A group of Missouri State University students are planning to protest construction of the University Recreation Center, a $22.9 building set to break ground next month.

The protest will occur from 2-to-3 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, outside Carrington Hall on campus.

“There’s a Facebook group of over 150 students against the construction,” said protest organizer and Missouri State student Heather Welborn. “The most commonly posted reasons to rethink the project range from, ‘I’ll never use it,’ to ‘I don’t want to pay for it.’”

Welborn believes the construction is a waste of valuable resources during a time when the budget is incredibly tight.

“My goal is to shed light on an issue many at Missouri State feel strongly about,” she said. “This project is largely an awareness campaign.”

Welborn plans to circulate a petition calling for a student body re-vote “to see if this project is still in line with how students want their money spent.” Students originally approved a $16.5 million renovation of McDonald Arena in 2006, which later evolved into the construction of an entirely new building.

Welborn said students who cannot attend the protest but are interested in the cause should join a Facebook group called “MSU Students Against Construction of the University Recreation Center.” Information about further efforts to stop this construction will be posted there, she said.

“A protest is a great way to increase awareness on campus,” Welborn said. “It encourages student involvement in shaping and questioning the policies that directly effect them. If you hear about the Rec project for the first time through the protest, we made a difference.”

]]> http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1114/feed 3 http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1112 http://www.msu-underground.com/archives/1112#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:25:04 +0000 http://www.msu-underground.com/?p=1112 by Zach Becker

Chuck Drury, President and CEO of Drury Hotels, will present a speech at 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, in the Plaster Student Union. The event is free and open to the public.

Drury helms the family-owned company that has 130 hotels in 20 states. Drury Hotels has received the J.D. Power and Associates award for excellence for the past four years, “which is just unheard of,” according to Melissa Dallas, head of the Department of Hospitality and Restaurant Administration, which is sponsoring the event.

“Definitely (students) will get some ideas for successful entrepreneurship, delivery of quality goods and services, and be able to hear from a very highly respected leader in business,” she said, noting that Drury rarely conducts public speaking engagements.

“We are very, very lucky to have him hear,” she said. “It should be a very dynamic presentation.”

Featuring a live orchestra, five singers, and 10 dancers, this year’s Spring Dance Concert should provide an engaging and fun experience for the audience.

The performance, titled Fault Lines, features student and faculty performers and will be held March 25-28 at Coger Theatre located in Craig Hall.

The first half will feature three short musical dance pieces, according to Ruth Barnes, Theatre and Dance professor.

Tsiganes, which means “gypsies” in French,” features choreography by Sara Brummel and music by Vittorio Mondi and Astor Piazzola.

A Divine Majority is choreographed by Darryl Kent Clark, while music is by Chopin.

Random Acts of Joy is choreographed by Barnes with music by Paul Shoenfield. Emily Brown provides lighting design for all three pieces.

“It should be kind of silly and funny and hopefully fun for the audience,” Barnes said when discussing Random Acts of Joy.

The second half features a performance of The Seven Deadly Sins, a satirical sung ballet written in 1933 by Germany’s Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht during the early rise of the Nazis.

“It is a disconnected story,” Barnes said. “It is kind of a critique of the bourgeoisie and people who say you shouldn’t sin but actually do.

“They encourage other people to sin in order to get ahead in the world and (they encounter) resistance to that on the part of the girls.”

Brummel directs The Seven Deadly Sins, while Amy Muchnick serves as the conductor and music director.

Choreographing duties for the nine-section piece were divided up between Barnes, Brummel and Clark.

“The styles change from one section of the piece to another,” Barnes said. “It’s a real journey that goes around the United States kind of randomly.”

Matthew Wilson is in charge of lighting design for The Seven Deadly Sins, while scenic design is handled by Renee Simmons and costume design by Cynthia Winstead.

“Just having live music is a major change for us,” Barnes said. “It’s great. We’re excited.”

Tickets are $8 for Missouri State students and can be purchased at any box office, online or by calling 417-836-7678.

The event will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, March 26-27, and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 28.

Rebels kidnapped the group of children who were innocently playing soccer, blindfolded them, and cut a deep gash in their wrists, rubbing a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine into the wound to induce hysteria.

Then, rebel soldiers handed the still-blindfolded five-year-old Michel Chikwanine an AK-47 assault rifle and ordered him to fire. Chikwanine obeyed and killed his best friend in the process. Sadly, the nightmare was just beginning.

Students and faculty members packed into Carrington Auditorium on Jan. 21 to hear the heartbreaking story of Chikwanine, a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo who now acts as a motivational speaker and advocate for oppressed children around the world.

After the being abducted and being forced to kill his best friend, Chikwanine spent the next two weeks of his life participating in village raids and violent acts of all sorts along with the rebel soldiers.

War again threatened Chikwanine and his family when he was 10 years old. First, rebel soldiers captured his father. Then several months later, rebel soldiers forcibly entered the family’s home, where Chikwanine was forced at gunpoint to witness his mother and two sisters being raped.

A child carries shell casings in a rebel camp in the Central African Republic. Photo courtesy Pierre Holtz/UNICEF CAR

Rather than succumbing to the violence and animosity he suffered, Chikwanine, now 22, became inspired to positively affect communities all over the world through education and public awareness. He works closely with two organizations: Me To We, a group dedicated to influencing world change by encouraging others to make ethical and socially conscious decisions, and Free The Children, which engages in building schools, developing water and sanitation projects, and other tasks in impoverished communities.

Chikwanine believes greed is the greatest thing that divides communities and keeps people from living and working peacefully together.

“I think the world today is full of (greed), but (in North America) it is a part of the culture we are born into,” Chikwanine said. “In school we are told to become doctors, professors- things that will serve you instead of the world.”

Chikwanine noted how greed had played a major part in the violence he experienced, citing that in the Congo, certain corporations had paid rebel soldiers to commit violent acts in the interest of securing precious minerals.

Chiwanine believes the antidote to greed is compassion and education.

“We can move away from this (greed) by learning about other people’s cultures and world issues,” he said. “If you love your computer, why not blog about issues that you care about? If you like to read, then read about other cultures. We must appreciate the world for what it is.”

Education is key to learning this compassion and appreciation for others.

“By educating children, you give them the opportunity to broaden their horizons and extend their own lives as well,” Chikwanine said. “Most of the wars start because people are not educated enough. Education allows you to choose the way you think.”

Hundreds of students lingered after the presentation in order to learn more about what they could do to help or participate in one of the organizations Chikwanine mentioned.

Michel Chikwanine

Chikwanine finds it crucial for privileged nations to hear of other countries that are not quite so fortunate. Just as is the philosophy of Me To We, Chikwanine is helping to change the way people think about global crises, and how the smallest of decisions can help bring about justice and revolutionary changes in the Congo and elsewhere.

The event was sponsored by Student Activities Council. More information about Me to We can be found at www.metowe.com. More information about Free the Children can be found at www.freethechildren.com.

Students volunteered their help to many local non-profit and service groups present at the 9th Annual Community Volunteer Fair held on Jan. 27 in Plaster Student Union.

About 50 groups representing a myriad of causes set up booths at the event.

Lori Street, representing Ozarks Public Television, said she spoke to around 40 students during the fair about her group.

“We need volunteers primarily to work during pledge drives to answer telephones,” she said, adding that students can also help with bulk mailings to existing donors and other special events as need.

Ozarks Public Television provides PBS content to the Ozarks area and is funded through donations.

Karl Schmidt of the Southwest Missouri Region of the American Heart Association also was pleased with student interest in the volunteer event.

“Students are interested in not only helping us, but the community as a whole,” Schmidt said. The group had signed up six students during the three-hour event.

Schmidt was primarily working to promote the upcoming Heart Walk, held April 10. The five kilometer walk is a national campaign to promote healthy living through exercise. Groups participating gather donations, with the money going towards medical research and educational programs.

“It helps save lives,” Schmidt said.

Tiffany Warriner, representing the Alzheimer’s Association, found that many of the students who visited her group’s booth knew someone who had suffered from the disease and either wanted to help the cause or wanted more information on Alzheimer’s.

“We can always use volunteers and extra help,” Warriner said. About 20 students had signed up for information at her booth.

The event was sponsored by Missouri State’s office of Citizenship and Service-Learning (CASL).

Service-learning links “academics to the community (in order) to develop the skills, sensitivities, and commitments necessary or effective citizenship in a democracy,” according to the CASL website.

More information can be found at www.missouristate.edu/casl.

Tonight, the Missouri State campus will never be the same…we can only hope.

The infamous comedy troupe Broken Lizard, behind such classics flicks as Super Troopers and Beerfest, are coming to Missouri State University for the ultimate one-night stand. All five members of the group will bring the heat as they perform stand-up, skits, improv, original films and a special Q&A session after all the madness.

Doors open at 7 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2009, at Juanita K. Hammons Hall. Admission is free for MSU students. This event is brought to you by Student Activities Council, and, as always kids, be sure to keep the drugs, alcohol and maple syrup at home.

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Pulitzer Prize winning poet Ted Kooser entertained a crowd of MSU students for an event sponsored by the English Department on April 17.

Kooser, also a two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and Stanley Kunitz Prize winner, read several of his most famous works, while also discussing his life and experiences, before a packed crowd in the Plaster Student Union Theater on Friday evening.

With a soft, but resonant voice, Kooser began with a humorous introduction of himself, in which he recalled the story of a young boy who noted Kooser’s resemblence to a hobbit in a picture from the newspaper, before turning to his poems.

His simplistic works have called forth a generation of memories and vivid images that almost any audience could relate to. Among the many poems he read, a few were “Tattoo,” “Father,” “At the Cancer Clinic,” and “Site.”

The depth of his words captured many in the audience and few appeared disinterested. In the hour that he read, he spoke of death, life, the plains and about several people that influenced his own life in one way or another. He visited an era long forgotten by the fast paced world of today.

After the reading, his books Delights in Shadows, The Poetry Home Repair Manual, and Sure Signs were for sale and a book signing took place.

Prior to the reading, Kooser visited several MSU creative writing poetry classes and gave a question and answer session. For many students, the ending of the poem is the most difficult portion to complete, so one student asked him how he finishes his poems so well.

“My endings are not always deliberate,” he said. “The objective is to set it up, confine the reader, squeeze them in, before letting them go at the end.”

Kooser’s poetry is world-renowned for it’s deft and detailed imagery.

“I have always be known to be a descriptive poet,” he said, “and simplicity is key.”

Kooser mentioned throughout the question and answer session and the reading that he prefers not to write in the first person. He said he despised putting himself too much into his own work.

Assistant Editor

Have you ever had a dream for your future? Do you want security and prosperity for yourself and your family?

Most people will discourage you, because the chance of failure is so great, but you are special. If you have faith in yourself and the commitment to see this journey to the end, you can overcome the odds. Also, I’m selling a book and audio CDs that reveals the secrets of how to get there, so you can have the benefit of overcoming the mistakes that I made.

Sound like a sales pitch? Actually, this is the bulk of the message from the speakers at the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, which came to the PSU Theater in the afternoon of April Fool’s Day. The program started off, as many pitches do, with subtle promises. Did you know 80 percent of millionaires are entrepreneurs? That almost sounds like 80 percent of entrepreneurs are millionaires, so you can’t lose! As entrepreneurs, the speakers on the tour only work with people they like. That almost sounds like all entrepreneurs only work with people they like!

Fun, not money, is the driving factor for the entrepreneurs we heard from. They showed a video of a guy playing with a yo-yo who had some kind of online business related to yo-yos. It left the impression that he played with yo-yos all day and money just poured out of the internet. The internet is the new vehicle of get rich quick schemes. I’m surprised one of the speakers wasn’t selling a “Making money on eBay” CD.

The other domain of such schemes is real estate, represented at the tour in the person of Doug Fath, who created and sold two online distribution businesses while in college, and then got into real estate. He’s never worked a salaried job since college, and he can show you how to get rich in real estate, using none of your own money. His system, contained in an 800 page binder and eight audio CDs, is valued at over $2000. This is one of the guys the Provost paid, with our money, to come speak to us.

Fath described his philosophy to the crowd in terms of cultivating assets, like owning rental properties, which generate passive income. It was largely lifted from Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the tremendously popular book by Robert Kiyosaki, with whom Fath said he was friends.

Fath told us to forget about working a job and concentrate on generating wealth. The core problem with that idea is confusing the ability to spend with being wealthy. People create wealth by doing work that adds value to society, such as building a house or caring for the sick. The so called passive income described by Fath actually destroys wealth because it transfers money to owners without adding value. Fath appears wealthy because he has a lot of money to spend, but he gets his money by siphoning it from people that actually work to create wealth.

For example, Fath described a recent property acquisition of his as a “win, win, win” because he was able to pay the scout that found the property, rent the property to someone, and generate $2,200 of passive income for himself each month. He didn’t go into detail about how it’s a “win” for the renter. If he looked at that “win” in any detail, he would find that the renter actually lost. The renter has to pay $2,200 a month extra, above the cost of renovations, for Fath’s “service” of arranging for the renovations and Fath’s risk in buying and marketing the property. Hardly a fair deal.

Nick Friedman, CEO of College Hunks Hauling Junk and another Tour speaker, described taking this extra money from customers as creating added value of the customer service experience. He realized early on in his business that he couldn’t keep charging $600 for junk hauling when his competitors were charging $50. So Friedman created procedures that control every action his employees take. The handbook tells them how to wear the uniform, how to groom themselves, how to address the customer, etc. All this effort enables Friedman to fool his customers into thinking that paying twelve times the price is a good deal for being treated like a human being.
But for an example of adding the value of the experience, the audience didn’t have to look any farther than the stage.

The Office of the Provost didn’t respond to a request to find out how much of our tuition money was paid by the school to bring these charlatans to campus. From looking around myself, I estimated 200 students attended, meaning the price tag was easily in the range of tens of thousands of dollars. Should we be using tuition money to bring people to campus to hock books, CDs and subscriptions to websites, all promising riches for virtually no effort? Is this part of creating well-rounded, educated individuals?

Apparently it is, because several teachers offered extra credit for students to attend. Among the names of instructors I saw as offering extra credit were Lapraza and Haggard. What part of the show on Wednesday was part of a university curriculum? Shameless Exploitation of Desperate People 101?

Finally, one statement by Friedman struck me above all others as being particularly telling and particularly crass. His parting words were, “Those who do nothing, have nothing, and are nothing.” My father was involved in several entrepreneurial ventures in the restaurant industry.  We have been wealthy at times and flat broke at other times.

During the rough parts, the whole family pulled together, and we worked our fingers to the bone for what little we had. To see a 25- year-old like Friedman, standing up there and implying that the billions of people in the world who work very hard for the little they have are ‘doing nothing,’ and as a result, ‘are nothing,’ was sickening. It highlights the undercurrent of arrogance running through the entire Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour.

April 1, 2009, was not a day just for fooling around.

English Society hosted one of its central programs in the Plaster Student Union on April 1, where they served cookies, soda, and delectable information,

Faculty members of the English department and other speakers discussed the possibilities  of what a student can do with an English degree.

A total of six speakers made presentations, kicking off with junior Tyler Snodgrass.

Through poetry and pure humor, he set the ball rolling and entertained the students and faculty that attended.
Tracey Glaessgen, academic advisor at the Advisement Center, followed with a spectacular presentation of her own.

She got to the heart of the issue, directly asking the students why they wanted to be English majors. Many of the answers were vague, like, “I love to read. I love to write. It’s all I can see myself doing.”

Glaessgen challenged the students to think deeper. She said English is a gray major because there are so many channels that one can follow.

She emphasized the critical thinking skills English majors attained through their various literature and writing courses.

Danielle Evans, an instructor for the English department, followed with information about publishing and creative writing. Evans received an M.F.A. in Fiction from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Her short story, “Virgins,” was published in The Best American Short Stories of 2008. She was also published in the Paris Review, Phoebe, Black Renaissance Noire, and the L Magazine. She discussed the ins and outs of publishing, shared her experiences of M.F.A. workshops, and described the sacrifices one must make as a creative writer. Evans also touched on editing and agent opportunities.

Technical writing followed, with a presentation by Lyn Gattis, an assistant professor for the English department. Technical writing was described as the world of writing that’s invisible, but that people see every day.
Technical writers are responsible for the labels on toothpaste, proposals in the corporate world, and all the important stuff people tend to overlook.

Gattis discussed job opportunities that are available to technical writers, and her advice was supported by the speaker that followed.

Robert Blevins, a graduate student at Missouri State University, gave a show and tell presentation of his position in college. “It’s a lot of work. You are reading and writing about twice as much as you did in undergrad,” Blevins said. He discussed the big “GRE” and gave tips to proper preparation for it.

The event ended with an education section by Mara W. Cohen Ioannides, an instructor for the English department teaching professional writing. Her book, A Shout in the Sunshine, was published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2007. Besides discussing the facts of teaching English, she gave advice about what not to do as a graduate student. Ms. Ioannides advocated that, despite everything, English majors should love their jobs. If they don’t, then they’re in the wrong place.

Hammons Hall Council will be hosting the Hammons Talent Show on Monday, April 27, in the Grand Lounge from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Students can still sign up at the front desk in Hammons House. The sheet asks how much time the performance will require and what kind of equipment will be needed.

Kameran Thull, who is the special events chair of the Hammons Executive Board, believes that people cannot afford to miss this event.

“We had an open mic last semester and lots of talented students showed up,” Kameran said. “We had singers, poets, and a band.”

She also gave an insight to how hard the executive board has been working. “We have been meeting weekly to discuss our plans and this one of our big programs,” she said. “Any MSU students are welcome to sign up.”

Prizes are still sketchy at this point, but she said that they will only be awarding first place and recognizing the second and third place winners.