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Marketplace encounters troubles with casual workers

By
Stephen Nemeth
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The introduction of new temporary workers at the Marketplace has caused concern among existing employees, some of whom believe the training of these new workers contributes to slower service and longer lines.

Eight nonunion, temporary Marketplace staff members, called “casuals” by Campus Dining, have reached the yearly work limit of 480 hours, according to Associate Vice President for Hospitality Services Amy Muñoz. This limit was established in the contract between Occidental and the Teamsters Union that represents Campus Dining employees, which is open for negotiation every three years. These experienced casuals who have worked since the start of the school year cannot work again until the fall. Their absence is filled by the hiring of new casuals.

Marketplace employees raised questions about employing casuals at a meeting of Campus Dining Staff held by Munoz on March 14.

According to Marketplace employee Mary Vasquez, employees asked why several casuals had to stop working around this time of year instead of working through the school year. They also questioned why casuals could not be hired for a full nine months in order to avoid inefficiencies caused by training new staff members midway through the year.

However, not all employees feel that casuals contribute to the slower service.

Both Marketplace Executive Chef Michael “Meesh” Montygierd and cold kitchen lead Joseph McKee hold that Campus Dining hires experienced casuals who need minimal training to acclimate to the Marketplace. Several of the people they hired are culinary students or have had employment in other culinary jobs.

Other employees feel differently on the matter.

“They don’t have experience,” one Marketplace employee, who requested to remain anonymous, said. “Last week they sent me some guy to help me, and he [didn’t] know how to work. They don’t have experience. I have to explain to him how to do it.”

Casual employee Luis Robles, who has worked in the Marketplace since last semester, agreed with the anonymous employee. He explained that having untrained casuals impedes the work of regular employees.

“We have three people at the grill for a reason,” Robles said. “One is serving, one is cooking and the other is doing quesadillas or something. But the thing is, let’s say, when we have one in training, then I have to do my job, and theirs, to teach them how to do it. So that actually affects the work pace.”

The issue of having to train new casuals during the school year inconveniences the students as well as the employees, according to Marketplace employee Kathy Lauriha.

Lauriha recalled several times when students said they had to leave for class before getting food because the wait was too long. She suggested to students that they contact Campus Dining management with suggestions or requests because they have the most power to influence changes in the Marketplace.

According to Lauriha, the training of casuals itself is not so much an issue as the timing of the training.

“This has been going on for years, and it does not make sense. Give them 200 more hours, if that is what it is going to take,” Lauriha said. “If [480] hours gets them from late-August to mid-February, then a couple more hundred, and they could have their summer off, and then they could come back.”

Another one of the employees, who requested to remain anonymous, thought that the casuals are not as invested in their work as full-time employees are.

“I think it is more important they hire full-time employees,” the anonymous employee said. “I don’t agree with the casual. I do not know why they don’t hire them full-time, or nine-months, or for 24 hours [per week].”

According to Vice President of Finance and Planning Amos Himmelstein, the hiring of casuals rather than full-time employees has to do with the constant fluctuation of Marketplace operations.

“There is a financial aspect regarding casual employees, however there is a financial aspect to decision making in all employee categories,” Himmelstein said via email. “The workload in Campus Dining is cyclical and that is the most important driver in staffing decisions.”

According to Muñoz, the casuals that Campus Dining hires are essential to address fluctuating demand for its services. Casuals play a critical role in working during busy periods in the academic year and allow management to fill planned and unplanned absences of regular Marketplace employees. They also help Campus Dining when large events need to be catered outside of the regular, daily routine.

The casuals’ yearly limit of hours, however, is not something that can be easily changed. The local Teamsters Union, which represents full-time and part-time Campus Dining staff, negotiated a contract with the college that specifically limits casuals’ hours, according to Muñoz.

“According to the union contract, which is renegotiated every three years, the maximum number of hours that a casual staff person can work in a position that is a union position is 480,” Muñoz said.

According to Director of Human Resources Richard Ledwin, most positions within Campus Dining and Facilities Management departments are subject to the union contract. Therefore, although casuals working in the Marketplace are nonunion workers, they are bound by the work limit specified by the union contract.

If a casual wishes to spread their 480 hours across the entire 33-week school year, they can only work up to 14.5 hours per week. Muñoz says that is the root of the problem: Some casuals work as many as three full days (24 hours) per week.

“The problem is that the type of employee that we want oftentimes is not willing to work just 15 hours a week because they are looking for more,” Muñoz said. “And if we don’t give them more hours, they will go find a job that gives them more hours somewhere else.”

The union contract will not be open for renegotiation until the summer of 2015. At that point, Campus Dining employees can work through their union representatives to see if they can amend the clause about casuals and increase the hour limit, according to Muñoz.

“I am pleased with the professionalism and cordiality we share with the union leadership, which allows us to work well together when issues arise,” Ledwin said via email. “There is mutual respect, even when we disagree.”

 

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TEDx speakers reinvent ‘the American Dream’

By
Noel Hemphill
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The lecture series TED (which stands for technology, entertainment, design) has arrived at Occidental with the first-ever TEDxOccidental College event. The independently-organized event by Occidental will bring students, alumni and community members to speak to the community on this year’s theme of “Reinventing the American Dream” this Saturday.

Oxypreneurship member and economics major Shilpa Bhongir (sophomore) began planning the event last spring. Bhongir and the Oxypreneurship team was interested in bringing a large event to campus and decided to apply for a TEDx license, the first step in getting approval for hosting a TEDx event.

“The idea for hosting a TEDx conference came from conversations among members of Oxypreneurship,” Bhongir said via email. “To us, TEDx conferences were about bringing people together to share new ideas and spark important conversations, and we felt like Occidental had so much to contribute to the conversation.”

Bhongir worked through the spring and over the summer with Oxypreneurship’s advisor, Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) professor Sanjeev Khagram, as well as with Vice President of Finance and Planning Amos Himmelstein and DWA adjunct professor Professor Sherry Simpson-Dean to complete the application, which was approved last fall.

“We wanted to capture the momentum and initiative that was already happening within the student body and move that forward,” Bhongir said via email.

Once Bhongir’s application was approved, she worked to get together a team of students to organize the event. Faculty Manager Khagram, economics major and Co-Manager Cholpon Ramizova (junior) and Co-Manager and undeclared Alexander Urry (sophomore) are key organizers of the lecture series. They met with administrators and staff to organize the details of the affair, from the venue to the food served during breaks.

Ramizova and undeclared Valdair Lopes (sophomore) served as curators to select speakers for the event. They looked specifically for speakers that would discuss a wide variety of topics – a TED requirement – concerning the American Dream theme of the conference.

“We wanted the best people from different fields, and we really tried to get a broad spectrum of speakers and students,” Ramizova said.

Ramizova and Lopes ended up with a list of fifteen people to speak during the day-long event. Along with Occidental alumni, staff and students, the list includes seven speakers not directly associated with the college: CEO of an architecture consulting firm David Gensler, entertainment industry marketing specialist Dennis Rice, Café Gratitude owner Terces Engelhart, activist Alberto Retana, activist Gamal Palmer, oncologist Richard Pestell and China sustainability expert Peggy Liu.

The list of speakers from Occidental includes: Diplomacy and World Affairs adjunct instructor Sherry Simpson-Dean, entrepreneur and Occidental trustee Dave Berkus (’62), Assistant Dean for Community Engagement Ella Turenne, history major Cordelia Kenney (senior), Art History and Visual Arts major Sarah Tamashiro (junior), undeclared Somer Greene (sophomore), politics major Brian Erickson (sophomore) and Critical Theory and Social Justice major Adrian Adams (first year).

Khagram explained that the speakers will engage in a variety of topics in their talks.

“We wanted diversity of all kinds and timely topics. Inclusion, equity, sustainability and community are all parts of the American dream and are going to be discussed by our speakers,” Khagram said.

Greene will be performing an original spoken word piece, entitled “RAD.” Most TED speakers present lectures or engage the audience in discussion making spoken word an unusual medium for presenting an idea.

“I have always wanted to attend a TED event, but when I found out that I could actually present at an event, I had to give it a shot. My piece is very different than the rest of the talks. It’s more like a story-telling narrative,” Greene said via email.

Khagram believes that with such a talented pool of speakers, this will be a day of celebration for Occidental.

“It’s been a tough time in the past few years at Occidental, and this has put sort of a dark cloud over the campus,” Khagram said. “We really wanted to create an event that was good, positive, that was all that is exciting and wonderful at Occidental. This event is a perfect alignment of what Occidental is at its best, throughout its history.”

Ramizova expressed appreciation for the open-minded student population as the right audience for TEDx.

“There is something really special about this campus. People really care about having conversations about a variety of things they care about. Occidental students ask the right questions, and they are really invested in finding the answers, whatever they might be. This is a perfect opportunity for Occidental to put itself on the map as a leading school in the world,” Romizova said.

The lectures will take place in Thorne Hall. Although it is an all-day event, built-in break sessions will provide time for group activities, art installations, snacks and coffee. A live stream of the talks will be streamed in the Tiger Cooler and possibly Choi Auditorium, pending approval, for students unable to get tickets. Registration will start at 8:30 a.m. but the speakers will commence at 10 a.m.

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Hunting for Occidental's Past: A History of Architecture and Landscaping on Campus

By
Olivia Landon
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When visitors grace Occidental’s campus, tour guides boast small classes, involved professors and a diversely passionate student body, but these facts often fall by the wayside. Prospective students and parents become enthralled by the Spanish tiled roofs, the roses, the trees, the cream-colored archways and numerous sunny patios and balconies. These picturesque images last in visitors’ minds when they reflect on the college. As a result, Occidental’s aesthetic appeal has become one of its defining characteristics, earning it the title of sixth Most Beautiful Campus in the nation, according to a 2012 Newsweek publication.

For many prospective students, the prospect of such an idyllic setting for their college years is what makes them take a leap of faith and attend Occidental.

“The red tile roofs are very striking and set Occidental apart from the rest of Los Angeles. The beauty of the campus allowed me to picture myself really happy at Oxy,” Cognitive Science major Soumya Choudhury (senior) said.

Current students, faculty and administrators have architect Myron Hunt to thank for this setting. Hunt’s style is renown as relatively conservative and practical; his attention to healthy and comfortable living resulted in stunning open-air architecture. Hunt gave his buildings at Occidental verandas, large living rooms with fireplaces, French doors, sun porches, high-beamed ceilings and green spaces. The architect was born in 1868 and designed every building constructed on Occidental’s campus between 1912 and 1944. He attended Northwestern University before transferring to the architectural school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then returned to Chicago and worked alongside contemporaries such as Frank Lloyd Wright. After his wife was diagnosed with tuberculosis, Hunt transferred his family to Pasadena in search of a warmer climate.

In 1904, Hunt partnered with Elmer Gray. Their firm, Hunt and Gray, was responsible for numerous buildings in downtown Pasadena and Los Angeles. Hunt later partnered with Harold C. Chambers, with whom he designed landmarks such as the Pasadena Rose Bowl in 1920 and the Pasadena Public Library in 1927. Other Southern California schools, such as Caltech and Pomona College, contracted Hunt to help design their campuses.

Biology major Nathan Landay (junior) has worked as a tour guide; he emphasized that visitors often asked about the college’s architecture and Hunt’s contribution. He added that he quickly accumulated knowledge of the college’s architecture and Hunt’s participation.

“It’s noted that Hunt would walk around with eucalyptus seeds, and just drop them in the soil on campus because greenery was very important to him,” Landay said. “This used to be all farmland, so it was really bare and he wanted to change that.”

The college has made a concerted effort to preserve Hunt’s architecture on campus. Johnson Hall, Swan Hall, Fowler Halll, Thorne Hall, Booth Hall, Bird Hillside Theater, Orr Hall (Weingart Hall), Freeman Union (The Johnson Student Center), a girl’s gymnasium (the Tiger Cooler), the Comptroller’s House (Admissions building) and the President’s House are all originally Hunt’s design. All, however, have been renovated at least once to suit the needs of new generations of students.

Swan, Johnson and Fowler Halls were the three original buildings erected on Occidental’s Eagle Rock Campus in 1914. The exterior of the Swan has been preserved, but the hall has undergone several renovations. Swan, characterized by its offset floors, was the first residential hall on campus and originally functioned as a men’s dormitory, complete with sleeping porches in line with Hunt’s devotion to clean, open air designs. There were 27 bedrooms, ten sleeping porches and a large assembly room on the ground floor. The hall underwent its first renovation in the 1960-1961 academic year when it was transformed into seminar rooms and faculty offices. The most recent remodel was in 2012 by architect Brian R. Bloomed, who reexamined and adjusted the offset floor design and added a 22,500-square-foot wing on Alumni Avenue.

In Occidental’s early years, Swan was one of the only housing options and many students lived off campus. According to Director of Communications Jim Tranquad, the lack of on-campus housing also prompted the development of Greek Life, and therefore Greek housing, at Occidental.

“Students had to live off campus. There wasn’t anything else, so a lot of the houses that students rented began to morph into social societies. That’s where the Alphas, Deltas and ATO came from. There was a lot more Greek housing, and they were all local. That just reflected the reality that there were very few places to live on campus in the early days,” Tranquada said.

Although Occidental has historically been a co-ed college, there were no female dormitories until Orr Hall (now Weingart) was constructed in 1926. Even though a female residence hall had not been built yet, the first two graduates of Occidental College, Maud E. Bell and Martha J. Thompson, were both female.

When designing Fowler and Johnson Halls, Hunt stepped away from his interest in mismatched floors and placed more emphasis on open-air designs. Both halls have large windows and classrooms with wide hallways. Fowler, especially, was not conducive to the numerous staircases standard in Hunt’s previous designs for Occidental as it was designated as the science building where large equipment would likely need to be moved around on dollies. Fowler housed laboratories and classrooms for the natural science department, as well as the campus café. It wasn’t until 1918 that the college expanded dining accommodations for the campus community.

The most recent overhaul of Hunt’s original architecture is the Johnson Hall 2013 renovation. Johnson originally housed administrative offices, classrooms, literary society rooms and a combination of a chapel and lecture hall. In 2013, the bottom floor of Johnson Hall was renovated to serve as the McKinnon Family Center, which features a two-story entrance hall, global media lounge and interactive media wall. The rest of the building houses Diplomacy and World Affairs, politics, all of the language departments, the Keck Language Lab and the International Programs Office. Simultaneously, the Office of Student Life, the Office of Community Engagement, the Associated Students of Occidental College and the Neighborhood Partnership Program have been incorporated into the Johnson Student Center.

“There was a lot of re-purposing on campus to fit student’s needs. The Cooler was an art barn in the 1960s, before that a women’s gymnasium and an army barracks during World War I. Choi Auditorium was originally a chapel, then a mess hall during World War IIand lastly an alumni auditorium,” Landay said.

This semester students in an Urban and Environmental Policy course about the architecture of Los Angeles studied Occidental’s evolving campus.

“I wrote a short paper about the changing use of The Cooler. Today, its central location is purposed well. When it was a gym or art barn, only certain people went there. Now, it’s a place where all kinds of students can meet. That was a good decision for such a building,” history major Garrett Schwab (junior) said. “The Cooler and the [Academic] Quad are certainly my favorite places on campus. They are designed to be welcoming and open so that encounters with a vast amount of people is likely. The dorms and classes sprawl out from there.”

Much of Southern California was a barren area in the early 1900s, according to Occidental College Magazine. Renowned landscape architect Beatrix Farrand is responsible for Occidental’s green academic quad area and walkways.

“Before Farrand came, it was mostly dirt paths, and she’s the one who made the atmosphere really beautiful,” Tranquada said.

Beatrix Farrand was born into a wealthy New York family in 1872. Her summers at the Reef Point Estate on Mount Desert Island in Maine inspired her interest in botanical gardens and landscaping. At the age of 21, she moved to Brookline, Mass. to study landscape gardening, landscape planning and botany. However, there was no specialized school to serve her interests at the time, so she enrolled at the Columbia School of Mines in New York City.

She continued on to become the only woman of the 11 founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Farrand left her mark on a myriad of popular landscapes such as the Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Maine and elements of Princeton, Yale and Occidental.

Farrand handpicked the 18 oak trees that were planted along the Academic Quad, and also planted the 50-year-old olive trees that surround Thorne Hall. Farrand’s vision was to sustain a balance of illustrious foliage and functionality through paved walkways and footpaths.

Students also have Farrand to thank for sculpting the scenery around Haines Hall. In 1938, she joined a committee that decided that Haines Hall would be set back on a dramatic slope. She brought diversity to the campus foliage by including orange trees and myrtle hedges along the pathway to the front of the hall.

“It should be possible to give the campus real distinction and beauty in its plant material, instead of using the ‘railway station and lunch counter’ type of material indefinitely repeated,” Farrand wrote in a 1940 letter describing her work at Occidental.

Myron Hunt and Beatrix Farrand are the creative minds who framed Occidental’s campus to be built upon by future generations. Special collections is re-exhibiting the architectural history of Occidental later this spring in the library to commemorate the centennial of Occidental’s Eagle Rock campus. The exhibit was first created in honor of Occidental’s 125th anniversary.

To celebrate this event, the alumna and artist Margarat Gallagher ’13 was commissioned to create six illustrations focused on Occidental’s role in the Eagle Rock community. The illustrations are part of a larger project, which were first displayed last August and includes street lamp banners posted throughout Los Angeles to promote Occidental’s “100 Years in Eagle Rock.”

The exhibit is expected to include blueprints for initial buildings, as well as correspondence between the college and Myron Hunt.

“Knowing the original architects’ intentions and designs definitely changes my understanding of this campus,” Schwab said.

 

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Forget the flight, remember the road trip this summer

By
William Stupp
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At the end of this semester I will drive home to St. Louis. I am not
sure what route I will take to get there, but I am confident it will be a rewarding
trip. I think of my previous journeys to and from Los Angeles and the
crossing of deserts, mountains and prairies. I remember the feeling of
hours fading into one another and a vast continent unfolding itself
linearly through my windshield.

By the time the semester comes to a close in May, hundreds of students
from outside Los Angeles will make arrangements to return home.

Though most students will fly home, making the trip by car can turn a simple flight into an unforgettable adventure. Compared to a flight or a train ride, a road trip can serve as a vacation and personal journey while still moving the traveler from point A to point B. With America’s vast interstate highway system as a canvas, the road tripper can craft a journey which reflects their personal interests.

For students with cars, a road trip home is a chance to take in any number of spectacular natural sites found along the interstate highway system. Traveling by car, either with friends or by oneself, is a chance to discover new places and new aspects to life at a cost comparable to a flight.

It is important that more young people take to the road and explore our public lands. Though the number of visitors to national parks is stable, the share of young people visiting has declined across the country. In 2012, USA Today reported that the median age of visitors to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was 54 (the country’s median age is only 37.6 years).

If public lands and the natural spaces they support are to be maintained for the future, more young people must form emotional connections to parks. If more young adults do not visit national parks and form emotional bonds to the natural world, these vital spaces will lack devoted champions and their preservation will be threatened.

Students should not be intimidated by the prospect of taking a road trip home this summer. Even with a destination across the
country, planning and executing a journey by car is a relatively simple
endeavor. My first step is inputting my point of departure and
destination into Google Maps. I then pour over the calculated route, noting green areas on the map that indicate public lands.
Using Google, I determine which parks and wild areas I would like to
visit and adjust the route accordingly. After a few hours of Internet
research, I can outline a rough itinerary and calculate total mileage.

The most direct route to St. Louis is about 1,800 miles, but a proper road trip does not much regard direct routes. The beauty of the American road trip lies in the accessibility of wonders along the way; it is half about driving and half about deciding where to stop. In the past I have found the most rewarding of distractions near the Interstate 15 and Interstate 70 junction in Utah. Traveling east or west along this coast-to-coast highway, a driver passes within a hundred miles of dozens of some of the country’s most spectacular national parks, state parks and designated wildlife areas.

Excursions into parks and roadside attractions should fill a road trip, making what would otherwise be an arduous 20-hour drive into a week-long combined camping, driving and hiking expedition. The accessibility of major trails at national and state parks make it easy to pepper a 2,000-mile journey with many scenic hikes. The road trip, interspersed with hiking and camping, creates the perfect combination of appreciation for a large swath of land and the up-close examination of specific canyons, mountains and basins.

Public lands also offer a critical way to save money. Land administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service usually offer either free or cheap dispersed camping or campgrounds, sometimes charging a few dollars a night. In a pinch, one can park and sleep in the parking lot of a rest stop or a rural Walmart, which, by national policy, allows the practice. Additionally, more money can be saved by stocking up on groceries rather than relying on more expensive restaurant food sold on the road.

By traveling thriftily, the road tripper can minimize the cost gap between traveling by plane and car. According to Travelmaps.com, the fuel cost of my trip last August from Denver to Los Angeles, with side trips to Canyonlands National Park, Great Basin National Park and Death Valley National Park, would have been about $175. The cost of a flight, if booked well in advance, would be $112 on Orbitz.com. According to the site, one would spend $250 more driving to New York from Los Angeles than flying. But with multiple people paying for gas and supplies, driving can even be a cheaper means of transportation.

But looking at travel from a simply budgetary perspective ignores the real benefits of a road trip. Leaving school by car can be a vacation in and of itself, an adventure which could stand out as the most memorable of the summer.

Spending days on the road is an experience fundamentally different from the normal goings-on of student life. Every new place and activity is an opportunity for growth and personal understanding. The road is open and the car gives independence. There is no reason to be deterred by lack of experience; any student who knows how to use Google Maps and drive a car will be able to find their way on the road. If lacking a traveling companion, consider the depth of self-reflection presented by solitude, shifting landscapes and beautiful scenery. On most of my extended trips I traveled alone, contently.

Despite its enduring value, the road trip has retreated somewhat from
the forefront of the American culture. Students I have spoken with find the idea of a road trip outlandish. Many more are discouraged by their parents from even considering taking interstate journeys. In August 2012 Motor Trend reported on, “Why young people are driving
less.” In the same year, the International Business Times asked, “Is it the end of
the great American road trip?” It is a shame that the trend of taking road trips and visiting parks is in decline among the younger generation.

We are in the midst of widespread decline in interest for road trips and the parks and wild areas that they make accessible. Such trends must be defied. Students interested in independence, new experiences and natural beauty should consider the feasibility of the road trip and the immense rewards it can offer.

William Stupp is a sophomore theater major. He can be reached at stupp@oxy.edu or on Twitter @WklyWStupp.

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Myriad of post-grad options proves not so daunting after all

By
Arielle Laub
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Last Friday, April Garrett looked at her daughter, Arielle Laub (senior), and said to her, “It’s okay if you need to take a year off after graduation.” Laub, an English and Comparative Literary Studies major, responded by choking on her iced tea and hyperventilating.

This may be a dramatized version of the lunch I recently had with my mom, but it is not far from the truth. When she told me, supportively and lovingly, that it was okay if I need a breather after college, I did not respond with relief or appreciation. Instead, I thought to myself, “What, you think I can’t do this? You think I can’t jump right into being a functioning professional who owns a pencil skirt and pays bills? I am a grown woman!”

I respond equally indignantly when someone asks me what my job and career aspects are after graduation. (“I don’t know –– I think I’m just going to adopt a dog and drive around the country volunteering at organic farms.”) If anyone dares ask what my post-college plans are, I immediately resent them and force myself to reiterate one of the 300 possible options at the top of my list at the given time.

Some students already have post-graduation jobs lined up while others are being accepted into graduate schools. Those of us with humanities degrees applaud our peers, while simultaneously wishing we had been left-brained enough to major in economics or chemistry or even gone to school for marketing so that we could actually find job prospects on LinkedIn. But alas, LinkedIn keeps telling me to apply for a job at a Chinese news media company.

At the end of four years in college, I feel completely overwhelmed by the plethora of options the world holds. It has led me to question everything from what my lipstick color says about me to whether I picked the right major (Is it too late to go back and choose botany?). The stories in the media do little to reassure seniors about impending reality. We hear tales of geniuses who dropped out of college to begin revolutionary start-ups, made undergraduate scientific breakthroughs, sold all of their worldly possessions to climb the Seven Summits or found yoga schools in underprivileged communities. We hear the extreme stories – the black and the white but never, ever the grey. The fact of the matter is – what happens to 99 percent of people immediately after graduation would never make it to the cover of a newspaper or into a movie because it would be mind-numbingly dull.

I have always put pressure on myself to be the extreme, the pinnacle. In sixth grade, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “The first female president of the United States.” In ninth grade, I thought I was going to be a war zone reporter. Whatever my career trajectory, I believed it would begin immediately after college.

What I am realizing, however, is that few people have one career in their lifetime. My dad, a criminal defense attorney for three decades, once paid the bills by putting the lids on sodas in a bottling plant. And while I think the soda-bottling industry has replaced his job with a robot, I still in some way want to follow in his footsteps. Instead of thinking of the choice I make for post-grad as the summation of who I am and what I will do, I am trying to think of it as one small plot point in the long story that will be my life.

I still have no solid answer for those who ask me what I am going to do when I graduate. But even as the anxiety swells when I hear the words, “What are your plans?,” I remind myself that the point is not to do something remarkable – the point is to do something. In constantly choosing to move forward, we will find the many things that fulfill us. And while most of those things will not make it onto front page headlines, they will make for rich lives.

Ari Laub is a senior English and Comparative Literary Studies major. She can be reached at alaub@oxy.edu or on Twitter @WklyALaub.


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Pop culture detracts from electronic dance music

By
Cordelia Kenney
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Broadly defined, “Electronic Dance Music” (EDM) has undeniably transformed the music scene, and intrinsic to EDM’s success in the U.S. is the festival culture that has grown around it. Large-scale music events have helped shape and define music since well before Woodstock, but the explosion of large festivals featuring dance music within the past decade contrasts sharply with the underground dance music
scene from which they sprung. What most people understand as constituting EDM in the U.S. is commercialized pop music played at exorbitantly priced outdoor parties. The focus of EDM festivals has shifted from making meaningful memories to getting wasted with others who can afford it.

Ultra Music Festival (UMF) will take place this Friday through Sunday in Miami, with nearly 250 artists scheduled to perform. UMF’s website states that 97 percent of general admission tickets for the entire weekend have sold at $400 each. According to Forbes, UMF raised ticket prices by 30 percent this year, reflecting both the enormous appeal of these events as well as the increasingly out-of-reach price to partake in them. Tickets for the next major dance music festival at the end of June, Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas (EDCLV), are almost sold out; tickets on StubHub are going at a whopping $600 for all three days. Once flights, housing, food and transportation are all accounted for, moreover, the cost of major events like UMF and EDCLV end up costing well over $1,000, an increasingly unaffordable cost for many prospective attendees.

A recent NPR article defined EDM as a “pop-driven, mostly high-energy, commercial
strain of dance music,” which accurately encapsulates the monolithic form EDM has assumed since taking off in the U.S. Although UMF will feature several stages catered to particular styles, including a trance stage, UMF, EDCLV and other major EDM festivals tend to propagate this commercialized version of EDM. Although EDM meant a sizable range of music styles as recently as two years ago, the term has become tantamount to Katy Perry with heavy bass and synthesizers. The resultant sound tends to lack the kind of emotional impact listeners find with genres like trance.

Expensive festivals like UMF end up becoming yet another venue for drunken or otherwise intoxicated large-scale college parties rather than a space for relating with the music and fellow concertgoers. Shirtless packs of young men weave through the crowd looking for young women to grind against at these larger festivals. They are visibly absent from smaller, more music-centered events, like Trance United and Future Sound of Egypt, both in New York.

The irony of this growing exclusivity should not go unnoticed. The “rave scene” emerged in the U.S. in the ’90s and remained largely underground until relatively recently. Into the early 2000s, dance music retained a small motley crew of followers who formed a welcoming, inclusive environment for those who developed an emotional relationship to the kinds of sounds produced with electronic technology. The “PLUR” (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) motto of diehard ravers encapsulates the communal aspect of dance music. Numerous producers and DJs such as Armin van Buuren and Kaskade have remarked on the ability of dance music to bring different kinds of people together.

Companies like Hot Topic and Spencer’s have hopped on the EDM bandwagon by selling “kandi” – bead bracelets that ravers handcraft and exchange at dance music events. People in the dance music community were so taken aback by this explicit commercialization of the culture that they created a Change.org petition demanding Hot Topic and Spencer’s to stop selling kandi. Although the petition reached only 56 signatures, the sentiments conveyed by the petition’s creator reflect disillusionment with the status of EDM in the U.S.

“Making personalized cuffs and bracelets to trade with friends is a
symbol of friendship, memories, and a love of music… Mass-producing
kandi defeats the whole purpose of kandi by effectively taking the
symbolism away,” the petition stated.

The communal element is lost when EDM comes to mean enormous festivals of a very commercialized strand of dance music.

The boom in popularity of EDM and the expansion of EDM-oriented festivals has transformed the meaning of dance music in the U.S., and not for the better. As tickets grow in cost and as self-proclaimed popular EDM artists continue to orient their music toward a pop-like, mainstream sound, the meaning of “EDM” will continue to take on an identity almost entirely distinct from its underground origins. As has always been the case with art, listeners after unique, groundbreaking sounds that resonate with them on a deep emotional level will have to look elsewhere.

Cordelia Kenney is a senior history major. She can be reached at ckenny@oxy.edu or on Twitter @WklyCKenney.

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January term would ‘Re-Engage’ students academically

By
CamayakArchive
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It is the perennial paradox of Occidental students: when at school, we are constantly complaining about all of our school work, but once we get home for break we complain about how unendurably long the break is. To protect students from academic burnout while still saving them from a little too much family time over winter break, the college should implement an optional winter term. This term, spanning two to three weeks over the course of winter break, would offer more than just a reprieve from winter doldrums – it would give students a chance to participate in community service, engage with Los Angeles or explore Occidental’s diverse academic offerings in ways unavailable during the regular school year.

Too often, students are denied the opportunity to expand their academic horizons and delve into Occidental’s course catalog because they must fill their schedules with major and minor requirements. This is a significant loss to the type of inter-disciplinary, far-reaching education that Occidental espouses. Luckily, this problem can be cured in part by offering students the opportunity to take classes over the winter break. Biology majors could dip their toes in art history for a few weeks; English and Comparative Literary Studies majors could try their hand at that psychology class they always dreamed of taking. Additionally, those students who wish to engage in the myriad opportunities the city provides for service, cultural education or any number of other experiences could do so without the constraint of juggling multiple classes. This exploration of Los Angeles and the surrounding area could augment the efforts of programs such as OxyEngage by offering students even more time to immerse themselves in their environment; a type of “Oxy Re-Engage” for upperclass students.

The groundwork for a winter term has already been laid at Occidental. Student group Oxypreneurship hosted a one-week program this January to teach students the basics of becoming an entrepreneur. Other student groups would simply have to find a faculty adviser and follow the model set by Oxypreneurship to establish a winter term of their own. This student-led development of winter courses would be cost-effective and would ensure a level of student interest in the programs offered. Additionally, because the Marketplace and several residence halls are already kept open for athletes over the break, these spaces could easily be used to accommodate additional students staying on campus for a winter term. By using existing infrastructure and enlisting student assistance, the college could implement a winter term economically and efficiently.

The creation of a winter term is a sound investment in the future of the college. It is sensible from an administrative perspective and exciting from the perspective of students looking for new ways to enhance their education. And, of course, it offers a cure for the winter break cabin fever so familiar to Occidental students.

This editorial represents the collective opinion of The Occidental Weekly Editorial Board. Each week, the editorial board will publish its viewpoint on a matter relevant to the Occidental community.


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Occidental needs to continue water conservation efforts

By
CamayakArchive
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Although the Water Conservation Challenge has formally ended, The Occidental Weekly would like to remind students that water scarcity in California has not. With this year’s campus-wide theme and initiative being water and with California being in a state of extreme drought, it is imperative that all members of the Occidental community continue to incorporate water conservation practices into their daily lives.

The second Water Conservation Challenge, in which residential halls competed against one another to decrease the percentage of total water usage on campus residential halls, began with a plea to students to not cheat by increasing water consumption in other buildings.

While it seems as if we should commend the student body for not cheating this time, as adults and college students at an environmentally conscious school, cheating should not have been an issue in the first place. The whole point of the Conservation Challenge is to reduce water usage, and if students go to other halls to turn on the faucets and showers in order to “win,” it undermines the overarching goal.

We do, however, commend students for the reducing even further the volum of water consumption overall compared to the first challenge. Decreasing water usage not only reduces the amount of water that is consumed but also has positive externalities such as lowering energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It is also reassuring to see that Occidental is taking part in the effort by reducing its plant irrigation volume by 50 percent and switching to more efficient water spouts.

It is our hope that the challenge has served to introduce students to conservation practices – such as taking shorter showers, running more full loads of laundry and reporting leaky faucets to facilities – that can ultimately become campus-wide habits. We encourage students and faculty to extend their water consumption reduction practices to non-residential buildings as well. Despite the end of the challenge and the downpour that passed through the city over the past weekend, it is our duty to continue the effort of reducing water usage to increase sustainability.

This editorial represents the collective opinion of The Occidental Weekly Editorial Board. Each week, the editorial board will publish its viewpoint on a matter relevant to the Occidental community.


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Let me (not) live that fantasy

By
Juliet Suess
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Loyalty is the most undervalued trait in sports. Last week this column investigated loyalty within the National Football League (NFL) in terms of free agency and cutting players.

But it is not just the NFL that has a problem with loyalty. All sports follow the same pattern of cutting players for money, usually blaming it on other reasons like age or their chances at victory (as depicted last week with the examples of Champ Bailey and DeMarcus Ware).

Fans, too, have begun to decrease their loyalties. Granted, there are extreme fans that have not lost an ounce of loyalty in generations, but fans on the whole have begun to lose the mindset of dedication to one team. There should not even be the concept of a “bandwagon.” Loyalty means being there for the team through everything; it is like marrying a team.

I am a Cubs fan; I have loved the Cubs my whole life. My sister works for the Red Sox, and only when the Cubs (shockingly) were out of the running for a ring last season did I consider cheering for her team. Even then, it felt wrong, dirty somehow.

With drafts going on for Major League Baseball (MLB) fantasy leagues, it is clear to me that loyalty among fans is declining. As a fan of any one team, how can a person cheer for other players?

It is one thing to objectively look at a player and say “great catch” or “great game,” even “great player.” But to want that person to do well in a game even against the team for which a person cheers is basically blasphemy.

If I created a MLB fantasy team, I could not put a player from another organization on my roster. I refuse to cheer for players from other teams. That does not mean I do not respect players from other teams, but I will not go so far as to root for them.

Fantasy sports diminishes, if not ruins, true fanmanship. Fantasy sports is the equivalent of jumping on a bandwagon, even if only the bandwagon of a single player.

Those with fantasy teams cheer for players on rival teams, yet do not want the rival team to do well. It just does not work that way. The whole team works as one, so to cheer for a player is like cheering for the rival team.

But people do not seem to think in terms of dedication to a single team anymore. Sports are something to be enjoyed calmly and for pleasure, so few people actually pour all their heart and soul into a team. Instead, their loyalty is won by a victorious team or a team with better colors.

Sports lose meaning and valor when people give away their loyalties; when they do not throw themselves into the sport wholeheartedly. If someone can watch a game without yelling once or getting emotionally involved, then that person is not a true fan.

Juliet Suess is a senior ECLS major. She can be reached at suess@oxy.edu or on Twitter @WklyJSuess.


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A History of Buildings at Occidental

By
The Occidental
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