CYAN
MAGENTA
YELLOW BLACK NEWS
In Sports:
September 16, 2011
Men’s soccer starts out season strong with a new head coach. SEE Page 2b
Vol. 87 No. 2
“Happiness is eating breakfast quesadillas with your roomie to celebrate Saturday.”
2A
OPINIONS
3&4A
SPORTS
1&2B
FEATURES
3B
ENTERTAINMENT
4B
In Entertainment:
Read about Chipotle’s Mexican Grill and learn more to find out if it is worthy of a trip to Little Rock. -Aerial Whiting, senior SEE Page 4b SEE Aerial’s take on happiness on Page 4a
HU professor given firsthand look at 9/11 memorial by ALEXIS HOSTICKA features editor
photo courtesy of DR. JACK SHOCK Two acre-wide fountains have been built where the World Trade Center once stood. The fountains bear the names of those who died on 9/11.
After nearly ten years of work, the 9/11 Memorial opened on Sept. 11, 2011. Jack Shock, chairman of the Department of Communication, was one of the first to enter with a group of volunteers, victims’ families and responders. “Watching other people experience [the memorial] brought a lot of emotion,” Shock said. “It was just very intense to watch people experience it, and I am emotionally connected to some of the families. It was no walk in the park.” In the memorial, one of the items that touched Shock the most was the survivor tree, a tree that survived at the site 10 years ago, he said. “They brought it back, and it’s just a compelling item in the memorial because it’s natural and alive and a part of God’s creation that survived,” Shock said. “You can see where it was burnt and where the new growth is coming in, and it’s just a ver y powerful symbol of resolve to survive and thrive. Everything in nature has a will to live, and it’s a remarkable metaphor.” Other aspects of the memorial that Shock said he thought were well thoughtout were the waterfalls,
Watching other people experience [the memorial] brought a lot of emotion. It was just very intense ... It was no walk in the park. -Jack Shock, Chairman of the Department of Communication which stood where the twin towers used to stand. “ The memorial is in between two waterfalls, and the waterfalls are so powerful that they drown out the noise of the city,” Shock said. According to the 9/11 memorial’s website, the two reflecting pools that the waterfalls feed into are the largest manmade fountains in North America and were designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker. Shock was part of a select group of visitors who got to visit the memorial because of what he did 10 years earlier as a volunteer coordinator of media for the Red Cross. He began volunteering for the Red Cross two weeks after 9/11 at the request of a former student. “What I did this past weekend was basically a reunion of Red Cross staffers who worked together at that time,” Shock said. “We had a reunion dinner the first night and just caught
up with each other.” Shock spent much of his time reconnecting with the other volunteers during his four-day stay, but he also had the opportunity to see New York City civilians coming out to support the events. “One thing I remember was the number of impromptu memorials around the city,” Shock said. “A choir came in a market and sang because they wanted to use their music to help. String quartets were playing around the city, and people had prayer circles getting together. There were candles, flowers, wreaths, teddy bears, just set up in their own little memorials.” The official museum for the memorial will open next year, and Shock and his group are planning a return trip to visit the museum, he said. “Part of what made this trip so meaningful was sharing it with some of my best friends,” Shock said. “It was just a group effort with a lot of support, and it was really nice to share with friends.”
Fall chapel theme works to start student discussions by J.M. ADKISON editor-in-chief The university’s chapel committee has asked students for input on the topics and speakers for this year’s chapel theme, “Facing the Issues.” The theme was selected this summer by President David Burks and the chapel program committee, which consists of several professors and administrators such as Bruce McLarty, vice president of spiritual life, and Michael Claxton, associate professor of English, who coordinate certain days of chapel. “It is a little different approach,” Burks said. “Instead of picking the theme and selecting topics and speakers at the beginning of the semester, this year is open-ended as we ask the student body to suggest the topics and use a student committee to rate the topics and the speakers.” Burks said the chapel committee has always included student input, typically the
Student Association president and spiritual life chairmen, but this fall chapel has had more student input than ever. The student committee, which consists of 10 students including senior Ryan Rummage, junior Brooke Ramsey and freshman Sara Sims, helps organize the “Facing the Issues” chapel programs. “This past summer I was working in Dr. Burks’ office, and he came to me and told me he wanted this year’s chapel theme [to be] student-led,” Rummage, who leads the student committee, said. “So we began organizing a committee from a diverse group of students from each year to try and meet a good balance of representatives.” Rummage and the student committee created the Pipeline survey to allow the student body to choose topics for “Facing the Issues.” Rummage said about 250 students responded to the Pipeline survey. From the results, the student committee was able to determine the seven most popular topics. Both Burks and Rummage said one of
the most requested topics focused on the problem of hypocrisy. The student committee selected Harding alumnus Harrison Dell to speak on the issue last Wednesday, Sept. 6. Rummage said that many topics to come will possibly feature two speakers, one to speak on each side of an issue. Burks said he hopes the students will seriously consider and talk about the topics after they leave chapel. “You can’t possibly deal with some of the topics in 15 minutes,” Burks said. “You can certainly state an opinion in 15 minutes, but I think what we would like to happen is more of a beginning of or a continuation of the discussion. This wouldn’t be an issue unless it was something people were thinking about. For example, we will be talking about suffering, and suffering is a very broad issue. You can’t completely answer that in one presentation in 15 minutes. I would hope it would generate some discussion on the part of the people. But I hope that would be true of any presentation that is made in chapel.”
Rummage said the goal of “Facing the Issues” is to bring clarity or closure to several issues that may be keeping students from knowing God. He said that the student committee is working to benefit students outside of the usual 45 minute length of chapel with other resources. “We want to provide students with resources for these issues we discuss in chapel,” Rummage said. “Whether it is an evening board discussion, information on the Counseling Center or simply something they could read in the library, we want students to know there is more help out there for them.” Burks said students should always feel free to make suggestions about chapel and should contact members of the chapel committees. He also said that student input is not limited to the “Facing the Issues” theme and that suggestions will be taken into consideration for any aspect of chapel. To find out more about the chapel committees, check out the full list of staff and student members on The Link.
‘MANAbago’ visits campus by LAUREN BUCHER news editor Mark Slagle, a Harding graduate and Pepperdine alumnus Alex Cox visited Harding’s campus last Wednesday, Sept. 7, in a 1971 spray-painted orange and white Winnebago, turned “MANAbago,” which they parked outside of Midnight Oil and on the front lawn. It was their first stop in their three-month cross-country crusade to raise awareness about child malnutrition. Slagle and Cox pitched a relief simulation tent outside of the Winnebago, where students watched videos about nutrition. MANA is a nonprofit organization that manufactures a peanut butter-based product loaded with protein and micronutrients for malnourished children in Africa. “We are going around the country to speak to different audiences, whether that’s a chapel of 3,000 people at a Christian university or a frat house at Texas A&M or a church in Southern California,” Slagle said. Cox and Slagle began driving Sept. 4 and will stop the tour on Dec. 15, or
when they raise $600,000, which would be enough money to provide 10,000 children with MANA. “I really think that our generation is really seeking something more than a great retirement plan,” Slagle said. “We’re seeking more than the American Dream, and I think that if all of the college kids at Harding could be paid in purpose, they would try to make as much purpose as they could. And so honestly, I felt this call to find a purpose.” Fully renovated, the refurbished van has an orange and beige shag carpet, with orange and green décor and an 8 track player, playing ’70s-era musical icon Melanie Safka. The van is fully functional, meaning that it has an oven and stove, which run off of propane, a mini-fridge and a bathroom. Two beds, one in the back and one that folds out from above the driver’s seat, make the sleeping accommodations. The pair plans to eat, sleep and live in the MANAbago for the duration of the tour. “As long as we have a parking lot, we are good to go,” Cox said. “The van draws
photo by CALEB RUMMEL | The Bison Alex Cox stands in front of a tent with MANA materials as he explains to students about MANA’s mission to help feed malnourished babies in Africa on the front lawn, Thursday, Sept. 8. Cox and Mark Slagle also pitched a tent at Midnight Oil the previous evening. attention. People react to it on the road, and it gives the tour some flair.” Since it is an old W innebago, the MANAbago does have a few minor
kinks in its system. For one, wide turns are inevitable, and the brakes have to be occasionally pumped, Cox said. SEE ‘MANAbago’ Pg. 2A