of the darkest chapters of American history. Rather than warn the movie viewers about the incredible amount of oppression and abuse that they were about to witness (which, frankly, was a sanitized Hollywood version paling in comparison to the brutal reality of life for African Americans in the Jim Crow South), the audience instead was given a disclaimer that they might find some mild profanity in the film offensive. With apologies to Tony Campolo, it saddens me that our community is apparently more sensitive to occasional cursing than it is to overt displays of the historical racism that has shaped (and continues to shape) our nation. As a fellow follower of Christ, I pray for the day when Christians’ discomfort with salty language is far surpassed by our discomfort with injustice.

by: Emily Bair

I was grateful to see someone else who is confused by the lack of spirit at Indiana Wesleyan University sports events. Quite frankly, I’ve been asking the same question, myself.

I am a cheerleader here, so I attend every men’s and women’s home basketball game. I get so caught up in watching the games that I often forget that I’m supposed to be cheering. Sometimes, the games are extremely close, and in those games I’ve watched our players give all they have to cinch the victory. At others, we dominate the court. Either way, our teams give us something to be proud of when we come to games, and it saddens me that more people don’t know about it. We are top-ranked teams, too.

In fact, all of the athletic programs here at IWU are great. Our volleyball team, as you mentioned, put on an impressive display against Taylor, and they have been a powerhouse team all year. When I came for my first visit here, I met with the former cheerleading coach, who showed me a video of a performance that earned the Wildcats a third-place trophy –  third being out of not just NAIA schools, but all Division II schools across the country, with roughly 10 teams in the division. Track, cross country, soccer and all the other sports teams have all had their moments of greatness, and within their seasons, every athlete that comes here commits to representing IWU in a positive manner. We pride ourselves in being Wildcat athletes.

So why are there so few fans who pride themselves in being Wildcats? Why do so few people come support their athletes –  their roommates, their suitemates, their hallmates and their classmates – at athletic events?

I brought up those very questions to Aaron Morrison, and the two of us came up with one dominant answer: we seem to have nothing to rally around. Some universities have come up with traditions that have survived years, such as ringing a bell at the first basket, the “Silent Night” tradition at Taylor, or even an incredible mascot program. We even brought up the toilet paper ordeal that happens at John Brown University. Sure, these might be gimmicks, but they work. When we tried to come up with IWU’s “gimmick,” we were both stumped. I jokingly said World Changers; that’s not going to bring people to games.

I would love to see more people come to games – not just basketball, either. Being at all the games, I see people come in with seemingly low expectations and leave ranting about how great the Wildcats played. People exercising in the Recreation and Wellness Center often stop what they are doing to see what all the ruckus is about in Luckey Arena whenever a sporting event is going on, and they end up staying for the rest of the game.

I agree completely with what Jeremy said. I want to see more people get excited about Wildcat sports. If you come to a game for no other reason, come to support your fellow IWU students. We pride ourselves in the community we have here; extend that to sporting events. We may not yet have a tradition or even a “gimmick” to rally around, and I hope someday we can have something like that. But until then, if people come to a game for no other reason but to show their support of those who call us their friends, then I’m happy.

by: Greg Ferguson
Director of the Phillippe Performing Arts Center

Dr. Todd Voss and I loved some of the same things, one being cars. He had restored an original VW beetle convertible. I have previously owned many original beetles, among other vehicles (including vintage Porsches and a 1986 model 944 now). He was the first to mention the Smart™ car to me. It was with personal interest that I followed his four-part series in The Sojourn early this calendar year.

I completely agreed with Dr. Voss’ starting point when he said “[y]es we will have enough energy to sustain our planet…God already designed it that way! (…contrary to the secular view that resources are soon to be depleted with no hope to be had).”

I may have different reasoned opinions than Dr. Voss about what the sources of our energy can and should be in the future, and on whether the planet we live on is truly suffering an environmental crisis at all and whether man has caused it. I don’t believe we understand nearly enough about how the earth’s ecological system works to come to any hard conclusions about global warming or carbon emissions. I base that belief on statements made by world-renowned scientists in Lawrence Solomon’s book “The Deniers,” and other reading. I believe that the topic of the earth’s environment has been pretty-much hijacked by those with a purely political agenda.

That said, there are things that we all can and should do to save energy, and we should have been doing these all along, after all most of our grandparents probably did these things. The most basic principle that should be applied is reduce, re-use and recycle. We should not feel good for recycling if we haven’t first re-used, and we shouldn’t feel good about re-using if we have first reduced.

I’m thinking here about containers. I take all kinds of containers to the Grant County Recycling Center, including glass, plastic and metal. But, why should I feel good about recycling a clear plastic peanut butter jar, if I turn around and buy a new empty container to store nails in from Walmart™?  I’m thinking here about turning lights off.  We have had a conversation here on campus about which lights should be left on and which can be switched off. My understanding is that all modern fluorescent lighting can be switched on and off many times per day without degrading the tubes. This is not true for high intensity discharge fixtures like we have in the highest part of the Phillippe Performing Arts Center lobby and in the band room, or the work lights we have in the auditorium. So, unless lighting is on for security or “architectural” reasons, I turn it off, in large degree because that is the way I was raised.

One thing that we are pleased to be doing in Sound, Lighting & Media Group is using re-using rechargeable batteries. We started soon after I arrived in 2004, when Nate Lail, the student technical director did some research for me and discovered the Maha Energy Company, one maker of nickel metal hydride batteries. This type battery has a significant advantage of the NiCad rechargeable type, but we could not get a NiMH type with enough capacity in the 9-volt size that most of our wireless microphones utilized.  With the opening of the Chapel-Auditorium, our newer wireless systems are using the AA size battery, as does the wireless communication system purchased by the IWU Theatre Guild.  So we decided to take another look.

The ampere-hour capacity of the AA size in the NiMH battery has continued to improve since 2004, while at the same time there is more circuitry that will operate on this size as opposed to the 9-volt.  If we pay $1 for a disposable alkaline battery rather than $2.75 for a NiMH that can be recharged as many as 1,000 times, what are we saying about our concern for the monetary resources of the university and the environment?

So, we purchased 48 batteries and an eighth generation $88 charger (made by Maha Energy – they are still in business!); the charger is now permanently mounted in our Dimmer Room.  The Theatre Guild reports that the wireless beltpacks seem to run forever on these new batteries.

It turns out that we are in good company. According to the “Shadow, Light, and Truth” column by Richard Cadena in the Fall 2011 issue of the Protocol (journal of the entertainment technology industry) there is an “increasing use of  rechargeable batteries in Broadway theatres…Audio technicians…are finding that it’s a workable solution…Among the first to make the change was the New York company of Wicked…Until October 2008, they had been using and disposing 15,808 batteries per year or 79,040 batteries in five years, and about 5,000 pounds of electronic waste…Since they switched to (NiMH)…batteries, they have reduced their consumption to 76 batteries per year….Many Broadway productions have switched…including Lion King, Mary Poppins, Mamma Mia, and Billy Elliot.  The practice is still spreading.”

It takes a commitment to question why we may still be doing things like we always have, research, and commitment to manage a new process, but the S,L&M Group is pleased to report that we are seeking first to reduce and re-use, and then to recycle the resources entrusted to us.

by: Kendra Emmett (jr)

On Monday night, Oct. 10, 2011, the SGA cabinet hosted an open floor discussion of the IWU Media Policy. As the academic representative for the Division of Communication, I felt a sense of obligation to read the Media Policy beforehand in preparation for the discussion. As I began to read the policy, two different thoughts occurred to me: “Why have I never read the media policy in its entirety before?” and “I can’t believe this.”

Last spring I took “Media and Society,” a required class for every student in the communication division. The class seeks to promote media literacy among those preparing for careers in television, radio, theatre, public relations and journalism. Media literacy is “a set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the media and interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter,” according to the required text for the class, “Media Literacy” by W. James Potter. In other words, the class trains students, who will soon be in the world without media consumption rules, to think critically and from a Christian worldview about the messages in the various media. As I read through IWU’s Media Policy, however, the inconsistency between what I learned in “Media and Society” and the policy’s demands alarmed me.

Not only did I disagree with many of the statements in the policy, I was disappointed to find that some of the phrasing seemed vague. My main disagreements, however, are with the section of the policy that discusses “R” rated movies. The policy states, “Although an ‘R’ rated movie rarely provides the educational or redeeming value which would warrant its viewing, we have developed a system for students to request specific movie exceptions to the ‘R’ rated exclusion based on educational, historical or social value.”

The beginning of this statement claims that there are few “R” rated movies with educational or redeeming content. I would contend that this statement is false, as evidenced by the films shown during GlobeFest. Films with deep messages are chosen and screened, and students are asked to think critically, respond and discuss. It is my assumption that those who pick the films for GlobeFest do not set out with the intention of picking only from the pool of “R” rated movies that have recently been released. Rather, I think their objective is to intentionally look for movies with messages that will make students think and that will foster meaningful discussion. The majority, though not all, of the selected movies are rated “R,” suggesting that some of the most relevant and thought-provoking messages in society today are communicated in movies that happen to be rated “R.”

The Media Policy lays out an approval process for “R” rated films. The “Approved” list includes 39 titles, such as “The Book of Eli,” “Dead Man Walking,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Matrix” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Students are allowed to possess and view these movies at their own discretion. There are 33 movies on the “Guided Discussion” list. Students may not possess an “R” rated film on this list and, in order to view it, a faculty member must be present, give an adequate introduction to the film, and have discussion questions prepared in advance to lead a talk-back after the film is finished.

The “Denied” list contains 30 titles, including “Crash,” “Fight Club,” “House,” “Munich,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “V for Vendetta.” As stated on the Wildcat website, “Movies that have been reviewed and given a Denied rating continue to be RESTRICTED due to inappropriate content or the movie does not contain enough redeeming value as determined by the Movie Review Committee.” Many students (myself included) do not agree with the placement of most of these movies on the “Denied” list.

I understand that the intent of the Media Policy is not to restrict as much as it is to encourage healthy media consumption, and I fully understand that there are films not worth viewing. I am merely making the suggestion that the policy, as it is now, does not reflect an attitude toward media consistent with what I know I have been taught, and I might go so far as to say that it is currently a stumbling block to students who recognize and want to grapple with the important messages found in some films that happen to have an “R” on the cover.

“Without purposefully building critical thinking skills, especially in a college environment, consciences can be badly damaged and thoughtful selection almost non-existent,” claims the policy, and it concludes, “It is our prayer that with this policy creating a higher level of expectation, students will be challenged to think and converse, and thus make selections above and beyond the pressure of pop culture, or media marketing ploys.”

But if the movies we are allowed to watch and even possess are governed absolutely by lists, what “thoughtful selections” are students to make? What are students to “think and converse” about? Will watching only movies that have been selected for us truly put us “above and beyond” pop culture?

I suggest that the University at-large adopt a true attitude of media discernment, which is already being fostered in classes like UNV-180 and “Media and Society.” If the university wishes to help students develop discernment, one way to begin might be to do away with the “Denied” list entirely, while further encouraging settings for guided discussion of films with difficult subject matter. This community may well be the best environment students will ever have to develop media discernment and wrestle with difficult issues. Is that not done best by helping students make wise choices rather than making the choices for them?