The Burr Magazine — Spring 2018

SHOW PLACE LIKE HOME 33

HERE I AM, SEND ME 40

HAZED 49

HIGH FIDELITY 62

SPRING 2018

#KENTTOO THEBURR.COM | 1

TABLE OF

CONTENTS THE COMMUNITY 22 A NOTSOHOLLOW GHOST TOWN Writer Shelbie Goulding embarks on a real-life ghost expedition

24 FRIENDS THROUGH FANDOMS A deeper look at the online friendship community

29 GAME ON

A look inside intramural athletics at Kent State

THE CULTURE 33 THERE’S SHOW PLACE LIKE HOME Exploring Kent’s basement music scene

36 HEADS AND TAILS

Senior editor Megan Ayscue gets to know the anthropomorphic community

40 HERE I AM, SEND ME

The balance between evangelism and exploitation

THE CLASSROOM 49 HAZED

Senior editor Cameron Gorman investigates the Greek climate on campus

55 WORRIED ABOUT KENT STATE FOOTBALL? SEAN LEWIS HAS YOU COVERED.

Kent State’s newest football coach steps up to the challenge

THE CURRENT 58 A SCHOOL DISTRICT’S FIGHT FOR FUNDING

Field Elementary and its stubborn tax levy

62 HIGH FIDELITY

A Cleveland radio station makes beautiful music between rehabilitation and rhythms

ON THE COVER 45 #KENTTOO

Local women Natalie Dang, Carrie George, Melanie Angell and Jordin Manning, join the movement sweeping the nation THEBURR.COM | 3

EDITOR'S

NOTE Dang — it’s weird to write my own version of an editor’s note! Since the second semester of my freshman year, I’ve been on The Burr Magazine staff in some capacity. And even first semester it was an aspiration — but more on that later.

This semester we operated under the lens of a loose “investigative” theme. Writer Collin Cunningham breaks ground in Kent’s punk and do-it-yourself culture. Senior editor Cameron Gorman takes a risk and dissects the university’s stories of hazing in Greek life. Writer Taylor Robinson speaks with women who are a part of the #MeToo movement, taking a local approach with victims of sexual assault who populate the campus.

The topics staff members chose to address show in full force The Burr’s desire to explore the unexplored. This is what attracted me to the publication when I was entering college: why I emailed the editor, whipped up a story about churches around Kent, asked her if she liked it and was told (gently, of course) that The Burr picked its staff the semester before, probably when I was wearing my marching band uniform and playing my high school clarinet.

Even with that initial rejection, The Burr has become a little home for me during my time around campus. And even more beautifully, my little home became The Burr — if you ever want to know the status of the magazine, stop by my apartment and check the stress level of photo editor Jana Life, art director Megan Enderle and I — we’re all under the same roof. It has been a joy to share both leadership responsibilities and a living room with them.

In general, this semester has been a joy. To the spring 2018 staff: I love you and want to be best friends with you — if you want. You, too, whoever picked up this product. Let’s be friends.

KELLY POWELL Editor-in-chief 4 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

The Burr Magazine is Kent State’s first student-produced magazine for Kent State University, the city of Kent, Ohio, and anyone looking for strong, journalistic storytelling. The Burr strives to provide its readers with interesting, humorous and hard-hitting stories that tap into current events, trends and the lives of those who have made a home in Kent.

Kelly Powell EDITORINCHIEF

Megan Enderle ART DIRECTOR

Megan Ayscue SENIOR EDITOR

Jana Life PHOTO EDITOR

Cameron Hoover COPY DESK CHIEF

Tia Myers-Rocker VIDEO/AUDIO EDITOR

Molly Spillman MANAGING EDITOR

Madeleine Kidd ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR

Cameron Gorman SENIOR EDITOR

Julie Riedel WEB EDITOR

Kayla Proctor COPROMOTIONS MANAGER

Abby Hickey COPROMOTIONS MANAGER

WRITERS Collin Cunningham Shelbie Goulding Henry Palatella Amanda Levine Ben Orner Taylor Robinson Valerie Royzman

PHOTOGRAPHERS Sophia Adornetto Colleen Cummins Adrian Leuthauser Xiaoru Wang Dani Watts

Jacqueline Marino ADVISER

Tami Bongiorni ADVERTISING MANAGER

ILLUSTRATORS Sophia DelCiappo Mark Tabar

Norma Young BUSINESS MANAGER

BLOGGERS Alex Kamczyc Alexa Marco Ashlynn Thompson

Published with support of Kent State and the Kent Community. No part of The Burr Magazine may be reprinted or published without permission. © 2018 The Burr Magazine.

330-672-2572 | theburrmagazine@gmail.com

DESIGNERS Sydney Geller Sam Gibson Sarah Riedlinger Katie Studnicha

Kevin Dilley DIRECTOR Jacyna Ortiz MEDIA SPECIALIST

Christian Caudill SALES MANAGER Lorie Bednar OFFICE MANAGER

FOLLOW US @TheBurrMagazine

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NATIONAL AWARDS AEJMC STUDENT MAGAZINE CONTEST 2014 SECOND PLACE First-Person Consumer Magazine Article Nick Shook, “Head Games” (May 2014) ASSOCIATED COLLEGIATE PRESS 2014 DESIGN OF THE YEAR AWARD SECOND PLACE Yearbook/Magazine Page Spread Rachel Mullenax, “Kent’s Flashiest Cocktails” (April 2014) AEJMC STUDENT MAGAZINE CONTEST 2015 THIRD PLACE Chrissy Suttles, “Two Seconds in Cudell” (April 2015) HONORABLE MENTION Chrissy Suttles, “Nightfall” (November 2014) 2015 NATIONAL COLLEGE MEDIA CONVENTION SIXTH PLACE Best of Show for a Feature Magazine AEJMC STUDENT MAGAZINE CONTEST 2016 FIRST PLACE Blythe Alspaugh, “Can’t Fix What Isn’t Broken” (April 2016) THIRD PLACE Online Magazine SECOND PLACE Single Issue of an Ongoing Magazine-Design

REGIONAL AWARDS

NICK HOLLEY SIDELINED

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SPECIAL REPORT: HURRICANE IRMA

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VEGAN FOR A MONTH

It’s just so much more than standing onstage and looking pretty.”

FALL 2017

–ALICE MAGOTO Miss Ohio 2016

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AEJMC STUDENT MAGAZINE CONTEST 2017 FIRST PLACE Neville Hardman “Living on the Edge”

SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS REGION 4 MARK OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS

OHIO SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS

FINALIST Feature Photography Leah Klafczynski, “Unbreakable Bond” (May 2014)

FIRST PLACE Best College Feature Writing Neville Hardman “Living on the Edge”

FINALIST Nonfiction Magazine Article Carley Hull, “Don’t Sweat the Small Things” (May 2014)

SECOND PLACE Best College Feature Writing Kelly Powell “Stress on Screen”

FINALIST Nonfiction Magazine Article Chrissy Suttles, “Nightfall” (November 2014) Chrissy Suttles, “Two Seconds in Cudell” (April 2015)

FINALIST Best Non-Fiction Magazine Article Samantha Ickes “Flowers vs. Guns”

FINALIST General News Photography Jacob Byk FINALIST Feature Writing Top 20 Matthew Merchant, “Shelter Realities” (February 2015)

Student pageant contestants defy industry stereotypes to accentuate inner beauty

SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS MARK OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS Best Student Magazine (Nationwide), Staff

FINALIST Best Student Magazine (Nov. 2017) Kelly Powell, “Breaking Down the Crown” (Nov. 2017) Carter Adams and Aaron Self, “Road to Recovery” (Nov. 2017)

WINNER Jamie Brian “Gaining Perspective”

READ ON Find past issues of The Burr Magazine online at issuu.com/theburr

THEBURR.COM | 7

MICHAEL KEATON TO SPEAK

THROUGH THE LENS

Famous for his roles in “Birdman” and “Batman,” alumnus Keaton will speak at KSU’s “One University” commencement at Dix Stadium in May.

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estled on the edge of South Lincoln Street and East Main Street stands an epicenter for student life. Over the years, this corner has held numerous businesses and changed ownership frequently, but one thing remains certain: This postage-stamp-sized piece of Kent is loved by students and cherished by alumni alike.

The Chestnut Burr was Kent State’s student-produced yearbook, published from 1914 to 1985. In 1986, students Lauren Buterbaugh and Thomas Lewis transformed the yearbook into The Chestnut Burr Magazine, which was shortened to The Burr in 1988.

Current students recognize this corner as the home of Starbucks, Campus Lettering and Embroidery and Campus Book and Supply, but soon this plot will change hands less than 20 years after the last switch in ownership. The 1974 issue of The Chestnut Burr remembers the original Campus Book and Supply established in 1929 on that same corner it stands today. Kent State announced this past year in 2017 its successful purchase of this land for $2.2 million, sealing the deal that this almost 100-year-old property will make its next ownership switch to the university.

Johnson, who graduated from Kent State in 1991 with an aeronautics degree, was recently named Delta Airlines’ first black female captain. Her eldest daughter, Alexandra, is attending KSU as a freshman this year.

This strip of land holds memories for students throughout the years at Kent State. The corner was home to The Robin Hood Inn, a drugstore, Capt’n Brady’s, a bakery and finally Starbucks in 2003. No matter the business, this section just steps from campus served as a social hub for community members and students since its beginnings in the late 1920s.

The future of this cherished piece of downtown Kent remains hopeful. Kent State announced plans to keep the historic building Starbucks is in and turn it into an interdisciplinary studio space or retail center, according to a KentWired report in February 2018. No matter the business, the land on the corner of South Lincoln and East Main will remain a part of student life for years to come.

MOLLY SPILLMAN | mspillma@kent.edu

8 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

CAPT. STEPHANIE JOHNSON SOARS

RICHARD SPENCER DENIED Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist research group, requested to speak at the annual May 4 commemoration and was denied a spot in the lineup.

For the latest updates and breaking news, visit KentWired.com.

CREDITS: Through the Lens - Jana Life; 1974 Chestnut Burr; Michael Keaton - Courtesy of MJ KIM/HFA2014/Getty Images; Richard Spencer - Courtesy of AP Photo/David J.; CAPT. Stephanie Johnson - Courtesy of Record-Courier; Operation Hope- Kelly Powell

STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY

Hanna Duncan, a senior studying fashion merchandising, walks down the runway at ‘Operation Hope,’ an event organized to raise awareness and funds for those affected by human trafficking around the world.

OPERATION HOPE A

nna Honerlaw and Evie Rossol didn’t bus-week to sew dresses, nail down logistics and State, fights against. The organization has not only know each other well at the begin- assemble a team to help them make their artistic changed lives of people external to it, but internal ning of the fall 2017 semester. Seven vision come to life. One existing fashion show, as well. Because of their involvement, Rossol hopes months later, and together, they’ve “Unchained,” worked as a base for what they to work as a sustainable liaison for a company, and put on Operation Hope, a theatrical fashion show wanted to accomplish, but it did not include the Honerlaw wishes to be a bridal and special event symbolizing the horrors of the modern-day sex theatrical story that Operation Hope does; designer for abused teenage girls. slavery world. instead, it tells sex-trafficking survivors’ stories purely through clothing.

“Last semester, at the beginning, I went to IJM, The show started as an under-the-breath idea and I just heard about all of these girls from everyfrom Honerlaw during the first International Jus- “When you see a person on stage being in the sit- where that have been robbed of their childhood tice Mission meeting of the year, where Rossol uation that you can’t imagine, I think that hits and have been robbed of their right to be a person,” happened to be sitting next to her. When a board you harder than just fashion,” Rossol says. “With Honerlaw says. “I thought, even if Quinceañeras member from IJM asked for event ideas, Honer- the fashion, that’s going to hit you harder than are more of a Latin-American thing, but even to law whispered, “Fashion show,” and Rossol took just the show. … The clothing is an emotional and give them a wedding dress or just a formal dress hold. In fact, that summer, she had been tossing mental reflection of what’s happening to the girl to have, to have something that is valuable and ideas around her head about a social justice show. that has been sold.” important. … I want them to feel beautiful in it This was the perfect platform. because they are.”

The harrowing nature of the situations they are Operation Hope was a go. The pair stayed in Kent depicting is the core of what IJM, a global nonpost-finals and came back to Kent pre-sylla- profit organization with a campus chapter at Kent KELLY POWELL | kpowel23@kent.edu

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COUNT E R Photo editor Jana Life spoke with Anne Dargenio, a junior studying sculpture, and Kayla Chimel, a junior ROTC cadet studying computer science, to get a taste of what it’s like to be working toward two very different degrees at Kent State.

ANNE DARGENIO

SCULPTURE

JANA LIFE: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MAJOR. ANNE DARGENIO: “I like sculpture because it is really open-ended; I can do whatever. I have been playing with performance art recently as well as video work. You can combine anything, it’s not just about object making.”

JL: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SCULPTURE MAJOR? AD: “It takes being able to look at things in a different way … being able to give objects a voice and being able to tell what they are saying compared to other objects. I feel like if you don’t understand that, it’s hard to understand sculpture.”

JL: HOW MUCH VALUE DO YOU PLACE ON YOUR DEGREE? AD: “I go back and forth on whether I place any value on it. I like that I am in a university; it seems like I am more well-rounded, but I also don’t think I am more well-rounded than I would be if I didn’t go to school. I think when it comes to my major specifically, it’s very helpful because ... the caliber of the artists teaching here is really high.”

JL: HOW MANY HOURS A DAY/WEEK DO YOU PUT INTO YOUR SCHOOL WORK? AD: “I go into the studio every other day. I probably spend between four to six hours in there, that’s not including class time. Maybe 40 hours a week.”

JL: WHAT’S THE BEST THING ABOUT BEING A SCULPTOR? AD: “That no idea is too crazy. You can just talk about whatever you want, and you have all the materials at your disposal to do that so you don’t really have any limits.”

JL: WHAT’S THE HARDEST? AD: “There are a lot of skills you have to know. Until a sculptor decides what their material is, it’s a lot to take in.”

JL: WHAT DO OTHER PEOPLE SAY ABOUT YOUR MAJOR? ARE THERE STIGMAS? AD: “A lot of people think that they don’t work very hard. I think a lot of people think that you make what you feel ... but people are also diving into really important topics, topics that a lot of people could gain awareness from.”

JL: COULD YOU MAKE IT AS A COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR? AD: “God no! I think if I wanted to maybe it would be different, but I wouldn’t have the motivation for it.”

10 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

POINTS KAYLA CHIMEL

INTERVIEWS & PHOTOS BY JANA LIFE

COMPUTER SCIENCE

JL: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MAJOR. KAYLA CHIMEL: “All the CS classes are about coding. You learn the same language. It’s also really, really heavy in math; I have to go up to calculus 3.”

JL: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE IN ROTC AND BE A COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR? KC: “It definitely feels like a double major, throwing ROTC in there. On your transcript it shows up as three credit hours, but you definitely put in more time than that.”

JL: HOW MUCH VALUE DO YOU PLACE ON YOUR DEGREE? KC: “A lot. I am not planning on making a career out of the military, so once I leave I am going to have to use my degree to get me jobs in other places. I think that if you get a degree in something that you like, that will lead you to being happy in your life later on. I’d say it’s pretty important.”

JL: HOW MANY HOURS A DAY/WEEK DO YOU PUT INTO YOUR SCHOOL WORK? KC: “I get a new coding project every week and it really just depends on how easily I grasp the concepts.”

JL: THE BEST THING ABOUT BEING A COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR? KC: “I think the best part about computer science is that ... you are still able to be creative with it; there are so many different ways you can use the coding language to solve a problem.”

JL: WHAT’S THE HARDEST? KC: “I would say mastering the [computer coding] language is probably the hardest thing. It’s so big and there are so many things that are hidden and it just takes experience to get it in your brain.”

JL: ARE THERE ANY STIGMAS ATTACHED TO COMPUTER SCIENCE OR ROTC? KC: “With computer science there’s not really a stigma, there’s just a bunch of misconceptions about what it actually is. People will be having trouble with ‘Oh how do you do this on Microsoft Word? You’re a computer science major — you should know!’ But I’m really bad at Microsoft Word!”

JL: COULD YOU MAKE IT AS AN ART MAJOR? KC: “Definitely not. I don’t have that kind of creativity!”

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FLAVORS WE CAN’T HANDEL

PEANUT BUTTER BROWNIE KAYLA PROCTOR COPROMOTIONS MANAGER

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH JULIE RIEDEL WEB EDITOR

BLUE MOON JANA LIFE PHOTO EDITOR

COOKIES & CREAM TIA MYERSROCKER VIDEO/AUDIO EDITOR

VEGAN COCONUT MOLLY SPILLMAN MANAGING EDITOR

Some of our Burr staff share their favorite flavors from KSU’s most loved homemade ice cream shop PHOTO BY JANA LIFE

12 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

FULFILLING CHILDHOOD DREAMS As told to Megan Ayscue

When I was 18, I wrote a terrible song for my audition. It was really generic, awful shit on a webcam, sitting in my room playing the four chords I knew how to play at the time. It was really bad. It was a bad song. I didn’t hear back, but I didn’t expect to. When I was 19, I sent in another one and I actually heard back from them. I got feedback. After that, I thought, “It’s never going to happen,” but I kept applying anyway, hoping I would spark some interest again. And despite all odds, after applying at 21 while I was still at Kent I was able to make it to the cast.

I had it written in my calendar when I thought they were going to call me to tell me I was on the show. I expected it to be late April, and I was called earlier than that, and I thought she was calling me too early, and I was like, “Oh shoot, I’m

out. I didn’t make it.” “Survivor” is such a bad girlfriend. You’ll hear back, then you won’t hear back again for months at a time. They’ll say, “We really like you,” and you won’t hear back for weeks. It’s so much waiting and silence, it’s harsh. When you’re told, “You’re on, we want you,” you expect there to be one more twist. I was sitting on my couch in my pajamas when I found out. It was not glamorous. I jumped around the den for a bit and then let my family know. It was bonkers.

I had a whole business idea I wanted to put into place if I won the million. I wanted to start this creative collective of my artistic friends, give us all a platform, get my siblings through college. I had a whole slew of ideas, a lot of fun ideas. The impact of me doing well on the show was there, the things I could’ve done.

After coming home, I feel like I’ve strengthened a few friendships. I moved to Brooklyn as soon as I got home so having friends in the city, so those relationships have gotten stronger. I deeply value my friendships in an intense way, and I put a lot of energy and a lot of effort into them. Other friends flat-out pushed me away. I got home after being away filming for so long and some people

stopped talking to me, some people didn’t want to be involved in my life anymore, and that was hard because when you come home from something like this, you want to be around your friends because you’ve been away from them for a long time. To find out that a lot of them are kinda over you kinda hurts. But it makes me value the friendships I have.

But me being there shows you don’t have to be a model. You don’t have to be some genius from Brown or Yale. It shows you can just be really passionate about something, and you put the time and effort in it can work out sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK TABAR

“Can You Reverse the Curse?” - Jacob Derwin on Survivor: Ghost Island. The Emmy Award-winning series returns for its 36th season with a special two-hour premiere, Wednesday, Feb. 28 (8:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Photo: Michele Crowe/CBS Entertainment é2018 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

I

have been watching “Survivor” since I was four years old. Some people go to church on Sundays, while “Survivor” has been my weekly ritual for a long time. I was always intrigued by the adventure and the challenges, but as I got older, I was interested in the whole social strategy, the complicated relationships that make a game of “Survivor.”

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READING SIGNS WORDS BY CAMERON GORMAN PHOTO BY DANI WATTS

F

irst, a word of confession. I was not entering the tarot reading as a skeptic. No, sorry. I know, I know. The writer, for you, reader, has to play the detective. When I sat down at the table, worn and colorful cards spread out before me, I should have felt them for telling folds. Lifted up the velvety black tablecloth and checked for notecards. Told my card reader that her explanations were generalizations. But I have to be honest with you, reader. I didn’t.

When I sat down and was told to pick my cards — she would tell me when to stop — I didn’t do any of that extra-special sleuthing. Instead, I took a breath and let my hands gravitate toward each card, one at a time. Slowly. That one felt right.

Now, this one. Soon, they were face-up in a “V” in front of me, ornate designs staring up at the ceiling. In the recent past, there was warmth. Optimism, my card reader said. (OK, maybe that part made me skeptical.)

In the spread, the Queen of Swords stared out, gray and stormy. An illustration of a stern-looking

14 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

woman, hair blowing behind her. My pentacle-necklaced card reader smiled. There was something in my past that wasn’t resolved. Part of my energy was closed off, behind a wall of unfelt feeling. I glanced up, into the sun streaming through the window behind us. I could feel the heat gathering on my face. That sounded familiar.

Then, the Queen of Cups. I was introspective, and I was going to have to resolve what lay across the table, the other queen. There was a difference, my card reader said, between putting on armor and being strong. Whether I wanted to or not, the past would come back to confront me. I would need to overcome it. Unpack some boxes. I’d need to have all my energy again.

I asked my card reader if that’s what the cards were telling me to do. She said yes. It was time. I pumped hand sanitizer into my hand, grabbed her business card, and went to eat lunch. And, reader, I do wish I could tell you that I scoffed as I walked away, all Hercule Poirot, certain there were logical explanations behind her reading. I

wish I could tell you I thought about frauds and Barnums, about suckers and cons. But I didn’t.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the uncertainty I’ve harbored most of my life.

If you ask me what I believe in, I’ll tell you I’m not sure. Maybe that’s what makes it easier for me to ponder the cards in the same way I pondered mermaids at six and undiscovered species at 16. Armor? Sure. General? Maybe. And maybe that’s the good in the fortune. Sometimes, my card reader mentioned, the cards dredge up thoughts and memories, reflections about your own life, your own conflicts. For me, the armor was loss. For someone else, a breakup. Sadness, unacceptance. Was any of it true? Well, reader, your guess is as good as mine.

In any case, the cards, resting on their velvet, illuminated by the sunlight focusing through a crystal ball, have spoken. And they have told us it’s time to let go.

CAMERON GORMAN | cgorman2@kent.edu

16 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

FIVETRICK WONDER Self-made sideshow performer Boyd Bush makes entertaining a staple

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY MADELINE ZUPKO

S

itting in the living room near a bed of nails, Boyd Bush recalls his life of performing.

“Don’t try this at home,” Bush says.

“I’m working on having someone bust a flaming cinder block over my stomach while I’m on the bed of nails.”

He’s not a medieval torturer — he’s a sideshow performer, tattoo artist, lizard-rescuing dad and mechanic, and he’s talking about one of his new acts.

“For training, I want them to first perfect busting a regular cinder block over my stomach, learn how to swing [the hammer] and not be nervous,” he says.

Bush currently lives with his wife, Allyson, and two stepsons in a barn-red house in Stow, Ohio, where he practices his act, keeps five lizards and has a multifunctional art studio.

Life in Bush’s shoes is a colorful one. A purple pair of Dr. Marten’s dress him for his performances and day-to-day life and black non-slip footwear protects him while he works as a service technician.

Bush has been studying the art of sideshow performing since the age of 13 when he discovered books on the subject.

“I just found it interesting when I was younger, and I guess I read the books on it and just

decided to start trying things — which is not recommended unless you have a mentor of some sort, but [I was] young and dumb,” Bush says.

It was at the age of 18 when Boyd performed his first show for an audience. It was a party and his entire performance lasted 20 minutes.

“It was just simple stuff, stapling,” he says. “I had all kinds of piercings and stuff. I did different kinds of suspensions from my ears, and of course, the screwdriver.”

At age 36, Bush goes by “The Indestructible Popeye.” He says he chose the name because of his squinted eye: “My left eye squints naturally,

ABOVE: Boyd Bush the “Indestructible Popeye,” 36, of Stow, Ohio, prepares to put on a show for only one audience member on Dec. 4, 2017. Bush has been an active sideshow performer since age 18. His act includes allowing people to staple dollar bills to his body, inserting pointed objects into his nose and hanging weighted items from his ears. LEFT: Bush lights sparklers stuck onto his face using a blowtorch, Dec. 3, 2017. “I bought a bunch of sparklers one time because they went on sale,” he said.

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ABOVE: Bush teaches stepson Austin how to properly lay on a bed of nails, Nov. 13, 2017. “I eventually want to work the kids into my act,” Bush says. RIGHT: Bush replaces a rim after a tire rotation, Nov. 29, 2017. As a TLE Service Technician, Bush is responsible for minor repairs such as oil changes and tire replacements. “Once Walmart is [done] beating the piss out of me, I’ll try to find my way back into the tattoo shop,” he said. “But for now, it works.”

“I don’t do the sideshow performing for money. I donate most of what I make to charities and this and that.”  BOYD BUSH

18 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

ABOVE: Bush stares into the eyes of his bearded dragon, Gigi, while watching anime, Nov. 13, 2017. Gigi is one of five lizards owned by the Bushes. Gigi, Ted Cooper and Sweet Pea are all bearded dragons and Barnibus and Tink are geckos. Both Sweet Pea and Barnibus (or “Bubs”) were rescued. “We get phone calls from our friends a the pet shop asking us if we want another lizard. We say, ‘sure,’” says Allyson Bush.

and I don’t know, Popeye was one of my favorite cartoon characters as a kid.”

Currently, his act includes letting the crowd staple dollars to him — “the tongue costs $50, though,” he says. In addition to stapling, Boyd suspends things like cinder blocks from his ears, inserts sparklers into his face, lays on a bed of nails, inserts a screwdriver into his nose and up until recently, blows fire balls.

A little over a year ago, Bush was entertaining some guests and says he decided to blow some fire balls. He accidentally aspirated the fluid he used to fuel the flames and got a chemical form of pneumonia.

“I have not blown fire in a little over a year. I’m looking for another kind of fuel because just the smell of the lamp oil now makes me nauseous.

You know, burping up lamp oil for five days, it’s gross,” he says.

Having the hobby of sideshow performing, Bush says there is always the fear of getting hurt.

“There’s always fear, every time I perform … anything could go wrong, you know, when you’re blowing fire, the wind’s fine all day and then all of a sudden you blow a fireball and the wind takes it,” he says. “That can affect you; that can affect your spectators. Losing balance while you’re doing things on your bed of nails. Especially when you’re doing things like balancing while you have a screwdriver in your nose. It all adds up; there’s always that fear and that doubt, but you also have to be confident in yourself that you know what you’re doing.”

Currently, Bush is working on two new acts in addition to getting back into breathing fire. He’s also attempting to work his stepsons into his act by training them to balance on him while he lays on a bed of nails. “ They’re learning about these things; it’s not a game,” he says. “I didn’t really incorporate them into things up until recently. I want them to learn all aspects before becoming part of the show, but t hey helped me build the bed of nails. They’ve helped me with props and all that fun stuff too.”

Although sideshow performing has his heart, Boyd works at Walmart as a lube service technician.

Bush says he continues to perform to see the look of “wonder” on people’s faces.

“Working the full time job at Walmart … definitely cuts into my time to practice, but I use it for the health insurance there. For the kids and the family, you know? We need health insurance,” he says. “I don’t do the sideshow performing for money. I donate most of what I make to charities and this and that. Usually I just do it for the tips, for the staple money.”

“You have to at least perceive that you know what you’re doing,” he says. “You can’t show it on your f ace, that you’re scared or you’re nervous. You have to just do it. There’s not any time to be nervous. I’m nervous before every show, every time.

But as soon as I get one person to come up, it completely disappears and it’s gone.” B MADELINE ZUPKO | mzupko1@kent.edu

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DELVING INTO THE MINES How cryptocurrency has been making young people very rich very quickly WORDS BY ALEC SLOVENEC ILLUSTRATION BY MARK TABAR

P

icture this: It’s 2010, and you come across a strange new internet fad. You don’t fully understand it, but it sounds cool. People online have been calling it “the future” and claiming it will replace money.

Wow! So you spend your hard-earned $100 allowance on this so-called revolution. You forget about it, and life moves on.

Fast forward to December of 2018.

You see the headlines. You check back on your investment you made eight years ago. Your investment is now worth millions of dollars.

Welcome to Bitcoin.

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You’ve almost definitely heard of it, perhaps from your friends on Facebook or from someone in one of your classes. Bitcoin has infiltrated the media and sparked the interest of millions worldwide.

But what exactly is it?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which means it is a money that is not controlled by a government or any central entity, but rather a complex system of code known as “blockchain technology.” This means Bitcoin cannot be hacked or inflated. An article from Techspective discusses Bitcoin’s security: “Bitcoin itself is almost impossible to hack as the blockchain technology that forms the basis of the currency is constantly under review by other Bit-

coin users. This means that it is no more at risk than other payment methods such as PayPal or traditional credit cards.”

Since its creation in 2009, Bitcoin has been gradually gaining value as more people started to use it. According to an article on Investopedia, there is a limited amount of Bitcoin available. The demand for Bitcoin has increased, causing its value to soar.

If you bought $50 worth of Bitcoin a few years ago, you could sell it today for thousands.

Ezry Bennett, a sophomore studying accounting at Kent State, was one of many students who was attracted to cryptocurrency’s magnetic pull. Bennett first became interested in cryptocurrency in

the summer of 2017 when some of his friends began telling him about it. He knew he had to get involved when two of his friends, after investing a few hundred dollars into a cryptocurrency called “Nano,” suddenly became millionaires.

“When I turned 18, I just kept watching it for the first semester,” Bennett says. “I watched it as my friends became millionaires, and I went, ‘Okay, I want in on this.’”

This pattern of hearing someone got rich quick, buying into cryptocurrency and spreading it to the next person had an enormous domino effect that rippled worldwide at lightning speed. This enormous flux in popularity was why Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading app, rose to the No. 1 most downloaded app on the iTunes store in December, beating out Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, according to Business Insider’s article, “It’s Bitcoin mania: Twice as many people downloaded Coinbase as Instagram last week.”

looking at around $17,000 depending on how things go.”

finance professors knew all we claimed to know, we’d be very rich. But we don’t.”

Part of its success can be credited to how easy the buying process is. Purchasing Bitcoin is as straightforward as buying anything else online and can be done on any smartphone or laptop. This ease of access has allowed the coin craze to rise as quickly as it has. There are a few different cryptocurrency apps, but the most popular is CoinBase.

Muthuswamy, while unsure of its future, is very skeptical of Bitcoin. He predicts while it may possibly rise to even higher levels, it will eventually “crash and burn.” Dennis, like Muthuswamy, speculates that the cryptocurrency market is a bubble.

This means that the value of it will keep rising until it peaks, and then it will “pop” and dramatically drop in value very quickly.

“Being able to make transactions on your phone… you can just send basically a text message to make “Could it be $30,000, $50,000 or $100,000 in two purchases.” says Daniel Hawes, an associate pro- years, five years or 10 years?” Dennis asks. “Sure it fessor in Kent State’s Department of Political could. Absolutely. But I have seen enough bubbles Science. “It’s futuristic. It’s appealing, especially to know that this looks like a bubble. I can’t tell you to young people.” it is a bubble, but I can tell you it smells like a bubble. Anything that goes straight up, [hyperbolHawes has dabbled in Bitcoin investments with his ically], is typically headed toward a bubble.” son. Last year, he invested $250 into Bitcoin, and now has about $1,800; he essentially made about Even Bennett, who believes in the power of cryp$1,500 for clicking a few buttons on his phone. tocurrency, expects the Bitcoin craze to fall, at least temporarily.

“I think what tends to happen is people start to make money, and then somebody else starts to say, ‘Hey, that guy’s getting rich and I’m not. That’s a very powerful force. Somebody else is getting rich and I’m not,’ so I need some of that.”  STEVE DENNIS “I think what tends to happen is people start to make money, and then somebody else starts to say, ‘Hey, that guy’s getting rich and I’m not,’” says Steve Dennis, the Firestone Chair of Corporate Finance at Kent State. “That’s a very powerful force. Somebody else is getting rich and I’m not, so I need some of that.”

The app allows any user to spend any amount of money and convert it into Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Ethereum.

Because the value of cryptocurrencies is constantly changing, so is the exchange rate. One day, $100 could buy .01 Bitcoin. The next, it may only buy .005 Bitcoin.

2017 was a golden age for cryptocurrency. In March of last year, each unit of Bitcoin was worth about $950. By mid-December, it had become worth over $19,000, which is about a 2,000 percent increase.

If you had any money in Bitcoin, you multiplied every dollar you had invested by 200. Ever since, it has caught the attention of starry-eyed students looking to make a quick buck.

While cryptocurrencies are mostly only accepted online, some local businesses are starting to accept Bitcoin as a legitimate form of payment. In downtown Kent, Wild Goats Cafe accepts Bitcoin as of late 2017. However, manager Justin Rogers claims there have only been two transactions involving Bitcoin since the restaurant started accepting it.

Many corporations have also begun accepting it as payment, including Subway and Microsoft.

This was around the time Bennett began to make his own investments in cryptocurrency and very quickly saw profits.

“I asked my granddad for some money to invest and he started me off with $100,” Bennett says.

“Four days later, I turned that into $300. And so he gave me $1,000 and I turned that into, like, $3,000. And then he gave me $5,000, and that’s what I’m still working with right now. If things go as planned, by the end of March I could be

“People are investing irresponsibly right now,” Bennett says. “Because everyone is Bitcoin-crazy right now. They went Bitcoin-crazy after it hit $20,000. But the thing is, you could see its death coming from a mile away.”

After its unprecedented rise in value during December 2017 and early January 2018, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been on a steady decline. However, it has proven to be an unpredictable market, and it could pick back up in the future. Bennett estimated that it might take a few months for the market to see any real growth, but he asserted that cryptocurrency is “here to stay.”

As enthusiastic as Bennett is about cryptocurrency, he has witnessed his fair share of tragedy from it.

After a long string of emails discussing cryptocurrency, he had one final message.

“My friend lost $200,000 in the process and tried to take his own life last night,” Bennett says.

“Another friend lost $150k and now has to return to living with his parents. Moral of the story: Play it safe.” B ALEC SLOVENEC | aslovene@kent.edu

However, its constant flux in value may hold it back from being used as money; as of now, most use Bitcoin more as a speculative investment scheme.

What was created to be an alternative to the dollar now resembles a volatile stock market, and even experts on finance have been left stumped.

“I don’t know where it’s going to go now,” says Jayaram Muthuswamy, an associate professor from Kent State’s Department of Finance. “If we

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A NOTSOHOLLOW

GHOST TOWN

I’ve never experienced a real-life ghost story, but maybe the depths of Rogues' Hollow will give me the chance.

WORDS BY SHELBIE GOULDING PHOTO BY SOPHIA ADORNETTO FEBRUARY 18, 2018, AT 10:50 PM

O

h my,” my friend, Brandon Bounds, says as we enter a deep abyss of a road.

Darkness surrounds us at every angle; the only light shining our path to the Hollow is my car’s dim headlights. This is Bounds’ first time coming to Rogues’ Hollow, and it’s my second, but something has changed. The nature I once thought was hauntingly beautiful in its deadly form from the brutal winter is now traumatizing.

The hairs on my arms stand straight, and I begin to shiver from the stirring site that lost its beauty.

Bounds feels the same discomfort I do, but we press onward to discover the secrets of this ghost town.

I only hope I don’t become lost in this overwhelming darkness while doing so.

Never in my life have I denied the existence of a ghostly presence in this world, but I never believed in one either. I tend to have an open mind when it comes to these types of things. Hearing stories from family and friends saying how they have seen ghostlike figures and experienced terror makes me

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wonder whether the odd phenomenon could be real. That’s when I happen upon the grim sight of Rogues’ Hollow, a legendary ghost town approximately 30 miles southwest of Kent.

“Prospered from coal mining in Rogues’ Hollow 1840-1946,” reads a Doylestown sign. In the late 1800s, the town was a major trading route alongside the Ohio Erie Canal. Many riders and refugees traveled through Rogues’ Hollow in order to get to the canal and other trading posts. The town sought this as an opportunity for commercial profit, and saloons and other local businesses drew in wanderers of the Hollow as time passed.

But throughout the years, the town became more and more quiet.

“Rogues’ Hollow is a true ghost town in that the miners’ huts and cabins numbering in the hundreds are now gone,” says Earl Kerr, the previous president of the Chidester Mill historical society.

“There are fewer than a dozen houses in Rogues’ Hollow today.” Although the town is empty, it is still filled with ghost stories that have lived for

centuries. Kerr says there are verifiable legends within the Hollow, and many myths as well, proven through the book “Rogues’ Hollow: History and Legends,” written by Russell W. Frey in 1958. Rogues’ Hollow attracted many dangerous characters, such as strangers starting fights in saloons or outlaws with their illegal activities. Frey also told of accidents: Coal miners died due to the dangerous jobs, men died due to dangerous fights, etc. Still, the town has more ghostly potential than dangerous characters and old coal miners.

FEBRUARY 18, 2018, AT 11 PM After wandering the winding and taunting roads of the Hollow, Bounds and I cross the narrow bridge leading to the Chidester Mill. We scout the area before building the courage to venture out into the unknown wilderness. “I’m sure nothing will happen,” I tell Bounds. “The ghost town is now a quiet and peaceful place compared to its history.” I open the door with confidence, but deep down I wonders what was beyond the faint lighting at the

edge of the woods. I shut the door and Bounds follows. Nothing but quiet whistles of the wind surround us. It’s bitter cold, and neither of us are prepared to go into the dark depths of the Hollow.

Kerr, Eric Pandrea; the current president of the historical society, and “Mac,” the caretaker of the Chidester Mill all say Rogues’ Hollow is known for four specific legends that are still a mystery to this day: Cry Baby Bridge, the Headless Horse, the Ghost Oak Tree and the Ghost of the Mill.

The Legend of Cry Baby Bridge: A young woman was pregnant, but the father left town.

When the child was born, legend says the mother was so ashamed the father left that she threw her newborn off a bridge into the cold waters in the Hollow. People say you can hear a baby cry while atop the bridge.

Based on the museum’s historical evidence, the three men believe this to be true, but the story told today is false. The bridge did exist and the story did happen, but the bridge does not exist anymore.

Recent articles tell the story wrong. “Don’t go sitting at that bridge waiting to hear a baby cry,” Kerr jokingly tells me as he points outside the mill’s window. The bridge at Chidester Mill is not the Cry Baby Bridge from the story. The men confirm the real bridge was nearly a mile up the creek from the mill in the middle of the Hollow, where the tall, dead trees sway back and forth above and the icy waters below, but the flood of 1913 destroyed it.

The Legend of the Headless Horse: There was an old oak tree that horse riders would pass on their usual route through Rogues’ Hollow. A branch of the oak hung so low riders ducked underneath the branch so they wouldn’t be thrown off of their horses. One frozen winter night, a horse ran full speed into the branch, which hung even lower being weighed down by ice, and the horse’s head was severed off. “This is not Sleepy Hollow where they had a headless horseman,” Kerr says. “We have the only headless horse lore that I am aware of.”

The Legend of the Ghost Oak Tree: After the horse lost its head, riders passed the old oak tree with caution. Since the traumatic incident, riders swear they’ve seen a devilish creature sit atop the low hanging branch, or even the headless horse itself. Some believed the creature was the devil.

Frey tells the stories of many riders seeing the devil up on the ghost tree. Kerr says when he was a kid, the oak tree still stood (minus the low hanging branch), but he had never seen a devilish figure over the years.

The Legend of the Ghost of the Mill: A young worker at the mill was repairing the water wheel, but in doing so, he slipped and was crushed by the vigorous waves underneath. Legend says his

ghost haunts the Chidester Mill to this day, and others believe this ghost is responsible for burning down the Chidester house six days after being sold.

All three men say this is historically true, but what caught me off guard is what Mac has to say about this story. Being the museum’s caretaker for nearly 26 years, he’s never once encountered a ghost.

Although, he says, odd things have happened, like the lights flickering rapidly for no apparent reason once. He also spoke of a story not told in Frey’s historical book. Mac says the wife of the young worker was the one who found her husband dead from the water wheel. The wife was so distraught she hung herself in the mill. He thinks if anything is haunting the mill, it would be her.

I couldn’t help but want to experience these for myself. At dusk, the park is closed to the public, but Pandrea grants me permission to explore the truths of these legends for one night, though the men tell me the town is peaceful and quiet these days. They doubt I will find anything out of the ordinary, and honestly, so do I.

FEBRUARY 18, 2018, AT 11:15 PM Bounds and I are only so far within the woods of the Hollow. It’s nearly pitch black, but we use our phones to brighten our path; though it is still very faint. Only four minutes after venturing within the haunting woods, I hear a deep, manly grunt to my right. I ignore it. Bounds is at my right, so I thought maybe he was clearing his throat or something of the sort. Then Bounds asks, “You heard that, right?” I freeze and become unbearably tense. “I thought that was you,” I say. We both quickly turn to shine our faint lights into an uncomforting abyss. No animal, no person, nothing. Our anxiety builds.

We press onward down the deepening path that lies in front of us, but we go about the route in a more anticipated manner. Back and forth, we question whether we were in the presence of a ghost or not. The manly grunt was so close to my right that I thought it had to be Bounds. Who else would it have been? Bounds imitates the grunt to reassure his claim. “Oomph!” “Oomph!” I can’t believe what I hear. He imitates the sound so perfectly, I am struck with disbelief. We race through the haunting trail to make it back to the inside of my car.

FEBRUARY 18, 2018, AT 11:50 PM I stare out into the pitch-black woods, contemplating whether to go back in, but I have no choice.

Bounds and I leave the car to begin our second round of the night. It’s colder and the wind has picked up slightly. We venture past where we once heard the grunt before, but we hear nothing this time, only the wind brushing the tall trees against

one another making dead leaves dance across the trail. The creek runs rapidly, causing a disturbance in the wind’s brisk whisper. The swishing and swooshing of the icy, cold waters overwhelms my ears. I continue walking through the abandoned trails awaiting the next surprise Rogues’ Hollow has to offer, but I only find myself and Bounds returning back to my car.

FEBRUARY 19, 2018, AT 12:10 AM While we wait patiently for our next round, we notice the wildlife beginning to emerge from the shadows of the Hollow. A black cat emerges from the depths of the woods and crosses the mill. It seems to know my car does not belong because it makes its way toward us in a cautious manner.

It’s chic, black coat resembles the type of cat that would be at the end of a witch’s broom. Not long after observing my car, it scurries off into the unknown of the Hollow. Bounds then notices another creature up ahead near the mill. A raccoon rummages through the trinkets by the mill with no intention to come near my car. It too disappears into the Hollow, and soon Bounds and I needs to do the same.

FEBRUARY 19, 2018, AT 12:30 AM Bounds and I return to the depths of the Hollow to make our last round of the night. I am more nervous this round because the anticipation inside me grew with the wildlife around us awakening.

With each step I notice the same whispers of the wind, the same sloshing sound of the creek, and the same brushing of the trees and leaves. We hear a slight break in the nature’s melody. A dog in the distance barks aggressively. Bounds and I freeze from the startling sound. We continue through the Hollow seeing the same shadowy figures from the trees and bushes as before, never once seeing or hearing a ghostlike figure within our range. We return to my car, and I look back into the Hollow one last time. Nothing but darkness stares back at me. I start the engine and cross the narrow bridge leading back to the winding, taunting roads that led us to the Hollow in the beginning.

I never got to experience any of the legends of Rogues’ Hollow. I never saw a ghost in the mill, nor a headless horse roaming the grounds. But I still wonder, what was that sound Bounds and I heard in the beginning of our search? “Oomph!” It replays in my mind like a taunting memory. Was it an animal? No, it couldn’t be; it sounded too human. Was it actually a ghost? I can honestly say I don’t know. It will always be a curious mystery to me, and it drives me to return to Rogues’ Hollow someday in the future to figure out this unknown phenomenon straying in the back of my mind. B SHELBIE GOULDING | sgouldi1@kent.edu

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THE COMMUNITY

FRIENDS THROUGH

FANDOMS Exploring an online friend community that unites fans all over the country one concert at a time

WORDS BY MOLLY SPILLMAN ILLUSTRATION BY SOPHIA DELCIAPPO

Y

a’el Courtney, a junior studying neuroscience, stops into a coffee shop in downtown Columbus on a cold winter day. It’s January 2016, and in just a few hours, she’ll be seeing Vespertine, one of her favorite bands, live in concert. She looks across the shop and catches a glimpse at the back of a head. It’s a girl with pink hair. Courtney’s heart rate increases as she pulls out her phone and scrolls through her Twitter direct messages. She has seen this pink hair before — not in person though — on her fan Twitter account dedicated to all her favorite bands. Courtney sends a direct message to a fellow fan online:

“Hey, I see a girl with pink hair, and I know you have pink hair. Is that you?”

The girl with the pink hair turns around. Courtney had just met her first internet friend.

Internet friendships have rapidly grown since the explosion of social media but are not a new concept for the online communities. In the 1990s, bloggers met up at restaurants and cafes in big cities. In 2004, MySpace and Facebook users hosted meetups. A YouTube convention called

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VidCon debuted in 2010, popularizing meeting friends with similar interests in an organized event. In 2015, a Pew Research Center study found 57 percent of teenagers have made a friend online. Now, in 2018, online friendships are a concept many teenagers have grown up around and now consider a normal practice when using social media.

“Having a supportive community that understands that depression is real and awful things are real was so important.

You develop a strong trust without ever meeting these people at all.”  YA’EL COURTNEY For some, these digital relationships stay trapped in laptop screens and phone applications. A mere

20 percent of teenagers actually meet up with their online friends, according to the same Pew Research Center study. For Courtney, however, her internet friends were an escape for her when her home life crumbled at age 15. Without a support group to lean on, she found comfort in music fandoms, subgroups of fans collectively interested in the same topic, person or group, based on sites like Tumblr and Twitter. On the internet, Courtney could openly talk to people she had never even met about lighter topics, such as her favorite bands and music, or more sensitive subjects surrounding mental health.

“Having a supportive community that understands that depression is real and awful things are real was so important,” Courtney says. “You develop a strong trust without ever meeting these people at all.”

After years of a problematic home life and years of moving around through family and friends’ homes, she found herself based in Northeast Ohio at age 17. With little to no contact with her immediate family and no support system to guide her through her formative teenage years, Courtney was completely independent and found comfort

and acceptance in not only music, but fan bases of her favorite bands. This need of connection led Courtney to connect with fans of bands like Vespertine, Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons through her love of music she shared with her Twitter and Tumblr followers. James Ponder, an assistant professor in Kent State’s School of Communication Studies, argues this desire for inclusion and relationship is nothing new.

What is so unique about these fandoms is their anonymity to attributes such as age, gender and other personal details. Some users go weeks or months without disclosing this information until they meet in person. To this community, that information just isn’t necessary or important.

This inherent blindness is an attribute some would find risky, but Courtney believes it strengthened many of her online friendships.

“It’s something that people have always done, I would say,” Ponder says. “If we go back in history, penpals are the same type of thing. People always seek opportunities to talk about stuff, interact with other people, share in things that they love and connect with other people through that.”

“I don’t know what people are; I just know they are fans and they are accepting,” Courtney says. “I

could meet someone in person, and they could be 13 years old, but if they were my friend online, acted mature and went through the same things as me, who cares? I think the internet really makes you blind to that sort of stuff.”

The same invisibility that many fans love is an aspect Ponder discusses as a blessing and a curse.

“The interesting part about social media, particularly in terms of our environment, is that it provides so many opportunities for people who have similar interests to connect with one another,”

While Courtney navigated her newfound independence at age 15 through music fandoms, a similar story played out over 500 miles away in Nashville, Tennessee. Texting group chats filled with Twitter and Tumblr friends daily, Skyping fans for hours from other sides of the U.S. and meeting up with internet friends at concerts is something junior Brookelynn Weaver knows all too well.

“I had friends at school but was very insecure and never really felt like I fit in with them, and these girls had the same interests as me and always made me feel better about myself,” Weaver says.

“It was never something that I did consciously. It just became a very common and normal part of my life.”

Her online friendships provided a safety net while she dealt with family struggles; however, Weaver’s network gave her security as she left Nashville to pursue a fashion merchandising degree at Kent State. While balancing classes and extracurriculars, Weaver began traveling to see her favorite bands in cities across the country, not with longtime high school friends, but with friends she had only talked to online. Weekend trips to Philadelphia, New York City and Los Angeles became commonplace, and her relationships with these online friends transformed into deep emotional connections. Weaver’s tradition became seeing LANY, one of her favorite bands, with her online friend Moira.

“We would book a fun Airbnb, go thrifting wherever we were, find good places to eat, then we would go to a LANY show,” Weaver says. “It just became our thing. While we were technically there to see the band, our little trips became so much more than that.”

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THE COMMUNITY

“When you're in the front of the pit and you've camped out, you know everyone there die-hard loves it.

You automatically know you're accepted.”  YA'EL COURTNEY

Ponder says. “It can turn negative, too. The anonymity provided by the internet lets people do all sorts of fun things. You can build relationships, or you can tear people down, or you can even lie to people.”

gone through something as poignant as Courtney, but many young adults can think back to memories during their teenage years and relate to feelings of isolation, being misunderstood and feeling out of place.

For Courtney, many of her meetups happen after months of knowing the fan and occur in large groups. Coming from a family who opposed social media and internet relationships, she surprisingly didn’t have many hesitations joining the online community and recalls never having a dangerous encounter. “Of course there are people you don’t click with,” she says, “but it’s never unsafe.”

“A reason why people use social media a lot of times is to connect with other people,” Ponder says. “[Some] major reasons people use media is for companionship, for loneliness or to pass the time. All of those serve as opportunities to fill gaps in people’s lives.”

When Weaver studied away in New York City in the fall 2017 semester, her weekend concert meetups turned into a semester of constant in-person hangouts and adventures with her core online friend group who lived closeby. This group not only helped her adjust to living in a new city, but offered support academically and personally.

Security with these friends had been established after years of video chatting and social media messaging. Weaver had no need to worry about safety. To her, these are her offline friends.

“Had they not been around me, I know that I would have had a very different experience,” Weaver says.

“I feel so lucky to have found a group of people who love and accept every part of me, regardless of the fact that it was through the internet.”

Supporters within music fandoms often find it easy to foster in-person relationships because meetups offline can happen so frequently and in a very emotionally powerful way. For music fans, concerts are cathartic and help them cope with issues happening in their life. This experience bridges the gap between online and offline and gives fans a chance to unite at an event both parties bond over. Because Courtney’s connection to these bands happened during dark times riddled with mental illness and personal struggles, she relates to concerts as an emotional and uplifting celebration.

One of her favorite bands, Twenty One Pilots, strives to make music that speaks to those struggling with mental illness and provides a safe space in person for fans to support one another’s hardships. Because of this atmosphere, the Twenty One Pilots fandom is the first base Courtney found herself heavily involved in. “That’s how I got super into traveling for Twenty One Pilots and meeting friends,” she says. “It’s a celebration with your friends that you’re still alive. You get to meet people from all over the world and learn their stories.”

Ponder explains these relationships aren’t just for people going through mental illness or trauma, but people feeling a range of different emotions.

Not everyone who makes connections online has

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Courtney’s online friend network has developed into one of her biggest support systems, growing roots all across the United States. Ponder describes this system as a “safety net,” providing her with training-wheel-like security when navigating sometimes traumatic and stressful situations. Her love of music has made meeting up with online friends at these concerts a huge part of her life over the past three years since moving to Ohio. She tallies on a computer spreadsheet at least 50 concerts and seeing upwards of 100 bands live, all while helping her cope with her everyday struggles.

“I live a very stressful life, and I still struggle with mental illness to some extent, but I want to meet others who are struggling and help them,” Courtney says. “I’m never at a concert worrying about my homework. Ever. I’m never worrying about an exam. Music completely takes away everything else.”

For Weaver and Courtney, online friendships are more than just a like or a follow. Unity found within band fandoms has brought solace and peace to their often not-so-glamorous lives while giving them an outlet to share things they love and are passionate about with others. This bond is something neither can deny is special, providing security, comfort, stability and happiness through their journeys as teenagers and young adults. Above all, Courtney explains, these online friends are people to stand with you at the edge of the front row barricade, crying and dancing together while screaming the lyrics to a band loved by everyone in the crowd.

“When you’re in the front of the pit and you’ve camped out, you know everyone there die-hard loves it,” Courtney says. “You automatically know you’re accepted. You’re going to look weird if you don’t scream the lyrics. Some of them you fall away from, and some of them you meet again.

Even if it’s by accident, you’ll never know when you’ll see them at another concert.” B MOLLY SPILLMAN | mspillma@kent.edu

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Students of Human Services and Social Sciences!

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28 | THE BURR MAGAZINE

Members of team “Sorta Athletic White Kids” watch from the bench during an intramural basketball game.

GAME ON From courts to pools, how these students found community somewhere in between WORDS BY AMANDA LEVINE PHOTOS BY XIAORU WANG

O

n a Monday night, teams in blue and gold jerseys run to compete in an intense basketball game at the Kent State Student Recreation and Wellness Center. These players aren’t Division I athletes, but students who enjoy a friendly, but competitive, game. Both sides are playing with aggression after the home team scores again.

With 14:59 left, they maintain their lead of 27-23.

Only down by four points, the away team looks to come back in its first game of the season.

The atmosphere in the game is loud and energetic. Bystanders stop to watch, but the players aren’t worried about them; they’re focused on each other and the other team. Teammates point

to each other on where to stand while dribbling the ball, calling the shots. The players on the bench are fixated on the game, calling out students who are open. Whenever their team scores, they cheer. Some jump up yelling words of encouragement, while others remain seated. The bench shouts at their team to pass the ball, calling the plays when they think their teammates don’t see it.

losing. There are rival teams and universities where the students care more about taking down a certain school than they care about winning a game. Intramural sports take that competitive aspect of college and professional sports but take away a high-stress environment. Intramural sports are about playing for fun with a bunch of friends, but in an organized way with the goal of a championship.

Intramural sports are a relaxed activity where students compete in teams or individually in a wide range of sports. Going to these games is a lot different than going to your average college game. College games are passionate with high stakes. There’s an emphasis on winning and

At Kent State, the most popular intramural sports are softball and basketball. Turner Goa, the youth program intramural sport graduate student, credits the interest in those sports to how successful Cleveland’s baseball and basketball teams are. In the fall, basketball has the

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THE CULTURE

highest enrollment, with soccer falling in at second, and in the spring, softball is the biggest sport, with basketball following close behind.

This past spring, Kent State added a new intramural sport: Innertube water polo. Goa says they added innertube water polo because Kent State didn’t previously offer any intramural water sports, and from Goa’s undergrad experience, he saw that water polo was a popular sport.

Anna Honerlaw, a junior studying fashion design; Clay Troyer, a senior studying integrated health studies; and Hanna Duncan, a senior studying fashion merchandising were on a five-person co-ed innertube water polo team where they competed in a four-week season. Honerlaw and Troyer were part of the sport’s inaugural season, and they were the first to win it all too.

After the announcement of innertube was made, Honerlaw had the idea of creating a team. She had played water polo back in high school and loved the idea of being part of a team in college with friends. “I don’t play soccer, so it was cool that I could finally do something that I had done and do it with my friends,” Honerlaw says.

Honerlaw was the only one of her friends who had played the sport before, but she says “even though they didn’t know how to do it, it caught on pretty quickly.”

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During games, friends of the team would show up to support them. Their peers would cheer from the sidelines and sometimes even get dressed up to show their support. “My freshman year for one of our tournament games, some of our fans would paint up,” Duncan says. “It’s always nice because you can always hear them cheering on.”

Duncan says. In intramurals, students get associated with the other teams and the referees for their sport, as well as their fellow teammates. Kent State is home to over 23,000 undergraduate students. Goa says, “I think it builds this sense of community within Kent State, with all the students coming together for a single interest and being able to bond.”

The trio’s team won the first championship. Earlier in the season, they faced a team that had been one of their only losses of the season. In the final round of the championship, they faced the same team, a group of seven guys, to win it all. With a focused mindset, the team of five were able to stay in the game to win the championship, winning free shirts and the first-ever title. “I think they [our friends] enjoyed it because we kind of looked like idiots, but we were victorious champions,” Honerlaw says.

“I’ve gotten a lot of friends and met new people,” Duncan says, “[I’ve] formed better relationships and have a better perspective on doing things for fun because I know it’s completely different for intramurals. … We’re all out here to have fun.”

“In a lot of sports, you can get caught up in the competition, but — innertube water polo — it’s so fun, you don’t care if you win or lose,” Duncan says.

Being part of intramural sports has given students like Honerlaw, Troyer and Duncan a community on campus. Duncan first joined intramural sports during her freshman year to meet new people.

“Freshman year it was a really good way for me to get involved because I didn’t know anybody,”

Kent State offers two different programs: league sports and tournament games. League sports are games played in teams and have a month-long season. Students can sign up with friends to create their own team or as a “free agent.” Tournaments are games that are one-day events. Students can participate in a wide range of sports, competing against numerous teams.

Although there are players like Troyer, who played four sports over the course of eight semesters — softball, soccer, volleyball and innertube water polo — the enrollment in intramural sports has decreased. With the addition of innertube water polo, Goa believes more students will join intramural sports. Goa says there

LEFT: J.C. Scott manuvers the ball away from an opposing team’s player during an intramural basketball game on February 13, 2018. RIGHT: Though enrollment in intramural sports has decreased, there were still more than 200 teams and 2,000 members registered this school year.

“I think it really helps them [students] out. It kind of gives them that outlet, that stress relief.”  TURNER GOA were more than 200 teams for all of the leagues and over 2,000 participants.

Intramural sports are also a less expensive and time-consuming option than club sports. Troyer opted for intramural not only for the laid-back community but for the more financially reasonable option. For club sports, the players have to pay to be on the team, for travel costs, uniforms and gear and anything else the team would need.

Troyer sees intramural sports as less of a time commitment than club sports. Because there’s a more relaxed atmosphere, there’s less stress on someone’s athletic ability. Intramural is able to combine the organized and competitive aspect while still having a stress-free zone. “For soccer in particular, it’s very difficult to play a pickup game of good competitive soccer, and so having an intramural as that catalyst, I was able to pull them together and say, ‘Hey, we’re playing soccer,’” Troyer says.

As a whole, the team had to learn how to play innertube water polo. Although Honerlaw played

in high school, the team had to adjust to the modification of the sport. “I think because the sport was new, we all had to learn how to play, so that was fun,” Honerlaw says. “I actually enjoyed playing around after practice. We didn’t [have to] follow the rules.”

Intramural sports have the ability to teach individual lessons too. Still maintaining that competitive atmosphere, Troyer says his teammates would hold him accountable if he started to take things too seriously. “I’ve always been super competitive, and so being able to balance that, we’re still here to have fun,” Troyer says. “All you get out of it is a free T-shirt. If you lose, all you lose is a free t-shirt.”

aspect as well, and it helps when refocusing on going to class and helping with homework.”

Intramural sports don’t distract from studies, but give students a break from their work. The activity also helps develop friendships between teammates, allowing students to get to know not only their friends, but also the other teams as well. “I think it just brings a bunch of people together, having fun and doing what they love,” Duncan says. “I’m passionate about sports and having fun.

I think that’s pretty much what everybody out there is coming together to do.” B AMANDA LEVINE | alevine3@kent.edu

The program allows students to take a break from learning and school work, while still being challenged and involved. “I do it to get away from the education,” Troyer says. Goa adds that intramural sports also help students stay motivated with school work. “I think it really helps [students] out,” Goa says. “It kind of gives them that outlet, that stress relief. It gives them that social

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THERE'S SHOW PLACE LIKE HOME As music venues in Kent disappear, students turn to house shows like the Hoe Garden for performances that are enjoyable and cost-effective.

WORDS BY COLLIN CUNNINGHAM PHOTOS BY ADRIAN LEUTHAUSER

S

ituated on Columbus Street, just behind Kent’s courthouse, the Hoe Garden is the first home you’re going to notice on the block. As you get closer, you see the wide front porch crammed with bodies smoking cigarettes between a set, while the side and back yards are bordered by overgrown foliage.

In the back, there’s another entrance and occasional spot for guests to go pee. Folks are wearing a lot of denim, that’s for sure, but there are also people hanging out in khakis and jerseys. They all seem to be having a good time, maybe locked in conversation, maybe just staring off into space.

Inside, attendees are congregated in the two-story’s kitchen and living room or waiting in line for the bathroom upstairs. The walls are arranged with all manner of decorations: On one shelf in the living room sits a prize machine filled with plushies that resident Erin Dovishaw created for an art project. On another sits a neon sign that reads “Hoegaarden,” the name of a Belgian wheat beer which served as the inspiration for the venue’s iconic name, a gift from Dovishaw’s parents for Valentine’s Day in 2016.

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ABOVE: The crowd watches as a band performs at the Hoe Garden on the night of Friday, February 16, 2018. The Hoe Garden is one of the only DIY houses that hosts local bands. The idea stemmed from the owners during their sophomore year when they realized that if they wanted house shows, they would have to do it themselves. LEFT: A “Hoegaarden” sign sits in the corner, lighting up the room. The sign was a gift from Dovishaw’s parents.

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“And now, even though the Workshoppe is gone, we still have this hub of people and it expanded more into people in the university or people who live in town.”  GARET GREITZER When you have music scenes as large and boisterous as the ones in Cleveland and Akron, it’s only natural some of that enthusiasm for good live performances leaks into the surrounding areas.

Kent especially has long been saturated with a rotating crew of active bands. Devo was the town’s standout act of the ‘70s, and venues such as JB’s Brewhouse and The Stone Tavern were the places to go to see touring acts from Ohio and the rest of the country for years.

Jeff Atkinson, a sophomore studying human resources management, frequently visits the Hoe Garden when it has its Friday or Saturday shows.

“It’s a fairly nice, older house to begin with,” he says. “There’s a lot of people there. It’s usually a pretty cool party, even when you’re not watching the shows.”

Bennett says she’s happy people can feel welcome enough at the Hoe to bring their friends along, but it can lead to some difficulties when people wander in off the street.

Since then, things have changed. The Stone Tavern shuttered its doors in 2016, to be followed by a venue known only by its address: 425 Gougler Some people have come to look at houses like the Avenue. The other spaces in town are mostly being Hoe Garden more as places to party and drink than used as bars. Instead, people who want to see live music venues, which often leads to people overbands for cheap will now turn to house shows — stepping their boundaries with the girls’ property. literally homemade venues in basements where bands and artists come to perform. Even more “We’re definitely trying to bring it back to what than some of the bands themselves, these resi- we’re used to because it has kind of gotten out of dences have become staples of the Kent music hand, unfortunately,” Dovishaw says. “It becomes scene, serving as the background for excellent unpleasant for us. It’s not like we don’t have a good performances — or just enjoyable Friday nights. time regardless, but when I walk into my bedroom, Simply ask Dani Bennett, who currently resides I don’t want random people to be in there.” at the Hoe Garden, one of the few remaining house show locations in Kent.

This lack of respect for the venue’s owners and noise complaints from their neighbors bother the “I’ve heard people say things like, ‘I didn’t even like Hoe’s residents, but they shoulder the burden. In Kent before I came here,’” Bennett, a senior major- fact, they’re effectively the only house having ing in fashion design, says. One of the latent func- shows in Kent right now. Previously, other shows tions of these house venues is they also serve as were held at two punk-flavored venues named relaxed hangouts, and many use the Hoe Garden The Workshoppe and Bum House. While the Hoe to make new friends.

Garden is a haven for indie or jazz acts, the other two served up more hardcore music.

“I’ve met the most beautiful souls here,” says Dovishaw, one of the Hoe Garden’s current co-owners Garet Greitzer is a freshman studying visual comalong with Bennett, Nina Bianco and Ella Foley. munication design whose parents own the WorkDovishaw is a junior, dual-majoring in jewelry/ shoppe, a standalone garage spot in which his dad metal and sculpture. “Seriously, I might’ve just often does work for the house. Except the Workseen them in passing or something, and then they shoppe hasn’t had a show since October of 2017 come here and I sit (on a couch near the house’s after repeated noise complaints from neighbors. first-floor entrance) usually, but, as the show’s starting, I love just meeting people. I love it so Visitors access the Workshoppe simply by walking much. It makes me so happy.” down the hill into Greitzer’s backyard on the corner of Williams and Depeyster Street. The The house tends to get pretty messy after every interior sports an industrial setting, which works show, but the residents don’t seem to mind. A well whether a sweaty moshpit has developed in giant support beam divides the entire room in half, the center of the room or people are leaning leading to some interesting movements and inter- against the walls and enjoying softer music. actions between guests during every performance.

With this atmosphere and set of traits, it’s easy to The only signs that bands play are a small stage believe people who have trouble fitting in else- set up in the corner and a banner hanging from where can find shelter in the Hoe Garden. the ceiling, while the rest of the place is occupied

by miscellaneous tools and building materials.

During shows, the wide-open garage allows people to see and hear the acts no matter where they’re standing, harsh sounds from the guitars and drums clashing perfectly with the sight of the random instruments scattered about.

Greitzer doesn’t intend to have any shows soon, but he understands Kent’s independent music scene would be different if his venue had never existed. “I definitely feel like there would be less cohesiveness between everybody because there are so many people I’ve met through the Workshoppe,” he says. “And now, even though the Workshoppe is gone, we still have this hub of people, and it expanded more into people in the university or people who live in town.”

Greitzer says having house shows isn’t just about clearing your basement and setting up a public address system; you also have to consider how to get the word out.

“It goes a lot beyond doing the show itself, organizing it on Facebook and stuff,” Greitzer says.

“We had 1,000 likes on the Facebook page, and it really showed that the word was coming around Ohio, and even other states because touring bands were coming through.”

One of the comforting aspects of house shows is that things aren’t always regulated. It’s difficult to get down the stairs at the Hoe Garden, for example. The steps leading to the cellar leave a bit of head room to be desired, and you might have to brush past a few people to reach the music.

The walls of the Hoe’s basement are covered in a swirling tapestry of graffiti. IPA cans from the most recent show are spread about the floor. At first, it might look like a battlefield, if a hardcore band has taken the stage. Or perhaps a cult engaging in ritualistic dancing on jazz night. (They have a lot of jazz nights — Bennett really likes jazz.)

But after a few songs, you really start to get into the music, and you realize you’re going to want to come back. B COLLIN CUNNINGHAM | ccunni19@kent.edu

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HEADS AND TAILS Being a furry is more than tails and roleplay: it’s being a part of a community.

WORDS BY MEGAN AYSCUE PHOTOS BY JANA LIFE

A

lly is an orange possum with green eyes, fox ears, long red hair and large hips. She works two jobs, owns three cats, one small dog and a lizard and likes a good coffee. Ally is Alaina Rose’s fursona.

group, while others believe older media, such as Disney’s “Robin Hood” or “Kimba, The White Lion” from 1973 and 1965, respectively, started the trend.

Just liking anthropomorphic animals doesn’t automatically make you a furry, though.

‘Tail Spin,’ Gummy Bears, ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ ‘Street Sharks,’ everything. We were like, ‘Yeah, no, anthropomorphic animals are par for the course for us.’” It was these shows and movies that introduced Rose, and others, to the community.

Rose has been a part of the furry community for 20 years of her 34-year life. Generally speaking, a furry is someone who likes animals with human characteristics, particularly anthropomorphic characters such as in “The Jungle Book” or “Zootopia.” Furries may also like to create their own furry-persona (or fursona) for fun or roleplay, either online or in person. There are some disagreements about where furries began, some saying it started at a science fiction convention in 1980 where someone’s drawing of a character from “Albedo Anthropomorphics” started a discussion

“You’re a furry if you call yourself a furry,” Rose says. And Rose is unabashedly a furry. Rose draws furry artwork, creates fursuits, runs furry-related social media and attends furry events and conventions. Looking back, Rose even used to wear dishtowel tails when she was six. “I’ve just always been a furry,” she says.

From Sonic fan art and wearing tails in high school, Rose now runs several furry community accounts and incorporates being a furry into her everyday life. She runs a Northeast Ohio furry group called NEOFurs on Telegram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. On top of that, she also occasionally weighs in on other local groups and runs her own Tumblr and art pages.

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Rose was introduced to the furry community through Sonic the Hedgehog, “when it was cool.”

“That’s what I grew up with,” Rose says. “Any kid that was born in the ‘80s grew up with ‘Duck Tails,’

With hundreds of members in NEOFurs, running the account doesn’t come without its own set of issues. On Oct. 9, some members of the

LEFT: Furries Ally, Tony and Malaeros take a walk in downtown Kent, Ohio on March 2, 2018.

ABOVE: Tony Stark poses for a portrait in downtown Kent, Ohio. Stark created his own fursuit from scratch.

“You’re a furry if you call yourself a furry."  ALAINA ROSE group met up at Cedar Point. They went in everyday attire, but wanted to enjoy the day with people of similar interes: being a furry. While there, group members discovered one of the people who came had recently “admitted to viewing child pornography” and was in legal trouble because of it. After learning this, Rose immediately banned him from the NEOFurs account.

With more minors in the furry community than ever before, Rose says it was better to be safe than sorry, and she wasn’t going to stand for anything like that. If it happens to be a big misunderstanding, Rose says she might reverse her decision but “for right now, no. You’re gone.”

“The biggest struggle is holding members accountable,” Rose says. “The internet in the late ‘90s, there was a different sense of community. You had to work to find people to talk to, people with the same interests. … You had to dig to find people, and you had to really dig to find local people.”

With that struggle to find people came complacency. Rose says it wasn’t uncommon to turn a blind eye to things from phobic tendencies to even illegal actions, like child pornography and bestiality. Speaking out against people who were doing wrong meant the possibility of being ostracized from the group as a whole. Rose says that the “callout culture” nowadays is much better.

However, being a furry is still not “mainstream.” A councilman from Connecticut resigned from his

job after it was discovered he was a furry. On his old furry profiles, Rose says there was nothing wrong; nothing illegal and nothing about sex. But because of perceptions of what a furry is, he still resigned. Despite stories like this, Rose believes furries will continue to be more accepted by society.

Michael Zickefoose, another member of the furry fandom, says being a furry is “becoming more acceptable [because] we have this huge influx of people who aren’t young; they aren’t naive.”

a larger group, she can’t exclude people she doesn’t like from local meetups who haven’t done anything specifically illegal or wrong. While managing her mini community, Rose has to be proactive. The wrong decision could reflect poorly on the NEOFurs group as a whole, whether that is blocking someone or not blocking them. C. Hillson, a friend of Zickefoose and also a furry, says, “You could be anywhere on the internet, and you’d have weird, creepy people you’d have to block.”

While the furry community started out small, there are a lot of factors to its growth. Rose says media today such as “Zootopia,” a Disney movie about anthropomorphic animals, and BoJack Horseman, a darker Netflix show with anthropomorphic animals and humans together, has grown the interest in the furry community.

Movies, shows and the internet as a whole have led more people to discover that furries exist, and the bettering community allows for people to explore what being a furry means without as much toxicity. There are also more conventions, meetups and websites for furries than ever before.

However, more furries today do not allow other members to get away with things they had in the past. Rose says groups like NEOFurs are quick to ban accounts that have been known to have or promote child porn or bestiality. There are some figures in the community as a whole, however, that remain despite these efforts. “With more minors and this bigger community, we just can’t have that,” Rose says.

With so many more members, Rose says it’s easier to be selective with whom to hang out. Groups are quicker to not invite people who make others uncomfortable to meetups. Rose also says she needs to have more in common with someone other than “you’re a furry and I’m a furry so let’s be friends.” Her biggest issue is, as the admin of

“I don’t get involved in the drama, that’s your thing,” Rose’s husband Tony Stark says.

Recently, there have been other issues the furry community has been facing as well. One of those is “Nazi furries.”

“Back in the day it was just like, ‘You know [those certain people] just like drawing [their character in Nazi uniforms],’ whatever,” Rose says. “That’s their fetish or whatever,” Stark says. “And it was

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THE CULTURE relatively quiet,” Rose continues. “Even though they were assholes,” Stark remarks. “You didn’t have people who were outwardly speaking Nazi ideology. You just had people who were kind of drawing stuff and keeping to themselves about it,” Rose says. But then some furries would show up places in fursuits with Nazi uniforms and would be told, “That is clearly Nazi symbolism, you’ve got to go.”

head and just arm and leg pieces of a costume, or when members take off their heads even when it’s the middle of summer.

I’m not here for your entertainment,” Rose says.

It takes thousands of dollars and many, many hours to put together a full fursuit. Rose has no empathy for those who are upset when someone “ruins the magic” by airing out their suits.

“Nazi furries have been phoning in bomb threats, and they have to cancel conventions, and a bunch of them have been banned from local meets — not just around here, but around the country,” Hillson says. “These people are getting banned from conventions and getting conventions canceled. I mean that’s becoming a problem.”

Conventions, like AnthroCon in Pennsylvania, have special rooms dedicated for airing out suits, however. AnthroCon is in the summer and fursuits can get extremely hot, so for those who don’t want to break the illusion or those who have anxiety, like Stark, special rooms are set aside as a safe place to cool off.

“I think it boils down to the anonymity you have,” Zickefoose says. “You’re not you. So a lot of these people feel like they can get away with whatever.

It makes me wonder if some of the people are even serious about it or if they’re rabble-rousing and intentionally trying to start up problems.”

“I’m a bitter, old and jaded furry greymuzzle,” Stark says. “But I also keep to myself, and I don’t get involved in drama because I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

“Even when it’s at its bad points and bad stuff is happening, like all this stupid stuff that’s going on with these Nazi furries, I’m not thinking about leaving the fandom or no longer being a part of it,” Hillson says.

“Headless lounges” have PVC pipes with air that heads can be placed on to dry while the person in the costume can sit and relax or drink some water.

There are no cameras in these rooms, and they are separated from the rest of the convention. With over 4 million attending AnthroCon, Pennsylvania tries its best to take care of its furry friends.

There are lesser problems within the community as well. Some furries don’t like the illusion of fursuiting, when people dress in complex animal costumes, to be broken. This is a problem to “greymuzzles,” or older (35+) members in the furry community, more than others. Sometimes they don’t like when other furries “poodle,” or wear a

Smaller conventions, Hillson and Zickefoose say, are the most at risk for being shut down from the groups such as the Nazi furries. Even more than the big safety issues, Hillson also says, “There have been furries who aren’t necessarily dangerous, like the Nazi furries threatening people, but people that just act up at conventions lately.”

Zickefoose says it’s because when you’re a furry, especially in a fursuit, people think they can act out more than they would otherwise. Both Hillson and Zickefoose still like the idea of owning their own suits one day, though. Possibly when they have the disposable income.

While Ally doesn’t have a fursuit of her own to wear, she often will wear one of Stark’s. She also has some pieces and plans to make her own. At her home, a “wipe your paws” mat lays outside the door.

Upon entering, heads from fursuits lay in boxes to the left while every other surface is covered in games, books, stuffed animals and art. One head, Tony, one of Stark’s fursonas, has a red mohawk, matching with Stark’s own red stripe. Large plastic bins are filled with paws, feet, extra fur, claws and materials, kept closed to keep Beans, one of the cats, from sleeping on the fabrics.

Stark says a lot of furries wear their suits because it helps them to cope with their social anxiety.

Stark likes it because nobody knows who it is underneath the fur; he can be anyone. At places like AnthroCon, there are parades of fursuits during the conventions.

Rose’s friend, Lysa Anderson, is not a furry. She first found out about the community when she saw a “furry parade.” Some furries were showing off their suits, while others were showing off what they had — just heads, just tails, arms and paws and a mismatch of everything in between. “The only thing I didn’t like was how dingy some of the tails looked,” Anderson says. “One guy’s fursuit, though, was really nice.”

Rose told Anderson all about furries over the years, answering any and all questions she had.

On sites like Tumblr, Anderson says that genuinely curious questions can be met with hostility.

Rose was always happy to answer any questions.

“It’s not for me, but I understand it now,” Anderson says.

That is the biggest step: understanding. With the culture inside the community improving, and the call-out culture improving, Rose says people not in the community are more accepting of furries.

People understand the collective is not just “basement-dwelling dog fuckers” but they are intelligent people who have a hobby.

“We wake up and make fun of furries while we’re eating breakfast,” Hillson says. Zickefoose agrees, adding “It’s totally absurd, and that’s the best thing. … It is what it is.” B MEGAN AYSCUE | mayscue@kent.edu

Alaina Rose and her husband Tony pose inside their home with their dog, Toby. The couple has been married for two years and they have both been involved in the furry community for over 20 years.

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THE CULTURE

HERE

SEND The term “cross-cultural missions” can elicit a lot of different emotions — for some, excitement, for others, doubt. We’re analyzing the desire to evangelize.

WORDS BY KELLY POWELL ILLUSTRATION BY SOPHIA DELCIAPPO

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T

he season of spring is typically seen as a period of renewal, revival — a refresh on life. It is a period where the heart seeks cleaning, maybe a good spiritual Swiffer sweep. What is the antidote to this? How is the urge for a spring cleanse solved? For some, it might be the short-term mission trip. Churches and mission organizations across America will gear up to apply for visas, board international flights and spend short moments with Nicaraguan, Indian, Spanish and Dominican children.

These trips don’t always take the same shape.

Sometimes the short-term events lead to longterm dreams. Sometimes the long-term dreams lead to paid positions. And sometimes, in a different vein, an inability to pursue any of the above lets people draw close to hometown missions. There is an unending well of support for those who choose to chase these experiences — but there is also an unending well of criticism.

I AM,

ME HYDERABAD, INDIA

There are flies everywhere. So many flies that, no matter how far you walk, you can hear their wings rubbing together, creating a humming in your eardrums. There is a smell, too. So much of one smell that it doesn’t seem to leave your nostrils for hours after you leave the area. People emerge from their homes on either side of the aisle — homes constructed from garbage. They are all smiling, pairs of lips opening to reveal a welcoming spirit. The recipients are 12 members of a college church, white twenty-somethings experiencing Hyderabad, India, for the first time.

A young boy, no more than 10 years old, begins to walk alongside their pack. He wields a log around every time he hears a rabid dog barking, ready to protect those he steps beside. He has only known these people for five minutes, but he is defending them like he has known them his whole life.

A.J. Ozanich, a full-time staff member at H2O Church, was one of the 12 — an unintentional parallel to Jesus’ disciples. He has been a part of

eight mission trips: four international service trips, two international vision trips and two local, Pittsburgh-oriented trips. And he is arriving at his ninth, another weeklong venture to India.

When averaging all of these missions together, the time frame is roughly 18 days. Ozanich has a track record for short-term mission trips. He’s done enough fundraising to understand the praise and blame they might elicit.

“We want to be careful about how we spend our money,” he says. “Some people might ask, ‘Why should I spend $2,700 on one person to have that experience rather than putting $2,700 straight into the orphanage to bless these children?’

There’s probably a number of answers, but part of this [solution] is the American mindset that we’re going to fix everything. Part of the problem with pouring money into different projects and mission works, especially in other countries, is that they’re not learning to self-sustain.”

He has a Biblical perspective — a mindset that advises him his money is not his own. In fact, to him, it is God’s. In a society that fails to be generous with time, funds and energy, Ozanich

seeks to live in a countercultural way with the attitude of a student. He is eager to be educated.

“We need to go to say, ‘We’re going to learn about the people in this culture and pray and hope that God uses us in some distinct ways maybe only we can fill, but we certainly don’t have all the answers,’” he says. “We’re going to avail ourselves and make ourselves available to whatever is happening.”

Two arguments often presented against missionaries go as follows: The foreign places they are traveling to have issues with deep roots which cannot be pulled within the course of a week, or the individuals on the team are going for the location, not for the mission. Ozanich recognizes these bad aspirations and motivations, but he feels his church is aware of the pitfalls.

Through pre-trip research, he recognizes India as part of the 10/40 window: a term coined by 1990s missionaries for the area 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude. They are “unreached” parts of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, places untouched by the Christian Gospel. Com-

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THE CULTURE plementing the India trip is a Puerto Rico trip, in which a group of college evangelicals will go south to assist with Hurricane Maria cleanup.

“The question we’re constantly asking is: What does Scripture call us to?” Ozanich says. “I kind of addressed that with orphanages, but also, what’s happening in our culture? What’s relevant to us here and now? Hurricane relief might not be a very specific calling from Scripture, but it is something that’s relevant to our context right now, and so we’re responding to that.”

ALBANIA AND CANCUN, MEXICO The buildings are complete, but unless you are an Albanian, you are unable to tell. From an outside perspective, the structures look more like piles of cinder blocks. Upon entering the dorm buildings, American college students call out to Albanian college students, awaiting a human response from the otherwise inhumane conditions. A man opens the door to his living quarters, revealing a room similarly sized to one in the United States. The difference is the lack of furniture which fills the space — instead, only two mattresses, a stack of books and a hot plate furnish it. The floor is concrete, and the walls are cinder block.

“When you come for a week, you just on-ramp onto the super highway.

We’re not paving a new lane for you, you're just literally joining us in what we're already going to do, and then you off-ramp, and we keep going.”  MATT COOPER

This was the setting of Matt Cooper’s first mission trip, a seven-day excursion with national college ministry organization CRU. Cooper is the United States director for Back2Back Ministries’ Cancun and Mazatlan, Mexico, locations, a believer in the power of abbreviated mission work. All that said, he understands the perspectives of those who see evangelism as enduring or nothing. There are some who may “take a jab at short-term missions,” the in-and-out approach some organizations take when entering the international realm. But Back2Back is stationed in these third-world nations 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

“Picture Back2Back as this five-lane super highway, like, ‘This is where we’re going,’” Cooper says.

“We know what our goals are. We know what we believe God has us here to do in the lives of children and families. When you come for a week, you just on-ramp onto the super highway. We’re not paving a new lane for you. You’re just literally joining us in what we’re already going to do, and then you off-ramp, and we keep going.”

Cooper made it very clear — they do not exist to entertain the youth groups who travel abroad, to decorate the Instagram feeds of Christian college students. They exist to fill emotional, spiritual, social, physical and educational needs of orphans.

They exist to put a new roof on a struggling fam-

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ily’s home, to cook a meal with a hurting mother or to take children on an educational field trip.

Thirty Mexican boys, aged 12 to 17, board a boat tour, 25 Cincinnati men following shortly after them. They ride across the ocean for 20 minutes, enjoying the sights and sounds of Cancun for a moment. The day following the ferry ride is the day of their recreational dreams: hanging out at the beach, playing soccer, eating picnic food and going snorkeling. They feel safe. They are building relationships.

“Some people would say, ‘Well, those people that came in were strangers, so they’re spending time with strangers, and what does that do? Is it traumatizing those kids?’” Cooper says. “We would say no because we are the safe adults. As Back2Back, we have a relationship with those young men. They trust us, so they trust the people we are inviting into that space are also safe people.”

According to statistics from the World Health Organization, there are approximately 160 million orphans worldwide. And loving them is as individual, Cooper says, as loving the one in front of himself. It could look like housing a child who has grown up in a children’s home so they are more capable of high school or college education.

It could take the form of giving the child fresh clothes, a backpack or good meals. It could look like personal nurturing and wiping away tears.

It could be a matter of thinking outside the box.

AKRON, OHIO The clock strikes 2:30. The doors open, the children enter, the nametags are fastened and the games are initiated. Approximately 150 kindergarteners through fifth-graders from Thailand, China, Mexico, India and the Congo, to name a few, flood the halls of what was previously a United Methodist Church. There is a flurry of activity. Nine hula hoops are converted into a child-sized tic-tac-toe board. Boxes of Connect Four, Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders are opened. A sanctuary is filled to capacity with people no taller than four feet, the screen flashing technicolor videos with lyrics about Jesus Christ’s love.

This is Kids’ Club, an every-Friday occurrence for Urban Vision’s staff team. This is what some may argue is an alternative to an international trip, and rightfully so. Since 1992, the organization has pumped blood through the missional heart, originally located in the Elizabeth Park Valley neighborhood and relocated in North Hill.

Regina Lewis, the volunteer coordinator, calls it the “go-to place for kids” in the area. Over 30 languages are spoken within its walls, each of

them getting a special place on the lobby’s mural, speaking “hello” in almost three dozen tongues.

It already is calling for new additions, children from the Congo and Kenya joining the body.

Lewis claims it is a “magical place.”

“It is a requirement that [the staff] all live in the neighborhood,” she says. “We live side-by-side with these individuals. We see people in the store like, ‘Hey, how are you?’ We’re not coming from outside because the one thing we want to give people is dignity. Regardless of whether you were born here or whether you came here, everyone deserves dignity.”

Despite being a “vibrant part of town,” North Hill faces its challenges as a neighborhood just like any other. That’s why, Lewis argues, Urban Vision is a vital hub. “Walking alongside people who may not look like you,” she claims, is the mission of Jesus Christ, an eraser that wipes away most challenges that might etch themselves into the area. This is the magic. This is “what the Kingdom is supposed to look like.”

ard says. “That doesn’t project well on you and your missions and what you’re doing.”

In the end, the mission trip is what you make of it. Rouchard says the outcome is all in the mentality. One missionary’s simple “yes” response is enough to counter any “no” from anywhere else.

Whenever he sets out, Ozanich recalls Isaiah 52:7 — “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald, who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” He wants to have beautiful feet. B KELLY POWELL | kpowel23@kent.edu

ORLANDO, FLORIDA [RELEVANT MAGAZINE HQ] One important argument against the short term mission trip, typically, takes shape in the form of an app, an app whose aesthetic has sleekened, one that probably followed the path of its users over the years. Instagram’s platform has drifted from a place for Clarendon-filtered photos of dogs to a place to start a Canon-captured record of life meant for one-upping. This promotional mentality can trickle down to the mission-trip world without a second thought.

“A lot of times they see the reel of excitement on Instagram and the stories that other bloggers post, and they get so romanticized by it because they only post the good part,” Mikaylah Rouchard, the operations manager at Relevant Magazine, says. “In reality, it’s very, very, very hard.”

What she means is inherent in every community — the pressure to perform, the burden of boasting.

It makes its way into the missionary sphere as well. Rouchard warns against a tendency to project a more impressive or positive image than someone is actually experiencing. This can come in the “worth-it” mindset; because the missionaries have people funding them to take the trip, they need to make sure it appears to be the bestcase scenario.

“Say you go to New York for a week and it’s technically a mission trip; you are doing mission work, but all you’re portraying is the fancy ice cream and your trips to your sightseeing,” Rouch-

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#KENTTOO A movement’s ripples hit Kent WORDS BY TAYLOR ROBINSON PHOTOS BY COLLEEN CUMMINS

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fter being attacked from behind with rope, dragged onto a bed and tied down, Melanie Angell says she was raped while attending Bowling Green State University. At 18 years old, she says, it was her second sexual assault.

As shocking as it may sound, an American is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Since 1998, more than 17,700,000 women have reported a sexual assault, according to MeTooMovement.org.

Even in the heart of Ohio, the statistics show an increase of reported rapes. Rape reports at Kent State tripled from 2016. There were 18 sexual assault crimes reported on campus property and five on non-campus property in 2016, an increase from six in 2015 and 2014, according to the Kent Campus Annual Security Report.

Following her attack, Angell says she went from a 4.0 student to earning nearly a 1.5 GPA. She says she felt depressed and worthless and took a year off. After deciding to go back to school, she decided to attend Kent State and is majoring in middle childhood education. Now, two years later, she is a junior and a member of Phi Sigma Pi, an honors fraternity, a sister of Chi Omega sorority and is working on regaining trust and establishing friendships.

Natalie Dang, a sophomore studying biology at The University of Akron and a sexual assault survivor, says it is important people understand sexual assault can happen in a multitude of ways — it’s not just rape.

“Every situation is different and equally terrible,” Dang says.

College-aged women, ages 18 to 24, are three times more at risk for sexual assault, and 23.1 percent of undergraduate student females experience rape or sexual assault, according to RAINN. Is change on the horizon?

The phrase “me too” is used to help survivors let go of any shame they may feel and empower them, especially in minority communities, says Tarana Burke in an interview with The Nation. Burke is an American civil rights activist known for creating the #MeToo movement.

Angell says the #MeToo movement is empowering and gives those who have or haven’t been through assault beneficial knowledge to prepare them if anything ever happens to them.

Carrie George, a senior studying journalism and a sexual assault survivor, says she feels the #MeToo movement is empowering and helping people take their power back.

“I hope people take away that they can’t trust everyone they meet,” Angell says. “It’s good to have some trust, but always have your guard up. It could be someone close to you. It’s not always a stranger.”

“At first, I wasn’t willing to participate and put my name out there with the movement,” George says.

“But the more I saw people come forward, the more I felt I wasn’t alone and I could put my name and voice out there.”

According to RAINN, seven out of 10 rapes are committed by someone a victim knows. Forty-five percent are committed by an acquaintance.

The now-viral movement has motivated survivors to step forward with their stories and their experiences.

“For years, women’s voices have been silenced not only by men, but by society,” Dang says. “They try to silence you and make you feel guilty.”

George says people need to understand the movement isn’t a matter of getting attention — it’s a matter of survivors finding their voice.

“There [are] some misconceptions that people want pity or attention,” George says. “Nobody is doing that. Nobody wants people to know. It’s very vulnerable to come forward with this.”

Jordin Manning, a sophomore majoring in psychology, a sexual assault survivor and an activist who participates in the Kent State organization Students Against Sexual Assault’s (SASA) rallies and helps to update and create policies with them, says the movement, though powerful, has its pitfalls.

“I’m glad the #MeToo movement is happening,” Manning says. “However, I see hypocrisy when an actress goes and stars in a movie with Woody Allen and use excuses like they don’t have a choice.”

Dang says she thinks some people are scared to be a part of the movement because they don’t want people to know they've been assaulted.

“Don’t compare your experience to others,” George says. “If it affects you in any way, you have the right to feel that. Everyone heals and reacts to it differently.”

According to RAINN, 994 perpetrators out of every 1,000 rapes will walk free. Only about 310 of those crimes are reported to police.

“There is a lack of a justice system, and even if someone reports it, they still have to live with

Sexual assault survivors clockwise from left Natalie Dang, Jordin Manning, Melanie Angell and Carrie George illustrate four different emotions (isolation, vulnerability, anger, shame) they, and many other women, have experienced through their assault.

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THE CLASSROOM what happened to them,” Manning says. “Reporting is scary, and even getting a rape kit doesn’t really show a sexual assault happened.”

Jennifer O’Connell, the director of Sexual and Relationship Violence Support Services (SRVSS) at Kent State, believes the #MeToo movement has launched a trend of believing survivors and has helped survivors want to speak up and seek help, even if they aren’t officially reporting the incident. “#MeToo is helping survivors see they are not the only one,” O’Connell says. “It is hard to say if reports will go up, but it is helping bystanders see this is a bigger issue and these aren’t isolated incidents.”

O’Connell estimates about 20 percent of students will file an actual report, but about 40 to 50 percent will seek support. SRVSS can walk survivors through filing a report, if they wish to do so, or point them in the direction of Student Legal Services.

SRVSS, located in the Williamson House, is open to anyone in the Kent State community and can provide support and resources such as crisis intervention, adjudication support, academic intervention and awareness.

“There is a lack of a justice system, and even if someone reports it, they still have to live with what happened to them. Reporting is scary, and even getting a rape kit doesn’t really show a sexual assault happened.”  JORDIN MANNING O’Connell explains reporting sexual assault has a lot of barriers and may not be the best option for a survivor. However, she encourages survivors to speak to someone and seek support.

SRVSS offers crisis support at any point after assault, from immediately after to years following the incident. They provide privacy and allow students to come in and remain anonymous if they wish. SRVSS can help students with academic accommodation, finding safe housing and has hot lines and counseling available for them.

Dang says survivors should know there are always people there to support them, and it is very important for women and survivors to stick together and support one another.

Coming to Kent State for a fresh start after her attack at Bowling Green, Angell says she has

Sexual assault survivors Carrie George, Melanie Angell, Natalie Dang and Jordin Manning stand together in solidarity to support all women who have been sexually assaulted.

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finally been able to open up about her experiences and is taking her life back.

“I personally wasn’t able to talk about it at all, but I just got over that,” Angell says. “I wanted to share my story, just to give people a heads up that it can happen. A lot of people think, ‘Oh, it won’t happen to me,’ but it does. It’s good to know there’s someone who cares about your story.” B TAYLOR ROBINSON| trobin30@kent.edu

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HAZE HAZE H A ZE HAZE HAZED Pulling off the blindfold of a harmful practice

WORDS BY CAMERON GORMAN PHOTOS BY DANI WATTS

I

n his office in Kent State’s Twin Towers, Todd Kamenash is an imposing man. Tall, with wide shoulders under his button-down, the assistant dean of students and director of student conduct embodies the athlete-turnedadministrator. He seems like the kind of allAmerican guy who might have had an easy ride through college.

Ask him, and he’ll tell you different.

“I was on a sports team, a club sports team, and I was a sophomore when I was able to make it onto that club team,” Kamenash says. “And I had guys that were my year, and they were on the team the year before, and they just absolutely treated us like garbage.”

On his team in college, Kamenash was hazed. He and other players were forced to do all of the team’s setup and had to carry stuffed animals in public for months.

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THE CLASSROOM “We had our first tournament where we went out of state,” Kamenash says. “We were blindfolded.

There were several of us, at the time there were four of us. … They blindfolded us and made us hold hands. And they had it orchestrated, and they were telling us, ‘One of you has not done what we want. … And as a result, effective immediately, that person is not going to be one of us anymore.’ And then, everybody, because of how they set it up, had a hand release, so we didn’t know who was next to us, but each of us, a hand let go.”

As it turned out, veterans had been stationed in between them. Still, it was frightening.

“It gives me chills now to think about it,” Kamenash says. “That was mentally a mess for us. How do you do that? Who thought of that and thought that was going to be OK?” For Kamenash, hazing, which Kent State defines as “any action or situation intentionally created, whether on or off university premises, to produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment or ridicule,” took the form of humiliation and intimidation.

For some at Kent State, it was physical. To others, like David Carlyn, a member and the corresponding secretary of Phi Kappa Psi at Kent State, and a member of IFC, the Interfraternity Council, where he’s the director of community service and philanthropy, hazing is anything that causes discomfort.

“Hazing’s … anything that makes you feel uncomfortable physically, mentally or emotionally,” Carlyn says. “Anything that would cause trauma.

Anything … that would degrade an individual.”

These definitions of hazing can seem familiar, even unthreatening. It’s college, or a sports team or a club. To get in, you have to go through something, right? No harm, no foul. But with the rise of coverage on the topic nationwide, awareness of the true threat of hazing is growing — and there are those at Kent State who want to stop it entirely.

Campbell is proud to tell you that he was a part of a fraternity in college. A Sigma Nu. And he’s proud to tell you that, at its core values, Greek life offers something no other experience on campus can.

“I believe the fraternity … is the best thing on the college campus when done right,” Campbell says.

“Nothing else compares to the advancement that a student can recieve and the experience a student can get out of that and lifetime satisfaction and commitment, which was shown in a recent study, that members of fraternities and sororities have a better lifetime of career and happiness than non-members.”

When asked to describe his hazing, though, he goes quiet.

“I would prefer not to,” Campbell says. “It’s — it was not good. It was not necessarily saying dangerous activities. I’m just saying it wasn’t good and it did nothing for me as a man. And so, I don’t dwell on it. I dwell on how I can prevent it from happening to anyone else.”

“It gives me chills now to think about it. That was mentally a mess for us.

How do you do that?

Who thought of that and thought that was gonna be okay?”  TODD KAMENASH Hazing, which Campbell defines as “unwanted, uncomfortable situations,” has been a point of contention in the media recently, with stories such as the death of Penn State student Tim Piazza dominating headlines. But the fight against hazing in Greek life is an old one.

“With all the national press, the bigger organizations, they don’t want to deal with it,” Sellers says, “because they can start a new one at any college they want to, so they could just get rid of you if you do it. So now, it’s more of a PR thing from the top.”

Andrew Coffey died during hazing at Florida State University’s Pi Kappa Phi in November of 2017.

Maxwell Gruver lost his life in September of the same year to hazing at Louisiana State University’s Phi Delta Theta. In November of 2012, it was David Bogenberger at Northern Illinois University.

In 2011, George Desdunes at Cornell. 2010, Samuel Mason, Radford University. 2009, Donnie Wade, Prairie View A&M University. 2008, Carson Starkey at Cal Poly. The list goes on.

Some working to prevent hazing, like Dennis Campbell, the assistant director for Fraternity and Sorority Life in the Center for Student Involvement at Kent State, have good reason.

“I personally was hazed,” Campbell recalls. “And my organization has since … eliminated hazing in my chapter. I now serve as the chapter adviser for my chapter, and so we’ve spent our time erad-

The cultural shift is becoming evident for those such as Matt Sellers, who says his fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa, holds hazing at zero tolerance.

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icating it. It doesn’t happen in our organization.

We don’t permit it, and so we’ve spent a lot of time on that.”

No one has died of hazing at Kent State, but in 2013, the Gamma Tau Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi was suspended for a history of hazing, including paddling, caning and mental anguish.

Kamenash says they aren’t the only ones who have been disciplined through the years. In fact, he says, there have been “several.”

“We’ve had paddling, yes,” Kamenash recalls. “... I don’t remember if it was here or at my previous place where we had blindfolding. So I’ve been here since 2010, and we’ve had a lot of different varieties of things that have occurred, and thankfully, the level of harm has been limited, but … the paddling is an extreme. That’s happened since I have been here, and the people freely admitted to it. And in that situation, the fraternity was found responsible and endured sanctions.”

Sanctions for fraternities found to be involved with these risky behaviors can range anywhere from interim measures to suspension or other consequences. Kamenash says there is no norm.

In the Kappa Alpha Psi case, crackdown came in the form of a previous suspension, two probations and, finally, another suspension, according to the Kent Stater’s reporting. It lasted three years.

“It’s a case-by-case situation, and it really is so dependent on the issues that occured,” Kamenash says. “If there was some alcohol there, there could be some element of alcohol education. If it’s severe or pervasive, and it’s creating a safety risk to the university, then yeah, we have to say, ‘You need a timeout.’”

Those sanctions, though, aren’t meant to punish, but to change, Kamenash explains. He seems to have thought this philosophy through before, perhaps explained it to many other kids sitting across from his desk.

“Look, I’m not telling you not to have a good time,” Kamenash says.“I’m not telling you to find that what you’re doing is bad. I’m not judging you.

What I’m saying is, you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity because we didn’t just completely de-recognize you. We gave you an opportunity to review yourself. If you want to think of me as the bad guy, OK. This isn’t about me. … My goal is not to wield power. My goal is to help these people think about for themselves: What does this mean to them?”

Carlyn, who also serves as the community service chair for the Order of Omega, an honorary orga-

nization for Greek members, says he hasn’t heard anything about hazing at Kent State. Still, he seems to recognize the issue.

“I would hate to think that there is, but I would be ignorant to say that it doesn’t go on,” Carlyn says. “ … I know for a fact, my fraternity, we don’t do that. We don’t accept that at all, and I would hope that’s the same for all others, but I can’t say or know what they all do.”

Lamar Hylton, the dean of students at Kent State, seems to share Carlyn’s skepticism.

“Hazing, party culture, alcohol, high-risk drinking, sexual misconduct, diversity and inclusion issues, you name it,” Hylton says. “I don’t want to sugarcoat it for what it is. Those are the issues that we deal with, and also are some of the driving forces and driving attractions for many of the people who are joining our organizations, unfortunately.”

Hylton, an energetic man with a bright bow-tie, is also involved with a fraternity: Phi Beta Sigma.

“These organizations were founded on the principles of brotherhood or sisterhood, scholarship and service, and so regardless of what organization you are aligning yourself with, it is likely, about 99 percent chance, that you would be hearing those terms,” Hylton says. “… That is what

distinguishes a fraternity or sorority member: that you are committing yourself to those values in a very prominent way and that you are in some ways taking up the mantle to be academically successful, to provide quality and meaningful service to the community and to share and to promote the concept of brotherhood or sisterhood among all people. Those are the reasons why you join an organization. We have gotten very far away from that, in my opinion.”

But what about fraternities breeds this behavior?

“I think it’s very individual to the individuals that are participating in the behaviors,” Hylton says. “Some of it may be power, some of it may be, ‘This is the way that I was brought in, and so I have to do it to somebody else.’ Some of it is … allowing the organization to make the individual rather than the individuals making the organizations. Some of it is — most of it is — downright buffoonery.”

Carlyn believes it might be a misguided way to bond.

“It’s a concern because you have people with different trains of thought,” Carlyn says. “You think, some people believe — I don’t even understand it myself — some people believe that hazing is a way to create a stronger bond, it’s a way to … test

devotion or whatever. I just don’t see it. … It’s coming out now because people aren’t afraid to speak out about it.”

Campbell, who admits he also participated in hazing, because “that was the culture of it,” contests that hazing isn’t the way to foster friendships.

“A lot of times, it’s the destroying of self-worth,” Campbell says. “You also don’t know the individual and their past experiences, and what they’re coming into it, whether it’s through depression, whether it’s loss of a family member, and now you’re doing something to them, and you’re hazing them, and it could cause a whole ricochet, all the way up until death.”

Campbell also mentions that hazing could undermine the very bond it might be trying to forge.

“It systematically destroys trust,” Campbell says.

“You can’t trust someone that you treated that way or that treated you that way, there’s an inherent lack of trust and empathy. And loss of humanity.”

Because of this, Hylton says hazing, among other recent struggles in Greek life, can undermine the original purpose of the organizations. There are crushed beer cans on the hallowed halls’ floors.

“It underscores the issues prevalent in fraternities and sororities, regardless of the reasons why

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“It systematically destroys trust. You can’t trust someone that you treated that way or treated you that way, there’s an inherent lack of trust and empathy. And a loss of humanity.”  DENNIS CAMPBELL people choose to engage in those behaviors,” Hylton said. “At the core of it, it’s weakening the foundation of things that have been built over hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Fixing hazing, then, can seem like a Sisyphean effort. What isn’t known about can’t be fixed. Still, there is optimism in Kent State’s bones.

“I think anything is possible,” Hylton says. “I never want to say it’s impossible. I think it will take a lot of work to undo. And it will take a lot of continual focus on making sure that we’re not becoming complacent, that we’re not sitting back and resting on our laurels, but that we’re actually continuing to address these problematic behaviors, and I think it can be done. It will take the work and intentionality of the people who are part of the community.”

Campbell says his group worked toward prevention by overcoming the culture’s occasional acceptance of hazing as normal. In fact, Sellers says he believes if a hazing incident were to come to light today, all of Greek life at Kent State would be shut down.

“We, as a community of scholars, a university, needed to transcend our culture,” Campbell said.

“And that’s been the biggest thing for us, and my chapter specifically, is to transcend the culture and address the issues.”

He attests that hazing is dangerous not only in a physical sense, but in a mental one.

“Yeah, there’s scars that will never heal from those situations,” Campbell says. “That’s why it’s so dangerous: It reopens old wounds and creates new scars that can’t ever fully be healed. And you work the best you can, … but there’s moments that will always, … especially when you’ve participated in it, that wound never fully heals. So, for me, … my goal has always been to eradicate it.”

And the effort to stamp hazing out seems to be shared by nearly everyone on the administrative level. Hylton says he has been speaking to Kent State Greek leaders to try to encourage preventative measures.

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“I shared with our fraternity and sorority council leaders last semester that I would really like for them to put together a plan as to how to begin to proactively address these issues,” Hylton says. “I don’t want to have to wait until somebody comes forward and complains or we have a major issue to then begin to try to address behaviors that may or may not exist.”

Kent State Greek life hosts an annual “Hazing Prevention Week” already, part of a national event that encourages schools and campuses to raise awareness about the phenomenon.

“I think it’s incumbent upon any fraternity or sorority community … to be as proactive as possible to mitigate as much opportunity for these behaviors to be resident in any one community,” Hylton says. “There’s probably behaviors that need to be changed in our community. I mean, I think that you would find that with any fraternity or sorority community around the country. It’s all about the way in which you address it, and try to be as proactive and innovative and cutting-edge as you possibly can to minimize or mitigate any opportunity for those behaviors to be a prominent part of the culture.”

Fixing hazing isn’t in the realm of impossibility for those invested in Greek Life — they haven’t lost sight of the original values of the groups.

The prestige and meaning of their letters still shines through.

But for those affected by hazing, the memories may never truly fade.

“It did nothing to make me a better man,” Campbell says. “And so my pledge has always been: I get a chance to see great men graduate that are in my chapter and see them completely change the world and be better men because they were never touched by something like that. Because it’s cancer, and it destroys people. It destroys grades, destroys lives, causes alcohol addiction, causes all sorts of issues.

And we need to destroy it from the root.” B CAMERON GORMAN | cgorman2@kent.edu

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WORRIED ABOUT KENT STATE FOOTBALL? SEAN LEWIS HAS YOU COVERED. At 31 years old, Sean Lewis is ready to lead the Kent State football team back to relevance.

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Kent’s new head football coach Sean Lewis instructs players during their first practice of the season on March 6, 2018.

WORDS BY HENRY PALATTELLA PHOTOS BY JANA LIFE

S

ean Lewis is busy.

At 31 years old, he’s the youngest coach in NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision history, three years younger than Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley. At 6 feet 7 inches tall, Lewis is a mountain of a man. With his bald head and full beard, he looks more like a lumberjack than a football coach, but his passion for Kent State football is evident as soon as he speaks, his booming voice echoing through the long hallway that makes up a majority of the football office.

For all intents and purposes, he’s home.

His office sits at the end of that long hallway, with each door between him and the receptionist housing a member of his new staff, most of whom are spending the early parts of their February morning looking at film with players, laser pointers focused on televisions in their office.

He’s dressed casually, electing to don sweatpants and a Kent State football sweatshirt, the outfit of a man who has spent a good majority of the past four weeks on the road, working on his inaugural recruiting class; a class that went from 12th in the Mid-American Conference to sixth in a matter of a month.

The 31-year-old has made some serious headway in his first 48 days as head coach of the Flashes, but by the look of his office, you’d think he got the job yesterday.

The biggest eye-catcher in Lewis’ office are graphics on the wall of current and former NFLers Roosevelt Nix, Brian Winters, Usama Young, Josh Cribbs and Julian Edelman during their respective times at Kent State. Winters, who is currently an offensive tackle for the New York Jets, visited Lewis’ office earlier in the day, the ink still wet on his signature on the wall. A wagon wheel stands propped up against the windows in the far corner, a tangible marker of the heated rivalry that Lewis has been dropped into for a second time in his young coaching career.

To say that Lewis has a challenge in front of him would be an understatement. He’s succeeding former Kent State head coach Paul Haynes, who amassed a 14-45 record in his five years as coach, a tenure summed up by injuries and heartbreaking losses. Haynes was brought in to replace former coach Darrell Hazell, who turned an 11-3 season in 2012 to a head coaching job at Purdue.

None of this influenced Lewis’ decision to come to Kent State. In a way, it’s a job that he’s been preparing for all his life.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS When Sean Lewis first entered the college football coaching world, it was on the other side of the Wagon Wheel. Lewis joined Akron’s coaching staff as a graduate assistant during the summer of 2011, hoping to help lead the Zips to the top of the Mid-American Conference.

It didn’t work.

The Zips limped to a 1-11 finish on the year, with one of the losses coming in the form of a 38-3 drubbing at the hands of Kent State.

Following that season, Lewis went down a winding road that saw him head west to Bowling Green, up north to Syracuse, New York, and finally, to Kent, Ohio.

Lewis started his path toward head coaching in his hometown of Oak Lawn, Illinois, where he starred as a quarterback at Richards High School, totaling 42 touchdowns compared to just three interceptions his junior season and earned a berth in the state quarterfinals.

Lewis and the Bulldogs followed this up with an early exit in the second round of the playoffs.

Despite Lewis’ strong showing behind center in high school, he went to the University of Wisconsin playing a position he hadn’t played since Pop Warner — tight end.

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“At the end of the day everyone up and down these halls are ball coaches, myself included.

Whether it’s a football, tennis ball, golf ball, if you’re a ball coach, you find a way to coach ball, we’ll be just fine.”  SEAN LEWIS

RIGHT: Lewis is no stranger to the 'Wagon Wheel' rivalry between Kent State and the University of Akron. Lewis began his coaching career at Akron in 2011 BOTTOM: Lewis sits in his new office in the M.A.C. Center on February 27, 2018.

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It was there he was coached by Badgers legend Barry Alvarez and routinely traveled to play against some of the premier programs in college football history.

“I learned from [former Wisconsin running back] Brian Calhoun to just kind of put blinders on,” Lewis says of playing in front of large crowds. “You don’t know if there’s another person watching you, or just the trainers and your teammates watching you, or if you’re in Camp Randall Stadium and there’s 100,000 people watching you. You train that way and then play that way.”

On the stat sheet, Lewis’ time with the Badgers was anti-climactic. He had one catch, a seven-yard reception on third and eight during Wisconsin’s 41-34 loss to Minnesota on Nov. 17, 2007. For reference, Lewis played against current Tennessee Titans wide receiver Eric Decker [30 years old] in that game, with Decker recording 125 yards receiving and two touchdowns.

After spending four years with Wisconsin, Lewis came back to Richards High School as an offensive coordinator before heading to Division II Nebraska-Omaha. It was there that he caught the attention of former Wisconsin assistant coach Kevin Cosgrove, who brought him to the Zips.

“Sean and I kept in touch after he left Wisconsin,” Cosgrove says. “You could see he was a talented guy. He really understands football.”

Cosgrove had helped initially recruit Lewis out of high school as a quarterback, but left Wisconsin after Lewis’ freshman season.

Lewis was the Falcons’ quarterbacks coach that year and personally helped work with Johnson.

“Coaching him, it was a pleasure since he was a gym rat,” Lewis says. “He was always in the facilities all the time. He was always hungry. That’s what we’re looking for in kids that we’re recruiting.”

After brief stints with the Cincinnati Bengals and the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton TigerCats, Johnson left the Tiger-Cats after suffering a career-ending ankle injury in the preseason opener. Johnson wasn’t away from the game for long. He joined Lewis on the Syracuse coaching staff as an offensive quality control coach after spending the season prior as the quarterbacks coach at Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Johnson is now a member of Kent State’s coaching staff and, at 25, is following in Lewis’ footsteps.

“When I got hurt, it was time to give up playing,” Johnson says. “It sucked, but as soon as the fall rolls around, I’m going to be running and throwing with those guys.”

Lewis and Johnson had talked about coaching before, and that dream became a reality when Lewis called Johnson when he joined at Syracuse asking if he would want a spot if one opened up on the Orange’s coaching staff. He accepted, and the rest has spun into history. But through it all, Lewis has stayed the same.

“It’s impressive to see that he hasn’t changed at all throughout the process,” Johnson says. “He’s still the same coach Lew. Obviously, now he has more responsibility, but he’s still the same.”

high school and I recruited central Florida. He decided to sign with Auburn, and over the past two years, I’ve gotten to know his high school football coach pretty well. When we came to Kent, we knew that he was available so we contacted his high school coach.”

Lewis and his coaching staff got Barrett to visit Kent on the final recruiting weekend of the year, with Barrett commiting to Kent State the same day, a move Lewis calls his “first recruiting victory.”

He was in the same boat with his coaching staff, as he had to put them together quickly after he was hired as coach in a process that Lewis described as a “sprint.”

“When you’re in this profession you’re always talking to guys you know and you respect, playing that fantasy game saying, ‘Man, if you become a head coach, we’re going to get together and do this,’” Lewis says. “It’s always good to have those fantasies, but then it becomes real world, and you talk about those coaches moving and coming here.

That’s when you truly know guys are all in.”

But for Lewis, it wasn’t just the players that needed to care about the team; it was the whole community.

“Having been in the MAC, I know the parity,” he says. “The biggest thing I was looking for in the interview was if Kent had the people that cared about football, and do we have a community in the town and university that can help our young men grow? The fact Kent had all those things, I was good.”

Being the youngest coach in the FBS gives Lewis a relatability edge that some other coaches might not have. He listens to the same music as some of the players he’s recruiting. He uses social media more effectively than other coaches. He thinks Jordan is better than LeBron. (We’ll work on that one.)

Cosgrove then ended up at Akron, where he brought Lewis on the staff for a year before Lewis headed to Bowling Green to work under head coach Dino Babers.

Both Lewis and Johnson are bald with scruffy beards, and if you didn’t know better, at first glance, you’d think they were brothers.

It was with the Falcons where Lewis first met Matt Johnson.

“I was bald first,” Johnson says laughing. “I had the beard first. I had the look first.”

‘HE HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL’

‘FIRST RECRUITING VICTORY’

On Oct. 24, 2015 Bowling Green quarterback Matt Johnson added another chapter to his historic 2015 season, throwing for 430 yards and totaling six touchdowns in a 48-0 beatdown of Kent State at Dix Stadium. Johnson and the Falcons finished the regular season with a 10-3 record and earned a invitation in the GoDaddy. com bowl in Mobile, Alabama.

Lewis made his first big splash at the helm of the Flashes on January 14, 2018, when he signed former four-star Auburn quarterback Woody Barrett. Barrett transferred after a year at Auburn to Copiah-Lincoln Community College, where he threw for 1,294 yards and recorded 14 total touchdowns.

“At the end of the day, everyone up and down these halls are ball coaches, myself included,” he says with a smile, his voice rising ever so slightly with every word. “Whether it’s a football, tennis ball, golf ball, if you’re a ball coach, you find a way to coach ball. We’ll be just fine.” B

“I first learned about Woody two years ago when I was at Syracuse,” Lewis says. “He was a senior in

HENRY PALATTELLA | hpalatte@kent.edu

Kent State finished the season 3-9.

Having always been an offensive coach throughout his career, it’s a natural concern that the defensive side of the ball could be a problem for Lewis. But, Lewis says, he and defensive coordinator Tom Kaufman have you covered.

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A SCHOOL DISTRICT’S FIGHT FOR FUNDING Nearing the brink of state intervention, Field Local Schools needs something from its community it hasn’t gotten in 27 years: new funding.

WORDS BY BEN ORNER PHOTO BY SOPHIA ADORNETTO

T

he last time voters in the Field Local School District passed a tax levy for new funding, Erin Roberts was a student at Suffield Elementary.

That was 1991. And even then, funding was an issue in the school district that serves the southern part of Kent and sits less than a mile from Kent State.

“I remember being a kid and this happening,” Roberts says, thinking back to the same arguments community members were having then.

Twenty-seven years later, Roberts is now a mother of two kindergartners who attend the financially distressed Field school district. In

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that time, she has gone from student to concerned citizen.

She and her sister-in-law, Brandi Roberts, lead the Field Levy Committee, a group of district parents and residents promoting the district’s tax levy that will be on the ballot May 8.

“Instead of joining the PTA,” Brandi, who also has children in the district, says, “it was joining this.”

If the levy passes, it will give Field Local Schools new operational funding for the first time in more than a quarter-century, and it will end an exhausting streak of a dozen consecutive failures in elections dating back to 2011.

A tax levy is a property tax increase proposed by a public school district. Ohio is a referendum state, meaning school boards have to put tax levy proposals on election ballots. Passing the levy is then solely up to voters in the district, unlike in states such as neighboring Pennsylvania, where school boards can just raise property taxes themselves.

The Field school district handles the logistics, such as how much money the levy will raise and what that money will go to. The levy committee handles public outreach.

The levy on the ballot in May would raise about $4 million, which comes out to about a $380 increase in property taxes for a home valued at

$100,000. Most of the funds would go to day-today operations costs to keep the district financially stable through the 2021-22 school year.

“The levy isn’t going to bring anything back, but it’s going to continue what we have,” Brandi says. “We wouldn’t have to cut classes and courses and teachers.”

A small part of the levy would go toward replacing the high school parking lot.

“If you’ve not driven our main campus, you should,” Superintendent Dave Heflinger says of the continually deteriorating pavement. “Just be careful. It’s a very rough parking lot.”

The district as a whole is also in rough shape.

Few people know this more than district treasurer Todd Carpenter. According to his figures, the district spends about $9,000 per student, which is the lowest in Portage County and the 42nd lowest among Ohio’s more than 600 school districts. In the past seven years, the district has lost 37 percent of the new staff it has hired, mentored or trained.

“New teachers come in, we train them, we get them their resume builder and they move on to another school,” Erin says. “And that’s a hard turnover for our school.”

“If people were trying to live on the same budget at home on an income that they made 27 years ago, I think they would have found that their expenses would have gone up dramatically,” he says.

The teachers union even agreed to not take a pay increase this year so the district could remain fiscally solvent.

The lack of funding since 1991 has forced the district to make significant cuts. To name a few, there is no bussing for high schoolers, students have to pay to play sports and elementary electives were once cut in half.

“The teachers have very often — since we’ve started this levy process — either taken a salary freeze or a step freeze,” Erin says. “They’ve taken ones for the team quite often, and they’re not getting rewarded for that.”

A school district’s costs naturally rise as time goes on. Inflation drives costs up, teacher salaries and benefits increase, and the tax base shrinks because families leave the district. Plus, in Ohio, the state legislature often reduces public school funding.

“The district is a service-oriented business,” Carpenter says. “It’s not really a spending issue. It’s a funding issue.”

Heflinger puts it in relatable terms.

“There’s no more money to find,” Heflinger says bluntly. “There’s no more big-time savings.”

“There’s nothing left except to go back to the voters," he says.

Those cuts cause a negative feedback loop. As the district loses programs, parents move their kids to other districts through open enrollment. That diminishes Field’s tax base and thus its ability to raise money.

“Every time you cut, you’re taking things away from the students,” Heflinger says. “Whatever it is we’re cutting, it’s a service we’re providing somehow for kids.”

THEBURR.COM | 59

THE CURRENT The cuts also have a negative effect on public perception — for the levy at least. As the district tries to stay afloat by throwing things overboard, community members think the ship will always stay upright.

“The school is one of the pillars of our community, and if that goes downhill so does the community.”  ERIN ROBERTS

“We keep getting by by the skin of our teeth, which is really fabulous,” Erin says, “but to the voter it looks like they had more money than what they said.”

“We were putting out flyers and stuff on Facebook or a post, and we’d get maybe 300 views,” Erin says, “and now we’ve done videos and we’ll get 3,000 views.”

The school district of 1,900 students has not had any new operational funding in 27 years, but it is not because of lack of trying.

But that online presence is not without its challenges. “Social media has been a great avenue for us to get our information out, but it’s also a great avenue for people to spread misinformation,” Erin says.

Some version of the current levy proposal has been on the ballot in almost every election since August 2011. Twelve elections, 12 failures.

Erin and Brandi have led the levy committee for the past three or four years, but they joined it during that August 2011 election, when the levy failed by more than 2,000 votes. That ended up being its worst defeat, however, as voters warmed up to the levy over time. In November 2013, it failed by just 80 votes. But then the trend reversed, and by last November, voters denied it by 570 votes.

“You almost feel like there’s no way it’s going to pass,” Brandi sighs, “but then you just sit and hope, ‘Maybe.’”

That “maybe” is what keeps them going.

Each levy cycle, the Robertses will add a new strategy to close the voting gap. In levies past, they’ve held community meetings, made T-shirts and mailed flyers to every registered voter in the district.

“Before ... we made this flyer, and we mass-mailed it to everybody who was a registered voter in our community,” Erin says.

But with this levy, social media may be the key.

The committee has an active Facebook page, website and video blog. The group regularly posts videos and other media to virtually reach into the community and pull out supporters.

The online outreach has seen some early success.

A video Erin posted in January promoting May’s levy gathered 1,500 views in just a month. “I feel like this conversation is changing,” says Erin, a stay-at-home mom whose efforts during levy season essentially turn into a full-time job.

She tells a story in which she went to a Suffield Lions Club meeting to promote the levy, and an elderly woman came up to her and complimented her on the committee’s Facebook videos.

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Whenever the levy committee posts something, people will comment and argue with false information. “We do our best to be on there correcting it,” Erin adds.

Misinformation is a major hurdle in the committee’s efforts.

“People don’t understand how their local government works, how their local levies work,” Erin says. “People don’t understand that one ‘mill’ is not $1 million.”

Another strategy the Robertses have committed to is heavily reaching out to parents, who they think include a lot of “yes” voters who just don’t show up at the polls.

“The state tells us what we’re doing, not our local school system and our local board,” she says. “So that terrifies me.”

But even with deep cuts to district offerings, the state would still need Field to pass a levy in order to pay off the state’s loans.

“Even if the state comes in, you pass a levy,” Heflinger says. “That’s what happens eventually.

You just pass a bigger levy, because you have to pay all the money back the state’s given you.”

Erin and Brandi have deep roots in the district.

Both their sets of parents attended Field High School. Erin’s grandparents attended the district, and the football stadium is named after her grandfather. But if Field’s dire financial situation continues, the Roberts family may not see a third generation of Field High School graduates, forcing Erin to make a decision of whether to keep her kids in the district.

“I’ll have to have that conversation,” Erin says frankly.

Through the doubts, the failures and the tough conversations, Brandi and Erin keep pushing.

“We have a lot of parents in our community that are not registered to vote or just don’t go bother to vote on that day, and that’s what kills us,” Erin says. “Here’s a group of people that have every reason to vote for the levy.”

“You can’t give up,” Brandi says as she thinks back on the cycle of disappointment from a dozen straight levy failures. “As many times as you want to give up, then you are giving up on your own kids and your community.”

If the levy does not pass this time around, the district moves closer to intervention by the state.

Heflinger says if the voters don’t pass a levy by next year’s primary election, Ohio will likely put Field in “fiscal emergency.” The state auditor’s office comes in and helps the district get back above water by loaning it money and cutting things it sees as excessive.

“The school is one of the pillars of our community,” Erin says, “and if that goes downhill, so does the community.”

In fiscal emergency, Heflinger worries, many important things the district provides could be fair game for the state to slash.

“There is nothing good that will come from kids and families that would come from reducing the number of teachers or reducing extracurriculars or eliminating electives,” he says. “We’re trying to hang on to those opportunities as long as we can.”

Fiscal emergency scares Brandi.

From superintendent Heflinger, a plea to the voters, who ultimately hold the power of whether the district sinks or swims: “We’re trying to provide our kids with the best opportunity for their future,” he says, urgency rolling off his tongue.

“Someone did it for us when we were in school.

Somebody provided for us. That’s how we are all where we are today. The kids today need those same opportunities.” B BEN ORNER | borner@kent.edu

FIDELITY

HIGH

THE CURRENT

Ohioans share how music aids recovery from opioid addiction

WORDS BY VALERIE ROYZMAN PHOTOS BY JANA LIFE

Amy shows off her musical staff tattoo while wearing a shirt she made with girlfriends in RCC (The Oriana House Residential Correctional Center) who are all living sober now. It reads 'Sober is the new me.' "I'm going to have [this shirt] for the rest of my life," Amy says. "I'm different now, I could cry."

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AMY, RECOVERING ADDICT

A

year from now, Amy sticks the key in the ignition. She turns the volume up a few notches, spins the dial to 91.3, a new favorite on nights like this.

Ringo Starr’s voice fills the car: “Sometimes this world can be a hard place / We wonder where we go from here.” As she speeds through the beat-up Akron roads, she hums along; her body radiates with warmth. As Starr belts out from the scratchy radio, “Give more love / It’s what we know we need more of,” she glides into an empty parking lot, listening to the beat, reflecting on how far she’s come.

S he taps fingertips across her tattoos — from large lips spill musical notes, flowing across her arm, along with the words “Music is the sound of life,” — in rhythm with the beat. An indescribable feeling of euphoria fills her body. This time, the f eel-good sensation isn’t from snorting heroin.

It’s from the music.

Amy says she was addicted to heroin “for a long time.” She’s buried the memories no longer worth r emembering. But she’s been clean since 2015.

The ride wasn’t smooth.

Amy left the Akron-area Oriana House Residential Correctional Center in late March. She was directly sentenced to the halfway house as part of her recovery from heroin and Percocet. After a life-saving arrest sent her to prison for six weeks, s he set out to get clean all on her own — she r emained drug-free for 11 months before her relapse on Percocet.

Without the daily fix, she risked feeling dope sick, a n ugly sensation she describes as aches all through the body and painful nausea. She moved out of the home she shared with her mother, got high with friends, stopped working and quit her greatest passion since childhood: basketball.

S he chased dope because it practically became her lifeline. Amy says while addicted to heroin, she needed it just to feel normal

“I didn’t feel good if I didn’t get high, honestly,” she says.

W hen her life spun out of control after heroin became a daily part of her routine, she says she f elt terrible keeping it from her mother, and admits she put her through a real-life hell.

“I was pretty good at keeping it from her,” she says.

“I felt terrible because I was so good and successful at a young ag. I felt like I let my mom down. Who wants to tell their mom you’re a heroin addict?”

Unfortunately, Amy’s story isn’t unlike many others grappling with the fast-growing national epidemic.

According to data released by the Centers for Dise ase Control and Prevention in March, overall e mergency department visits for suspected opioid overdoses increased 30 percent in the U.S., from July 2016 to September 2017. During that s ame time, the Midwest took the hardest hit, with overdoses surging by 70 percent.

For Amy, music clears her head and helps re-prio ritize her goals in life. Before, as soon as she opened her eyes in the morning, her agenda was to get high.

“With the heroin, I had to do it, or I didn’t even get out of bed, pretty much,” she says. “I got up out of bed to go get it. And I knew when I was going to get it. … I knew already in my head I was starting to feel better.”

“At the beginning of my recovery three years ago, I’ve changed from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, like a whole brand new person.”  AMY L ike a broken record, she started her recovery o nce again, this time with help, but says she’s proud of the difficult journey and how far she’s come in her 34 years.

M usic wasn’t the only solution in her road to recovery, though it’s been her favorite. She is currently participating in the Vivitrol program, used as part of treatment for drug- or alcohol-dependent individuals. The prescription allows Amy an i njection once a month, aimed at preventing relapse when she made the decision to stop using, a sudden shock for her body.

Amy calls the non-addictive injection her safety blanket, mostly because it protects her from spiraling back into a destructive lifestyle. She says she hasn’t thought about using again since her last injection one month ago.

Though music can trigger bad memories, Amy h as learned to avoid songs that spark unwelcome memories, and instead focus on tunes she c alls “booty-popping” anthems because they brighten her mood. Right now, it’s DJ Khaled’s “Do You Mind.”

She says Machine Gun Kelly is another artist she resonates with, and even if she doesn’t know the song, she can imagine herself right into the tune and extends meaning from the lyrics.

“At the beginning of my recovery three years ago, I’ve changed from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, like a whole brand new person,” says Amy, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. “I’ve changed a whole lifestyle, and then I m essed up, just like that happens. Everybody messes up, and I messed up a couple times.”

JESSICA YODER, TREATMENT COUNSELOR AT ORIANA HOUSE J essica Yoder, a treatment counselor at Oriana H ouse’s chemical dependency treatment center, met Amy during the first phase of the intensive outpatient program (IOP) part of her recovery, where Yoder works with clients from all walks of life in the world of opiates to identify coping techniques and kick-start their new road to restoration.

Yoder sees a wide range of drug abuse from clients. From meth to heroin, drugs considered a better “bang for your buck,” and even pills, she’s seen it all. Lately, she says fentanyl seems to be coming up frequently, and a lot of the time users don’t even realize their drugs are laced with it.

“I do see people who have been introduced to this e pidemic through a prescription that they got from a doctor and became addicted through that,” Yoder says. “Sometimes they’re buying pills off the street. Sometimes they’re using heroin because it’s financially more viable for them.”

Yoder says Vivitrol is essentially an opiate blocker that deters cravings for their problem drug.

“It binds to the receptors in your brain so if somebody on it did decide to use an opiate, they would feel no euphoric effect from it,” Yoder says.

Although the injection may cause physical discomfort at first, the mental reaction turns people away because the injection inhibits the effects of opiates. Yoder praises the program, which includes a three-month, therapy-driven transition for clients when they feel ready to halt injections, but mentions the negatives too.

If clients aren’t careful, there’s a greater chance of overdose “because they feel like they aren’t getting high, so they do more and more, and it’ll overtake [their] heart or nervous system.”

During someone’s time with IOP, Yoder talks to clients a lot about the different aspects of their addic-

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“People want to listen to music to have some sort of emotional identification with it and I think that having this radio program definitely helps with that, that sense of wanting to feel connected to something outside of yourself.”  JESSICA YODER

tion, detailing the difference between biological, psychological and mental health-related parts.

Yoder says the process needs to feel holistic, though, and sometimes other more personal tools are useful – like music. While she hopes clients will utilize the cognitive behavioral therapy skills she teaches during IOP, she believes there are other methods clients may be more inclined to apply, especially in the beginning.

“If they have a tough day or we talk about a tough topic in treatment, they can go back to the facility and [music’s] something they can do,” Yoder says.

“They can put in their headphones; they can have quiet time; they can reflect.”

With Amy, Yoder notices music plays a key role in preventing her recovery from veering off course.

Discussing social skills and having interventions on the whiteboard is required and beneficial, but in her short time at Oriana House, Yoder has noticed music comes up frequently in conversations with her clients.

Yoder says it’s important to show her clients “you don’t always have to do these very clinical things.”

While Yoder works with clients in phase one IOP and after-treatment, part of phase three, she suggests they listen to Rock and Recovery, a regular nighttime show on 91.3 “The Summit,” an Akron radio station. The show is targeted toward helping anyone in recovery from an addiction, from opiates and alcohol to gambling and sex.

Rock and Recovery partners with the Summit County Recovery Court and Oriana House, where judges assign clients to programs such as counselors like Yoder, who can only recommend the radio show as a complementary piece to clinical treatment.

The reason? Not every client has access to radio.

Amy, for example, isn’t allowed a phone or access to social media during her time at the correctional facility. She is only given a player and headphones with limited access. While music is a saving grace for her in the facility, which she says feels a bit like jail because of the strict rules, she can’t gain access to the radio show until after she leaves.

For other patients, some living at home and attending IOP meetings in group and individual settings with Yoder, a more versatile variety of music is available.

Amy dons her Vivitrol identification bracelet, which lets medical responders know she is currently on Vivitrol, an opiate blocker that protects patients from cravings and potential relapse.

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Though Yoder is sad to say it, relapse is all too common among those trying to turn their lives around after opiate addictions.

Garrett Hart, creator of Rock and Recovery, sits in one of the two recording studios at the station's Akron-based office.

It’s a true reward to witness recovered clients visit her, but a lot of the time, people re-enter the world just to be sucked back into the gripping epidemic. She recalls a trip to New York City in July 2016. As she walks through Times Square, she sees a headline flash, revealing the number of overdose deaths in Northeast Ohio from opiates.

“I just remember standing there, and the person I was with … they were like, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I just looked at the TV and I said, ‘That is like a half-hour from where I grew up,’” says Yoder, a Cleveland native.

Not unaware of the power opiates possess over individuals, Yoder still never could’ve predicted the crisis would’ve gotten this harrowing – and it isn’t over yet.

In 2016, more than 63,600 died of a drug overdose in the U.S., according to the CDC. The Ohio Department of Health reports the unintentional deaths claimed 4,050 lives in Ohio, a 32.8 percent spike from 2015, some of these lives being Amy’s own friends.

Though music isn’t the end-all solution to dissolving an addiction, those in recovery, like Amy, along with counselors and mentors like Yoder, are realizing its potential in taming the monsters lurking over the nation.

Yoder says while enduring a crisis like this, people want to feel supported and connected to something, whether it’s knowing people recognize that an addict is struggling or someone is acknowledging their family member is having a hard time — that’s a really key part of it.

“People want to listen to music to have some sort of emotional identification with it, and I think that having this radio program definitely helps with that, that sense of wanting to feel connected to something outside of yourself,” Yoder says.

GARRETT HART, PROGRAM DIRECTOR AND CREATOR OF ROCK AND RECOVERY Garrett Hart settles down in his safe place, headphones on and head perfectly cocked, ready to go on air. This is where he finds his bliss.

“From Akron, Ohio, the birthplace of modern addiction treatment, this is Rock and Recovery,” the show’s introduction echoes through the radio.

“Recovery rocks.”

Bruno Mars’ sugar-sweet voice harmonizes: “If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea, / I’ll sail the world to find you,” transitioning into the chorus, “You can count on me like 1, 2, 3 / I’ll be there.”

After the song plays, positive messages like, “Take a break from stress; let it go” and, “No one heals themselves by wounding another” follow suit.

The show features interviews and further encouragement from figures sharing their stories of recovery, including musicians, athletes, therapists and case workers.

Hart, program director and creator of Rock and Recovery, noticed a serious spike in listeners as the opioid epidemic grew bigger and more frightening than itself. He says when he signed on in 2011, he was aware of the problem, and his goal was to try to make it better the only way he knew how — through radio.

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“We listen to the songs together and just think about our roads and our different paths that we each have, and what we’re trying to do individually and as a couple.”  JUDY K THE POWER OF MUSIC

“We had no idea it was going to engulf the entire country in this incredible tragedy that involves so much death and so much loss,” Hart says. “It’s not just the addict’s life who is disrupted but everyone who loves that person — people who are related to them, their friends, their co-workers — everybody is affected by this tremendous burden, this tremendous problem.”

sets up information tables to raise awareness on addiction and break the stigma associated with it.

Judy and her husband, now 21 years sober, keep their recovery separate to maintain a strong relationship, though the one thing they bond over is listening to Rock and Recovery together. For him, recovery is a matter of life and death, but for her, it’s more for maintaining her health and sanity.

The epidemic is like an utterly terrifying symphony that never seems to end, luring people in and consuming them whole as they drift between addicted, sober and sometimes dead. Through this chaos, Judy says it’s important to fight, even when society is quick to judge.

The show plays a 300-song list ranging from classic rock, country, R&B and some modern-day pop, which has grown through the years. Tunes are carefully selected to convey positivity for listeners, most of whom are recovering addicts.

Others are parents and siblings holding on to the harmony of hope while their loved ones bear the brunt of the crisis.

“We listen to the songs together and just think about our roads and our different paths that we each have, and what we’re trying to do individually and as a couple,” Judy says.

DJ Khaled on full blast wherever she goes, Amy now works at Burger King and visits her mother as she tries to stay as far away as possible from heroin, “the devil.”

She says the realization that her husband had to clean up his past, meaning his recovery was top priority over their love, was painful at times. In the beginning of their marriage, she was bothered when he told her his sobriety was his number one priority, and she would always come second.

Through the years, she’s made peace with it.

Hart has found success in his show, reaching listeners not only in different states, but on an international level, too. He is currently negotiating the broadcast of Rock and Recovery on terrestrial radio stations across the country, expanding from his local roots.

Hart acknowledges the show isn’t going to necessarily empty a detox bed or cure someone of their cocaine addiction, but if it can provide a sense of relief in the next five minutes and help the listener feel better about themselves, he’s doing exactly what he set out to do, and calls it “the most rewarding work” he’s done in his 44-yearlong broadcasting career.

He says the show meets people where they are, and unlike people, music doesn’t have the predisposition or judgement to present to listeners.

“I learned that if I said, ‘No, you have to stay with me,’ or ‘You have to put me on top priority’ or whatever, instead of staying clean and sober ... I learned after a while our relationship would’ve never worked,” she says. “Because I cannot stay with an active addict. I can’t. As a spouse, I know our finances would drain and I know that I cannot watch somebody die.”

“The idea is that with the music and the messaging, we are positive but not preachy,” he says.

“We’re inspirational but not religious. … We allow them to listen and take from the experience which is gonna be helpful to them.”

Outside her marital ties to addiction, Judy mentions her 70-year-old brother is a Vietnam veteran and alcoholic who refuses to get sober, and several members at NarAnon have recently lost family to heroin — the first time she’s witnessed this after attending for 14 years.

JUDY K., SPOUSE OF RECOVERING ADDICT

Rock and Recovery holds a place in this daunting epidemic though, and it feels like it was made for Ohio communities, she says. Individuals in recovery of any kind often feel isolated from the world, practically writing their own elegies, and the show reassures listeners they aren’t alone in this.

Through email and one-on-one interaction at community events in Northeast Ohio, Hart hears from devoted listeners like Judy K., whose name has been modified to ensure privacy. Judy herself isn’t an addict; however, she is the spouse of one, who heavily relied on meth for 25 years.

Her husband attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings, for addicts, while she’s involved with NarAnon, an organization specifically created for family members. Here, she frequents events and

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“I think that to have a radio station that will play something to the community is showing that ‘We are there for you,’” she says. “‘We understand what you’re going through. We understand that there’s an epidemic. We understand that maybe a song that we play can help put your mind at ease, can help you get through this next 24 hours.”

Yoder left her life in Boston to come back to the Buckeye State, inspired by the novel “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic” to aid addicts in recovery. She’s been with Oriana House since 2017.

Judy continues to break the barriers surrounding addiction in the community, sharing the radio show with everyone she encounters who is struggling. Frustrated by the embarrassment surrounding addiction, she hopes one day the nation organizes marches or falls into a movement to end the stigma.

If you haven’t been an addict yourself or been cursed with a firsthand experience of a loved one, you can’t relate, all these voices seem to echo. It’s vital to remember there’s nobody to blame, Judy says, and no fingers to point when someone is aching with addiction.

“You’ve gotta remember that there’s nothing wrong with being an addict,” she says. “It’s the way that person is. And all you can do is love an addict.” B VALERIE ROYZMAN | vroyzman@kent.edu

THE LAST SHOT WORDS AND PHOTO BY DANI WATTS

T

he door is almost open and Cleveland’s best drag queen of 2017 is about to shake up Kent State. She bursts through the door, struts on to the stage while Little Mix’s "Wings" blares from the speakers. Inspiration and empowerment are rapidly headed our way. Aurora Thunder has officially arrived.

Every beat is performed with immense energy and an overwhelming amount of love: love for herself, love for the art and love for everyone in the room.

Thunder gives all that she has to every perfor-

mance because for her, drag is about the combination of transformation and art. Drag is the ability to have fun and express oneself creatively.

By day, Thunder leads her life as a man named Warren and by night, Aurora comes out to play.

With Aurora, the woes of Warren can be left behind, even if it’s just for the duration of a song lasting three minutes and 39 seconds. Wouldn’t it be nice to try out a new cocoon, just for a night?

After all, these wings are made to fly.

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GREAT FOOD DRINK AND FUN! 2017 WINNER BEST BURGER BEST COCK TAIL BEST RESTAURANT BEST PLACE TO TAKE YOUR PARENTS - BEST OF KENT ISSUE SPRING ‘17

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