Save the clock tower!

Spokane has always been a city with a small but passionate independent music sector, which has been able to thrive due to the activism on the part of students and local establishments friendly to the arts. Many Whitworthians have fond memories of nights spent at the Empyrean, a downtown coffeehouse which serves up more culture than you’ll find at any dozen regular establishments.

Unfortunately, a recently passed state law (RCW 19.27.500) requiring automatic sprinklers in all “nightclubs” (any place with a dance floor larger than 350 square feet) has the potential to force the Empyrean to shut down.

The Empyrean, founded two years ago by sisters Chrisy and Michelle Riddle as a personal commitment to community service, has been one of Spokane’s greatest friends to independent artists, poets, and bored students.

Installing a new sprinkler system would cost more than $20,000, which is money the owners do not have.

“It will basically shut us down,” Co-Owner of the Empyrean Chrisy Riddle said.

[...]

The sisters don’t make any money here, but they rely on their day jobs for income. They say this is their community service.

“I always had this dream about owning a coffee shop that would be also a center for the arts,” Riddle said.

She may have to wake up from the dream this winter, when a new law will require any business with a performing or dancing area that has an area 350 square feet or more, to have automatic sprinklers installed.

“Unless some miracle happens, or the law changes, or somehow we find the money we need, our plan is that we may have to close on November 30,” Riddle said.

[News coverage: http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=10667473]

The Empyrean’s closure would truly be a great loss to the community. Unfortunately, it sounds as though the amount of money in question is essentially insurmountable without what Riddle calls a “miracle.

So here’s a thought: Whitworth’s students have the capacity to make that miracle happen. $20,000 across, say, 2,000 students starts to look pretty affordable pretty fast. I’m not intimately familiar with ASWU bylaws and financial regulations (especially as an ex-student), but it seems to me that a few motivated campaigners could get a benefit concert going on-campus. With sufficient impassioned advertising, a $10-30 ticket price over the course of one or two concerts could make a serious dent in solving the Empyrean’s problem.

What sorts of creative solutions do you folks have?

July 10, 2009 | Filed Under ASWU, Law, Pop Culture, Student Life

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GO. VOTE. NOW [PT. TWO].

Ha ha ha…..really though. Vote.  The sooner the better.

Same deal as last time, people. I logged into Facebook and typed each candidate’s name into Facebook search.  Their first name I made a link to either the picture they’re using to campaign with, or their profile pic. Their last name is a link to whatever picture on their Profile Pictures Page amused or intrigued me most.  And after that I quoted an intriguing, amusing, or just plain WHAT?! quote from their “Favorite Quotations” section on Facebook.  And after THAT I linked you to any existing Facebook support groups.  Only difference: this time it’s the people who became, as the email said, “official candidates through the write-in process.”

Duvall Senator

Off Campus Senator

Warren Senator

April 7, 2009 | Filed Under ASWU, Higher Education, Mass Media, Politics, Pop Culture, Possibly Not Entirely Serious, Sociology, Student Life, The State of Whitworth

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GO. VOTE. NOW.

…before you forget, ’cause you were busy doing @#!# CORE homework!  

OKAY, here’s what I did.  I logged into Facebook and typed each candidate’s name into Facebook search.  Their first name I made a link to either the picture they’re using to campaign with, or their profile pic (in many cases, both [in one case a Paint interpretation of a particularly evocative campaign poster]). Their last name is a link to whatever picture on their Profile Pictures Page amused or intrigued me most.  And after that I quoted an intriguing, amusing, or just plain WHAT?! quote from their “Favorite Quotations” section on Facebook.  And after THAT I linked you to any existing Facebook support groups.  WHEW.  

President

EVP

FVP

Boppell Senator

Mac Senator

Ballard Senator

Stewart Senator

East Senator

Arend Senator

Off Campus Senator

Off Campus Rep

April 5, 2009 | Filed Under ASWU, Academics, Higher Education, Mass Media, Photos, Politics, Pop Culture, Possibly Not Entirely Serious, Sociology, Student Life, The State of Whitworth

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25 Things about Whitworth

You saw it on your friend’s note on Facebook. You might have seen it parodied in Time Magazine. You might not have a Facebook.  

Regardless, here it is: Everyone’s least favorite favorite meme: with a twist:

25 Things Gabrielle Vaughn Loves and Hates About Whitworth

1. My favorite theatre major said [a really bad word] (I edit myself for Daniel Walters’ grandma’s sake) really loud in Saga-I-mean-Sodexo at 6:45 PM, Thursday, April 1st.

2. I play Dungeons and Dragons with a group in Hendrick Hall. The security people leave the lights on in Hendrick Hall for us from after classes leave the hall until about midnight.  Sometimes the security people stop by mid-session & tell us stories about epic things that happened in their high school/college/insert time period label here sessions.

3. Very few people commit the egregrious sin of PDA on the Whitworth Campus.  Those who do, do it with passion (find the pun, it’s not very hard [if you noticed the pun between these parentheses, you're a perv (if you noticed the double puns, email me, I think we'd like each other)]).

4. Percentagely speaking, everyone at Whitworth loves Facebook.

5. Those who don’t love Facebook have really interesting reasons why the heck not.

6. Go to the Whitworth Coffee Shop alone sometime. Say hello to the inevitable fifteen people there that you know/took a class with/took a class from/have about .2390572938456 degrees of separation from. Take a moment to mourn Stan’s loss to the Whitworth community. And then sit down. And people-watch/listen. People talk about EVERYTHING in the Coffee Shop. It is one of (surprisingly numerous) places on campus where Whitworth’s diversity of psyche can be clearly seen. I have heard/participated in any number of conversations there. I have had conversations planning road trips where people felt free to lean over and suggest places to go (incidentally, Julia, Powell’s was amazing, as promised). I have heard intense debates between conservative professors and liberal students (and vice versa [Whitworth's subtitle should be vice versa]). I have interviewed Bill Robinson (no, he’s not an unusually lifelike hologram) for the Whitworthian. I have seen first dates there. I have experienced a first date there. I have had people meet me and my boyfriend six months later and say, “Oh! You’re that couple I saw that one time doing that one thing!”

7. I have sat with a Theology major in one of the larger dorms on campus and listened to him rant about how very, very, wrong evolution was as a concept, knowing that several dorm floors away, someone was pushing the Everclear a little farther behind the Whitworth-approved Mountain Dew in the minifridge. The contrast in personalities amazes me.

8. I, who grew up a flaming Southern Baptist, have been taught the beauty of Roman Catholicism by simply watching other people love it.

9. I sat in a lecture with close to fifty other people. The lecture concerned Chaucer and Sex. Maybe a third of the student audience were English majors. The professors there (some of the legends, Doug Sugano, Corliss Slack, Arlin Migliazzo) expressed amazement at the amount of people there. I was fresh out of high school. I hadn’t even declared my major yet. I was struck speechless that a) not only were there people who CHOSE to take English class, but b) they were taking time out of their social life (AND MANY OF THEM WEREN’T EVEN MAJORING IN ENGLISH!) to listen to a professor who didn’t teach at their school lecture about the blatant sexuality in a piece that is bandied about by at least as many people as have seen A Knight’s Tale!

10. I have gone on a roadtrip with an opinion columnist thinking about transferring to a college back home and a girl who carried her Canon camera on every beach we visited who is giving serious thought to transferring to Seattle Pacific University. I was taking a trip driving the car, in a rainstorm, on a curvy mountain road. I was distracting them and myself from the bad weather and dangerous conditions by telling them stories about my other friends (sounds dangerous – actually helps me focus & drive better – ). I found myself telling them about the horrible things that a high school friend of mine had gone through while I was simultaneously experiencing my freshman year at Whitworth. I had never talked to anyone about the experiences before. Because it was a road trip and I had just spent two days camping on the Oregon coast with these girls and listening to the amateur photographer playing folk songs on her fiddle for us in the dark while our campfire burned, I forged ahead. ….Not to put too fine a point on it, but I found myself trying to drive and sob at the same time. Without expressing any (justified) concern for her life at all, the opinions columnist gently offered to drive the car (which is owned by the amateur photographer). And I let her. And instead of doing what MOST people would do, which is let the change in drivers allow the mood to lapse and the crying and sharing stop, the opinions columnist hugged me as we passed each other on the way to changing seats, and once everyone was settled and we were on the road again, the amateur photographer started encouraging me to finish the story, “because it’s important to get these things out.”

11. Stewart is the dorm known for being attractively sketch, having sewer problems of mythic proportions, and testing the patience of the surrounding residential neighborhoods every year with the Stewart Lawn Dance (Save a horse, ride a cowboy!) But Stewart is also the dorm whose front lawn was featured in the ‘07/’08 school year, as a photography student took pictures of the four seasons in action from his dorm window. Stewart also vies with BJ for my personal title of “most flags displayed on dorm windows” (Colorado seems to have the most state pride, flag-wise).

12. Whitworth is obsessed with good art, even if half the campus doesn’t know it. There is a 3-D art sculpture in the HUB right now. It’s triangular & made out of broken mirrors. There are small-sized advertisements for REALLY INTERESTING events on the Whitworth campus stuck to it. You should go see it. The sculpture, I mean. And the interesting events. The HUB’s a pretty good thing to see too, while you’re out seeing things because some girl on the Internet told you to (protip: there are no girls on the Internet).

13. Whitworth is a campus that simultaneously has art students paying their way through college who really, really try to make a show called “Free Beer,” and who write very contained opinion columns when their idea is turned down….and conservative students from California whose fathers are millionaire businessmen who go to Hosanna every Tuesday night, rain or shine (or April snow).

14. While we’re on that topic, I love the glow of Whitworth’s lights in December/January when they are mere halos through fogs of snow, low-lying clouds, or other inclement weather. But I’m a little bemused by the beauty of an inch of snowfall when it comes on April Fool’s day (you see what God did there?).

15. I have a really skinny friend who lives in Arend and sometimes forgets to eat. He has ADD and sometimes gets really caught up in checking websites and doing homework and talking to friends and he…just…forgets…to eat. One day he fainted in front of his roommate (who I later heard threaten him: “If you ever do that again I will strangle you myself!”). It’s been roughly six months since that incident, and he’ll still meet people in Arend or associated with Arend (you know, dating some of Arend’s infamous geeks or the like) who, after a while, will suddenly look intensely focused, then surprised, and go, “Oh! You’re that guy that fainted!” They will then look suddenly concerned, put a hand on his shoulder, and ask sincerely, “Are you doing okay?”

16. I once brought a plate of cookies to Whitworth for the express purpose of sharing them with my boyfriend and inadvertently invited three computer science majors over to chillax in a tiny Keola room (that’s right, Village pride) and have some cookies as well. This is how it went. I was in charge of the cookies, sitting in the one chair in the room, simultaneously trying to listen to everyone talk and finish painting my Dungeons and Dragons figurine. My boyfriend kind of pressed himself against the wall and watched everything (I may or may not have invited those guys over while my boy was in the shower, I’m not sure – IT’S ALL A BLUR TO ME NOW -). One friend argued, cookie in hand, his theory about why women shouldn’t play World of Warcraft. The other friend argued with the first friend that he didn’t think ANYONE should play World of Warcraft, because it does all the imaginative work for you (that was the first time I’d met this guy face-to-face). And the last friend was curled up on my boyfriend’s bed, having kidnapped my boyfriend’s copy of Watchmen to reread.

17. In the last month before the ‘07-’08 school year was over, a group of us took to the back 40 one night. Those who played instruments were encouraged to bring them. We went down to Pirate’s Cove. The boy who played bagpipes was heckled until he got up on stage and played for us. Several others had particular pieces of poetry memorized and got up on stage and recited them for the group. One boy did all the voices and motions of the “Bring out yer dead!” scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame. Another performed some obscure speech by some crazy English revolutionary, in a funny accent (he’s talented with those). Then we walked in large circles around campus, singing shreds of songs that we all knew (The Beatles proved popular as the large majority knew at least a chorus’ worth of lyrics) as well as showtunes…..Incidentally, the boy who played the bagpipes still practices near Pirate’s Cove in the back 40 now and again. He prefers to practice in daylight, but often plays at night, lit by a bare lightbulb, surrounded by cigarette butts and dead pizza boxes.

18. If you are that rare creature, a sophomore or freshman who lives off-campus, most of Whitworth’s dorms and The Coffee Shop are a great place to just get away from it all. Take a book, take some coffee, take your laptop, take your sheet music & practice on the pianos that are in every single dorm (Thank you, to whoever’s idea that was). Any of the above, or your own idea, works. I especially recommend the big dorms for lounge-hopping, like Arend or Warren, but also spent about an hour in Schumacher last year when it was still girly and it worked pretty well. Haven’t been back in The Shoe since it changed gender, but I hear good things!

19. Whitworth lives in Spokane, a city that has a heartbreaking handfulsworth of metropolitan area centered around the Spokane River Falls and miles and miles and miles of condominiums and housing development. It takes a village to raise some beauty…

20. Three words: The Garland District. I don’t care when you go or where you go or what time of the day you go, just go. There’s Garland’s Dollar Theatre. There’s an excellent used-book store, I visited once and at the counter the owner looked through my selections and randomly started muttering, “That’s too much” and marking things down (which ended up really good because I was in a book glut mood and bought waaaaaaaay too much stuff that trip). There are about five semi-famous greasy-spoon restaurants (The Milk Bottle has Doug Sugano’s personal recommendation, if that means anything to you – plus the door is in the middle of a 15 foot milk bottle sculpture and there are lots of black and white pictures over the counter inside – what more do you need?). The Blue Door Theatre does cheap-ish but REALLY EXCELLENT improv every weekend or so and they need bigger audiences. GO SEE. REPORT BACK.

21. If you’re the occasional Whitworth student who actually has money, get yourself to the Spokane Civic Theatre. Two years ago they sent a Sondheim Musical (Assassins, for those literate in Sondheim Speak) to AACTFest in Charlotte, North Carolina. Why do I know this? Because I attended middle school and high school at Northwest Christian in town, and was in every musical from 7th-12th grade, and the theatre teacher graduated from Whitworth College. He played The Balladeer in that production of Assassins and as a person is why I attended Whitworth and plan to again.

22. Don’t be fooled by Whitworth’s white-bread exterior. It’s not all rich kids attending on their parent’s money. It’s also kids who cut and alcoholics and kids who love premarital sex and kids who write poems and kids who write worship songs and kids who wish…that…someone…would…just…react. Whitworth is like that crazy bread that Costco sells sometimes that looks nice and easily edible until you open it up and realize all the nuts in the inside. (”Everything is edible. People are edible, but that is cannibalism my dear children, which is in fact frowned upon in most countries [Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory].)

23. Whitworth is a boy who’s never known a kiss listening to his friend describe how much she misses sex in all its flavors.

24. Whitworth is a girl in a skirt hanging out with a group of boys, saying to one of them, “Stop being such a boy,” and having another boy twitch as in irritation and say, “As a boy I take offense to that,” and having the girl lean and say into his ear, “As a girl to a boy you know I’m right. Sometimes you have to realize that cliches are true, so you can transcend them.”

25. Whitworth is the marriage of the sacred and the profane.

April 2, 2009 | Filed Under ASWU, Academics, Philosophical Musings, Student Life, The State of Whitworth

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Last Words from a Silver Medalist

Thank you to everyone who voted.  Regardless of the box you checked on the ballot, you did a service to this university.  Yeah, the news of my loss tonight was profoundly disappointing but not because it undermined my ego.  Rather, it’s just plain hard to face that I’ve lost the opportunity to serve you as President next year.  Nevertheless, I rest in the comfort that I tried my very best and that, apparently, many of you believed me when I told you how I looked forward to serving you through ASWU.  Thanks for your time and for lending me an ear.  You’ve been wonderful.  Meeting so many is reward enough for this whole campaigning effort.  God bless every one of you.  Over and out. 

April 9, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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Final Election Results: It’s OKK.

Via the Whitworthian:

President:

Obe Quarless

Executive Vice President:

Kalen Eshoff


Financial Vice President:

Kendra Hamilton

Among other interesting notes, Seth Flory is the Off-Campus Senator. Check the link for full results.

April 9, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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Final Thoughts and Predictions.

First, a quick note to those who haven’t been following the campaign. Just because you don’t know the candidates well or haven’t been following the issues, doesn’t mean you can’t vote!

It just means you shouldn’t.

Here are a few final thoughts on the candidates.

First of all, this is the year of the “K” sound. You’ve got a choice of Kalen or Carl or Kendra or Quarless or Cleary. Cacophonous, no?

For president I’m leaning toward Obe, but slightly.

Cleary is very slick.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. A persuasive person is good to have on your side. If he’s on your side. I’m a person who can’t stand catchphrases, when there should be arguments. Cleary is more specific than most candidates in the past 3 years. But not quite specific enough for my taste.

I don’t think this lack of specifics comes from Cleary trying to be evasive or lacking creativity. It just comes from his lack of experience with ASWU. He doesn’t quite know what’s been tried before or how to solve the problems that have happened.

As Caleb Knox pointed out in the comments section, a lot of Quarless’s ideas are either unworkable or expensive. Outdoor Basketball Courts probably cost a pretty penny. Or a hundred thousand ugly ones.

Quarless also lacks Cleary’s silver tongue.

But here’s the thing that hasn’t come out in the debates or the posters or the voters guide or the analysis thus far: Obe is a great listener. He doesn’t just listen, he asks.

The Sports Event Coordinator positions is one of those positions you can do without getting help or advice from others. You can forge your own path. But, nevertheless, during many meetings Quarless asked the ASWU what they thought about his ideas. And here’s the kicker: He listened to them. He took their advice.
That’s a sweet quality to have in a president.

Cleary’s inexperience and vague rhetoric make him an unknown quality. But Quarless’s reading of the student body has been dead on and that makes him a pretty good choice for President.

For the EVP position, I’ll vote for Kalen, obviously. My only concern is her RA background. ASWU and Student Life should be separate. Sometimes they should even butt heads. If the student body is upset at the decisions that Student Life has made the ASWU needs to address that. The RA’s boss is Tyler Pau or Dick Mandeville or Kathy Storm. The ASWU member’s boss is the student body.

As long as Kalen values debate and discussion and judging ideas critically more than simply an undisrupted community she’ll do fine. There have been quality RA’s, like Andrea Naccarato, in her position. (Except Andrea was the BJ rep, so she had background.)

For FVP I think the choice is pretty simple.

In any other year, Carl Chan would be a perfect candidate. He would have made a better FVP than Jeff Hixson or Luis Lopez, or maybe even Denise Hewett. But he’s not running against Denise or Jeff or Luis.

He’s running against Kendra. Kendra Hamilton was handcrafted by God specifically for this position. If there was thing clear from the debate last night, it was that Hamilton was in her element. She had knowledge of her position like no other, and wielded it like a rapier.

I don’t know what it says when the platform of the Financial position gets you the most pumped up.

—

In this case I won’t make a full out for-sure predictions, or even try to guess the spread. I’ll just give percentages. (Not percentages of the vote, rather, chances of winning.) So I still could be wrong, but I’ll only be wrong to a certain percentage.

I like to hedge my bets. In the end, much of it will come to down to who had the best ground game, I’m not really sure of that.

Chances of Winning

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April 9, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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The Differences

Update: Clarified a bit.

Can’t figure out the differences between the candidates this year because of vague posters and platitudes?

I’ve got you covered.

PRESIDENT

OBE QUARLESS

Grade: Junior.

ASWU Experience?: Yes, he was the Sports Coordinator. Also has been in music ensembles and has played football.

Campaign Themes: Empowering the common student. Increasing ASWU’s profile. Instilling pride in the student body.

Endorsed by: The Whitworthian.

Criticism of Opponent: Cleary is not familiar with ASWU, and not familiar with the greater student body has a whole.

Specific Ideas:

PETER CLEARY:

ASWU Experience: No, but is an Small Group Coordinator.

Grade: Sophomore.

Endorsed by: Carl Chan

Campaign Themes: Communication, Communication, Communication. Bringing East and West campus together. Getting things done. (Less talk. More rock.)

Criticism of opponent: Quarless is a weaker communicator.

Specific Ideas:

FINANCIAL VICE PRESIDENT:

KENDRA HAMILTON:

ASWU experience: Yes, most of any candidate. Has been Stewart senator, Boppell Senator, and (for a little bit) Financial Vice-President.

Endorsed by: The Whitworthian, Seth Flory.

Campaign Themes: Experienced candidate. Says she will streamline financial procedures accountability and making them more

Unallocated money should be: Maximized, because unallocated money is money that regular students can access.

Criticism of opponent: Carl Chan never asked the current FVP (Kendra) about the FVP position. Carl Chan lacks as much experience as Kendra.

Specific Ideas:

CARL CHAN:

ASWU Experience: No, but has extensive accounting experience. Also worked at Washington Mutual for two years, as a teller, so he knows his way around the Benjamins.

Endorsed by: Peter Cleary (but Cleary also, later, kinda endorsed Kendra. Wuss.)

Campaign Themes: Making it easier for new clubs to form.

Criticism of opponent: Kendra isn’t as much of a team player, a people person, as Chan is.

Unallocated money should: have a certain amount of money set aside, in a “lockbox” as it were, for starting new clubs.

Specific Ideas:

April 8, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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LiveBlogging ASWU Debates.

Correction: Peter Cleary was correct when he stated that all execs are paid the same. I was going off of a document that was only, essentially, an experiment. The document did not note it was an experiment, so that was the problem.

This is my first experience LiveBlogging. Beware. I am a slow typer, and an inaccurate one. Here’s a live blog of the ASWU debate. Since I’m typing stream-of-consciousness live, It’ll be a bit raw.

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April 7, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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Final Question: The differences between you and your opponent.

One of the biggest frustrations for voters during the election is figuring out the differences between opponents. That’s one of the reasons I’ve pushed the

So tell me, what’s the difference between you and your opponent? Don’t worry. You can actually say you’re better than your opponent. Because if you aren’t, well, you shouldn’t be running.

By now you should know quite a bit about your opponent. I’d encourage you to go beyond pure resume reviewing. Examine ideas and philosophies.

April 7, 2008 | Filed Under ASWU

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