Students – Anna's Alcove

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True Friends

As I was trying to come up with a topic for this week, I kept drawing a blank… and then it hit me.

The awesome way God always provides the right friends the exact moment that we need them!

Thursday nights are always my favorite nights of the week. Why? That’s the night of my young adult Bible study at Calvary Baptist and the night that I get to hang out with some of my closest friends (a.k.a. brothers and sisters in Christ)!!

It’s been almost a year since I came into this group of amazing people and it still blows me away how God brings certain people into our lives right when we need them.

I’m a graduate of Edinboro University, Class 2012, and when I came home that summer, I felt as if I didn’t quite belong. Back in college, I had a huge church base with numerous fellow believers who were my age and it was such an encouragement to come back from a stressful day/week knowing that I had a fun night planned with them or that they would always be there if I needed someone to talk to.

I didn’t have that here at home. Most of my friends from youth group had gone away to college and either stayed out there or moved to another part of the U.S. While I love traveling and all, I’m definitely a “stick-around-home” kind of person… as in I really don’t want to move too far away from my immediate family… at least not on my own.

But I had heard of a young adult Bible study at one of the local churches that one of my friends had been attending. I went with her one week and enjoyed the inductive study and how everyone was willing to welcome me into their group.

It wasn’t until the next week that the group starting to truly make an impact on my life. When I walked into the room, the leaders remembered me by name and were asking about how my week had been (bringing up topics that I had talked about with them the week before) and the young adults I had met the first time greeted me by name and had a genuine love and care in their attitude toward me that I never felt like the outsider or the newbie.

After that week, the friendships just kept growing deeper and deeper the more time we spent in God’s Word and the more we hung out outside of the Bible study. This is a group of people who aren’t afraid to be real with each other and who, once they get to know everyone, let their guard down and act completely natural…

Why?

… because of God’s relational love.

I know that’s probably not an official term, but think about it, God’s love causes us to genuinely love others in His name. There’s no faking.

That’s exactly what John is saying in 1 John 4:19:

“We love because He first loved us”

This is what sets Christians apart from the rest of the world. We’re not loving others just because it’ll give us bonus points with our God or because it benefits us. We love because it’s in the “new us.”

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17

Once we become children of God and accept his free gift of salvation (meaning there is absolutely no way that we can earn it.. it’s completely free!), we take on the image of God. Our old sinful self gets pushed out of the way so that Christ can shine and love others through us.

God created us to be relational beings for a reason. He desires us to get to know Him and, in His perfect timing, provides us with the community of believers we need to support and challenge us.

One of my favorite sections in the gospels is Jesus’ prayer for all believers in John 17:20-23

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and You in Me – so that they may be brought to complete unity.”

Isn’t that awesome? The God of the universe so desperately wanted us to get to know Him that He sent His only Son to come down to earth in human form in order to become that perfect sacrifice for our sins. He understand our need for relationships and community… because He created us that way!

So, in closing, all I’m gonna say is I’m so thankful for my Awaken family and am just blown away by how God brought me into this close Christian community when I was needing it the most.

Praise Him!

Students Honor Trayvon Martin

April 29, 2012 / Anna / 0 Comments

Students gathered in front of Baron-Forness Library on “Trayvon Tuesday”, April 17, to remember the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was killed in Sanford, Florida.

“Justice in general has always been served, but is it really happening when it’s supposed to be?” asked Marlan Jones, a sophomore communications major with a minor in political science, who was leading the event.

According to a New York Times article, it happened like this: It was a dark, rainy night, on February 26, when Martin entered the Retreat at Twin Lakes on his way back to the house he was staying at in Sanford, Florida.

A neighborhood watch had been created in August 2010 due to earlier episodes of robberies, said the article. The guidelines were that the volunteers for the watch should not possess police authority, should not have any firearms, and should only be the eyes and the ears for the police force. George Zimmerman, 28, was chosen for the job.

That night, Zimmerman had a licensed, 9-millimeter handgun and when he spotted Martin walking past his vehicle, he became suspicious and dialed 911, according to the New York Times.

There aren’t many details about what exactly happened during those next six minutes from 7:11 to 7:17 p.m., but what the newspapers were able to find out was that Zimmerman told Martin to stop moving and Martin started running, so Zimmerman set off in pursuit.

What happened after that is unclear. Some say that Martin punched Zimmerman first, while others say that Zimmerman tackled Martin, but no matter how it started, both men ended up wrestling on ground, according to the article.

Someone screamed for help and no one is really sure who it was, but then a single shot was fired and then silence filled the night.

When Zimmerman took it upon himself to chase after Martin, he stepped out of the guidelines that were set for the neighborhood watchmen, according to the New York Times.

Despite the charges filed against Zimmerman on April 11, one student who attended the on-campus remembrance said he was not convinced there was enough evidence to find Zimmerman guilty.

The thing is, said Jones, you’re innocent until proven guilty; however, it seems like you’re guilty until proven innocent.

The Stand Your Ground Law “allows people to use deadly force when they feel a reasonable threat of death or serious injury,” according to a CNN article. In answer to the accusations that he fired too quickly instead of trying to reason with Martin, Zimmerman says that he shot in self-defense with no intention to kill.

Yet some students in the group were saying that because Martin didn’t stop when Zimmerman called for him to stop, he broke the law, so he was just as much in the wrong as Zimmerman was.

While all of suspicions and accusations are flying around in this case, one of the students in the group said that it’s great that more light is being shed on it, but at the same time, the family has to relive it every day and they really can’t seem to escape it.

It’s on the news every single day, so instead of being able to go through the grieving process and getting the chance to move on, it’s being drug out further than it would’ve been otherwise. The student said he could not even begin to imagine how hard it must be for the parents to see their son being talked about on TV.

Most of the students in the group were trying to view the story from both sides. Maybe Zimmerman felt that it was his duty to protect the neighborhood and had some motive for pulling the trigger that night, they said.

After the discussion, Jones asked for a moment of silence to be held to commemorate the death of Martin.

On April 23, Zimmerman was released from jail on a $150,000 bond. Later that day, his attorney, Mark O’Mara announced that Zimmerman would enter a not-guilty plea.

–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator Vol. III, Issue 25)

Campus Pinpoints Details in Occupy

April 12, 2012 / Anna / 0 Comments

Students from Edinboro University and Mercyhurst College discussed the humane conservative viewpoint of the Occupy Wall Street Movement with Dr. Michael Federici, from the political science department at Mercyhurst, during a panel discussion in the R. Benjamin Wiley Arts & Sciences Center on April 5.

“The problem when we’re general (in our discussions) is we miss the subtleties that allow us to see similarities between things that are seemingly different,” said Federici in his opening comments.

Federici said that humane conservatives tend to take the word “conservative” seriously, in that they believe there is something worth preserving and conserving.

For example, the integrity of the community is important to conservatives and in relation to the Occupy Wall Street Movement, there are several areas of common ground that Federici pointed out.

Concentrated economic power is seen as destructive to local communities, Federici said.

“I’ve seen over the course of decades, small family-run businesses be replaced and forced out by big, giant corporations,” said Federici. “We would call that the ‘Wal-Mart Problem.’”

The Occupy Wall Street Movement claims that they are fighting against the combined power of major banks and multi-national corporations and their influence over politics, Federici said.

Yet, Federici said he doesn’t agree with the way that the Occupy Wall Street Movement demonizes the tens of thousands of people that work there.

“That is precisely the kind of language that I think polarizes politics and discourse,” Federici said.

The idea that it’s possible to transform the entire world is another example of language use that Federici doesn’t agree with. “The very talk of massive, wide-sweeping change is unrealistic and likely to do more harm than good,” he said.

“I think it makes more sense to focus on smaller, local goals that are attainable and to stay within your own community, first and foremost, when it comes to political reform,” Federici stated.

Federici also didn’t agree with the idea that more democracy is better. When we talk about rights and democracy, Federici said, I think you’ve lost touch with how the real world operates

“Political action requires a certain degree of intelligence. Not only intellectual intelligence, but practical intelligence that comes with time and maturity,” said Federici.

In response to Federici’s comments, Sean Fedorko, a recent graduate from Mercyhurst who holds B.A.’s in both Political Science and Philosophy, said that he agrees with what Federici said.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement wants localization and empowerment, Fedorko said.

So, thinking about empowerment in relation to self-interest, Fedorko said, “this is the kernel that really rests in the similarities between humane-conservatism and OWS and maybe (can show) how… these two groups are advocating a very similar goal from very different means.”

The people involved with the movement are advocating a way to regain power because they see an imbalance of power, said Fedorko.

“They seem to be failing, however, due to their knee-jerk reaction to political, economic and social institutions that are failing to foster the good life for the majority: the 99 percent,” Fedorko pointed out.

I think that if the activists were to articulate that what they’re advocating isn’t to seize control of Wall Street and punish them, said Fedorko, but trying to reintegrate Wall Street “as individuals who have sort of lost the way to a community that we all need to foster.”

Brian Barton, a senior majoring in Political Science at Edinboro University, responded next by saying that one of the unifying characteristics of humane conservatism and the movement is the skepticism toward the government.

The problem that conservatives had with the bailouts in 2009 was the government interference in the market, Barton said. They felt that the government was deciding who would be the winner and the losers rather than just allowing the marketplace to decide.

The government intrusion in the marketplace has extended our current economic drought, said Barton, and that’s why I find myself supporting some of what the movement is advocating.

Suzanne Boone, an undergraduate majoring in sociology at Edinboro University, has had a personal experience with the Occupy Wall Street Movement and, in her response to Federici; she said that it’s important to have these conversations in order to get different perspectives on the issue.

“We all have a common thread that holds us together as human beings,” Boone said. It’s all about having respect for the other person and holding that conversation with them about their views and what they’re going to do about them.

“Every single person has to be responsible for the decisions that they make,” said Boone, “and to change the things that they can change within their little area.”

–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator Vol. III, Issue 23)

Former NPR Personality Discusses Religion Conflicts – Religion and Humanities

April 11, 2012 / Anna / 1 Comment

Ken Myers, a former National Public Radio persona, spoke about “Religion and the Humanities” to hundreds of students and faculty members at Cole Auditorium on Thursday, March 29.

“A good education recognizes the whole of what we are, that we are imaginative creatures and not just rational creatures,” Myers said. “That we were made for more than just mere survival.”

Of his personal convictions, Myers said, “I would assert that human beings were made to love what is true, to honor what is good and to delight in what is beautiful.”

Humanities helps to uncover the meanings and purposes of life, said Myers. He went on to explain more about what humanities and education really is.

Philosopher Josef Pieper called attention to the difference between being educated and being trained, Myers said.”

Training is concerned with one aspect while education is concerned with the whole world, according to Pieper.

Myers explained that education has been historically grounded in the disciplines under humanities.

“While vocational training shapes skills, humanities shapes persons. Training provides information, humanities opens a way for wisdom. Training departs practical abilities while humanities provide the framework for guiding our practices,” he said.

Myers cited Jacques Barzun, a 1970 American historian, and discussed how he used a farming metaphor to describe the role of humanities in society.

“Cultivation means that minds are not just databases that need to be filled. They’re more like fields that need to be prepared for fruitfulness,” Myers said.

For example, literature, philosophy, language, and the arts are not just classes to take, Myers said. They should be encountered in everyday life.

“The time of formal education is simply the intense preparation for a lifetime of informal education,” said Myers. “The field isn’t just cultivated once because there is more than one crop to be harvested. Education is just the beginning of our relationship with these different areas of research.”

Humanities frees us to live as more than just mere animals, Myers said.

In a 1910 lecture to the Association of American Universities, Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, warned against schooling that was merely training, said Myers.

The trained individual is a tool, not a social mind, said Wilson. Society needs minds that are imaginative and not just capable of logic or reasoning.

Poetic knowledge is a central part of the humanities, said Myers. This knowledge requires involvement and participation. It’s an invitation to engage and respond.

Poetic knowledge calls us away from detachment and dominion, toward love and community, Myers explained. It challenges our objective and subjective knowledge.

In this sense, education is more than just training for a job, Myers said. If we think that human beings have a higher purpose than mere survival, then education can be seen as to equip us for that higher purpose.

We are created in the image of God according to the western humanism and religious viewpoint, said Myers, but we continue to make mistakes because of our humanity.

Myers quoted historian Steven Ozment in saying that “we study the past, not to avoid repeating it, but to learn how previous generations survived the same mistakes that we make.”

The search for truth is essential to communities, said Myers. “Just knowing the truth wasn’t enough. We need to get together and talk about it.”

Myers then went on to point out the similarities between the church and the university. The church had always read the Bible out loud to a gathered community of believers and, likewise, the university also had its own “canon of writings.”

The church researches the Bible, while the university takes the texts that others had written and compare other articles with that text, Myers continued. The church looks to the Bible for guidelines on how to do theology and the university looks to written texts to see how professors before them had taught certain subjects.

In his closing remarks, Myers quoted literary scholar, Marion Montgomery, in saying, “A good education isn’t just the combining of ideas. It’s a communal wrestling of ideas of reality and then take it to the next step.”

–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator, Vol. III, Issue 22)

Former NPR Personality Discusses Religion Conflicts – Religion and Science

April 11, 2012 / Anna / 0 Comments

Ken Myers, a former National Public Radio figure, gave a presentation in Cole Auditorium on “Religion and Science” to hundreds of students and faculty on Wednesday, March 28.

“Both terms in popular usage have hardened into defensive positions that have created an unnecessary sense of opposition,” Myers said.

Science is regarded as purely objective and detached from personal choices, said Myers, while religion is seen as entirely subjective, more personal and private.

According to John Polkinhorne, a physicist and theologian, the ideas and thoughts that can be gained from these matters are obstructed by the myth of the battle between the “scientific light” and the “religious darkness.”

Yet, there has been fruitful conversation among scientists, philosophers, and theologian about the relationship between science and religion, said Myers.

“It’s a fruitful conversation because the scientific and theological ways of knowing actually have much in common,” Myers explained.

Thomas Kuhn, author of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” said that the main challenge is the assumption that we can separate the objective from the subjective.

Some scientists say that when they are behaving in a completely objective manner when, in reality, science relies heavily on the authority of other scientists, Myers pointed out.

“Science must rely heavily on the authority of fellow scientists,” explained Myers. “The community of scientists is one of authority, of trust, and tradition, as are religious communities.”

According to Herbert Butterfield, an English historian, people tend to point to the scientific revolution as outshining everything since Christianity and reduce the Renaissance and the Reformation as “mere episodes,” Myers said.

But, in the 17^th century, there wasn’t a single cultural unit called “science,” said Myers. A diverse variety of cultural practices was aimed at understanding, explaining, and controlling the natural world.

There’s a sense that’s detached science from all sorts of human activities, which is very similar to how some people regard religion, Myers pointed out.

“What we call science and what we call religion are deeply human activities. That they’re situated in human history and they’re connected to other aspects of human experience and, to the dismay of zealots on both sides, they’re very much intertwined with one another,” said Myers.

In the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, there was talk that science was the “new religion” and had succeeded the position that religion had previously enjoyed, Myers said.

In his 1874 book, “History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion,” John William Draper, claimed that science and religion were “necessarily at war.”

According to Draper, there will come a time where men have to choose between immobile faith and ever-advancing science.

Steven Shapin, a historian of science, said that “there’s no such thing as science and there’s no such thing as religion.” They are huge words that lump together human practices, beliefs and institutions, he said.

According to Shapin, science and religion are much more complex than the terms suggest, Myers said.

“I’m not trying to prohibit the use of certain words,” Myers said. “I just want us to recognize that they are used really loosely. The concrete realities that they describe might be obscured if we’re not mindful of the fuzziness of the word.”

“We know the world as persons and as persons we are necessarily tied to an inheritance of knowledge,” Myers said in his closing remarks.

“Merely to use a language, with its distinctive, poetic possibilities, is to be involved in a tradition of knowledge. Such traditions either in science or religion, can be reformed but they can’t be avoided.”

–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator Vol. III, Issue 22)

University Policy Deems Attendance Unnecessary

March 29, 2012 / Anna / 0 Comments

The Edinboro Administration Council has announced that as of April 1, they will allow students to have an unlimited amount of excused absences for the rest of the semester.

“We’ve learned from past semesters that when the weather is nice and the sun is out, students tend to skip class anyway,” said Robert McCluder, head of the council.

“We discussed different options and came to the conclusion that it’s unfair to force students to stay in class when they’d rather be enjoying the outdoors,” McCluder explained.

However, in order to give students credit for the class, the council couldn’t say that they weren’t required to show up for class, said Michael Munchie, the secretary for the council.

After weeks of meetings, discussions, debates, and compromises, the council decided that the only way that this could be made possible was through eliminating the limit of excused absences, said McCluder.

Students and faculty who attended a presentation on February 29 on the U.S. financial crisis, discovered the reasons behind the recession and why the situation hasn’t been improving faster than it has been.

“It didn’t come out of the blue,” said Dr. Samuel Claster, assistant professor of sociology at Edinboro University. “It’s been a 30 year period of corporate deregulation of the banking industry and the financial system as a whole.”

Our economic system has a series of economic and political subsystems and in order for them to each function properly, they have to mix with people’s values, beliefs, attitudes and everyday lifestyles in a process called “socialization,” said Claster.

“Investment banking is the largest industrial sector in America and has been since the late 70s,” Claster said, “but a society cannot sustain when wealth is concentrated in that one economic sector.”

Yet, one of the problems with this is that the system pushes its problems on the citizens and hinders our ability to critically examine and question those in power and domination, Claster pointed out.

This then turns into “irrational functioning,” Claster explained.

America has one of the most advanced health care systems in the world, for example, but is 25th compared to other nations with the number of citizens because of our insurance industry, he said. This is the result of us “living in a society where the many are ruled by a few,” Claster said.

This can be seen in the way the mortgage system works.

In the video “Crisis of Credit Visualized” that Claster showed, Jonathan Jarvis, an interaction and media designer, says investment banks link families with a mortgage lender.

Investment bankers then borrow money and call up the various lenders to buy mortgages, which they then divide up into portions and sell to their different investors.

So, says Jarvis, when the homeowners default on their mortgage, it creates a problem. No one wants to buy a house that isn’t bringing in a profit and then “the whole financial system is frozen.”

“What caused the major collapse illustrates the interconnectedness of the banks in our entire financial system,” said Claster.

On September 7, 2008, the government took over and bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the major mortgage lenders, and on October 3, 2008, the Senate passed a revised version of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

“It’s a capital injection,” said Claster, “and what that means is that some of it is loans to come later, but for now they had to get money to the banks immediately.”

According to MotherJones.com, a news website, the banks were considered too big to fail, so one of the solutions was to make them bigger, such as have Wells Fargo buy Wachovia.

Other problems added to the crisis. Fraud, which is also known as “robosigning,” and Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), said Claster.

“Robosigning sounds fancy, but it’s actually criminal,” said Claster. It’s when a person gets paid to sign the names of six or so bank presidents to hundreds of different loans without their consent. These are actual legal documents and this happens all over the country.

MERS may be an efficient way to keep track of the thousands of housing mortgages, “but it values efficiency over customer service,” Claster said. “People don’t know who owns their mortgages, they have no contact with them and they don’t know where the actual titles to their mortgages are.”

In 2010, the Frank Dodd Act was put into play. It created a lot of government regulatory councils and commissions so that they could redesign our regulatory system. “Yet, the things that have happened can happen again because new bubbles will burst,” said Claster. “Critics are pushing to break up the banks and stop making them bigger because what we’re actually doing is socializing our problems and privatizing our profits.”

The government also struck a $24 billion deal with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other major banks,” said Claster. Seventeen billion dollars would be set aside for credit forgiveness, while $5 billion would be put into cash payouts to those who have been foreclosed upon.

Claster asked, “Is the administration saving the system and making real good economic policy and reform or is it all part of a political strategy that keeps the two party system rolling on?”

Claster stressed that Americans must not always trust governmental decision-making. “We have experience and we have the expertise,” Claster said. “We can’t leave it to the people who rule this country.”

–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator, Vol. III, Issue 19)

Anna's Alcove

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Category: Students (page 1 of 2)

Students Honor Trayvon Martin

Campus Pinpoints Details in Occupy

Former NPR Personality Discusses Religion Conflicts – Religion and Humanities

Former NPR Personality Discusses Religion Conflicts – Religion and Science

University Policy Deems Attendance Unnecessary

Communications Chair Selected to Attend Leadership Academy

Financial Crisis Studied

Tenure-track Professors in Decline

APSCUF Negotiates New Contract

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