Chapter One of a New Venture

     So, if you've been following my other blog, Another Lover of the Blade, then you pretty much know about me. I'm Wes, and I enjoy telling stories. This blog will be dedicated to things I've written, while "Another Lover of the Blade" will still hold all its previous posts, just in future the specifically writing-related ones will be posted on here, and it can go back to more of a "personal" type of thing. (If you were wondering at the titles, (they kind of confuse most folks at first) here's the backstory. (I really love The Princess Bride, okay?)

     Depending on how much time I have to manually retype everything, there will probably be at some point some sample sports recaps, scraps of poetry and song-lyrics-needing-a-melody, essays and short stories. I'm not sure what might happen; but it should be an interesting side project.

The Debate over #NSUProblems

     About two weeks ago, there was a Tahlequah Daily Press story on low morale throughout the Northeastern State University community. I would agree with that statement. It's a major reason I left a couple months ago. On Wednesday The Northeastern published an editorial defending the university.

     The TDP article is focused on administrators and faculty, which I don't know much about, and I'd never heard of most of those who went on-record, though I knew people who really liked Dr. Amy Aldridge-Sanford.
     In the second paragraph, the article mentions that faculty and staff pay is among the low end of Oklahoma regional universities. That is definitely true, as I've heard Mr. Deiter(Comp I), Prof. Semrow(Lit) and Mr. Woods(speech) all mention that in classes, and I'm pretty sure several other instructors have said something like that at other times.
     It also mentions several times that professors are greatly overworked. I would totally agree with that. On average it seemed like most instructors taught at least four to six classes, which were at least two separate courses.
     Dr. Richard Carhart was quoted as saying, "I watched other individuals(teachers) being berated, intimidated or humiliated for simply doing their jobs as best they can." There's no way to prove this happened, unfortunately, but everyone knew that it happened to teachers, and so they indirectly funneled that attitude down at their students. Carhart also stated that he honestly "couldn't wait to leave." That's how I felt most of the time.

     Dr. Isaac Dalanni, former assistant professor of economics, wrote six pages of unpleasant incidents and sent them to the Daily Press, which ranged from "mistreatment of colleagues to poor living conditions for students to stagnant salaries."
     Two of those incidents were mentioned in the article, one which involved a newly-hired professor not receiving his office key for over a week and not getting an email address until several weeks on the job. This instructor got his class schedule by email, which was then changed without his knowledge or consent, and the only way he found out about it was because of a phone call asking "Where are you? Why aren't you here?" on the first day of classes. This doesn't surprise me in the least.
     The other story was of one of his students who graduated, went through commencement and everything, but failed to get a diploma. So for six months the student called and emailed asking what the holdup was, and every time he was told to wait. Finally the student got so fed up that he physically came to campus to see what the problem was, and it was only then that he was told he was two credits shy of graduating. (This had been checked multiple times.) This also doesn't surprise me that much, because I've had this same scenario happen(on a smaller level).

     Dilanni's claim about poor living conditions is right on the (far too exorbitant for the amenities) money, as everyone who lives in the dorms knows. (On the other hand, everyone in Ross knows each other from complaining about the crappy conditions.) That's been well-documented in other posts on this blog. But paying $325-425 a month for a 10'x'14 cinder-block cell, usually shared with someone else? When the seasons are reversed and doors won't lock, ceilings leak and showers and sinks break down frequently? When the elevators are fifty years old and trap folks inside on a routine basis? And the TV and internet connections are really spotty. And that doesn't even include neighbors and noise levels. And the RAs never really seemed to do anything, as far as enforcing rules or customer service went. (Maybe that happens everywhere. Maybe all of these things do.)

     Dilanni elaborated on his view of his former workplace, saying, "I believe that the problems at NSU are systemic. To make NSU into a welcoming, academically challenging and competitive university would take a thorough reorganization." He is now a lecturer of economics at the University of Illinois, which is interestingly (and irrelevantly) where my cousin Logan goes to school.

     That was another thing about it; I know they were mostly gen eds that I took over 56 hours in four semesters, but the majority of my courses weren't very challenging. They were difficult, yes; but challenging and difficult are two very different words, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, as Twain wrote.
     Despite what they say in class, what you actually write in an essay or say in a speech doesn't usually matter. And that's extremely disappointing. But the reason that is is because the teachers are overworked; they have 120-150 papers to grade at a time and other projects besides, and sometimes they're taking Master's-level courses of their own. So they simply don't have time to judge/evaluate content. And so what that means for students is, honestly, you could probably write something only very loosely tied to the topic, following the format perfectly, and you would likely receive a decent grade.
     That's messed up.
     But most students don't really care, rolling their eyes when the subject is brought up and saying carelessly, "C's get degrees, y'know?" But most people don't watch Blimey Cow, and so just go along with it. If you pass, great, why strive for excellence?
     That's messed up, too.

     The article mentioned that Carhart wrote a legal brief called "The NSU Syndrome: A Recipe for Mediocrity", which he sent to the governing body of Oklahoma regional universities, and got no response from them.
     In political terms, the power of Northeastern State University is firmly an elite theory system. This means that a select few members control basically all decisions concerning the welfare of the organization/country/institution. And those powers would be those nameless, especially faceless non-entities to most people called administrators, the athletic department(never mind that most of the sports teams have a deplorable lack of talent and the success to show for it), and the Greeks.
     So what happens in this structure? A lot of meaningless talk about the "pride of our institution" and "our (pricey and idealistic and pointless) master plans for the next ten/twenty years" and a lot of money spent in really questionable ways. Like, a lot. $13 million for construction of a brand-new arena when dormitories are literally falling apart. $2 million for planting and near-immediate excavation of decorative baby trees. A probably non-really necessary addition and remodeling of the cafeteria(which looks horrible.) Wilson Hall sits there, proclaiming its haunted status and wishing somehow it could be put into use again, while the continued disuse make it less and less likely that will happen. Seminary Hall's carpet was held together in many places by duct tape. The health clinic is tucked way back into an impossible-to-find corner of campus inside Wyly Hall, which had been condemned as a dorm several years earlier. Uh...what?

     As the TDP article states, "Dilanni indicated the atmosphere at NSU was one of fear and intimidation." On a near-daily basis he would hear colleagues mention they were unhappy with their current job situation, or were scared they would be fired if they publicly opposed the policies of the administration.
     The whole existence of the Media Studies department hinges on this principle, which everyone knows about and says nothing about, because nobody can do anything about it. One instructor mentioned while teaching a journalism course one day that she knew money was disappearing in strange ways, but she couldn't do any type of investigative journalism on the subject because she'd get fired. And the newspaper staff had no chance of writing anything that came close to hard news, because of the Powers That Be and the fact that, really, the Media Studies department as a whole was on extremely thin ice. Really everything we did/do is an accomplishment, Media Studies is such an underdog in pack hierarchy. The magazine was cut out several years ago(before I came to school), the TV program was shut down, and the newspaper was forced into irrelevancy by going all-online. If we students made one "mistake" by practicing the craft we were learning well in sniffing out and telling the populace about a real news story, it would be extremely easy to shutter the entire department down in a heartbeat. (Based on the last couple times anyone tried to cover hard news.)
     So most of what was acceptable is fluffy pieces about things to come in the next week or two, or occasionally about someone receiving an award. People read the newspaper; it was all over the place, and you could talk to random people about what such-and-such an article was about, or mention that you knew somebody quoted or the writer, etc. The extra copies were a key component of many Homecoming floats. But with the department budget cut (again) and advertisers getting harder to find, the publication was moved entirely online and now nobody ever mentions the paper or notices its existence. (It's really hard to remember the name of the website, and there's so many other sites to look at....) Though folks do mark the printed Northeastern's absence.
     The TV program was sort of resurrected last spring, with half the semester to work with, a temporary teacher from Iowa, three cameras, two tripods(one broken), and six semi-working Macs shared among about thirty people, most of whom had near zero experience with Macs or working with video.  So it was an interesting process, but the eight of us in Advanced Video patched together two pilot episodes of a news show that would hopefully restart the program, and there were a fair amount of school commercials that were created. Not really sure how that's doing this semester.

     The Northeastern editorial begins, "Vacant expressions, empty desks and apathetic professors - this seems to be the current portrayal of Northeastern State University." Which is a very good journalistic sentence. It's stating an opinion of the general public, but not commenting one way or the other as to if there's any truth to it.
     The third paragraph brings up a good point that the students of today are hugely invested in social media, and that this story could spread and impact not just the school, but the city of Tahlequah.
     The fourth paragraph, "We as humble students cannot begin to understand the deadly political dance required to run a university of this size. We cannot speak for the inner workings of administration, or how faculty members are treated behind closed doors," is also strictly true. And it comes up nicely on the "Keep things safe but still address the issue" meter.
     The fifth paragraph makes a good point that the general tone of that article did kind of seem biased, which was true. But also, you have to compare that one article to the loads of other NSU stories the TDP has covered over the past year, promoting events like the summer camps and covering games and plays and debates and special speakers and teacher profiles and whatever else. 
     The sixth paragraph, about the opinion that the school is slipping, I don't completely agree with, especially the last sentence, "So do not tell us that our university is mediocre." That's an opinion. (I get that it's an opinion column, but still.) But the point the paragraph makes about there being a flipside to every coin is good. There are, certainly, some good professors.  Dr. Faulds, Prof. Semrow, Dr. Eversole, Cassie, Mr. Shamblin and Mrs. Bowin are the first instructors who spring to mind. And sometimes they do work weekends; and often at night as well.
     That last paragraph is made up mostly of facts. (And, by my count, eight punctuation errors.) Those facts are true. The rah-rah-rah "Go RiverHawks!" spirit is annoying. But, this did appear during Homecoming week. And Homecoming week is when everyone goes "OH MY GOSH, I'M SO HAPPY AND BLESSED TO ATTEND SUCH A WONDERFUL COLLEGE LIKE THIS ONE!" (I'm not much for Homecoming celebrations.) And I'm sure there are a lot of students who actually feel that way. It just seems kinda excessive and fake to have all these elaborate celebratory activities. But, because of that, you need to end on an upbeat note, with all the alumni coming this weekend.

     But Tahlequah is a great town, full of good people. And there's also NSU folks who aren't part of the school like Bob and Deb at the BCM, and Tom and Javier with CCF. And there's all the BCM-related adventures of the past year with SWAT, the worship team and just hanging around the office. But anyway, I just saw the Northeastern editorial this afternoon, and so then I had to look up the original article, and then this editorial or whatever it is just kind of happened. The hashtag title is from student slang, used both in everyday conversation and often on Twitter and Facebook. 
     And, weirdly enough, I'm wearing an NSU T-shirt right now while I finish typing this post. (I just took a shower and grabbed the first clean shirt in the closet, so....) 

America's Foreign Policy

     The last essay for my government course through Tulsa Community College.

     "George Washington, being elected our country’s first president, set a precedent for most of the basic rules of the office. One of these  rules was how the fragile new nation should approach foreign policy. His solution? If the European countries left the United States alone, we would stay out of the affairs of the Old World. This policy, generally called isolationism, was basically the status quo for the next 150 years until World War II, and was further strengthened by the Monroe Doctrine, which said that no European colonies could be established in the New World; if that was met, America would not get involved in whatever happened in Europe.

     This explains our lack of interest in the 19^th century’s power struggles and rearrangement of territory between France, Germany, England, Spain, Austria, Russia and everyone else. That lack of interest was partially because we had the Civil War to worry about, but in general it turned out to be a good plan, as America became a dominant player in world affairs due to the Industrial Revolution.

We entered World War I rather reluctantly and once that was concluded, due to the horrors of war and the 1919 Flu Epidemic, reverted back to our isolationist policy. The Great Depression passed as the Axis powers grew and flourished in Germany, Italy, and surrounding countries. Once Pearl Harbor was bombed, we entered World War II and entered the phase of interventionalism. As the United States became one of the main superpowers in the post-WWII era, their former ally of the Soviet Union became the other, setting up a decades-long stalemate known as the Cold War.

     The ideological divide between the West’s capitalism and the East’s communism led to a flurry of alliances with like-minded countries, much of that aid militaristic in nature. Nuclear weapons were stockpiled and upgraded on a regular basis, and the U.S.’ efforts to contain communism led to getting involved in Korea and Vietnam, and a third world war looked imminent with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Nixon’s foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger advocated for a new policy towards the USSR and China called détente, a French term for relaxation of strained relations, and things gradually improved over the 1970’s with China through “Ping-Pong Diplomacy”. The chill was back in the Cold War in the 80’s, though, represented best by the politically-charged atmosphere of the Olympics. Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the biggest threat came from a different direction – the Middle East.

     Since the Gulf War, and especially after September 11, the U.S. has actively intervened both for itself and its allies in combating terrorism throughout Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan; first in the Gulf War and then in the Iraq War from 2003-2011. Obama seems to be attempting to stabilize Afghanistan as a nation, as well as attempting to stabilize other Middle Eastern nations.  

     The rise of the European Union and the attractive low-cost/high profit structure of moving large amounts of American jobs overseas has definitely had an impact on foreign relations, mainly in the role that the U.S. has shifted from producing commodities and exporting them across the globe to relying on the labors and convenience of other countries creating materials and products to Americans to use. In this case, the United States’ status as top player in global economic affairs has been affected."