Monday June 6, 2011 year: 131 No. 6 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern Graduation costs OSU $328K
sports
Spring Commencement is one of OSU’s largest annual undertakings JAY CLOUSE Lantern reporter clouse.86@osu.edu
Golf’s young guns
1B
Young golfers captured attention at this weekend’s Memorial Tournament, where 34 golfers were in their 20s.
arts & life
Ohio State’s cost of graduation
At this point in their lives, many students at Ohio State have already hit several milestones: receiving their driver’s licenses, finishing high school and celebrating their 21st birthdays. On Sunday, about 6,500 students will reach another milestone: receiving their college degrees. Spring Commencement is one of the biggest annual undertakings and largestscale events on campus. Numerous committees, campus organizations and other university entities are involved in months of planning every year to make the event run smoothly. “Commencement is a day of celebration for our graduates and their families, a day to commemorate the hard work, perseverance and success of those who have achieved their educational dreams,” said President E. Gordon Gee in a statement provided by Amy Murray, assistant director of media relations. Such a large academic celebration doesn’t come without cost. The central university administration provides the commencement operating budget which funds the event, Murray said. Expenses incurred by university entities such as Facilities Operations and Development, Transportation and Parking, University Police and University Communications must be covered in the budget. Murray said between 2006 and 2010, the average cost of Spring Commencement alone was more than $328,000. The average cost of Autumn, Winter and Summer Commencements over that same span was more than $90,000, $88,000 and $76,000, respectively. Overall, the university spends about $600,000 on commencements each year. This year’s commencement budget is not yet available. “We are proud to provide a fitting and memorable event to mark the occasion,” Gee said. OSU students receive their diplomas at a single ceremony, a practice rarely attempted at a university of its size, Murray said. For a student to receive his diploma, his grades must be finalized through the University Registrar’s office. Brad Myers, the university registrar, said a diploma is typically withheld for two main reasons: a hold on the student’s account, such as an outstanding financial obligation, or an issue related to academic eligibility. “The percent is very small,” Myers said. “I’m gonna say 2 to 3 percent of a graduation would (be) people for whom we are withholding diplomas.”
Spring $328,508
Autumn
= $20,000
$90,912
Numbers are averaged from the final expenses for each quarter 2006–2010.
Winter
In the past five years, the university spent an average of $42 per graduate to hold its commencement ceremonies.
$88,080
Summer $76,116
Commencement Week budget 2008: $24,197.10 Source: Amy Murray and Matt Couch
2009: $29,136.00 2010: $30,303.35
KARISSA LAM / Design editor
Kolbie Saddler, a 2010 graduate with a degree in social work, said although it was nice to get her diploma during the ceremony, she didn’t think commencement was a good ending to her OSU experience. “It was really hot and long,” Saddler said. “At the college of social work, we do an evening of recognition. That was much better than commencement.” Matthew Couch, an associate director at the Ohio Union, has helped to make Spring Commencement more personal to students for the last four years through
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Pastry chef bakes up comfort sweets ALLY MAROTTI Campus editor marotti.5@osu.edu
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An entertaining year
The Lantern looks at the celebrities and events that made arts and entertainments headlines this year.
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Legal limit of alcohol in beer could increase online
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Steam billows out of dishwashers. Trays of cookies emit their delicious smell as they cool. Pots and pans bang as they’re moved about the kitchen, and students and bakers mix up recipes. This is Kate Koren’s workplace. Koren is Ohio State’s pastry chef and works in the bake shop in the back of Raney Commons on Curl Drive. “This isn’t your typical desk job,” Koren said, pointing out her “filing cabinet,” a cooling rack stacked high with cooking utensils, boxes and other objects. With a bachelor’s degree in baking and pastries, Koren is a professionally trained pastry chef. Heading a fleet of six students which produces more than 800 muffins, 200 cookies and other pastry products daily that add up to more than 9,000 pastries a week, her training comes in handy. “You picture your mom, (a) homey kind of thing, just making some cookies,” Koren said. “It’s actually a real thing.” Being efficient, baking mass amounts of muffins, cutting in straight lines and counting by 12s are a few skills Koren’s student-assistants take away from the job. “I mostly baked cookies at Christmas time and stuff, but I never knew how to … do things without a recipe,” said Christine Crews, a third-year in biology and one of Koren’s assistants. Koren said she invents most of the recipes for the pastries with homesick students in mind. “When I’m developing recipes and concepts and things, I think about what I want,” she said. “What would I want to eat? What would make me feel at home?” But some of her recipes, such as the monster cookie’s, are borrowed.
KAYLA BYLER / Lantern photographer
Kate Koren, pastry chef at Raney Commons, ices an order of cupcakes last Wednesday morning.
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OSU moving toward moving image program HARRY LOCKE Lantern reporter locke.59@osu.edu Preliminary talks among administration in Ohio State’s premier art divisions could see new interdisciplinary majors that will offer degrees in film and television production. J. Ronald Green, associate professor of film studies in the History of Art Department at OSU, discussed the advent of the moving image production degree. It is a comprehensive program that will offer students the opportunity to gain handson experience and skills in the field of media arts production. “We are working on a moving image production program worthy of a major research institution, which is long overdue,” Green said. For the past two to three years, he has been part of an exploratory team called “The Moving Image Production Group”, which is seeking to revive production education at OSU. The Moving Image Production Group, which a grant from the Humanities Institute fuels, has spent the past year researching and planning fundamental resources that will make the new curriculum a reality.
For video check out thelantern.com. The group itself is composed of 20 to 30 active faculty and staff members from around the university. Major divisions include the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Film Studies Program, the History of Art Department, Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, the Department of Art and the video production program in the Department of Theatre. While OSU already offers degrees in film studies, the moving image production degree would allow students to apply both the conceptual and technical components of film studies to create actual media art. If the moving image production program comes into fruition, it will work to close the gap left behind by OSU’s now defunct School of Photography and Cinema, which was established in the mid-1920s.
“Places like University of Southern California and New York University considered OSU a peer,” Green said. The School of Photography and Cinema was initially introduced as a division within the School of Engineering to satisfy the photographic needs of engineering projects. The program expanded to incorporate the various studies of film theory and technical application. The program offered about 100 courses, with up to three levels of instruction in production fundamentals of filmmaking, editing, cinematography and sound production. Specialization tracks in narrative, documentary and avant-garde filmmaking were also available, with an equivalent array of classes available for photography majors. A faculty of 15 to 20 professional filmmakers, film studies instructors, photographers and photo historians administered the program. In addition to housing a full studio, with all the equipment needed to produce and edit 16mm film, the program operated like a non-profit film production company. It held contracts with AAA Auto
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