Issue 8 by The Collegian

Ne w s p a p e r o f Wa l l a Wa l l a U n i v e r s i t y

Collegian The

Volume 102 | Issue 08

‘The Heart of Our Coutry’ pg. 3

“@aswwucollegian sad waste of money and paper #godigital” -Some person via Instagram

November 16, 2017

Wwu’s lack of A recycling program

Last Things First college place, wa | walla walla university

| November 2017 Issue 8

It’s All In the Delivery By Meghann Heinrich It’s almost Thanksgiving, which means time spent with those you love, and I am told (via Pride and Prejudice) that poetry is the food of love. Therefore, I am going to call this a Thanksgiving-themed story because it’s about poetry. If you have a problem with that, say it to my face. I could take you, and it wouldn’t even be a struggle. Sidenote: my friend Daniel told me that guys tend to subconsciously size up whether or not they could take someone in a bout of fisticuffs by how they move. His direct quote was, “You know, like you watch someone move or like how they dance.” I choose to think of this statement as: if you throw a boogie cupid shuffle you can also throw down in a scuffle. And that rhymed. I throw down a mean cupid shuffle, so just keep your trap shut about the whole Thanksgiving thing.

Hey Thanks! “Thank you Thanksgiving break, for giving me just enough time to get lulled into a false sense of security before finals.” “Thank you Walla Walla weather for showing us who the Californians are.” “Thank you Californians for the daily update on how cold it is.”

“

hank you Professor Wenceslao for efficiently wearing Heelys. (And for scooting around in them at Costco with 4 of your 6.5 children)”-

In high school, I had the opportunity to enter a national poetry competition for extra credit in my English class. Never one to turn down a captive audience and a few extra points, I signed up without hesitation. In preparation for this competition, each contestant was to prepare two poems from the Poetry Out Loud website to recite on the competition day. The first place winner from our county round could then move on to the next region, and so on, until the final competition in Washington D.C., where I can only assume the winner would receive $1 million in cash and a ride on Air Force One. Not to brag, but it was basically the “Akeelah and the Bee” of poetry. I selected my first poem with no time to waste. It was “The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Short, sweet and touching with an easy rhyme to follow. In short,

I could pull it off. The second selection did not come as naturally. I was perusing the list for something short that I could manage without too much difficulty when I happened upon “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith. As the title suggests, the poem is kind of a bummer, but it was only 12 lines long, so I was sold. Long story short, the competition came, and I don’t mind saying: I slayed. At least, I started to. Wadsworth and I had a mutual agreement: he’d write heartwarming verse, and I would perform it. This poem ends with, “Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.” Almost too sweet, right? I remember the audience all smiling at me when I finished that first poem, eyes shining, and Mike (my English teacher) beaming with pride

and relief that I hadn’t embarrassed him in front of the high profile guest judges. I even threw a cheeky wink at the judges table, which I am sure they ate right up. Then came round two. I had sized up the competition, and I knew I would be at the top, not a doubt in my mind. I swaggered to center stage and confidently announced my next selection, “I’ll be reciting ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith.” Cue immediate discomfort from everyone in the room. I won’t take you through the next few moments, as I’m sure you can imagine the confusion and alarm felt in the audience as I delivered every line of that chillingly somber piece with a smile plastered on my face. In a singsong cadence I happily wooed them all with, “Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought,

And not waving but drowning.” When I finished the second poem no one was looking at me, which I thought was odd since I had obviously just blown their socks off. Then I realized, they must be looking for their socks on the floor. Mike—no longer looked proud—looked a little embarrassed. Worst of all, the judges did not take to my second wink nearly as well as the first. I left feeling jipped out of the attention I deserved for such moving performances. Shockingly, I didn’t win $1 million or a ride on Air Force One. I have since reread Stevie Smith’s poem—you know, the one about the waving and the drowning. They say hindsight is twenty-twenty, and I get it now. As with many conversations and presentations I’ve had, I nailed the content, but the delivery left something to be desired.

Verbatim “The more you type on Google, the lower your grade. It’s not me, it’s nature.” – Professor Fred Liebrand. “I only eat what I kill.” – Professor Monty Buell. “Fidget spinners are really good.” – Professor Cynthia Westerbeck. “I hate to burst your urinary bubble.” – Professor Jim Nestler “I don’t know why, but these balls are sticky. You can wash them off if you’d like.” – Professor Larry Aamodt while preparing for a physics lab. “If you want a re-branding exercise take the pagan ionic column out of the Walla Walla University logo.” – Professor Pablo Wenceslao Email your faculty verbatim or thank yous to meghann.heinrich@wallawalla.edu to be featured!

page

November 2017 Issue 8 | walla walla university | college place, wa

Editor-in-Chief Daniella Silva

Twitter

Assistant Editor Kate Beckner

@aswwucollegian

Instagram @aswwucollegian Facebook

Creative Director Hannah Chebeleu

@aswwucollegian

Life Editor Angelica Chan

Backpage Editor Meghann Heinrich

aswwu.collegian@wallawalla.edu.

Head Copy Editor Brielle Tym Cover | Sophie Bailey

Writers

Layout Design Kyra GreyEyes Sophie Bailey Ashley Henry-Saturne Copy Editors Geoffery Lopes Karli Hart Jocelyn Griffin Office Manager Victoria Ico Distributer Sydney Peck Beau Gerber Advertising Manager Amanda Maizar

EDITOR’S NOTE

Feature Michael Jensen Jake Sloop Opinion Parker Bailey Savanna Pardo Food & Culture Daphne Novak Hannah Theil Media & Tech Matt Fennell Outdoor Niqolas Ruud Science Forrest Sheperd History Zachary White Religion Peter Flores The opinions of our writers do not necessarily reflect the views of The Collegian or Walla Walla University.

ASWWU Town Hall Answered Questions:

Daniella Silva

How can I be a part of ASWWU? (President/Anyone)

Dear Reader, With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, we at The Collegian believe people who recycle are a blessing that we should all be thankful for. This week’s issue deals with a question I’ve been hearing around campus for the last four years of my college career: does Walla Walla University actually recycle? If so, how much does it recycle? There are rumors that what gets thrown into the blue bins around campus just gets dumped in with the regular trash anyway; this rumor should be concerning for anyone who feels even slightly remorseful for the copious amounts of paper they write on, print out and tear up in frustration each quarter. To try to answer these questions, the feature team set out to discover once and for all if the rumors about Walla Walla’s poor recycling track record are true. Our poll for this week was: “What do you think WWU/College Place recycles?” We also explore what you as a student can do to be more eco-friendly when it comes to recycling and include interviews from several knowledgeable people in the area. You can read the full-length feature and interviews on the next page.

Additionally, this month is Native American Heritage month, when we are reminded to celebrate the men and women who have contributed so much to the rich history of this land and who lived here long before any European settlers set foot on American soil. To help celebrate, we reached out to the Umatilla Reservation, who in turn put us in contact with Native historians and writers at the Tamástlikt Cultural Institute who agreed to submit a short essay on the history of the Walla Walla Valley which you can read on page five. A special thanks to Wil Phinney, editor-in-chief of the Confederated Umatilla Journal, for helping us find and publish this essay.

We at The Collegian realize that we are contributing to the recycling problem on campus with all of our printed copies each week. To help move toward a more eco-friendly Collegian, we are launching a prototype WordPress blog! Let us know what you think by leaving a comment at aswwucollegian.wordpress.com. Additionally, here are some fun ways you can reduce, reuse and recycle old Collegians:

As usual, we hope you enjoy all of our regular columns this issue. If you have any questions, comments or article submissions, you can send them to aswwu.collegian@wallawalla.edu. Please note, there will be no issue next week because of Thanksgiving break, but we will be back for one more issue this quarter on Nov. 30. Stay snazzy, and have a fantastic break!

Pad and send a package to an SM or ACA student Start a fire on your next outdoor adventure Decorate your wall Line your chinchilla cage (your chinchilla will be so much more educated!) Use it as a fiber supplement when you run out of caf meals Use it as trendy wrapping paper (Christmas is coming!) Save them for your grandma

You are already a part of ASWWU by attending this school! If you want to become more involved with ASWWU, check the ASWWU jobs website. Here are some jobs that are currently available: marketing graphic designer, copy editor and layout designer for the Mask/Mountain Ash yearbook, and director of external relations for social. Can we have more ASWWU shirts in the spring? (Marketing) That’s probably not feasible for budgeting purposes. T-shirts are our biggest cost during the year, and doing another t-shirt run in the spring would take up the budget we use to print posters and stickers for ASWWU events. However, there are a lot of old shirts in apple storage that we plan to give out at certain times during the year. What’s with all the old newspapers in the boxes around campus? (Collegian) Those newspapers have been sitting around for one or more years because there is currently no job position tasked with taking out or recycling old newspapers. That is definitely something The Collegian is working on this year. For example, we have asked our distributors to pick up the old newspapers when they bring the new ones in. What is the single largest expense in ASWWU? (Finance) Wages—50 percent of the dues we receive goes to pay our approximately 118 employees.

PRESS November 15, 2017

Is the Atlas profitable? (Atlas)

November 14, 2017

Family of Charleena Family of Leonard Lyles Breaks its Silence Thomas Opens up About Police Shooting

Gabe Meyer Seattle Vocational Institute

Family of Charleena Lyle’s Will Speak Publicly About Challenges with System Seattle, WA - Not This Time will hold a press conference Wednesday November 15th, so that the family of Charleena Lyles can share the challenges and frustrations the family has experienced since Ms. Lyles was killed on June 18th of this year. Attorney Lisa Daugaard will be present, as well as Shakespear Feyissa from the Law Offices of James Bible. To date, there have been thirty-four people killed by police in Washington State in 2017. According to a database maintained by Killedbypolice.net, there were 29 people killed by police in Washington State in 2016. The family of Charleena Lyles has endorsed I-940 and supports the De-Escalate Washington Campaign. The family knows it is fundamentally wrong that in this state it is impossible to prosecute law enforcement officers for unjustified use of deadly force. They are also convinced that officers need more specific and com-

prehensive violence de-escalation and mental health training, and believe the provisions of I-940 establish the right framework to reprioritize the resources and emphasis in training. Their experience since June has shed light on other areas of the criminal justice system that do not work and thus perpetuate injustice. At this time the family believes it is imperative they share what they have learned with the public. The public is encouraged to attend to listen to and learn from the family of Charleena Lyles so that they can support them in their efforts for justice. WHAT: Family of Charleena Lyles Breaks its Silence WHO: Family of Charleena Lyles, Lisa Daugaard, Shakespear Feyissa, Andre Taylor WHEN: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - 11:00 am WHERE: Seattle Vocational Institute 2120 South Jackson - Room 212 Seattle, Washington

Riall Johnson De-Escalate Washington The Thomas Family tells their story of loss and police violence in the De-Escalate Washington Campaign’s first video launch Seattle, WA - In May 2015, Washington state resident, Leonard Thomas, was shot to death by police in front of his own home while holding his fouryear-old son in his arms. Today, for the first time, his family is sharing their story on camera and calling for more police training and accountability to help saves lives. “They absolutely escalated a situation far beyond what it needed to be,” Annalesa Thomas, mother of Leonard, shares in the video. “I called the police simply because my son had been drinking and he was off his bipolar medicine… My expectation was that a couple officers would come… We had 29 officers on scene. We had a SWAT vehicle in our front yard and a SWAT vehicle in our backyard.”

De-Escalate Washington is gathering signatures for Initiative I-940. The initiative would require law enforcement to receive violence de-escalation and mental-health training, require independent investigation of police use of deadly force, and remove our state’s de facto immunity from prosecution when police kill people. To build bridges between communities and police, text to GIVE at 206202-0461 to make a donation. If you would like to help make everyone safer in Washington, please donate here, forward this email to five friends, share this video on your Facebook page, and re-tweet this on Twitter. Please contact Riall Johnson, Campaign Manager at 650-520-8397 or media@de-escalatewa.org with endorsement, partnership, or press-related questions.

No—our income is not greater than our expenses—we’re budgeted to break even this year by about $1500, meaning this would be the first year that we’ve broken even. We are also paying our staff more than many other similar coffee shops. (verify this information) Typically businesses don’t break even for about the first 5 years. However, we do hope the Atlas will become profitable in the future. The Atlas is, above all, there to serve students. We think it’s cool to have something that is self-sustaining while at the same time being a component of a student leadership organization like ASWWU. Is it possible to create a meme page on the WWU app? (Marketing) ASWWU does not have access to the WWU app’s management functions. Unfortunately, the service that does control the WWU app is worried about students posting inappropriate memes as has happened in the past, so they prefer that no memes are posted at all. ASWWU Web could design the sorting algorithm so that your search priority is based on your high score in the website games Web is thinking of developing. (Missed the question/most of the answer) (I believe this part of the question had to do with adding a game to the WWU app. I [Adam] threw Ryan under the bus and chatted about a game on the website) (Web) What is half-tree? (???) You are half-tree. None of us in ASWWU are members of half tree.

COLLEGIAN WISDOM Cards Against Humanity buys plot of land on U.S./Mexico border to block border wall It seems they played their “Trump” card Elderly man, 96, behind the wheel of smash claims modern pedals are ‘stupid’ “Back in my day, we hand-cranked our cars and used a parachute to stop them” Aldi recalls peanuts packet from its shelves because the label didn’t mention they contain nuts “I thought there were almonds….” Mankini-wearing ‘Borat’ tourists arrested in Kazakhstan It’s a very nice! What music do psychopaths like? More Justin Bieber, less Bach As it turns out, the majority of America’s young girls are psychopaths Man uses match to check for natural gas leak; gas ignites No, he wasn’t from Florida Stray cat a suspect in Japan attempted murder “He scratched my belly, it was self-defense”

SENATE No new bills were presented. Senate meets Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. in WEC 217

ASWWU JOBS Graphic Designer - Marketing Director of External Relations - Social Layout Designer - Mt. Ash Copy Editor - Mt. Ash

college place, wa, walla walla university

| November 2017 Issue 8

page

HERITAGE NAAMÍ TIIČAAMÍ TIMNÁ

‘The Heart of Our Country’ Welcome to the homeland of the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla Tribes—three distinct peoples melded together over the past 160 years in an alliance now called the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). The Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla once numbered more than 8,000 people. Our confederation is now comprised of more than 3,000 enrolled tribal members. We have lived and died close to this land for more than 10,000 years. We are a small group of people bound together by blood, culture and history who have maintained our traditional song, dance, art, language, clothing, religion and food, despite significant events and changes in our lives. We are a small group of people with a big story to tell.

Naamí Tiičaamí Timná ‘The Heart of Our Country’ By Wišpuš (Dr. Eugene S. Hunn) University of Washington Professor Emeritus; Kakinaš (E. Thomas Morning Owl) Language Master; Pinawoolenmay (Modesta J. Minthorn), Education Director; and Weyétmascamay (Dr. Jennifer Karson Engum), Cultural Anthropologist The heart of the Tribes’ traditional area spans the drainages and ranges of the Blue and Wallowa Mountains. The Blues are composed of basalt from lava flows. Some 14 million years ago, massive amounts of lava flowed from vents in the earth’s surface, ringing the ancient metamorphic rocks of the high Wallowas, which are older and higher mountains composed of rugged marble and granite. This montane region throws off waterways that flow in all directions, uniting first with the Snake River and ultimately the Columbia, Ní Wána ‘big river’. The Cayuse on both sides of the Blues, the Walla Walla to the north, and the Umatilla to the west followed these waterways from their winter homes on the Snake, the Columbia, and the forks of the Walla Walla and the Umatilla to meet in summer at the headwaters of these encircling rivers—the John Day, the Umatilla, the Walla Walla, the Tucannon, the Grande Ronde, the Imnaha, the powder, the Burnt, and the Malheur. The northwest corner of the Blue Mountains gives rise to a series of streams that eventually join to form the Walla Walla River. From north to south, these are the Touchet, north

and south forks, and Coppei Creek, a Touchet tributary, then Dry Creek, Mill Creek, Cottonwood Creek, and finally the north and south forks of the Walla Walla. All but the lower ten miles of the Walla Walla River were Cayuse territory, as was the Umatilla River basin and that of the Tucannon River, which drained to the Snake. The Umatilla people moved south in spring and summer from their winter stronghold at the mouth of the Umatilla River, up Birch or Butter creeks to skirt the western flanks of the Blues, moving from one John Day tributary to the next, often in the company of Cayuse and western Columbia River Basin families—say, from Tákšpaš (John Day River area) or Táy (Tygh Valley). The Walla Walla people, who, like the Umatilla, sheltered along the Columbia in winter, moved up streams that flowed from the Blue Mountains for spring root digging. In late summer, they returned to the permanent village of Walúula ‘Wallula’ to receive bands of Cayuse and Nez Perce, who joined them for intertribal gatherings. From there, intertribal war parties set out to raid their Northern Paiute and Bannock enemies to the southeast. The Umatilla and Walla Walla Rivers are relatively short and define small drainage basins. These streams sheltered Cayuse winter villages and then, in spring, summer, and fall, pro-

vided connecting routes to the extenHardman to Rock and Wall creeks to it is rare to find a CTUIR member who sive headwater valleys and canyons of Monument on the North Fork of the does not trace ancestry to two, three, or the Grande Ronde and John Day river John Day or from Pilot Rock south by more tribal groups. Nevertheless, there systems. Umatilla families followed the way of Birch Creek to Camas Creek at is still an association between residenlower western tributaries of the UmaUkiah; then across the North Fork John tial clusters on the reservation and tilla River, Birch and Butter creeks, to Day to the Middle Fork and beyond Tribal affiliation. In the 1880s, individual the rich root-digging grounds up Wilby way of the rich camas meadows allotments heeded ancestral areas, so low, Rock, and Camas creeks. McKay on Fox Creek; then down Beech that Cayuse were allotted land along the and Meacham creeks connected to the upper Grande Ronde River, while the “God gave us day and night, the night to rest in, and the day to see, and that as upper Umatilla long as the earth shall last, he gave us the morning with our breath; and so he River drained takes care of us on this earth: and here we have met under his care.…God looked the high divide one way then the other and named our lands for us to take care of.…It is the between the Walla Walla and earth that is our parent, as it is God is our elder brother.” Wenaha Rivers and Looking—Átway Owhi, 1855 Treaty Council glass Creek, a tributary of the Grande Ronde. This was and is a prime hunting area for all three Creek to the main stem of the John Umatilla River above Mission. Many Tribes of the modern confederacy. Day at Mount Vernon. A complex Umatilla were allotted land on Birch and The forks of the Walla Walla River, its skein of trails linked campsites on and McKay creeks, and Walla Walla were eastern tributary the Touchet River, across the Blue Mountain divide east allotted land around Adams and Athena and the Tucannon River connected to of the John Day, at the headwaters of on Wildhorse Creek. the Grande Ronde River and beyond, the Grande Ronde, Powder, and Burnt Excerpted from Čaw Pawá Láakni, up to the Wallowa Valley by way of Rivers—generally considered Cayuse They Are Not Forgotten, Sahaptian the Wenaha River and Lookingglass territory but frequented by Umatilla Place Names Atlas of the Cayuse, UmaCreek. Indian trails into the Blue and Columbia River Indians as well. tilla, and Walla Walla. Mountains rarely followed the rivers, After the Umatilla Reservation was which wound about at the bottoms of established, the descendants of the Caydeep canyons. Rather, the main routes use, Umatilla, and Walla Walla became of travel cut across the major John even more closely interrelated. Today, Day tributaries, north to south: from

A man and woman travel the river in their dugout canoe. (TAMÁSTSLIKT CULTURAL INSTITUTE.)

HISTORY ANTI-LYNCHING

Ida B. Wells

An Anti-lynching Activist and the Power of Truth in Print By Zachary White I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I have a bit of reading to do over Thanksgiving Break this next week. School can be so difficult and overwhelming. With loads of research to done and entire books of assigned reading to slog through, it can be easy to get bogged down by the task of learning and take for granted our experience as students. At this point in the quarter, I often begin to think, “Does any of this stuff even matter?” “Why do I have to know all this?” “Can I just skim this book?” “Would it be a big deal if I just napped for the next 48 hours?” It probably won’t come as a shock to you, but when I become overwhelmed by these feelings, I often turn to history. To many, history is just another subject in school to groan about. I totally understand this, considering that I definitely feel that way about other subjects, unfortunately. But when I get tired of reading, studying, and being a student in general, I tell myself to remember the Black journalist, editor, suffragette, co-founder of the NAACP, and activist Ida B. Wells and the burning of the offices of her newspaper The Memphis Free Speech. Ida B. Wells was born to an enslaved parents on July 16, 1862, months before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Her family eventually gained freedom when the war came to a close in 1865 and the 13th Amendment was ratified. At age 16, Wells became the primary caretaker of six younger brothers and sisters when both her parents died of Yellow Fever. Wells obtained a college degree, moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and began teaching at black elementary schools to provide for her family.1,2 If you were a Black woman living in the South in the late 19th century, your entire existence is political. Jim Crow segregation is the law of the land. Vagrancy laws and peonage criminalized nearly every aspect of Black life.

Convict leasing and sharecropping perpetuate the tradition of forced black labor. White supremacist terrorism designed to intimidate Black people from voting is rampant. With this as the setting for her growing up, it is not surprising that the activism of Ida B. Wells began immediately and early on in her life. In 1887 the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled against her in a suit she filed against the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad company when she was thrown off a train for not giving up her seat in a “White” car. She was published in newspapers as early as 1891, testifying to the unequal quality of education Black children were receiving in America. But Well’s life changed forever in 1892, after buying an interest in a newspaper called The Memphis Free Speech. 3,4 After three black men that she knew personally were lynched in a single incident in 1892, Wells launched an investigation into the practice of lynching in the South. At the time, mobs of White

people rounding up “uppity” Black people that the town disapproved of was considered normal. The violent

deaths they were subjected to was seen as appropriate and just to many White people at the time because of the racist

notions of inherent criminality that were tied to Blackness. Ida B. Wells exposed the lies that justified lynching with meticulous research and elegant writing. One article she wrote called out White women for seeking out Black men for sex, having relationships with them, and if they were caught, accusing them of rape, which inevitably led to lynching. (At The Dark End of the Street by historian Danielle L. McGuire is a great example of contemporary scholarship on this topic.) This piece that Wells had written, highlighting the racialized and sexualized dimensions of the Jim Crow lynching era, was too much for the town of Memphis to handle. A white mob literally took to the streets and burned down the office of The Memphis Free Speech in response to Wells’ journalism. 5 It is stories like this that make me reconsider the value of the written the word. Throughout history, there have been forces who have fought tirelessly to prevent the sharing of truth through words that are printed on pages. Ideas are dangerous. The truth is dangerous. Stories like these remind me to never take for granted the opportunity I have right now to learn.

1. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/barnett-idawells-1862-1931 2. https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett 3. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ida-BWells-Barnett 4. http://mwp.olemiss.edu//dir/wells-barnett_ida/ 5. ibid

Ida Bell Wells (1862-1931) – Anti-Lynching Crusader (UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY)

Zachary White is a history major.

page

November 2017 Issue 8 | walla walla university | college place, wa

SCIENCE ANTS

Ants: The Smallest Paleontologists

By Forrest Sheperd

Imagine you are a paleontologist, a scientist who studies fossils, on an expedition in Wyoming near exposures of the fossiliferous Lance Formation. Much of what we know about dinosaurs was discovered here, including the discovery of the first partial Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. [1] How can ants help you find dinosaur fossils?

This is something I had the pleasure of discovering for myself. As I mentioned in my introduction article last year, fossil collecting is what got me interested in science. This interest led to the opportunity for me to participate in Southwestern Adventist University’s Dinosaur Research Project for the past 10 summers. Every summer, we spend the month of June collecting fossils from exposures of the Lance Formation, in an area famous for being extremely rich in dinosaur fossils.

As a paleontologist in the field, a good part of your work may involve tediously scanning the hillsides where the fossil-bearing formation is exposed in search of bones or teeth. However, it can take quite a while to cover any significant ground this way. That is where some help may come in handy. Thankfully, while exploring potential areas to dig, a fellow college student, Ivan, and I discovered a method to quickly assess the potential of a given area just by scanning ant mounds.

Ant mounds from the western harvester ant cover the landscape there.

They collect and eat seeds while gathering gravel and other small objects for insulation within 60 feet of their mounds. [2] In areas with many small fossil bones and teeth eroding out, such as where we dig, these ants may scatter hundreds or even thousands of small fossil bones and teeth around 2-3 mm [3] in dimension on top of their mounds, just waiting to be found. This behavior has been observed by paleontologists since the late 19th century.[4] Paleontologist John Hatcher described how using harvester ant mounds increased his yield of fossil mammal teeth per day from about two to 87. [5] Among the fossils that these ants may collect are anything from garfish scales to teeth from small meat-eating dinosaurs such as Troodon, which was around the size of a chicken. How can these mounds help with paleontological research? There are two major things these ant mounds can tell us; the first is whether you should look closer at an area or not. If you are surveying an area in search of fossils, it’s easy to spot ant mounds and quickly check to see what’s on the mound. If they don’t have any fossil bone fragments or teeth, it’s a safe bet there is no fossil exposure nearby, and you can keep moving. However, if the mounds do have some fossil bones and teeth, it’s a safe bet that there is a fossil exposure nearby, and you may want to spend the time to find where these fossils are coming from. Not only the ant mounds, but

the layer’s sediment. [6] Both of these methods are extremely time-consuming. There seems to be no way around these tedious processes unless someone else does it for you. That is exactly why western harvester ants are so valuable to fossil collectors and paleontologists. The western harvester ant truly is a paleontologist’s best friend. Thousands of these industrious workers may spend months every year collecting fossils and laying them out on top of their mounds, helping to collect valuable data about a fossil bed and doing a large part of the work for you, all before you even get there! 1 Osborne, Henry F. (1905). “Tyrannosaurus and Other Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaurs.” Bulliten of the AMNH, vol. 21, no. 14. American Museum of Natural History, Digital Repository, http://hdl.handle. net/2246/1464. 2 Burris, L. (2004). Harvester Ant Mounds: Utility for Small Object Detection In Archaeology, 20. Retrieved October 22, 2017, from http://www.greybull.org/ burris_thesis.pdf

The Western harvester ant, Pogonomyrex occidentalis, has a peculiar habit that has both intrigued and helped scientists who study fossils since this behavior was first observed over a century ago. (WWW.ANTWEB.ORG) also what we find can give us clues as to what fossils we may find nearby without ever digging there. We have anecdotally observed in the field that the concentration of fossils on the ant mounds, as well as what fauna the fossils are from, can give us a good idea of what kinds of fossils and how many we will find in the surrounding area before

we even look. However, the reliability of this has not been explored with the scientific method and is the subject of some upcoming research. The traditional method of collecting these small, hard-to-spot fossils is either surface collecting or using a screen sift to separate out larger objects such as rocks or fossils from

3 ibid. 4 Hatcher, J. B. (1896). Some localities for Laramie mammals and horned dinosaurs. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press for The American Society of Naturalists. 5 Adams, D B. (1984). “Fossil Hunters Best Friend Is an Ant Called Pogo: Paleontologists Use Insects to Find Small Bones.” Smithsonian, pp. 99–104. 6 Mckenna, M. C. (1962). Collecting Small Fossils by Washing and Screening. Curator: The Museum Journal, 5(3), 221-235. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1962.tb01586.x

Forrest Sheperd is a biology major.

MEDIA AND TECH ANOTHER ODDS AND ENDS REVIEW

Colors/Sounds

Thor: Ragnarok, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and some other stuff

By Matt Fennell

Hey, guess what? Thanksgiving break is here! Catch your breath and/or get ready to tackle that pile of homework that was dropped on you as you were running out the door. My brother and I are going to be “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”-ing ourselves back to Maryland as soon as class wraps up tomorrow, and when we get back home, I’ll have only my family to torture with my movie, TV, music, book and podcast recommendations. However, you guys1 are still here this week, so buckle up for another list of things I love! Film: “Thor: Ragnarok”

Last week, I said I’d spend this week’s column talking about “Ragnarok,” so let’s start there! “Ragnarok” was one of my most anticipated films this year, mostly because it looked so different. I hated the first two “Thor” movies but mostly enjoyed the

characters of Thor and Loki, so the idea of seeing those guys (and Hulk) with all sorts of weird Jack Kirby-styled cosmic stuff and a goth death goddess Cate Blanchett as the villain, all in a movie directed by Taika Wahiti2 seemed like a slam dunk — and it was! “Ragnarok” makes the wise choice to ditch pretty much everything bad about the other “Thor” movies, while throwing those previously-mentioned wonderful characters into a crazy, neon space arena run by Jeff Goldblum and then adding a heavy-metal music video finale. In addition, “Ragnarok” leans all the way into

the comedic tone established by “The Avengers” and further set up by both of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films. However, while most of the Marvel films since then have been funny, none of them have really been comedies. I’d argue that they all have held onto the basic “superhero quest” plotline, to their benefit or detriment.3 “Ragnarok” is the first Marvel film where the main plot thread hasn’t felt important at all. There were none of those tense, stressful moments, like when Steve and Tony fought at that arctic base in “Civil War” or when Spider-Man derailed Vulture’s arms deal in “Homecoming.” I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, tapping my foot nervously, and that’s mostly because I was laughing so hard. “Ragnarok” is less like the other Marvel movies and more similar to comedies like the “Jump Street” movies, full of nice character moments and jokes that kept me and my friends laughing for hours

his weird, scatterbrained-but-also-hyper-organized style of sci-fi comedy isn’t super easy to share with everyone. Thankfully, a solution came in the form of Max Landis, the highly visible, extremely divisive screenwriter behind hits such as “Chronicle” and flops such as “American Ultra.”4 Landis and BBC America have teamed up to produce a second television adaptation of Douglas Adams’ other sci-fi books about a psychic detective named Dirk who solves bizarre, universe-bending crimes by just kind of walking around and bumping into stuff. Rather than adapting the plots of the two completed books, this show lifts the character and tone of the work, throwing them into similar sounding mysteries (shark bites on the ceiling of a hotel, a girl who seems to be a dog, a car that fell out of a tree, a house within a house that may be “the actual Judeo-Christian Hell,” etc.) and amping everything up to 11. This show is full of bright colors, loud sounds, horrific violence, hilarious misunderstandings, comic genius/ idiocy and Landis’s typical top-tier character work. We’re introduced to at least a dozen weirdos, from Dirk’s depressed assistant/best friend Todd and his mysteriously-diseased sister Amanda, to the confusingly named “Rowdy Three” (there are four of them) and Bart, a character best described as a human murder tornado. We’re given all sorts of weirdos to root for and cheer on as things get weirder and weirder and more and more confusing, before eventually the layers all align, and we, too, can see that everything is connected. The first season, “Save Lydia Spring,” is available to binge on Hulu, and the second season, “Find the Boy,” is just past the halfway point but can be streamed on BBC America’s website. If you like funny sci-fi, Edgar Wright movies, or shows about British people with assistants like “Sherlock” or “Doctor Who,” you should watch this show! It’s great! I promise! Film: “Star Wars”

after the fact. My only complaint is that “Ragnarok” didn’t go far enough. It still bore traces of the standard, generic superhero movie, echoes of a much worse version of “Ragnarok” that might have been inflicted upon us. However, those echoes are faint, and “Ragnarok” deserves high praise. Give it a watch! TV: “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” Douglas Adams has been one of my favorite authors ever since I read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” back in high school. Unfortunately,

In case you’ve been living under a rock, I’d like to let you know that “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” will be in theaters in a few weeks. This new installment, directed by Rian Johnson (of “Brick” and “Looper”) is apparently so good that the Disney executives have given Johnson his own standalone trilogy of new Star Wars films. Johnson will be able to tell a new story in a new corner of the Star Wars universe without all the baggage of the Skywalker saga, which has pretty much been milked dry at this point. If you’re a big Star Wars fan, this is probably super exciting for you. I can say that as someone who’s always been more of a Star Trek guy, this is exciting for me. I originally wrote a really cool 600-word pitch for what I’d do with a Star Wars trilogy and how I’d make it super fun and different, but I decided that no one would want to read that. So, here’s the elevator version: a young bookworm from a merchant clan, his hotshot pilot cousin, the cousin’s super cool Sith girlfriend and her big lizard buddy are on the run from a cluster of rogue Jedi on the edge of the universe who are

stockpiling lightsaber crystals to do this really serious ancient force-balancing ritual. Three movies, full of laughs, tears, lovable characters, twists, turns, shocks, spills and absolutely no sand!5 Needless to say, it’s great. Disney, give me a call. Well, that’s it for this week. As always, thanks for reading! Have a safe trip home, and make sure to remember all the things we have to be thankful for. Love you guys! See you again in December!

1. And my trusty editing staff. 2. “What We Do In The Shadows” and “Hunt For The Wilderpeople,” both amazing films. 3. Ask me about “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” Spoiler alert, I didn’t love it. 4. “American Ultra” rules school, and you can borrow my Blu-Ray if you want. I love this film. 5. I know that the Star Wars movies we’ve already got have a scene where Anakin talks about hating sand, but somehow, all these movies still have sand! No sand this time!

Matt Fennell is a computer engineering major.

page

Feature college place, wa | walla walla university

| November 2017 Issue 8

Celebrating America Recycles Day By—Oh Wait, We Don’t Recycle By Cynthia E. Ochoa If you didn’t get a chance to attend the event held for America Recycles Day yesterday, you truly missed out. It seemed like every student was out on Centennial Green from 12-3 p.m. to enjoy the activities and games planned out to celebrate our planet and raise awareness about the importance of recycling for our environment. There were a few booths set up with educational pamphlets, and avid recyclers promoted the benefits of recycling. There was a big poster filled with signatures of students who pledged to begin recycling with the rest of the community. There was even a team game involving dumpster diving and an artistic competition to build statues or create figures out of recyclables found in our waste containers. Sound like fake news? That’s because it is! It’s true that yesterday was the national recycling day; however, the day came and went without anyone really knowing anything about it. On any given day, students open up their Instagram or Snapchat accounts and find out, through posts from peers, that it is national dog day, or sibling day, or donut day, or sandwich day. Why isn’t this the same for national recycling day? Between classes yesterday, I spent some time walking around and talking to a total of 20 random students, asking them to tell me what they knew about recycling and informing them it was national recycling day. Not one of these 20 students was aware of the occasion. When asked what they knew about recycling, I was surprised to find that a large portion of these students were well informed and were recyclers before coming to Walla Walla. They were steered away from their recycling habits because recycling was not much of a “thing” here at the university. After

Plastic, paper, and glass recycling bins in Rigby. (CYNTHIA OCHOA) no longer recycles is glass. Justin, a student who works for Sodexo, pointed out, “We have all of these wineries, and we don’t recycle glass.”

File folders

In a casual conversation with a professor who chose to stay anonymous, it became apparent as to why.

Phone books

“We cover the transportation costs taking the materials to a recycling facility,” The professor said. “So like glass, they don’t recycle in town here because [the cost of] transporting the glass to the closest place that will take it, is more than they get for the glass. … The closest place that recycles and melts down the glass [to] make a new product is far enough away that … the price they pay for glass material doesn’t cover the cost of transporting it.” The professor also pointed out that “if you are not on BDI’s

Brochures Magazines and catalogs Metal Steel (tin) cans Aluminum Cans Plastic #1 PET and #2 HDPE soda bottles, water bottles, milk jugs, orange juice bottles, detergent and cleaning solution bottles

If you think about it, these are items that you use and throw away daily that could be recycled. Every day, you wake up and use the restroom. On any given day, chances are the toilet paper will run out on your use and

chemistry homework, you mess up the whole chemical equation and choose to rip the paper out of your notebook and toss it in the trash to start over. Already, in the first few hours of your day, you threw away a ton of items that could have been recycled. Unfortunately, WWU currently does not send its recyclable materials to the Walla Walla Recycling Center, or, in fact, to any recycling center. Jim Nestler, a biology professor at WWU, gave a small narrative that put it all into perspective. He said that many years ago he and his wife decided to start recycling at home. Now, they find that close to two-thirds of what they had been throwing away was going to the landfill. He continued, “And we don’t go super crazy, but you know, paper, plastic, tin cans, cardboard—those are the four things that we routinely set aside and at home. It doesn’t take us any extra time, it hardly takes us any extra space and I also do the same thing here. So I have a recycle bin for paper, I have a recycle

environment. Learning more about the factors that make recycling in Walla Walla difficult is also frustrating. As Nicki Horning, a sophomore business and health science major, said, “I understand, but I also think that something needs to be done about that because I think it is not okay to not recycle. We are incredibly entitled to believing that we can just not recycle. I think it is our duty as inhabitants of the Earth to respect it, and we are not doing that.” It’s true. As a university, we have not been doing our part. But it’s not like this can’t change. If you’d like to contribute to the recycling movement that helps our ecosystem, there are a few options. Walla Walla Recycling Center accepts your recyclable items and, although this would mean that you collect, separate and take these items to the center yourself, it’s worth it. You can also take your items to Humbert Refuse and Recycling in Milton-Freewater and get 10 cents back for each bottle you return. You could also start cutting down on the waste you produce by bringing your own bags while grocery shopping.

“We are incredibly entitled to believing that we can just not recycle. I think it is our duty as inhabitants of the earth to respect it, and we are not doing that.”

— Nicki Horning bin for plastic, and, since the university does no recycling, I take care of the recycling myself, so I go to the recycling center… I was there just yesterday.”

Plastic, paper, and glass recycling bins in the SAC. (CYNTHIA OCHOA) I talked to a few professors who are avid recyclers themselves, it seemed like recycling is not really present at Walla Walla University. That’s because it really isn’t. Before I tell you about the sad reality of WWU’s failure to recycle, here are a few ways that recycling benefits our environment. Recycling paper saves space in landfills. According to the EPA, one ton of paper takes up approximately 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, and it makes up for 28 percent of solid trash in landfills.2 Recycling paper also saves energy and water in the pulp production process of paper manufacturing. Recycling one ton of paper saves about 7,000 gallons of water and enough energy to power an average American home for six months.3 As with paper, recycling plastic also saves energy and resources like water and petroleum, as well as landfill space.4 Glass can be recycled over and over without losing any quality or purity. Recycling glass is safe, nontoxic and also has many environmental benefits.5 With all of the benefits that come from recycling these materials, it makes sense to be involved in recycling. The “sad reality” I alluded to before is that recycling is limited not only in Walla Walla County but also in our university. After several attempts to get information from three or four school officials here at WWU, I was left with a feeling that no one really wanted to get into the topic or even cared. However, I was able to find out that one thing Walla Walla definitely

recycle program, Basin Disposal Incorporated, the area of recyclers will only take a limited number of plastics. They will only take certain types of plastic—the 1s, the 2s, the 3s … it’s just, we live too far from recycling facilities.” When I asked about how many little towns, approximately, were too far away from recycling centers, the professor said, “probably at least 50 percent of them.” Effectively, the suggestion was that unfortunately, a large percentage of America does not recycle, or at least not enough.

not on your roommate’s, and you will have to change it out. The empty roll is cardboard, which means it can be recycled, but you throw it out. Next you hop in the shower (hopefully), and your shampoo runs out, so you toss out the empty bottle. The shampoo bottle is plastic, and, once again, it could be recycled. After getting dressed, you head to the cafeteria to grab a take out box so you can have breakfast on the go while studying. The takeout box, along with the plastic eating utensils that get thrown out, again, could have been recycled. While working on that

Hearing there was no recycling on campus was confusing because there are actually a few recycling bins around campus. I’m sure you’ve seen them sitting around in Kretschmar, the library and the Administration building, for example. But Nestler let me in on the truth: “The university does not recycle, all the recycle bins are a farce… there is zero recycling done on this campus. Anything put in the recycle bins is thrown in the garbage. And I’ve requested for the recycle bins here at Rigby Hall to be removed, so we are not putting up a false front.” It’s upsetting to come to terms with the fact that our university is not involved in a recycling program to contribute to the cleanliness of our

Walla Walla Recycling Center 827 N 12th Ave, Walla Walla, WA 99362 Humbert Refuse and Recycling 54841 OR-332, Milton-Freewater, OR 97862 You know what they say: knowledge is power. Before writing this article, I knew nothing about recycling aside from the catch phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle.” As a community of collegiate students, we should strive to always be informed about the types of issues that have a big impact on our environment, such as recycling. Ultimately, these issues affect us as well. Am I going to start recycling after learning so much about it? You bet. I hope you think about starting, as well. 1. https://www.wallawallawa.gov/depts/publicworks/ solidwaste/recycling 2. http://education.seattlepi.com/advantages-recycling-paper-3440.html 3. ibid 4. https://www.thoughtco.com/benefits-of-plastic-recycling-1204142 5. http://www.gpi.org/recycling/why-recycle-glass

Cynthia Ochoa is a health science major.

Even though Walla Walla does have a recycling center that processes limited items, even those may be thrown into a landfill if they are not sorted properly. A contamination reminder on the center’s website informs people that dirty recyclable materials may not be processed because it becomes “too costly to separate and market that material for resale.” The processor may end up just sending everything to the landfill anyway if the material from the curbside program is not clean enough.¹ However, if your items are up to standards, Walla Walla does recycle the following items at their center on 12th street: Paper Newspaper, including advertisements and inserts Corrugated cardboard boxes Direct mail Chipboard (such as cereal, cracker and shoe boxes) Copier, printer, note, and computer paper

Aluminum, lastic, paper, and glass recycling bins in Kretschmar. (CYNTHIA OCHOA)

page

November 2017 Issue 8 | walla walla university | college place, wa

WEEK IN FORECAST

November 16-22 Thursday

Friday

ASWWU Pie Night @ The Atlas, 6:30-8 p.m. SBE Toy Hack @ Circuits Lab (KRH 3rd Floor), 6:30-9 p.m.

Saturday

Collect Operation Christmas Child Boxes Shine for ShelterBox Dinner @ The Marcus Whitman Hotel, 6-10 p.m.

Fall Indoor Farmers Market @ Whitehouse-Crawford Restaurant, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. Walla Walla Ski Swap @ Walla Walla Fairgrounds, 12-5 p.m.

National Fast Food Day

Mickey Mouse’s Birthday

National Homemade Bread Day

National Button Day

Sunday

National Adoption Day

National Baklava Day

Thanksgiving Break

National Take A Hike Day

FOOD POLENTA

Thanksgiving TV Break By Hannah Thiel Honestly, I feel like Thanksgiving break might be the best break. It’s a needed respite from the most stressful weeks of the quarter: you get to sleep a lot, the weather isn’t too bad yet, and, most importantly, the food is amazing. I’m looking forward to getting out of doors and catching up on the new “Stranger Things” season over break. I still haven’t seen too many spoilers, so all I have to do is survive one more week. Anyway, here’s a quick recipe that will be easy to make between episodes of whatever show you’re catching up on. It’s delicious but fast, so you can get right back to your Netflix queue.

Also, you should be able to make this recipe in the dorm if you end up staying here for break, or if you want to make this recipe another time. Every now and then the cafeteria has polenta, usually in the vegan line, so you could just grab some of that, plus some veggies in a takeout box, and head to your nearest dorm kitchen to create a delicious polenta dish. Like previous recipes, this isn’t so much a recipe as a list of suggestions so that you can personalize it to suit your tastes.

POLENTA BASE First, you’re going to boil a pot of water. I tend to wing it when it comes to the ratio of water to polenta, but according to this recipe,1 you should go for a ratio of 4:1, or 5:1 if you want thinner polenta. Wait until the water is boiling, then slowly pour in the polenta, making sure to stir so that there won’t be lumps.

1 https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014527-basic-polenta

Hannah Thiel is an art major.

POSSIBLE TOPPINGS • Tomato • Pepper • Carrots • Tomato sauce • Kale • Garlic • Onion Other vegetables would work as well! Add your favorites.

INSTRUCTIONS Pull out a pan and add enough olive oil or butter to coat the bottom. Next, mince the garlic and cut up the onions (if you’ve decided to add them). If you’re using carrots or any other vegetables that take a while to cook, I’d add them now as well. Cook until they start to get soft, then add the other vegetables you want. Make sure to stir every now and then, and add more oil or butter if needed to make sure the vegetables don’t stick. If you want the vegetables to be more like a sauce, you could add some water, tomato sauce or broth. Make sure to add some salt to taste and whatever herbs and spices you like. I added some rosemary when I made it last, and it was really good! Once the vegetables are cooked and the polenta is done, you can simply top the polenta with the vegetables and add some cheese, if you’re into that. You could also add the polenta to the pan with your vegetables and go for more of a scramble-type dish. If you want some extra protein, I bet a fried egg would taste really good on top.

Basic polenta. (NEW YORK TIMES COOKING)

CULTURE REUSABLE BAGS

Paper or Plastic? How About, Neither. By Daphne Novak The Facts “No, I do not need a bag.” At this point I’ve said this phrase hundreds of times with an exasperated and admittedly slightly condescending tone of voice. “I have my own bag.” I always try to say this in a nice way because I never intend to sound feisty or sarcastic, but it sometimes just slips out, especially when my purchase was a couple small items. The point is: it’s sometimes hard or annoying to not use plastic bags or plastic in general. Plastic is entrenched into our daily lives. My shampoo bottle is made of plastic, my yogurt container is made of plastic and even some of my clothes are made of plastic (yes, polyester is plastic). Plastic is everywhere. It’s easy to take a fatalistic approach towards plastic. The temperature of the Earth will still rise, the oceans will still acidify … what good can one person do? Well, here is a little advice: cut out disposable plastic and paper bags from your shopping experience. Get some reusable bags! Before we go further, here are just some quick facts about plastic bag usage in America.1 1. Conventional plastic is not readily biodegradable. As plastic degrades, it becomes microplas-

tic. Plastic bags were introduced to the American public between 1977-79. Every single one of those non-recycled plastic bags are still here. Every. Single. One. 2. Less than 5 percent of plastic bags in the United States are recycled. Even when you do recycle, there is a dirty little thing called downcycling (more on that later). 3. The U.S. uses approximately 380 million plastic bags and food wrappings per year. This equates to about 12 million barrels of oil. (Think about what we could use that oil for instead.) The Problem With Recycling You may have noticed that I questioned the usefulness of recycling above. I don’t question recycling per se—just the fact that recycling is an imperfect system. Let me clarify: everyone should recycle. However, what happens after you put your recyclables into the proper bin is kind of ambiguous. You can’t control what happens next. It could be exported to China (trash and scraps are the sixth largest U.S. export to China), or it could be downcycled, which is a process that essentially is like recycling but, instead of a continuous process of plastic that could be theoretically recycled over and

over again, the plastic is transformed into a lower—grade plastic that cannot be recycled again. Downcycling is not common practice, but we cannot ignore that it happens. Paper Bags. A better Alternative? Many folks, myself included at one time, believed that paper was the better way to go. Anything is better than plastic, right? Yeah, no, not the case. Plastic bags actually outperform paper bags on manufacturing, reusability and solid waste volume and generation. In terms of reuse, paper bags rip super easily and are unusable when they are wet. Also, paper bags weigh around five to seven times more than plastic bags. That’s a lot more tonnage of waste to manage in landfills.2 Also, biodegradable items do not degrade in landfills well due to the lack of oxygen present in trash piles (if personal composting was really common, then paper bags would be a good solution). Paper bags are merely a band-aid on the Titanic after hitting the iceberg—they just won’t fix anything. Reusable Bags. The Best Alternative! My love and my life. Reusable bags are the future. While starting your collection of reusable bags can take time and money, once you have a good collection of reusable bags, it just

becomes habit. At this point, I have a solid collection of about 15 bags. One reusable bag can replace up to 1000 plastic bags in its lifetime. Quitting disposable bags is one of the easiest and most effective environmentally friendly changes you can do in your routine. This is something anyone can get behind; whether you believe in climate change or not, we all live on the planet, and no one likes living in garbage. We all want to take a trip to the ocean and not see piles of garbage floating around, right? Scientists estimate that every square mile of ocean contains about 4,600 pieces of floating plastic.3 Even a reusable bag made out of plastic is better than a one-time use plastic bag. Moving Forward I truly believe that waste management is the industrial revolution of the mid-2000s. Advances in technology and manufacturing have come a long way since the early 1800s, so why can’t waste management do the same? It all starts with you. It starts with that dedication to do better and to be better for yourself, for others and for future generations. My anti-bag crusade is almost therapeutic. It reminds me of the hope I have for humanity—the hope that we can leave this world a better place for all life forms. It’s almost a duty I have. We are personally responsible for making this world a better place for future generations.

I’ve spent a lot of time fine-tuning my plastic usage. While I haven’t really figured out a solution for my toothpaste (yes, I’ve tried making my own but I haven’t found a recipe that I like yet; I’m open to suggestions) or my sadly plastic-bagged Pirate’s Booty, I’ve cut out a lot of plastic in my life. I don’t use plastic bags, and a lot of the food I buy is unbagged. I buy my veggies and fruits unbagged or in my own smaller cloth bags, and I buy my flour from the bulk section at Andy’s Market.[4] I also buy my bread, most of the time, from the Andy’s bread machine and place the bread in my own bag. Perfecting anything takes time; we see that when we take our chemistry and English classes. Even if you have an aptitude for a certain thing, you still need to hone in on it. Don’t get discouraged! I’m rooting for you. 1. https://blog.epa.gov/blog/tag/plastic-bags/ 2. http://www.allaboutbags.ca/papervplastic.html 3. https://www.sprep.org/attachments/Publications/ FactSheet/plasticbags.pdf

Daphne Novak is a psychology major.

college place, wa, walla walla university

Monday Mannheim Steamroller Christmas @ Leaving from Walla Walla Community College, 5:15-11:45 p.m. Walla Walla Ski Swap @ Walla Walla Fairgrounds, 12-5 p.m.

Tuesday

Kate searches for stray cats because she’s lonely @ By her apartment, All day

| November 2017 Issue 8

page 7

Wednesday

Hannah jumps into the ocean @ Some beach in California, Morning

National Peanut Butter Fudge Day

National Stuffing Day

Thanksgiving Break

Men’s Basketball vs. Whitman College @ WEC, 3 p.m. Thanksgiving Eve Dinner @ Passatempo Tavern, 3-10 p.m. National Cranberry Relish Day Thanksgiving Break

National Play Monopoly Day Thanksgiving Break

OUTDOORS RUUD REMARKS

Dimes of the Times By Niqolas Ruud With winter beginning to settle in, you’re feeling down and out. Going outside is hard; it’s cold out there. Maybe you wish you had a little extra spending cash to get yourself a nice hot Taqueria burrito to warm your cold, cold heart.1 But alas, you didn’t work those 30 hours you had promised yourself you would last week. Therefore, you can’t afford one of those juicy burritos, even with the student discount. So you’re left to fend for yourself tonight for dinner. Sad.

“I do 99.9 percent of my body collecting outside,” KateLyn Ruud, a freshman nursing major with a capital letter in the middle of her name, said laughing, “I mean ‘bottle.’” The fact that she does her collecting outside, of course, makes the story pertinent to an outdoor column, just to clear things up for our skeptics. It turns out that some of Ruud’s favorite places to collect these “literal dimes” are all around us, and many are indeed outside: “I look on the side of the road, at parks, in dumpsters after big events,” she said happily. Lucky for her, Walla Walla has plenty of those!

Ruud not only enjoys the money received for her efforts (the particulars of “how” we will get to in a paragraph or two) but also deeply appreciates the idea of being environmentally-friendly with her actions of picking up trash, as well as the interpersonal relationships created because of her habit. Ruud said, “One night we were at the Pendleton Round-Up to get cans to cash in. We dug in the trash cans, dumpsters, and Niq even went into a bar to get them. We pawed through ketchup and mustard, mayonnaise, beer, fair food, vomit, pus, you name it. And so I was getting stuff out of a trash can when a man dressed as a

You’re hungrily walking (or in a few weeks, skating) around campus, thinking about litter and how you wish it could turn into a tasty Taq burrito. Looking around, you notice a dime. “Awesome!” you say to yourself, as you pick it up and pocket the shiny bit of metal.

“I just stood there and waited,” Ruud said. “I was wondering if he was joking or lying about the gloves. But eventually he came out and gave me some—nice pirate.” As it turns out, since April 2017, collecting cans and bottles in the state of Oregon has become twice—that’s right, twice as profitable. According to the Associated Press, “To make it abundantly clear that the 2011 law requiring 10-cent deposits and refunds overrules the label on any can or bottle that lists the old 5-cent rate, the 2017 Oregon Legislature agreed to pass a law spelling that out in black and white … the Oregon Legislature overwhelmingly approved that measure, sending it to Gov. Kate Brown for her signature.”2 When I asked she how exactly she made money by just picking bottles up off the side of the road, she said, “You take them into these cute little machines and pop ‘em in and get your money out!”

A few moments later, you notice a pile of maybe 10 or so plastic water bottles. “Cool,” you say to yourself, “a pile of plastic water bottles,” and walk right on by. It’s like the story of the Good Samaritan all over again.

Fascinating, Ms. Ruud! Tell us more! “The nearest place to pop your bottles into cash? Safeway, Milton-Freewater, Oregon,” Ruud said.

Sad, isn’t it—sad that you chose to pick up the dime, a mere 10 cents, yet passed up an entire dollar in spending money via the pile of plastic (or glass) bottles! How, you ask? Well, to answer your question of “how,” I reached out to southeastern Washington’s most prolific bottle-collector for her answer:

pirate with only one eye says, ‘Ma’am, you want me to get you some gloves from the back, now? Follow me.’”

Curious as to how much Ruud has made by popping her bottles into cash, I asked for some of the hard data: “The most I ever made in one trip was $69,” Ruud said. “Even though the number has a bad connotation, it sure has a good one for me!”

Trash money. (HENRY GARCIGA)

“How about the total amount?” I asked her. She said, “The total since I started, I don’t know. Should I just lie about it and say $5,000,000? $50,000? I really don’t know.” Wow! She is so rich because of her good habits that she can’t even remember how much money she has made! Fantastic!

1. Not an advertisement for Taqueria Yungapeti. 2 Associated Press, 20 March 2017.

Share Your Thanksgiving Escapades with #thecollegian Hey! Niq here. I’m the guy who wrote that story you just skimmed about Ms. Ruud. I know that you know that Thanksgiving break is upon us, but what I don’t know is what rowdy things you are going to do in the great outdoors during this nine-day holiday—that’s a lot of days! Share your outdoorsy Thanksgiving adventures on Instagram using #thecollegian, and I’ll pick a few of them to feature in my next article. Stay safe and have fun out there!

Niqolas Ruud is a religious studies major.

RELIGION WORLD HUNGER

Not My Job By Peter Flores I’m sure that most of us have had a conversation when we were younger — hopefully not anymore — that went something like this: Relative: “Hey, how’s the food?” You: “Eh, I don’t really like it.” “Are you going to finish it?” “Not really sure, probably not.” “But it’s an olive-covered, brussel sprout-wrapped, asparagus-sauced, baked tomato soufflé!” “Yeah, that’s why I’m not going to eat it.” “Well, you know there are kids in Africa who would love to have that food. You’re lucky.” I guess I’ve always thought of the issue of world hunger in terms of practicality. I can’t really mail them my food because it would go bad before it gets there. I can’t really do anything about them having no food, unless maybe I send some money, but am I sure that it will get there? I can’t really go there ei-

ther because it’s most likely dangerous. What could I even do to help? Corporately, maybe we can do more, but two questions stand out to me above all others: “Are kids in Africa still starving today?” and “Can I help them?” Two words: Boko Haram. It is a terrorist group that started in 2002 and is still alive and well today. These terrorists have slaughtered their way through the country of Nigeria, and, in January of this year, the United Nations children’s agency warned the world that 90,000 Nigerian children would die of starvation in the next 12 months as a result.1 The starvation is due to the destruction of stores and the prevention of aid to dangerous areas. So, the short answer is yes, people are still dying from hunger. In this case, as you might have guessed, Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group that is perpetuating oppression and imposing their law wherever they go. These terrorists are ravaging northeast Nigeria without regard for the lives of children. Now, why are these children’s deaths our problem, and what can we tangibly do to help? The second part of this question is relatively easy to

Victims of Boko Haram. (REUTERS/AFOLABI SOTUNDE) answer: donate.2 BokoHaramVictimsRelief.org provides a simple way to donate directly to Red Cross in Switzerland so that they can help people in Nigeria. The first part of the question, however, is something that you’d think would be simple, but, in fact, it creates pretty emotive answers from some “passionate” internet commentators. I know I shouldn’t have, but I read the comments at the bottom of the article.

While we should realize that these commentators don’t represent everyone, I think it would be unwise to say that these opinions are only found online in random articles. Below are a few examples of the highest-voted comments: “[T]he world is overpopulated, yet again, [Save] The Children expects western taxpayers to bail these people out.” –Angus7777

“[A]ll that oil, all that independence and all these decades later this is where they are very sad really” – barry_mott Please read this last one. (It doesn’t make a ton of sense, but a few things may pop out at you.)

(cont. on page 8)

page

November 2017 Issue 8 | walla walla university | college place, wa

(Religion cont. from page 7) “Just let them die. The world is overpopulated and forests are being cut and burnt down to provide fertile ground for farming in 3rd world countries. This technique doesn’t work for long and new forests have to be cut down soon after, causing massive damage to the environment. And all anthropogenic global warming deniers should pay good attention to these famines. If global warming is not halted and mitigated, this will be your children and grandchildren’s lifestyle. No more hot baths, no more delicious food on command, no more television, no more internet, no more birth control. And if those future generations ever forget about ovulation cycles and how children are conceived in general...mother of mercy. Don’t just sit there thinking you’re that much better than them - you’re not.

We’re just a pack of well trained dogs, nothing more, nothing less. When you’re hungry, uneducated and young, you’ll do the most vicious of things. It is unfortunate but we need to let them die in order to curb population growth. We really need to do something about Islam as well. ‘Every child is a blessing from god’ - yeah right, go home and die. The men who invented Islam are probably the most genocidal and evil men in history.”3 Now that is some really hard writing to follow, but there were a few things that stood out to me: “Just let them die.” People can say some pretty stupid stuff under pseudonyms, and I know that we don’t have to take it all seriously. The fact is so many comments were saying essentially the same thing:

What is your response? If your response is a socially-sedentary lifestyle, and you’re okay with it, then fine—it’s your choice. However, if you want to donate, here is the link again: http:// www.bokoharamvictimsrelief.org/partners-irc-donations/ From a religious standpoint, whether or not you should be involved is profoundly simple: “Do unto others the way you would have them do unto you.”4 If followed, this verse from Matthew would be one of the most difficult undertakings of anyone’s life. Is it your job? If not, then who is going to do anything about it? Think. Read. Stay informed.

“Not my job.” 1. Bulman, May. “90,000 Children Are Expected to Die in Nigeria over the next 12 Months, Unicef Warns.” Independent, 25 Jan. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ nigerian-children-starve-to-death-2017-nigeria-africa-help-unicef-international-community-aid-a7546176.html. 2. http://www.bokoharamvictimsrelief.org/partners-irc-donations/. 3. Comments quoted can be found at the bottom of the article above. 4. Bible verse found in Matthew 7:12

Victims of Boko Haram. (REUTERS/AFOLABI SOTUNDE)

Peter Flores is a theology major.

OPINION READY FOR BREAK

10 Reasons Thanksgiving Is The Best By Savanna Pardo We have finally approached the best part of first quarter: Thanksgiving break. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most students have yet to go home this school year, so break will be a first for many to return to the comforts of home. I don’t speak for everyone, but I believe that, as college students, Thanksgiving break is the best. We have hit that point in the quarter where all motivation has gone straight out the window, and some home-cooked food and relaxation are just the cure. Thanksgiving break is absolutely wonderful for many reasons, but here are 10 that many of us can relate to. Home-Cooked Meals: Thanksgiving is the perfect time to go home because Mom cooks a plethora of food, calling weeks in advance to ask what you want for Thanksgiving dinner. Not to mention, you don’t have to eat cafeteria food during this short time! 1

2 Sleeping in Your Bed: This one is major because, at school, it is literally impossible to get a good night’s rest.

There is nothing better than being able to go home to your own room and sleep in a bed bigger than a twin. 3 Seeing Family Members: I have to admit, it’s very comforting to catch up with all of your relatives during the holidays. Even though your aunt won’t stop asking if you have a boyfriend/ girlfriend, or your siblings won’t stop annoying you, you’d still rather be at home than school. 4

No Homework Stress: We’re almost at the end of the quarter, but during break you’ve got to give it a rest. Take some time to catch up on those Z’s before you break out the textbooks again. 5 Only a Couple Weeks Left in the Quarter: This means that your head will be buried in books for the next couple of weeks until finals. Stay strong on this one, and enjoy the break while you can! 6 Sleeping In: No alarms, no classes and no worries. There is no better feeling than waking up on a weekday and realizing you got a full eight hours of sleep.

7 Thanksgiving Day Football: Sadly, the Seahawks will not be playing this year, but definitely keep an eye out for the other teams. It’s fun to sit on the couch with a plate full of appetizers and some sparkling cider, watching football with Dad.

Black Friday Shopping: Now is the perfect time to get everyone’s Christmas gifts on a college budget. 8

9 Christmas is Around the Corner: Realize that in just a couple weeks you will be back on break opening presents and drinking hot cocoa.

OPINION PRINTER PROBLEMS

Why All Printers Are Terrible By Parker Bailey Printers: those plastic vessels of hatred, sensing the fear of the innocent and jamming for those in a hurry. You know a printer came to mind, be it HP or Ricoh, Canon, Epson or even a Brother — no perfect printer exists. I am convinced that, despite its simple purpose, no printer company has perfected this technology, and they never will. Here are some key reasons why printers are the bane of a student’s existence. High Maintenance Printers are terribly high maintenance. If you have ever worked with large batch-print jobs on the big office printers and they jam, you know you are in for a fun time of beeping, ink stains, hot rollers, crumpled pieces of paper and suffering. Even on smaller printers, you must periodically clean them, replace the ink, load in paper, and if something breaks, you have no choice but to buy a new one. Ink Why is it so expensive? Black printer ink is the seventh most expensive liquid you can buy, weighing in at around $2,700 per gallon. That’s more expensive that human blood. I am not saying to inject human blood into a printer. Though more cost effective, it is not guaranteed to be the best solution for your printing needs. I have heard that some places are beginning to recycle used printer cartridges. It seems like recycling printer cartridges would be good for WWU to start doing since we print so much so often.

you’re trying to set up an older printer. They may be hidden somewhere in the far reaches of a company’s website that no longer exists and has been bought out by three other companies. Maybe the driver doesn’t even exist anymore. Who knows, but the people need their physical documents, and they need them now! Cheap Let’s be real here, printers are not usually well made. You can go online and buy a printer that costs less than its own ink. Why are they made with such disregard for quality in manufacturing? Back when I worked in IT, I had to fix a printer that no longer knew when it had ejected its own paper. To fix it, I had to break it. Some of these things I believe are engineered to fall apart in order to force you to buy a new one after so long. It’s never a good thing when the skimping starts all the way back at production. In conclusion, printers just weren’t made for the human who wishes to live a happy life. They were built for people who have to get the job done and aren’t afraid of being 30 minutes late to class. The printer’s purpose is to dash the hopes and dreams of the innocent into little black particles jettisoned onto a white sheet of despair. Let me know what you think here:

Errors Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I’m setting up printers, they rarely want to connect to the internet, and when they do, they never seem to want to receive print jobs. “Spooling” is not a comforting response, thanks. Also, drivers are a nightmare to find when

http://bit.ly/2mlHV3N

Parker Bailey is an engineering major.

10 Realizing That You Wouldn’t Trade Your Family for the World: After a long fall quarter, there is nothing better than going home to your family. They may be a bit much at times, but you wouldn’t trade them for the world. Going home and getting support from your family is just what you need to finish out the quarter strong.

Savanna Pardo is an English major.

Pumpkin Feast. (ISTOCK PHOTO)

SURVEY YOUR RESPONSES

What do you think Walla Walla University / College Place Recycles? What could WWU do to be more eco-friendly? “Change from paper waivers to electronic ones. Kinda like the ones at Get Air.”

15%

said other

19%

said electronics

59 total participants

69%

22%

said paper

said glass

27%

said plastic

“I was under the impression that the city of College Place didn’t actually recycle. If we do, shouldn’t we make an effort to recycle all that it can?” “More recycling containers around campus. Make it clear what is recyclable and what is not.”

said aluminum

34%

“I think it would be good to make The Collegian online instead Of printing tons of copies that people maybe glance through once. This would also save money that could be put towards other more important things. It would also be Good to have better alternatives to take out treys and cups, or have some way to encourage students to recycle them.”

61%

said cardboard

“Actually recycle. All of the recycling bins around campus don’t even get recycled. They get thrown into the trash. They could start actually taking them somewhere to be recycled, even if it’s farther away. Protecting our planet is worth it.” “Add more recycling bins around campus, one by every trash can or by the dorms especially.” “We should recycle food or give them away.” “Having recycling bins for different materials everywhere like many Western European countries do. Require students in dorms to separate their trash. Require all faculty and staff to recycle their on-campus trash. I just really think we fail at being eco-friendly.”

No question this week!

Enjoy your break and eat plenty of food!

“In the dorms, there should be an option to recycle instead of everything going to the same place. There also a needs to be a focus on printing less and more online submissions instead of hard copy to save paper.” “We could offer more recycling bins around campus. We could have bins for paper, plastics, glass, etc. We could also work to produce less trash.” “Start a recycling initiative in which new, clearly marked, and accessible recycling bins are installed, and accompany it with a poster/announcement campaign. New bins would encourage new habits, whereas leaving the old bins but doing the campaign alone would not be as effective.” “Recycle, like seriously.”