With the presidential elections nearing, everyone and their dog is analyzing the presidential candidates, from what they say or do not say and what they do or do not do. The issues they are taking a stance on directly and critically impact college students, students’ parents, grandparents and their future children. Gas being almost four dollars is not a major issue, but that’s beside the point.

What does matter is everyone’s reaction to the political candidates and the skewed, melodramatic reporting of various agencies.

Since I graduated in December, I have spent a decent amount of time perusing various websites looking at news articles and the comment threads that go along with them. I do this to catch up on current issues because college tends to be an insulated microcosm without much acknowledgement of world issues: you go to class, you eat, you study and you sometimes sleep. The constant theme and monotonous chorus in any comment thread is always an argument between Democrats and Republicans.

A news article could be about fluffy kittens and how cute they are but someone will invariably digress away from the cute kittens and blame something on Democrats/Republicans (because we all know that the problems of the United States are caused by the party opposite of ourselves). The verbal shindig usually begins with someone insulting Obama or Republicans, in which people literally SCREAM at one another about how stupid the other person is and how Republicans hate everyone but large companies.

You do not even want to mention healthcare because each individual believes he or she has the ultimate solution and that Obama caused the United States to go down the drain. Democrats hold that it was Bush, but either way things are circling the toilet bowl.

But let us all forget what I have said so far and focus on what really matters: unity. Even though the possibility of each person in the United States seeing eye-to-eye on an issue is one times 10 to the infinite power, it does not mean people should attack one another in any form. Each person has a right to express his or her views without fear of gnashing teeth or hurtful words. What people must realize is that our once king-of-the-hill nation is not about being a Democrat or a Republican, Christian or Muslim, black or white; it’s about being an American.

With this in mind, people should burst from their confined ideology and truly pick apart the issues and stances of politicians. Do not merely be a puppet of a large party that does not care about you, but delve into the inner you and discover what is important to you, not what is important to your parents, friends, religious leader, political leader or any one of your professors.

We as a generation, which the media calls “lazy” or “entitled,” need to discover our passion for something besides our own conceitedness. Too many of us sit back and let the decision making be done by older people who will not be around to see the repercussions of their mistakes. This is our time to take a stance, our time to make our voices heard above the clamor of the herd.

The most important part, though, is to be educated and informed on the issues. Spouting erroneous facts will only lead to more bickering of ignorant people. So, before you decide to call yourself a Republican or a Democrat, take a look at what those terms really mean and where they come from. Above all else, do not wait for someone else to be the catalyst of change. We are all responsible for what happens in the future and if we do nothing now, we can only blame ourselves when our world crumbles.

Students are feeling the heat of finals while enduring the cold weather and, like the snow, the two can pile up. Many students have trouble dealing with the stress, but there are a variety of activities on campus to help students get through. (Photo by ReAnn Arcand)

Students and health professionals alike recognize a certain correlation: college increases stress.

While there are many causes of stress, studies have shown college adds to the already fast-paced lives people live. In its National College Health Assessment, the American College Health Association surveyed 129 institutions and more than 100,000 students — of those students, 1,165 were from SDSU. The results showed 46 percent of SDSU students felt that academics had been “traumatic or very difficult to handle” within the last 12 months of when the survey was conducted last spring.

The survey covered a wide range of topics and it showed that 89 percent of students were overwhelmed, 44 percent experienced overwhelming anxiety and 56 percent were exceedingly sad. Overall, the values show that – nationally and locally – students experience a high level of stress and decreased mental health.

Debra Johnson, clinical counseling supervisor for SDSU’s Student Health Clinic and Counseling Services, said mental health functioning is comprised of genetics, stress level and biological activity like alcohol consumption or hormone fluctuations in women.

“When you start to have some difficulty in one of those areas, then you begin to start having mental health functioning that is affected.”

Mental health really comes into play when students draw nearer to finals. With more deadlines and the stress of passing a class, students are under quite a bit of strain. Johnson said anxiety is a major factor as finals approach, made up of three variables like self-confidence, feelings of control and a sense of approval.

“When one of those three go down, anxiety will rise,” she said. “All of those factors come into play when you’re dealing with finals and all of the projects that need to be done at the end of the semester.”

To help students combat the growing stress of finals, Residential Life tries to help students through programming. Amber Carter, residence hall director of Brown Hall, said the residence halls have 24-hour quiet hours and study breaks for students to relax. Study breaks include things like coloring, board games, video games, crafting and snacks.

Carter said they have been trying something new this year.

“We do academic success tips in the bathroom stalls and the tips give a ‘tip of the week’ like … ‘Take really fun notes.’ So helpful hints you don’t get in an academic setting,” she said. “We try to think a little out of the box or get things to students using different messages.”

The idea that college can be stressful and cause a large amount of anxiety was something Carter said was apparent in her time at SDSU.

“In my years of being a hall director, a lot of people come with certain expectations of what college will be like and then are hit with the realities of what it is,” she said. “Those two create a bit of a disconnect and that can be stressful.”

Another way ResLife tries to help students is through its student success model, in which they have garnered a more holistic approach. Carter said it’s been somewhat separated from academics in the past but has become more integrated to help students with their academic success.

The efforts of the administration to help students with stress for finals are not the only option available to students. Johnson said exercise, nutrition and most importantly sleep all play a critical role in coping with stress and anxiety.

“The number-one piece that is really important is sleep. That’s one of the things students often give up, but all of the studies indicate that for retention of memory and concentration, you need to have adequate sleep,” she said. “The minimum sleep you should be functioning on is six-and-a-half hours.”

While many students may feel an increased amount of stress as finals near, Jom Tolman, a sophomore political science major from Rapid City, said he’s not stressed at all.

“Finals are important, but it’s not the end of the world. I feel a lot of people over-hype it even,” he said. “I’m just an easy-going guy. Some things are worth getting worked up over in life and a test isn’t one of them.”

Tolman said even though he isn’t very stressed, he does have some friends who get overly stressed during the semester and moreso with finals.

Although everyone is different and may experience stress in different ways and levels, Johnson said there isn’t just one type of person who experiences it more than others.

“It crosses all economics, all races, all religions,” she said. “It’s a combination of genetics and coping skills.”

The ACHA-NCHA also reported 94 percent of students benefitted academically from counseling. Student counseling on campus can be found in the Student Health Clinic and Counseling Services within the Wellness Center.

The Department of Modern Languages is closely involved with the associated student organizations, which led the merger of all four clubs, including Spanish, French, German and Global Studies. (Photo by Kathy Kroeger)

Students of modern languages and global affairs at SDSU will “WALC” together to increase their presence and impact on campus.

The Global Studies Club is merging with the Spanish, German and French clubs to boost numbers and participation.

In a recent move by SDSU administration, the Global Studies program moved into the Department of Modern Languages and is now located in Wagner Hall. The proposed new name would include “Global Studies” in its title, a move that would signify the change to the department and its student organizations.

What used to be the Global Studies and the modern languages clubs are combining into one significantly larger organization named World Affairs and Languages Club, or WALC.

At the beginning of the Fall Semester, Molly Enz, assistant professor and coordinator for Global Studies, said modern languages incorporated the Global Studies program into its department. The merger finalized a relationship that had been in place since the Global Studies program’s inception in 2005 under Dr. Nels Granholm.

“We knew most of the students anyway and had been advising them and teaching many of the courses within (Global Studies),” Enz said. “It was just a logical transition, and part of becoming a global citizen is being cross-culturally competent and knowing another language and what’s going on in the world in general.”

Enz is excited for the merger of the languages and Global Studies clubs. She said the combination seemed like a logistical choice in order to help the clubs expand and increase the productivity of professors who would otherwise be involved in multiple individual clubs.

“There was so much overlap we didn’t want students to have to go to events and activities for four separate clubs. So to streamline them made a lot of sense to increase participation and be able to do more creative things,” she said.

With a decrease in the number of faculty advisers needed for the Department of Modern Languages and Global Studies, the faculty will rotate the position of club adviser. The current adviser for WALC is Eckhard Rolz, associate professor of everything German in the department.

Rolz said the club’s council is made up of the president and vice presidents of the four individual clubs and that each club donated $200 to help WALC get started. The council also elects a chair and other members for representation.

The problem of participation has always plagued the smaller clubs that now make up WALC, but Rolz said he thinks it’s a “good idea to combine resources and manpower.”

“I hope they’ll be more active than all the individual clubs. It’s more of an over-arching club that’s more visible on the campus and in the community, and it can actually do really cool things like work with the South Dakota Worlds Affair Council and support good causes on campus,” he said.

Even though the clubs will be merging into one organization, Students’ Association Senator At-Large Cole Breuer said the clubs will be sub-clubs within the larger WALC. As a senior global studies and French double major, Breuer is the chair of WALC and was previously the co-president of the Global Studies Club.

“They will still retain their name, but going from the university standpoint, they won’t technically exist. It’s more for designing events around that (sub-club),” he said.

The new organization’s council is currently going through the process of developing its constitution, which is being done by the club’s council. Breuer said the club will start its activities next semester and will provide greater benefits with the increased size.

“We can get a huge turnout for events that we do, and we will have more ideas coming from each of the sub-clubs. We will be able to have a more global focus on things, and we really want … to have a mixture of international and domestic students on campus and create more of a dialogue between different cultures,” he said. “There’s a wealth of information on this campus.”

As the club finalizes its constitution and prepares for its first semester, Breuer said it’s important for the club to impact students and the community members.

“I’m hoping that we as students can come up with issues that are very important to us in this century. We live in a globalized world and I hope to bring events to campus that gets a dialogue going between groups and to help understand issues that are relevant to all of us right now,” he said.

The Students, Association open forum held Nov. 15 encompassed several topics, among them was the plus-minus grading system. The proposed system has stirred controversy in recent months. (Photo by Kathy Kroeger)

A plus-minus grading scale draws support from faculty and some dissent from students.

SDSU students could potentially see a change in grading if the Faculty Senate votes in favor of a plus-minus grading system next month.

Robert Watrel, president of the Faculty Senate and associate professor for the Department of Geography, said the proposal would allow faculty members to determine whether or not they wish to use the plus-minus system.

However, Senate Vice President Michael Keller said departments establish policies for the departmental faculty, which would mean more consistency among classes. Keller, an English professor, said the English Department would endorse the new system “whole-heartedly.”

“I’m wholly in favor of it. It’s more accurate, it’s more finely calibrated and there’s more discriminations an instructor can make,” he said. “It’s more fair. It’s a more just system.”

Other Faculty Senate members like Scott Pedersen, associate professor for the Department of Biology and Microbiology, have a more neutral view. He said he enjoys helping students develop study strategies and providing overall help, but he may see problems with the change.

“I’ll have a lot of students bickering for intermediate points. I don’t want to be in the position to judge that fine line,” he said.

Overall, Pedersen said, “I don’t see a benefit either way. It’s a null game for me.”

SDSU is not the first university to discuss a switch in grading systems. Both Northern State University and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology faculty senates have passed resolutions endorsing the change.

NSU Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Tom Hawley said their Faculty Senate passed a resolution last fall recommending the South Dakota Board of Regents adopt the plus-minus system.

“They wanted more differentiation in the letter grades,” Hawley said.

The move for a grading system change did not start with the Faculty Senate. Members of the Academic Affairs Committee voted in favor of plus-minus grading in their Oct. 17 meeting, which then moved the discussion up the chain.

Laura Diddle, chair of the Academic Affairs Committee and an associate professor in the Music Department, said her research convinced her that protecting grades devalues higher education and hurts the reputation of universities.

“This is something that really spoke loudly to me; if you’re protecting (GPA) out of fear … I think it leads to the devaluation of higher education,” she said.

“What you need to be worried about is how much work are you doing—how much effort are you truly putting into it.”

Allen Jones, vice chair of the Academic Affairs committee, said the system was used at the University of Washington before he came to SDSU — a trait he preferred.

“It more accurately represents the grades,” he said.

Similarly, Diddle said she supports the grading system change because it would “better differentiate (students), increase motivation, and enhance the image of grades and the undergraduate degree.”

In the Nov. 7 Students’ Association meeting, a resolution opposing the plus-minus grading was tabled after senators decided to schedule an open forum that was held last night in the Marketplace of The Union, an idea that was proposed after the resolution had been submitted.

The resolution discussed in the SA meeting was written in part and sponsored by Jameson Berreth, SA state and local government chair, and Anthony Sutton, SA vice president.

Berreth said students’ opinions are very important and that SA should try its best to represent the student body.

“I was pretty neutral to moderately opposed, but seeing how many students are opposed really makes my decision easier,” he said.

Mark York, SA president, said he believes a grading system should show an overall difference, not just a difference between students in a class.

“From some of the research I found, it said the mean GPA wouldn’t really change, but the standard deviation would become smaller,” he said. “So basically it wouldn’t show as much difference between students … I think a grading system should show some difference between students.”

Another major concern for SA members is the idea that faculty could choose whether or not to use the system. Sutton said there needs to be more uniformity. However, he stressed that the real issue is the value of the grade given.

“We really want to have the conversation on what it means for a student to earn an A from SDSU, to earn a B, or to earn a C,” he said. “What does it mean to do that and really focus on that conversation …

That’s the bigger conversation that needs to take place.”

Unofficially, SA opposes the concept of plus-minus grading; however, SA will vote on the topic in the coming weeks.

Response from SDSU students on the plus-minus system have been historically tepid, but not without support.

Creighton University uses a plus-minus grading system, something Andrew Rueb, a senior in the Medical Lab Science program, said he enjoyed before he transferred to SDSU.

“It gives you something to work for and it really helps your GPA. Transferring here killed my GPA,” he said.

Others say the change wouldn’t solve any problems.

Becca Niewohner, senior biology and microbiology double major, said SDSU would be more standardized with the majority of universities nationwide.

“Professors might calibrate to that system, too. They would make their curve higher,” she said. “The root of the problem is professors’ grading.”

Bethany Pridey, sophomore dietetics major, said the potential change harms hopes of getting into quality graduate programs.

“I work really hard in my classes and getting a 90 percent is really amazing … getting an A-minus discredits the work,” she said. “It hurts your chances of getting into graduate schools.”

The decision will most likely be made in the Dec. 13 Faculty Senate meeting. In the end, Jones said it’s not about the faculty.

“It’s been about doing what’s fair and in the best interest of the students,” he said. “That’s been the motive behind this.”

(Photo illustration by Cassie Malik)

West Hall
Previously the Brookings hospital, West Hall was repurposed for SDSU — morgue and all. In 2010, an employee working in West Hall reported having conversations with people who weren’t really there as well as hearing eerie noises, according to the Jan. 27, 2010, issue of The Collegian. 

Stories of what may be paranormal activity occurred even before last year, though. Marilyn Brown, Writing Center coordinator and English as a Second Language teacher, worked in West Hall back in the early 1990s. She said she had creepy experiences which caused her to rush to her office and immediately lock the door.

“I felt that eyes were watching me and I kept looking around to see if anyone was there,” she said, “but no one was.”

A passing student or faculty member could easily experience the foreboding chill of which a darkened West Hall could prompt. The many vacant rooms project a mirage of decades past in which sick or dying patients might have been comforted in their remaining hours of life.

In the basement, white brick walls spring forth to greet any visitor in a semi-claustrophobic hallway. The south wall frames a padlocked metal door, beckoning a passerby to imagine the mystery or terror behind it. The walls and floor even seem to be tired of a long dreary past. Stains decorate both and the once clean walls only speak of age.

Doug Wermedal, associate vice president for Student Affairs, said the construction and history of West Hall lends itself to influencing the human imagination. Even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts 99.9 percent of the time, he said there are still things we don’t know.

Lincoln Music Hall
Prior to being moved to the Briggs Library, the SDSU Archives were located in Lincoln Music Hall. Ruby Wilson, Daschle project associate in the Hilton M. Briggs Library, worked in the music hall from 2008 until September 2010, when the archives were moved to the library.

During the time she spent in the old stacks, accessible only through locked entrances, she said she never had an experience with a ghost, but the area was creepy, dark and had low visibility. However, she did say motion detectors would go off without anyone else being present.

“We had beepers above all of the elevators for when you get off the elevator. I’d sometimes hear that go off so I would quickly go back there and I wouldn’t see anybody,” she said. “That happened from time to time.”

Crystal Gamradt, archivist and exhibits coordinator for Briggs Library, said she had heard of strange occurrences and experiences from staff in the Lincoln Music Hall and one of the very first librarians, Dr. William Powers, had died in the old library that used to be in the musi

In a Council Meeting last June, council members were presented with multiple letters and emails denouncing Pub Crawl and other drinking events in downtown Brookings. Responding to these complaints, the council appointed Downtown Brookings, Inc. to create a committee and facilitate discussions between downtown businesses, SDSU students, community members and bars.

Part of the reason the committee was made is to prevent the City Council from becoming involved. Which would mean regulations, ordinances or other restrictions that would affect the community year-round, not just during specific events. Downtown Brookings, Inc. Board President Kris Struwe said DBI would facilitate the committee discussions for at least the first few weeks.

“The city wants us to explore and see if there is something that can be done on our end of it or in conjunction with the bars,” Struwe said. “The committee will set its own goals.”
In spite of trying to help all sides of the issue, DBI has faced some difficulties finding businesses to commit to being a part of the committee.

“Anytime there is a topic such as this, they want their opinion known but they don’t want anyone to know it was them,” Struwe said.

Even though there has been some lack of commitment, Struwe said they hope to have the committee finalized this week. Members of the committee will consist of business owners, SDSU Students’ Association members, bar owners and a Brookings police officer.

DBI Program Manager Vicki Schuster spoke to SA on Oct. 3 about having SA members on the committee. In response to her presentation, two student senators were chosen to serve on the committee Senator At-Large Daniel Roberts and Senator Kaytlin Pelton, College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences.

While some people may have a strong opinion about the outcome and decisions made by the committee, Pelton said she wants to listen to what people have to say before she makes any decisions.

“I want to see where she (Schuster) wants to go with this or where the community wants to go with it and why they have problems. Obviously, that’s why the committee was made,” Pelton said. “I don’t see a huge problem with it … but I’m open to hear anything from both sides.”

As of now, Pelton said she is opened-minded and interested in hearing what people have to say. Although, she realizes things need to change so the City Council isn’t forced to take action.

“I don’t want to see an ordinance come into play so I think there are obviously measures we need to take. I think it’s important that we look at those measures and work with them accordingly and how we need to,” Pelton said.

When confronted with the possibility of losing Pub Crawl, Roberts immediately knew he disagreed with the reasons behind the discontent and wanted to be a part of the committee. He said the events like Pub Crawl help more than just the bars – they help the community.

“I didn’t really agree with the reason why they were doing it … They were saying it was a school thing and it’s not. There are more people that come to it than just SDSU students. There are people from other colleges that come. They stay in hotels and eat at restaurants. It’s not just the bars that benefit from it, it’s the entire community,” Roberts said.

As part of the committee, Roberts will have a voice in deciding what will change in Pub Crawl and drinking downtown. He said he thinks small changes could really make differences.

“With so many people in the streets and walking around, I would personally like to see additional bathroom facilities – port-a-potties,” Roberts said, and “have a better way of getting people home safely without disrupting the community.”

Even though Roberts disagrees with fault being put on SDSU students and the general disagreement toward events like Pub Crawl, he realizes the importance of having a committee to bring about change.

“This committee is a way to minimize some of the complaints so we can continue to have this benefit for the community as well as students,” Roberts said.

Brookings City Manager Jeff Weldon said as DBI organizes and plans the committee, they are supposed to update the Brookings City Council as progression is made, but so far the lines have communication have been silent.

A National Science Foundation grant allowed Information Technology to update the supercomputer network and other various components, which provides an opportunity to fully populate the third cluster base bought last summer. (Photo by Kathy Kroeger)

Campus researchers could expand their computer-based rese

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