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(09/23/03 12:00pm)
Most students call the College "home" during their four or five years spent working towards a degree. But for Ryan Fesko, the College was like his own personal backyard from birth until his death in a car accident this summer.
On the night of May 17, Fesko was in a car with friends. In an instant, the car spun out of control and three of the four men in the vehicle - all friends since childhood - were killed.
Fesko grew up across the lake from the College and spent most of his childhood in Ewing. He learned to swim in the pool on campus and played on campus grounds when he was young. Fesko's mother, Kathy Brazell, taught at the College's summer program during Ryan's childhood. His stepfather, James Brazell, taught English at the College until he retired in May, the day before Fesko's death.
"He had an exuberance about life," James Brazell said while reminiscing about Fesko's life. Kathy Brazell referred to him as a "pied piper to the kids in the neighborhood." She remembers him always talking to the kids in the neighborhood and playing basketball with them. Fesko always had time for children. He traveled to Oregon two summers in a row to work at a basketball camp for children with diabetes. Before his death, Fesko had been selected to be a camp counselor at Princeton University Sports Camp.
Fesko, who would have been a senior health and physical education major this semester, was also a substitute teacher at Fisher Middle School in Ewing. Kathy Brazell remembers the children giving Fesko gifts, and even baking for him, out of adoration. He would tease his mother who, for 34 years, taught and won many awards for teaching in Ewing Township by saying, "You won all the awards, but they liked me better." After his death, 10 grief counselors were called to the school to help the children cope with their loss.
"He would have been perfect as an elementary school teacher," Edward Rockel, professor of biology, said. Rockel had Fesko as a student for only one class, but said that the two came to appreciate each other very much.
"He was the only student in the last few years that was comfortable enough to put his hands on my arm as we talked," Rockel said. "Some people are just warm."
Fesko was an extremely friendly person, according to his mother and stepfather. "Ryan would go out of his way to say 'hello' to people," the Brazelles said. "He wasn't the type of person to wait for you to say 'hello.'" James Brazell said that "the phone was always ringing" and that Fesko's friends were always over their house.
"If you were his friend, you were his friend for life," Kathy Brazell said. "His biggest gift was to be able to make friends and keep them." A loyal friend, Fesko "would not let a cross word be said about any of his friends." While he made many new friends at the College, he was still very close to most of his childhood friends.
Fesko's mom often reminisces about all the time that they spent together. He had helped her plant the colorful garden in their backyard. Now every time she looks at their garden, she does so with remembrance.
Fesko's memorial at the College, which was supposed to be last Friday, was rescheduled due to the loss of electricity on campus.
(09/09/03 12:00pm)
Christina Puglia, the new president of the Student Government Association (SGA), has no intentions of having an uneventful senior year at the College. Year after year, SGA takes charge of a large portion of the decisions made for the campus. This year is bound to follow that pattern with Puglia in the head seat.
Puglia has many goals for SGA, especially for her position. She went from executive vice president to president after the elected president, Nadia Gorski, resigned.
"Over the SGA Executive board retreat in July, Nadia [Gorski] resigned for personal reasons," Puglia said. "There are no hard feelings. We're still good friends."
To Puglia, their professional past in SGA is separate from their personal relationship as friends and housemates.
"I love the SGA and I'm looking forward to represent the students," Puglia said, an SGA member since her freshman year. Puglia said that she is "nervous and excited" about her new responsibilities as president.
To Puglia, the job of SGA president is divided into two parts. The first responsibility of the job includes overseeing the VP's and trustees of the SGA, and the second part involves taking on an authoritative role by working with the faculty and meeting with College President R. Barbara Gitenstein.
This year, Puglia plans on making a few changes in SGA. In previous years, she thought that the senate felt somewhat isolated from the executive board and that it wasn't given enough power. She hopes to repair this rift by giving the senate the power they deserve while she and the executive board will have more power to mediate and oversee.
Puglia also hopes to improve the communication between the SGA committees, which will simplify SGA meetings. In the past, meetings can be very time consuming, as committees spend much time reviewing the week's business. An improved agenda that is handed out at each meeting now lists what each committee is doing on the back side of the paper. Puglia hopes that this will cut down on excessive meeting time.
In addition, Puglia aims to plan more events for SGA so the group gets to know each other better. Ideally, this will make SGA a close-knit group that focuses on teamwork.
"We're not the US Senate," Puglia said. "We're the SGA."
To her, SGA is a very important organization on campus, and she, like everyone in SGA, is there because they choose to be there. Puglia feels that it is recognized as a hardworking but fun student organization, and she has every intention of keeping it that way.
(04/29/03 12:00pm)
A project for a Women and Gender Studies class turned into a campuswide program last Wednesday, with the all-day program, Fem Fest. Discussions and workshops were held throughout the day in Forcina Hall while information tables were set up in the Brower Student Center to inform and educate students about feminist issues.
The idea for Fem Fest began when students in a women's and gender studies course were assigned to do an activism project. Jaclyn Castaldo, junior history and women's and gender studies major, decided to put together a day of education, information and discussion about activism and feminism for the project.
"We just hope we get our ideas across," Castaldo said.
The day of activities was kicked off by a welcome address and a workshop called "The Modern Family."
The welcome address was given by women's and gender studies director Ellen Friedman and President R. Barbara Gitenstein. Friedman and Gitenstein both commended Jaclyn Castaldo for her success in actually putting together Fem Fest.
"Our fight is not yet over," Friedman said in the welcoming address, speaking about people's ideas of feminism and activism. She explained that most people think feminists are man-haters. She further insisted that most people think feminists "don't want equality, but rather, expect more than their fair share of pay and opportunity."
"Feminism has nothing to do with male-bashing," Friedman said before bringing up that women still make approximately 75 cents to the dollar men make in the workforce. She explained that feminism is not anti-male, but rather anti-female beating, pro-equal rights, and pro-equal pay.
President Gitenstein followed Friedman's talk by discussing her role as a female professional and the steps taken to get where she is today. Gitenstein, a proclaimed feminist, started off talking about her education and explained that "values need to be questioned" in order for progress to occur. She further discussed the advantages of having a woman president at a college.
"We (women) definitely think differently," Gitenstein said. "We bring up different issues." She then noted the reluctance of male presidents at colleges to recognize topics such as date rape which are "more likely to be brought up by a female."
She concluded by acknowledging feminist progress. "We have to begin by recognizing and acknowledging that there has been change," she said.
The workshop on "The Modern Family" given by Cynthia Paces, professor of history, spoke of the modern family in which both parents not only share working responsibilities, but also child-rearing responsibilities.
It also touched on feminism and equality, not in the workforce, but in the household. Paces, with the help of other working-mom professors Felicia Steele and Eliza McFeely, spoke openly about the difficulty and payoff of juggling both work and motherhood.
"It's hard but it can be fun," Paces said, explaining the guilt associated with being a working mother. She said that a working mother tends to feel guilty about having a child when she is at work and about having a job when she is at home. Paces and Steele further explained that careers and children each take time away from the other but with the right teamwork in the family it is possible, and even enjoyable, to have both.
At the end of both the welcome address and workshop, Jaclyn Castaldo presented the speakers with Fem Fest T-shirts and certificates of appreciation for helping to make the day a success.
(04/22/03 12:00pm)
Photojournalist Lorna Tychostup's presentation, "The War in Iraq: Looking into the Eyes of the Enemy" attracted an excited crowd. With her photo exhibit/presentation, Tychostup showed pictures she took on a two-week trip to Baghdad this February. Her travel motive was to "bring home the face of the Iraqi people."
Tychostup, who was recently interviewed on the Fox News Channel's show "Hannity and Combs," illegally traveled to Baghdad with the anti-war group "Voices in the Wilderness." She photographed the journey to show Americans who the people in Baghdad really are and what Baghdad actually looks like.
"If we're going to war, I want to see who we're fighting," Tychostup said as she showed various photos of poor children, scarred adults and trash-lined streets in Baghdad.
One picture showed a little boy smiling for the camera while searching through a dumpster for food. Other pictures depicted various children's art projects with pictures of doves, the American flag and other symbols of hope and peace. She later remarked how "normal" these children are - just like American children. Yet, the fear of war, and now the reality of it is "always in the back of their heads."
In other pictures, adults and families were shown welcoming Tychostup.
"I have never seen so many scarred people," she said in regards to the citizens of Baghdad. She said that despite their scars, the people were not anti-American. Ironically, she said that the citizens "felt that America had been abducted" by President George Bush the same way they were abducted by Saddam Hussein.
While the citizens did not support Hussein, they said they'd rather be under his rule than be bombed.
"We'd rather have 10 Saddams than one Bush," one citizen said to Tychostup.
Tychostup also showed shots of desolate street areas filled with trash and surrounded by buildings in much need of repair.
"The streets were filled with raw sewage in many towns," Tychostup said, while showing pictures of streets covered in garbage. One picture showed the bathroom the group used, which consisted of a couple of holes in the ground.
"She definitely brought home a view of the people in Iraq that we'd never seen before," Megan McChesney, senior communication studies major, said.
Tychostup also photographed other anti-war groups in Baghdad. She said that there were groups from all over the world protesting the war.
Many audience members were shocked to see this because it wasn't shown in the American press. Numerous shots of sit-downs, banners and peace walks that Tychostup showed "were ignored by the American broadcast companies" and not shown on American TV, she said. Several pictures showed banners that said "No War for Oil" and "Boycott American Corporate."
Lorna Johnson, professor of communication studies, found Tychostup's presentation of the Iraqi people as well as the conditions they live in "just heart- wrenching."
Many students and professors stayed after the program to talk to and thank Tychostup for bringing home the face of the Iraqi people.
(03/25/03 12:00pm)
"Women's Words," a more-than-just-poetry reading held by the women's and gender studies department in honor of Women's History Month, featured five women writers and poets from the College. Associate English professor Kim Pearson, former English department head Lana Diskin, English professor Catie Rosemurgy, high school teacher Lois Harrod and principal library assistant Melissa Hoffmann read their work to students and faculty.
"When is somebody gonna tell the kids that Lil' Kim puts on clothes when she goes to business meetings?" Pearson asked in her poem "Theme for Mister Hughes."
Pearson's poems, along with her rap, "Compared to What?," focused on current events and the media. They provided social commentary on media figures, the news and George W. Bush getting "gangsta" with regard to the war with Iraq.
"All of the poetry was really high-quality, especially the rap that Kim Pearson did," Catherine Campbell, freshman biology major, said. "It was relevant to what is going on now in the world while still being poetic."
Other readers focused on a variety of themes. In "Miss. Peach, Ex-Sorority Sister," Rosemurgy brought up the idea of a bad body image through examples of diet pills and powders, with lines like, ". meanwhile I'd eat a beetle if I knew it's legs would make my lashes longer." She then went on in "Miss. Peach Gets Lucky" to recount Miss. Peach's date with a werewolf. This date mockingly pointed out basic similarities between werewolves and men, using sarcastic remarks such as, "He's got basic desires that lack a corresponding orifice."
"Rosemurgy's poems were funny, but they had an underlying theme of self-respect for women, which is great," Adrienne Ockrymiek, freshman communication studies major, said.
Hoffman focused mainly on love and heartbreak in the poetry she read.
"Then there was the stage when I wrote 'angry chic poems' and understood those Alanis Morisette songs," Hoffman said before reciting a few.
In "Damage Control," Hoffman's anger and bitterness were upheld by such lines as, "There must be a crime when honesty pleads the fifth."
Harrod amused the audience with such poems as the one entitled "I'm Gonna Drive Somewhere Far With the Windows Up."
She said that "most people only write when they are depressed," before reciting "My Sister's Short Life as a Writer." Reminiscent of a heartbreak experienced by her sister, the poem was filled with remarks written on a bathroom wall in vengeance of the heartbreak, including "men don't floss" and "semen causes ovarian cancer." Lines like these kept the audience laughing throughout Harrod's presentation.
Diskin's poetry had various themes, the most prominent being strength and weakness. In "Tree or Bird," Diskin metaphorically looked at life from a bird's eye view as well as through the view of a tree. She spoke of the beauty of the bird along with its simple-mindedness as compared with the huge awkwardness of the tree and its strength.
"Nobody pushes me around," Diskin said as a tree. This poem, a reference to youth and simplicity along with aging and intelligence was highly applauded by the audience, as was her other poetry.