Wednesday, March 20, 2024
A beginner’s guide to hiking Kennedy Thomason News & Lifestyle Editor With the outdoors to explore, it can be daunting to take the first step. There’s the location, weather, travel buddies and time constraints to worry about. Not to mention nature can be unpredictable. For the newbies, here’s five tips to prepare you for your first trip. 1. Do your research Before picking your destination, be sure to check what other hikers have to say about the location. Account for safety, car access and how strenuous the trails are. AllTrails, a hiking trails and equipment website, has information and reviews from many hikers on different locations across the country. Using it or a Google search can help you narrow down your hiking options. 2. Prepare mentally and physically Hiking can take a toll on anyone, especially someone new to it. In the weeks leading up to your trip, participating in aerobic exercise can help prepare your body and mind for the trails you are planning to take on. Depending on your location, train for hills or extreme temperatures. Get yourself outside and in the elements before you experience it for the first time. See Hiking on 6
Courtesy of Creative Commons
Before you embark on your first hiking excursion, use these five tips for a successful trip.
Investigating the tipping game tussle Courtesy of OSU News
Courtesy of OSU News
From left: Miss Asian OSU 2024 Alison Samson and Mr. Asian OSU 2024 Ike Imerbthama.
OSU crowns Mr. and Miss Asian OSU 2024 Courtesy of OSU News Oklahoma State University recently crowned Ike Imerbthama and Alison Samson as Mr. and Miss Asian OSU 2024.
The event, hosted by the Asian American Student Association and Office of Multicultural Affairs, was held in the Student Union Theater on March 9. Imerbthama, a marketing junior from Owasso, Oklahoma, said the opening dance was one of the most challenging parts of the
pageant. “I used to play soccer, so I used to be kind of flexible, but that was years ago,” Imerbthama said. “It was a lot of fun. We started practicing three or four months ago, and it was a good challenge.” See Crowns on 7
The restaurant industry hasn’t seen many large-scale innovations in the last few decades, but one Oklahoma State University researcher is hoping that focusing on a few key areas could change that fact in the coming years. Dr. Cortney Norris, an assistant professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, is focusing on the highly debated culture of tipping in the restaurant industry. She hopes that investigating the tipping process from multiple perspectives will lead to a better understanding and new innovations to an antiquated system. “By and large, the research into tipping has been focused on the customer’s point of view,” Norris said. “However, I’m hoping that by applying game theory to the tipping interaction, we can better understand all sides of the exchange, and develop new strategies that propose innovations that take all sides into consideration.” Game theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with the analysis of strategies for dealing with competitive situations where the outcome of a participant’s choice of action depends critically on the actions of other participants. Game theory has been applied to contexts in war, business and biology. In her research article, “Is tipping just a game? Applying game
theory to restaurant tipping behavior” published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, Norris and her co-authors D. Christopher Taylor, Scott Taylor Jr. and Michael Snipes explain that even recent studies on the tipping exchange tend to favor the customer perspective and struggle to address input from the service side of the interaction. As a former bartender and hospitality worker, Norris believes that true change can only happen when all sides are considered and the interaction between those parties plays a role in determining the actions of the other party. “While most studies into this exchange account for the ‘normal factors,’ i.e. quality of care, timeliness, etc., I don’t think there has been an adequate amount of research that recognizes personality as a quantifiable variable in the equation,” Norris said. “Furthermore, while party size and regularity of customers was taken into account in published studies, we found that the definition of those variables has changed when investigating the service side of the exchange. Regular customers were someone that came in three to four times a month, as opposed to four to five times a year. Also, party size did play a factor in the tip size, however we found that servers didn’t see it as more or less work, but a different set of duties, more task oriented as opposed to relationship oriented.” See Tussle on 8