WEDNESDAY Oct. 26, 2016 Vol. 100 • No. 11
www.therambler.org
Students spooked out of voting Shaydi Paramore ssparamore@txwes.edu
school
sPirits? Dalise Devos
dndevos@txwes.edu
The mid-September afternoon dragged on like any other in the sea of beige known as the Rambler Media Group offices. The skeleton staff squinted at their computer screens as the methodical tic-tic-tic of typing fingers filled the air like a familiar lullaby. Suddenly, the sharp three-toned ring of the office telephone broke through the monotony, demanding the attention of the dedicated office lingerers. “My name is Terry Moon,” the voice from the other side said, “and I’m going to share with you the location of several ghosts who live on campus.” Moon, a former Texas Wesleyan University student and staff member, believes that current students, faculty and staff share the 125-year-old campus with spirits of the dead, and he’s not the only one. Joe Brown, professor of theatre and mass communication and dean of freshman success, will tell you that all it takes is a quick Google search to find the legend of Georgia, Wesleyan’s most famous ghost, who is said to reside in Nicholas Martin Hall. “The story that we were always told is that a dark figure can walk anywhere around the building, but it does stay mostly on the front two rows,” Moon said. “And when approached, if it’s seated, it vanishes.” While the story is a familiar one for Moon, Brown can tell you nearly every detail. “When that building was a church, she was a member there. I never heard how she passed away, but she had a seat up on the balcony,” Brown said. Some people claim that the one green chair located on the main floor of Martin was where Georgia sat, but Brown says this is not the case. “When they remodeled the auditorium, they put that there so that when they were doing tours, they could talk about the ghost and point to that seat,” Brown said. “The seat is upstairs on the second row of the balcony.” Brown has been hearing about Georgia since his first week at Wesleyan in 1978. “Several of the theatre major alums would talk about when they were working there late at night, they would see this ghost supposedly floating down the aisle in white,” Brown said. “My predecessor, Mason Johnson, would claim to have seen the ghost.” For Kathy Ferman-Menino ‘90, one of Brown’s former students, Georgia crossed over from the realm of legend to reality late one night during her junior or senior year. “We were working on a set late into the evening,” Ferman-Menino said. “I saw someone up in the booth, like the silhouette of someone. It looked like an old lady up there. That didn’t make any sense, because it was just me and the other people from Joe Brown’s set design/set construction team. One minute we looked up in the booth and there was nobody there, because there wouldn’t have been, and the next minute I looked up and I thought I saw the silhouette of an old woman.” Sophomore music majors Alan Michael Whetsel and Chanel Hurd believe they, too, more than a decade and a half later, have come in contact with the famous ghost of Martin Hall. “As freshman, we went to Martin Hall to do rehearsal, and we ended up going up on the balcony to hang out,” Whetsel said. “It was close to midnight. No one was in Martin Hall anymore.” Surrounded by nothing but pitch black, Whetsel started whistling, then, after a few moments, stopped. “Five seconds later, you hear this same whistle
somewhere else,” Whetsel said. “It was like a distant whistle.” By this time in the evening, entry to Martin Hall requires a door code, limiting the building’s visitors to music majors, Whetsel and Hurd said. If a person was in the auditorium, Hurd says, it would have been impossible for them to leave silently as well, because all the doors connected to the auditorium require pushing a bar to open, which makes a loud noise. “Out of nowhere, we just hear the same whistle repeated back to us in the place where Georgia supposedly died, so it just kind of freaked us all out,” Hurd said. Although Hurd says music majors are used to Georgia, nonchalantly blaming her for “anything kinda weird” that happens in Martin Hall, Whetsel says being in the building at night leaves him uneasy. “You cannot be in Martin Hall by yourself at night,” Whetsel said. “You feel like there’s someone behind you.” The encounter with Georgia has not been Whetsel’s only paranormal experience at Wesleyan. He resides on the third floor of Stella Russell Hall, where it’s rumored that a student committed suicide. “All of the windows are locked now,” he said, “completely locked because someone hung themselves outside the window. Since then, you can’t open any windows.” Whetsel doesn’t know what to make of his own experience with the strange in Stella. “Last year, my first semester, my roommate was a runner, like track or something,” Whetsel said. “He got up at like five every morning to go run, and I got used to that. I set alarm to like six o’clock.” One morning, Whetsel’s alarm woke him at six, as it usually did. His iPod fell beneath his bed out of reach, forcing him out of bed to find it. “Through the window, I could see the reflection of my roommate in the bed,” Whetsel said. “I could always see his face if he was there or not.” Whetsel found this odd, as his roommate was not usually there at this time. “I thought he wasn’t going to be there,” he said. “It was pitch black, and I saw his phone screen light up his face. I saw his face. He was looking at me, like he made eye contact with me as that happened.” Confused, Whetsel picked up his iPod, then looked again - only to see an empty bed. “I didn’t see anything, so I turned the light on,” he said. “He wasn’t there. It really freaked me out. I was wide-awake at this time. I totally thought I saw his face, then he wasn’t there.” Hurd gets goosebumps hearing Whetsel’s account of the apparition, because she too has been
Texas Wesleyan University students are not voting in the presidential election. More than half of 20 students who responded to a recent anonymous poll are still undecided on whether to vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Random students were asked three questions: Are you voting?; Who are you voting for?; and Why are you voting for that person? Twelve of the students (or 60 percent) said they would probably not vote, five (25 percent) said they would probably vote for Clinton, and three (15 percent) said they would vote for Trump. “We have a fear of the unknown and that’s what causes many to fear the election and be afraid to vote,” said Jennie Scharnweber, senior political science major. Scharnweber did not participate in the poll, and declined to say who she was voting for. While news of the election has dominated the media in recent weeks, millennials are still not voting and believe the election is a joke, she said. “Our current presidential election is really sad,” Scharnweber said. “Our leadership has taken a decline. Great mindful people wrote our Constitution to make our country into what it is today, and now it has become a mockery on all of their hard work.” Millennials are the second largest generation in the electorate and could easily sway the election, but many aren’t interested in voting and have the lowest turnout at the polls of any generation, according to cnbc.com. Less than 50 percent of voters under 30 actually voted in 2012, which is the lowest percentage recorded since 1996, according to npr.org. “With this election, individuals in this election are going to be appealing to an important demographic and that’s the millennials,” said James Wetrich, adjunct professor of business. Wetrich did an anonymous poll of students and their attitudes toward the election in one of his classes. “Millennials are our future leaders and by creating this habit of voting they can begin to see that their votes do matter and count.” Researchers at Harvard University found that many millennials aren’t voting because they generally do not care about politics, according to an article in The Economist. Two-thirds of millennials think politicians go into public service for selfish reasons, and it won’t matter who they vote for because their voice won’t be heard. “What we don’t understand is that people have the constitutional right not to vote as much as they do to vote,” Wetrich said. “I always say you need to follow your gut and do whatever makes you feel comfortable. If you don’t feel comfortable in voting, then don’t. It’s your right.” According to cnbc.com, 80 percent of the most important events in a person’s life takes place by the time they are 35, and for many millennials, this election is one of them. “Voting at this point is twice as important in this election than any other,” said Student Government Association Treasurer William Wick, a senior criminal justice and psychology major. More than 80 percent of Congress is up for grabs. Voters have the chance to choose the president, 34 new members of the Senate, and all new members of the House of Representatives, according to cnbc.com. Replacing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February, could be greatly affected by who wins the presidency. This is one reason why the importance of voting for Supreme Court justices has been stressed in the current presidential campaign, according to cnbc.com. “With this election, despite what you may think about the presidential candidates whoever those candidates put into positions for Supreme Court members are going to hold that job long after this election is over,” Wick said. Several Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, believe voters should not have the chance to voice a strong opinion on the selection of the next Supreme Court justice, according to ballotpedia.org. “Even if you don’t want to vote for a certain candidate, you still get the chance to vote for who is creating and choosing bills to be made,” Wick said. Young adults can also show who they are supporting by what products they buy, Wick said.
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“Another way you can vote is through your dollars and cents,” Wick The Rams looks to a said. “Whatever you go successful season. and buy from a company VOTING. page 3
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