Billy Ullmann Contributor aeullmann@willamette.edu Aries: The moon enters Scorpio on March 12, so feel free to dig deep into what your motivations are. The moon then moves into fellow fire sign Sagittarius on March 14, giving you inspiration to move freely in a way that feels right. On March 16, the moon goes into Capricorn. Make time for addressing your responsibilities, no matter how dreadful it may seem.  Taurus: The moon moves into your sister sign Scorpio on March 12; trust in the fact that good things will keep coming to you, even if you feel otherwise. The moon enters Sagittarius on March 14, so step outside of your comfort zone and see where it leads. The moon goes into fellow earth sign Capricorn on March 16, making it a good time to recenter and ground yourself.  Gemini: The moon goes into Scorpio on March 12, giving you motivation to plunge deeper into your feelings. On March 14, the moon enters your sister sign, Sagittarius; look for adventure and speak it into existence, if you dare. The moon moves into Capricorn on March 16, asking you to double check where you have promised you energy. Cancer: The moon moves into fellow water sign Scorpio on March 12; try not to let your emotions ruin things. You can hold onto something without smothering it. The moon enters Sagittarius on March 14, making it a good time to go outside. The moon goes into your sister sign, Capricorn on March 16, so take a few minutes to figure out your intentions for the week. Leo: On March 12, the moon enters Scorpio, highlighting your subconscious needs. Will you give your attention to them? The moon goes into Sagittarius on March 14, so find time to do something or go somewhere new. The moon moves into Capricorn on March 16; figure what you need to let go of and release it. Virgo: The moon in Scorpio on March 12 wants you to let go of any beliefs that you can control people. On March 14, the moon enters Sagittarius, so stop overthinking and follow the flow around you. The moon goes into Capricorn on March 16, asking you to set clear and firm boundaries with loved ones as well as yourself. Libra: The moon moves into Scorpio on March 12, so be conscious of your feelings, especially in the way they can influence your decisions. The moon in Sagittarius on March 14 shows you the benefit of living in the moment, rather than in your head. The moon enters Capricorn on March 16, feeding your ambitions and helping you to actualize some goals. Scorpio: The moon enters your sign on March 12, making it a good time to trust your intuition and let it guide you. On March 14, the moon moves into Sagittarius, so give yourself permission to break the rules, especially the ones you have for yourself. The moon goes into Capricorn on March 16; are you always prepared to deal with emergencies? If not, address that. Sagittarius: The moon in Scorpio on March 12 asks you to double check that you’re acting with good intentions. The moon enters your sign on March 14; jump deeply into whatever sparks joy for you and you’ll find great things there. On March 16, the moon moves into Capricorn, bringing you motivation to tie some loose ends. Capricorn: On March 12, the moon goes into Scorpio; accept and feel your emotions no matter how messy they may seem to be on the surface. The moon enters Sagittarius on March 14, so examine where your inspiration comes from and don’t cut yourself off from new experiences. The moon moves into your sign on March 16, which puts you in a good place to address your needs. Aquarius: The moon enters Scorpio on March 12, so give yourself time to be alone and be comfortable accepting everything you see. On March 14, the moon goes into Sagittarius; ask yourself what your experiences mean to you. The moon moves into Capricorn on March 16, encouraging you to practice vulnerability. Pisces: On March 12, the moon moves into fellow water sign Scorpio. Show your appreciation for your loved ones, and often. The moon enters Sagittarius on March 14, making it a good time to go outside and be in nature. The moon goes into Capricorn on March 16, so make sure your finances and other personal responsibilities are under your control. DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional or trained astrologist. Any guesses made are simply that: guesses.

Dawn-Hunter Strobel Lifestyles editor dsstrobel@willamette.edu The women’s liberation movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s usually brings to mind images of bra burnings, calls for women to be defined outside of their association to men and protests of the Miss America beauty pageant. What doesn’t come to mind as easily are stories and images of working class women protesting in Appalachia.  Jessica Wilkerson, in her lecture “Lessons on Liberation: From Dolly Parton to Appalachian Feminism,” argues that working class Appalachian women’s contribution to the women’s liberation movement should not be underestimated. Wilkerson visited Willamette on March 5 as part of the Frost Lecture Series, put on by the History Department.  Wilkerson, an assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi, grew up in eastern Tennessee, 20 miles from Dollywood, the Dolly Parton-themed amusement park. Dollywood is a place dedicated to a beloved figure who is seen as representing eastern Tennessee; Wilkerson described a childhood where she was taught to love Parton.  But as she grew up, Wilkerson became more skeptical of the role Parton played in the economy and larger culture of the South. Once she became a historian, she asked herself, “How do I bring my training as a historian to that brand of Dolly Parton I grew up around?”  Wilkerson noted that Parton is seen as a champion of women’s rights and, more recently, of LGBTQ+ rights, but argued that she has done little to deserve those labels. Wilkerson argued that Parton tells stories of a working-class woman and people read it as feminism, whether it is truly feminist or not.  Some of this also comes from Parton’s carefully curated aesthetic that some could read as being close to drag. Wilkerson called it “a working-class critique of the stereotypical idea of white middle-class femininity,” and referenced a Parton quote where she described her style as “a blend of Mother Goose, Cinderella and the local hooker.” Because of this exaggerated look, Parton has been picked up by queer communities and heralded as, even in aesthetics alone, a queer icon.  Wilkerson went on to highlight times when Parton said that she believes feminists went too far during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Wilkerson also noted how poorly paid Dollywood workers are. Wilkerson ended her lecture’s section about Parton by saying, “Feminism that Parton represents is not the feminism that will help working class women in Appalachia and the U.S.”  To counter this very visible but seemingly insincere figure, Wilkerson offered stories of real Appalachian feminists who were fighting in the ‘60s and ‘70s but who are often overlooked.  Wilkerson noted a few prominent figures such as Eula Hall, Bessie Smith Gayheart, Bessie Cornette and Sudie Crusenberry, then outlined how they approached their activism. Overwhelmingly among activists in Appalachia, their platforms stemmed from their roles as caretakers and relied heavily on concepts of caring labor. Caring labor is the labor that has historically fallen to women: caring for children, the elderly, the sick, people with disabilities and so on.  It is important to note that this caring labor was deeply intertwined with their positions as working class women, so caring labor looked very little like the middle class, stay-at-home wife that is common in conceptions of what caretaking looks like. Instead, these women’s care labor was tied up in their husbands’ work in mines. Mines are incredibly dangerous places to work, and at this time, black lung disease was common.  The feminism of Appalachian women was one centered around issues of labor and class, and their approaches mirrored that.  Wilkerson said, “Women articulated a politics of care built on an understanding of women’s caregiving.” Women joined the labor movement and called for unionizing the mines, because unionized mines would mean fewer husbands with black lung disease, which in turn meant the women’s jobs as caregivers would be easier.  It is because of this platform rooted in care labor that Appalachian feminism is often written off. Wilkerson noted that when she approaches Appalachian feminism, she doesn’t look at it through the lens of a certain ideology, but rather considers what their actions said about what was important to them. What they did, she noted, “was not always called women’s rights or feminism” but these women “saw the coal strike as much as a woman’s issue as a labor issue.”   Wilkerson read out quotes of women who actively claimed their efforts to be part of the larger liberation movement and noted that Appalachian women challenged a host of gender norms in the process of their protests. It was only once women showed up at the picket line that they began to wear pants instead of their traditional dresses.  Once the union struggle was won, women went on to demand allowance to work in the mines. Once they were allowed, they immediately began to change the workplace by speaking out for things like family leave policies. The family leave policy that they pushed for and eventually passed in 1996 is still the law that is in use today.  Many of the same women who were in the picket lines also went on to join a number of other causes, including setting up rural health clinics that are still in use to this day,  currently in use to combat the opioid crisis. Many women also went on to join the fight against the rise of the KKK and were frequently harassed by KKK members.  Wilkerson projected a collage of photos of the women she highlighted: standing in picket lines and holding up billboards, photos of anti-capitalist song lyrics these women wrote as well as photos of the women in coal miner gear, working in the mines. Reinforced by the images on the screen, she ended the lecture by saying, “Appalachian activists stood at the nexus of 20th century activism.”

Piper Lehr Contributor Dr. Danielle Cadena Deulen has many titles: author, podcaster, mother and associate professor of English at Willamette. However, this is Deulen’s last semester at Willamette before moving to Georgia to teach poetry and start up a creative nonfiction program at Georgia State University. She has a Masters in Fine Arts in poetry from George Mason University and a doctorate in English from the University of Utah, with a specialization in creative nonfiction. She has also authored three books, two in poetry and one in creative nonfiction. In an interview, she talked about how she became a professor, her writing techniques, her revision process and her literary podcast.  When Deulen first started writing, she didn’t realize that it could be intellectually challenging. Upon the realization that writing is, in fact, difficult, she decided to further pursue it. She said, “I took my first creative writing class when I was eight, and I fell in love with the difficulty of it. The first time I recall sitting down to write a poem, I thought how important it was to try to say what I felt, and I felt like it was an impossibility for me to know how.” Deulen didn’t originally set out to be a teacher. She said, “I don’t think I understood that writing was something I could actually do as a living, and it’s not something I can do for a living, because my books don’t sell well enough, which is true of most writers." While she was getting her MFA in poetry, she was offered a teaching stipend, which began her pedagogical training. “The challenge of writing led me to the challenge of teaching, and I’ve just been there ever since,” she said.    Her background in poetry has influenced her stylistic techniques in nonfiction. “My foundational training in writing is toward a penchant for compression, descriptions, associative leaps, a lot of the moves that poetry makes,” she said. Her background as a poet has also given her a “penchant for the weird” in her writing.  Lately, she’s been trying to get out of her comfort zone. She said, “I’m trying to bring in more classic, conventional and narrative elements to [my work] as a way to challenge myself, towards something that’s meant for a larger, general audience. I tend to want to go towards the beautiful and obscure.” In response to classes where she felt she wasn’t being taken seriously, Deulen strove to make her teaching philosophy inclusive to all students, no matter what their taste for form is.  Deulen said: “The aesthetics of the professor were so finite that I wasn’t allowed to explore. [They would say], ‘this is what good work is, and nothing outside of this is good.’ I’m not interested in being the gatekeeper of aesthetics. At the very least, I like to point to my own subjective perception, but just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean somebody else won’t.”  Deulen explained that during revising, when she feels stuck, she reads other people’s books in the hopes of finding a good model for what she’s trying to accomplish. She said: “I’ll know what I’m doing wrong generally. Usually it’s either I’ve become too vague or I’ve become too specific. And what I do in that case to correct myself is I’ll pick up an author that does the opposite of what I’ve been doing. So if I feel like I’m dwelling in minutia and imagery, and I’m not moving forward at all, I’ll read someone who has a really beautifully structured plot.”  Deulen also has a literary podcast that she hosts with her husband after work. The premise is that she reads her husband a poem and they discuss it together. They record at night time in their basement, after they put their kids to sleep. Deulen explained what led to the initiation of the podcast.  “[My husband] and I realized that always the basis of our relationship had been conversation, and because all of our focus had been on our two children, we kind of stopped having conversations. At the end of the night, when we finally get them in bed, we would just brute-force watch Netflix. So, we wanted to collaborate together partly to reconnect.”  What led them to continue their podcast was positive feedback from their audience. Deulen talked about feeling accomplished for giving people “who just don’t feel like they can go out and take an English class anymore” access to something that gives them the same kind of conversations.  “To get so many people writing in to tell us how much they appreciated having something that was both intellectually stimulating and fun, we were really encouraged by that, and also we just had a lot of fun doing it together.”  According to Deulen, her favorite part of the job is: “Just being in the classroom. I love the moment when I get to introduce somebody to a work of literature and I can see that they’re excited about it, and then I get to be excited about it all over again. That’s probably my favorite part of the job, creating an environment in which this shared experience of excitement happens around a beautiful work of art.”

Lily Painter Contributor ljpainter@willamette.edu Technology surrounds people every day and impacts life in a variety of ways. Students spend most of their days using technology, writing essays, searching the internet, updating social media and messaging friends or professors for various reasons. Laptops, tablets and cellphones offer endless connection. While technology is undoubtedly beneficial, it has drawbacks as well. Concerns have been raised about loss of human connection, declining mental health in young people, distraction and wasted time. Young adults should be conscious of how much time they spend on their devices, especially on their phones, and some of the negative effects of technology use.  One of the biggest concerns brought up regarding the world’s growing technology use is that face-to-face human interaction is declining. A study done at Elon University found that 97 percent of students said they bring their phones or tablets with them every time they leave the house, and all of the interviewed students said they use their phones in the presence of friends and family. The majority of students also expressed the belief that technology negatively influences in-person communication. Elon University’s study concluded with the observation that young people are becoming increasingly reliant on technology to communicate with people who are not with them and, as a result, personal engagement with those physically around them is neglected.  Davis Bowler (‘23) expressed similar sentiments to the students in the study, saying, “Phone use takes away from certain social settings. If I’m in a small group and someone is constantly on their phone, it’s not as fun.”  When asked if she ever uses her phone to avoid social interaction, Lucia Bojorquez (‘20) said: “I think it’s easier to be on your phone than have to be awkward in a conversation. If you are on your phone, people assume you’re doing something so they won’t come up to you and ask you questions.”  Phones have become barriers in the social sphere, offering easy ways for students to ignore their surroundings and creating awkward spaces where people are not sure how to interact.  According to Brookings , this attitude toward technology can have real consequences. “As we grow older, time spent on devices often replaces time spent engaging in physical activity or socially with other people, and it can even become a substitute for emotional regulation, which is detrimental to physical, social and emotional development.” Aside from changing the ways people interact, technology has drastically changed the educational sphere. While many of the changes are positive, cell phones offer yet another distraction to studying, making procrastination easier for college students. Laetitia Mihigo (‘23) spoke about the difficulties of having her phone on while she studies: “I’ll be like, I’m gonna do my homework, but as soon as I hear that ding I check my phone.” Colin Fisher (‘20) added, “I turn my phone off when I’m studying. I use the daily app restriction. If I’m not careful though, it definitely distracts me.”  A study done at the University of South Carolina found students use their phones in class and admit to knowing that their ability to pay attention goes down as they feel the need to check their phones. The study says that attention spans have decreased drastically. On top of this, it found that “four of five college students report feeling anxiety, stress or isolation when asked to unplug from their cell phones for just one day,” illustrating the immense dependence on technology young people experience today.   Given the blatant negative effects technology can have on students, they should be taking measures to limit unnecessary screen time and pay attention to their surroundings. As Fisher mentioned, many phones today have a feature that can limit app use and another that keeps track of screen time and time spent on apps. Using tools such as these, students can make conscious efforts to become more connected with their peers, interact face-to-face and improve study habits.

Sophie Smith Editor-in-chief slsmith@willamette.edu Willamette’s Office of International Education (OIE) is hurrying to meet traveling students’ needs as the coronavirus disease known as COVID-19 spreads globally. In compliance with University policy, the OIE has sent home two students studying abroad in Italy, canceled a summer program in Japan and now grapples with the uncertainty surrounding the futures of students currently studying in Japan.  The spread of COVID-19 has become a local issue, with the Statesman Journal reporting that one case of the virus was confirmed in Marion County on March 8, the day after Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency in Oregon. As the situation escalates, the OIE and several other University departments are facing the pressure to develop and communicate response plans to the Willamette community. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) and the State Department’s travel advisories inform Willamette’s policies during situations like this one. The CDC uses a three-level warning system to inform travelers of the risks associated with entering a given country. As of March 10, the CDC had designated China, South Korea, Iran and Italy as Level 3 countries, meaning people should “avoid all non-essential travel to this destination.”  Kris Lou, director of the OIE, said in a March 5 interview that Willamette policy requires all community members, including students and employees, to return from a country that has been given a Level 3 warning. Two students studying abroad in Italy have been directed to leave their programs. Willamette has no other study abroad students in Level 3 countries this semester. Lou said the students who left Italy are able to finish their coursework remotely and will receive full credit for their classes, which began in January. The students will not return to their on-site programs this semester. Willamette is working with the students’ host institutions to refund portions of their room and board payments.  Lou said most other schools have adopted similar policies to Willamette’s, adding, “I would be surprised if universities did not pull students out of a Level 3 situation.” To date, Japan is the only country with a CDC Level 2 travel notice. This notice states that people should “practice enhanced precautions for this destination.” Willamette does not require students in Level 2 countries to return home, but they do give them the option to assess the risk associated with staying and make the choice to stay or leave. Willamette will not send students into a country with a Level 2 advisory.  Partly for this reason, the OIE has canceled its summer study abroad program, Environmental Studies and Sustainability in Japan. A March 4 email, pictured above, sent from the OIE to students who were planning to go on the program said both concerns about COVID-19 and low enrollment numbers affected the decision to cancel the program. The program requires a minimum of 10 students participate; this year, only four committed. “We very well may have canceled that for financial reasons,” Lou said of the program.  No other Willamette summer study abroad program has been canceled.  This year, there are eight Willamette students in Japan as part of the year-long Japanese Study Program at Tokyo International University (TIU) in Kawagoe. As of March 10, universities in Japan are still open, but their closing is a possibility. In February, the Japanese government asked all kindergarten through 12th grade schools in the country to close. TIU postponed the start of its spring semester from late March to early April, due to concerns related to COVID-19, and has canceled its commencement ceremony at the end of the semester.  So far, no Willamette students have left the Japanese Studies Program. If any students choose to return home, or if Japanese regulations or national travel advisories require them to leave, Willamette is prepared to support the students’ academic and financial needs. Since TIU’s spring semester will not have started until over two months after Willamette’s did, Willamette staff and faculty are now devising ways to allow students to receive the credits they need this semester in order to stay on track for graduation, should they leave Japan early. If the students choose to return to campus, Willamette will not require them to pay an entire semester of tuition or room and board costs. The OIE has been in communication with students currently studying abroad, warning them to think carefully about the potential risks associated with their travel plans.  “Please heed the advice of the local officials about where to go, what safe behavior is, how to stay healthy. Do not travel to Level 3 areas,” Lou said. Despite fears about COVID-19, the OIE is preparing for next year’s semester-long study abroad programs like normal.  “We’re doing business as usual, in terms of preparation for fall,” said Lou. “If, for example, Japan stays Level 2 until next fall, then it will impact those students who want to go next fall, but it’s unlikely. We don’t expect that to be the case.” Lou noted that because the virus has spread to the U.S., COVID-19 is now both an international and a domestic issue. Now, many University departments in addition to the OIE are creating response plans. He said this semester’s spring break may pose particular challenges to Willamette’s campus, since a large portion of the community will travel during the break.  “Between today, March 5, and spring break, who knows what areas are going to become Level 2, Level 3? Who knows how bad it will get in Seattle, for example? Who knows?”  “These are all real, big uncertainties that are looming,” he said.  Up-to-date information about the virus can be found on the University’s “Coronavirus Updates” webpage.

Cleighton Roberts Contributor cwroberts@willamette.edu The weather is warming up, students are spending more time outside and the trees are growing back their leaves. Spring is almost here. The grounds crew is working to make spring beautiful for those at Willamette: four years ago, they replaced annual flowers with perennials, which are plants that live two or more years, and which have many advantages over annuals in both budgeting and enjoyment. All around campus are pockets of plants that will soon bloom and be filled with color. As of now, the only flowers seen are early bloomers, including daffodils, currants, magnolias and honeysuckle. The rest of campus will be blooming in a matter of weeks, depending on the temperature.  “It’s a succession. They start in January and then by March we are going to hit everything,” said Jim Andersen, the grounds manager. “February will be our early bloomers, and then we are going to get kind of a lull where trees and shrubs that bloom first and then leaf out, like the magnolias. And then we are going to get a whole other succession of plants blooming, like the rhododendron and the pieris.” In past years, the grounds crew would plant annual flowers every year, mostly around the edges of campus. However, buying new flowers every year got expensive and required more water, so the grounds crew gradually began planting perennials. Perennials also allowed a larger coverage of campus by flowers because they didn’t need to be changed out every year.  “About four years ago we stopped putting in annual flowers. We would spend maybe about four to six thousand dollars a year on annuals,” said Andersen. “It came with budget cuts and that was one of the things that got sliced so we continued to do more and more perennials.” The perennials planted by the grounds crew include a number of different types of flowering plants such as shrubs, wildflowers, trees and even reeds. There are a mix of plants that are both native and non-native to Oregon. To accomodate plants not used to Oregon’s rainy weather, the grounds crew replaced the soil in some of the planting areas with looser draining soil. The planting of the perennials was a long and thought-out process. According to Andersen, getting to this point took 22 years of planning and experimenting. One example of exemplary planning is right next to the Botanical Garden, immediately after the footbridge on the way to Sparks, which Andersen calls a “fragrant area” that allows passersby to smell the flowers just by walking through or standing in the area. This area is perfect for rushed students headed to or from the gym that don’t have time to stop and smell the flowers. “[Flowers] generally give off more fragrance when they’re in the sun,” said Andersen. “This area was all lawn before. We knew this took a lot of sun, so what we wanted to do was to make a fragrant area.”  The grounds crew doesn’t just want the flowers to be fragrant and pretty to humans, though. They also want to attract wildlife to campus. Flowering plants attract nectar-consuming birds, such as Anna’s hummingbird. Flowers will also attract pollinators like bees, which allow the flowers to rebloom every year.  “The pollinator-friendly perennials that the grounds crew plant do attract a lot of bees,” said Professor of Biology Biranna Lindh. “Some plants that bees really enjoy include manzanita and ceanothus and flowers like penstemon, Mexican sunflower and cup plant. Bees like native plants like ceanothus, but they often are very happy to use non-native plants that have similar characteristics to native plants.” In addition to bees, the grounds crew is looking to attract and provide a habitat for butterflies, particularly the milkweed eating monarch butterfly, which are endangered.  “We’re trying to get more butterflies on campus, so we’ve planted a whole host of showy milkweed,” said Andersen. The grounds crew works to make campus beautiful year round, and that goal does not need to be achieved by the costly replanting of flowers every year. As campus is beginning to bloom, take a moment to appreciate the care and hard work that goes into making campus beautiful each year.

Jasper Jones News editor mgjones@willamette.edu Since former Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Domanic Thomas’s departure from campus in fall 2019, a committee made up of Willamette administrators, faculty and students have been searching for the next person to fill the role. In the last few weeks, the final three candidates visited campus to take part in conversations and interviews with a series of people on campus, as well as open forums that all community members were welcome to attend. Vice President for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jade Aguilar is chairing the hiring committee. Aguilar hopes to have a candidate selected by spring break and have them begin their role this summer.  Speaking to what the committee has been looking for in candidates, Aguilar said, “We have been trying to get a qualified group of folks who are committed to student engagement, committed to Title IX stuff, to equity, diversity and inclusion, to being a really engaged and authentic and an active dean of students and vice president of student affairs.” To begin the search for quality candidates, Aguilar reported that the committee hired an executive search firm that helps manage the beginning of hiring processes with tasks like reaching out to interested parties, collecting application materials and protecting the privacy of candidates. Since these candidates are often currently working at other institutions and might not want their employers to know they are on the market, this service helps to keep that information private until the final three candidates are selected. The firm received many applications, but narrowed it down to 20 recommended candidates for the committee to review.  The committee interviewed nine of those people over Skype, and then invited three of them to campus as the final round of interviews. While on campus, candidates had meetings with many leaders and departments on campus, including but not limited to Provost Carol Long, the person this position reports to and hiring manager who ultimately gets to choose who is offered the position, University President Steve Thorsett, Student Affairs leadership and a selected group of students.  Each candidate also had an open forum that all interested community members were invited to attend. At these forums, candidates were allotted five minutes to introduce themselves, and then 15 minutes to respond to the question: “Willamette University has observed a gradual but marked decline in student engagement over the last few years. Fewer students are applying for leadership positions (for example, in student government, resident assistant and Opening Days leader) and more students are leaving these positions. At the same time, the Campus Climate survey results told us that students in all three colleges do not experience a strong sense of ‘Willamette community,’ although they do have their own sub-communities. As vice president for student sffairs and dean of students, what strategies for increasing engagement would you consider and how would you determine which to implement?” The rest of the hour allowed for questions from the audience. After each forum, Aguilar sent a Google Form to everyone who attended asking for their feedback and opinions on the candidate.  The final three candidates are Dr. Lowell Davis, Dr. Lisa Landreman and Dr. Terry Lindsay, who visited campus on Feb. 24, Feb. 27 and March 4 respectively.  The hiring committee met on March 9 to discuss who should be offered the job. When they come to a decision, they will recommend that candidate to Long. Long will then make the final decision.

Jake Procino Staff writer jprocino@willamette.edu For first-year Ashley Medina, softball has always been a family affair. She started playing softball when she was 12 years old, wanting to get involved with the sport that her younger brothers had been playing.  “My brothers have been playing since they were three years old, but I just started late…[My family] were like ‘women can also play softball’ so I got really into it when they told me that women were also allowed to play... I would go to [practice] sessions with uncles and cousins and it would be a whole family thing.” This led to a pitching career that wound through Otay Ranch High School, Baja California and eventually to Willamette University.  Coming out of high school, Medina originally committed to a Division I school in Illinois, but a last-minute falling out led her to decommit over the summer. First-year Brianna Majors, who had played with Medina on a travel team in San Diego and was committed to WU, encouraged former WU softball head coach Damien Williams to recruit Medina. Since Medina wants to go into nursing, she eventually did commit to WU (which competes at the Division III level) because of its academic opportunities. It has been worth it so far for Medina; she enjoys the academic support and the friendships she has been able to make at a small institution.  The transition to college athletics is always difficult, and for Medina it is no different. Academically, time management has become a lot more real for her. “It was really a big challenge for me, just getting used to the whole college thing... Time management is real when you get to college. It’s not the same as high school. With practice and everything, it’s a big shift.”  Athletically, the other student-athletes in the conference are a lot more competitive. “All the colleges in the conference are competitive... These [athletes] really want it, but like I want it more.” Additionally, the transition was made uncertain for the softball team as a whole because of a last-minute change in head coach in January 2020. The change was sudden, and when head coach Paige Hall came in she wanted to create a new culture. This made the future very uncertain for Medina, and she felt like she had to prove herself again to a new coach. “She didn’t know the team, and I was worried that she was going to get a different perspective of me [than Williams]... I feel that made me want to work harder when she came in.” However, the experience has been rewarding for Medina. As a woman and a former softball player, Hall relates to the softball players and knows what it takes to win at this level. Hall was a pitcher, so she has improved Medina’s mechanics and self-confidence. “She’s brought me a lot of trust in my pitching, and a lot more self-confidence. [She] talks to me and helps with my mechanics every single practice.” Medina also relies on her teammates for support, self-confidence and academics. Medina is a biology major and she receives a lot of help from older biology majors on the team. Hall implemented another layer of teammate support by assigning accountability partners. Medina’s is senior Jocelyn Glasgo, whom she turns to on the field and off-the-field. Glasgo helps steady Medina by reflecting on games and by talking about what they are going to work on throughout the week.  To prepare for a game, Medina starts mentally preparing herself the day before. She does this through self-motivation and saying things to herself. Medina often pitches the full game whether or not she is pitching well. She receives a lot of support from  teammates to keep her going throughout the game.  “When I’m struggling in the game, [my teammates] come up to me and they’re like, ‘You’re fine, you’re the best one out here, believe in yourself, you can do this.’ And that motivates me. If I’m going through a bump in the game, they help me get through it.” The coaches are there too: “[When] I come in from the inning, my coaches are the first ones to come around me, [they tell me] ‘You’re doing good, you’re doing fine.’ That is really, really helpful for me, even if I’m tired.”  All of Medina’s hard work and the support she has recieved has paid off through the early season so far. Medina has thrown the second-most strikeouts in the Northwest so far, with 30 K’s. Stats like these validate Medina: “They are so motivating to me, because it’s showing all the hard work that I went through before coming here is paying off. And all the hard work that I’m doing here is paying off. Even though I break down sometimes and I can be down on myself, just seeing my team trust me is really motivating to me.”

Jacob Bloom Staff writer jhbloom@willamette.edu The College of Liberal Arts class “Reforming Criminal Justice” will be featured in an upcoming documentary directed by Lydia B. Smith. Smith’s last film, titled “Walking the Camino,” aired on PBS and had more than a million views. The class, taught by Professor Melissa Buis Michaux, is unique in that it is taught in the Oregon State Penitentiary, with about half of its students being incarcerated men. The class, which has been offered since 2016, focuses on issues of mass incarceration, the U.S. criminal justice system and the lives that are affected by it. Additionally, the class challenges its students to offer ways they believe the justice system should be reformed. According to Michaux, the film’s main focus will be on the incarcerated men. However, the class itself will also be a major focus of the film. The extent that individual Willamette students will be featured is unclear. The film crew has and will continue to be present during each class in the spring semester, and will conduct individual interviews with the incarcerated as well as with Willamette students.  Currently, the film is still in very early stages of development and has neither a release date nor a working title. While the film will be braodly about the U.S. prison system, it does not yet have a narrowed, central idea or subject.  “The main meat of the documentary will be following the class as it goes into a prison and the experiences that these students and prisoners have,“ said Ben Burton (‘21), who is currently working as an intern for the film’s producer. “With documentaries, the main goal is to just capture everything that you can and to just shoot as much footage as possible. Then post production is when you decide what will be left in, and what the big ideas are.”  One thing Michaux said she considered when she was initially approached by the filmmakers about filming her classes during the fall was whether the presence of camera operators would affect the dynamics of the classroom—an environment where personal and difficult discussions often take place. She said that she agreed to the presence of the filmmakers when the incarcerated men voiced their opinion that they wanted their stories to be heard.  When referring to the presence of the camera crew, she said, “In that way, it can be intrusive. But I think that the students, both the inside students and outside students, are supportive of what it is that Lydia and her crew are trying to do. Yeah, because they're really trying to bring the story of transformation and what it means to be incarcerated and what it’s really like to grow up in prison to the public.” Michaux believes that for her Willamette students looking to understand criminal justice, as well as for future viewers of the film, humanizing incarcerated people is crucial to fix a criminal justice system that many people of many different ideologies see as broken.  “I think we have a lot of demonization of people that are incarcerated and, you know, it's somewhat understandable when the only thing you know about a person is a terrible crime that they committed... Of course, people are more than just their worst possible act, and they do change. I think more and more society is accepting that idea in theory, but then, in practice, we still have to do it.” Jordan Schott (‘21), one of the Willamette students enrolled in the class, said: “It’s been really impactful to sit in a room with convicted felons, but they’re so much more than that. We all have preconceived notions about what it means to be in jail, especially in a maximum security prison, especially for people convicted of a violent crime... It’s so important that we recognize these guys have faced extreme obstacles in their lives that have influenced what brought them to where they are right now. Being able to recognize that these are amazing, multifaceted, three-dimensional people has really affected me. They have so much more to share then then the limits of what their crime was.”

Britt Shunn-Mitchell Staff writer bemitchell@willamette.edu Willamette is continuously adding former student-athletes to the Willamette Athletics hall of fame, but the process of getting into the hall of fame is not often talked about. Athletic Director Rob Passage explained how athletes are chosen and what it means to be honored in this way. According to the Bearcat hall of fame website, “The purpose of the Willamette University Athletic Hall of Fame is to formally recognize outstanding contributions to the heritage and tradition of the Bearcat intercollegiate athletic program. Criteria for selection includes achievements while at the University, plus accomplishments in sports later in life.”  Passage elaborated on this, saying: “It is primarily based on athletic achievement while at Willamette and that usually means they are individuals who have been All-Americans, conference champions, school record holders, etc.  In some cases they may have been folks who also experienced success in sport after Willamette, either as a competitor or a coach.”  This is an acknowledgment that athletics are a lifelong endeavor for some, on and off the field. With so many athletes coming through Willamette's programs, Passage also explained the long process of selecting athletes for this honor. “We have an executive committee who is responsible for collecting nominations, updating candidate information and organizing the voting. They bring nominees forward to a selection committee that is made up of a combination of current coaches and staff, former coaches and staff, alumni and current members of the hall of fame.  The selection committee voting is what determines each year’s class of inductees.”  The range of people on this committee includes athletes that attended Willamette 50 years ago up until now. This allows the committee have people who know all the nominees, making it easier to get a picture of who they are inducting in the hall of fame. With annual hall of fame ceremonies, there are plenty of opportunities for these athletes to be honored. These ceremonies are not large affairs, but that doesn’t keep the athletes of the past from connecting with the athletes of the present. Passage explained: “The ceremony is really for the inductees, their families and former teammates.  We do invite local alumni, athletic staff and current hall of fame members, but haven’t typically invited students. There are often efforts by coaches to connect the inductees with their current teams at other times that weekend.  I know that the swimmers inducted [this] past year went to the pool on Saturday morning and a men’s soccer inductee met with the team before their game the day of the ceremony.”  This year's ceremony will be held on Sept. 12, and all the current hall of fame members and information about their accomplishments can be found on wubearcats.com.

Jake Procino Staff writer jprocino@willamette.edu This coming Saturday, March 7, marks the official start of the men’s and women’s track and field season with the Willamette Invitational.  The team practices every day except Sunday, with a combination of practicing technique on the track and weightlifting in the gym. While sprint training is usually split by gender, many facets of the practice are co-ed.  17th-year head coach Matt McGuirk and his staff provide direction for the team through the planning of workouts and practices. The staff gives out the workouts and, during practice, assists with the team’s technique. Certain events need less technical help, such as most of the running events. Other events need a lot more coaching supervision to achieve a high level of execution. Events on the technical part of the spectrum include the high jump and triple jump. Track and field’s season is in the spring, though usually the team works out in the fall to prepare for the season. However, many of the track distance runners compete in the fall as members of the cross country squads.  Like most student-athletes, a loaded in-season schedule forces the track and field athletes to manage their time wisely to complete school work. Senior Brian Peck believes that the lack of free time actually makes him more responsible: “When your sport is [in season], it forces you to work when you have [free time]. But when you’re in the off-season… you have all this time, so you think you have tons of time to get your work done, but then you never get it done.” Track and field compete in meets, where two or more schools meet at one location and participate in events. According to Peck, the most important meet of the year for the team is the Northwest Conference Championships (NWCC) at the end of April, where there is a lot of strategy deployed to score as many points as possible for the team. In the meets leading up to NWCC, the intent is different: “Track is individual until we get to conference, and there the entire mind-set changes. Throughout the entire season, you’re just trying to [improve].”  The mindset of improvement is reflected in the execution of the meets. Each event usually only has one round, with each individual participating logging one attempt rather than having qualifying and final rounds. Leading up to the NWCC, track athletes will often run in a variety of different events. For example, a runner who usually runs 400-meter sprints may participate in a 200-meter sprint. However, field event athletes like throwers (shot put, javelin, hammer, and discus) tend to do their events every meet.  Peck said that he is trying to limit his expectations for the season. “I want to think that I’m going to do well, but I don’t want to have too many expectations because if I come in with super high expectations then early on in the season if I don’t quite meet those, then I’m going to get bummed out and lose motivation.”  A successful season for Peck does not necessarily mean hitting certain benchmarks. Peck would rather look back and say, “I tried my hardest.” For Peck, this includes eating healthy, getting enough sleep and being as coachable as he can. Off the track, this means getting academic work done in a timely manner so that he is not stressed about it: “When stressed out, no one runs as fast.” Lastly, Peck has learned to have a certain mindset to compete his best:  “What I’ve learned in my years here, the way you compete the best and the way you have the best time is focus on having fun. That’s why we’re out there, to have fun.” The Willamette Opener meet will be held on Saturday, March 7 at McCullough Stadium, with events beginning at 9 a.m.

Britt Shunn-Mitchell Contributor bemitchell@willamette.edu With over a quarter of Willamette University’s student body involved in athletics, associate athletic director and senior woman administrator Leslie Shevlin has a lot of training to oversee. But for the last eight weeks, she has added to her busy schedule her own training for the Salem Rotary Triathlon. Like many student athletes, Shevlin has been getting up early to train for an hour and a half before starting her workday. Shevlin swam in her college days. While she acknowledges that her training now differs from that of student athletes, she said, “If people can respect what I’m trying to do, even if its not exactly what they’re doing, there is a little bit of a connection there and I’ve always tried to set a good example for my athletes. It can be traumatic to have your athlete time end in college so its good to show that it can go on.”  Shevlin’s example has reached far beyond just inspiring athletes to stay active after college. When she was the head coach of Willamette’s men and women’s swim teams, she got the team involved with volunteering at the Rotary Triathlon. The yearly tradition that Leslie started has continued and surpassed her expectations. Shevlin said that she “wanted to support and participate in a local race… We knew swimming was going to volunteer I appreciate Brent [current head coach of the swim teams] has continued that. But to have softball answer the call at the SAAC meeting and we also have the Center for Hope and Safety 5-kilometer coming up with softball and tennis volunteering, to have our teams in the community being visible and volunteering when we put the call out, that culture is the culture we want.”  Shevlin was the third place finisher for the women’s Olympic distance triathlon and 13th overall with a time of 2:55.14. With a high of 62 degrees Fahrenheit and heavy rain, a mile swim, followed by a 40-kilometer bike ride and finished with a 10-kilometer run was no easy task. Both the men’s and women’s swim teams and the softball team volunteered at the race to help direct traffic, mark the course and cheer on participants. Shevlin said, “In that kind of weather, with that kind of obstacle, to have people who were putting in effort into their volunteering and to have direction was great. For me, I’d get right past someone before they’d be like, oh its Leslie, go Leslie. To have that constant encouragement was super helpful, it was awesome.” Junior swimmer Claire Alongi reflected on the volunteering.  “It was wet and a little miserable, but then someone would come around the corner while I was cheering and they would smile and some even said thank you. And that pretty much made up for all the rain.”