12.3.12Vol. 28 #10

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DEAD WEEK IS UPON USStudy lab map pg. 4

HOMOCOMINGAn inclusive dance

by the QRC, pg. 8

BHAM JINGLE JAM, pg. 3

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review

StaffEditor in Chief

Assistant EditorLead Photographer

DesignerWriters

Adviser

Megan ThompsonSpencer PedersonCade SchmidtBradley O’NealNick MarkmanLauren PraterLauren SimmonsKylie WadeTodd Wells

Jeff Bates

NEWS

EVENTS

STUDENT LIFE

FEATURES

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HOMOCOMINGQueer Resource Center’s event is an inclusive homecoming

EVENTS CALENDARSee what’s happening around Bellingham

THE NEW BOYThe final review on Harley Tat’s Novel

A student naps while studying in the fourth floor of Wilson Library.

Photo by Cade Schmidt// AS Review

GROUP PROJECTSWorking with others is an important skill, says Western managment professor

A student studies neAr the plAnetArium on nov. 30.photo by CAde sChmidt // As review

CAMPUS TECHNOLOGYA guide to the technology avaliable on campus, just in time for dead week

2 • as.wwu.edu/asreview December 3, 2012 • 3

NEWS

EVENTS

STUDENT LIFE

FEATURES

Dead week has begun and finals week is just around the corner for Western’s hardworking students. As the study groups begin to meet, the projects begin and the pots of coffee begin to brew, many students will keep their heads in their books and rarely take a deserved study break. This year, the B’ham Jingle Jam can be used as the perfect breather from group projects and flashcards.

Western’s Associated Students Pop Music and AS Productions Special Events have collaborated to host an event that will offer students a study break full of local music, said Megan Housekeeper, AS Pop Music coordi-nator.

“The idea is for students to take a break from studying and stop by for at least part of the event, if not the whole thing, and check out local bands that otherwise they nor-mally wouldn’t get to see or maybe they haven’t heard of,” Housekeeper said.

The B’ham Jingle Jam is a free music festival featuring bands from around Bellingham. The event takes place at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 8 in the Viking Union Multipur-pose Room.

Performing at the music festival includes: Prime Time Band, Bad Tenants, Palisades, Specters, Great Pacific and Cuff Lynx. All bands, except the Bad Tenants, include Western students.

A lot of local bands in the Bellingham area only have the opportunity to play at bars, said Jordan Swinder, AS Productions Marketing Coordinator of Music and En-tertainment. B’ham Jingle Jam gives these bands a larger venue to perform for audiences of all ages.

“I’m always getting inquiries from local bands [say-ing] ‘When can we play pop music shows?’ and a lot of students are like ‘Yeah, I’d be really interested in seeing local bands, I just don’t really know where to see them or when to see them,’” Housekeeper said. “So it was kind of an idea I originally came up with because we haven’t re-ally had all local bands on a pop-music stage before, and typically, we do all of our local music in the Underground Coffeehouse, but it’s not quite the right venue for those bigger, louder acts.”

Also featured at the music festival is a free photo booth where students can take unlimited pictures, Housekeeper

said. There will be plenty of props and holiday décor to dress-up with. Also at the event will be a canned-food drive for the Bellingham Food Bank.

“It’s a great way to not only enjoy some free music, it’s also a great way to give back,” said Jordan Renshaw, AS Special Events coordinator. “All the donated cans will be going to the [Bellingham] food bank, and it’s a really im-portant this time of the year with the holidays and every-thing. It’s just a great way to show up, have a great time for free, as well as give back to the community.”

Each piece of canned food donated will be in ex-change for a raffle ticket; these raffle tickets will be en-tered into drawings to tons of prize packs from local busi-nesses, Housekeeper said. Tickets to the Pickford, prize packs from Disidual and AB Crepes are among the raffle prizes.

“[The B’ham Jingle Jam] supports students, it sup-ports the local music scene, it supports the local business and all kinds of things that bring the community and the school together, which is not always an easy thing to do,” Swinder said.

CUFF LYNXGenre: Electronic

This electronic duo has been DJing “No Pressure Mondays” at The Wild Buffalo downtown, and their re-mix to Macklemore’s recent hit “Thrift Shop,” is turning heads, including Ryan Lewis’. If you are not listening to Cuff Lynx’s music, start right now.

PRIME TIME BANDGenre: Soul/ R&B

An 11-piece R&B/soul band, Prime Time Band showcases some of the best musicians from around Bell-ingham. Influenced by the classic sounds of Earth, Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones, Prime Time Band incorporates their own unique modern flavor into the mix.

BAD TENANTSGenre: Hip Hop

Take hip-hop and mix it up with the blues and you find The Band Tenants. With lyrics that highlight real-life and renowned live shows have brought them to large and small stages.

PALISADES Genre: Garage/Punk/Alternative

With a little bit of everything, Palisades has been described as a combination of Cursive, Fugazi, Joy Di-vision and Thursday. This Bellingham group plays such a unique combination of music and style that no words can do them justice.

SPECTERSGenre: Indie/Pop/Rock

Formed rather recently, this three-piece Bellingham band is quickly making waves around the community for their quirky sound and personalities. With a new fresh take on alternative pop/rock music, Specters themselves find it hard to describe themselves as a band. With this band, what you see is definitely what you get.

GREAT PACIFICGenre: Indie/Folk/Rock

Great Pacific was formed in 2011 when lead singer Nick Gendreau and lead guitarist Ky Mecklenberg took their songwriting duo to Bellingham. After getting to know the indie music scene, they found violinist Chan-dra Johnson, drummer Evan Douglas and bass guitarist Evan Herbison, and developed a sound of their own.

Lauren Simmons • AS ReviewGraphic by bradley O’Neal // aS publicity ceNter

6 • as.wwu.edu/asreview

BOOK REVIEW: THE NEW BOY, PART 2The conclusion of Western alumnus Harley Tat’s novel

Lauren Simmons • AS Review

As I turned to the last two pages of “The New Boy,” I had to make sure that my eyes did not shift over to the last paragraph of the book on page 249. Reading the last two pages probably took about a minute; it took me 45 seconds to read the text and an extra 15 seconds to reread the last few bits of dialogue on page 249 and sit in disap-pointment.

Even though my review of the first half of Western alum Harley Tat’s novel The New Boy was positive and full of intrigue, but in regards to how the rest of the book plays out, I will say that I was a bit dissapointed and sur-prised.

“The New Boy” is about Andy Martin, a freshman at Western in the early 1980s who finds solace on the Wart-hogs, Western’s rugby team. As the book progresses, An-dy’s troubled past follows him to Western when a series of murders occur on campus, and it seems like he keeps ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I will maintain that the book’s setting, Bellingham, is one of the stronger aspects of the book, especially for Western students who can picture various places like the Horseshoe Café and Red Square and imagine how differ-ent they looked 30 years ago. Familiarity, while reading

anything, always keeps me interested and my mind ac-tive, and that is one of the reasons I was so eager to finish the story.

Without spoiling anything, the primary reasons I was disappointed by Tat’s novel were the treatment of his characters and the conclusion.

In regards to the characters, I felt Tat’s excessive, but effective, descriptions of them were completely disre-garded as the book headed toward conclusion. The last chapters short-changed a handful of the main characters and left me extremely disappointed as a reader. When reading a novel – something I do not get the pleasure to do very often as a college student – I like to immerse my-self in what I am reading, and such a tactic really attaches me to certain characters; main character Andy and his roommate Owen. When an author surprises the reader by revealing hidden truths about a character, kills them off or unexplainably changes a character’s demeanor, it is not always a bad move – case and point Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series – but what Tat fails to do is back up the decisions he made in regards to the fates of his novel’s characters. Does he have any obligation to do this? No. But as a writer, he should have respected the

characters he developed instead of shortchanging their fates.

Though I cannot divulge the ending of “The New Boy, “I will say that, for me, it was unexpected and disap-pointing. As an avid scary-movie watcher and unofficial fanatic, I will say that Tat uses the ever-popular tactic of setting his story up for a sequel. Do not get me wrong, I am a sucker for sequels – I own all seven “Saw” mov-ies – but not only was I not expecting such for this book, I said to myself upon finishing it: “This does not need to be drawn out into another book.” The last few chapters introduce a number of different storylines and raise a few questions that could have been answered and concluded by adding two or three chapters to the relatively short novel – but no.

Amongst all the negativity, I will say that my distaste for the book is much more personal preference as op-posed to saying the book is bad, because it is not. “The New Boy” does a great job at setting up a mystery and throwing different distractions at the reader to stifle the discovery of the truth. Placing that in the heart of Bell-ingham will read well with students and the community, it was just not my cup of tea.

“The New Boy” oN display aT The wesTerN associaTed sTudeNTs BooksTorephoTos By cade schmidT // as review

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BOOK REVIEW: THE NEW BOY, PART 2The conclusion of Western alumnus Harvey Tat’s novel

Lauren Simmons • AS Review

GROUP PROJECTS:Developing a strategy for success

Nick Markman • AS Review

Throughout college, students will most likely be faced with group projects. Working together as a team can be a daunting and uncomfortable task for a lot of people. For groups that struggle with such projects, there are certain strategies that can be implemented to turn a random collection of individuals into a cohesive, functioning team.

Associate Professor of Management Jason Kanov teaches a class in team management. He said that a major piece of what he teaches in the class deals with working on the actual team dynamics first as opposed to the final product.

“The management of the group is part of the work with being in a group,” Kanov said. “Teamwork isn’t just about doing things with people, it’s about working on the team.”

Though the two aspects of being social and working well on a team may seem to coincide with each other, Kanov said that some of the things we learn in our social lives, such as conflict avoidance, are not functional with team building and management.

“We have to develop skills in areas that we might not have them and some of the experiences that we have had may actually be orienting us to doing things that are dysfunctional,” Kanov said.

The best way to facilitate group development, Kanov said, is by being upfront and honest about each indi-vidual’s expectations of the group and class in order to develop a dynamic that will work with everyone. He said that students should be transparent about what grade they hope to achieve, how much time they’re willing to

devote to a project, and the standards that each group member will be held accountable to. In some cases, it may help to draft a contract for the group that members can agree on and refer back to in cases of irresponsibil-ity.

From there, group members should have more prac-tical conversations about reaching deadlines, scheduling meeting times, and allocating tasks amongst the group. By comparing each individual’s schedules, groups can lay out a system that works for everyone. Kanov said that this usually involves making tradeoffs - all group members cannot get what they want.

“All teams are unique because they’re a unique mix of unique individuals,” Kanov said. “You can’t assume that the exact same system that worked on team last quarter will work on this new set of people this quarter.”

Two common personalities that can be detrimen-tal to the group dynamic are slackers and dominators. Kanov said that these two roles, although at opposite ends of the same spectrum, are very similar and tend to perpetuate each other. By being transparent and honest upfront, groups can potentially eliminate the appear-ance of these roles throughout the group’s time together.

“With the slacker, some people are just by their na-ture are a little bit less conscientious; they’re a little less responsible,” Kanov said. “They may not be bad people, but we mislabel them pretty quickly and may end up not treating them very well. I think that usually when you have a slacker, there are some extenuating circumstanc-es, there’s some reason that it’s happening.”

Senior marketing major Kathleen Esses has worked

in multiple different groups tackling several projects throughout her college education. She said that working as a group is a skill that becomes easier with practice and more manageable as one progresses in their major.

“In lower level classes, when you’re put in groups, a lot of the times people are not in the same major or the same mindset,” Esses said. “We’re all taking the same foundation courses, so there might be a bit of disconnect between the way people think or what expectations are.”

Kanov said a common student criticism is that many things learned in school will not apply in the real world. Group work, he said, is about as real as it gets. Working well with a team is a critical component of many jobs available to graduates and the experience of practicing and potentially failing at this skill in college are far less severe than in the working world.

“The beauty of academic life is that eventually the quarter will end and the class will end and you’ll go on to different things,” Kanov said. “In the workplace, if you’re on a team, you might have to work with these people for years, even if you’re not on a team with them anymore.”

By working on group development and treating it as a final product itself, groups can make working together easier, more functional, and more fun.

“If teams are done well, they can lead to a better ex-perience, they can lead to more individual learning, and they can lead to better team performance,” Kanov said. “It’s sort of like an investment; you put in a little amount of time upfront that hopefully will save you time in the long run.”

EVENTS CALENDAR

AS Outdoor Center Yoga

Still Black: A Portrait of Black TransmenSeattle Sounder Steven Zakuani

Guest Speaker:

B’ham Jingle Jam

Homocoming: Magic in the Snow

Volunteer Opportunity AdvisingWhere: VU 605

Where: Academic West 204Where: Academic West 204

Where: VU Multipurpose Room

Where: VU Multipurpose

Where: Center for Service Learning WL 481

When: 8 p.m.-Midnght

When: 12-4 p.m.

Price: $1-3

Price: Free

Price: FreePrice: Free

Price: FreeWhen: 4-6 p.m.

When: 7-9 p.m.When: 6:30-8:30 p.m.

When: 6-11 p.m.

Price: Free

Wednesday, Dec. 5Monday, Dec. 3

Saturday, Dec. 8Thursday, Dec. 6

Friday, Dec. 7

Tuesday, Dec. 4

p. 10p. 8

p. 3

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MONDAY DECEMBER 7TH 8PM-MIDNIGHT

IN THE VU MPR $1 with WWU ID $3 GENERAL

For disability accommodationsplease call (360) 650-6120

Western is an equal opportunity institution

MAGIC IN THE SNOW

THE QRC PRESENTS

HOMOCOMING

AN INCLUSIVE HOMECOMING EVENTQRC presents ‘Homocoming’ on Dec. 7

Lauren Prater • AS Review

Contact the Queer Resource Center for more information by phone, (360) 650-6120, email, AS.QRC.asst@wwu.edu, or in the office at Viking Union 515

For many, recollecting high school memories in-cludes many nights of dating, dressing up, and dancing the night away at Homecoming, Prom, or one of the many other high school dances. For others, dances bring back memories of a judgmental, non-inclusive envi-ronment, which is one of the main reasons the Queer Resource Center decided to put on “Homocoming.”

Homocoming is an event that is going to take place on Friday, Dec. 7 from 8 p.m. to midnight in the Viking Union Multipurpose Room. The event is $1 for students with ID, and $3 for students without. The event will include dancing, a live DJ, food, games, dancing, and

most importantly simply a fun, inclusive and comfort-able environment for students of all sexualities to express themselves and have fun.

The theme of this year’s dance is Magic In The Snow. QRC Assistant Coordinator Matt Smith stated that the event is going to be semi-formal, but also described the theme as fierce fashion with a wintery flare. Students are encouraged to dress up, while also dressing within reason. The DJ, who is going to play a wide range of music, will a focus on the general dance theme. The main intention of the event is not only to provide a safe environment for students to dance and have fun, but also

for students to have a place to de-stress and let go for a little while.

Smith also stated that although the event is primarily marketed for Queer students and their allies, it is also open to students who don’t associate themselves will the Queer community. He stated that these students are more than welcome, and even encouraged to go as long as they respect the event, environment and other students who are also in attendance.

The event has had a great turnout in the past, and is sure to provide a great place to spend your Friday night.

Poster by bradley o’Neal // as Publicity ceNter