The student voice of Midwestern State University
The Wichitan page 7 Rumble n’ roll
page 9 Playoffs underway
Trio of Red Dirt music artists visited Kay Yeager Coliseum for a performance.
The NBA superstars really come out to play in April, where good players become great.
WEDNESDAY April 22, 2009
Faculty pressures provost out of position Chris Collins For the Wichitan
Provost Dr. Freiderike Wiedemann’s office is a testament to her character. The tidy, efficient workplace of the German native is honeycombed into the back of the Hardin Administration building. Wiedemann sits at a sparsely decorated table, studying a photograph of the Berlin Wall, a reflection of her heritage. The Wall stands in stark contrast to Wiedemann’s own wall
– the one blocking communication between MSU administration and faculty. As far as she is concerned, this wall, unlike the one that separated East and West Germany until 1989, is still intact. Wiedemann, who sought to improve university communication during her seven-year tenure at MSU, was removed from the office by Dr. Jesse Rogers in early April. The provost said she is confused and hurt by the decision. Though she doesn’t
know exactly why she was removed, she guesses that it was due to her management style and some of the changes she implemented. Wiedemann says she had no inkling that the faculty was unhappy with her, or that they were conspiring to see her ousted from the provost position. Rogers, after speaking with the Faculty Senate, removed Wiedemann from the post. The action will be effective Aug. 31. “I’m stunned,” Wiedemann says. “When I wake up in the
morning I think it’s just a dream. I don’t have children, so all I have are my husband, my dog and my job. When I was first told, I thought I would be an outcast. What I have found since is that on campus and in the community, people have come forward to express their friendship and feeling for me. “At first I thought, ‘If I die, there will just be my husband and my church.’ But now I think there are people who will come. There are people in this office who will miss me.”
Wiedemann, a tenured professor with a doctoral degree in medieval French literature, says she was going to step down from the provost position in a year anyway. “I wish faculty representatives would have come to me and made me aware about their misgivings,” she says. “I would have listened to them with care. I would have been grateful to them and I would have acted upon their concerns. I always had good evaluations and I had no idea the president was unhappy with me.”
She compares losing her job to getting her heart broken, but says this is worse. “When you get your heart broken, you find somebody else,” she says. “There are many fish in the sea. But when you reach my age, there are no fish anymore, anywhere.” Wiedemann says she regrets there is not a forum for the provost and faculty departments to meet yearly. She says she was told departments did not have See WIEDEMANN page 3
MSU police officer loses his battle against brain cancer Brittany Norman Editor in Chief
Patrick Johnston | Photo Editor Professor Nathan Jun was among several attendees of the Yom Ha’Shoah, or Holocaust Remebrance Day ceremony and candlelight vigil with tears in their eyes during the moment of silence.
Never again,
never forget
Jewish Heritage Month commemorates faith, remembers tragedy Julia Graham For the Wichitan
Jewish Heritage Month has been established on the MSU campus. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Nathan Jun has been instrumental in establishing and implementing a monthlong calendar of events to educate students on the history of Judaism and Jewish culture. In addition to numerous planned events all month long, students are encouraged to stop by the bookstore, where a Jewish author’s books will be displayed until May. Earlier this month, the Philosophy Program and the group In & Out sponsored the showing of the movie “Paragraph 175.” The documentary was released in 2000, and chronicles the lives of several men arrested by the Nazis for homosexuality under Paragraph 175, the sodomy provision of the German penal code. According to the film, 100,000 men were arrested under Paragraph 175. Of those arrested, only about 4,00 survived.
The documentary follows five people who have come forward and were willing to tell their stories for the first time. Students were able to ask questions and discuss the film with MSU faculty. “I was in Dallas during the showing of the film, but according to other faculty there was a turnout of around 60 to 70 students,” Jun said. “A lot of the people who attended didn’t know about the persecution of this group of homosexual Jewish men during the holocaust. Raising awareness was just successful in itself.” The Philosophy Program and the Office of Student Development and Orientation sponsored a Judaism 101 forum and discussion Thursday. The forum was touted as “an overview of Jewish history, theology, rituals, traditions and culture.” While there weren’t as many students as there were at the film screening, those that did attend were able to get their questions answered. “I went to the Judaism forum baSee HOLOCAUST page 5
Tim Swedberg, 45, a longtime member of the MSU family ,passed away on Sunday after a battle with brain cancer. Swedberg was an officer with the campus police department for 19 years. “MSU was his extended family,” police chief Michael Hagy said. “April 1 was the anniversary of his 19th year. He was dedicated, loyal. If he could, he would have had a cot up here sleeping.” Hagy said that Swedberg started feeling bad in December. “They found out he had brain cancer,” he said. “He fought a hard battle and he left us on Sunday at about 6:30 in the evening.”
He left behind a family, including two children who are students at MSU. “Everybody wants to honor people,” Hagy said. “Tim was one of those people. He was an honorable man. He loved life, he really did, and he loved being a police officer and serving the MSU community.” Swedberg was on sick leave while he underwent nine weeks of radiation treatment. This year’s Spring Fever, the sports benefit event put on by MSU, partially benefited the Tim Swedberg fund. “He loved the students,” Hagy said. “He loved his job. You can always tell a person loves what they’re doing by how long they’ve been doing it.”
Abuse of printers leads to restrictions Heather Preston For the Wichitan
If you have walked into a computer lab recently, you may have noticed a new policy being implemented. There is now a fifty page limit and a five copies limit for all documents being printed in the labs overseen by information systems. If you try to print a document outside the allowed parameters, it will not print due to the recently installed software MSU is using to limit the amount printed in the labs. The new policy came directly out of information systems. Michael Dye, director for information systems, said, “We are the ones that fund the labs. It comes directly out of our budget: the paper supplies, the toner, and the student workers’ salaries” The goal of the new policy is simply to reduce the rate supplies are being consumed. “We can monitor the output remotely and we were seeing things like two, three, four, five, six and seven
thousand page documents being printed and we’re not funded to print thousand and thousands of pages every day,” Dye said. The wastage does not stop with the massive documents; it creates a snowball effect for documents waiting in queue to be printed. “A good portion ends up in the garbage because let’s say you come in and you’re trying to print your ten page paper and somebody in front of you is printing a 2000 page document and it’s going to take hours to print, then you just leave. Then when your document comes up and prints and nobody comes to get it, it goes in the dumpster,” Dye said. Dye attributes some of the large documents to online textbooks. He said that many students are finding their textbooks online and printing it in a computer lab rather than buying the textbook. The largest one he remembers printed was near 1800 pages. See PRINTERS page 5