Currents Magazine Fall 2020: Humans of Pepperdine by PGM-PepperdineGraphicMedia

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So what I am always looking for is, I’m always looking for something that that person has told me that nobody else has told me. It is normally not an opinion, and it is normally not a philosophy. It’s almost always a story. Because we all share similar philosophies, we all share similar opinions on a lot of different issues, but all of our stories are our own. — Brandon Stanton, Creator of Humans of New York

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Letter from the Editor by Madison Nichols I have always been fascinated by humans. I love asking someone about their life story, and about their hopes and dreams, because it reminds me that we all have our own passions to pursue. It is only through our structured and saturated world that we develop the categorization of people as ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ In my process of trying to understand why people do the things they do, say the things they say, and believe the things they believe, I have come to the realization that we cannot completely define someone by either term. Humans are a combination of positives and negatives, a mixture of remarkable traits and habits that need breaking. We are all human; we are all just trying to figure it out. Since March, the events affecting the world have provided me the opportunity to reflect upon my appreciation for people: The people I passed by in Payson Library, the individuals I interacted with in everyday settings, the humans that humored, humbled and honored me for the person I am today. But more importantly, I have also come to better understand the importance of these small encounters, the importance of human interaction and the power that each of us holds as a unit — when we are all together. That was the inspiration for this issue of Currents. Someone once told me, “Every person who walks into your life teaches you something about yourself.” As I finish my last semester of college and begin to flip the page toward the next chapter in my life, I have come to appreciate this statement and the authenticity that it holds. We are all so much more than meets the eye, and when we take the time to really listen to one another — not interrupt, check our phone or allow initial judgements to take precedent — we will appreciate the elements of humanity that allow us to be different and yet simultaneously bond us together. This magazine is not an attempt to navigate who is right and who is wrong in a world that is so sharply divided by opposing parties and beliefs. This magazine is an opportunity to reinstill acceptance, hope and love in the world we wake up to each morning: an opportunity to acknowledge what bonds us — faith, family, love, nature, social movements and sports. And more importantly, it is a reminder that humans need each other. These are the humans of Pepperdine.

Table of Staff Page .......................................................................................................... 5 The Importance of Human Interaction ................................................................ 7 Humans of Pepperdine ...................................................................................... 9 Key Pearson Julie Oni Will Noland How Diversity Shapes Human Interaction .......................................................... 11 More Than a Relationship: How Love and Trust in Relationships Shape the Self .. 15 Humans of Pepperdine ..................................................................................... 19 Priscilla Merlo Dania Ashraf Jeffrey Shultz The Beliefs Humans Hold and Why They Hold Them .......................................... 21 Pepp Students and Faculty Work to De-stigmatize Support Groups ..................... 24 Social Movements Spark Community and Change ............................................. 27 Humans of Pepperdine ..................................................................................... 31 Stacey Lee-Gobir Samantha Wuensche Zeke Bongiovanni Yinjie Zhai The World of Pepperdine .................................................................................. 33 Introverts, Extroverts and Everything In Between............................................... 35 More than a Game: Human Interaction in Sports .............................................. 38

Contents Discovering Self and Others through the Enneagram ..................................... 41 Humans of Pepperdine ................................................................................. 45 Jaxon Burgess Franki Hooks Gretchen Batcheller Juan Carlos Hugues What Makes Humans Beautiful ..................................................................... 47 People with Disabilities Discuss Their Communication Experiences ................. 48 Humans of Pepperdine ................................................................................. 51 Claire Lee Sophia Zummo Joe Karlous Tiger Ashtiani A New Way of Communicating: How Social Media Shapes Interactions ........... 53 Homo sapiens in their Natural Environment .................................................. 57 The Reality of College Roommates ................................................................ 61 Humans of Pepperdine ................................................................................. 63 Ooreoluwa Okediji Lexi Scanlon Diego Perez Taylor Begert COVID-19 Helps People Recognize the Importance of Human Interaction ........ 65

STAFF 5

Editor

Madison Nichols

Assistant Editor

Kiley Distelrath

Assistant Editor

Alex Neis

Production Assistant I

Marisa Dragos

Production Assistant I

Emily Morton

Production Assistant II

Lydia duPerier

Production Assistant II

Camryn Gordon

Production Assistant II

Charlotte Walker

Lead Designer

Melissa Locke

Design Assistant

Joanna Cabalquinto

Photo Editor

Logan Wood

Writers

Karl Winter

Artists

AJ Muonagolu

Lindsey Sullivan

Ally Armstrong

Alli Levens

Makena Huey

Gabby Digiovanni

Annabelle Childers

Marley Penagos

Madeline Duvall

Ashley Mowreader

Paxton Ritchey

Leah Bae

Brianna Willis

Race Dalton

Emily Shaw

Sofia Longo

Grace Wood

Samantha Torre

Jeremy Zerbe

Yamillah Hurtado

Kaelin Mendez

Currents Adviser Christina Littlefield, Associate Professor of Journalism and Religion

The Importance of Human Interaction by Charlotte Walker

Art by Madeline Duvall

Whether a smile in passing, an endearing touch, or an open ear or a lingering conversation, shared moments bring vibrancy to life. No matter one’s love language, Enneagram, or place on the introvert/extrovert scale, human interaction is a necessity for all. The desire for connection lies at the heart of each and every individual. “Looking from a Christian perspective we see that humans are inherently relational creatures,” Relationship IQ Director Kelly Haer said. “We image God — God is a relational God — in the Trinity — the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and as we image Him, we are relational creatures deeply designed to connect with other people.” While each person requires a different level of human interaction, the need for connection is inherent.

Senior Nick Donahue said he believes relationships are the most important thing in life and suggested people have a meaningful conversation with someone for at least an hour a day, whether it’s with an old friend or someone new. “People need to be able to talk to someone, see someone … to see that you’re not alone,” Donahue said. “We are inherently very social beings.” Human interaction has the ability to affect one’s health in both positive and negative ways, sociology researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found. Physical touch from significant others has the potential to improve one’s health, Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, found in a study. People with healthy emotional

support systems have a lesser chance of dying from heart disease, since high blood pressure remains a main factor in cardiovascular disease. Similarly, psychiatrists showed how partner touch correlates with a decrease in cardiovascular reactivity to stress, in a collaborative research effort published in “Behavior Medicine.” In what NPR called the “cuddle hormone,” Oxytocin levels increase when holding hands or receiving a hug and the stress hormone cortisol goes down. “I think that’s an important part of human interaction — feeling that warmth and touch from someone,” senior Claire Duval said. “Being in the actual presence of other people— that’s what’s powerful.” Human interaction is not only physically beneficial, but also imperative for mental health. Loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful as obesity to physical and mental health, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Brigham Young University, found in a study she co-authored. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a much higher percentage of human interaction occurs online.

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People need to be able to talk to someone, see someone ... to see that you’re not alone.

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Being in the actual presence of other people — that’s what’s powerful.

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— Claire Duval, Senior “Technology can offer a very anemic connection,” Haer said. “Technology can be the junk food of communication where we’re just exchanging tiny bits of information over text and we’re really missing out on accessing our full relationship capacity.” With this in mind, Haer suggested people use social media as a springboard to foster deeper connections with others, rather than settling for a cheap substitute of true, life-giving human interaction. She further encouraged everyone to get outside of themselves by calling friends to hear more about them rather than for the purpose of sharing more about themselves. “Don’t talk, just listen,” Donahue agreed. Lending an open ear and touch to those who are in need of human interaction not only considers the well-being of others but promotes personal physical, emotional and mental well-being.

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— Nick Donahue, Senior

Key Pearson Takes a Step Back by Kaelin Mendez

One word to describe junior business administration major Key Pearson is “energized.” She has not gone a week without running since her junior year of high school, drinks half a cup of coffee every morning and loves driving fast. “I like to push myself and see my limits always,” Pearson said. “I like to constantly be busy.” However with COVID-19 and quarantine, Pearson has had to slow down — difficult for someone who likes to be running around. “I think you learn a lot when those aspects of control in your life are taken away,” Pearson said. In this case, she learned to adapt her love of human connection to a socially-distanced world. As the Cross Country and Track team captain, she attempts this by meeting up with teammates living in the Malibu area for mock races and holding a Bible study for the other women on the team. “Just letting them know that we’re all in this together,” Pearson said, in regard to the team activities. “And, you know, training right now — the fitness that we’re building — it’s not for nothing.” With her Christian faith as a central point in her life, Pearson said she has had to listen to and trust God during this time. She talks with her Bible study group to discern God’s messages and understand how He works in chaotic times.

Playwright Julie Oni Uses Power of the Pen by AJ Muonagolu

Photo courtesy of Key Pearson “Well, what has He done during these past few months that wouldn’t have been possible if everything was open?” Pearson said about one topic of discussion. With much still left in the dark, Pearson has found ways to find the light in this situation, counting her blessings and continuing to lead an active life — rock climbing, hiking, surfing, skateboarding — all with friends. And it’s this constant eye on the horizon that contributes to Pearson’s other descriptor: “happy.” “I’m pretty content where I’m at right now, so if I’m here in five years, then I’m going to be good,” Pearson said.

English Professor Julie Oni juggles her roles as a playwright, professor and parent while also trying to understand her dual cultural identities as a Black American and a Nigerian woman. “We come from different backgrounds and different traditions, and so it was something that I was interested in investigating was the kind of lack of total understanding between those two communities,” Oni said. To comprehend the breakdown in these communities, Oni has had to separate her two identities. As a Black woman, Oni has developed an understanding of the ways she has withstood struggle. The plays she writes address that struggle and work against the stigmas society often assigns to Black women. Through her writing and characters, Oni said she feels comfortable talking about her struggle and knows others can connect with and appreciate it. “I’ve realized through my career as a writer, that the more honest you are about whatever challenges you have, the more of a response that you can gain from your audience,” Oni said.

Will Noland Takes a Journey to Recovery by Ashley Mowreader Senior business administration major Will Noland never pictured himself as the kind of person attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But two years into recovery, these meetings have allowed him to find community and comfort on his road to sobriety. “On paper, AA isn’t supposed to work,” Noland said. “Scientifically they don’t know why it does — it’s just a group of alcoholics talking about being alcoholic and knowing that we can’t do it alone.” Noland said he first started experimenting with substances around age 15. Experimenting slowly became addiction. After starting college at Tulane University in New Orleans, Noland fell into a cycle of substance abuse that later led him to withdraw his second semester and move to a rehabilitation center closer to home in Minnesota. Noland spent months progressing from an inpatient center to a halfway house and later a sober house. In Minnesota, he began to build a life for himself: attending community college courses, leading AA meetings and staying sober. In Spring 2018, Noland applied to Pepperdine. Noland said he was drawn to Pepperdine for his next step in life because of the university’s Christian beliefs and dry campus. “Being at Pepperdine seemed like a really great place for me just kind of to focus on my recovery, but also my spirituality and find a really good community of people, which I have and I’m really grateful for,” Noland said.

Photo courtesy of Will Noland On campus and off, Noland continues to be an advocate for support groups and mental health resources. “I wouldn’t be here without mental health awareness, therapy and help from my family,” he said. “Even just being open about it is something that helps my mental health.” Noland is working with the Inter-Club Council to implement an AA support group on Pepperdine’s campus for others looking to walk the road of recovery together.

She said she uses her own experience to outline what it looks like to be Black and connect Black people to one another and other people of color. “I feel that responsibility as a Black American to share the stories of our struggle and share the stories of our joy,” Oni said. Her roots as a Nigerian come from her father, but Oni is still figuring out her connection to her Nigerian identity. She said she hones in on the universal African diaspora intertwined in Nigerian culture. “I feel a very strong connection to people who are saying I wasn’t born and raised on the continent but have these roots in my body,” Oni said. “I need to figure out a way to kind of deal with what that means right. And for me, I feel like part of that is in my writing.” Despite having two cultural identities, there is only one Julie Oni. As she finds self-discovery, Oni informs others that their “story is perfect paradise; share it and we will see ourselves in you.”

Photo courtesy of Julie Oni

How Diversity Shapes Human Interaction by Makena Huey

Art by Gabby Digiovanni From race and socioeconomic status to gender and sexual orientation, diversity comes in many different shapes and sizes. For many young adults, college is the first opportunity to encounter diversity. Although it can render human interaction more challenging, two experts and six students agreed that diversity is a necessary and invaluable aspect of the human experience, especially the college experience. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think human interaction is a very beautiful thing, and I think interacting with people who both look like

you and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look like you can really change your whole entire outlook on life,â&#x20AC;? said Amani McCalleb, senior and president of the Black Student Association. Reasons for and impact of noticing differences Human beings seek connection, and in the process of noting similarities, they consequently note differences. They naturally perceive themselves and others in terms of group identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-

economic status, ability and religion, Communication Professor Charles Choi said. Categorizing each other based on similarities and differences helps people function more effectively. Humans focus on differences because of both internal, psychological forces and external, systemic forces — including the family, the media and lawmakers, Choi said. Observing others’ differences also allows individuals to form their identity. “As I figure out who I am, I’m certainly also picking up on what I am not, and then those outgroups are naturally forming as a contrast to my own identity,” Choi said. Experts agreed this tendency is inherently neutral. “There’s nothing negative about it — we categorize, that’s just what we do,” Sociology Professor Rebecca Kim said. “But when we categorize, let’s not also rank in terms of value.” The tendency to view differences as inherently negative and view each other as groups rather than individuals can be problematic; it can easily lead to discrimination and dehumanization, Choi said. Recognizing differences can also help build relationships and foster inclusivity, sources agreed. “When we see that difference, it provides an opportunity to appreciate it, celebrate it, learn about it,” Choi said. Kim said acknowledging the different identities and perspectives of her students helps her respond to them and create a more inclusive space, ultimately making her a better professor. Senior Grace Ramsey said remaining aware of differences is important to progress toward equality because those differences significantly impact an individual’s lived experience. “We all bleed the same, but the fact that the color of our skin still changes the way people treat us is important to acknowledge,” Ramsey said. Role of the college experience One critical function of education is to provide a context of diversity, Choi and Kim said. Liberal arts universities like Pepperdine are designed to equip students with a wide range of

knowledge while providing safe spaces for open dialogue. “A lot of people have something to say, and college needs to be a place to be able to express it and to maybe even hear yourself say something wrong,” Choi said. Students cited cultural clubs and International Programs as key opportunities to immerse themselves in diversity. “I think it’s so important people take advantage of the college experience because it’s one of the only times we’re around people who are so different,” Choi said. Growing up in the Midwest, junior Isabella Yeager — who serves on the executive board of the Feminist Club — said she did not experience a breadth of viewpoints until her first year at Pepperdine. “Some of the culturally insensitive things that can come out of the conservative crowd were more normalized for me,” Yeager said. “My first year I had trouble really recognizing how damaging it is.” Senior Alexis Hixson moved from Oklahoma to Rwanda at 8 years old and attended the international school where her parents worked as missionaries; upon returning to the U.S., she said she experienced culture shock. Hixson chose to attend Pepperdine because it has a high number of international students and is located in a more diverse state, so she was disappointed to find it racially homogeneous. She said she appreciates that women feel more empowered to speak up in the classroom, but she has also noticed that white student voices drown out those of students of color. “A lot of people grew up in a community with a bunch of other people that are just like them,” Hixson said. “Because they haven’t really been challenged before, they’re really comfortable saying whatever they want to say.” For senior Tyler Speed, the transition from his predominantly Black high school to Pepperdine was more drastic than expected. “There are so many people coming from different parts of the country and the world that you gain a new perspective on everything,” Speed said.

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A lot of people have something to say, and college needs to be a place to be able to express it and to maybe even hear yourself say something wrong. — Charles Choi, Communication Professor

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Pepperdine is trying to walk that middle ground of not making anybody angry, and by doing so, they’re taking a non-position that hurts everyone. — Grace Ramsey, Senior

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“I had no idea what the perspective of someone that was rich was.” While he had to worry about how he was going to pay for tuition and support his family in Detroit, Speed said his peers had the privilege of focusing only on grades. “It was just like a bubble,” Speed said. “A lot of people didn’t understand that there’s more to life around them.” Over his four years at Pepperdine, Speed said he has felt suppressed and misunderstood. Due to the demographics of the campus and the fear of tarnishing Pepperdine’s image, he often feels the need to code-switch, or alternate between two different language varieties. “My demographic isn’t highly represented or respected on campus — unless you’re at a party,” Speed said. McCalleb said attending a predominantly white institution initially caused her to question her identity. “Before I got to Pepperdine I had never thought of my race and my ethnicity because I was around Black people,” McCalleb said. “And then I got to Pepperdine, and I found myself in situations where I was the only Black person. ... I started to become hyper-aware of my existence as a Black woman.” Although Pepperdine is not as racially diverse as she would hope, McCalleb’s experiences of marginalization have made her more self-confident. She said she believes institutions have a responsibility to create spaces with equity and inclusivity at the forefront. “Everyone else on campus gets to live freely and be comfortable without being questioned, and I feel like as a student who pays tuition, I also have that right,” McCalleb said. Challenges and benefits of diversity Choi and Kim agreed that interacting with a diverse group of people is more challenging than interacting with a homogeneous group of people.

All communication is intercultural communication, and when one is interacting with someone who operates on a different value system, miscommunication is inevitable, Choi said. The mindfulness required to communicate effectively can be exhausting, and most individuals are not willing to put in the extra effort because it is not immediately rewarding and seemingly obligates change. “I understand resistance, but I don’t think we should be fearful of that because life is fluid anyway — it’s not like cultures are fixed,” Choi said. Diversity can also create disconnect, and this is evident in instances when Pepperdine’s demographics do not reflect broader demographics. For example, Kim said the lack of diverse representation in the administration can make on-campus interactions more difficult, while the diverse representation in the classroom requires her to be more intentional to not offend or exclude anyone. Ramsey emphasized the importance of colleges representing the student population. There are few women and almost no people of color or LGBTQ+ individuals in administration, and she said the negative impact of this on daily interaction is inescapable. This makes uncomfortable conversations even more important. “Pepperdine is trying to walk that middle ground of not making anybody angry, and by doing, so they’re taking a non-position that hurts everyone,” Ramsey said. Language has consequences, and senior Justin Chai said a diverse community makes one’s words even more important. “It makes us think before we speak,” Chai said. For Speed, diversity — even when it causes conflict — is beneficial because it is necessary for achieving mutual understanding. “Diversity is important whether it produces turmoil or whether it is positive because now you have a broader

view of how the world works and really understand why certain people act how they do,” Speed said. Sources agreed that the benefits of diversity far outweigh the disadvantages. “If you walk in wanting to learn and grow, then you’re more likely to come away with a lot of success with these interactions, and the long-term reward goes through the roof,” Choi said. Hixson said people cannot empathize with others or grow as individuals unless they embrace diversity. Her experience in Rwanda prompted her to appreciate how others’ stories became intertwined with her own story. “You constantly have to shift your perspective into a place where you’re ready to understand what the other person has to say,” Hixson said. Greater diversity can positively impact one’s academic experience, as a sense of belonging makes it easier to participate in classroom discussions. As an Asian American, Choi said he is all too familiar with the feeling of walking into a room where no one looks like him. Ramsey agreed and said a more heterogeneous environment provides individuals who are underrepresented or marginalized with more opportunities for connection. “I can feel very uncomfortable going into a hyper-religious space as a queer person, even a queer Christian,” Ramsey said. “The moment I know there’s someone else like me in that space, it makes me more comfortable.” Although her gender and sexual orientation can be disadvantages, Ramsey said she acknowledges that her privilege — being white and upper-middle class — impacts how she interacts with others. She said she unintentionally committed a microaggression against a student of color, and she is grateful that the student corrected her. “It was truly a humbling experience because I realized that just

because I claim to know better doesn’t mean that I actually do, and I need to listen to the people who have these experiences,” Ramsey said. “It’s painful for me because I hurt someone, but I can’t imagine what it’s like for them to have to deal with that every day.” Although the fear of making mistakes often inhibits people from speaking out, Ramsey said silence can cause even more harm. For her and many others, diversity enriches life. “God intended for our world to be this amazingly diverse thing, and when we can engage in community together in diverse spaces, I think we’re getting steps closer to what that vision was supposed to be,” Ramsey said. Change does not occur in a vacuum, Kim said. Social activism within an institution like Pepperdine — including the 2016 student protests of the Christopher Columbus statue and the more recent development of the @BlackatPepperdine Instagram account — can only occur when the population has reached a certain level of diversity. “Being able to interact with diverse groups of people is not just a positive value,” Kim said. “It’s a must.” McCalleb said the most important impacts of diversity is the new perspectives it enables her to understand. “It allows me to approach life in general with this feeling of welcoming everything and everyone,” McCalleb said. “I understand and I recognize that there are millions and millions of people who go through life just like I go through life, and it looks very different for them.”

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Being able to interact with diverse groups of people is not just a positive value. It’s a must.

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— Rebecca Kim, Sociology Professor

More Than a Relationship: How Love and Trust in Relationships Shape the Self by Emily Shaw

Photo courtesy of Lexi Johnson

Photo courtesy of Steve Rouse

Photo courtesy of Chris Doran

When Stacy Rouse, site manager of the Pepperdine Volunteer Center, attended college in Texas, she and her roommate collected and saved all the Dr. Pepper cans they drank and displayed them on a wall in their dorm room. Psychology Professor Steve Rouse, who also went to school in Texas, had bought the then Stacy Johnson a drink on a particularly tough day, which she then placed in the middle of her soda can display. “I didn’t know how he felt about me,” Stacy Rouse said. “So this was kind of like a victory day of ‘Oh, this boy that I like bought me a soda when I felt bad and made me feel better.’ So it’s sweet, but it’s also embarrassing too.” The Rouses have been married since 1992. But like any relationship, it has not always been simple or full of “victories.” Whether one looks at long-term couples, newlyweds, or seasoned married folk, the challenges and successes of each relationship foster an opportunity for self-growth and understanding others better. “In individuals and in couples, the universal truth is we are interested in issues of identity and issues of safety,” said Sharon Hargrave, marriage and family therapist and executive director of the Boone Center for the Family. “We are interested in love and trust.”

relationship to automatically fill one’s insecurities or define one’s purpose or identity. “It’s not up to our partner to make us feel OK, but it is up to us to learn how we can be constructive in our coping with other people when we feel pain or when we get emotionally dysregulated,” Hargrave said. The pressure of marriage and marriage itself Religion Professor Chris Doran said many Christians in the U.S. tend to believe that a cisgender heterosexual marriage with children is what God desires for everyone, making some feel excluded if they don’t fit the norm. Doran said he thinks Christians who might be feeling this pressure should consider whether they believe Jesus — who did not marry — is the epitome of what it means to be human. “[ Jesus] lived a full life,” Doran said. “He did everything that God asked him to do, and if that’s a full life, then it’s possible for people to be single and live a full life and to be valued members of their community.” Hargrave said that although being single is a great choice, even single people need others to go through life together.

The pressure to be in a relationship Before finding a romantic partner, many often feel a pressure to pursue a romantic relationship, marriage and then a family. But for some single people, the pressure to be in a relationship comes from an internal desire to get married, Relationship IQ Director Kelly Haer said. Haer has researched the emotional experience of singleness, particularly for those who want to be married. She said the construct called ambiguous loss — which can be when a person is psychologically present to another person but is physically absent — describes how some single people might be feeling. “If a single person is single and they desire to be married, the desired partner is not physically present, but they’re alive in their mind,” Haer said. “The single person may be wondering, ‘Am I going to find this person?’” Haer said she has found that for many individuals, identifying this feeling of ambiguous loss, seeking mutual support and connecting with others helps one to accept this ambiguity and find meaning and hope during it. A dating relationship is also not the place to search for the answer to the questions, “Am I loveable?” or “Who am I?” Haer said. Hargrave echoed Haer about not expecting a

Photo courtesy of Deidra Myatt Seaver College and School of Law alumnus Matt Myatt and his wife Deidra said they grew in their understanding of what it means to go through life with another person after getting married in January. The couple moved to Uganda, where Matt Myatt had already been working, and lived there for eight months. This was their first time living together, as well as living in an unfamiliar place without any family or friends, Matt Myatt said. Both Deidra and Matt Myatt said that in Uganda they learned the importance of self-care, communication and listening in a relationship, as well as knowing they’re on the same team, even during disagreements. Matt Myatt said he also realized the value in seeking community and mentorship to support their marriage as a couple.

Less people are getting married, according to TIME magazine. This can make marriage seem like only a title for some. To Doran, marriage is an important public covenant, where both parties consent to the marriage and witnesses to the marriage help to support the relationship. Marriage for Matt Myatt is a covenantal and sacrificial love, a significant public commitment to love one’s spouse the way that Christ loves the church.

“If we’re born into a place that honors who we are, that helps us create a healthy identity, we’re going to be more able to connect to other people in relationships because we feel good about who we are,” Hargrave said. One of the problems in relationships is a tendency to cut the other person off and leave when things get especially challenging. However, Hargrave said by empowering people to identify their own feelings and coping mechanisms and focus on their own participation in a relationship, they can change their interactions within the relationship. “Because if you’re in a relationship and you spend most of the time trying to change the person that you’re in the relationship with, it doesn’t work,” Hargrave said. “You cannot change another person.” Hargrave also emphasized how relationships can contribute to personal growth. “If you’re willing to learn who you are when you look in that mirror, and willing to learn how to negotiate life in a better way, you’ll grow,” Hargrave said. The formation of trust

Photo courtesy of Katie White The individual experience of love Katie White, Pepperdine 2019 alumna, started dating her current boyfriend Jaxon Burgess, a 2020 alumnus and first-year Pepperdine law student, about three years ago after she returned from studying abroad during her sophomore year. White said being single her freshman and sophomore years allowed her to be present during her study abroad experience, build community with others and learn more about herself before getting into a committed relationship. Hargrave said how people are loved by others teaches them about their identity, emphasizing the importance of love in relationships. “If we feel like we belong to a relationship; if we feel worthy in a relationship — if we feel unique and special in a relationship — that helps us develop a strong sense of identity,” Hargrave said. Relationship dynamics from birth impact this development, and unhealthy coping mechanisms can form if those dynamics are destructive, Hargrave said.

Hargrave said another essential part of a relationship — in addition to love — is trust. There are three significant components of trust: predictability, openness and honesty, and balance. “The concept of ‘Am I safe in relationships?’ we don’t think about that as much,” Hargrave said. “But it is as important, if not more important that we feel like we can trust another relationship.” The first component, predictability, is when a person does what they say they’re going to do. “People have to be trustworthy, up to 85 to 90% of the time in order for us to feel comfortable in relationships,” Hargrave said. Pepperdine senior David McQuilkin said in his relationship with his boyfriend Justin Welling, he feels he can be fully transparent with his emotions — fulfilling the second pillar of trust: openness and honesty. “We really built a strong foundation and kind of figured out what each other’s goals were before the relationship even started,” McQuilkin said. “So it’s kind of easy to build a relationship once you are both on the same page.” McQuilkin said an important milestone for him in the relationship was when he stayed with Welling and his family. “That was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I really see myself fitting in with this family for the long run,’” McQuilkin said. Family became an especially important part of the relationship for McQuilkin when he lost his mom to cancer in December 2019.

The concept of soul mates

Photo courtesy of David McQuilkin “Having [ Justin] along my side during the whole process of her cancer diagnosis and her passing away, I think that kind of really put family in the forefront of my mind and kind of made being around his family and him being around my family more of an importance to me,” McQuilkin said. Hargrave, who met her now-husband Terry Hargrave while in eighth grade, said their dating relationship lacked stability because of her fear of relationships due to the loss of her father and two brothers. “I would have told you I wanted to be in a close relationship, but there was something inside of me that every time Terry and I got too close, I would break up with him,” Hargrave said. She and Terry have now been married for 41 years, have raised a son and a daughter and have two grandsons. “Marriage and the commitment to marriage for me, and I think for most of us, is the commitment to a lifelong partner that helps you heal,” Hargrave said. Pepperdine 2020 alumni Lexi Johnson and Harold Aguayo met when they were first-years and have been dating for three years. Aguayo said during their friendship and when they first started dating, they had established three values in their relationship: communication, transparency and honesty. One thing they’ve been able to do when a conflict arises between them is to view it as “us versus the issue.” Their relationship also exemplifies the third component of trust, balance. Aguayo said he and Johnson are equals in their relationship, but that does not always mean they have to split their efforts 50/50. “I don’t think that’s really realistic in a relationship,” Aguayo said. “I think that there’s going to be times where your partner is gonna need you to give 90% and all they could give is 10%, but as long as that’s not happening 100% of the time, then I think you’re solid.”

When thinking about the topic of soul mates, Doran said he and his wife both believe that it is possible for them to be married to other people and still live perfectly happy lives. “To think that if we had not found each other, we would have been miserable, terrible human beings, I think is a really weird Hollywood-ish kind of idea,” Doran said. Doran said he is not a big fan of the concept of soul mates and does not think it is real; however, he does believe that there is something about feeling connected to another person. As a former scientist, Doran thinks about the Quantum Entanglement Theory, which is when there is an entanglement between particles and something could happen on one side of the universe that would be entangled with another part of the universe. Doran said he believes that instead of soul mates, people can be so connected with and engrossed in another person’s life, in a healthy way, that it is hard for some to even imagine themselves without that person. Aguayo and Johnson said they are not huge fans of the concept of soul mates because they think it implies that everything in a relationship is easy, when in reality, a lot of hard work is put in. Hargrave said she believes relationships can be challenging because a marriage or a relationship often acts as a mirror that allows a person to see themself like they never have before. While this can be difficult, the relationship is still worthwhile, as there is no greater joy than having a companion that goes through life with you. “I have healed because I have learned that you can be in a relationship with another person — a close relationship with another person that doesn’t die,” Hargrave said. “I’ve learned that, but I’ve also learned that the relationship risk is worth it.”

Photo courtesy of Sharon Hargrave

Priscilla Merlo Finds Her Way to Herself by Ashley Mowreader

Senior international studies major Priscilla Merlo exudes warmth. Merlo has been on a journey to find herself through reimagining her faith and her passions. During her time at Pepperdine, Merlo has explored theologies that have spurred her to reevaluate her love of people, Latinx culture and her career goals. “I try to approach everything that I do in love,” Merlo said. “I think coming out of these last couple of months, it’s a little bit easier to approach things in love just because there’s no time to take things for granted.” Growing up in an American Baptist “brown church,” Merlo said she was raised with a Latinx understanding of theology. “The migrant church has a spirituality that is absolutely rooted in perseverance and in a perseverance that allows one’s faith to be persistent and overcome obstacles,” Merlo said. “I think the whole understanding of migrant theology and migrant faith is that you keep going. So I have that ingrained in my system — in my bones.” During her sophomore year, Merlo dug into Ada Maria Isasi-Dazi’s mujerista theology — a Latinx feminist liberation theology. In viewing her faith through this lens, Merlo began to see God as a woman and God in her mother.

Junior year, Merlo attende a Black Student Association and Latinx Student Alliance convocation session that furthered her understanding of efforts to decolonize theology — separating European colonial culture from true biblical faith. “Those spaces really saved my faith while at Pepperdine, as well as helping to form my own theology in certain regards,” Merlo said. After graduation, Merlo said she hopes to use her nonprofit management minor to continue to support and fight for minority social issues such as femicide, migrant issues and rights for asylum seekers and the incarcerated population.

Photo courtesy of Priscilla Merlo

When senior economics major Dania Ashraf was a sophomore, she received an email about applying to work as an international student ambassador. Ashraf knew this was her opportunity to improve the international student experience at Pepperdine — so she signed up. “There [were] a number of things that were happening that I really wanted to speak up about or fix at Pepperdine,” Ashraf said. “And so [I asked myself], ‘Who can I go to? Or, what role can I be in that would enable me to make a difference?’” Ashraf has now been an ambassador for two years. She has used her experience as an international student from Karachi, Pakistan, to communicate with others in the program. “Identifying the needs of international students and being able to help them out, I would say, has been the best part of the program,” Ashraf said.

As an ambassador, Ashraf has had opportunities to meet and interact with a variety of people. She said she has learned a thing or two about herself and the way she engages with others. “What I appreciate about interaction is to be able to learn other perspectives and other people’s point of views,” Ashraf said. “By meeting different people and engaging in conversation, it is really interesting to see why people think the way they do.” Ashraf said her dream job would be to work as an ambassador for Pakistan. It would allow her to both help her home country and educate others about Pakistan. “I feel like that’s something that I’ve always been attracted to because one, you do get to travel the world, but you also get to represent your country and show them what it’s all about,” Ashraf said.

Jeffrey Schultz Finds the Beauty in Truth by Lindsey Sullivan

Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Shultz

Dania Ashraf Connects with Students Around the World by Samatha Torre

Photo courtesy of Dania Ashraf

Many students know the prize-winning poet and essayist Jeffrey Schultz as a beloved professor of English, humanities, literature, Great Books and formerly creative writing. Schultz combines his love of literature and writing with a passion for teaching — and in both endeavors he said his aim is to find the beauty within truth. “When I look at the world that we live in today, there is an enormous amount of ugliness and that is what gives my work its, sort of, trajectory,” Schultz said. “I’m interested in where beauty and truth intersect. … I’m always trying to get closer to it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever found it.” When Pepperdine didn’t renew Schultz’ creative writing teaching contract in the spring, his students rallied around him, creating a petition to appeal the decision. The outcry of student support prompted Pepperdine to renew Schultz’ contract for

the fall as a professor in the Humanities Division. “[My students] supported me through one of the most difficult episodes of my life, and it was beautiful,” Schultz said. “That’s how it struck me at the time, which is like saying the students performed a sort of magic. They took this terrible thing that was happening and made it into its own opposite.” After growing up in a low-performing academic environment, it wasn’t until college that Schultz realized his love for literature and the power of education. It is his students, Schultz said, that keep his love and curiosity for learning alive. Compassionate, driven, earnest, brilliant — these are a few of the words Schultz used to describe his students. “Education changed my life and the way I look at essentially everything,” Schultz said. “That potential is something I hope to bring to my own classes.”

Photo courtesy of Christina Stratton

The Beliefs Humans Hold and Why They Hold Them by Camryn Gordon Belief systems are complex. They are a set of values, norms and stories that people tell to explain their place in the world, Political Science Professor Chris Soper said. They can take various forms and can range from religion to politics. “Beliefs are inherently the things that aren’t concrete and the things that we have to choose to believe,” senior Julia Clark said. Beliefs are intricate among people, within families and between relationships; no two people have the same belief systems because no two stories are the same. “The belief system that someone holds — and the things that they hold on to — says a lot about who they are as a person and how they view the world,” Clark said. Professing beliefs Joel Fetzer, a political science and sociology professor, is well-known at Pepperdine for his utter transparency in and out of the classroom. Raised in

a pro-military, white, Southern, Protestant fundamentalist environment, Fetzer challenges the rules of academia with his provocative teaching style. “It was always frustrating when professors pretended to be objective or centrist or whatever when in fact, they were anything but,” Fetzer said. “It was just concealed. That struck me as a form of dishonesty. Deceit.” His own graduate work led him to challenge the beliefs of his family and come to believe that many of the adults he was supposed to admire and trust lied. Therefore, he begins every semester with a frank disclosure of his beliefs and where he stands politically. Fetzer, whose central value is equality, often shares with his students that some colleagues refer to him as a “communist,” but he said that doesn’t phase him. “When you’re teaching political science or sociology, [ideology is] incredibly relevant,” Fetzer said. “A Communist and a Nazi would presumably teach calculus the same way. But if they’re competent, a Communist and a Nazi are not going to teach political science the same way.”

Fetzer said he only has one goal for the students who complete his courses. “I want the students that have lived relatively sheltered lives — from a class perspective — to be aware of what the world is really like,” Fetzer said. Communication Professor Jennifer Akamine Phillips said her belief system is founded on equality, compassion, empathy and “observations of others.” Phillips, who grew up in an Asian American family, understands the complexity of culture, the longing for normalcy and the disruption that dual-perspectives can bring. But more than that, she said she understands how her upbringing contributed to her teaching style. “Just knowing that no one has it easy — that we all have a story — I think that helps me gain a lot of empathy,” Phillips said. “And again, it continued my passion for just wanting to learn about other cultures and traveling a lot more.” Phillips spoke specifically about how intercultural communication — a general education option — challenges the students’ belief systems. “There’s a debunking stereotype and misconceptions assignment that I created,” Phillips said. “It forces [the students] to take different stereotypes and find academic resources and current news resources to both prove that it’s a problem and also to debunk the myth and to show from an academic perspective why [it’s] incorrect.”

system: Psychology Professor Cindy Miller-Perrin and Sports Medicine Professor Cooker Perkins Storm. “What made those professors different from the others was their ability to challenge me,” Stratton said. The role of family and community Fetzer, whose father worked as an intelligence officer in the United States Army, recounted how his childhood influenced other core beliefs: non-violence, pacifism and honesty. “When I was young, about 13 or 14, I said to my dad, ‘How can you be a Christian and bomb people? I mean, you’re basically engaging in the business of killing communists’,” Fetzer said. His father replied: “‘Well, no, if we don’t nuke them, they’ll nuke us.’”

Beliefs in the classroom Clark, a religion major and the vice president of Pepperdine’s LGBTQ+ club, Crossroads Gender and Sexuality Alliance, said she believes that one of the biggest things she learned since starting Pepperdine is that the world is more expansive than she was previously led to believe. Clark, who grew up in a very conservative church in Virginia, said she experienced a lot of personal turmoil in her Religion 101 course during her first year on campus. “When I came to Pepperdine, I was like pretty liberal politically, but theologically I was very conservative,” Clark said. “I’ve grown up with this idea that there is the only way to be Christian and only one way to do things. “It made me question everything,” Clark continued. “[My professor] said that you can believe whatever you want but you have to be able to defend it, and I wasn’t able to.” Senior Christina Stratton said her professors have influenced her beliefs through forming trusting relationships. “Before those professors ever took the steps to change what I believed in, they took the time to get to know and develop trust with me,” Stratton said. Stratton, one of six students in the Psychology Honors Program, finds comfort in knowing that two professors have made a significant impact on her belief

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Akamine Phillips

Photo courtesy of Joel Fetzer Like Fetzer, Phillips found her childhood to also be formative for her. “I think growing up in an Asian American household — my parents immigrated to the U.S. — I often saw a dual perspective in terms of culture,” Phillips said. She said she often struggled between wanting “normalcy” and wanting to accept her own unique identity.

“As I got older, I learned to actually really embrace my Asian identity and appreciate it differently,” Phillips said. “My first time traveling [out of the country] was to Japan with my dad, and that was the first time that I realized being half Japanese is really incredible.” While Phillips’s family had differences in culture, Clark’s family challenged each other to respect change. When Clark’s parents moved to California there was a significant shift in the formation of her and her immediate family’s belief systems. “My parents over the last 10 years have become super liberal, and . . . seeing how my brothers and I have responded to that in different ways has been really interesting,” Clark said. Clark’s parents played a large role in how she and her siblings’ belief systems came to be. “I’ve learned a lot from my parents and how to be in a relationship with people who hold different views,” Clark said. Stratton described her parents’ teaching style as an instillment of guiding principles rather than political beliefs; without bias, her parents allowed her and her brother to decide what was most important. Stratton, who is passionate about women’s rights, finds comfort knowing that while her little brother’s values may differ from her own, their relationship remains strong because of their ability to respectfully challenge each other. “Our differences stem less from just choosing different political parties from each other and more from holding different guiding values and different principles at different priority levels,” Stratton said.

Clark said Pepperdine taught her how to come to terms with her own identity. “When I was told that those two things can’t coexist, but they did coexist in me, there was a dissonance,” Clark said. “I did love God, and I am gay — those two things have to coexist because they do.”

Dealing with differences For many people, a difference in belief systems can lead to the end of a relationship and even contribute to “cancel culture.” Cancel culture is a popular group-shaming trend on social media where individuals will “withdraw support for public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered offensive,” according to Dictionary.com. The individual belief system is unique, humans are complex and while they may not understand one another all the time, hate, canceling and disrespect are never the correct response to difference, Phillips said. “I think a lot of times if we don’t like someone, it’s often because we don’t understand them,” Phillips said. “We haven’t learned about them, their stories, their communities and where they come from. I think that when we take time to do that, we are more likely to see them as not as much of a threat, as opposed to someone who just thinks just differently from the way that we do.”

Belief systems are personal Fairness is important for Stratton as well as representation in all places, for all people. “It’s important to have people that any child can relate to people who are in positions of power,” Stratton said. “Having women and men who look like every child, who have backgrounds like every child, helps [children] to realize they have the opportunity to achieve their dreams.” The lack of serious attention that women’s issues receive saddens Stratton. “When women believe there’s no reason for people to be fighting for women’s rights, that’s when I really get emotional because there was probably a time in history when I would have agreed with that,” Stratton said, tearfully. Clark reflected on how her upbringing challenged the way she constructed her beliefs. “I think for most of my life, I would have considered [religion and the LGBTQIA+ community] mutually exclusive as well,” Clark said. “And that was definitely what I was taught in my church growing up in that you can either be gay or you can be Christian.”

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Akamine Phillips

Pepp Students and Faculty Work to Destigmatize Support Groups by Grace Wood

Art by Leah Bae In a time when many are limiting the amount of interaction they have with other people, support groups — even in a virtual setting — can be an important part of the healing journey. It is important to note the difference between support groups and group therapy. Group therapy is a form of mental health treatment where a mental health professional brings together individuals afflicted with the same condition. Support groups, however, unite individuals who are currently facing — or have faced in the past — similar life struggles, such as sexual assault or grieving the loss of a loved one, according to the Mayo Clinic. A licensed professional, or a lay person with adequate experience, can lead a support group. “Their biggest help is bringing together people who have something in common,” Shelle Welte said. “There’s kind of an instant connection there where they can share their stories, their personal expe-

riences, and feel like, ‘Someone is going to get me.’ And they might even get some advice, some feedback from other people in the group that’s really helpful for them.”

One student’s perspective Mackenzie Mazen is an MBA student at Pepperdine. Mazen has experienced more than her fair share of traumatic experiences in her life: being sexually assaulted as a child, losing her father to suicide when she was just 10 years old and being diagnosed with several chronic illnesses, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. During her time at Pepperdine, Mazen has been the leader of a support group for students with invisible illnesses, and she started a support group for students going through grief. Mazen said because she is comfortable talking about the loss of her father and has spent several years volunteering at a camp designed for young

people going through the stages of grief, she is a good fit to facilitate a support group. “I’m obviously a lot more comfortable with my grief because it’s been 11 years,” Mazen said. “But there are people who are just now going through this. And if I can create space where people can talk about that and not feel weird about it, then that’s something that I wanted to do.”

“

And if I can create space where people can talk about that and not feel weird about it, then that’s something that I wanted to do.

”

— Mackenzie Mazen, MBA student

A huge aspect of the support groups Mazen is involved in is prioritizing the comfort of students. Mazen said she wants the groups to feel as normal and conversational as possible, trying to stay away from the image of folding chairs arranged in a circle that may come to mind when some think of support groups. Mazen said she was inspired by a group she attended while studying abroad in London, in which adults gathered, ate dinner together and discussed their grief in a comfortable setting. Mazen said she noticed how comfortable the participants — who had experienced a range of losses — were in that setting, and wanted to emulate that in Malibu. “I kind of took the concept of like the dinner party, where we would just have

dinner together and then talk about, you know, whatever you wanted to talk about related to your grief,” Mazen said.

The benefits of opening up La Shonda Coleman, director of the Student Care Team and Title IX coordinator, said the very act of sharing one’s feelings with another person can help alleviate the trauma they may be experiencing. Coleman said someone who may not know exactly how to express what they are feeling can have their experiences affirmed in the support group setting. “With trauma, sometimes there [are] not words that can actually express what they’re holding in their body,” Coleman said. “For those who have found a way to communicate, whether it’s through sensory words or explicitly stating what they feel or what they felt, it can help to provide a model for someone else who’s looking to do the same thing. It can help to normalize an experience.” Coleman also said sharing traumatic experiences, like an abusive relationship or sexual assault, can help rewire the brain to create healthy relationships. “The interpersonal connection with another person may serve a unique purpose,” Coleman said. “Witnessing that person, helping them to feel safe or offering them resources with interpersonal trauma, it can help by creating an opportunity to experience relationships differently and to begin to feel like, maybe, that one can trust another person or be vulnerable with another person.”

Online support groups Welte said the connection, support and healing that can be received from support groups are especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Right now, we really need connection,” Welte said. “At this particular moment in the world, it’s a really helpful thing for students to have a place where they feel understood by other people.” While she thinks in-person support groups are best, Welte said there are

unforeseen benefits to online groups. Those attending the group can do so in the familiarity of wherever they’re living, and also transition quickly between their classes and whichever group they may be attending. “It kind of levels the playing field for people,” Welte said. The Student Wellness Advisory Board (SWAB) often partners with the Counseling Center on different wellness initiatives on campus. SWAB also uses its Instagram account to provide mental health awareness and exposure for the support groups the Counseling Center offers. Senior Morgan Clinton, a representative for SWAB, said support groups can be a great option for someone who is new to counseling or is nervous to share their trauma with loved ones. “They are very helpful, especially for students who feel intimidated by doing one-on-one therapy with a therapist at the Counseling Center,” Clinton said. “The problem is just getting people initially to make that plunge and to commit to it, especially now that we’re virtual, because things are so much more awkward on Zoom.” Coleman said there are many reasons a person could be hesitant to join a support group, or even seek counseling at all. A person’s trust or vulnerability could have been exploited in the past, and for people of color, mental health resources are not only stigmatized but also harder to get. “Not every racial identity has been supported in asking for help,” Coleman said. “It has meant different things for different people. For some within our country, to ask for help was seen as being lazy or asking for handouts, whereas for others, not so much.”

Destigmatize and normalize Coleman said one of the best ways to normalize support groups is to actively work to honor those who have taken the step to be vulnerable to others. “We can destigmatize asking for help by celebrating help-seeking behaviors,” Coleman said. “It’s a demonstration of

inner strength and self-awareness. We are not created to do life alone we are created to work interdependently.” Clinton said the stigma of support groups will be mitigated when individuals can be open and honest with each other, not shying away from questions or topics that may seem taboo. “Far too often, especially at Pepperdine, we have an issue making people uncomfortable because we’re so much about the status quo and the ‘Pepper-fine’ thing,” Clinton said. “Something that SWAB does a really good job of is, in a delicate way, asking those hard questions and coming down to: ‘Why do we even have this normalization problem in the first place?’” Senior Aine Jones, a student representative for SWAB, said it is important to remember that healing is not linear, and support groups may just be one step in the holistic healing journey. “If one aspect of your health is suffering, the others are too,” Jones said. “So when it comes to mental health, making sure you’re also still taking care of your body and you’re surrounded by friends and people you love; that is so important to your overall health and wellness too.” Mazen said a piece of advice she has for people considering joining a support group is to not overthink the experience. “Healing doesn’t have to start there, healing can start anywhere,” Mazen said. “It can start just listening to other people sharing things about their lives and being like, ‘Oh, like I resonate with that.’ If you’re scared to go, just [go] in knowing that you have no obligation to do anything.” The Counseling Center is currently offering several virtual support groups and workshops, including a Black student support group, a group for international students and a workshop offering breathwork and anxiety-management skills training.

Photo courtesy of Heavin Hunter-Hernandez

Social Movements Spark Community and Change by Marley Penagos America has seen an incredible amount of powerful protests and marches. In fact, almost every marginalized group in the United States gained their rights through protests. These social movements have made an impact on many students as they enter adulthood during a time of intense socio-political turmoil. On and off Pepperdine’s campus, students are rallying for change and making a difference in any way they can. “I realized that there is no specific way a person is supposed to look or be when it comes to actually creating that change,” Pepperdine 2020 alumna Heavin Hunter-Hernandez said. “It’s caused me to expand and broaden my view, to not typecast someone or write them off because of how they look, or what they may seem like, or their socio-economic class or anything like that. Because I know and I’ve seen there’s power in unity and there’s power in numbers.”

Student activists have learned valuable life lessons through their experiences with social movements; those lessons have been just as impactful as the movements themselves. Drawing meaning from a movement Despite roadblocks like COVID-19, many student activists remain hopeful in regard to social movements and the change that they continue to generate. Despite the progress made over the past months, these students are anxious to get back to pre-pandemic marches and protests. Hunter-Hernandez described the atmosphere of the protests she has attended as unifying. “There’s always such an empowering feeling and atmosphere when you step into a place like that,” Hunter-Hernandez said. “You feel like, ‘Wow, I’m not the only one who’s losing sleep

over these issues and who cares about these issues and who these things are affecting or may know people who these things are affecting,’ and for me it really restores hope in humanity.” Jakub Mierzejewski, a former Pepperdine student who left the university in 2019, agreed and said his protest experiences have been powerful. “I’ve always felt so inspired and like I have this power inside of me that I could just like take over the world with,” Mierzejewski said. “It’s just like this surrounding of love and power and joy and just using our voices that’s made it so incredible every single time.” These protests provide a sense of community for many individuals. “We can see that it’s not just Black people at these events and at these protests,” senior Josias Escobar said. “It’s white people and Latino people and Asian people; it’s people of all colors.” With this sense of community comes a feeling of relief. “As a mother with two biracial daughters, the fact that [the George Floyd protests] were so multigenerational, and multiracial and multiethnic, I think is so healing for them,” said Abigail Smith, Waves Debate director and communication professor. “For them to not just see other Black people saying ‘You matter,’ but to see white people saying ‘You matter,’ old people saying ‘You matter,’ young people saying ‘You matter’... That is, from what they’ve told me, a very healing moment.” There is a uniquely human connection that is shared at protests, Mierzejewski said. It’s powerful that so many individuals from different walks of life can come together as one and fight for a just cause. The diversity displayed at protests — not only in America but around the world — has begun to send messages of hope. “[Protests] have taught me that humans are social by nature, but we’re accepting by proxy,” Mierzejewski said. “Not everybody is thinking the same way, but we’re all discussing these topics — ; and it’s important to discuss these topics.” There are five core reasons why individuals rise up in protest: grievances, efficacy (an individual’s belief that one can make a difference through protest), emotions, identity and social embeddedness (one’s web of personal and social attachments), social psychologists in the Netherlands found in a 2013 study. Emotions and personal beliefs are the overarching driving factors in why social movements come to fruition. Feelings of anger are typically associated with social movements, the study found. Belonging to certain groups (i.e. racial,

ethnic, gender) increases the likelihood of an individual’s participation in social movements. The rise of social media activism Social media has been a platform for activism for years now, with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag turning 7 years old in 2020. Online forms of activism are now the safest option for many people who are striving to spread awareness while also steering clear of the risk of COVID-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic and the most recent wave of protests for the Black Lives Matter movement, colorful graphics have popped up left and right. While some believe these graphics spread awareness, others think that these posts break down and trivialize the issue at hand. Senior Alyssa Anderson said her experience with social media activism has been largely positive and allows her to become more involved with issues she hadn’t previously considered. “Pepperdine is a primarily white institution, and I’m in Greek life, so I felt like I’d be able to reach people that I wouldn’t normally be able to reach otherwise,” Anderson said. But students question how deep these social posts reach. “I can post on my Instagram story all day long, but are people actually doing anything about it?” Hunter-Hernandez said. “Are they actually reading it?” Many students think that while social media posts are the best they can do considering the circumstances at hand, the posts themselves are not as effective. “I hate the social media infographics because I feel like they don’t work,” sophomore Kristopher Gordon said. “Like the Justice for Breonna Taylor unfortunately became a meme, and then Vanity Fair made her the cover, and that is not how change gets passed. You know, people just skip, skip, skip through.” Smith agreed. “We have to be careful if we are using social media for activism,” Smith said. “Because that can kind of signal a lack of the genuineness that is necessary for real change to happen. So you’ve made the statement, you’ve changed your profile picture, but what are you actually doing to change this problem?” Many students said they think social media activism can only be positive when it is followed up with more action than an Instagram post alone. “Some people will post on social media all they want and then not do anything about it, and I don’t think that’s the same thing as actually

Pepperdine Graphic File Photo participating in an event or donating or signing petitions,” Mierzejewski said. One Instagram account, however, is making waves of change within the Pepperdine community. In July, an anonymous Instagram account with the handle @BlackatPepperdine began posting to bring awareness to the negative, racially-charged incidents students of color have experienced while attending Pepperdine. “I’m really glad that @BlackatPepperdine exists,” Escobar said. “I’m glad people are finally stepping up and talking about it and calling out the administration.” Sharing insensitive run-ins with other students, offensive jokes administrators have made and even blatant racism from some faculty, the orange and blue posts are uploaded to an audience of nearly 3,000 followers. Many students have expressed anger in the comments of these posts, tagging Pepperdine’s various Instagram accounts and often tagging the organizations who have been accused of discrimination or insensitive behavior. In a presidential briefing, President Jim Gash addressed one of the @BlackatPepperdine posts that criticized him. Students still said they would like administrators to thoroughly address the nearly 300 posts on the page. “Students can be assured that faculty, staff and administrators have been reading

Photo courtesy of Jakub Mierzejewski @BlackAtPepperdine, that the feedback has been discussed and incorporated into the Presidential Action Advisory Team’s recommendations for action to the president,” Connie Horton, vice president for Student Affairs, wrote in an email. “Many of us have also had the opportunity to discuss the concerns raised on @BlackatPepperdine with students to influence our next steps.” Gash formed the new Presidential Action Advisory Team to work with the University Diversity Council to advise him on how to improve diversity and inclusion efforts at the university. Gash announced via email Oct. 28 a list of initiatives Pepperdine will be taking. Social movements on Pepperdine’s campus Before COVID-19, Pepperdine’s Malibu campus acted as the backdrop while students sparked numerous social movements — from protests to sit-ins. In 2016, then-freshman Hunter-Hernandez organized a walk for unity for Pepperdine students and staff as a way to bring peace and awareness to campus after the 2016 election ended in victory for President Donald Trump. “I felt like there was truly a cognitive dissonance and a lack of understanding, which is what some people are taught to celebrate, while others fear for their lives and their futures,” Hunter-Hernandez said.

Her goal for the movement was to spread empathy to those who were fearful after Trump’s election, such as Pepperdine community members who were also members of the LGBTQ+ community, Latinx students and DACA recipients, Hunter-Hernandez said. “We hear your voices, we hear your concerns,” Hunter-Hernandez said. “And we cried together and we laughed together, and there were people there that just listened.” Hunter-Hernandez has been involved in various protests on Pepperdine’s campus and has seen the power they hold unfold before her eyes. “We protested to get the Christopher Columbus statue removed and the picture that depicted indigenous people in a subservient manner hung in the Caf — we protested to get that removed and replaced,” Hernandez-Hunter said. “It felt so good to stand around the Christopher Columbus statue and hold hands with so many of my peers and to pray together.” While most of her experiences on campus have been overwhelmingly positive, Hunter-Hernandez and other student organizers said they felt stifled when administration became involved. After the Borderline shooting in 2018, Hunter-Hernandez was one of many students who attempted to organize a peaceful sit-in against gun violence in honor of their lost friend and peer, Alaina Housley. “We spoke to [two Pepperdine faculty members] so they were aware of what we were going to be doing,” Hunter-Hernandez said. “In retrospect, I kind of regret having them involved in the picture because I think we didn’t have the creative freedom to do what we really wanted to do to its fullest.” She said administration limited the small group to a single corner in the cafeteria and prevented tours from passing through the area. “You know, the administration kind of had their hand over it,” Hunter-Hernandez said. “I didn’t think that was very transparent, and I wish that we could have done it our way.” Her frustration stems from a perceived lack of action and recognition from Pepperdine administration on current issues. “We can’t say we are a Christian university and we love people when we don’t advocate for situations, and we don’t advocate for stricter policies when we have the power to,” Hunter-Hernandez said. Other student activists on campus have experienced similar treatment from Pepperdine’s administration as well.

As a freshman in Fall 2019, Mierzejewski organized a school strike for climate change at Pepperdine in line with climate activist Greta Thunberg’s call to action for students around the world. Approximately 150 Pepperdine students participated in the climate strike, including Gordon — who said he believed that administration again limited the student body. “We were not allowed to strike on the side of the Pepperdine sign on the road,” Gordon said. “Personally, I believe that Pepperdine didn’t want — from the outside — people to see us striking against Pepperdine. They wanted us inside, so only Pepperdine students saw what we were doing, which I think was a little shady.” Horton wrote she did not know the specific cases but wrote that the university can put some limitations on time, place or manner of protest. “We will work with students to come to a reasonable solution, but we want to make sure academic and business operations are not disrupted,” Horton wrote. “We welcome a conversation to arrive at a plan that students feel meet their objectives.” Despite facing opposition from administrators, Mierzejewski said the strike went well, and even picked up traction from local media sources. “Here at Pepperdine everything is a little bit more personal,” Smith said. “So I imagine the response of pushing people to the periphery, and that’s such a visual for how those students may already be feeling.”

Photo courtesy of Jakub Mierzejewski

Stacey Lee Gobir Challenges the Stigma by Lindsey Sullivan

Photo courtesy of Stacey Lee Gobir

As a first generation Korean-American, Stacey Lee Gobir has devoted her life’s work to challenging negative stigmas associated with mental health services. Lee Gobir, who earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and a master’s degree in dispute resolution from Pepperdine, is now a coordinator for the Health, Wellness and Resilience Education Program. Much of her work centers around student outreach and having conversations with students about mental health resources. “So much of my life I [have felt] too Korean to be American but too American to be Korean,” Lee Gobir said. “I feel like a lot of that was manifested in the way I viewed mental health resources.” For Lee Gobir, growing up in a family with a collectivist culture meant that having conversations around mental health or seeking help might be perceived as ungrateful or disrespectful to the family. This is because there was the potential for therapy to expose the family’s shortcomings.

Now Lee Gobir actively works to ensure students — particularly those in marginalized groups — don’t have this same experience. “I never want anyone to feel alone or feel like there are no resources or no help for them,” Lee Gobir said. “There’s nothing wrong with going to counseling, there’s nothing wrong with holding space for yourself. If anything it allows you to be a better [human] — it allows you to show up in all the spaces in your life in the best way you can.” In the future, Lee Gobir said she hopes to write children’s books that encourage them to talk about their feelings and ask questions about mental health, so no one is left feeling alone in their mental health struggles. “I think that everything I do really centers around preserving and upholding the dignity of human life,” Lee Gobir said. “[I want people to know] that you’re worth it to live — past your mental health crises and past anything that you may be going through in your life.”

Samantha Wuensche Loves Animals and Humans the Best She Can Sophomore Samantha Wuensche described her family as full of hippies, vegans and vegetarians — but generally speaking, passionate animal lovers. Wuensche grew up with her mother rescuing animals and her father working as a veterinarian. She said this upbringing cultivated her care for creatures. “I’m passionate about animals because the unconditional love they show us deserves recognition,” Wuensche said. Known to her friends by the nickname “Groovy,” Wuensche draws inspiration from The Asher House animal rescue. Founder Lee Asher travels across the country with his nine rescue dogs promoting animal rights.

“My dream is to live in a van and travel and write and just kind of vibe,” Wuensche said. This lifestyle would allow her to advocate for animal rights while meeting new people. Wuensche has a heart for others, especially those close to her. Wuensche pays particular attention to the way people give or receive love: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch. She makes it her mission to know the love language of her friends and family. “I ask people what their love language is and I save it in my phone so that I remember how to best love them,” Wuensche said.

by Lydia duPerier

Photo courtesy of Samantha Wuensche

With a quick wit, dry humor and critical eye, Zeke Bongiovanni is not afraid to tell it how it is. Yet his sharp edge contrasts his caring heart for others as Bongiovanni’s peers nominated him for being “an all-around amazing human being.” “That’s just kind of what I like to do, is just to get to know people,” Bongiovanni said. Bongiovanni, a sport administration major, worked as a resident advisor his sophomore year abroad in London and later in first-year housing. He said he was drawn to the job because the whole purpose of being an RA was to be a friend to residents. “I loved it because those guys in Peppers [House] — during the rounds you get to know them and you’d do anything to help them,” he said. “I’d skip class to help them if they needed it.” Bongiovanni said he enjoyed helping his residents connect to Pepperdine, whether help-

ing them network to find jobs, watching them make TikToks or inviting them into new spaces and relationships on campus. Because of COVID-19, Bongiovanni said he’s grown socially in learning to understand and evaluate his relationships with others during this isolating time. “You learn how to navigate friendships, relationships easier,” he said. “I mean, that’s until the day you die, but you understand and realize what type of people you can invest in as well.” Bongiovanni’s word of advice for the Pepperdine community is to take risks in being oneself and being kind. “Go out on a limb and trust other people,” Bongiovanni said. “You know, at Pepperdine, you’ll find the most unlikely friends. And it’s amazing because you can look back and realize you had such great memories with people that you love for that time.”

Zeke Bongiovanni is a People Person by Ashley Mowreader

Photo courtesy of Zeke Bongiovanni

Yinjie Zhai Lets Food Do the Talking by Kaelin Mendez

Photo courtesy of Yinjie Zhai

Senior advertising major Yinjie Zhai likes to eat, and when he found himself away from home, he did what some hungry college students do: He learned to cook. “When I started to live by myself — not with the family — I kind of missed [my grandfather’s] dishes,” Zhai said. “So, there’s one holiday vacation I go back and ask, ‘How do you cook those, like, pork belly or anything like that?’” After learning how to make a teriyaki-pork-belly-like dish from his grandfather, he then tried his hand at other recipes, mostly learned from YouTube videos. While studying abroad as a sophomore in Lausanne, where going out to eat can be expensive, he decided it best to cook for himself, drawing the attention of other people in the program. “I always offer food to people, too, and they said, ‘Do you want to just have a dinner with everyone or something like that sometime?’” Zhai said.

Zhai ended up hosting a group dinner, which became a regular tradition for the 2018-2019 Lausanne program and was dubbed “Din with Yin.” “Din with Yin is not just about food,” Zhai said. “It’s also about a place for people to just rest and talk to people they really want to know.” It is this communal aspect of food that Zhai believes creates a channel of communication between him as an international student and those he feeds. “I’m not really, I will say, extroverted or good at articulating what I’m thinking,” Zhai said. “But food can tell everything, basically. That’s how I feel.” In fact, for him, cooking is all about the community. “If I just lived by myself, I can still cook back for myself; I enjoy the food,” Zhai said. “But when I start to share my food with others, that’s when the cultural exchange — everything — starts.”

Art by Madeline Duvall

Introverts, Extroverts and Everything In Between by Alex Neis

Social butterflies and happy loners. When it comes to humans’ social preferences, everyone’s are a bit different. While some prefer to be around other people, others keep to themselves. “It’s a continuum,” Psychology Professor Cindy Miller-Perrin said. “There are few people who are out on the extremes.” A self-identified introvert, Miller-Perrin said the words introvert and extrovert are thrown around quite a bit in classrooms and workplaces. However, many people may not understand exactly what they mean. “Over the years, people have sort of equated introversion with shyness,” Miller-Perrin said. “Shyness reflects an anxiety or discomfort associated with social situations, but introversion is really just a preference.” Extroverts, like her husband, Sociology Professor Robin Perrin, tend to be more comfortable with bigger groups and more likely to find enjoyment in engaging in lots of social activities. Perrin said he can be the life of the party, from chatting people up on the golf course to speaking up in large groups. Unique mammals Both Miller-Perrin and Perrin study introversion and extroversion academically, but they approach them from different disciplines. For Miller-Perrin, the two sides are traits which different people exhibit based on a combination of genetics and experience. “There’s a pretty significant biological component to personality traits, so we inherit part of our disposition genetically,” Miller-Perrin said. “But that doesn’t mean that certain experiences can’t also shape who we are.” Sociologists like Perrin look at introverted and extroverted personalities as different responses to humans’ social conditions. He said whether a person is an introvert or an extrovert, at the end of the day humans are social beings. “That means we look to others to help us understand who we are,” Perrin said. “We are unique to us among mammals.” Innie or outie? Natalie Forde, assistant director of International Programs and adjunct professor in the International Studies and Languages

Division, helps students in her first-year seminar learn about their social preferences by having them take a Myers-Briggs test. The test asks a set of questions about personality and identity in order to better understand how a person works socially. The results come in the form of a four-letter acronym like “INFP” or “ESTJ,” which describe a person’s introversion/extroversion as well as multiple other identity factors. While Forde said the test isn’t a perfect way to evaluate someone’s personality, it can be helpful for students to get to know themselves more so they can better understand their needs and wants. On a scale from 1, being most introverted, to a 10, being most extroverted, senior Alex Gettinger ranked himself a 2 or 3. “I’m definitely an introvert,” Gettinger said. “I like hanging out with my close group of friends, but when it gets to be a lot of other people involved, I kind of phase out.” Gettinger said he’s known this about himself for as long as he can remember. “I think I’ve always kind of been like that. Not that it necessarily gives me anxiety,” Gettinger said. “But it just makes me feel claustrophobic, I guess, when I’m in big crowds.” Junior Zack Born is another introvert who said he’s always felt comfortable being alone. “I never really wanted to be around people that much,” Born said. “When I was around people it was fun, but if I were by myself, I was totally fine. I never really needed to be around anybody to have fun.” Born and Gettinger said they thought being introverted has its advantages, like being self-reliant and independent. However, it comes with challenges as well. Miller-Perrin said humans live in an “extroverted world,” a society set up to function well for extroverts; operating in this society as an introvert can be difficult. Pepperdine especially is a community that may be more natural for an extrovert, Miller-Perrin said. Sophie Tarditi is a first-year student and an extrovert who said she learned about human interaction from a young age through performing arts. “I started doing theater when I was really, really young,” Tarditi said. “It helped me with talking to other people because I had been so experienced with performing on stage.”

“

It’s definitely really difficult to live out my extroverted self just because of what’s going on. — Sophie Tarditi, Extrovert

”

Theater helped Tarditi open up, as she believes there was a time before acting when she was much less of an extrovert. “It helped me more with talking to other people because I had been so experienced with performing on stage and performing with other people,” Tarditi said. “That made it more comfortable for me to actually talk to people outside of [that environment].” Social, at a distance For Tarditi and other extroverts, this school year poses challenging circumstances, and staying well means staying connected. “It’s definitely really difficult to live out my extroverted self just because of what’s going on,” Tarditi said. “I love just seeing other people. I love talking to other people.” For many first-year students, meeting so many new people in the first few months

of Pepperdine can be overwhelming. This year, however, people who crave human interaction like Tarditi have to take extra initiative to get to know their classmates. “Probably the best way I’ve been meeting people is through social media,” Tarditi said. “I’ll see people who are in my grade and who are staying in the Malibu area, and I’ll just DM them and ask if they want to meet — socially distanced, of course!” Introverts Born and Gettinger said the virtual campus brought neither a positive nor a negative change. “From a social standpoint, it really hasn’t affected me because I don’t really need to talk to people all day, every day,” Gettinger said. However, Gettinger said he took the little interactions he had with people every day for the past three years for granted. Social distance learning is one of few contexts in which it seems, to Miller-Perrin, that the introvert is at an advantage.

“

I like hanging out with my close group of friends, but when it gets to be a lot of other people involved, I kind of phase out. — Alex Gettinger, Introvert

”

More than a Game: Human Interaction in Sports by Karl Winter Photos courtesy of Pepperdine Athletics Marketing and Communications and Pepperdine Graphic File Photos Grueling. Demanding. Physically and mentally fatiguing to the point of vulnerability. Suffering together. These are just a few terms that Pepperdine student-athletes, coaches and sports psychologists used to describe one of their lifelong pursuits. These terms set interaction in sports apart from other teams or groups, and they are also part of what makes sports so rewarding. Relationships in sports — between teammates, coaches, friends and family — go beyond the shared goal of a trophy or ring. “Athletes and coaches can understand that their human interactions are not just for the end [result],” Beach Volleyball Head Coach Marcio Sicoli said. “It is the process

for something bigger. … It might be when you’re in trouble, that person is going to knock at your door.” That’s coming from a guy who has coached athletes to win Olympic gold medals. Max Rooke, Women’s Soccer associate head coach, said he uses sports as a way to teach life, so one of his key philosophies in sports seems counterintuitive. “The purpose of the goal is not to reach the goal,” Rooke said. “The purpose of the goal is who it makes you in the process.”

Physicality makes sports interaction unique Physical competitiveness, failing together and suffering together are aspects

“

You end up getting so much more out of student-athletes when there’s a relationship there.

”

- Matt Young, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Performance of team sports that other group or workplace environments cannot replicate. “There’s something about the physical nature of sport that makes it a little bit more of a bonding experience,” said Bassey Akpan, a postdoctoral fellow in Pepperdine Athletics’ sport psychology department. From the first meeting or practice, a player’s trust in the team unit and willingness to sacrifice trumps prior experience, Sicoli said. Speaking of his team’s cohesion in its undefeated 2020 run, Men’s Tennis Head Coach Adam Schaechterle emphasized that individuals put the team’s goals ahead of their own. Two years ago, Men’s Tennis was ranked outside of the top 200 nationally; this year, they finished their 2020 campaign in the top 20. “We all kind of came to the conclusion that it was the level of sacrifice that each individual is willing to make,” Schaechterle said. “ … You see guys sacrificing those individual goals to be a part of a special unit.” Part of that sacrifice is a level of physical bonding that elevates members of a team to heights they would be unable to achieve on their own. “We have to understand that when we do an Assault Bike workout, it’s going to suck,” sophomore Men’s Volleyball setter Joe Karlous said. “But every single guy is doing it.” Matt Young, assistant athletic director for sports performance at

Pepperdine, is one of the people who sometimes assigns an Assault Bike workout. He sees the value of athletes growing together physically and mentally in the weight room and in training. “You may see some people fail and you may fail in front of other people,” Young said. “I think the opportunity to address those things together as a group — as a community — makes it that much different than an 8-to-5 type job.” The same goes for training and competing in more individualized sports. “In running — since it’s literally all about the amount of pain that you’re willing to put yourself in — if you’re alone, you think that your stopping point or your breaking point is a lot slower than if there’s people around you,” said Skyler Danley, sophomore Women’s Cross Country runner. Team chemistry Team chemistry is not scientific or quantifiable. In the sports world, it is more of a cliche than anything, many Pepperdine coaches agreed. Nonetheless, this abstract concept is the reason that some teams perform better than the sum of their individual parts on paper, while some perform worse, Leonie Webster wrote in a 2017 article published in “Frontiers in Psychology.” Alexander Cushing, a sport psychologist for Pepperdine Athletics, and Akpan each mentioned the example of the Nuggets and Clippers in the 2020 NBA Western Conference semifinals, when Denver — ever the young underdogs — defeated superstar-laden Los Angeles. “It doesn’t matter how many great players you have on a team if they’re not on the same page, if they’re not communicating well,” Akpan said. But what set the Nuggets apart — a team familiar with each other but lacking in playoff experience — was their cohesion. Like that of the Pepperdine Men’s Tennis, this unity was part of its identity because the players made it so.

“A lot of times people think the coach is the one orchestrating it, but a lot of times I’m just the closest observer,” Schaechterle said. Current and former athletes stressed the importance of understanding teammates’ personalities to better succeed in sports. “If you’re really good friends with your teammates outside of sports, it’s going to be easier to know what they need in sports,” Cushing said. Cushing, a former NCAA team champion in swimming at University of California, Berkeley, said when athletes harness the competitive energy in practice to outperform each other, the whole team can benefit. Competitiveness between teammates is unique to sports in that athletes battle for starting positions each day. “Regardless of position on the depth chart, when teammates genuinely want each other to do well, then it relieves a lot of pressure and the team as a collective performs really well,” Cushing said. Whether described as chemistry, cohesion or camaraderie, athletes agreed the value is defined by teammates working toward goals while also genuinely enjoying each other’s company. “That was the hardest part about the season being canceled in March was I felt like we did get to a place where practice was the best part of everyone’s day,” Schaechterle said. Junior pitcher Dane Morrow pointed to social relationships as a part of Pepperdine Baseball’s 12–3 start to their 2020 season. Morrow said accountability and inclusion — starting with the team’s upperclassmen — are critical. “We embrace everyone’s individualism and we don’t think anyone’s too weird to hang out with,” Morrow said. “We all love each other.” Coach-athlete relationships Coaching styles vary from person to person and sport to sport, but many Pepperdine athletes and former athletes believe the best coaches take into account how their feedback

should vary among different athletes. “One teammate may get motivation from being yelled at or being barked at,” Cushing said. “Another teammate may need more of a positive, supportive approach.” That’s when a personal relationship comes in — when the coach understands the athlete’s disposition enough to discern the best way to give feedback, Sicoli said. Immediate, constructive feedback is also a distinctive piece of relationships in sports. “When both sides develop that trust that they can identify the right timing to give the praise, to give the challenge, give the feedback, the positive, the constructive, whatever feedback it is — that’s when the coach-player relationship is the best,” Sicoli said. If a coach is relationship-driven with their players, the athlete will better understand strong criticism because they are aware the coach has their best interest at heart, Young said. “You end up getting so much more out of student-athletes when there’s a relationship there,” Young said, “when they’re not driven by fear of what would happen or repercussion if you didn’t do something, but they’re driven by the respect and the relationship with the coach.” Athletes at the Division I level are serious enough about excellence that they want honest feedback, Schaechterle said. For example, Morrow said he appreciates his new pitching coach, Jim Lawler, who is not afraid to be honest and direct. “It’s a delicate balance, because obviously your coach is not going to be your best friend,” Akpan said. “They have one objective. But at the same time, you also want to cultivate a team atmosphere where it’s welcoming and comfortable.”

different during a competition than other days. Athletes gain a competitive advantage by picking up nonverbal cues from teammates and opponents. “Your ideas and your thoughts are way faster than the action of verbalizing things, so you get faster, you get more connected when you’re able to not be verbal,” Sicoli said. Karlous said his teammates stare at him rather than saying anything when they feel confident and want him to set them the ball. Women’s Basketball Head Coach Kristen Dowling mentioned feeding off the body language of opponents. “If I’m playing against you and I see you put your hands on your knees, I know you’re exhausted and I got you,” Dowling said. More critical even than body language is an athlete’s response to pressure on game day. Nerves can create arousal that is critical to success, but too much can cause the athlete to crack under the pressure. Akpan spoke of the zone of optimal functioning, which describes the relationship between emotional arousal and performance. Athletes must experience some arousal or pressure to perform at their best, but not above a certain level. The team atmosphere can help athletes focus and feel the pressure of a competition, but also calm down teammates who become overly nervous. Akpan calls it the “I got your back mentality.” A team’s culture and competitive drive must define a program over its win total. “If winning is the only thing you know, you run into identity issues,” Rooke said.

The game-day experience Interaction between coaches, teammates and opponents is far

Discovering Self and Others through the Enneagram by Kiley Distelrath

Humans try to understand themselves — how they think, how they relate to people, why they react the way they do — but this understanding doesn’t come easily. Enter the Enneagram — a model of nine interconnected personality types with ancient roots that brings people a sense of self-understanding and an awareness of how others process the world. “I feel like the Enneagram is really cool because it helps people accept themselves and be seen that they are accepted and they are known as their own unique self and that’s OK,” Rachael Murdock, a junior and a type Nine, said. What is the Enneagram? The Enneagram is a system of personality types that helps people understand their core motivations, attitudes and behaviors — both the positives and the negatives. It doesn’t stop there: The model also teaches people empathy for how other humans operate. The Enneagram Institute, a company devoted to teaching the Enneagram, asserts Oscar Ichazo created the typing system in the 1960s, though official origins are debated. The symbol, however, carries roots from multiple religions, like mystical Christianity and Islam, and ancient Greek philosophy. There are nine personality types which fit into the eclectic — yet intentional — symbol of the Enneagram. Type descriptions merely summarize instead of fully illustrate the personality. Each individual person has an innate basic type that never changes, although people can find characteristics of themselves in each type.

The model’s shape is crucial to understanding how the types connect. The model uses a type’s core motivation to divide each into three centers: the Instinctive Center (Eight, Nine, One), the Feeling Center (Two, Three, Four) and the Thinking Center (Five, Six, Seven). Further, each center has a dominant emotion they feel when they lose their self-understanding, according to The Enneagram Institute. The Instinctive Center reacts with anger; the Feeling Center feels shame; the Thinking Center deals with fear. The Enneagram exploded with popularity in 2017, according to a Los Angeles Times article examining Google searches. It gained momentum on Pepperdine’s campus as well, as students and professors said they found it unique compared to traditional personality tests. “I think in some ways [it] gives a lot of language to something that doesn’t always have a lot of language ‘cause it’s just like your internal thought processes, which I think is what differentiates it from other personality systems,” Emily McNutt, a junior and type One, said. The Enneagram focuses on people’s “internal drives” versus their “external presentations,” as traditional psychology tests do, McNutt said. Because of this, Alicia Yu, a junior and type Four, said the Enneagram feels more personal. “It’s different from other personality tests — and I’ve done my fair share of personality tests,” said Yu, once an avid Myers-Briggs test-taker. “... Myers-Briggs or other personality tests which I still — I like them — but those focus a lot more on your behavior and I feel like that’s not really a way we can categorize ourselves because

we change our behavior throughout life but I feel like your core desire stays the same.” Bringing self-understanding The Pepperdine students and professors interviewed confirmed the Enneagram is a tool for self-understanding. Murdock said the Enneagram offers meaning to someone’s identity. “I like it because it helps people feel seen better,” Murdock said. “I think a lot of people, myself included — you can know yourself a little bit but then when you read that someone or this tool like the Enneagram has this understanding of how you might operate or how you think and feel — it just feels so, I don’t know, like you just feel so loved and understood and seen and known.” When it comes to discovering what one’s type is, Murdock said the moti-

vations and values characteristic of a type will resonate. The Enneagram also looks at the behaviors that shine when people are healthy, average and unhealthy, according to The Enneagram Institute. This is known as integration, or movement toward growth, and disintegration, or resorting to average to unhealthy characteristics due to stress. When a person integrates or disintegrates, they possess the healthy or unhealthy characteristics of the type connected to them in the model. During growth, the types flow in the direction of 1-7-5-8-2-4-1 and 9-3-6-9. In unhealthy phases, the types move from 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 and 9-6-3-9. “When we are healthy, we tend to pull healthy traits from that number so I as a Four, when I’m healthy, tend to pull healthy traits of a One — so, organization … management ,” Yu said. “… And, in the opposite direction when I disintegrate, when I’m unhealthy,

Graphic by Kiley Distelrath and Leah Bae

I pull unhealthy traits from a Two — [like] manipulation, trying to insert myself everywhere.” The importance of the Enneagram for young people Cambry Pardee, a religion professor in the London Program, has taught the Enneagram in a Club Convo for the last two years. He finds the Enneagram to be a beneficial tool for college-aged students. “We have found that it is so relevant to college-aged people because college-aged people are choosing who they’re going to be for the rest of their life,” said Pardee, who is somewhere within type Five and Six. “ … The Enneagram comes and confronts them with introspection, ‘know thyself.’ … It is better to know who you are than to know the future.” The types help people see their personalities’ dimensions — a concept McNutt said is Christian. “It’s a very Christian concept to be like, ‘Ugh, like I need to fully embrace every part of myself — the good and the bad,” McNutt said. “That I have these tendencies that are not great and these things about me that I think I’m really gifted in,’ and doing that for the people around you.” She has the soul of an Enneagram enthusiast. “I make everyone I know take the Enneagram,” McNutt said. “Every single person I knew abroad took the Enneagram and every single person I knew freshman year of college took it and my whole Lausanne house knows their Enneagram number — like 100% of them do; I guarantee you.” Coming to life in relationships The typing system cannot exist without one of the nine types. “There’s something we all bring to each other through the Enneagram that we all need,” McNutt said.

“

We have found that it is so relevant to college-aged people because college-aged people are choosing who they’re going to be for the rest of their life.

”

- Cambry Pardee, Religion Professor Type Five/Six

By knowing what other types bring to the table, the students said they found greater empathy for others. They discovered how the people around them had vital characteristics to their personalities that guided their behaviors. “This specific tool has really helped me in my relationships with people, especially with my parents too,” Yu said. “… It’s given me a better understanding of them as people and not just as my parental units.” Yu’s relationship with her freshman roommate was a case-in-point of how the personality model transforms relationships. Having once seen her roommate’s reactions as dramatic, Yu recognized the deeper foundations of such reactions.

“I think after knowing that she was a One, I was able to think about OK if sometimes she’s hard on herself, it’s not going to help for me to be like, ‘Oh my gosh. You need to chill out,’” Yu said. Instead, she discovered how beneficial it was to remind her of her humanity and offer validation. Pardee said the Enneagram is applicable in student-professor relationships. It allows him to know students deeper among the many he teaches by begging the questions: “Why do they do that?” and “What could their motives be?” By knowing or guessing Enneagram types of students, Pardee can show charity and learn how to best approach them in tricky relationships. The dangers of misusing types While the Enneagram offers a deeper sense of self and develops empathy, Communication Professor Lauren Amaro raised a concern about the model’s qualifications. “It is not a scientifically validated instrument and operates much more like a horoscope than a reliable measure of personality,” Amaro wrote in an email. Some of its unscientific qualities are the unreliability of test results, the personal biases that play into choosing one’s type and a person’s possible evolution from one type to another. This is why it is not an academic tool and not something she uses in her classroom, Amaro said in a follow-up phone interview. Pardee said he has recognized the imperfections of the Enneagram but still uses it as a relational tool because he has seen its benefits in action. Amaro said she also finds a problem with how people use their Enneagram types once identified. “My main quibble with it is that people use it in a predictive/prescriptive way (as in, ‘I’m an [Eight], so that’s

just how I’m going to operate’ or ‘that’s what an [Eight] would/should do’), rather than using it as a descriptive tool (‘[Eights] sometimes behave this way or that way’),” Amaro wrote. This unhealthy use of the Enneagram keeps people in line with their type’s tendencies rather than recognizing their type’s limitations and making healthy choices toward growth, Amaro said. Despite lacking a scientific background, the Enneagram has power. The students interviewed and Amaro noted the positives it can have on Pepperdine’s campus if students knew about it. “It almost feels like you’re given permission to see something different than another person, which is how we are supposed to operate as humans,” Murdock said. “We are supposed to have these differences among us and love and accept these differences.”

“

We are supposed to have these differences among us and love and accept these differences.

”

- Rachel Murdock, Junior Type Nine

A picture speaks a thousand words. Turn that picture into fashion, and it could change the world. Jaxon Burgess, a first-year Pepperdine law student and Seaver alumnus, has always been interested in clothes and making a difference. Drawing inspiration from TOMS shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, Burgess decided he wanted to pursue a similar path. “Creating a business that can be something cool but also help the world at the same time was just a really cool thing,” Burgess said. It wasn’t until a mission trip to the Dominican Republic that Burgess really found his calling. He said the trip opened his eyes to a way for him to combine his love for clothes and others. He also realized he could use photography as a part of his new idea. “When we were there, I kind of just noticed the simplicity of

how it’s so universal to take a picture with a camera,” Burgess said. This sparked his idea for his clothing brand Living In Frame. The company sends cameras to different communities where someone takes a picture and sends those photos back. Then the photos are printed on sweatshirts and T-shirts. Living in Frame sells the clothes online, and 25% of profits go back to the community where the photos came from. Cameras have already been sent to cities in the U.S., Kenya and Nicaragua. Burgess said he hopes the company can continue expanding to become global. “We are really just looking to reach out to empowering causes that really create change in the world,” Burgess said. For Burgess, clothes are more than a fashion statement; they are a creative way for him to leave his mark on the world.

Franki Hooks Tweets What’s on Her Mind by Kaelin Mendez

Photo courtesy of Franki Hooks

Jaxon Burgess Changes the World One Thread at A time by Lydia duPerier

Photo courtesy of Jaxon Burgess

Though people may not always know her face, people know her Twitter account and her name: Franki Hooks. “Someone was like, ‘I thought this was a burner account, and Franki Hooks was a fake name,’” Hooks said. The senior psychology major has been on Twitter since August 2014. “People would tweet stupid things,” Hooks said about being on the social networking platform in high school. “And I feel like everyone kind of grew out of it. Except, I didn’t.” She said she spends her free time on Twitter, tweeting about five times a day. Hooks fills her account with posts about Pepperdine, the jobs she’s worked — now at a doctor’s office and before at a grocery store — and many of her spur of the moment thoughts. She especially enjoys being on Twitter when something new happens at Pepperdine — like when a controversial incident occurs or administrators share new information.

“Twitter’s the future ‘cause I learned that Pepperdine was closing campus on Twitter,” Hooks said about the decision to not return to campus in Fall 2020. “But that’s because I’m always on Twitter, so I saw it when it was tweeted like 18 seconds ago.” After the campus closure announcements, several students, including Hooks, took to Twitter to voice their thoughts on the matter. She said with every Pepperdine decision and incident, people go to Twitter to put out their feelings and opinions and see what others are saying, creating a virtual community some are calling ‘Pepperdine Twitter.’ “I feel like we just came together out of all the soreness of all this,” Hooks said. And next time, she will be right there along with them, posting just what she’s thinking. “Every time Pepperdine sends an email, it’s like, you need to get on Twitter,” Hooks said.

Gretchen Batcheller Launches Into Art by Samantha Torre

Photo courtesy of Gretchen Batcheller (top left)

Painting has always been a major part of Art Professor Gretchen Batcheller’s life. She said it was a way to connect with family — especially her grandmother who taught art classes for adults in her studio — and a place to ground herself. “I painted one of my first paintings with her in watercolor,” Batcheller said. “I had just turned 5 years old, and [the picture was] a landscape of Mount Rainier.” After Batcheller was diagnosed with leukemia at 13, she pushed herself more into painting. “That sort of repositioned my trajectory of what I would do, for I was on treatments for about three-and-a-half, almost four years,” Batcheller said. After beating leukemia, Batcheller volunteered for years at a summer camp for children with cancer. Batcheller’s leukemia made it harder for her to take part in the sports she enjoyed, and she devoted that time to painting. Soon, painting encompassed a large portion of her life.

With the help of her high school art teacher, Batcheller entered and won several contests which boosted Batcheller’s confidence as she decided to declare herself an art major upon entering college. “It just became all very apparent that I was just ready to launch into the art-making full-time,” Batcheller said. Batcheller’s time with her grandmother was what led her to consider teaching fine arts as a career. Batcheller said teaching allows her to watch her students mature and grow artistically as she imparts her own wisdom. Although her students tend to joke with her about her advice, Batcheller said she loves knowing that they remember it enough to take it to heart in that way. “I think one of the reasons why I love academia is that I love learning,” Batcheller said. “And that’s something that helps us to evolve and grow and change and become better human beings as well.”

Juan Carlos Hugues Inspires Radical Love

As a high school student, Juan Carlos Hugues was at war with his identities. Hugues now proudly identifies as gay, Latinx and Christian, specifically Church of Christ. Hugues, a senior psychology and religion major, served as president during the 2019-2020 academic year for Crossroads — now called Crossroads Gender and Sexuality Alliance — and firmly advocates that Christianity should be a religion welcoming to all people. “That is my life’s mission,” Hugues said. “To make sure that everyone feels love, because I have experienced a lack of love from my community.” Hugues moved from his home in Panama to the United States in 2004 after his father decided to start a Latinx Church of Christ in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “Regardless of where I was in Panama or South Carolina, the heteronormativity, the sexism, the homophobia was prevalent,” Hugues said. Hugues said as he grew up, his experiences with surrounding communities began to shape the way he viewed his identities, cultivating the idea that homosexuality and Christianity could not coexist. “In Panama, my uncles would talk about how gay people are like cockroaches because they come out of the closet,” Hugues said. “So, you hear things like that and it’s degrading, and then it starts creating this internalized homophobia.”

by Annabelle Childers

That idea began to change once Hugues came to Pepperdine and had meaningful interactions with faculty like Steve Rouse, professor of psychology, and Al Sturgeon, former University Church of Christ pastor. “All of those things made me feel like, ‘Wow, maybe the story I have been told about God growing up is not who God really is,” Hugues said. Photo courtesy of Juan Carlos Hugues Still attending a Church of Christ, Hugues continues to stay true to his roots despite his past experiences with church exclusivity. “It’s what feels like home to me, and I have the right just as anybody else to say that the Church of Christ is also my home,” Hugues said.

What Makes Humans Beautiful? Video editing by Marisa Dragos

People With Disabilities Discuss Their Communication Experiences by Race Dalton A major fear for many people with disabilities is being treated differently. Psychology Professor Tomas Martinez, who has post-polio syndrome, said people would talk to him differently because of his disability when he was younger. Now he believes that people are becoming better at communicating with him. “It is an area that as we learned about communicating differently to respect the new definitions that we have for each other, and to now not allow ourselves to be compartmentalized into these little boxes of being handicapped or being disabled as opposed to recognizing it as something that impacts somebody, but doesn’t necessarily have to define who they are,” Martinez said. As people think through how to communicate more inclusively in terms of gender and race, they also need to think about disability, Martinez said. Pepperdine students and faculty who have a disability shared their communication experiences, which they believe are sharply different than those of the people around them. Experiences in communication Martinez said he has had post-polio syndrome since he was a year old when his family took him to the hospital to spend a year in isolation. “I was taken away from my home,” Martinez said. “Now that I know what happened to me over the years, it’s kind of affected me growing up.” He said he was lucky to have a family who supported him.

Photo courtesy of Tomas Martinez Martinez recalled a time where the public school his mom wanted him to attend would not allow him in because of his disability. However, his mom’s resolve was strong and the school eventually ended up taking him; Martinez was one of the first children to be mainstreamed in education, that is he was one of the first children who had a disability to be placed into a mainstream classroom. Like Martinez, senior Amanda Cooper said she has had a difficult time growing up with a disability and is thankful for her family’s constant support. “Growing up with a hearing impairment can definitely feel isolating because a lot of people assume that only elderly people have hearing loss, but for sensorineural hearing loss, it’s hereditary,” Cooper said. “It also continues to worsen as you get older. When I was a teenager and I already had hearing loss, it was difficult for me to know that that was probably the most I would be able to hear in my life.” Cooper said people often assume she knows what they are saying. When she mishears them and answers incorrectly, they automatically think it’s due to a lack of intelligence instead of a lack of ability.

“That can be frustrating because I know that it’s something that is easily explainable, but it also shouldn’t have to be my responsibility to tell the person who’s at the grocery store checking me out I’m hard of hearing,” Cooper said. Martinez said many people who first learn about their disability have to cope with the knowledge of losing an ability they used to have. “The idea of loss and recognizing that to some extent, every person who’s disabled struggles with some of those issues,” Martinez said. “And so to that extent, I think this is the harder part of people with disabilities [because] we don’t talk about these things very often.” Parenting a child with a disability Sports Medicine Professor Cooker Perkins Storm has a 17-month-old daughter who has Down syndrome. When she was first born, Storm said they didn’t name their daughter for a while. “We tried to do a little bit of research on the sounds that are hard for people with Down syndrome,” Storm said. “Because we didn’t want her to feel frustrated trying to tell someone her name.” Her daughter, Tessa, sees four therapists a week, including a speech language therapist. She said this has revealed how fundamental communication is for her daughter’s development. “You don’t think that communication will play a role until kids start to talk, but it really has opened my eyes as to how important it is and so early, and you take it for granted,” Storm said. Storm said Tessa is also learning sign language with her speech therapist to help with speech delay.

Photo courtesy of Professor Cooker Perkin Storm

Extra difficulties in the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has created more communication difficulties for Cooper. She thoroughly believes that wearing masks is an important thing to do, but it has unfortunately caused more communication problems. “It’s very difficult right now with COVID because I do a lot of lip reading, and the masks really hinder my ability to understand what people are saying,” Cooper said. Martinez said his experience during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a double-edged sword. He said COVID-19 was “America’s Second Plague” and his experience with polio has helped him understand people’s extra-cautious reactions now, but he is once again facing the trauma that he experienced throughout his childhood. “My history is kind of very relevant to much of the history of what we’re seeing today when I was developing and growing,” Martinez said. “The good news is that I have much of my own kind of history that I understand some of the dimensions of what people are going through now. The downside is I’m remembering a lot of the trauma I went through as a child because during that time polio was not understood the same way we don’t understand this virus.” How Pepperdine is addressing difficulties Education Professor Elizabeth Yomantas said the online learning environment due to COVID-19 has made it difficult for faculty to communicate with their students who need accommodations. “I think by not having that human connection, it’s just harder for professors to put the accessibility needs at the forefront of their teaching and then to be able to reach out to students more seamlessly based on how things go on in the physical learning environment,” Yomantas said. “But as educators, we need to meet students’ accessibility needs, especially during distanced learning.” Sandra Harrison, executive director of the Pepperdine’s Office of Student Accessibility, said the OSA staff have have been working with students and faculty to help overcome any barrier they might be facing. “We encourage the student to initiate a conversation with the professor and make sure the faculty member has their accommodation letter and talk about what their needs are, how the class is designed and how their particular accommodations unfold in the class,” Harrison said.

Photo courtesy of Amanda Cooper

When the Pepperdine faculty saw that courses would be online, the Center of Teaching Excellence launched a course to help professors transition to teaching in an online learning environment. Christopher Heard, religion professor and CTE director, taught a course that involved inclusive design. “So if I have a text that is mainly auditory, I want to make sure there’s a visual companion to that so that students who might have trouble hearing it for whatever reason can read it,” Heard said. Heard said Pepperdine is doing a great job at being accessible to students within the classroom, but there’s always room for improvement. “We don’t necessarily have to wait until we have a specific student in mind but design for as much variety as possible,” Heard said. How society can be more inclusive Storm said she is hopeful for her daughter’s future when it comes to communicating with others. While she has had concerns regarding people treating her daughter differently, she has been pleasantly surprised with people not being afraid of communicating with her daughter.

Based on her experience, Cooper said the best thing people can do is to be more mindful. “Never assume people’s ability just from the way they look, or you should never assume that everybody is an able individual,” Cooper said. “When you’re going through your everyday interactions just treating everybody as if you want to make life as easy as possible for them in every way can help you be more compassionate.” Martinez said he is hopeful for the future, and looks forward to seeing more people advocate for people who have a disability. “I do think this is an area that we can kind of support each other with and advocate for each other, even if it doesn’t necessarily apply to that able body person directly,” Martinez said. “It does allow for diversity and inclusiveness, and I’d love to see more disabled students on campus.” Yomantas said inclusion in communication is important, and there are many means of self-education for everyone to learn about how to be more inclusive with people who have a disability. “The work of thinking about inclusion means you’re on the path to becoming the person that God made you to be a better, more inclusive person in all arenas of your life,” Yomantas said.

Claire Lee Links Humanity Together by AJ Muonagolu

Photo courtesy of Claire Lee

Sophia Zummo has a love for all of the things that God created. Zummo, a junior biology major with a sustainability minor, grew up in San Diego with a passion for nature and community. This has grown into a deep devotion for fighting climate change in developing countries. “The first lesson my dad taught me was what it is to be a steward of God’s creation,” Zummo said. For Zummo, being a steward is more than just caring about the environment — it is loving all of creation, including people. In high school, she was involved with mission work where she saw the needs of developing countries. One place that really impacted her was Uganda. She said there had been a severe

From the United States to Canada, Bolivia, Mexico and South Korea, Claire Lee travels around the world. A sophomore political science major, Lee uses her faith, friends and the places she travels to understand herself and how unified the human experience is. She writes about her travel experiences for The Graphic. “There’s just so many shared experiences that we have, yet they’re so different in the way that the story is created,” Lee said. New areas or cultural and societal differences can create a feeling of discomfort for some people. However, Lee said she can always find unifying characteristics in the places she visits. “I didn’t really quite experience that culture shock,” Lee said. “I just saw so many similarities. No matter where

drought causing crops to not grow. Because of this, the entire community suffered; there was no food to eat or sell. “Places that I have grown to love ... are the ones that are suffering the most,” Zummo said. To help solve problems like this, Zummo said she hopes to one day start her own nonprofit organization where she can help these countries implement sustainable programs. She said the bigger the impacts of climate change, the more the developing countries are going to struggle. “It would be really cool to take that and be able to take my vocation of helping others and my faith and connect them together,” Zummo said.

I go, there are just so many similarities in human beings.” When Lee faces uncertainty in her life, she said she grounds herself in her faith, which reminds her of how she is unique. Wherever she is, Lee knows her place in the world reflects her unique experience with God and how she chooses to praise Him. “Location — like the communities I’m a part of — and the way that I communicate and live my life for God and obedience is just what makes me different as a daughter of God,” Lee said. The world is a great place with many different perspectives, sights and people, but everyone needs more unity that comes from personal understanding, Lee said. “The world needs people who can be themselves, but it takes a journey to find out who you really are,” Lee said.

Sophia Zummo Imagines More Sustainable World by Lydia duPerier

Photo courtesy of Sophia Zummo

Sophomore Joe Karlous was in high school when his grandfather’s death led him to an existential ultimatum: pursue God wholeheartedly or settle into a lukewarm faith. Karlous, a psychology major and setter for the Pepperdine Men’s Volleyball team, was steeped in Coptic Orthodox traditions most of his life. Still, he was amazed at the peace his grandfather carried with him on his deathbed — a peace Karlous struggled to understand, despite his own faith background. “I was so confused why, because he was leaving so much behind,” Karlous said. “But he understood that there [is] a greater reward after this life.” In that moment, Karlous determined he would choose God despite the pain he internalized while grieving his grandfather.

“I was like, ‘I’m all in,’” Karlous said. Karlous said he continued to struggle with experiencing joy and genuine laughter during that period in his life. For Karlous, the pursuit of God means constantly telling God what is on his mind, falling on his face before Him, and choosing to get back up and continue to give Him everything despite his downfalls. He said following God is a daily choice. “No matter how far we run away from God, we’re still His children at the end of the day; He still claims us no matter what,” Karlous said. “I think that’s what makes humans so special — is that we have a Father who will love us even when we don’t love Him.”

How Tiger Ashtiani Lives Up To His Name by Yamillah Hurtado

Photo courtesy of Tiger Ashtiani

Joe Karlous Goes ”All In“on His Faith by Lindsey Sullivan

Photo courtesy of Joe Karlous

Tigers symbolize fierceness, courage and confidence. It comes as no surprise that senior advertising major Tiger Ashtiani embodies the significance of his name. Moving from the small town of Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, to the huge and vibrant city of Los Angeles was a dream come true for the aspiring television star. Living in the City of Angels has fueled Ashtiani’s life-long dream of becoming famous because he said there are so many open doors waiting for him to walk through. “The opportunities [here] are crazy,” Ashtiani said. “And growing up in Idaho, with it being really small, the opportunities there are so minimal.” For the past year and a half, the advertising major has stepped into the spotlight as an anchor for Pepperdine’s visual news program, NewsWaves. Ashtiani has already begun his journey as a content creator by posting videos on TikTok, where he’s gained over 150,000 likes on his videos.

Armed with a radiant personality and a desire to bring people joy and laughter, Ashtiani hopes to take on YouTube by starting a vlogging channel. He said he’s hesitant in doing so due to a fear of failure, but quickly reassured himself. “Every YouTuber has started off with zero subscribers,” Ashtiani said. “So just because I start at zero doesn’t mean I will stay at zero.” The reason for Ashtiani’s confidence is simple: “Everyone should have confidence in themselves,” Ashtiani said. “Everyone should feel like they’re important, because everyone is.” Ashtiani’s sense of self-worth and unapologetic embrace of his uniqueness has taken him far in life, and he said he hopes it will lead him to become a successful entertainer in an industry that is highly competitive. “People hold themselves back when they try to hide parts of themselves,” Ashtiani said. “Being unique is so prized right now and it’s inspired me not to tone down who I am.”

A New Way of Communication: How Social Media Shapes Interactions by Emily Morton Art by Ally Armstrong

Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Leong

LOL, <3,

OMG, g2g,

These messaging symbols and acronyms have infiltrated their way into the human experience and the relationships humans hold. LOL signifies humor, <3 signifies love, OMG represents shock and g2g means ‘got to go.’ Even facial expressions can now be exchanged online with emojis, representing a smile, a kiss or even a hug. But do virtual XOXOs feel the same as real ones?

“Face-to-face is to be able to enjoy and savor the moment together,” Public Relations Professor Klive Oh said.

Face-to-face interaction cannot be recreated

Computer-mediated communication is communication that occurs through electronic devices or via computers. While computer-mediated communication breaks through the barriers of time and

space, it also removes natural parts of human interaction including facial reactions, body language and physical closeness. Oh said he believes that there is a special element to in-person interaction. “I don’t think it can be replicated in any way,” Oh said. “It has to do with all five senses and you’re seeing how the other person reacts [and] behaves — their attitude’s right there, making eye contact, things like that.” Senior Casey Tice limits his interactions via social media because he enjoys more in-person moments with other people. “I cherish getting to know people and gaining intelligence based off of their past experiences that they portray to me,” Tice said. Shared experiences are also one of the reasons that face-to-face interactions are more meaningful than interactions on social media, sophomore Geoffrey Leong said. One person is able to invite another into a private world — rather than continuing to exist on two separate screens. Connected to family and friends Oh uses his social media accounts to keep in touch with his more distant relatives. “My parents live in Korea and they’re on some social media platforms,” Oh said. “I get to check on what they’re doing, [and] they can see what I’m doing very quickly and very easily.” Social media platforms remove the need for postcards or letters to inform far-away friends and family of everyday life. Instagram is one of these large platforms for engaging with photos of other people; the mission of the company is “bringing you closer to the people and things you love.” “There’s that instant access and the reaction of, ‘Oh, if I want to see how this person is doing and living thousands of miles away, I can see how they’re doing,’” Oh said.

Senior Annie Little said she tried to explain Snapchat — a visual instant message app that has garnered a millennial and Generation Z following — to her grandma. “I was having a really hard time because I was like, [Snapchat] is really for no reason,” Little said. She told her grandmother that she mainly uses the app to share funny memories with friends in a faster fashion rather than sending a text. Most famous for its streaks, the app features photos that can be clicked through in a 10-second time frame. Similar to Oh, Tice said he uses Snapchat to stay connected with friends. However, he does not find the 15- to 30-second videos or selfies he sends his friends as meaningful as their face-to-face interactions. “The downside of mediated communication is the lack of genuine feelings,” Tice said. “Having someone or something in between you and your communicating partner results in a less honest result.” Another disadvantage of social media for Oh is how fast the messages are sent and received. He believes that the instant speed creates shorter attention spans. “[This] could get in the way of building and sustaining meaningful relationships from time to time,” Oh said. Oh also uses his social media accounts to stay updated with the trends of his students. He mainly uses Instagram and YouTube. “I make it a rule to check out some trending TikTok content as well,” Oh said. “I know that they’re watching those and as a person who teaches and studies social media, I want to make sure that I’m keeping up with the trend.” As apps like TikTok become more popular, teachers are starting to create educational content on the app to appeal to students. In addition to keeping up with his students, Oh stays active on social media because his job now requires an advanced technical and digital skill set.

Photo courtesy of Annie Little Communicating for work Oh teaches his online classes via Zoom and does not believe that the app comes close to replicating a classroom environment. He said Zoom takes away the ability to read his students’ body language. As technology in the classroom becomes more prominent, so does technology in the workplace. Many employers screen job applicants’ social media accounts, Saige Driver wrote in a March 23 Business News Daily article. Some companies require employees to be active on social media, like various modeling agencies. Leong is represented by a modeling agency and uses his personal Instagram to market himself and his modeling. “I’ll put up photos and it’s basically like a portfolio of sorts,” Leong said. “And if

anybody’s looking to book me for a job, they just go on there and they can see what I look like.” Leong formats all of his posts around various themes in order to attract potential job offers. “The advice I was given is just follow like other models in the agency who you think have a similar style to what you would like to emulate or what you think like suits your personality,” Leong said. “And then you can kind of just mimic their feed, maybe some of the colors that they tend to use or you could even practice some of the angles that like they’re modeling in and you just resemble that and you put it up on your feed.” Before Leong started using his Instagram for work, he said he had more pictures up of friends and more pictures of him smiling. “It used to be a place where I could project my personality a little bit more,” Leong said. “While I do justify it in the sense of it’s serious because of work and all that, every now and then I try and get my personality in there.” The social struggle for likes, follows and ‘friends’ Across the most popular social media apps, the infamous ‘like’ and ‘follow’ — or in some cases ‘add friend’ — options have sparked serious and troublesome conversations about what the status of these features mean in people’s daily lives. After Little decided she wanted to unfollow some people with whom she does not keep in touch anymore, one friend reached out and questioned whether or not the two were still real-world friends. “It was interesting to see how people reacted and to understand my own relationship with social media and other people’s

and how other people give it so much power where for me, it’s just a simple platform to share experiences in my life,” Little said. The popular app Facebook allows you to ‘unfriend’ or ‘take a break’ from accounts. “I think as a society we’ve created this expectation that unless you’ve had a falling out or unless something negative has happened between the two of you, you would just still keep following each other on Instagram,” Little said. Leong expressed similar frustrations with his social media, especially with how individuals portray themselves in images. “I see a big problem with [social media], especially in Instagram and in that everybody’s life on there is just picture perfect,” Leong said. “And nobody’s life is like that. And if you’re exposed to that for long enough, you can start getting like a false sense of reality.” Leong also said he believes social media can create pressure to do the things that everyone else is doing; It can cause a lonely feeling or become overwhelming. Oh explained the pressure through the concept of self-construal. “[Self-construal] is how you define yourself by how you believe others are seeing you,” Oh said. Little said social media apps can overpower self-esteem when photos don’t receive enough likes, or don’t receive a desired follower-to-like ratio. “I thought that was really interesting how we’ve created — or I guess morphed — this positive, encouragement thing into a comparison thing, because of our insecurities,” Little said.

Little said she thinks communication through social media should be reserved for more casual conversations and people should save the more confrontational conversations for in-person. “We are naturally meant to be physically face-to-face talking to each other,” Little said. “We were not biologically created to be messaging through two different little computers. We’re supposed to be talking to each other face-to-face and I think that’s really healthy and natural.”

Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Leong

Homo sapiens in Their Natural Environment by Ali Levens Photos by Ali Levens

From left to right, Victoria Levinsohn and Riley Wright

Victoria Levinsohn

When Homo sapiens walked the great green Earth thousands of years ago, they were not alone. Early humans evolved to become social creatures — but in a different way from what is practiced today. Together early humans lived in the wilderness and learned to survive. In the digital age where more people live in cities than not, escaping to the great outdoors can be challenging. “I think being in those groups outdoors in the natural world, as it were, should remind us that we are social creatures, that we come from the soil, that we are part of this planet,” said Chris Doran, religion professor and founder of the sustainability minor. By interacting with each other in natural environments, people can realize the true beauty that this planet has to offer. Conversely, this may also bring awareness to the mistreatment of the environment. The Earth’s positive power on humans When people engage with nature for two hours a week, humans of all walks of life see health benefits, Jim Robbins wrote in a January 2020 360.yale.edu article. “Being in nature, being in a place where you’re outside, being in a place where you can see the water, … seeing green, has a huge benefit to who we are as human beings,” Doran said. Observing the true beauty of nature can make one realize its true function. “There are parts [of nature] that just naturally do what they were created to do,” said Amani McCalleb, a senior political science and sociology double major and sustainability minor. “And I think that’s such a beautiful thought and a beautiful sight, especially in a world where we try to have everything fixed or set or control everything.” Kurt Goldie, a senior Hispanic studies and international studies double major, said escaping daily life distractions reminds himself of his humanity. “[You’re] more than just your job,” said Goldie, a member of the Outdoor Recreation Council at Pepperdine. “You’re more than just a student. … You’ve got a God that loves you and then you can connect with Him, connect with

your friends, pursue deeper relationships with your families and friends [when you connect with nature].” To compare the level of attention and focus in different environments, researchers Stephen and Rachel Kaplan coined the Attention Restoration Theory, Robbins wrote. The theory found that people focused in a “less effortful way” and had a broader attention span in nature, as opposed to the concentration people required in stressful, detail-oriented environments. “Once you remove yourself from an urban or a city life … I think that you have the freedom to breathe and recognize the beauty around you so much more than you do in urban life,” said Scottie Sandlin, a senior rhetoric and leadership major, sustainability minor and Green Team president. When experiencing nature without distractions, McCalleb said it is beneficial to venture into nature as a group rather than by one’s self. “I think when people go out into nature they intentionally are more aware with one another,” McCalleb said. “I think there’s a lot to learn in, a lot to grasp, in those types of situations where you can really learn from the people around you.” Unlike the urbanized world, the unpredictable nature of reality and Mother Nature grounds humans and provides the realization they are not the only pawns in the planet’s game. “If you hear a bear growl or you see a large spider on the ground, all of a sudden you’re reminded [that] you’re not in a controlled place,” Doran said. “You need to think more carefully about how you are a part of a bigger whole.” McCalleb, who hails from Chicago, was unaware of the true beauty of untouched land until she stepped onto the Pepperdine campus. “To see all of these natural landscapes, … it makes you take a step back to realize like, ‘Wow. We live on this huge planet, and in our entire lives we probably won’t be able to see every part of it,’” McCalleb said. By recognizing that humans are not the only important aspect to life on Earth, it allows humans to be cognizant of their role in the environment. “Ultimately, I think being out in the natural world, being out away from things that are made by human hands, helps us to remember how

small we are compared to the rest of the planet,” Doran said. “And that can drive us to be more humble people if we let it.” Although it is beneficial to spend time in nature, there are instances where humans have overstepped their bounds, causing damage to the planet. Harming the Earth To combat climate change and preserve the land, some humans are trying to reverse the harm they caused to their planet by educating themselves. “I think we tend to look at the environment as something that owes us something,” McCalleb said. Personally experiencing and viewing the devastation humans ushered to the land is important in bringing awareness to these issues, Doran said. “We’re finding out … our national parks and some of our places that we thought were untouched by human hands are being far more devastated by climate change and other impacts of human modernization than we would have expected,” Doran said. Lizzi Nickerson, a clean energy associate for Environment California, said the organization aims at protecting open spaces and keeping the air and water clean for all to enjoy. While an undergrad at University of California, Berkeley, the recent alumna played a part in committing the school to 100% clean energy and helped them start to veer off the use of fossil fuels, which contribute to today’s climate change crisis, according to NASA.

“We’re going to be facing some of the worst consequences of climate change if we don’t act now,” Nickerson said. On a national stance, Goldie is frustrated with the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2016. “The thing that sucks about humans is that we’re often reactive and not proactive,” Goldie said. “So in the end, until some crazy huge natural disaster comes that is going to be like, ‘Oh wow, climate change is really happening,’ nothing’s really going to change too drastically.” If people enjoy nature, then they may be more likely to aid in its protection instead of harming it, said Emily Stephens, a junior and founder of the sustainability major. “If going on a hike or learning how to surf and being in the ocean is a way for a human to connect with nature, I feel like they’ll be less likely to then go pollute the ocean in which they enjoy their time,” Stephens said. Advocates in the environmental movement should recognize their privilege to give a voice to the voiceless — those who do not have the platform to speak up, McCalleb said. She referenced the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The city still does not have clean drinking water, NPR reported, forcing its citizens to resort to plastic water bottles, even though drinking from single-use water bottles is not good for the environment. She compared those who have no choice in their water source to those who have options but choose to utilize an unsustainable route because they do not like the taste of tap water. “I think that whole dynamic is super interesting and how we sort of choose the nonsustainable route for whatever reasons where there are people who literally don’t have a choice or don’t have other options,” McCalleb said. McCalleb also advocates for environmental education for those who may not even realize they are being affected, as factories and drilling can lead to negative health in the neighboring communities. “They don’t realize that having an oil drill or having this factory literally across the street from their homes or across the street from their children’s schools isn’t the norm,” McCalleb said. Humans must first analyze their relationships with the environment they inhibit. The one-sidedness of environmentalism One of Doran’s gripes with the environmentalism movement is drawing attention to one issue while not bringing any recognition to others, he said.

From left to right, CJ Davenport, Victoria Levinsohn, Riley Wright and Luke Baker

“We’ve got to try to talk about all of these things at the same time and not just pick one or two,” Doran said. As a professor of sustainability, Doran emphasized the meaning of living in the Santa Monica Mountains, a zone that experiences evolutionary fires but has seen an increase in fires due to arson and climate change, according to the Los Angeles Times. He also believes Pepperdine is “way behind the curve when it comes to climate change education,” as there are no climate-change related classes required of students. “If I could snap my fingers sort of Avenger style, [I would] make sure that every student that graduated had an understanding of what climate change is and how she or he is participating in it either making it worse or making it better,” Doran said. “It’s not just education but connecting education to … long-term behavior change.” While learning and teaching, Doran often encounters false statements and beliefs that could be severely damaging if not corrected. He said the United States can have both economic growth and environmental protection, but it is often portrayed as a one-or-the-other decision. “That’s just a poor choice and it’s never been the case,” Doran said. Doran drew on the state of California, which Forbes lists as the fifth-largest economy in the world and which the nonpartisan World Affairs indicates can lead the world in environmental protection measures, to show it is possible to have both working together. Doran said the Trump Administration’s claim in 2019 that the air and water was cleaner since Trump had taken office in 2017 is “absolutely false.” According to factcheck.org, the Environmental Performance Index reported a 1.9% increase in energy-related CO2 emissions

from 2016 to 2018. While the country ranks first — along with nine other nations — in drinking water, the president’s statement predates his administration, as the EPI data was collected in 2016 but published in 2018. Understanding climate change through religion Christians make up the majority of the population in the nation and university, according to data from Pew Research Center and the Pepperdine website. Because of this, those in the Pepperdine community may use education alongside religion to interpret their role in nature. Doran believes in educating not only students, but Christians and churches in an effort to work on aligning their beliefs with God and preserving the planet. “Study after study shows that generally speaking, the average Christian is a huge meat eater, the average Christian travels all over the planet, the average Christian just consumes way too much,” Doran said, “yet we say that we’re being stewards of the land and that just doesn’t make any sense, compared to our behavior.” Doran said Christian behavior in the environment does not reflect their values, as the planet is heading toward a human-led great extinction. By using an exalting appreciation, Sandlin sees the Earth as God’s creation to admire, to enjoy and to find sovereignty. “When we commune together, it makes it so much more meaningful and allows us to grow as individuals,” Sandlin said. “As a Christian, I think our environment is salient to who we are, and who we strive to be as an individual and who we need to be as a community so that we can serve others.”

Clockwise from top left, CJ Davenport, Luke Baker, Chris Gonzalez, Riley Wright and Victoria Levinsohn

The Reality of College Roommates When human beings with different traits and qualities come together under one roof, contrasting personalities can clash or compliment each other. But one thing is clear — living with a roommate is a major learning experience for all involved. “Make sure you pick people you know and trust,” Communication Professor Kenneth Waters said. “Know how to communicate so you minimize misunderstandings.” Waters said he experienced some struggles during his undergrad at Pepperdine with roommates — some of whom did not keep up their end of the chores, leaving the responsibility all to himself. “What I remember most is that one of the guys just decided he didn’t like school,” Waters said. “He just slept in and didn’t go and moved out a month later.” There are different factors that contribute to how a person acts when living with others. These include the context of the connection between roommates — partner, friend or stranger — and how an individual was raised to take care of themselves and treat others.

Learning to live with others in college Maddie Blume, a 2018 alumna, grew up as an only child. She said the transition from living by

Art by Ally Armstrong

by Sofia Longo

herself to living with others in college enhanced her communication skills. “There wasn’t one time when I felt like I didn’t get along with my roommates or feel like I didn’t have enough space,” Blume said. Blume said she believes she had a positive roommate experience because she lived with people who held similar values and social preferences. Senior Sergio Velazquez was a residential advisor in the J. Pengilly House during the 20192020 academic year until COVID-19 prompted campus to close. He helped to foster a new home to 50 male first-year students. “The first year of college, they’re learning how to be more of an adult,” Velazquez said. “They’ll get more comfortable with sharing what’s going on in their lives and be more communicative, open and vulnerable.” In most cases, Velazquez said the students accept each other as living partners and keep the relationship at that. In rare cases, a pair of roommates will end up becoming best friends.

Learning to live with a best friend Seniors Madison Menefee and Annie Vander Mey have been inseparable since sophomore year when they lived in Seaside Hall with six other suitemates. “Our core values are the same, like being Christians [and] loving God, and we have the same friend group, which helps a lot,” Menefee said. “We’ve been able to live well together because we have that mutual understanding.” Menefee and Vander Mey both grew up without any siblings, which is why the women said that living with another person — aside from their parents — has taught them to be more selfaware. Vander Mey said living with someone else helped push her out of her comfort zone. “It wasn’t hard for me to learn how to live with other people, but it was difficult getting used to [living with someone else],” Vander Mey said. Menefee said she learned she never wants to live alone after returning home during the COVID-19 campus shutdown. Living with friends, however, has not proven to be a positive experience for everyone, including senior Ooreoluwa Okediji.

“After I lived with other people, I realized it wasn’t my favorite thing and unfortunately, it kind of made me afraid to live with my friends,” Okediji said. Her personality and study habits have made living with roommates a difficult experience. Okediji said she prefers living alone because she has her own space — especially as a night owl and an introvert. If Okediji had to live with anyone, she would prefer to live with a stranger over a friend in order to protect their friendship.

Waters said someone’s way of living with another person defaults to what they observed in their family growing up: an example being if they only saw their father take out the trash and only their mother do the dishes, then children will bring these assumptions into their adulthood understanding of who is responsible for certain tasks. “All those kinds of things are really, really practical, but also cause a lot of friction,” Waters said.

Learning to live with a loved one

Living with a sibling

Waters has been married for 36 years and said living with a partner is more intimate than living with a roommate because a couple is together more often. “You should have the same kinds of deeply spiritual conversations in a roommate situation that you would have in a marriage,” Waters said. “But when you’re married, there’s a commitment to an intimacy and a transparency that’s certainly not present in a roommate situation.”

“Sibling relationships are one of the most significant child-rearing challenges parents face,” Mark E. Feinberg, Anna R. Solmeyer and Susan H. McHale wrote in a psychology study in the journal “Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review.” Hierarchal dynamics and intense sibling ties contribute to this. However, “close, supportive sibling relationships may promote the qualities and skills needed for successful friend and romantic relationships.” Senior Jonathan Palau grew up sharing a room with his brother and now lives in a house with his fraternity brothers. When he first got a roommate his freshman year, the experience wasn’t very different from home. “I haven’t really lived alone,” Palau said. “If I did that, I feel like I would learn a lot about myself.” When Palau shared a room with his brother, he said he was never lonely because he always had someone to talk to. However, living with his sibling didn’t come without pet peeves. Okediji and her sister grew up as night-owls who shared a room. When Okediji moved back home due to COVID-19, she said she was used to having her own space, which made sharing a room difficult to the point where she slept on the couch some nights. Across all living situations, communication is the most important part of sharing a living space when two (or more) people come together in an environment.

“

You should have the same kinds of deeply spiritual conversations in a roommate situation that you would have in a marriage.

”

— Kenneth Waters, Communication Professor

Ooreoluwa Okediji’s Passion for Social Justice and Fashion by Yamillah Hurtado

Photo courtesy of Ooreoluwa Okediji

Senior Ooreoluwa Okediji and her family moved to the United States from Nigeria when she was just 15 years old, and her love for her home country remains at the core of her passions. As a political science major, Okediji said she wishes to one day bring political reformation and social justice to Nigeria after building a political platform for herself. She hopes that by the time she occupies a position in politics there will already be progressive politicians in office she can work with to move Nigeria forward. “It’s extremely saddening to study all of the negative effects imperialism has had in my home,” Okediji said. “We have all these intelligent Nigerians that are going abroad and we are not reaping the benefits [of their labor] because the system is just so broken.” From politics to prints and patterns, Okediji said she also has a deep love for fashion. She delights

in her ability to express herself through the clothes she wears and experimenting with different styles. Okediji said she dreams of creating a fashion brand one day that will focus on Nigerian culture, specifically the styles of her tribe, Yoruba. “It’s the most beautiful thing with the vibrant colors, the patterns, the headwraps and jewelry,” Okediji said. She said she hopes to push Nigerian models and designers to the forefront of the fashion industry. Okediji said she believes in her country and its potential to be a progressive and innovative nation. She said she looks forward to helping bring her home into the global spotlight through political reformation and her passion for fashion. “I’m proud of my heritage,” Okediji said. “I’m proud of where I’m from. I want my home to do well, you know, I want it to excel.”

Lexi Scanlon Goes Sustainable by Lydia duPerier Senior Lexi Scanlon is passionate about the way humans connect with the environment. Scanlon, a double major in political science and sociology with a minor in sustainability, grew up in Bakersfield, California. Scanlon said she was not always fond of her town’s agricultural focus but grew to love it. In summer 2020, Scanlon worked on a small sustainable farm in her hometown, where she saw how agriculture could be more environmentally friendly. The model of the farm is an edible schoolyard. She spent most of the time planting and harvesting seasonal crops, using sustainable methods. “It was a really great way to actually learn some of the science behind farming and to understand the

hard work that goes behind farming sustainably,” Scanlon said. Scanlon is a member of the Young Evangelicals For Climate Action. The organization requires her to work on a project she can implement in the future. She wants to create a mini magazine for Pepperdine students that would inform students about where Pepperdine is environmentally and include topics relating to students’ interests, like surf patterns. “I would really like to give back to where I have gotten my education,” Scanlon said. Down the road, Scanlon said she hopes to implement mandatory climate change and environmental courses on college campuses — perhaps her own — to further educate the future leaders of America.

Photo courtesy of Lexi Scanlon

Diego Perez Lets the Music Speak by Yamillah Hurtado

They say let the music speak. Music allows sophomore Diego Perez to express his emotions and surrender them to God. For the past two years, Perez has grown as a musician, learned about music production and developed his skills as a singer, guitarist, pianist and drummer. “Writing my own music has helped me strengthen my relationship with God because it’s my voice, my story,” Perez said. Perez said he doesn’t want to be tied down to a specific genre of music. He said he would much rather create his own sound and keep experimenting with different musical techniques. Although creating music can be challenging, he loves the freedom it brings. “Writing lyrics is definitely the hardest thing,” Perez said. “It’s hard being vulnerable, but if you have something you really want to say, you can just say it [in song].” Along with music, Perez – a religion major – has a love for

Photo courtesy of Diego Perez Taylor Begert, worship director of The Well, originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue singing and songwriting. Over time, he said his faith began to compliment his love for music. “I love the Lord and I love music, and getting to participate in the interaction of that in a communal space is just — it’s just insane,” Begert said. Begert said the biggest sign of his connection with God happened when he was performing a cover of the Coldplay song “Yellow.” Begert said he remembers staring out into the crowd and realizing that he was worshipping as he sang. “If I can worship [through] playing, then I’m really doing this,” Begert said. “I’m really doing something cool.” Now, combining music and worship has become both his occupation and vocation. “I sat down one night, and I said, ‘God, I know that you told me to do music with my life,’” Begert

said. “’But I think I’m doing it the wrong way because there’s no really viable path to success right now.” After a lot of prayer and deliberation, Begert stopped performing covers and began to pursue worship full-time. “I ended up at Pepperdine because I had a part-time worship job and I was looking to fill the rest of my time with more worship ministry,” Begert said. “I got brought in to lead what was formerly a student-led worship night.” Over time, the organization grew into Pepperdine’s “The Well,” a popular and highly attended weekly worship session. “Music is kind of an infinite pursuit; there’s no such thing as arriving in music, and I believe God to be infinite,” Begert said. “I believe that you can never know everything there is to know about God, there’s never a relationship with God that is fully developed and has nowhere to go.”

God that runs deep. Perez grew up knowing and believing in God, but there was a time where he had walked away from his non-denominational church. It wasn’t until the death of his father, Perez said, that he decided to take his walk with God more seriously. “Maybe a couple of months after I fell away from my faith, my dad got cancer and passed away three months later,” Perez said. “Something about that made me believe in God again.” Through this life-changing experience, Perez said God revealed Himself. One thing that lifted Perez out of this hardship is the story of Jesus being tempted to sin for 40 days. “We’re going to go through hard times, but you need to experience hell in order to help others experience heaven,” Perez said. For Perez, music has been a vessel to showcase vulnerability and worship God.

Taylor Begert Connects his Love of God with Music by Samantha torre

Photo courtesy of Taylor Begert

COVID-19 Helps People Recognize the Importance of Human Interaction by Brianna Willis Art by Madeline Duvall

Buying groceries, going to the bank, eating at a restaurant, celebrating a loved one or just simply hugging someone has not looked the same since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic March 11. COVID-19 has changed the way people are able to interact and communicate with each other in both positive and negative ways, said Thema Bryant-Davis, a psychology professor at Pepperdine’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology (GSEP). With no clear end in sight, experts believe some of these changes are here to stay. “In the positive, I think there’s going to be so much more appreciation for connection [because] a lot of those things we took for granted — like just running over to see a cousin or a grandparent or just gathering at a restaurant or a social space,” Bryant-Davis said. “There will be a higher gratitude, appreciation and value for relationships and a sense of community.” From the bubonic plague to the swine flu, professionals said that after a pandemic there are some adjustments that tend to stick forever, — including using technology to connect. Other changes, such as wearing a mask, are only here temporarily. Physical human interaction During this time, physical touch with anyone from a friend to a loved one has decreased. “I think one of the things that we’re all kind of thinking about is those small moments that we’ve taken for granted with our loved ones, you know,” Communication Professor Diana Martinez said. “Even when you think about the ability to hug a family member and what that means and just the emotional connection, that physical act and how that really is irreplaceable.” GSEP Psychology Professor Shelly Harrell said people’s comfort with spontaneity has shifted due to the virus. “I think about the news clips that I’ve seen of people who prior to coronavirus would be in a public place and completely give away free hugs and hold up signs like ‘free hugs’ — just the recognition that people need a hug,” Harrell said. Hugging is important for human health and one of the most important ways people can show physical support, according to a Sheba Tel HaShomer Medical Center article. But with COVID-19, people have exchanged hugs for elbow bumps.

“

In the positive, I think there’s going to be so much more appreciation for connection [because] a lot of those things we took for granted. ... There will be a higher gratitude, appreciation and value for relationships and a sense of community. — Thema Bryant-Davis, Psychology Professor

”

The dating world COVID-19 also affects human interaction and physical touch in the dating world. “The way that people orient toward dating and finding partners [is different],” Harrell said. “What’s possible right now and how do we get to know each other in the same ways?”

Some in the dating world have continued to turn to online dating and other methods to try and find someone. But during the pandemic, it’s easier to take things slow after finding a partner. “Others have suggested that that’s a benefit, so that there isn’t such a rush to kind of sexual relationship or premature kind of physical intimacy,” Harrell said. “They’re going, ‘Wait a minute, maybe we don’t want to jump into that so fast.’” For now, dating practices have shifted. “Now is this a forever thing? I don’t know,” Harrell said. “I think that when society shifts, there are things that last [and] the current way we interact with each other may not be forever.” The new normal Places such as school and work — where most people’s daily interaction comes from — have also changed during the pandemic. Instead of playing with friends at recess, children are having Zoom playdates or using technology to interact with their peers. Swap out playdates for happy hours and the same is true for adults. While some public places have reopened, large gatherings are still banned in California and other states. Many argue a new normal has emerged. “I will say, I usually speak at a lot of conferences and initially like every conference was canceled,” Bryant-Davis said. “But then they figured out these platforms to be able to offer the conferences online and as a faculty member and as a speaker, it’s easier for me to speak at a conference on the East Coast virtually.” When conferences and big gatherings have to take place online, they can allow more individuals to attend because people have more flexibility to participate. Travel costs are reduced and all one has to do is log on. Drive-by celebrations have emerged throughout the pandemic as a way to make a person feel special without having to spend hours at a fancy venue. Some people enjoy how easy the celebrations are. “I have a few family members who had to have a driveby birthday situation,” Martinez said. “It was so sweet and so funny because they were saying how ‘Oh wow, this is really interesting you know, I didn’t have to clean my house. I didn’t have to decorate everything on the inside, my house is a mess.’” While drive-by celebrations may stay for birthday and graduation celebrations because of the simplicity, the same is likely not true for memorials as COVID-19 regulations restrict numbers at funerals, limiting who can say goodbye. “I think that it’s been really difficult for people who have to mourn the loss of a loved one, and have been unable to attend a funeral or a celebration of life,” Martinez said. “So,

whether it be in life or in grieving or in moments of death, it’s important to understand how valuable those human connections are and realizing the importance of these events on our lives.” Weddings have also changed during this time with couples having to reduce their guest list and add COVID-19 safety precautions such as wearing a mask and providing hand sanitizer. Pre-COVID-19, humans took interaction and communication with loved ones for granted. No one knew there would be a time where the ability to celebrate the life of someone would be snatched away. “I think that when we get back to things, hopefully we’re all going to just take it with a little extra gratitude and extra connection,” Martinez said. Staying connected Now people are finding new ways to interact and build connections. “I think what I most appreciate about [human interaction] is just feeling connected to someone else,” GSEP Psychology Professor LaTonya Wood said. Harrell said one of her classes recently spent time talking about how they missed the casual conversations people had in-person before class. Conversations could be about anything from the Lakers game to what they’re going to get for lunch later. In the virtual world however, most students wait until the moment class starts to log on to Zoom, which does not allow time for casual and organic conversations. “There’s not as many opportunities for these informal ways that we build connections with each other,” Harrell said. “It’s not deep meaningful conversation but that’s how we feel a sense of connection and community is just by those little informal things.” Harrell started to incorporate time for relaxed discussion in the beginning of class because she said these conversations are important. Technology is also now allowing humans to stay more connected than ever with the ability to chat online. Martinez said the world is going through dialectical tension, where even as people are more disconnected from each other, technology is allowing the world more ways to connect. “We’re able to connect with people that at a different time would have been impossible,” Martinez said. Now, technology is here to stay. “As we begin to reconnect in other ways, those feelings and those emotions of saliency or how close we are to this issue and how much it’s affected our everyday lives will make us all connected in a very unique way to the situation and to our generation and the generations that are represented in this moment,” Martinez said.

Vol. CXV, Fall 2020

Currents Magazine Fall 2020: Humans of Pepperdine

Articles inside

Lexi Scanlon Diego Perez Taylor Begert COVID-19 Helps People Recognize the Importance of Human Interaction

Homo sapiens in their Natural Environment

The Reality of College Roommates

Humans of Pepperdine .. Ooreoluwa Okediji

A New Way of Communicating: How Social Media Shapes Interactions

Humans of Pepperdine .. Jaxon Burgess Franki Hooks Gretchen Batcheller Juan Carlos Hugues

People with Disabilities Discuss Their Communication Experiences

Humans of Pepperdine . Claire Lee Sophia Zummo

Discovering Self and Others through the Enneagram