Quote while you’re ahead #1: The Economy raises and lowers incoming student numbers.
Quote while you’re ahead is a series highlighting flip-flops, contradictions, or sudden changes in policies at Whitworth.
Point
Despite an increase in the number of applicants, the admissions staff expects fewer incoming students to enroll for fall 2008.
….
Pfursich said some factors that may account for the decline in the number of incoming students include the current sub-prime mortgage crisis and stocks dropping. The admissions staff predicts that the current economic slump will affect the number of incoming students for fall 2008, Pfursich said.
“There seems to be an uneasiness [this year] for families making huge financial decisions in deciding [to attend] universities such as Whitworth,” Pfursich said.
….
However, with the tuition increase this year and the various economic challenges the country is facing, students are becoming a little more hesitant in making their college decision, Pfursich said.
–Fred Pfursich, quoted and paraphrased in the Whitworthian, March 18, 2008.
CounterPoint
Schools nationwide are also receiving a surprising number of early action applicants in spite of the economy, according to a recent article in The New York Times.
People are often more prone to try to get into school during an economic downturn, Pfursich said, because of the greater number of career opportunities open to college graduates.
-Fred Pfursich, paraphrased in the Whitworthian, Nov 24, 2008
Nearing Semester’s End, the Verdict on Schedule Changes
As most of us probably know, this year’s school schedule was altered for reasons I forget. When the changes were announced, I felt a slight annoyance at the idea of adapting to something new, but it wasn’t anything I felt worried about. However, unless I have just been oddly lucky with my previous class registrations, it seems as if there are an unusual amount of classes meeting only twice a week. Perhaps this was an unexpected side-effect or reward for freeing up more daytime hours with the schedule change. Whatever the reason for the changes, I think I’ve been feeling the consequences.
Maybe I’m just getting old and am having a hard time breaking old habits, but I’ve never been much of a habitual person. However, having four classes that meet twice a week or less has made me have to change the way I think about school. I miss the flexibility of three days a week, the classes coordinated easier. Now the late classes before night classes release at nearly 5pm, the big projects are seeming to hit at the same time with even more of an impossible force, and in order to have a minimal social life I have to sacrifice the “important” things like perfect attendance.
If Unit II of Core 350 teaches us anything, it’s that overload is bad. Three days in a row of the same class nearly no one wants to be in causes feelings of despair and cramming assignments into those days makes the weeks seem like neverending torment for the short-sighted people who like to have lives apart from school like me.
On the other hand, haven’t Tuesday/Thursday classes always kind of felt like cheating? Teachers themselves say that more learning occurs outside of the classroom and that becomes painfully obvious after the first twenty minutes of most lectures during an hour and a half class. Teachers often cater toward students’ tiredness in the classroom and then release them whenever in order to do homework or whatever. Less days per week in the classroom equals more space in between those valuable early minutes of each class period and more classtime spent not really learning in an attentive way. Now added to the Tuesday/Thursday mix, in which I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking “okay I only have to sit here for an extra half-hour, but then my day is done,” the new schedule has added the occasional Monday/Wednesday or Wednesday/Friday class. It is now possible to eliminate ever taking a class three days a week from a student’s schedule. Night classes, of course, are even worse.
Is this good? I may not be the greatest student, but I’m not a bad one. However, the constant thinking ahead to meet the demands of more classes that meet fewer times per week is challenging and has been catching me off-guard. It also seems as though many of my friends and myself are having the “busiest” semester of our lives. I like being challenged, but I also like the idea of finishing things on time, which for the first time in my academic career has been brutally difficult. My classes are not harder than I’m used to, in fact I have many hellish semesters full of all-nighters under my belt, but something just feels off about this year.
What do you think? Am I just a senior who’s used to something different or has this schedule made things exceptionally difficult for you? Should I stop sexing up the town for school?
How to turn your Student Government from Punchline to Paragon
When I was a writer for the Whitworthian, I’d always joke that the purpose of the paper was to take the greatest journalistic minds in the school, teach them all the keys, tips, and tricks to feretting out the truth, and then turn that mighty force on the noble goal of making fun the Student Government.
In the 15 year period, from 1993-2008 ASWC– and later ASWU — gradually slouched towards complete irrelevance. The many student committees for changing the school, the student judicial organizations, have fallen silent, replaced by the whims of administration.
In 2005 — when I was on ASWC — I wrote a short Wonderful life parody where the protagonist wishes there wouldn’t be an ASWC. To his horror, he wakes up and realizes that absolutely everything is exactly the same. Except, he has $140 in his pocket. Not knowing how to spend it, he fervently wishes to have the ASWC back.
Hyperbole, obviously. But the point remains. ASWU makes a lot of sound and fury in your E-mail inbox, but they signify practically nothing. I’m not asking for the student government to be given more power — more power in the hands of an incompotent organization would be a horrible thing. I’m asking them to use the power they have more effectively.
While the Donnell Regime last year was a start. It was not perfect — for sure — but it represented a slight improvement over the dismal years past. It was a sliver of what the student government could be.
I don’t know how the ASWU is this year — it may have magically become an incredible force, but if not, here are a few suggestions for transforming the institution into something worth your student fee.
Triple the Constituency Report number. Your job, on ASWU, is not to put on Homecoming. It’s not to sit around and eat pizza and tell your life story. It’s not even to go spend student money to jump off the Blob at Camp Spalding. It’s to represent the students. Unfortunately, that’s harder than turning to your roommate and saying, “Hey, Joe, should Whitworth close down Whitworth Drive?”
Constituency reports are a pain to do — you have to interact with people — but they are also a pretty awesome way of determining what students are thinking. They give you an actual figure.
Do the RIGHT constituency reports: Some constituency reports in the past have asked questions like “What do you think of your Student Government” “Name the student leaders you know” and “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
This is endemic of an insular organization. In some years, the ASWC might as well been enclosed in a Bomb Shelter, for all the interaction its had with the outside world.
The best consititency report focus on specific, controversial issues. Especially things that students are talking and complaining about. “Should Whitworth close Whitworth Drive?” “Should Whitworth seek to have more students, less, or the same number?” “Why do you hate CORE 350 so much?”
Turn those constituency reports into resolutions. Too many times, ASWU will actually get around to producing a consituency report, only to let to say, “Hmmm…. that’s nice,” and then move on. They need to do two things:
1) Send an all-student e-mail with the results of the survey.
2) In many cases, turn that into a resolution. If you find out that all the students hate a particular thing about Core 350, maybe ASWU should turn it into a resolution. It’s one of the better ways to get the administration’s attention and to highlight a contrast between Whitworth’s policies and their customer’s wishes.
Last couple of days. Hard for America, hard for me.
I am an Obama supporter and I am horrified by what I have seen on and off campus these last couple days. The election hadn’t been over for two minutes before I was assaulted and assailed by text messages, emails, blog posts, Facebook statuses and other means of expressing one’s opinion saying that the America was going to hell and that we would be in a civil war by the end of 2009. Several even went so far as to make crude and racist comments about our future president, something that my friends know I don’t tolerate.
Understandably McCain supporters are disappointed and I don’t blame them for being so, but the time to be angry is long past us and all anyone can do now is pray and worry. I would go so far as to say that these attacks are not only crude and mean spirited but also anti-American and anti-democratic. The citizens of America have spoken and now is the time to come together and work to make this country unified.
One particularly nasty example of this post-election smear campaign is a text message I got stating that the book of Revelation describes Obama perfectly when it describes the anti-Christ as a “man in his 40s, of Muslim descent, who will come out of nowhere, deceive the nations with persuasive language. . .” and be “. . . allowed to have authority for approximately 42 months (almost 4 years)” and finishes with a plea for “God to have mercy on us.” Now this is the kind of thing that I would expect a high school student to believe and forward, but no. The text came from (what I thought was) a mature college student who has traveled extensively and who isn’t even that strong of a Christian. Now before all the conservative Christians out there rush out to get your bible and crucifixes and holy water to prepare for the Armageddon let me assure you that this chain letter is absolutely NOT true at all. While there is an abundance of fallacies in the text the two most blaring are this:
- The book of revelation does not even mention the anti-Christ in the entire book and thusly doesn’t describe him/her.
- The Islamic faith did was not established until a great deal after the book of Revelation was written and thus it could not have described a man of Muslim heritage.
These kind of remarks make me just a little nervous about where this country is headed, not because it is controlled by the Democrats (though a one party rule is something to be wary of) nor because the president is “not qualified for the job.” But rather because I tremble to imagine an America where people are this vehemently against democracy and don’t trust the majority.
I am not asking that you silence your opinions, because this country is great partially because its citizens are allowed to have opinions. I am asking however that you trust the system to work itself out, the majority of Americans obviously want the future president of the USA to be Obama and that is what democracy is all about. Don’t attack Obama supporters on their beliefs and don’t attack Obama, especially using lies and slander as your tools of doing such. Imagine if the situation were reversed and McCain had won. Would you want to be subject to the personal attacks that liberals are being subjected to now? As a closing note for all the Christians out their (and I realize that we aren’t all Christian) remember that in Romans chapter 13 verses 1-7 we are told to respect and obey authority (government) because it is God’s will that they have authority.
Thank-you for reading this and peace be upon you.
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