Hear me out: I am not in any way bashing dating websites. I know of several strong, God-centered couples that met through a dating service and are now happily married. This is also not a tirade from another bitter single girl who hates everyone in a relationship until she gets a boyfriend. But I am bothered by the idea of a dating service for IWU students for several reasons. First, the communicated premise of the website is not uplifting to the body of Christ or to those who are single. I agree that the whole notion of “ring by spring” gets a little bit annoying. But to be “heartbroken, single, and desperate” is slightly, no, completely melodramatic, and any person, guy or girl, who feels that way should be given a dose of reality. If a person cannot be happy for his or her friends who are getting a “ring by spring”, that is a heart issue of selfishness and shows a lack of contentment in Christ. It is natural to feel pressure when it seems like all the people in one’s friend circle start to get hitched, but at the end of the day a person’s self-worth is not determined by a relationship status. If in singleness a person is “desperate”, that is an indicator of a heart not right with Jesus nor at rest in Him. It is perfectly normal to desire (and there is a huge difference between desperation and desire) a relationship and companionship, and for goodness’ sake we all know we are hormonal young adults, but as Christians ridding ourselves of desperation and heartbrokenness should not be our first incentive in entering into any relationship. Our first incentive for relationship must be the glorification of God; otherwise people are only a means to filling a void that will never be satisfied until our hearts are at rest in the Lord. I greatly appreciated the scripture reference given by a student with the alias of ‘just a thought’ in the article’s comment section. He or she quoted Song of Solomon 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4, which say, “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” We (and I purposefully include myself because this is a lesson that I have had to learn and must continue to practice) are called to first and foremost be content in the Lord. If we trust Him, we know that He will take care of every need and desire in His timing and in accordance with His will. If His timing is not for right now, it will not matter how hard we try to push His hand. Even the most wonderful person in the whole world could not make us feel at peace.

Second, the notion that anyone who does not have a “ring by spring” is a spinster-in-the-making is archaic. If a person is lucky enough to find his or her best friend and true love in college, that is great! Get married and be fruitful and multiply! But if not, is all hope lost? Is my self-worth suddenly deflated due to my “single” status on Facebook? No! We are young, people. Our brains have not even fully developed yet! Rejoice in getting a few years to get settled, get a job, and pay off college debt, while at the same time rejoicing for friends who are getting married and starting a life with their love.

Finally, the idea that “having a network like this saves time, finding good relationship and friendship options for you, instead of having to actively search for them yourself through time-consuming, potentially awkward socialization” is just plain lazy. Get off Facebook, leave the dorm room, and go sit in McConn and talk to people. Go to a sports event. Do the legwork! If a relationship is based on convenience and ease it is doomed to fail. Relationships are hard. They take work. Starting them takes work. Keeping them takes even more work. But it is all that work that makes them worth it in the end. It is all that work that makes every moment you share with your friend(s) or significant other even sweeter. And let’s face it, the “potentially awkward socialization” is the best part. A guy might get an awkward rejection from his crush, but down the road when the next girl says yes (when he asks her out to her FACE) it will make the victory even more enjoyable. Two people might have a completely awkward moment in class or in the dorm, but laughing over that awkward moment might just be the foundation to a lasting friendship. Yeah, it would be so nice for a service to tell me who I am compatible with, but that just does not sound like fun to me. Part of life is figuring out who I am and who I want to be, and figuring out who I want in it, all centered around knowing who God is and what He has called His children to do and be. I do not want a service to do all of that for me.

April 14′s awards and winners:

All-level

Third place: Use of Twitter, staff

Division II (3,000+ undergraduate enrollment, not published 3x or more weekly)

First place: Opinion column, Steven Porter & Molly Meyer

Second place: Breaking news reporting, Molly Meyer & Steven Porter; entertainment column, Lauren Sawyer; feature page, Rachel Pyle, Molly Meyer & Hannah Towler

Third place: Sports news story, Rachel Pyle; sports photo, Josh Gales; themed issue, staff

Dr. Kyle Huckins, The Sojourn’s faculty adviser and IWU’s journalism coordinator, expressed excitement at news of the awards. “These honors come in all facets of the physical newspaper – writing, photography and design – as well as acknowledge the growing emphasis we’ve given to online operations,” he said.

The Society of Professional Journalists of Indiana also has announced The Sojourn has won five awards in its annual competition, which pits all the state’s colleges and universities against each other, regardless of size. This year marks the first time the newspaper has won an honor from SPJ Indiana. Winners are: Meyer, Porter, Pyle, Sawyer and Jeremy Sharp. Places will be revealed at an April 27 Indianapolis event.

These honors follow The Sojourn’s first-ever first place finish at the Hoosier State Press Association awards (with Indiana colleges & universities competing together without regard to enrollment), in which Porter won for best opinion piece.

“The Sojourn is developing a statewide as well as national reputation for excellence,” Huckins said, referring to the newspaper’s placement in the top 10 in its category in the National College Media Convention “Best of Show” awards last year. “Indiana Wesleyan University’s student journalists have shown they can compete with the biggest schools in Indiana and the U.S. They’re an important witness for the Lord in a secularly dominated field.”

Shawn Howse (sr), a computer information systems major, and Mike Winterberg (fr), a political science major, are creating an online matching network exclusively for IWU students, set to debut at the start of the fall 2012 semester.

The network will allow students to create profiles with just enough information for the site to generate possible matches with students of the opposite sex, based on the information given, according to Howse.

Howse, who is coordinating the network’s technological development, said participants will answer both subjective and objective questions.

“Objective questions will pair individuals based upon search criteria and preferences,” said Howse. “Examples of objective questions include hobbies, interests and sports. Subjective questions will be in the form of essay.”

Howse and Winterberg are aware of the usual problems that arise from online dating sites but think that this network should solve those problems.

“Many popular dating websites such as eHarmony allow anyone to register, regardless of their religion, hometown, etc. The network Mike Winterberg and I are developing is for IWU students only. In this manner, men and women can more readily meet each other without having to worry about traveling miles,” said Howse.

The original intent of the site was to spark romantic relationships, but the creators are encouraging those who are already in relationships and those not even searching for romance to use the site to develop friendships with others who share similar interests or hobbies.

“I don’t want the site just to be a dating network,” said Winterberg, the network’s visionary. “Many people at IWU walk around campus totally unaware of others who have very similar interests to them, and it prevents good friendships from happening.”

The early buzz about the imminent arrival of the network has been very positive.

“Of course I would use it!” said Emily Sather (jr). “That kind of site would make it easier to build romantic relationships or just friendships. If a guy found me on Facebook, I would think that’s sketchy, but here I know it’s just people from our school who want to chill and get to know me.”

Davy Jones (fr) echoed Sather’s comments and added that having a network like this saves time, finding good relationship and friendship options for you, instead of having to actively search for them yourself through time-consuming, potentially awkward socialization.

The Film Society, which meets one Wednesday a month, has been growing in recent years, according to Donna Pick.

Pick said students, faculty and staff who regularly attended society meetings formed into a committee to have some input on the movies selected for screenings the following year.

Ideas are put forward, and a separate entity reviews them. The Movie Review committee is separate from the Globe Theatre, Film Society and the Film Society Committee.

“[It] is the safeguard that student development uses when they want to show a film that challenges our view of [the] world but involves a certain amount of violence or something that got it rated R,” said philosophy professor Steve Horst, a member on the committee, who noted that the Film Society uses the assistance of the movie review committee to determine whether or not the film is worth condoning.

Film Society members submitted ideas online to the movie review committee for review (prior to this semester’s March 16 deadline). The review committee has the responsibility of considering the ideas put forward.

Barnes Student Center manager Jim Taylor operates the Globe Theatre and works with the society to help them get the movies they want to see.

“For Film Society, I collaborate with Donna Pick on movie selection and make sure licensing agreements are met. Potential films are listed and sent for review to the movie review committee,” Taylor said.

If the ideas Film Society puts through get accepted, the Globe will have them available to watch and discuss afterward. The approved films are placed on the student activities calendar, then the Globe Theatre gets the licensing needed, Taylor said.

In April, Film Society Committee members present their top five movie choices to show the coming year.

“All of us discuss our vision and how we want it to look – do we want to play two war movies or just one horror movie? Do we want to play a silent movie or a documentary? Everyone gets together to defend their own movies,” Pick said. “It’s fun – you learn of movies you may have never heard of, and I get to meet with students that I might not normally get to meet.”

The Film Society itself meets once a month in the Globe Theatre at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday.

“Anybody’s welcome to come,” Pick said. “Since we’re part of student activities, we offer [services] to the student body.”

For more information, contact Donna Pick at donna.pick@indwes.edu, or submit your own movie idea via the reviewed movie list link on the Wildcat page.

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.”

Indiana resident Misty Wallace was a high school senior when she was shot in the head by Keith Blackburn, who was 18 at the time.

Blackburn was sentenced to a 21-year detention at the Indiana Department of Corrections, according to the winter 2011 issue of IWU’s Triangle Magazine. Blackburn reportedly found Christ in 1996 through the witness of a fellow offender and was released in 2001.

Having felt led to prison ministry, Blackburn, 36, is now a chaplain for the Indiana Department of Correction at the Indianapolis Re-entry and Education Facility and is a graduate of Wesley Seminary at IWU with a Master of Divinity.

The two reconciled after Wallace found Blackburn through Facebook just last year. Together, they told their story in an IWU criminal justice class and at Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Ind.

Jack Brady, assistant professor of criminal justice at IWU, helped organize these events in order to get out Wallace and Blackburn’s story.

The redemption story presentation will be followed at 11:45 a.m. by a cornerstone dedication ceremony for the new Wesley Seminary facility.

Wesley Seminary began in April 2009 when the IWU board of trustees voted to create a new seminary to house the new Master of Divinity degree and existing Master of Arts in Ministry degree, according to the seminary’s website. Classes were offered in August 2009 in the Noggle Christian Ministries building on IWU’s Marion campus.

The new $7 million, 21,000 square-foot facility will be located on Washington Street, just south of IWU’s main campus entrance. It will include classrooms, faculty offices and a multipurpose gathering area, according to an IWU news release.

Approximately 275 students are currently enrolled in the program, and officials plan to open the new building for classes in fall 2013.

Ron Paul has 10 percent support, with Newt Gingrich tied at 10 percent, according to the most recent data from Gallup.

As of the most recent primaries, on April 3, the Associated Press estimates that Romney has 658 delegates of the 1,144 available. And some pundits are already claiming Romney as the nominee to run against President Obama in the fall.

The November election looks like it will be a close race. According to a poll conducted by Gallup, 49 percent of registered voters said they would vote for Obama, compared with the 45 percent who would vote for Romney.

The next primaries, in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, will take place April 24. The Indiana primary will take place May 8.

Any measure on the part of colleges to enroll students based on race falls under the category of affirmative action. Support for affirmative action is divided, as reported by a 2005 Gallup poll that found only about 50 percent of the population backed it. The report also mentioned that support for affirmative action is stronger among African American and Hispanic populations, whereas non-Hispanic whites and Asian-Americans are more likely to oppose it.

A 2003 decision by the United States Supreme Court set the current national standard, which prohibits public universities from admitting students based on criteria in favor of minority ethnicities.

The Sojourn reported in October that Indiana Wesleyan University’s campus has, in the past four years, seen a 79 percent increase in students who identify themselves with a minority ethnic population.

Jamie Daniel (jr), the diversity coordinator in Martin Hall, said the Intercultural Student Services Office hosts booths on admissions days and multicultural days. Other than that, the ISS office doesn’t have too many events designed around recruiting or admissions. Daniel said she believes that could change but isn’t the current vision of IWU’s diversity office.

“Our goal isn’t to affect admissions directly but to make this a place where students of diversity would come and be understood,” said Daniel.

ISS recently hosted “Breaking Down Walls,” an event designed to help students move past stereotyping into understanding. On April 13, the office will be sponsoring “DiversiTEA” to show how different things can originate from the same source.

The FCC states that all low-frequency Class A stations, like WIWU, must play a certain amount of children’s programming on the station. WIWU played the children’s programming but did not document it correctly, according to Dr. Randall King, director of broadcast media and chairman of the Communication Division at IWU. The FCC notified WIWU’s lawyers about a year ago, but the fine is just now being administered.

“We made a mistake,” King said. “I’m embarrassed on behalf of the station. I’m embarrassed on behalf of what this means for the university. But in the scheme of things, it’s not a disaster, and we’re taking the appropriate steps to respond.”

King said the station is not going to pay the fine without challenging the FCC’s decision.

WIWU was not the only Class A station reprimanded by the FCC this month. RBR.com reported that TV stations WHDO-CA in Orlando, Fla., and WZGS-CA in Raleigh, N.C., were fined as well.

RBR.com also reported that there has been an influx in Class A fines, administered by the FCC. Media lawyer Scott R. Flick said this is the FCC’s way of pushing Class A stations off the air in order to free up more spectrum.