Author: Emma Carpenter

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International News

WORLD// South Korean President Ousted

Park Geun-hye, former president of South Korea, was officially removed from office earlier this month by a court of South Korean justices. The impeachment followed a massive corruption scandal that sparked weeks of protest by South Korean citizens, according the New York Times. Park’s replacement is set to be selected in May.

The first sign of rough waters for Park’s presidency came in 2014, according to CNN. In April, the Sewol passenger ferry sank off of South Korea’s coast, resulting in over 300 deaths, most of them high school students on a field trip. CNN also described the results of a lengthy and painful investigation into the tragedy. According to CNN, “[T]he ferry was found to be loaded with double its capacity. Its cargo wasn’t secured properly, which threw the ship off balance as the containers tumbled and knocked the vessel off balance. An inexperienced crew and redesigns of the ship to handle more passengers and cargo were also cited as factors in the disaster.”

Park Geun-hye did not address the public until seven hours after the tragedy began. According to Professor of Seoul’s Yonsei University, John Delury, , “That was a stain on [Park’s] legacy. There was a palpable sense at that time that she wasn’t there. It’s not as if people expected her to magically save the ship, but there was a need for leadership.”

The South Korean government’s handling of the Sewol disaster was followed by public outcry. Anger against Park only intensified last October, when a corruption scandal broke surrounding one of Park’s unofficial advisors, Choi Soon-sil. CNN reported Choi “is accused of abuse of power and attempted fraud following claims she had access to secret government documents and intervened in state affairs.”

Choi Soon-sil is the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a cult leader whose “Eternal Life Church” blended elements of Christianity, Buddhism, and shamanism, according to The Telegraph. Choi Tae-min’s influence over Park had been questioned for many years, and after he died in 1994, his daughter remained close to Park. According to The Telegraph, “Both women are understood to have met decades ago and formed a close relationship when Ms Choi’s father allegedly helped the future president contact her late mother in the afterlife. Since then, according to South Korean media reports, the pair have been inseparable – though Ms Choi has never held an official position in the country’s government, nor did she have security clearance.” According to The Telegraph, accusations Choi had guided the president’s choices “on everything from her wardrobe to her strategy on tackling the North Korean regime” resulted in swift public backlash.

Protesters took to the streets during the cold Korean winter, said Griffiths, and their calls for impeachment were swift and unrelenting. The National Assembly voted for impeachment in December, and the Constitutional Court upheld the vote this March.

The shakeup of South Korean leadership comes as international concerns surrounding North Korea continue to grow. According to Choe Sang-hun, North Korea announced on March 19 that it had tested a high-thrust missile engine. Following the missile test, North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, said “the whole world will soon witness what eventful significance the great victory won today carries.”

United States Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said, “All options are on the table” for dealing with North Korea, including a potential preemptive strike “if [the North Koreans] elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action.”

South Korean Prime Minister, Hwang Kyo-ahn, currently acting as interim president in Park’s stead, announced recently that he would not run for the presidential office.

South Koreans will choose their new president on May 9.

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Stories In Focus

Joining the P-Staff: Houghton’s New VP of Finance

Vincent Morris, Houghton College’s new Vice President of Finance, started his first day on the job in September. “I suppose I could be considered part of the incoming ‘class of ’20,’” he joked. “Although I don’t know when—or if—I’ll graduate!” Morris moved to Houghton from Chicago, Illinois, over the summer, and has been pleasantly surprised by the weather thus far, prompting what he described as “naïve doubts about the true ferocity of winter in Western New York.”

Morris’s career path prior to Houghton is eclectic and winding, yet unified by a core passion for students. He “served as a youth minister for an enjoyable decade,” worked at Wheaton College as the Director of Risk Management, and most recently worked as higher education consultant for colleges and universities in the United States and around the world. “I missed the influence for Kingdom work as a single higher education institution,” said Morris. “So I was open to listen when President Mullen suggested I consider joining the Houghton team.”

As the Vice President of Finance at Houghton, Morris is responsible for ensuring that the college’s financial resources are managed efficiently and effectively. “Many, many days [are] spent ’rasslin’ with the budget!” said Morris, adding that a major challenge is attempting to keep tuition “at least sort of affordable” despite ever-rising expenses. He added, “[We] do want to meet payroll and keep the heat and power on for those who want to write a late-night paper or have a Fallout binge or shotgun Netflix shows or bake Christmas cookies or have an RDT or whatever. So that takes resource management.”

Morris serves as part of the president’s staff, a group of core advisors to president Shirley Mullen. The “P-staff,” as Morris calls it, is comprised of vice presidents representing a wide range of college departments and offices, from student life to advancement and external relations. According to Jack Connell, Provost and Dean of the Faculty (as well as another member of the president’s staff), members of this team “collaborate closely together . . . in making the numerous administrative, strategic, and budgetary decisions that are required to operate the college.” Connell described Morris as “curious, creative, energetic, insightful, intelligent, and passionate about Christian higher education,” adding that Morris “brings a tremendous amount of experience and expertise” due to his consulting work with colleges and universities.

In addition to his official responsibilities, Morris has been able to engage personally with the Houghton community during his time here. “A local pastor asked me to a delightful lunch-and-conversation early on,” said Morris. He also added that “Several faculty and staff . . . have graciously invited me into their homes,” gestures he has appreciated doubly because he’s been “batch-ing it” while his wife ties up work at her art studio at Wheaton College.

Morris also played a key role in this year’s Christmas-tree-lighting chapel service at the college. After President Mullen oversaw the lighting of the tree, Morris came up to read “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” a book by Barbara Robinson about six unruly, irreligious children, the Herdmans, who secure the lead roles in a church Christmas pageant.

Morris began with a witty self-introduction, confessing to be “that guy at parties, that asks people to punctuate ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,’ and reminds people that we don’t really know that Christ was born on the twenty-fifth of December.” Nevertheless, he asked the audience to suspend their disbelief regarding potential inaccuracies in traditional Christmas pageants, for the purpose of engaging with the story.

And engage they did. The end-of-semester chapel remnant sat spellbound as Morris read for over half an hour. Bursts of laughter bubbled from the audience, as well as the orchestra onstage, as Morris deftly slipped into different voices to suit the characters, from nasally, tough-talking Imogen Herdman to pristinely snotty Alice Wendelken.

When asked what he’d like students to know about him, Morris shared a diverse taste in music, ranging from Beethoven to Mumford and Sons to Pentatonix to the Hamilton soundtrack. He also said that he owns “all the extensions and expansions for ‘Settlers of Catan’ and [has] a very large table in [his] apartment,” as well as “popcorn, cheese, chips, dip, apples, and often some special reserve deep-dish pizza in the freezer too… just sayin’…”

Broke, bored, and hungry college students, take note.

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Stories In Focus

Sojourning to Belfast // Sojourner’s Mennonite and the Houghton Community

Photo courtesy of: Sojourner's Facebook Page

At 4 p.m. on Sunday, when many Houghton students are resting up for another week of classes, or finally turning their attention to a neglected bit of homework for Monday morning, a small, but diligent group of community members, students, and faculty gathers in Belfast for their weekly church service. This is Sojourners Mennonite Fellowship, led by Houghton College professor, Connie Finney.

“Anyone who’s been to Sojourners could tell you that the services there are… different,” said Bonnie Huegel ‘19, who began attending Sojourners last fall, after professors Benjamin and Susan Lipscomb invited her and several other London Honors students to visit the church. “When I went to my first service it felt almost more like a Bible study or small-group worship session than a ‘real’ church service,” she said. Since then, however, she said she has come to appreciate this aspect of attending Sojourners.

“I like that there’s so much focus on the community,” said Huegel. “I don’t only feel like a member of a congregation; I feel like a part of a family. Yes, it’s different; I still feel that sometimes, but I feel it in a good way.”

Raisa Dibble ‘17 said, “When I first came to Houghton, I wanted to commit to a church.” She talked to upper and underclassmen about her desire for a smaller, more informal place to worship. “Everybody kept recommending ‘This Mennonite church, this Mennonite church.’” She visited Sojourners for the first time without knowing much about it, but has attended regularly ever since.

“It’s very comfortable,” she said. “The pastor preaches in her sweatshirt sometimes. I really like that, because, even if you just rolled out of bed, it’s totally fine. They just want you there.”

The format of a service at Sojourners focuses on congregational involvement, encouraging both adults and children to help choose songs during the service, rather than having a worship leader prepare a set list beforehand. Sojourners also stresses the importance of communal prayer expressed in tangible ways, whether through stacking rocks, lighting candles, or some other symbolic, active representation of the spiritual aspects of prayer.

The service also includes a weekly teaching, though it isn’t treated as the “meat” of the service with worship or other elements as appetizers. “The message is very short,” said Huegel. “In most churches, the pastor’s sermon is the main emphasis of the service; at Sojourners, it’s easy to tell that worship and prayer are much more important, and the focus is on the church as a whole, and not only the pastor.”

According to Dibble, Finney preaches about twice a month, with congregation members volunteering to speak on most other weeks. Occasionally, said Dibble, the service will forego a sermon altogether: “We’ll split into small groups and look at a question and talk about it, or in small groups we’ll read a passage and have some reflection prompts,” regrouping afterward to discuss thoughts within the larger congregation.

Finney sees her role as pastor not so much as a top-down leadership role, but predominantly as one through which she serves and empowers the members of her congregation. “If you came to our church on a Sunday, it might not be obvious that I’m the pastor,” she said. Her goal is to serve as a welcoming presence for newcomers, and to identify and encourage giftings within church members, but not to be the star of the show. “A lot of pastors consider themselves to be the main people responsible for the life of the church,” she said. “And so they overfunction, and other people let them do all the work. At Sojourners we try really hard to keep a balance.”

Dibble said one of the things she appreciates most about Sojourners is the feeling of belonging that the small, tight-knit congregation brings. “Almost everybody there is Houghton students or professors,” she said. “So I feel like it’s taking my big church of Houghton and giving me a small portion of that.”

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Campus News

Longtime History Professor to Retire in the Spring

Professor of history, William Doezema, who came to Houghton College in forty years ago, will be retiring in the spring of 2017.

Eliza Burdick-Risser ‘18, took Recent American History, 1920 to Present, with Doezema. Burdick-Risser recalled a semester of history made vivid through Doezema’s rich teaching. “You walk into Professor Doezema’s class at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning,” she said. “You sit down, and he starts with discussion questions on the reading from the night before.” However, the resemblance to a predictable lecture stops there.

“He was really good at providing examples of what happened, because he experienced a lot of this stuff. He was able to tell us about the Cold War, and what it was truly and honestly like to grow up during that time period,”she said. Burdick-Risser stated Doezema’s teaching gave the students in the class a greater tie to history, as well as a broader perspective on major events. “At twenty years old you haven’t experienced,  a Cold War,” she said. “And most stuff that has happened, we haven’t even had a say or a vote in it.”

Doezema joined Houghton College’s history department in 1979, and has been teaching  at Houghton for almost forty years. In addition to teaching, he enjoys historical research, as well as presenting and publishing scholarly work on a variety of subjects ranging from the Salem witch trials to China’s Taiping Rebellion.

The history department’s small size allows for close working relationships between faculty. “Teaching in an area of academia I love and learning much from colleagues inside and outside my department have been incalculable privileges,” Doezema said. He added, “I’ve been struck over the years by how much we complement one another.”

Those colleagues seem to agree. Meic Pearse, a fellow professor of history, described the small, tight-knit department as a blessing, “[W]e all get along so well together; departmental meetings are mostly punctuated by funny stories and laughter.”

Professor of history, David Howard, was one of the faculty members who interviewed Doezema for his teaching position years ago and said Doezema is “a wonderful colleague; absolutely a person you can count on.” According to Howard, Doezema’s presence, in conjunction with Houghton’s other history professors, has helped to balance and strengthen the department. In addition to maintaining a warm dynamic with fellow professors, Doezema said,  “The most satisfying side of teaching … has been helping struggling students develop confidence in strengths they scarcely realized they possessed.”

Burdick-Risser said she appreciates the way Doezema drew connections between the past and the present, and navigated those topics in a way that allowed students to reach their own conclusions about politically-charged issues. “He never made it a thing of ‘Democrat versus Republican’ … I found that really nice. It was just history for what it was” stated Burdick-Risser.

Pearse affirmed this sentiment and stated the world needs “non-mythologized, non-romanticized, non-ideological history.” Otherwise, “All we do is delude ourselves and confirm our own prejudices, and fail to understand our own place in the world, or why others act as they do—and so fail to anticipate what is likely to happen next.”“[A]s one historian has put it,” says Doezema, “history is ‘an act of self-consciousness.’ History can make us all more discerning Christians.”

Howard said, if Doezema decided to leave Houghton after retiring in the spring he will be missed. He said, “There are very few people I’ll miss as much as Bill.”

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Campus News

Student Lecture Promotes Unity With LGBTQ Community

Micah Cronin ’17 approached the front of the recital hall stage prepared with a tongue-in-cheek self-introduction: “Many of you know me as Mary Cronin, and so you might be a little bit confused right now. It’s okay; I have not been replaced by my evil twin.”

On April 5, Cronin and Dean of the Chapel, Michael Jordan, hosted a forum entitled “Baptized into One Body: LBGTQ-Affirming Christians at Houghton College,” which aimed to spark dialogue and compassionate listening on LBGTQ, specifically transgender issues. For the first half of the forum, Cronin shared personal thoughts, convictions, and experiences with members of the college community. The evening then moved to a question and answer session where Jordan and Cronin interviewed each other using anonymous audience-submitted questions.

Cronin was raised female, but identifies as male, choosing to go by Micah and use male pronouns. Jordan chose to honor this decision despite disagreeing with it.

“I’ve agreed to call Micah by his chosen name tonight, rather than by Mary, and to use masculine pronouns when talking about him,” said Jordan. “My reasons for this are at once rather complex and at the same time very simple, because he asked me to.” Jordan explained he felt “to insist on calling Micah ‘Mary’ tonight would be like taking all my interactions with Micah and using every one of those to remind him that I disagree with him, and that’s a really hard way to build a relationship with someone.”

Cronin, who believes that the church should embrace LGBTQ-affirming Christians, cited a Pew Research Center report which found an increasing number of LBGTQ people are joining the church even as church membership decreases in the overall American population. Cronin expressed frustration with “rhetoric regarding how ‘the church’ should respond to the LBGTQ community,” insisting that this fails to grapple with the reality of the situation.

“Queer people are the church,” said Cronin. “I’ll say it again, queer people are the church.”

Cronin addressed ways in which traditional Christians can, intentionally or unintentionally, marginalize people who fall outside the heterosexual and cisgender circle. Cronin focused on a refusal to acknowledge both the complexity of the LBGTQ community and the complexity of the human beings within that community. According to Cronin, traditionalists who use outdated or inaccurately-narrow labels like “homosexual” or “same-sex attracted” to refer to the LBGTQ community send an implicitly demeaning message: “Our complexity does not matter. Our personhood does not matter. We do not matter.”

Likewise, said Cronin, reducing LBGTQ people to their sexual behavior fails to acknowledge them as human beings, “The conversation around queer people is so saturated with discussion of sex acts that it has long since passed the point of objectification.”

Colleen Shannon ’17, who attended the forum, said she appreciated “the respectful discussion, but also the direct conversation.” She said it is possible to err too far on the side of respect, to the point of ignoring an issue entirely.

Referencing an anonymous question which had referenced Cronin’s “trans-ness” (which

had prompted a joke from Cronin about the “Trans-Ness Monster”), Shannon commented on the importance of demystifying nontraditional perspectives on sexuality and gender. She said, “It’s not some mythical creature up in Scotland; this is a reality in culture, in American culture and in Christian culture and in world culture.”

Jordan said, “I think part of the message of Jesus is that we understand things about God better in relationship with other people.” Jordan said he hoped the forum and discussions like it would give students practical, relational experience that would prepare them for future interactions with people who hold differing beliefs on sexuality.

Cronin counseled traditionalists and progressives to “remember that first and foremost, anybody who has been baptized in the name of Christ and trusts in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as their hope and their salvation is a part of Christ’s body.” She continued, “ That extends to LBGTQ people, that extends to conservative people, that extends to anybody who we find inconvenient. And if we remember that, then we will actually be able to be brothers and sisters in Christ.”

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Stories In Focus

Houghton Students Spend Easter Break in Vienna

Professor of political science, Peter Meilaender, along with a group of 15 students traveled to Vienna, Austria for two weeks over Easter Break. In 2013, he had originally brought students to Vienna through an honors program called Contemporary Contexts that was replaced with the London program. Since then, Meilaender has been eagerly awaiting the chance to return to the beautiful city.

When organizing this trip to Vienna, Meilaender said “There are two ways to organize a trip like this: to travel around a lot in order to see as much as possible in the time available, or to stay in one place and get to know it more intimately.” This trip focused on knowing the city more intimately, focusing in on history from 1880-1920.  Kelley German ’17, attended this trip and said she “wished we [the students on the trip] could have [visited] the neighboring countries around Vienna.  Since it was a two week trip, we really only had enough time to do things in Austria . . . Overall though, I fell in love with Vienna immediately, so I really didn’t mind spending all of my time there.”vienna-933500_960_720

On this trip, the group saw a lot of different parts of history and Vienna culture. According to Michael Green ’18, they “covered a lot of ground during this trip and saw a lot of amazing places – all of the major galleries, museums, parks, palaces, theaters, etc.” The students were in Vienna during Holy Week as well, so seeing the Cathedrals and attending a service in the Cathedral of St. Stephen was also a perk of this trip.

A highlight of the trip seemed to be the coffee. Rachel Zimmerman ’18, said that “the coffee was wonderful” and Meilaender noted the group would often stop at “the coffee houses, for which Vienna is famous.”

Besides the coffee, travelling abroad was a growing experience for all. German spoke of the relationships  formed on this trip. “When you go on a trip like this” German said, “when you fly across the world and spend two weeks in a foreign country where you are with people who will sing do-re-me around a fountain in Salzburg and drink tea and cake in the same cafe every day, you get really close.  People that I never saw on campus before, people that aren’t in the same major as me or even the same year as me, I now get to call my new friends.”

Even Meilaender found the dynamic rewarding and said it “is very rewarding to watch the students–especially ones who have not done much traveling before- grow in confidence as they discover that they can make their own way around a major world city in a foreign country.”

Vienna was an amazing city, rich with history and a culture different from our own. If you didn’t get the chance to go this year don’t worry, Meilaender said he is “considering spring of 2018, so students should begin saving their money now.” Green said it best “It was a wonderful opportunity to travel to an amazing city with a fantastic group of people.” Some advice from German before you go, “if you go, get a hot dog.  They are a foot long and they give you a whole loaf of bread!”

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Campus News

Two Devoted Faculty Get Tenure

This spring, Houghton College’s Board of Trustees approved professor of mathematics Rebekah Yates and professor of intercultural studies, biology, and Earth science Eli Knapp for tenure, the culmination of a multi-year evaluation process by Houghton’s Rank and Tenure Committee.

Eli Knapp RGB YatesRGBAccording to Linda Mills Woolsey, Dean of the College and Vice President for Academic Affairs, faculty members hired into Houghton’s tenure track go through three tenure evaluations over their first six years at Houghton. In their second year, faculty face a departmental review, which includes faculty peer review and an evaluation by the department chair. Faculty members are evaluated again in their fourth and sixth years, both by their department and by the Rank and Tenure Committee, which is chaired by Mills Woolsey.

According to professor Douglas Gaerte, a member of the Rank and Tenure Committee, the committee goes over all the material that has been collected for a given faculty member, including peer reviews, self-evaluations, and teaching evaluations done by students.

Each candidate for tenure is assigned a case manager from the Rank and Tenure Committee, said Gaerte, who served as Yates’ case manager. Gaerte interviewed members of Yates’ department, as well as eleven different students, including both upper-level math majors and first-years. Likewise, Gaerte said that when he was up for tenure, his case manager interviewed not only communication majors, but also students who had taken a communication class with Gaerte for integrative studies credit. According to Gaerte, this allows the Rank and Tenure Committee to determine whether the tenure candidate is qualified to teach both entry and upper-level classes.

Once the Rank and Tenure Committee has performed its final evaluation and met with the tenure candidate, the Mills Woolsey makes a recommendation to Houghton’s president, Shirley Mullen. “If the president agrees with the recommendation,” said Mills Woolsey, “the Dean’s summary of the case and recommendation are given to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees. If the AAC votes for tenure and promotion, the names are taken to the full Board who vote to confirm the tenure and promotion.”

According to Yates, the Rank and Tenure Committee assesses faculty members’ suitability for tenure on a number of factors, including disciplinary competence and relevance, such as how well a professor knows, and is up-to-date on, his or her field, as well as integration of faith into a professor’s teaching, scholarship, and service.

“For the final tenure review,” said Yates, “the faculty member has to also submit some form of scholarship addressing the integration of faith and learning in the faculty member’s discipline; this often takes the form of a paper but can also be a sermon, a performance, a work of art, etc.”

Gaerte said fewer colleges nationwide are offering tenure. “The vast majority of [Houghton’s] faculty are full-time professors,” said Gaerte, adding that this encourages professors to commit themselves to Houghton and to their students.

Mills Woolsey said tenure “strengthens an institution by providing a means of mutual commitment between faculty members and the institution they serve.” She added that the tenure evaluation process is designed both to determine whether professors are a good long-term fit for their position, and to help committed faculty members improve.

“When faculty members are not doing as well as we would like,” said Mills Woolsey, “the review process often helps them to make thoughtful decisions about improving their work or  looking for a position with a better fit.”

Yates commented on her experience as a newly-tenured faculty member, “Having had tenure for about a week and a half now (and technically it doesn’t really start until next academic year, but the decision is already made), I don’t feel terribly qualified to answer how being tenured affects my role.”

However, she added, “It’s a nice confirmation that the work I have been doing at Houghton that I feel is what God has called me to do is also valuable enough to the College that they want me to stay long term.”

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Campus News

Trio of Honors Weekends Ends Successfully

This spring, Houghton hosted three honors weekends, inviting academically-gifted prospective students to interview for the college’s honors programs, while also giving those students and their families the opportunity to experience life at Houghton firsthand. Each weekend ran from Friday morning through early Saturday afternoon, with a rigorous schedule of interviews, discussions, panels, and information sessions.

Honors co DrJamiePotterRGB“The overall goal of our honors interview weekends is to help prospective students discern if Houghton is the right school for them, as well as to help Houghton decide who should be admitted to our Honors tracks,” said Betsy Rutledge, assistant director of admissions events and office operations.

Rutledge and others in Houghton’s visit office are responsible for organizing the logistics of the weekends and making sure that everything runs smoothly. This extends beyond just lining up classrooms for discussions and scheduling interviews. “We want students to get the whole picture of a Houghton education,” said Rutledge. “So we try to emphasize and help them experience not just academics, but also Houghton’s spiritual climate and student community.”

Houghton has three honors programs for incoming first year students: Science Honors, East Meets West, and London Honors. “Students are divided among those interviewing for Science Honors and those interviewing for the two humanities programs (East Meets West and London Honors),” said Professor Peter Meilaender, interim director of honors. Science students and liberal arts students have separate schedules for Friday, both of which include interviews and interactive experiences designed to give students a taste of what the programs will be like.

“Science students have departmental information sessions; humanities students attend an East Meets West class,” said Meilaender. “Science students do a problem-solving team exercise; humanities students participate in a simulated class discussion on an assigned reading.”

Ryan Spear, Director of Admissions, said the honors weekends help the college make decisions on scholarships and admission to the honors programs, but also provide the opportunity for students to get to know Houghton and to interact with other prospective honors students.

Rutledge agreed, describing prospective students’ exposure to Houghton as a critical part of the honors weekends. She said, “We want students to be able to envision themselves as Houghton students and ask themselves, ‘Can I see myself spending the next four years here?’”

Spear said the intensive nature of the honors weekends is intended to communicate to students that Houghton’s honors programs are more than just “a collection of a few ‘harder’ classes dubbed ‘honors.’” According to Spear, many students who interview for Houghton’s honors programs excelled in high school and are used to performing well academically. He said, “Our goal is help these students see that Honors at Houghton isn’t simply about slapping a ‘feel-good’ label on their existing accomplishments in order to entice them to enroll,” but is instead  “a rigorous experience that is intended to further develop their God-given potential.”

According to Rutledge, the most recent honors weekend (which ran February 12 and 13) had 64 students, the most of any interview weekend to date. Spear estimated a total of about 120 students for the three weekends combined, which he said is on par with previous years.

Both Rutledge and Spear emphasized the preparation for the honors weekends as a personalized process designed to connect with students on an individual level, and not just as throngs of intelligent young minds.

“We work really hard to make the Honors weekend a personal experience,” said Rutledge. “Because we strongly believe that the Houghton experience is a personal one.” She added,  “We want to welcome as many of these students into our Christian academic community as possible, and we want students and families to come away from the weekend feeling that we got to know them as individuals.”

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Campus News

Students Plan Lobbying Trip for March

This March, a group of Houghton students will travel to Washington, D.C., to lobby on the issue of mass incarceration.

“America has the highest incarceration rate in the world,” Stephanos Bibas writes in his article, “The Truth about Mass Incarceration,” published in the National Review. He added that the United States houses almost one-fourth of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that our country constitutes only one-twentieth of the global population.

Lauren Bechtel ‘16  is organizing the trip to Washington, D.C. “I’ve spent a lot of time studying injustice in other cultural contexts and in other countries,” said Bechtel, who is an international development major. “From that experience I’ve really started to realize how much work needs to be done in our own country,” she stated.

Bechtel commented on the challenges that former inmates face when they leave prison, “If you take someone out of a place where they have family, friends, relationships, that depend on them, and you take them out of that context and put them into a place where they don’t make any money, they don’t have a real sense of purpose … and then you isolate that person from those that they care about the most, what’s supposed to motivate them to be a positive contributor to society when they get out?”

U.S. Capitol at Dusk
U.S. Capitol at Dusk

At a four-day event called the Spring Lobbying Weekend, Houghton students and other young adults will work with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker group which has lobbied on a number of issues including sustainable energy, the Syrian refugee crisis, and campaign finance reform.

According to Bechtel, participants will spend the first day of the Spring Lobbying Weekend learning about the issue of mass incarceration, the second day learning about the policy surrounding mass incarceration, and the third day learning about the mechanics of lobbying. On the fourth day, participants will have the chance to put what they have learned into practice by lobbying for The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, a senate bill introduced by a group of bipartisan senators.

A summary from the Friends Committee’s website states that this bill “focuses on non-violent drug-related crimes, separating them … from violent crimes and the more serious drug trafficking crimes.” Despite this, the bill proposes reducing mandatory minimum sentences not only for second and third convictions of drug possession, but for certain violence-related felonies and crimes of violence. The intent of these reductions, according to the Friends Committee, is not simply to reduce sentences, but to allow judges to exercise more discretion in sentencing, giving them the opportunity “to take into account the criminal history of individuals being charged … and the relative level of their involvement in the crime.”

Emma Brittain ‘16 said she is interested in going to D.C. for the lobbying weekend “because I know that as a Christian I need to be caring about justice and that means even caring for those who have done something wrong.” She also commented on issues of corruption and discrimination in the criminal justice system, “[T]here has been data that suggests racial profiling and monetary incentives cause more people to be sentenced to jail for longer, harsher terms than what is probably fair.”

Jackson Wheeler ‘17 said participating in the lobbying weekend will give him the opportunity to see how he can apply his education to the sphere of American government. “The U.S. justice system, of course, does plenty of good,” Wheeler said.  He added that it then becomes “our goal as citizens, as voices in our communities, to do our part in trying to highlight its facets that are in need of reform.”

Bechtel echoed this sentiment and stated, “If you have a voice, and you don’t use it, you’re wasting your opportunity to speak out against injustice. If you have a voice and you do use it, that’s not only empowering for you as an individual, but it also is a part of a way to enact real change.”

The trip to D.C. runs March 11-15. Those interested in learning more may contact Lauren Bechtel at lauren.bechtel16@houghton.edu.

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Stories In Focus

Summer Research Institute

Students and Faculty Work Side by Side

While most students spend their summer sitting by the pool, traveling, or working, this summer a group of students spent their summer on campus, conducting research and experiments.

Physics professor Mark Yuly, helps lead and guide students through research each summer.“It’s a time when professors and students can work on research projects during the summer… and stuff.” Yuly laughed. “It’s nice, because during that time—during the rest of the year, professors and students are still working on research, but in the summer you can really focus.”

According to its webpage, the Summer Research Institute (SRI) allows students “to interact with faculty in a much more collaborative sense than in the classroom setting” through research in physics, chemistry, biology, math or computer science. This research ranges from studying genetic modifications in influenza viruses, to exploring spam message detection on Twitter.

SRIforreal2Yuly has been involved with the SRI since it began, writing the initial proposal for the program. He then worked with computer science professor Wei Hu to make the SRI a reality.

Hu is the director of the SRI. He coordinates the research projects, in addition to doing his own research with students each year. Hu said he and Yuly met with Ron Oakerson, the Dean of the College, in 2006, and received approval to launch the program in 2007.

Seniors August ‘Gus’ Gula and Thomas Eckert worked with Yuly this summer on research involving inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Yuly explained ICF as a process “when you take a little tiny pellet of nuclear fuel and hit it with laser beams from every direction.” This results in an implosion which is incredibly dense and hotter than the core of the sun.

Unfortunately, the scientific instruments which may be used to study the implosion are too delicate to withstand the experiment. Therefore, as an alternative, scientists “put a piece of carbon in [the test chamber], a piece of graphite, and the neutrons that are coming out of the explosion cause the graphite to undergo a nuclear reaction.” This can hopefully be used to determine what happened inside the implosion, said Yuly.

For this technique to work, scientists need to know “how likely it is that a neutron would interact with the graphite and not just go right through it,” said Yuly. Until recently, no one knew what that likelihood was, so Yuly and his two students spent the summer finding out.

Yuly’s days at the SRI started early. “A typical day for me would be to get here at 5:30, and work for a couple hours before Gus and Thomas came,” Yuly said.

Once the students arrived, they would meet with Yuly to review their plans for the day. Each student had a focus area, tailored to their individual strengths. “Thomas mostly worked on simulating the experiment using computer codes,” said Yuly. “Gus primarily worked on collecting data.”

The objective of the research project, according to Yuly, was gradually tweaking and improving Eckert’s simulation, so it coincided with the data Gula collected. Yuly said by the end of the summer, all the collected data, aside from one set of results that Yuly is “still not completely sure” about, aligned with the final simulation Eckert had created.

For science students interested in going to graduate school and someday carrying out their own research, hands-on experience during undergraduate school is crucial, said Yuly. “You won’t get [research experience] in a graduate school unless you have some experience that you can point to.” he said. Yuly said the reason graduate programs want students with hands-on experience is because it teaches them key skills that will help them in later research.He said, “You learn a lot of things that you wouldn’t learn just by taking a normal class or listening to a lecture.”

According to Hu, faculty members benefit from the program, as well, “Our SRI faculty learn how to work with students in research, which is not possible in a standard course work.”