Category: Stories In Focus

In the back corner of the Neilsen Center, past mop buckets and parked industrial floor cleaners, a chicken-wire fence encloses the camp closet. Around two dozen grey, blue, and green hiking backpacks obscure the wall directly across from the closet door and, on the ground, lifejackets spill over the top of a variety of plastic bins. The walls to the left and right are equally hidden by sleeping bags rolled into fading red sacks; stacks of pots, pans, and bowls; and hard plastic coolers for drinks and food all organized into neat wooden shelves, some sagging beneath the weight. Students can rent the majority of the equipment stored in the closet for minimal daily fees.

While Houghton has had a camp closet since 1979 when Houghton began adventure programming, more recent policy changes have made the camp closet more student focused. This semester, Robert Smalley, assistant professor of recreation, took on responsibility for overseeing the camp closet, which was previously run by the Wilderness Adventure Program. According to Smalley, “A lot of this equipment was used by young kids all summer long,” when Houghton ran a youth program. These trips typically resulted in equipment damages making some gear unusable, so the end of this program should mean that “the quality of our equipment stays good for longer, and we don’t have to replace it as much.”

Regarding the current equipment, Smalley said he needs to “see what’s usable and what isn’t usable,” but some of it is relatively new. A few years ago a group of students were granted student government money to buy new equipment that “doesn’t go to outside groups at all – it’s just for Houghton students to use.” Additionally, when Houghton sold the Star Lake campus, equipment from their camp closet came here.

Smalley intends to improve renting coordination because some of Houghton’s outdoor recreation classes utilize the equipment. In the past, conflicts have arisen from schedule mismanagement; for example, “sometimes the [canoe] class would start and there’d be no canoes or not enough canoes for a class.”

Equipment is lent to Houghton programs “free of charge as long as they sign things out and then agree to return them in good condition.” Individual Houghton students and non-Houghton groups can also rent for low fees; for a 2-man tent and sleeping bag it costs two dollars per day and $0.50 per day for a sleeping pad. For now, Smalley has chosen not to offer canoes for individual rental and for liability reasons he never rents out climbing ropes, but usually he will lend canoes and trailers to Houghton programs. Junior Matthew Munkittrick said he borrowed “a backpack, tent, and stove for a weekend, and a pair of climbing shoes for a night.”

Smalley said he has been “a bit of a stickler” when it comes to safety but only because he wants to protect the students who use the camp closet gear; college groups need to have someone experienced with the equipment leading. “If the conditions aren’t going to be good, I will tell the people I think you ought to reconsider. Or I might even say I’m not going to give the stuff to you because I don’t want to be part of a dangerous thing…I just would feel terrible.”
Students can contact Smalley to make rental requests, but need to plan ahead as request forms are due at least three days before the desired pickup date. As the brisk autumn nights start to give way to wintry frosts and the fall camping season comes to an end, Smalley said he has had only a trickle of requests. Senior Sean Daigler who had never heard of the camp closet before said, “this is actually a really cool thing” supporting Smalley’s suspicion that “there’s a lot of potential here that hasn’t been tapped in regards to student use.”

Recent Houghton graduates Madison Murphy and Bretta Hixson have Facebook to thank for their newly hired professor positions. Murphy, a 2011 graduate, and Hixson, a 2010 graduate, were alerted by current Houghton professors on Facebook of positions in their fields that became available.

After graduating with a degree in Communication, Madison Murphy went to Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Georgia and earned a master’s degree in Computer Animation with a concentration in 3D Computer Character Animation.  Realizing the range of possibilities her field offered, Murphy attended SCAD knowing that she wanted to teach at a small school.

Murphy got this opportunity earlier this year when she found out Professor David Huth, the current professor of media arts and visual communications, was taking a sabbatical.  “It was a Facebook message that sort of kicked it off,” Murphy said, “Professor Huth asked, ‘Would you mind coming back for a year?’ Then it got a little more professional from there.” Huth will return next fall and Murphy’s position will no longer be available but she would welcome the opportunity to stay. “Would I like to [stay]?” asked Murphy, “Sure, I love it here. I think everything this department is doing is fantastic. I think it’s producing awesome students.” Since her current position will end, Murphy decided she will either look for another teaching job at a place like Houghton or for work in the industry of computer animation.

While a student at Houghton, Murphy was a Teaching Assistant (TA) and very involved in the communications department, so the teaching aspect of her job was a swift transition from student to professor. However, some aspects caused for a more difficult transition. For example, instead of being all around campus like she was used to as a student, she now spends a great amount of time in the building where her office is located. The most prominent difference, Murphy said, were the “little things” like “walking into the cafeteria and noticing that they switched all the chairs around, or that the NERF club is now officially a student-recognized activity.”  Murphy also describes the ups and downs of eating in the cafeteria and mentions she doesn’t eat in the cafeteria as much, but complains because she doesn’t get to “hear as much of the buzz”.

Also new to Houghton is Bretta Hixson who graduated with a degree in Biology before moving to Boston in 2011. Hixson received a master’s degree of public health in international health from Boston University. After graduating she traveled to Cap Haitien, Haiti to work for a non-profit organization, strengthening the medical supply chain of the public Haitian hospitals.  When that project finished she moved back to Boston and worked at a coffee shop until hearing from Houghton.

Hixson was Facebook friends with the previous genetics professor, Matthew Pelletier, and saw that he was leaving Houghton. Shortly after she received an email from the biology department encouraging her to apply and after applying Hixson recalls, “Within a week, I flew out to teach a sample lecture and interview.” Less than two weeks later she got the job.

Hixson describes her first few months at Houghton as a “through-the-looking-glass” experience. She said “I had moments in faculty meetings and division meetings and department meetings – we have a lot of meetings – where I felt a keen sense of absurdity.  Not that the meetings were absurd, just the idea that I belonged in them.” The teaching itself brought more comfort, as Hixson had been a TA and tutor while a student at Houghton. She does admit, however, “Lecturing a class of fifty-six in Schaller is quite different than sitting down with one or two students to drill them on the finer points of a fetal pig anatomy or the polymerase chain reaction.”

Both Murphy and Hixson shared their gratitude for the opportunity to be back at Houghton and felt privileged to be able to continue their experiences at the college.  As Hixson said, “I do remember day-dreaming about what it would be like to come back some day and teach at Houghton…”

It’s not unusual to see several of the booths occupied by students on their laptops in Big Al’s. While some people are eating, others chatting, doing homework or perhaps working on a group project, a group of students consistently frequents Big Al’s to play video games together.

These “gamers” have become a quintessential aspect of Houghton. They spend hours down at Big Al’s, sitting side-by-side their friends, their teammates. “It’s fun to play as a group. Playing by yourself just promotes isolationism. We like playing as a team, otherwise, it’s not as fun,” said, sophomore, Ryan Campbell. “I wish I could play, but my laptop broke” said Justin Livergood, first year, who despite his broken laptops, looks on while his fellow gamers play.

The appeal to sitting in front of a computer for hours playing games is the team aspect. They often play “League of Legends,” an online game involving two powerful champions that battle head-to-head across multiple battlefields and game modes. Campbell described playing the game as: “A team game, you have to have five people. We constitute four and then we have another friend playing in the dorm…We are all playing the same game.”

Aside from “League of Legends,” this group of friends also plays “Magic: The Gathering,” collectible cards with a strategy game. In this game, you play the role of a “plansewalker”, a powerful wizard who fights other wizards for glory, knowledge, and conquest.

For Ronald “Bub” Duttweiler, a sophomore and avid gamer, gaming has become one of his main hobbies. “I started playing once I came to college last year,” he said. It’s been an opportunity for him to make friends and spend time with them. Duttweiler said that “having a friend group to play with” is one the benefits of gaming. Campbell shared his similar experience: “I originally got involved with [gaming] because I couldn’t participate in sports when I was a freshman. I’d never heard of it before that, but it had the competitive edge that I liked. So I got involved with and enjoyed it more than I thought.”

Naturally, “winning,” is a common goal shared by the group as well, according to Duttweiler. Along with spending time with friends, Duttweiler and Campbell enjoy the competition gaming entails. Duttweiler remained so intensely focused while playing “League of Legends,” that he didn’t pause to look away from his computer screen while being interviewed.

“When do they get their homework done?” wondered, junior, Mike Knapp. That seems to be the question most Houghton students contemplate about the gamers in Big Al’s.  Yet, the amount of time they spend playing games “depends on how much work [they] have,” said Campbell. While gaming is a fun activity they partake in together, ultimately, they have to manage their time like any other student to get schoolwork done. “When homework gets boring I’d rather play games,” said Duttweiler. Gaming is a way to forget about the demands and pressures of school for a little while.

Some students have differing opinions on the students gaming together in  Big Al’s.  Senior Danielle Lyndsley observed, “It’s better than being a loner and just plugging yourself in for four hours and not interacting with other people.” No matter what hobbies each student participates in, the difficulty of finding a location impinges on the ease of which friends can spend time together. When and where did the tradition of playing video games in Big Al’s come from? No one really knows, but what Duttweiler does know is that “there’s food, comfy chairs, and not really another place to do it.”

Downstairs in Gillette, there is a hall that has taken on an entirely new name this school year. The hall many students knew just as ‘Basement New’ in previous years has become the townhouse floor.

The townhouse floor is a new option for living on campus that combines the rules of a townhouse with the setting of a dormitory. Replacing the First Year Learning Community option, the townhouse floor is a “living on campus” plan brought back to Houghton after a long absence. The townhouse floor has open hours that span most of the day beginning at 8am and with longer weekend hours, just like the townhouses and the main lounges of the dormitories. The townhouse floor is furnished with more supplies and furniture than any of the other lounges in Gillette. It contains a very useful, spacious kitchen and comfy, clean couches. Down the hall, a variety of eye-catching pictures and drawings brought in or made by residents adds a welcoming appeal to the whole area. Along with the wall decorations placed by students, an elevator and a custodial office also reside here; something different from the other floors of Gillette.

Although the townhouse floor has all the same rules as a townhouse, they are still very much a part of the rest of Gillette. The floor participates in events held by the rest of the dormitory, but would also like to participate in townhouse-centered events in the future. The floor is a living option that could be described as “in between” living in Gillette and the townhouses. Living there gives residents a sense of closeness to the rest of Gillette, a shorter walk to campus buildings, but the freedom and responsibility of living in and taking care of a townhouse.

“It’s going well,” said junior, Rachel Wright, resident assistant (RA) of the townhouse floor. Wright calls the floor a “happy medium” and enjoys leading and living amongst the upperclassmen that she describes as, “an awesome bunch of residents.” She likes that they have a sense of maturity and a grip on what they want to do in life.

At double the size of a normal townhouse, the townhouse floor is home to sixteen residents.The townhouse floor is a privilege according to Wright, much like any upperclassmen living option. Though it is still early in the semester, Wright already shows great pleasure in her position as the townhouse floor’s RA. When told that she would be the RA of the townhouse floor, she immediately responded with a good attitude, saying, “That’s what I want to do.”

So far, the townhouse floor has been the location of a solid, focused, and successful atmosphere on the Houghton College campus. As for the future of the townhouse floor, Wright said it is “not set in stone,” but if all goes well this year, she thinks the townhouse floor will continue to be a living option in upcoming years.