ReviewNews // Events // Student Life

2.26.13Vol. 28 #17

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Viking Union 411 516 High St. Bellingham, WA 98225Phone: 360.650.6126 Fax: 360.650.6507 Email: as.review@wwu.eduOnline: as.wwu.edu/asreview @theasreview facebook.com/theasreview

©2013. Published most Mondays during the school year by the Associated Students of Western Washington University.

We are a student-produced, alternative campus weekly covering news and events that are of interest to the Western community. We support all programs, offices and clubs affili-ated with the AS. We have a direct connection to the AS board of directors, and although we report on board actions objec-tively, our relationship should be made clear.

Submissions: We welcome reader submissions, including news articles, literary pieces, photography, artwork or any-thing else physically printable. Email submissions, or send them to the mailing address above. They will be returned as long as you include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

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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

Laura Del Villar-Fox per-forms on Feb. 20 at the Vagina Memiors.

Photo by Cade Schmidt

ODESZAWestern alumni find success as musicians

EVENTS CALENDARSee what’s happening around Bellingham this week

GUN CONTROLThe debate wages on in the US, and on campus

HYBRID BUSS FLEETWTA goes green with eight new hybrid busses

WWU CONFESSIONSThe Facebook page that went viral

MUSIC PRODUCERSClub working togeth-er to create music

HIPSTER LIFECloseted hipster con-fesses his hatred for hipster culture

POPPIN’ TAGSA review of Bellingham’s thrift shop options

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oDESZA comES to BEllinghAm on mArch 10 to thE WilD Buf-

fAlo. rEAD thE Story on pAgE 12.photo By mAryBEth coghill;

courtESy of oDESZA

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NEWS

EVENTS

STUDENT LIFE

FEATURES

EVENINGS OF EMPOWERMENT

The tenth annual Vagina Memoirs , hosted by the AS Women’s Center, brought crowds of hundreds, Feb. 20-23 to see 18 individuals tell their empowering stories of marginalization, oppression, survival and healing.

Above: the cast takes a bow after the show’s opening night. Below: (Right) Hangatu Dawud performs her monologue “Muslimah Oromo-mer-ican.” (Left) Polly Woodbury and Taneum Bambrick share a moment of comfort while Emmett Moore watches their cast mates perform.

photoS By cADE SchmiDt // AS rEViEW

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I n Catholicism, penitents sit inside a confessional at their church to disclose sins and wrongdo-ings to a priest. This, the sacrament of penance

and reconciliation, has been practiced in the Catholic Church for two thousand years. But for the past month, Western students have taken to a new kind of confes-sion, one that occurs not in a confessional booth at a church, but rather via Facebook and through the world-wide web, available for all to see, yet guarded through the pretext of anonymity.

Since its creation on Jan. 20, the Western Washing-ton Confessions Facebook page has amassed over 4,916 likes and created thousands of posts from current and prospective Western students and alumni. By simply filling out an anonymous Survey Monkey form, users of the page submit their content to one of six administra-tors that go through and select which “confessions” to post. From academic life, to partying, to sexual esca-pades, romantic shout-outs and the occasional unveiling of personal struggles – the Confessions page publically displays aspects of students’ personal and public lives.

Peter, a freshman, decided to create the Confessions Facebook page when he noticed several other schools, like the University of Washington and University of Portland, had their own popular anonymous confessions pages.

“I was thinking that this school could use one, and I was right about that because it blew up pretty quickly,” Peter said.

Peter said that in one day, the page gained 100 “likes” and generated 400 posts of unique confessional con-tent. Within the first week of the page’s existence, the time-consuming duties of being the page administrator quickly became apparent as Peter spent most of his lei-sure time scanning through confession submissions and posting the ones he felt to be most genuine, interesting and funny – a filtering process inherent to the page that some do not appreciate.

“People get upset when they hear that we’re filtering them, but filtering means we’re just not putting up the ones that are not really confessions at all,” Peter said. “If everything got on, it would be too much. You’d be going through a lot of stupid things.”

Two weeks into the page’s existence, the university contacted Peter. The Confessions page was originally designed with the incorporation of Western’s logo as the profile picture. The university instructed Peter to remove the logo in order to make it clear that the page has no affiliation with Western.

“We don’t have a stand one way or another on this page. We strongly support First Amendment freedom of expression,” Director of University Communications Paul Cocke said. “We do caution, with regard to any

online site with anonymous posters, that such sites can become places where untrue things can be posted about real people with little opportunity to respond.”

While the page is unaffiliated with Western, a thor-ough scan of the page’s content reveals that the anony-mous posts by students are indeed influencing prospec-tive students’ opinions on the university. Influenced by the confessions of weekend parties, or depression and difficulties adjusting to college life, potential students have posted on the page stating that their intentions to attend Western have been negatively or positively im-pacted by the anonymous voices of the student body.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Peter suggested. “For the people who aren’t going to go here because of this page, I find that really interesting that you’d let somebody else’s actions decide what this really big deci-sion is for you, not even in terms of academics but just based upon what people do on the weekends.”

The university had no direct comment on this matter but stated that Western stresses the importance of criti-cal thinking skills that should be applied to all informa-tion and especially anonymous posts.

While most confessions on the page are either hu-morous or sexual in nature, occasional posts hint at dis-satisfaction with an individual’s academic and personal life, severe depression and even a rare admittance to suicidal thoughts and tendencies. The question raised in regard to these posts deals with whether it is healthier to anonymously post serious submissions for all to see or to keep such thoughts contained to oneself.

Peter said that he thinks the page is a healthy me-dium for those that might feel uncomfortable revealing serious personal issues to a person face-to-face.

“I find that people build things up a lot and don’t ex-press their emotions and that’s not healthy,” Peter said. “When there are those genuine confessions of depres-sion or battling with something, people really respond to that and say things like ‘if you need someone to talk with, you should message me.’ I think the page is a good thing because it provides that option.”

Director of the Counseling Center Nancy Corbin said that the effectiveness of the page in terms of dealing with issues such as depression depends on the individual person and what their needs are. She said that she does not think the page is a bad medium, but that it lacks the professional mediation and response that is gained through services offered through the Counseling Center as well as local and national help hotlines.

“There are a whole lot of places to have a chance to talk and where you’re going to be talking to somebody who is trained and who has your best interests in mind, which not everybody who is going to respond online does,” Corbin said. “Not to say it’s a bad thing, and I

know it can be very popular with students, but it worries me that people use that when it would be so much more helpful to talk to somebody.”

Corbin said that the anonymity of the Confessions page is disadvantageous in serious cases such as suicide risk. She said that other online forums that are occasion-ally used to get personal issues out in the open, such as Viking Village, are at least moderated by someone who can refer an individual to professional help in such cases.

Regardless of whether or not the Confessions page is healthy for student life, it remains an incredibly popular outlet for the Western community. Elizabeth Vogt, a sophomore at the University of Washington was impressed by how popular the Western Washington Confessions page was in comparison to the UW Secrets page, a similar Facebook site designed for the Univer-sity of Washington community. Vogt, who “liked” the Secrets page, said that she is notified of every comment posted on the page.

“I usually see one or two comments a day,” Vogt said. “It’s nothing like the amount of content that is on the Western Confessions page.”

Bradley Johnson, a junior at Western thinks that the recently heightened interest in the Confessions page is related to a much bigger movement.

“The Internet and social media are more prevalent today than ever before,” Johnson said. “People are spending more time in front of computers, phones and other electronics and less time interacting in actual social situations. They’re scared to meet new people or even to step outside of their comfort zone. I think this is one reason why so many people are participating in the Confessions page. They don’t have to take the risk of actually introducing themselves or expressing openly how they feel. I don’t think this change is good, but it certainly is happening.”

For the time being, Peter and the team of administra-tors will continue to manage the Confessions page. Peter said that he cannot remember the last time there were fewer than 100 new submissions in a day and that he is starting to consider the role of admin to be a chore. He said that someday he hopes to hand the administration of the page down to a new class of freshman that can balance the duties of handling submissions with their typically light credit loads.

“I probably should pass it on to somebody else. Maybe I’ll still be a part of it from time to time and put up a couple of posts but it is quite the chore,” Peter said. “Until that time comes, I feel like this won’t really retire itself because people are still posting stuff at the same kind of level that they always are.”

By Nick MarkMaN & Todd Wells

WESTERN WASHINGTON CONFESSIONSThe story behind the social network sensation

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The story behind the social network sensation

Weekly total reach39,668

People talking about this

3,410

“I have entered 5 confessions and none of them showed up. They were all about the guy I can’t get over. I really want to move on from this jerk. But I can’t stop thinking about him. I just know he feels the same way. I really want him to see this and think of me. Maybe man up and spend every night together like we want.”

4 people like this 13 people like this

28 people like this

29 people like this27 people like this

41 people like this

“I have been struggling with eating disorders for the past few years, and am slowly overcoming my daily anorexic thoughts that still linger long after my an-orexia ended. Being at Western has honestly helped SO MUCH because of how awesome and accept-ing everyone is here. Thank you peers at WWU for making me feel beautiful!”

“I spend most of my alone time wearing six inch heels, blasting Britney Spears, dancing like a fool, and eating Nutella straight from the jar. No shame.”

“I saw two girls walking, holding hands together so happy on campus. I am a heterosexual female. just want to say props gals, for being who you are and not being afraid to show it. almost brought a tear to my eye.”

“My grandpa sends me a little bit of money every month to help out with college, and I use that money to buy my monthly alcohol.”

“I spend way too much time reading wwu confes-sions and I dont even go to school here.”

Total Likes

illiStrAtionS By SpEncEr pEDErSon

figurES AnD confESSionS compilED on fEB. 22

4,916

WWU COUNSELING CENTER'S SERVICESStudents seeking to talk with a counselor when the Counseling

Center is closed can call our main number 360-650-3264 and press option 1 to reach the after-hours service.

To schedule an appointment call 360-650-3164. The Counseling Center reserves some same day appointment times for students who needs are urgent. If you are having serious thoughts of suicide, have experienced a recent and significant loss or trauma, let us know of the urgency of your needs.

OFF-CAMPUS CRISIS LINESCommunity Crisis Line 1-800-584-3578National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-TALK (8225)Trevor Project: Preventing Suicide Among Gay Youth 1-866-488-

7386Veterans' Crisis Line 1-800-273-8225, Press 1 or text to 838255

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By kylie Wade

PhoTos By cade schMidT

Thanks to a certain Seattle rapper who brags about stealing your grandpa’s style, thrift-mania is sweeping the nation. That’s right, it’s actually cool right now to dig through buckets of used clothing and create an ec-centric ensemble with the findings. With that in mind, I set out to see what some of Bellingham’s best thrift stores have to offer, so you know exactly where to go to search for your very own outfit that smells like R. Kelly’s sheets.

LABELS 1512 Ellis Street & 3927 Northwest Avenue This store only sells women’s clothing, not that

that would stop Macklemore, who can rock items discarded by your grammy, aunty, momma and/or mammy. Labels isn’t your typical grungy thrift store – think neatly, organized racks of clothing instead of bins full of god-knows-what. However, while the shopping experience is slightly more upscale, the prices are still pretty low. The Ellis Street location has an entire small room full of shoes priced in the $10-$40 range, several purses priced around $10 and multiple racks of shirts and sweaters all between $6 and $10.

The store even earned 2012 Best Clothing and Consignment Store honors from Cascadia Weekly as well as a 2012 Best Consignment Store award from Bellingham Alive. Labels employee Gen-evieve Andre tied the store’s success to its local roots and superior customer service.

“We have such a close relationship with our customers,” Andre said. “We have over 25,000 consigners and we know a lot of them by name.”

Reflecting their large consignment base, Labels offers a wide variety of clothing items and acces-sories.

“We take all sizes and all brands,” said Melissa Burke, a Labels employee. “Our motto is we take anything cute, clean and current.”

Go to Labels for the reasonable prices and fairly fashionable offerings, but this isn’t the place to fulfill your desire to manically dig through hap-hazard shelves full of treasures from another age.

VALUE VILLAGE 150 East Bellis Fair Parkway This is the place to be if you want to be digging

through piles of random stuff – a lot of random stuff. The best way to describe this place is a humongous warehouse space full of absolute mad-ness. Some highlights I stumbled across included

HEY BELLINGHAM,CAN WE GO THRIFT SHOPPING?

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Thanks to a certain Seattle rapper who brags about stealing your grandpa’s style, thrift-mania is sweeping the nation. That’s right, it’s actually cool right now to dig through buckets of used clothing and create an ec-centric ensemble with the findings. With that in mind, I set out to see what some of Bellingham’s best thrift stores have to offer, so you know exactly where to go to search for your very own outfit that smells like R. Kelly’s sheets.

LABELS 1512 Ellis Street & 3927 Northwest Avenue This store only sells women’s clothing, not that

that would stop Macklemore, who can rock items discarded by your grammy, aunty, momma and/or mammy. Labels isn’t your typical grungy thrift store – think neatly, organized racks of clothing instead of bins full of god-knows-what. However, while the shopping experience is slightly more upscale, the prices are still pretty low. The Ellis Street location has an entire small room full of shoes priced in the $10-$40 range, several purses priced around $10 and multiple racks of shirts and sweaters all between $6 and $10.

The store even earned 2012 Best Clothing and Consignment Store honors from Cascadia Weekly as well as a 2012 Best Consignment Store award from Bellingham Alive. Labels employee Gen-evieve Andre tied the store’s success to its local roots and superior customer service.

“We have such a close relationship with our customers,” Andre said. “We have over 25,000 consigners and we know a lot of them by name.”

Reflecting their large consignment base, Labels offers a wide variety of clothing items and acces-sories.

“We take all sizes and all brands,” said Melissa Burke, a Labels employee. “Our motto is we take anything cute, clean and current.”

Go to Labels for the reasonable prices and fairly fashionable offerings, but this isn’t the place to fulfill your desire to manically dig through hap-hazard shelves full of treasures from another age.

VALUE VILLAGE 150 East Bellis Fair Parkway This is the place to be if you want to be digging

through piles of random stuff – a lot of random stuff. The best way to describe this place is a humongous warehouse space full of absolute mad-ness. Some highlights I stumbled across included

a decorative pot full of nothing but fake moss, a wiener dog serving tray split into three convenient sections, a terrifying old baby doll inexplicably wrapped in a plastic bag and thirteen identical fuzzy knit hats with a design resembling a lava lamp that has exploded.

This store is worth going to purely for the adventure. The best part of Value Village is it’s like a normal store completely devoid of any rules. You can (and I did) ride razor scooters around one aisle and then run to the next aisle and stage an epic battle between plastic swords and slightly bent out of shape toy lightsabers.

Buried deep amidst the sheer crazy, however, are some truly useful, ridiculously low-priced finds. This store in particular has a huge selection of dishware, movies, books and board games, all in pretty good condition and priced at just a few dollars. Go for the adventure, but bring some cash because you will find something you can use.

BUFFALO EXCHANGE 1209 N. State Street Like Value Village, Buffalo Exchange is a na-

tional brand whose Bellingham branch has taken on a certain flair unique to this city. The Buffalo Exchange model is slightly different from other thrift stores in that it doesn’t take donations or items on consignment, but will pay people upfront for their items in either cash or store credit.

“We buy, sell and trade for Bellingham from Bellingham,” said Julia Shelden, a Buffalo Ex-change employee. “We try to keep that local feel, it’s very important to us. When you’re buying from a community, the store really comes to re-flect that community.”

Shelden estimates 90% of the store’s inventory is supplied purely through the items people bring in to sell.

“I think people really like our buy, sell, trade model,” Shelden said. “With consignment you have to wait for it to sell and you have to keep on

thinking about it. Here it’s gone and right away you can buy some new clothes.”

The clothing at Buffalo Exchange is slightly more expensive than at some of the other stores on this list (T-shirts were priced around $10), but the selection is more current and relevant than most of the other places and in much better condi-tion.

“We try not to have a specific style; we want to appeal to everyone,” Shelden said. “We’re really focused on style and condition. Other places like us might be focused on brands, but that is not a deciding factor for us.”

MAD HATTER CLOTHING 1327 Railroad Avenue Mad Hatter is a privately owned and for profit

thrift store located in the heart of downtown Bellingham. The atmosphere here is more vintage boutique than bins of old stuff, so come here more to do some serious shopping than for a thrifting adventure.

The good news about Mad Hatter is that you’ll feel like you’re shopping at a regular store, but at thrift shop prices. The store offers vintage dresses priced in the $20-$40 range, jewelry for $12-$35, shirts for $4-$12 and jackets for $16-$30 and the majority of their inventory is in phenomenal condition.

“We typically get a lot of college students that shop here because it’s one of the more affordable places for clothing downtown,” said Ashley Ho-grebe, a Mad Hatter employee. “We take things in that are relevant to today’s fashion, but also things that are vintage as well.”

This place has some unique finds that you won’t see at other thrift stores, although they can be fairly expensive. Mad Hatter specializes in cow-boy boots, offering a dazzling selection of high-quality boots priced from $40-$80. This is a store you can come to if you want to create a look that’s all your own without it being glaringly obvious

that you thrifted for it.

CROSSROADS 4145 Meridian Street Crossroads is a big, open space full of eclectic

but slightly nicer items. The store gets around 50 percent of its inventory from donations, but rounds out the selection with items on consign-ment and from auctions.

“We try to get more unique stuff,” said Alex Haslam, a Crossroads employee. “Right now we’ve got a giant gong and a ninja monkey hanging from the ceiling.”

The biggest thing that sets this store apart from other thrift stores is its furniture selection. Un-like some of the offerings at Value Village, which look like they have lived long, hard lives and been cleaned never, the furniture here is in really good condition.

Beyond that, the store has shelves full of mov-ies, books, records and CDs as well as boxes full of really old comic books. They also seem to have a wide selection of eclectic decorations, including the previously mentioned ninja monkey, several golden sculptures, a 3-mink scarf and a framed close-up photograph of a lion.

“We have nicer furniture than some of the other thrift stores,” said Brad Marshall, the store’s general manager. “And we’re cheaper than every-one else on clothes.”

Marshall explained that at most thrift stores, brand-name clothing gets a premium price tag, but at Crossroads, they use a standardized pricing system for clothing so every shirt costs the same amount, regardless of brand.

“Those corporate boys all bump up their prices on clothes just because something is a particular brand,” Marshall said. “The whole point of thrift-ing is to find something cool for a decent price. Why would you pay more just because it happens to be a certain brand?”

HEY BELLINGHAM,CAN WE GO THRIFT SHOPPING?

8 • as.wwu.edu/asreview

photos

By laureN siMMoNs

Whether it’s riding to Haggen to stock-up on grocer-ies or heading downtown to get some Mallards, many of Western’s students rely on the bus system to get them from point A to point B. With the recent implementation of eight hybrid buses to the Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) fleet, Western students and the larger Bellingham community can travel sustainably through Whatcom County.

“I think it’s a great push for alternative fuels,” said Robby Eckroth, Associated Students’ Alternative Trans-portation coordinator at Western. “I think that since the buses have alternative fuels, maybe it will push [the] com-munity, when purchasing their next vehicle, [to] consider getting a hybrid.”

Eckroth’s office stands as a resource for transporta-tion for students, staff and faculty, while Eckroth himself focuses on student transportation and promotes all the different transportation resources available locally and regionally. He also educates students on how to use that transportation and let them know what options are avail-able to them, Eckroth said.

The Fleet Replacement Project, started about five years, was the beginning of the WTA’s plight to attain new hybrid buses, said Maureen McCarthy, community rela-tions and marketing manager at WTA. The hybrid buses are a lot less polluting than the other buses so they fit per-fectly with WTA’s mission statement of offering environ-mentally sound transportation. Furthermore, the hybrid buses are a lot less expensive to run, McCarthy said.

Even though hybrid buses are more sustainable and cost less to run, the original outlay was more expensive, so WTA could not afford them right away. Because of

this, they applied for two federal grants, “State of Good Repair Grants.” These grants are quite competitive and entail writing an application and competing against other transit agencies who are also looking for funding, Mc-Carthy said. The WTA was successful in getting two of these grants that added up to be enough for eight bus purchases.

“While buses represent a tremendous opportunity to help the environment by reducing the number of peo-ple in drive-alone cars, they are also powered by diesel, which is not the greatest thing in the world,” McCarthy explained. “So, to an extent, we can do [two] things; [one], get more and more and more people out of their drive-alone cars, and [two], reduce the amount of diesel that it takes to operate a bus. That’s a great place to be; that’s where we’re really feeling good about fulfilling our mission.”

In the 80s, the WTA inherited a fleet of 28 buses, but the fleet proved to be somewhat of an issue. The Ameri-cans with Disabilities Act requires all buses to have a wheelchair lift, but these buses did not. Upon receiving the buses, the WTA had to fix, and eventually replace, all of them which became a very costly process. Because of this, they were only able to replace a few buses every couple years, thus that money could not go toward buy-ing more environmentally friendly buses like the hybrid ones until recently.

In 2011 and 2012, the WTA received the grants to re-place the last eight buses with the new hybrid buses. Op-erating much like hybrid cars, hybrid buses use electric-ity and diesel. Their batteries store energy and recharge whenever the buses decelerate, McCarthy said.

“Basically, they run on battery power as often as they possibly can and only when the demand for battery pow-er exceeds capacity will the diesel kick in,” McCarthy ex-plained.

Not only are these buses better for the community and environment, but they drive better for those who spend the most time in them – the drivers. The hybrid buses ride smoother and quieter, and drivers do not feel the gears shifting, McCarthy said regarding feedback from the WTA drivers.

“On the one hand, they are very, very, very similar to our other new buses – same company, same seats, and the cockpit for the driver is the same, but they are just quieter to drive and a little more responsive,” McCarthy said.

The new buses will be used primarily on routes with heavy stop-and-go schedules, like urban routes down-town and around Western. WTA has started using them on every route except for route 80X to Mount Vernon, which is primarily a freeway route, McCarthy said. WTA will continue to monitor the diagnostics and overall feed-back of the hybrid buses to see if they are truly more ef-ficient on the urban-area routes before opening them up to routes with less stop-and-go.

Not only will hybrid buses do wonders for the Belling-ham community, but they can also be seen as a sort of PR move that represents Whatcom County.

“I think it also does a lot for image because when we have issues like the coal terminal coming up, I think that showing we are really serious about sustainability will show [that we] are very serious about sustainability in Bellingham and at Western.”

WTA’S HYBRID BUS FLEET

One of WTA’s hybrid buses shuttles students from campusphoto By cADE SchmiDt // AS rEViEW

8 • as.wwu.edu/asreview February 26, 2013 • 9

photos

By kylie Wade

“Basically, they run on battery power as often as they possibly can and only when the demand for battery pow-er exceeds capacity will the diesel kick in,” McCarthy ex-plained.

Not only are these buses better for the community and environment, but they drive better for those who spend the most time in them – the drivers. The hybrid buses ride smoother and quieter, and drivers do not feel the gears shifting, McCarthy said regarding feedback from the WTA drivers.

“On the one hand, they are very, very, very similar to our other new buses – same company, same seats, and the cockpit for the driver is the same, but they are just quieter to drive and a little more responsive,” McCarthy said.

The new buses will be used primarily on routes with heavy stop-and-go schedules, like urban routes down-town and around Western. WTA has started using them on every route except for route 80X to Mount Vernon, which is primarily a freeway route, McCarthy said. WTA will continue to monitor the diagnostics and overall feed-back of the hybrid buses to see if they are truly more ef-ficient on the urban-area routes before opening them up to routes with less stop-and-go.

Not only will hybrid buses do wonders for the Belling-ham community, but they can also be seen as a sort of PR move that represents Whatcom County.

“I think it also does a lot for image because when we have issues like the coal terminal coming up, I think that showing we are really serious about sustainability will show [that we] are very serious about sustainability in Bellingham and at Western.”

The debate about gun control in America has been about as divisive and explosive as an actual bullet being fired. The issue has been a political hot button for de-cades, but the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary last December seems to have driven both sides into a frenzy. Suddenly, gun policy at every level is under close scru-tiny. The obvious objective is to take steps to make every-body as safe as possible, but it’s how best to do that that gets people so worked up.

At the national and state level, the debate centers around ideas like banning assault rifles, increasing the prevalence and scope of background checks and possi-bly introducing new safety requirements. At the campus level though, the debate is fairly clear-cut: should guns be allowed on campus at all?

In Washington State, if you are a U.S. citizen over the age of 21 with no outstanding warrants, no upcoming tri-als, no documented mental health issues, no felony con-victions and no court orders specifically saying you can’t possess a firearm, you can apply for a concealed carry permit. If you pass a background check that confirms all of the above, the state is required to grant your request for a permit. Once you have a permit, you can carry your gun almost anywhere, with certain exceptions. As stated by Washington Administrative Code 516-52-020, one of those exceptions is college campuses and school grounds.

“There are those that would like to challenge the WAC and allow concealed carry on campus,” said Randy Stegmeier, the Chief of Police at Western. “I’m opposed to that, and I think all of the University Police Chiefs in the state would agree that we’re glad the WAC is in place. I think it does make the campus a safer place. The fewer guns present, the better the chance it will be safe.”

The WWU Chapter of the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is one of those groups that would like to challenge the state policy.

“I figure it should be the same as it is everywhere else,” Jordan Voie, the former president of the SCCC, ex-plained. “For the most part it’s legal to carry everywhere else, but not on college campuses. It creates an environ-ment where people know that people aren’t armed and it can make us vulnerable.”

Voie grew up around guns and began target shooting when he was a teenager. He owns a few different firearms and has a concealed carry permit. He wears his gun, in a holster on his shoulder, whether he’s on a camping trip or headed to the store to buy groceries. In compliance with the WAC, Voie never brings his guns on campus, but he doesn’t believe he should have to ditch his firearm to come to class.

“It makes us seem really paranoid that we want to be able to carry, especially with the society and the culture that we live in,” said Voie. “It’s not so much as we feel threatened so much as it’s that we just want to be able to have the upper hand in the situation if it did arise.”

Stegmeier said his primary concern in allowing fire-arms on campus would be that someone with a concealed

weapon might act with intentions of diffusing a violent situation but instead escalate it.

“The amount of and level of training that one needs to be safe and proficient with firearms is something that the average citizen is not likely to obtain,” Stegmeier said. “Even with police officers who have hours and hours and hours of training, there is a concern of weapon retention, that your own weapon could be turned on you. That is really a concern of mine.”

Even students who are generally on-board with guns seem to balk at allowing them on campus.

“I’m all for guns, but on campus, kids don’t need to bring them,” said Kyle Keefe, a freshman at Western. “I’d feel less safe knowing people were carrying on campus. It’d give them a way to hurt people.”

Voie said in his two and a half years at Western, he has never encountered a situation where he felt like he needed his gun. However, he has felt uncomfortable dur-ing a few situations in which people who observed him carrying a rainbow flag yelled derogatory statements at him as he was walking home.

“I am a gay man and if I’m walking down the street with my boyfriend and somebody starts freaking out, I don’t want to be unarmed and helpless,” Voie said.

Voie also said he was concerned when he heard about robberies on campus in the past. According to the West-ern 2012-2013 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, from 2009 to 2011 five robberies were reported. Also re-ported in that three-year span were forty-nine burglaries, three forcible sex offenses, fifteen motor vehicle thefts, fourteen simple assaults and two incidents of aggravated assault.

When it comes to preventing violence on campus, Stegmeier would prefer students use their eyes instead of their guns. He said that in the vast majority of cases in which someone acts out violently, somebody who had in-teracted with them or was close to them knew or strongly suspected something bad was going to happen. If he can encourage students to report incidences that seem sus-picious or alarming, Stegmeier hopes he can eliminate the threat of violence long before somebody reaches the point of bringing a gun onto campus. The Department of Public Safety has a video on their homepage called FLASHPOINT that outlines potential signs of violence and how students can recognize and respond to them.

Stegmeier believes an increased national focus on rec-ognizing and treating mental health issues might solve a lot of the mystery around how to prevent violent shoot-ings.

“The whole issue of mental health problems is cer-tainly very tightly tied to gun violence. We need to look very closely at the way we handle mental health issues in this country,” Stegmeier said.

That is something Stegmeier and Voie can agree on. “The problem definitely stems deeper than guns,

they’re just using them as a scapegoat right now,” Voie said. “They need to focus more on the mental health side and decreasing the stigmas that surround it.”

GUN CONTROL DEBATE CONTINUESFirearm debate present on Western’s campus

10 • as.wwu.edu/asreview

Over the past few years, Western students’ interest in music production has grown at an astounding rate. Today, Fairhaven College’s

audio recording classes are highly sought after, and new classes in music production are being offered while students are collaborating with one another to produce and preform music outside of the school environment. A relatively new and particularly interesting development for any and all aspiring music producers is Western’s own Music Producers Club.

In November of 2011, Robert Cappelluto, a senior studying Communal Celebration Through Interpretive Art and Music, started the Music Producers Club with help from his friends who shared an interest in making music production a community process.

“It was clear that everyone had so much information that me and my buddies just started getting together,” said Cappelluto, the Coordinator, President and Director of the club. “Only then did I decide that it was something that needed to be a club that anyone could come to.”

Now, a typical meeting for the Music Producers Club consists of about fifteen students meeting in one of the labs at the Performing Arts Center.

“We meet in the PAC in a lab that has sixteen or so desktops, all with mini-keyboards and quite a bit of software,” Cappelluto said.

The meeting usually commences with Cappelluto

briefing the rest of the club on upcoming shows or events, then the floor is open and becomes someone else’s turn to lead the group.

“The general format is for people to bring in their laptops with their session files and songs and play it, and usually they’ll kind of dissect it afterwards and maybe show how they made their kick drum sound a certain way,” said Assistant Coordinator and Vice President Jordan Hatzialexiou. “We’ve had a lot of people that had never been [to our meetings] before who showed a track and blew people out of the water.”

“We sometimes do workshops where people are creating things on the fly. We’ll have somebody that’s going through a lesson then people will follow along from their laptop or at a desktop. There’s not really a defined curriculum. People that have been coming on a regular basis have definitely advanced together. So, we’re now starting to learn things that [members of the club] are learning from their own experience in studios or other places outside of class,” Cappelluto added.

On occasion guest speakers who are coming through Bellingham will stop by to present and share their own knowledge of music production. Two weeks ago Branden Clarke, more commonly known as IG88, stopped by to share with the class some of his tips and tricks. From the live performance that he opened with to his in-depth explanations and tutorials on using drum machines and manipulating sounds, club members were

mesmerized by his entire presentation. Clarke kept the students involved in his performance by answering their questions and explaining how to achieve various effects.

“I feel like this club is a good way to kind of unite everyone together. It’s awesome you guys are doing it,” Clarke shared with the club. “I learned most everything that I know now from online forums. This is like a physical version of something you’d find on those forums.”

These days the club is doing more than just meeting once a week. Recently they’ve been playing a number of local shows and showcasing their music online via soundcloud.com.

“Last year we did [a show] called the Tribal Disco, one the weekend before Halloween called Frightnight, and then most recently we did a Music Producers showcase at the Wild Buffalo,” Hatzialexiou said. “We are definitely looking to make some sort of community or label out of the club where we can release mixed tapes and play shows more often.”

For anyone that is interested in learning more about music production, the doors to the Music Producers Club are wide open and ready to accommodate more members. The club meets every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in MPC 168. Everyone is welcome, and for any further questions you can visit their Facebook page or email Robert Cappelluto at capellr@students.wwu.edu.

By Todd Wells

BrAnDEn clArkE of ig88 pErfoming At thE muSic proDucErS cluB mEEting.

photo By toDD WEllS // AS rEViEW

CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSETED HIPSTERBy cade schMidT

Not all who drink coffee from mason jars ‘Instabrag’

THE SOUND OF COLLABORATIONA look into the Music Producers Club

10 • as.wwu.edu/asreview February 26, 2013 • 11

EVENTSTuesday Feb. 26Labyrinth10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the VU GalleryFreeAS Productions, VU Gallery and the AS Women’s Center team up to showcase visual pieces from this year’s Labyrinth journal. The show will be running from Feb. 25 until March 13

Wednesday Feb. 27 LipDub Info. Session4:30-5:30 p.m.FreeThe AS Communications Office, along with KVIK, are organizing a WWU LipDub info-session to discuss the production of the video for the coming months.Get involved by contacting:as.communications.assistant2@live.com

Thursday Feb. 28 Ask Us Anything6 - 8 p.m. in Academic West 204FreeAS club Freethinkers of WWU will hold a discussion to explore topics on religion. Members of the discus-sion panel will people from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity, Unitarian Universalism, Islam, Secular Humanism, Islam and Buddhism.

Friday March 1The 21st Annual Drag Show7 - 10 p.m. in the PAC Concert Hall$10 for students, $12 generalThe 21st Annual Drag Show is a benefit for Sean Humphrey House and Evergreen AIDS and features the drag performances of students and community mem-bers.

Saturday March 2Postal Service Laser Light Show7 p.m. in the PAC Concert Hall$4 for students, $5 generalCome celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Postal Service’ debut iconic album, “Give Up” with a laser light show featuring the entire album. Two Ben Gibbard tick-ets will be given out at the Laser Light Show.

Sunday March 3Ben Gibbard Concert6 p.m. in the PAC Concert Hall$24 for students, $30 generalWestern Alumnus and front man for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, Ben Gibbard, returns for a solo performance. Tickets are sold out.

CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSETED HIPSTERSometimes I drink coffee out of a mason jar. My

peers have diagnosed me as a hipster, or for my denial, a “closeted hipster.” Yes, I listen to music that’s never seen the light of day, I own thick framed glasses, roll up my jeans and drive a bike. However, I’ve never claimed myself a hipster. But if art students at one of the most liberal universities in the state are calling me hipster, I might have a predicament.

You see, I began drinking my Joe out of a mason jar the morning I awoke to realize I had lost my ther-mos, and the closest seal-able container to me was a jar that once contained my mother’s organic to-mato sauce. The tomatoes harvested from where I sprouted, Lazy Schmidt Ranch, a few minutes from the Gorge Amphitheater-which sees thousands of neon-painted drunk (mostly white) people every Memorial Day Weekend.

Growing up, I knew about Sasquatch Music Festival before it was cool. Not because of my hipster condition, but because it was in my backyard. It’s oxymoronically hilarious how thousands of “alternative” folk flock to the least alternative-friendly place in the world to together

bask in their alternativeness, shotgun microbrews, dance to the beat of their own synths, and braid hair and stuff. And I adored it because I hated Eastern Washing-ton, and the hipsters at Sasquatch were the least Eastern Washington thing that ever happened.

Thus I landed myself in the Art Department here at Western, where my classmates urge me to come out of the well-thrifted hipster-closet. But in fact, my only possession from a thrift shop is a neon green snapback

embellished with “flyfishing” that I don at least once a week. I think Pabst Blue Ribbon tastes like fermented cat urine. I spent my last birthday wolf-ing down a slab of meat at a Canadian butcher-shop, I don’t

eat soy and consume copious amounts of whey protein. I get way too excited about Major League Baseball, sometimes I drink Starbucks and I often forget what goes in the compost bin.

Yet I protect the identities of where I collect my style goods and my latest music discoveries like a menopausal mama bear protecting her cubs. I don’t want to wear the same shirt as some other dude. I’m like that girl at prom throwing looks that kill at another cat wearing the same

dress. Music is my favorite thing in the whole world. When

I love a jam, it’s a monogamous relationship. I have such an internal relationship with my music, that when an artist I love gets big, it’s so over. Also, in every romantic relationship I’ve been in, I’ve made my sweetheart a playlist. It’s my way of initiating my trust, letting them know I want to share my life’s golden nuggets with them.

Am I cynical? Probably. Personally, I find the price of the ideal hipster lifestyle expensive. I can’t afford all the records or wardrobe required for the role. I think Ameri-can Apparel makes cheap clothes, and Urban Outfitters is politically incorrect. The only thing I can muster the dough to purchase at the Community Food Co-Op is a zucchini.

Some of the ideals associated with a hipster lifestyle, I find attractive. I mean, I melt for ladies in floral print. But with any identity, comes stereotypes, and those aren’t hip. I’m not down with the culturally insensitive, snooty privilege excess that comes with hipsterdom. Not all hipsters Instabrag, wear Aztec print or treat social issues like fashion trends. If being hipster is all about being independent, that could maybe be me. In the end, I’d rather be anything than something solely defined by Urban Dictionary or from where I drink my coffee.

I think Pabst Blue Ribbon tastes like fermented cat urine.“

“

Cade Schmidt

By cade schMidT

Not all who drink coffee from mason jars ‘Instabrag’

12 • as.wwu.edu/asreview

You take a sound, any sound, record it and then change its nature by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds, you play it backwards, you add it to itself over

and over again. You adjust echoes, filters, and acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape. By these means and many others, you can create sounds which no one has ever heard before.”

This quote, sampled off of a 1957 BBC sound experiment radio show “Private Dreams and Public Nightmares,” plays throughout the intro of the electronic group ODESZA’s album, “Summer’s Gone” and provides an intuitive look into the production style of the two Western graduates that make up the group.

Before the summer of 2012, Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight – the two brains behind ODESZA – produced music as solo artists. Mills, going by the name of Catacombkid, was putting out low-fi, hip-hop style beats with crisp vinyl sampling; while Knight, producing as BeachesBeaches, created a more up-tempo, experimental sound with feel-good, danceable songs. When the two met through a mutual friend, they shared each other’s solo work and decided to collaborate and make music together.

“When it first started, we said ‘let’s try to mix our styles,’ because he’s a little bit more up-tempo and I’m a little bit more down-tempo,” Mills said. “I wanted to somehow mix these two styles together to create something that you could listen to on your headphones on the bus or while doing homework and something that

you could also play at a live venue and dance to.”What eventually resulted from this collaboration was

the release of “Summer’s Gone,” a 13-song LP flooded with bright melodies, angelic vocal samples, organic, rich percussion and warm bass lines. The album manages to maintain a cohesive sound while still providing a wide breadth of song styles. Listeners will be driven to the dance floor with songs like “Don’t Stop,” “IPlayYouListen,” and “I Want You” only to be hypnotized later through relaxing tracks such as “How Did I Get Here” and “Today.”

“I wouldn’t say we necessarily intended for all of the songs to be cohesive, but I think it was kind of a sense of where we were in the sense of making music,” Mills said. “We were liking that sort of sound and we kind of kept pushing it.”

The album was well received and ODESZA quickly rounded up a fan base and booked a west coast tour opening for electronic acts Little People and Emancipator. The duo was also invited to play at this year’s Sasquatch! Music Festival. The tour will be coming downtown to the Wild Buffalo on March 10.

“The response has been really good and I’ve just been really happy to hear people like the music, so we’ll see where it takes us,” Knight said. “We’re just hoping that people dig our new stuff too that we’ve been working on, and we want to keep our fan-base and give people a wide range of music. That’s what we’re kind of going for is blending a bunch of different styles so that it’s accessible to a very broad audience.”

Mills said that he partially credits ODESZA’s reception to the way they released their album. Instead of releasing tracks individually – as is the current practice in electronic music – ODESZA waited until the completion of “Summer’s Gone” before releasing it to the public for free in its entirety.

“It makes sense in this world where everyone has a short attention span and they don’t really listen to the album anymore, so everyone just works on singles,” Mills said. “We were really hoping that if we dropped something that had a lot of different feels on it and just hit everyone all at once, it would make more of an impact.”

Mills and Knight both said that they are honored about the reception of the group and the album by their fans as well as the opportunity to tour with bigger electronic artists.

“No words will suffice how excited we are to play Sasquatch and to play with Emancipator, who I’ve always liked a lot and who has been a big influence on me,” Mills said.

In their live performances, ODESZA deconstructs their songs into individual samples and then recombines them live using a variety of audio effects so that the songs sound organic each time. They said that in the future, they hope to work with more live instrumentation during their sets as well as produce music videos and incorporate visuals into their performance.

“We definitely want to stay together and try to do as much as possible,” Knight said. “Touring is a big part of that. We would like to do as many shows as possible.”

HOMETOWN HEROES: ODESZA

By Nick Markman

photo By mAryBEth coghill; courtESEy of oDESZA