3/7/2016 Issue

@HSUORACLE www.hsuoracle.com

Henderson State University — Monday, March 7, 2016 Volume 110, Issue 21

PUPPET MASTERS Theatre department brings Avenue Q to Henderson Street P. 5

THE ORACLE

THE ORACLE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF – Moe Skinner FACULTY ADVISER – Mike Taylor COPY EDITOR – Madison MacNew NEWS EDITOR – Carmin Wills SPORTS EDITOR – Dom Cella VIEWS EDITOR – Dax Guilliams VIEWS EDITOR – Jae-Kur Lockhart PHOTO EDITOR – Joshua Bradley PAGE DESIGNER – Melanie Cole AD DESIGNER – Chris Sharp GRAPHIC DESIGNER – Jordan Jones

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POLITICAL OVERLOAD See the results from Super Tuesday

LOCAL MUSIC FESTIVAL Hot Springs hosts Vally of the Vapors during Spring Break

PUPPETS COME TO CAMPUS Theatre prepares for Avenue Q Production

LOSS AT HOME

The Reddie baseball team falls short to the Harding

ONLINE EDITOR – Ashley Smith BUSINESS MANAGER – Coley Henson

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Have an opinion on an issue or response to what we said? Just want to rant about something for a while? Write us at ORACLE@HSU.EDU. We want to hear what you think. Hell, if it doesn’t suck, we’ll publish it in next week’s issue. Try to keep it between 400 and 600 words. Just like your Tumblr, we ignore anonymous submissions.

COVER Theatre students practice for the upcoming puppet performance.

PHOTO BY JARED KELSAY

ONLINE STORIES Make sure to check out our other featured stories online at www.hsuoracle.com.

VALLEY OF THE VAPORS Q & A COUNTRY CLUB BURNING LEGION OF NERDS ROOTED

FELLOW BLOGGERS If anyone is interested in having their personal blog published, feel free to email us at ORACLE@HSU.EDU. If we don’t find it absolutely obnoxious, we will be happy to let you have a chance to share your words.

MAR. 7, 2016

FEATURES

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TUESDAY’S TALLIES

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Professor of theatre working to keep Arkansas from being Trumped STORY BY AARON CHARLES — GRAPHIC COURTESY OF MCT CAMPUS ©

VS Did you cast your vote on Super Tuesday? Well, the results are in and there were few surprises in Arkansas’ presidential primary.

The big winners last Tuesday were Republican Donald Trump and Democratic candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While all eyes are on the presidential race, we actually had one of our own on the ballot. Claudia Beach, professor of theatre arts, successfully won her bid to become one of 14 Democratic Party delegates for Clark County.

“I just love being involved in politics,” Beach said.

“It’s my second love, right behind theatre.”

Beach has been selected a delegate three times in Clark county. The position of being a delegate expires after the state democratic convention is over.

The delegates selected on Super Tuesday will go to the state convention and select a total of 32 delegates to go represent Arkansas at the National Democratic Convention, which will be held July 25-28 at the Wells

Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

There will be a total of 4,764 delegates who will select the presidential nominee who will go on to represent the Democratic Party in Novemberw.

The Democratic National Committee leads the Democratic Party, and is responsible for making the rules for its presidential nominee.

There are two types of delegates, pledged delegates and super-delegates. There are 4,051 pledged and 713 super-delegates.

On Super Tuesday, voters selected delegates such as Beach. They are pledged to support a particular candidate based on the results of the primary election and caucuses. Beach has pledged to support Clinton.

Each state has rules for its delegation. The first rule is there must be a gender balance, meaning that it must be half women and half men. The delegates must also be culturally diverse.

There were a total of 14 delegates chosen and among that number was Beach. Beach has been a part

of the Democratic Committee for around 10-12 years now.

The state Democratic committee is a state organization that has a representative for every county and they meet up to four times a year.

As of today, the front-runner for the Democratic Party is Clinton. She received a total of 22 delegates and opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont received a total of 10.

“The Republican race will be a close finish between Republican candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, but if the results in Arkansas are a reflection of the rest of the states, Bernie Sanders has no chance,” Tia Larry, senior education major, said.

Beach began as a part-time employee at Henderson in 1988. After five years, she received a new teaching opportunity and she took a six-year break. She decided to return to Henderson in 1999. Beach hopes to make a difference as a professor and as a pledged delegate supporter of Clinton.

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DOWN IN THE VALLEY Hot Springs rolls in highest number of musicians for Valley of the Vapors STORY BY ASHLEY SMITH — IMAGE COURTESY OF VALLEYOFTHEVAPORS.COM

With spring break just around the corner, the endless possibilities of taking a trip on spring break is filling students’ minds. But, this year students have another, and possibly better, option that is much closer by and cost affordable for an average college student. Valley of the Vapors is an independent music festival in Hot Springs, featuring music from over 70 music acts this year, the most bands the festival has booked yet. Just in time for spring break, the festival is being held at different venues in Hot Springs on March 18-22.

Providing something for everyone with their generous array of musical acts, almost all genres are covered in this year’s show. Indie, different subgenres of punk, hip- hop, and electronic are all at the show- along with everything in between.

Many bands continue to make the trip back to Hot Springs for the show. Returning bands include Peelander-Z, Young Buffalo, Hikes and Doomsquad, all ready to rock your socks off.

“First off, Hot Springs is beautiful,” Nathan James Wilkins, member of returning band, Hikes, said. “The atmosphere is relaxed and everything feels organic. [We decided to return] because the hospitality is unparalleled and the friends we’ve made from playing last time around are the sweetest.”

The 70 musical acts are traveling from a variety of places this year, with acts from 8 different countries and over 20 different states and everywhere in between. There are 10 plus more bands than there were last year, the same year the amount of musical acts doubled.

This year, creators behind the scenes of the festival took steps to try to expand it.

People such as Bill Solleder, Low Key Arts executive director, teamed up with others to make it happen. With more bands booked than ever before, a big show awaits them.

“Bill [Solleder] is a good friend and we had a talk about expanding the VOV, growing it, and we decided that making the website more user friendly with band bios and videos plus ecommerce would be a great first step.” Aaron Buckley, director of the VOV website, said in an email interview.

Day passes are $10 each and passes are $75. There are opportunities for VIP passes on the website, valleyofthevapors.com, which includes all-access to VOV events, VIP parties, and access to the VIP lounge with drinks and music artists provided.

Different venues include the Low Key Arts Center, Maxine’s, shows in the park and some secret shows. Scheduled show times and bands are listed on the website.

Workshops, which are free and open to the public, are also being offered during the festival, though pre-registration is required. Activities in the workshops include creating your own whiskerphone, photography, and film loops.

Each year, arts are featured at the festival as well. A limited edition silk screen poster, a series of silent auction paintings, and a large scale mural will be at the festival.

Low Key Arts Center is presenting the VOV. Tickets and VIP passes are on sale on the website right now and will be up until the festival begins. For more information on this year’s show and past years, visit valleyofthevapors.com.

MAR. 7, 2016

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NOT EXACTLY CHILD’S PLAY

Theatre prepares for new style of production STORY BY EMILY R. BELL — PHOTOS BY JARED KELSAY

QUALITY TIME — LaDarius Jamerson and Anthony McBride become aquainted with their characters.

Last Wednesday evening, the theatre department had their last of four puppetry workshops in preparation for their upcoming production of Avenue Q. Claudia Beach, director of theater and director of Avenue Q, rented the cast of puppets from the Dallas Puppet Theater, a non-profit theater. Pix Smith, director at Dallas Puppet Theater, delivered the handcrafted puppets and offered his expertise to the student cast.

For the first three workshops, students had only used practice puppets to begin their lessons. Smith turned the official stage-ready puppets over to the students for their final workshop that night.

Smith trained the actors by working directly with the students through the puppets and the tools which operate them. He demonstrated how to conduct proper handling of the puppets as well as coordinated speech and mouth movements.

Smith reminded the students that their overall goal was to create easy to read, yet vibrant expressions through their puppets, and to take the focus off of themselves.

Each puppet character had multiples of itself in different outfits for specific scenes of the production, which Beach noted would aid in between-scene preparations.

“They won’t have to dress and redress their puppets in a rush before their next scene,” Beach said. She also pointed out that changing the puppets before each scene could result in accidental tears due to the speedy over handling.

Anna Brantley, junior theater major, was cast as the “girl bad ideas bear” with her counterpart “boy bad ideas bear,” played by Anthony McBride, senior theater major.

“We come in and convince people to do terrible things,” McBride said.

“One of my lines is literally, ‘slip her the tongue!’” Brantley said.

The entire class lined up to rehearse Avenue Q’s opening song with their stageready puppets.

In between puppetry practices, Smith reminded the students to rest their arms so as not to develop muscle cramps.

As all the students continued to work their newly gained skills, Smith commented on their improvement from the first workshop.

“This is normally a crash and burn situation and nobody crashed and burned,” Smith said, encouraging the students to applaud their jobs well done.

The students showed marked improvement with only a few habits left to tweak.

Smith assured them all that they would easily be puppeteer professionals by opening night if not sooner.

Beach watched her students practice with their puppets for hours, smiling wide the whole time. The students appeared just as jubilant and handled their puppets as though they were true extensions of themselves.

“We’ve been doing these workshops for two days now, and the actors have accumulated 14 hours of training from Pix,” Beach said. “It’s starting to come together.”

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WHY COLLEGE?

OPINION BY JAE-KUR LOCKHART — IMAGE COURTESY OF MCT CAMPUS © Growing up, I am almost certain that there were people that asked you what you wanted to be whenever you got older.

If you were anything like the common person, your answers may have ranged from the simpler answers such as fireman, doctor, lawyer, or even scientist.

Some answers were probably a bit more outlandish like maybe a wizard, Superman, Batman, or in my case, I wanted Vanna White’s job. I wanted to turn the hell out of those letters on “Wheel of Fortune”.

Nevertheless, how did you think you would obtain these jobs – these goals?

When did you start thinking about going to college? I mean, “why college?”

Something people may or may not realize is that a college degree does not guarantee you a job in the real world.

“It is already hard enough for a black man to get a job, so without a degree, I am damned to work at a factory or sell drugs – I prefer to do neither of the two, so I know I need to get a degree and make something happen,” Javare’ Simmons, freshman student from the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, said.

Today, nearly 4.6 million African-American’s have a four-year college degree.

“I just don’t want to have to get a job that makes me work by the sweat of my brow,” Simmons said.

According to a study performed in 2014 by the Economic Policy Institute, the rate of unemployed college graduates in the U.S. has risen to 8.5 percent as opposed to the 2007 study of 5.5 percent.

Yet and still, there are still jobs out there that make a substantial amount of money and do not require a degree at all such as being a loan officer, small business owner, and even an electrical power-line installer.

Information from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, college enrollment has increased steadily since 2008 – not including the dropout rate, though.

They reported that with the increasing demand for jobs has driven high-school graduates to seek a college degree.

“Sometimes, I wish I did not even come to college,” Fantaysia Henry, freshman pre-biology major, said. “But I figured that was the only way I could make something of myself, so here I am and it is what it is.”

The majority of responses when asked “why college” are all essentially focused around one imperial idea: wanting to make a better life for yourself and your family.

“My mom and dad really motivated me,” Kristen Brown, freshman physical therapy major, said. “I just want to get a degree and make a living so that I can provide for my family. I just want to be able to give back to them.”

But is a degree just a more glorified version of a high-school diploma? I am in no way discouraging a person’s dreams when it comes to their future and education, but it is always something to think about.

Is college a waste of time?

“I don’t think college is a waste,” Alayna Williams, freshman human services major, said. “Because singing is the only thing I have to fall back on and if that does not work, I’ll have to become a stripper.”

As a college student, or even teacher, do you feel as though the importance of a college education is slowly dwindling?

However you feel on the matter, please do not hesitate on writing in to our newspaper to voice your opinions and views.

MAR. 7, 2016

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HUIE LIBRARY AND THE NEWS OPINION BY DAX GUILLIAMS — PARODY IMAGE BY JORDAN JONES There is no better place on Henderson’s campus than the HUIE Library. I’ve been a student here for a few years now and I can confidently say that the library is absolutely Henderson’s best feature.

It may seem odd at first that a college’s library would be its best feature, but that’s just how good ours is.

With every library I’ve ever been to, I’ve walked out hating myself for choosing to spend time there and I gained a short-term hatred for books, but I have zero complaints with the HUIE Library.

While I don’t go in the library every day, I try to use its services as much as I can.

One of the best features of the library is that each and every room in the building I’ve been in is a nice, quiet place for studying, doing homework or just sitting in a chair and relaxing.

This is great because it’s nice having a place on campus that gives me a break from having to hear all of the annoying sounds that spread across this campus so much. I can barely escape those noises in class, so the library deserves some credit for helping out with that.

The absolute highest praise I can give to the HUIE Library is the Green Room which is where all of the comics and graphic novels are located. I’ve spoken very highly of the Green Room in the past and its selection of reading material keeps growing with each semester.

You can barely find comics and graphic novels for purchase in this state, but the library just has hundreds of them available to read.

I’ve overheard some of the library staff talk about how some people tell them they are glad they chose to study at Henderson because they like the Green Room so much. Not only do I believe that’s true, but I’m starting to suspect that they were talking about me.

And I don’t know how it’s possible,

but every computer in the library works perfectly. Every library I’ve been to has had a few computers that work, about two that were a little frustrating to use and one that was on fire, screaming for help.

The other buildings on campus can’t even say that they have perfectly working computers, especially the computer lab which I’m pretty sure needs to have someone come in to fix the computers or perform an exorcism on them.

Even though I haven’t been in every room in the library, I believe they all have something good to offer students.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entrance to Hogwarts was located somewhere in one of the rooms.

And I haven’t even mentioned the wide selection of books they have because they should be pretty obvious by looking at the building from the outside.

There are so many books in there that I’m starting to think the building itself is made of them.

I also recently found out that they do allow you to make coffee in the library if you ask for it. I don’t drink coffee, but that’s nice for the people who do and are working on homework late at night or early in the morning.

The library also has great hours. Most libraries close on Sundays or in the case of the Malvern Library, anytime they feel like it, but the HUIE Library is open everyday for quite a few hours.

It also seems to be the only place on campus that has vending machines that don’t break down because the wind blew near it. It’s nice to have vending machines that I can approach without wondering if it’s going to steal my money or die in front of me.

Despite all of these good things and more, many students still do not go into the library or use any of its services. I can only assume that these people either do

not know how good our particular library is or that they hate themselves.

Even bad libraries offer a little bit of benefits to those who enter them so with our good library, more people should be using its services.

You don’t even have to read any books, use any of the computers or anything.

You can just sit down and relax before or after classes.

Most of the time I go into the library, I just sit in the Green Room, put my earbuds in and watch videos on my phone if I don’t feel like reading anything or doing any homework.

I wish I could say that Henderson having an amazing library is a breakthrough discovery, but everyone should know about the library’s services and be using them as much as they can.

I say this having many complaints for most places on campus. In fact, I can think of something negative for every place on campus but the HUIE Library.

The only suggestion I have for the library to make it better is for them to have robots fighting each other in the middle of the building as if it were a Battlebots arena, but I don’t think Henderson has enough money for that, so I guess we’ll have to settle for all of the great stuff the library already has.

I hope that the students who don’t use the library for whatever reason will change their mind after reading this article and if they don’t, I guess that means there’s more reading materials, pleasant atmosphere and vending machines that aren’t in the process of collapsing for me and anyone else who wants them.

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NOT ENOUGH FIGHT Reddies struggle to keep up with Harding STORY BY PETE TUBBS — PHOTO BY DOMINICK CELLA

The Reddie baseball team lost Tuesday night after they started off slow and failed to build enough momentum to overcome the Harding Bisons. On a night that got down into the low 40’s, the Reddies and their fans left the stadium cold indeed.

The team came into the game with high spirits as the number one team in the GAC. On the weekend preceding the Mar. 1 game, the Reddies beat Arkansas Tech in all three games of the tournament. That streak did not continue at their bout against Harding, who stood at a distant sixth in the GAC. The game started off with the Bisons scoring at the top of the first and second innings. The Reddies struggled to find momentum and switched pitchers at the top of the third, from freshman Blake Patterson to sophomore Dylan McCain.

The third inning came and went quickly, without a score from either team. Things perked up in the fourth for the Reddies as senior first baseman Hunter Mayall, who ranks sixth all time at HSU in offensive walks, scored off of redshirt-senior and center fielder Tadarious Hawkins’ RBI single.

Sophomore Beau Shelby came in from the bullpen before the start of the fifth inning. At the top of the fifth inning, the score stood the Bisons 2, the Reddies 1. The Bison’s sophomore second baseman Grant Guest then stole home after junior third baseman Jordan Taylor committed an error.

With senior Josh Henderson subbed in at pitcher, it was time to begin the sixth. Harding’s senior DH Jaxon Mohr

and sophomore outfielder Jesse Cox both scored, bringing the Bisons up to five scores against the Reddies one.

The bottom of the sixth and the seventh inning came and went, leaving the Reddies with no runs to show for either of them.

Before the eighth, the Reddie fans shouted to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” in a noble attempt to rally their team for the end of the game.

Things seemed to be looking up when three of the Harding players came and went, “three up, three down,” as they say.

The rallying didn’t pay off, however, as Reddies left the eighth with no runs.

The Bisons failed to gain a run at the top of the ninth, leaving the Reddies one final at-bat to resolve the game.

Redemption of sorts was found as junior second baseman Alex Morgan got the final Reddie score, leaving Mayall on first and redshirt-sophomore outfielder, Joseph Gary, on third. With Taylor’s final out however, the game was over and the teams lined up to shake hands and then retreated to opposite ends of the field for their team meetings.

“It was pretty pitiful,” head coach Cody Hooten said. “We didn’t put up enough of a fight.”

Coach Hooten isn’t letting this game get him down though.

“We’re still number one in the state, we just need to focus on this weekend.”

The Reddies lost two of three to Southeastern Oklahoma, splitting the doublheader on Saturday. Henderson will battle OBU at Rab Rogers Field on Tuesday Mar. 8 at 2 p.m.

Go online to the Oracle website at: www.hsuoracle.com to catch all the campus happenings and check out www.hsusports.com for more Reddie Athletics coverage.

LINE DRIVE — Joseph Gary drives one into the outfield.