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Holocaust survivor to speak on campus tonight

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Berman, a Holocaust survivor, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 10, in the Centrum, Knutson Campus Center. The lecture, part of a series of events hosted by the college on “Scandinavia and the Holocaust” March 10 and 11, is sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and Tolerance Minnesota.

Berman is the author of “We are Going to Pick Potatoes: Norway and the Holocaust, The Untold Story” (2010). Her talk will focus on the fate of Norway’s small Jewish population during World War II. After the Nazi invasion 900 of the country’s 1,700 Jews were able to escape to Sweden, but more than 760 Norwegian Jews were deported and most of them were murdered at Auschwitz. Nearly 40 percent of Norway’s Jews perished in the Holocaust.

A reception and book signing will follow the lecture. Berman’s book, signed by the author, is available at the Cobber Bookstore.

The lecture, also sponsored by the Scandinavian Studies program and the history department, is free and open to the public.

This article is a press release from Concordia’s Communications and Marketing department.


Corrections: Concordia Orchestra conductor Beyers announces resignation

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An article from last week’s paper reported Foster Beyers’ decision to take a new teaching position as orchestra director at James Madison University, and the future of Professor Kate Hamilton’s position. We would like to add the following corrections.

Professor Capistran teaches string methods and is a violinist and conductor, but has also taught and played viola here. The viola students will have the opportunity to study with her and Professor Sonja Harasim next year.

In response to the quote from Jake Broten, the number of viola students in the orchestra has been as large in past years, according to Capistran.

Dr. John Roberts sent an official statement with the following information:

1) The Department of Music employs several faculty members who teach more than one instrument.

2) It is not uncommon for an institution to hire an upper-strings applied studio professor.

Concordia adds new summer school courses, online options

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Concordia has put in extra effort this year to boost interest in summer school by offering brand-new classes, flexible online options and a large selection of courses. This summer, Concordia will offer over 100 classes, the largest number of summer classes the college has ever offered.

Dr. Cynthia Carver, chair of Division of Professional Programs at Concordia, said that the number of online classes, accelerated classes and summer-only classes, have doubled from last year. She said she has noticed that students actively discuss summer school, and is excited to see the enrollment numbers after registration is complete.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t see at least the same level of interest from last year,” Carver said. “Last year was the first year we made a really concerted effort to reinvigorate summer school.”

Several summers ago, President William Craft put together the New Programs Group and asked Carver to be the chair of it. Faculty and administrators serving on the group were looking at what kinds of programs the college would want to get involved with.

“One of the major [ideas] that emerged was reinvigorating summer school for the benefit of our students, because we think there really are a lot of benefits,” Carver said.

Some benefits of summer school are the possibility of adding a major or minor, having more time to focus on a particularly challenging or interesting class and the potential to graduate early, Carver said.

Also, according to Carver, a lot of students want to take online classes because they understand that employers want to see students who have done some learning in an online environment, because much of the training and development in companies happens online.

“I think the biggest thing that has held summer school back has been the lack of flexibility,” Carver said. “Students feel the need to get out there and start summer jobs and internships, and oftentimes they’re anxious to get home.”

However, online classes now give students the flexibility to be anywhere, and sometimes allow them to work at a pace that suits them.

Carver said she has been working to increase student interest by offering more classes, cooperating with SGA and engaging more professors.

“There are many new and different things that [faculty] could do during the summer that they’re not able to do during the school year,” Carver said.

For instance, English professor Dr. Amy Watkin will teach one of two classes on Harry Potter for the first time this summer.

“I offered to teach it because I love Harry Potter,” Watkin said. “I’m also very interested in pop culture, popular fiction and the divide between the classic stuff that we feel like we’re supposed to study and the fun stuff that we’re not supposed to study for some reason, and Harry Potter bridges that gap in some interesting ways.”

In addition to Watkin’s class, results of SGA’s initiative are the courses “Psychology and Neuroscience of Sleep” with Dr. Mikel Olson, “Psychology of Sexuality” with Dr. Philip Lemaster and “Harry Potter: Liberal Arts for Wizards and Muggles” with Dr. Dawn Duncan.

According to Watkin, the student interest in the Harry Potter courses seems to be high. Hopefully, the course can be offered on later occasions as well.

“The dream would be that one day the course would also travel to London and visit Harry Potter studios,” Watkin said. “But we’ll see how it goes this year.”

Watkin’s course “Harry Potter: Champion of Pop Culture” is a result of students’ votes on new summer classes. Students had the opportunity to submit ideas for new classes to SGA President Tanner Knutson.

“The purpose was to create some new classes, but I think the bigger purpose was to create some excitement around summer classes,” Knutson said. “It was really fun to get all these students’ input on what they would like to see.”

Freshman playwright publishes first play

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Cartwright said faculty members from the Concordia theatre department have also told him that they will consider his work in the future. Photo submitted by Bri Lee.

Cartwright said faculty members from the Concordia theatre department have also told him that they will consider his work in the future. Photo submitted by Bri Lee.

Freshman Chris Cartwright has always had a passion for theatre; he began acting in fourth grade. Now, his play has been published by Off the Wall Plays and is ready for purchase.

Off the Wall Plays, an online publishing house, notified Cartwright a few weeks ago. He wrote the one-act comedy, which he titled “Awaiting Patients,” during his junior year at Eastview High School. He said the play tells the story of six strangers in a clinic waiting room, there to see a doctor who is not showing up.

“The characters are crazy: one is a super emotional pregnant lady, and her helpless husband, and a very old guy, and a typical midwestern woman . . . and they eventually storm into the doctor’s office,” Cartwright said.

This marks the first time Cartwright has ever done any playwriting. His theatre director, Scott Durocher, expressed interest in the play and asked Cartwright if he wanted to direct it at Eastview High School.

“[Durocher] was there to encourage me,” Cartwright said. “I was one of few people who expressed interest in directing and not acting…it was surprising to him that I wanted to go more into directing and playwriting.”

Cartwright was able to cast and direct the 45-minute play. After a few productions of the show, he said that he set the script aside and paid it no attention for several months.

“The script was just lying dormant on my laptop, so halfway through senior year… I decided to send it off to a couple publishers just on a whim,” Cartwright said. “I really wasn’t expecting anything.”

To Cartwright’s surprise, he heard back from several different publishers who were interested in publishing his work. He ultimately decided to publish his production through Off the Wall Plays because he felt strongly about their mission of providing scripts and plays to theatres for an affordable price.

Although his decision was made last November, the process of publishing takes well over a year, according to Cartwright. Schools, community theatres and professional theatres can now purchase the script and rights to produce “Awaiting Patients.” Cartwright will receive half of the profit for each script purchased and another portion of the money made from producing it.

Since writing “Awaiting Patients,” Cartwright has written several more plays. Lately, he has been writing shorter plays and submitting them to theatre festivals across the country to see if any theatre companies show interest in producing them.

“A lot of play publishers prefer you to have a production of it done before you send it in to get published,” Cartwright said.

If writers can find a theatre willing to put on a production of their play, it greatly increases the odds of publication.

Cartwright said faculty members from the Concordia theatre department have also told him that they will consider his work in the future. Photo submitted by Bri Lee.

Cartwright said faculty members from the Concordia theatre department have also told him that they will consider his work in the future. Photo submitted by Bri Lee.

On-campus housing shifted to fit decreased enrollment

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As the end of the school year creeps closer and students begin to seek housing for next year, some have been surprised to find certain changes in on-campus dorm and apartment availability.

Mikal Kenfield, director of Residence Life, said 60 to 65 percent of the student body typically lives on campus. With lower enrollment, fewer floors and rooms are needed to house this population.

Kenfield said Residence Life aims to keep floors full for students so they can interact with each other and not be alone. Therefore, Residence Life has taken several floors offline in housing to keep rooms full and students congregated. The following floors will not be available for the 2016-2017 school year: the sixth floor of Park Region, the top two floors of Hoyum and the eighth floors of both Hallet and Erickson. Fjelsted will remain unavailable as it still holds faculty offices.

In Livedalen, all floors will remain available but the female and male floors will switch, designating four female floors and three male floors, instead of three female floors and four male floors.

Hoyum will be losing both of its two returning-student male floors. According to Kenfield, there are more females than males, and the college is shaping to new demographic sizes.

“There’s one space [single room] in Hoyum for a returning male student on a new student floor and I saw in the housing center that it got picked,” Kenfield said. “So there’s one returning male student in Hoyum.”

While floors are being removed in on-campus dorms to make up for lower enrollment, an alternate option is being applied to Brown Hall and Bogstad Manor.

Many quads in Brown Hall will be converted into triples like this current one. Photo by Reilly Myklebust.

Many quads in Brown Hall will be converted into triples like this current one. Photo by Reilly Myklebust.

Instead of compacting students and closing rooms, rooms will simply house fewer students: triples are being turned into doubles and doubles turned into singles in Brown; a few apartments meant for four will be available for three in Bogstad Manor.

Kenfield said students have expressed that they really want their own bedrooms. By reducing the amount of beds in Brown, there would be more single bedroom choices.

“Right now there’s 250, so we want to reduce it to 150 to 180 beds,” Kenfield said.

Right now, students pay $1,680 per semester with a roommate in a double. To have a double to oneself, a student would pay $2,520 per semester. A triple shared between three costs $1,680 per semester per student; a triple shared between two would cost each student $2,520 per semester.

“If someone is willing to pay extra to have a room to themselves, that benefits the department and it benefits the student, so that’s a win- win,” Kenfield said.

Sophomore Hailey Morrow is one of the students who chose to have a room alone. After living arrangements fell through with two friends, Morrow received a triple to herself in Brown. She decided to close it off to roommates.

“I really like having the room to myself as a place to just get away,” Morrow said. “It’s easier to study, too. Everyone has their own study habits.”

However, after a few months, Morrow found that she couldn’t afford the cost and decided to open it up to roommates.

“For two and half months I paid it full and then opened it up to roommates in October,” Morrow said. “For me, it depended on financial aid, but the cost can be a lot.”

By opening it up, she was able to pay just her portion of the room again. She said she never received a roommate, which she was told by the housing office is not uncommon because most transfers are more interested in apartments and townhouses.

Morrow said that while the cost can be a lot, the option of having your own room is great for people who enjoy having alone time and personal space.

“The Butterfly Mosque” to be upcoming summer read

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This summer, hundreds of incoming freshmen will read the memoir of a young American woman and hear her questions about faith, following her brave journey to Egypt, where she decided to teach after college.

“Doesn’t that sound like a Cobber?” said Dr. Dawn Duncan, English professor and chair of the Summer Book Read Committee.

Duncan said the committee is very happy about their choice of this year’s summer read, “The Butterfly Mosque” by G. Willow Wilson.

G. Willow Wilson’s “The Butterfly Mosque” is available in the Cobber Bookstore. Photo by Emely Kransvik

G. Willow Wilson’s “The Butterfly Mosque” is available in the Cobber Bookstore. Photo by Emely Kransvik

The book, published by Grove Press, is described on the publisher’s website: “Twenty-seven-year-old G. Willow Wilson has already established herself as an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. In her memoir, the Colorado-raised journalist tells her remarkable story of converting to Islam and falling in love with an Egyptian man in a turbulent post– 9/11 world.

Part travelogue, love story and memoir, ‘The Butterfly Mosque’ is a brave, inspiring story of faith — in God, in each other, in ourselves and in the ability of relationships to transcend cultural barriers and exist above the evils that threaten to keep us apart.”

According to Duncan, the book educates as well as entertains, and should interest both religious and non-religious people, even though it discusses the Islamic faith. In addition, the book is relatable to Cobbers who experienced time abroad.

“The book is incredibly well-written and we felt like [the author’s] voice was a voice so close to our own students’ voices that they could imagine themselves in her position,” Duncan said. “I’m telling you, anybody will like this.”

The road to choosing the book has consisted of meetings, voting and a lot of reading, but Duncan said the process of book selection varies from year to year. The book should engage and excite students for the annual Symposium, which is why the Symposium Committee will make book suggestions for the Summer Book Read Committee.

“We asked the Symp0sium Committee to forward us titles that they would like for us to consider, and that has worked differently every year,” Duncan said. “Some committees don’t spend a lot of time looking at books and basically leave it in our hands. Other committees may say ‘Here are ten possibilities we found’ — and the worst case scenario: one year I had to read 40 books.”

This year, however, the suggestion of what would become the summer book read came from English professor Dr. Amy Watkin, who found her students engaged in the book, which was assigned for one of her classes. “I recommended ‘The Butterfly Mosque’ because some of my first-year students read it for my Inquiry Seminar ‘Beyond Genocide: Learning to Help and Hope’ a few years ago,” Watkin said. “I asked them to read a chapter or two because we were going to hear the author speak and I wanted them to be familiar with part of her work, and they chose to finish the entire book because they loved it so much.” According to Watkin, the book is timely in terms of current events regarding Muslims in this country and around the world.

“It’s time that we have more discussion of Islam in order to gain understanding and fellowship,” she said.

The fact that Watkin’s students liked the book so much, was a good sign to Duncan. She said the students’ interests are the committee’s priority.

“What’s going to work with a 59-year-old English professor is not necessarily what’s going to work with an 18 year old in the summer,” Duncan said. “We’re always trying to think of the students and what will keep them reading, and really try to give them a good entry into the academic life.”

In order to ensure that the book would be appealing to incoming freshmen, a focus group of current students was put together. The students approved the book, and it was unanimously voted for by the Summer Book Read Committee.

“Of the seven books I read I had no question that this would be the one my students would love, but I wanted to know what the students thought and [they] agreed,” Duncan said.

In addition to having a focus group, sophomore Andie Palagi was asked to join the Summer Book Read Committee in order to ensure that the book would be suitable for new students.

“I kind of accidentally joined the committee, because in November the Student Symposium Committee asked if anybody would be able to read this book called “The Voices of the Arab Spring,” one of the books they were considering for the summer book read,” Palagi said. “And I was the only person who read it … and [the committee] discovered that I like reading, and that I’m a fast reader, so they asked me to be on the book committee.”

Palagi said the meetings mainly consisted of sharing thoughts on “The Butterfly Mosque,” and said that they all liked the book. The committee also looked at data of the number of students who had read past summer books, and found that fiction and memoirs attracted the most readers.

“We think that this book fulfils what students would be interested in,” Palagi said. “I couldn’t put it down.”

The book shows the author’s personal beliefs from a Western perspective, something that makes it more understandable to readers, Palagi said. She also said that the book pertains to Concordia’s interfaith program.

Hopefully, the incoming freshmen will find the book as wonderful and engaging as the Summer Book Read Committee did.

“I liked it so much that when I finished it, I wanted to know the next part,” Duncan said. “When you are reading a book and you want the next part of the series, that’s a good sign.”

In memory of

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Lucas Anderson

Lucas Anderson

Concordia sophomore Lucas Anderson passed away this past Saturday in his family’s home. Anderson, age 26, was a talented pianist, and his talent was greatly admired by his peers and mentors, namely Dr. Jay Hershberger, Anderson’s private teacher. Anderson is greatly missed, and The Concordian would like to offer our sincere condolences to his family. A memorial service will be held today, March 17, at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church in Fargo. A visitation will take place from 2 to 3 p.m. at the same location.

Community members gathered on Monday for a can- dlelight vigil of remembrance. Submitted.

Community members gathered on Monday for a can- dlelight vigil of remembrance. Submitted.

What is consent? Cobbers talk about sexual assault

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One in 5 women and 1 in 16 men will experience sexual assault while in college, according to It’s On Us, a campaign combating sexual assault in colleges nationwide.

So don’t go walking alone at night, right? Wrong.

“That’s not the kind of rape we’re dealing with on campus,” said Natalie Dulka, co-founder of feminism club.

Most sex offenders know the person they assault, according to Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action by The White House Council on Women and Girls, published January 2014.

In simpler terms than the 20-page pdf document, Concordia’s policy says any kind of sexual touching without a clear, sober, unpressured “yes” from both people is sexual assault. It doesn’t matter if it is violent or not, over clothing or not — if someone’s not 100 percent sure the other person wants it, and they do it anyway — that’s sexual assault.

The clear, sober, unpressured “yes” is what consent is, according to Concordia’s policy, but a lot of people don’t understand that, Dulka said.

“I think a lot of times when sexual assault happens especially on college campuses it’s because there’s a lack of understanding on what consent is.”

According to Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Sue Oatey, head of Concordia’s It’s On Us organization, Concordia’s sexual misconduct policy is worded in a not so “person-friendly” way, in order to meet certain legal obligations.

It’s On Us is working to educate people about what sexual assault really means and clear up some confusions about consent.

Just because someone doesn’t say no, doesn’t mean that they’re saying yes, according to Dulka.

“Consent is active. It’s engaged,” Dulka said.

For gender scholar and former Concordia faculty member Megan Orcholski, consent even applies to cuddling and holding hands.

“Consent for me is about ‘Is what I’m doing with you ok?’,” Orcholski said.

A yes to one thing does not mean yes to everything, Dulka added.

“It’s not just like ‘she said yes to kissing and she took off her pants so she must have wanted it.’ That’s not how that works,” Dulka said.

First-year student Sean Fee said consent is not just a one-and-done type deal.

“You don’t just ask it once,” he said. “It’s a continuous thing, because just because someone feels a certain way one minute, if they feel a different way the next minute then the offer’s off the table.”

Dulka said people need to ask before engaging in sexual activity with someone; they can’t just assume the person will say no if it’s unwanted.

“There are a lot of people, especially introverts, who won’t say anything,” she said.

Fee said that this can create a terrible feeling afterward if someone did not ask the other person — who may be too timid to speak up — before engaging in sexual activity with them, because that is also form of sexual assault.

It’s important to communicate to make sure both people are on the same page, according to Dulka.

“If we don’t teach everybody that it is their right to say no … then we’re going to have problems,” Dulka said. “And it’s the problem we have now.”

For Fee, verbal communication is the way to go when it comes to clarity, because different gestures and nonverbal things can be easily misunderstood.

“If you’re mature enough to have sex, I think you should be mature enough to be able to talk about it with your partner or whoever,” he said.

Fee said people can get confused about what they think others want sexually. Orcholski agreed, saying people often don’t interpret situations the same way.

Orcholski recalls a time when a guy she was interacting with intimately did not understand that what he almost did would have been rape.

“I think I said “no” 10 to 15 times, which shouldn’t have to happen,” she said.

Though they did not have sex, Orcholski still recalls their conversation the next morning.

“He said ‘I think had I tried a little harder last night, we would’ve had sex,’” she said. “I wasn’t articulate enough yet to say, ‘So had you worked just a little harder, you could have raped me?’”

Pressured sex is rape, according to Concordia’s policy and Minnesota law.

Dulka said a contributing factor to this issue is the way that society questions women so much.

“A lot of men assume that women don’t know what they want,” she said.

For Orcholski, who has taught Gender and Communication at Concordia, the way that we are raised in our genders plays a role in this interpretation.

“If you say no 27 times and on the 28th you hesitate, will they put their dick in you?”

Oatey said this decision cannot be pressured.

“It’s a personal choice. … Whoever you’re with is not in charge of that decision. You are.”

According to Oatey, if someone cannot give consent, it is up to the other person to not engage in sexual activity with this person.

Dulka taught a sex education class to teen boys this summer; she recalls one boy’s reaction to this concept.

“One guy was like ‘Well are we just supposed to never have sex when we’re drunk then?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s probably your safest bet. If you’re concerned about consent or being falsely accused of rape, or something awful like that — don’t have sex with a drunk girl.”

Just clarifying these things can help, according to Dulka.

“It’s not that men are evil or want to have power over women or are awful animals and can’t control themselves,” Dulka said. “It’s that they’re not taught. It’s simply that we don’t teach the right values.”

Because we don’t talk about it, people can end up committing rape because they don’t understand they’re supposed to ask the other person if the sex is wanted. Fee said this is an issue.

“Even if those people don’t mean harm, they’re being harmful,” he said.

For Dulka, the time to start talking about consent needs to be much earlier.

“We should teach young children that their bodies are theirs. And they are in charge of their bodies,” Dulka said. “When you’re taught that your body is yours, you understand that everybody else’s bodies are theirs.”

Fee said if we start talking about sex at a young age as something that is not bad, then people will have a healthier understanding of it, which in turn will make it easier to talk about consent and sexual assault.

“[Sex] has been something that’s taboo and I think that’s how rape culture and different things like that become taboo as well, whereas if we talk about them as frequently as they occur, I think it would solve some issues,” Fee said.

For Orcholski, it starts with ourselves.

“We first have to figure out our boundaries and get stronger,” Orcholski said. “[Learn to say] ‘Respect my boundaries or leave.’”

Orcholski said having personal conversations is a good way to break down assumptions and misunderstandings that people have about consent and sexual assault.

Oatey said Concordia’s It’s On Us is working to initiate these conversations by having Resident Assistants, Orientation Leaders and athlete leaders talk to students about sexual assault and consent.

“The most powerful voices about this are student to student,” she said.

For Oatey, it’s about people’s respect for the ones they are with and for themselves as well.

It’s everyone’s responsibility to care about consent, Fee said in an email, and Dulka said this is especially important for Cobbers.

“Our statement is to become responsibly engaged in the world and that means responsibly engaged in sexual health issues. … If you’re a Cobber and you’re a male, you should care about consent. If you’re a Cobber and you’re a female, you should care about consent,” Dulka said.

Some people may see seeking consent as killing the moment, but for Fee, it’s sexier to ask.

“I find it admirable if I ask or if someone else asks,” he said. “And I also I find it sexier.”

Though it may seem awkward, Dulka said it’s always worth it to ask.

“The awkwardness of saying ‘Hey do you like this?’ or ‘Hey is this okay,’ or ‘Hey do you want to keep going’ … That awkwardness is far less awkward than facing each other in court.”

Oatey said the consequences of being classified as a sex offender are serious and long-term. If someone is convicted in court as a sex offender, that listing travels with them when they try to get a job and some jobs may not be available to them. If it is a campus hearing, the listing goes along when the student tries to transfer.

Dulka said just a few moments of making sure both people want what is happening, can have a lifetime’s impact.

“Stopping and taking those 30 seconds to ask checkup questions and to make sure everybody’s on the same page is going to benefit you in the long run,” she said.


Professors tailor classroom discussions for introverted students

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One step. That is all that separates Tayler Klimek from the inner ring of desks — the fishbowl — where small-group discussion is taking place in a large-group setting.

It might as well be a mile.

In fishbowl discussions, only people in the middle ring of desks can talk. Everyone else on the outside cannot add to the discussion, even if they only have something small to say, Klimek said.

“You have to pass that barrier and walk into the circle,” said Klimek, a senior who considers herself introverted. “I don’t know if it is a turn of laziness or not, but you just don’t want to take that extra step to go into the fishbowl.”

While Klimek is not a fan of the fishbowl discussion, this method of participation is one way that professors have tried to incorporate various learning and processing methods into classrooms. From Moodle forums to writing down ideas to discussion in large group discussion, some professors are addressing differences in communication.

Not every person learns the same way, nor do all students speak up in the same instances as their peers. Not everybody wants to raise their hand and participate in that way. Johnny Wagner addresses this very issue in a letter to the editor that was published in The Concordian Oct. 8, 2015.

“Imagine, if you will, a perfect student. This precocious individual spends all of his or her free time studying, has impeccable attendance, and always scores highly on tests,” Wagner wrote. “Now, visualize said student logging on to the internet to check grades and being devastated to find that … he or she has a B marring the gradebook. Why? The student’s grade was lowered simply because the student rarely speaks in class. … Is the sentence a just punishment for the crime?”

Wagner said that no matter the reasoning, no student should be forced to participate in class beyond their comfort zone.

Not everybody is good at just jumping in there, ahead of everybody else and participating, said Aileen Buslig, professor and chair of communication studies, and an introvert.

In her classes, Buslig often has students write down responses to discussion questions prior to discussing them. The responses serve as a way to keep attendance and can be used for two other purposes.

First, it is a means to keep everyone engaged. Secondly, it gives people who may feel less bold or less extroverted the time to think about the question and think about their answers, so that they will then feel more comfortable speaking their ideas. Buslig remembers having a participation grade when she was in school.

“I was extremely shy — I mean my heart beats hard whenever I think about talking in front of people,” Buslig said. “I couldn’t bring myself to say something in class most of the time. The pressure that I felt when I just couldn’t do it and to know that that impacted my grade …  and to accept that didn’t seem right.”

Jonathan Steinwand, a professor of English, tries to be deliberate in his classes about talking about different forms of participation as many of his courses are discussion based.

In some, he employs the fishbowl in hopes that students will be more comfortable speaking in the small group setting. The fishbowl itself physically calls attention to silence and speaking. For those who speak more readily, they cannot just jump into the conversation, they have to physically move into it.

“It’s not too different from having to raise your hand, but it is a little bit — one step more than that,” Steinwand said.

He surmounts that this levels discussion and allows for more voices to be heard, because, in his opinion, discussion is the best way to learn about and get excited about literature. Lecturing about literature, he said, would be too boring.

In upper level classes, Steinwand is less directive about participation expectations, while in introductory literature classes he calls attention to discussion and the ways it can vary, ideas that are part and parcel of communication classes. One example is the idea of interpreting silence and pause perception.

Pause perception is the amount of time and silence one feels comfortable having. According to Steinwand, research has shown that people have different pause perceptions. If one has a longer pause perception, they tend to be a mental processor who processes internally rather than aloud. If one has shorter pause perception, they tend to process orally.

“I talk about the extremes — I learned from a kindergartener teacher, a friend of mine who talked about shouter-outers as those who had short pause perceptions. I was intrigued by that idea and said that we need a term that’s equally as pejorative for the other extreme,” Steinwand said. “So I came up with the selfish sponge, being one myself.”  

Extroverts and shouter-outers, like sophomore Andie Palagi, tend to have shorter pause perceptions than introverts.

“I get uncomfortable when a professor asks a question and the students just stare blankly back,” Palagi said. “It just makes me feel very sad for the professor almost, so if I’m in that situation, I’ll talk in hopes that other students will talk as well.”

Palagi’s ideal form of participation would be a debate, but she says that is because she has been in speech and debate for six years. In those instances, participation is more student-involved and the professor acts more as a moderator who allows the students to apply what they have learned in textbooks.

While outgoing now, when Palagi started high school, she was shy and did not talk much since she had a speech impediment when she was younger. Because of the impediment, she had to attend speech therapy for six years, after which she joined speech and debate.

“That was a weird switch, but in debate in high school, I had to become informed about a lot more topics, see both sides of the issues and formulate my own opinions about things,” Palagi said. “It was helpful in the fact that what I do know about I get passionate about.”

Palagi now feels like she could talk for several minutes about certain current events and controversial ideas, including things she learns about in class. But not all students feel this way, and professors like Buslig recognize that.

“There are other ways to know that people are engaging … very smart students are truly engaging. You can see their wheels turning in their head, and you can see it in the way that they write their papers, and you can see it in how well they perform on tests,” Buslig said. “But they won’t necessarily say something in class if they have to compete with other people.”

This is why she has students write down responses.

“You’d be amazed at the depth of thought that goes into the lesson or thinking about the questions that you might ask, and so to recognize that there are different ways to get people to engage and to participate and it doesn’t always have to verbal,” Buslig said.

If it is always verbal, some students may dominate the discussion. In Global Studies 117 with Leila Zakhirova, Palagi often spoke up because, as a global studies major, she became very excited about much of the subject matter. Zakhirova suggested that she let others speak more.

“I realized how little I know, which is humbling because other people participate in the discussions and I learn from them as well. So I’ve learned to stay quiet sometimes, because you can learn a lot from other people,” Palagi said.

As a student, Steinwand had a very long pause perception to the extent that he was not participating in discussions in graduate school. In being on the East Coast, the culture there was very different: if you did not speak up, people moved on without you. Here, with Minnesota nice culture, there is the assumption that people are valuable even if they do not speak up and show that they are, Steinwand said.

“So I try to introduce students to that and suggest that we all have something to learn from different styles because oral processors can do certain things but if the class is dominated by oral processors, there is a type of thinking that doesn’t always get represented in the discussion,” Steinwand said. “So finding a way to work as a class, as a team, as a group to make room for different types of processing information. It’s best for the learning of everybody.”

Buslig bridges differences in learning styles by keeping classes varied. Occasionally, she introduces a self evaluation survey to see what kind of decision-making styles her students have. Then those with the same styles group up and talk about advantages and disadvantages to that specific style, and then they share it with the whole class.

“I think that the variety allows for different modes of learning to occur and some students will be more drawn to certain styles than others, and in that way I’m reaching more people too.”

A few things that selfish sponges can do is talk to peers about discussion topics outside of class so that they are more confident with their ideas. People can also prepare something to say or develop little phrases that buy them time in conversations while they collect their thoughts, Steinwand said.

Shouter-outers can also invite others into the conversation and work to develop listening skills and restraint, while not squelching their own voice, Steinwand said.  

“I was not confident in my voice so I … challenge students to gain confidence in their own voices in discussion because that is really valuable not just in classes but in meetings and in teams that you’ll be on, in politics,” Steinwand said. “There’s all kinds of places where you have something that you care about and need to represent your position and the classroom is an excellent place to practice that.”

For Palagi, participation grades encourage people to talk more and that style of teaching is a lot more useful to learning than lectures.

“Communication skills are one of the most sought-after skills for college graduates,” Palagi said. “So I think, rather than needing to major in communication to get those skills, having participation grading and having students be more comfortable expressing their thoughts or being involved in speech where students just love the sound of their own voice is one of the ways to actually grow those skills.”

When Klimek began college, she was more introverted than she is today. Joining a percussion ensemble, along with other musical groups, really helped her to become more comfortable with sharing her ideas and expressing her personality.

Klimek believes that participation could be anything from talking in discussion to just being present in class. For her, participation grades do not always feel fair because there are those obvious people who are more extroverted and always share what they are thinking and there are people who just aren’t that way.

Klimek finds it easier to talk in classes where she is more knowledgeable or where she is more comfortable with her peers, but it has only been in the past year that she has really started becoming more comfortable speaking her mind.

“I don’t feel like I always word things the right way and I’m always thinking about how I am saying something more than what I am saying so it has been a journey,” Klimek said.

But the journey to finding one’s voice is necessary. Audrey Gunn wrote a letter to the editor in response to Wagner, arguing the value of participation grades.

“Nobody has the inherent right to always feel comfortable. It is the challenges we face that allow us to grow as humans. To argue that these challenges should be removed from college (the very place meant to allow personal development and growth) is a very dangerous idea. I should realize this better than anyone; I came to college as one of the shyest people I know, and to a great extent, I still have this shyness,” Gunn wrote. “However, without being forced to participate in class discussions, I would never have developed the basic communication skills that I have today.”

Gunn said in the letter that she cannot think of a single job that does not require communication skills. Concordia must prepare students for the world beyond college and that world does not cater to introversion.

“[The world is] not some utopian fantasy where people are never made to feel uncomfortable or to face their anxieties,” Gunn wrote. “It would be ridiculous to allow a student to not write a paper just because it creates a great deal of anxiety for them, and it is similarly ridiculous to allow a student to be a selfish sponge and never contribute to class discussions because it causes anxiety.”

Yet if students do not volunteer to speak, the only option left, if one believes they must speak, is to call on them, a process which Buslig said professors sometimes use to hear different voices in discussion.

“I even remember as a student feeling like I was put on the spot and pressure to respond when somebody called on me and when you are not ready for that, that’s hard,” Buslig said.

If a student is unsure or insecure about responding, they will not do so, according to Buslig. But if they do venture out on that metaphorical limb and receive a positive response, it increases confidence and puts them on a path to find their voice.  

“I can empathize, really, with what the student is going through, and I don’t want to devalue that, and I want to encourage them to recognize that they are thinking about things and … have good things to say,” Buslig said. “Some of the things that were most helpful to me is when people said, “That was smart. You should say something more often.”

Just a few weeks ago, Klimek went into a job interview and she was able to answer everything spot on and she got the job. Speaking in class and the practice of speaking in college prepares one to learn how to think and talk and write, Klimek said.

“I definitely don’t think a class should be without discussion,” Klimek said. “It’s just hard finding a balance, for introverts especially.”

For Buslig, as an adult, she realized that finding one’s voice is more important than she realized when she was younger.

“I was always a very good student,” Buslig said. “My parents raised me that all you have to do is do good work, and … you’ll be recognized for that. I’m still not good about putting myself out there, but I realize how much more you have to be your own advocate in some ways. The world has just become that much more oriented towards getting your message out.”

Part of finding one’s voice is practice, according to Steinwand, but some of it is also developmental psychology, for as people age, they gain experience that gives them more confidence and lets them more comfortable with their voice.

“But it seems to me that students who take ownership of their participation and become conscious of the different roles that play in this, navigate that aspect better than those who come to realize it later on,” Steinwand said.

Steinwand tries to make discussion a discussion topic, because the point of a discussion class is to learn to find your voice through sharing your perspective and getting feedback on your thoughts. That is what he asks students like Klimek to do: to claim their voice.

 

How Concordia handles plagiarism

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Rigid policies are in place, but how do professors actually deal with it?

A survey of over 63,700 college students conducted by Rutgers University found that 38 percent of college students admit to “copying a few sentences from a writ- ten source without citing it,” and 7 percent admit to “turning in work done by another.”

Although these examples are vastly different in terms of severity, both fall under the category of plagiarism.

While there are several guidelines at Concordia for the steps that professors should take if a student is caught plagiarizing, there is leeway for professors to make judgment calls and there are not any specific rules for how the professor should punish or assist the student.

Dr. Jonathan Steinwand, chair of the English department, said that cases of students maliciously passing others’ work off as their own do not come up each semester in the English department, but minor cases of plagiarism do.

A malicious case may be defined as copying another’s paper word for word; a minor case may include forgetting to include quotations around a direct quote, but including a footnote.

In Concordia’s handbook under the heading “Joint Statement on Rights, Freedoms and Respon- sibilities,” there is a category on academic integrity, including general guidelines on how professors should deal with plagiarism.

“It states that each viola- tion of academic integrity must be reported to the academic dean’s office,” Steinwand said. “It’s probably not the current practice that every violation is reported.”

Steinwand said there are sev- eral reasons that a violation may not be reported. Students may not understand when they are plagia- rizing, which is common for first- year and international students, who might come from different policy practices. The plagiarizing may also be tied to a low-stakes assignment.

“I frequently have assign- ments that are like, five points … general writing responses to read- ings,” Steinwand said. “If a student plagiarizes unintentionally on that assignment — sloppiness, laziness, whatever — this is a form of plagiarism. Not providing your source is a form of plagiarism.”

Steinwand said in these cases, he would give the student a zero and talk to them about what they did wrong.

Other times, professors are reluctant to report plagiarism because the consequences are severe and professors would rather deal with the student than put him or her in that situation, according to Steinwand. On the other hand, some professors believe it’s important to document every act a plagiarism, no matter how minor, so that there is a track record for how often a student is committing pla- giarism.

With one violation of academic integrity, students are placed on academic probation. With a second violation, they are placed on leave for a semester. In severe cases, they may be expelled or placed on one- year leave.

Aileen Buslig, chair of the communication department, said that cases of plagiarism used to be dealt with in-house exclusively. Now, professors can still deal with plagiarizing students themselves, but they must report the students as well.

In Buslig’s syllabi for each class, her policy is that plagiarism will result in failing the assignment

or course and will be reported. While she has not had any recent problems with students plagiarizing, she said reporting it partly depends on if she thinks it was purposeful.

“I do think there are small instances where a student will copy something out what they read word-for-word,” Buslig said. “I will point it out to them and tell them to make sure they are attributing appropriately.”

Buslig said in these cases, she would not report the student. If it became large portions of the pa- per or the entire paper, the student would fail the assignment and she would report him or her.

Dr. Roy Hammerling, chair of the religion department, has reported students for plagiarizing several times throughout his time at Concordia. He explained that first he calls the student into his office and asks about their writing process. Sometimes, the students will not admit to the plagiarism and he will show them all sections of the paper that were plagiarized.

Hammerling then tells the student that he or she has the right to appeal it and he sends the paper to student affairs.

“I’ve had a few students try to fight it but the evidence is usually overwhelming,” Hammerling said.

If the student admits to the plagiarism, the dean gets involved and tells the student what the penalty is. If the student chooses to fight it, student affairs sends the paper on to the judicial review committee.

Hammerling said he has taken steps to reduce plagiarism and its consequences. On the first day of his classes, he reads the college’s statement on academic integrity and tells his students that a violation will result in a failing grade in the course. He also assigns short papers first so he can catch any small mistakes right away.

“I will get very few questions that first day of class, but the week after I have a short paper assigned and I will remind them that the policy applies and then they will ask questions,” Hammerling said.

By answering questions and addressing issues right away, there are fewer mistakes in large, highpoint papers and it is easy to see if a student is having issues.

“Students are generally good and work hard at not plagiarizing,” Hammerling said.

A toast to Cord from a transfer

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Steadfast Feminist.  Natalie Dulka

Steadfast Feminist. Natalie Dulka

As some or none of you may know, I am leaving Concordia next fall. I will be transferring to NDSU for a handful of reasons, but I will always be a Cobber. The values and virtues I have accrued in my time as a Concordia student are staples in my personality and will stay with me, shaping who I am as a person, for the rest of my life. Today I write not to discuss some micro-aggression that women face or the major issue of sexual assault on college campuses but to sing the praises of this school that I have fallen very, very hard for.

My time at Concordia taught me many things. I learned about ancient Greek prostitutes, the importance of the oxford comma, and how to write counterpoint. I learned how to juggle two majors and three co-curricular activities. I learned how to start a club. I learned how to articulate my feelings in a well-educated way. I learned about the history of the Bible and the importance of listening. I learned how to stick to a sleep schedule and how to cram for an exam. I learned how important support is.

Concordia taught me more than what I learned in my classes, though. I learned how to draw strong connections between multiple fields of study. I learned how to manipulate a degree in something some would call “useless” (theatre, music, women and gender studies, etc.) and create an education that will keep me in comfort for all my days. I learned that there is nothing more important than being present. I learned to BREW.

On my second day at Concordia, I went on a field trip to the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo and helped poster for the Take Back the Night rally that they were sponsoring. My orientation club, there for “Hands for Change Day,” was a ragtag group of scientists, artists, athletes, and historians studying “Ancient Gender and Sexuality.” We sat in the conference room of the center with Nancy, the volunteer coordinator, and discussed the importance of what we had just done.

At the time, as I sat there winded and tired, I thought all that we had done was walked a bunch for no reason. I was wrong. Nancy stood before us, telling us about the numbers of people who find shelter and support at the center, and I learned an invaluable lesson: doing nothing doesn’t change things; doing something, no matter how small, does. It was in that navy blue rolling chair that I realized how important it was to engage in the world. The postering we did in downtown Fargo probably didn’t save any lives or do any permanent damage in the problem of rape. But it taught each and every one of us self- involved young people how blessed we really were. It sparked conversations and discussions of how to fix the larger problem of rape and abuse. It engendered in me a desire to make a change, to speak up, and to responsibly engage in the world.

This ideology, to responsibly engage in the world, is the cornerstone of Concordia’s mission and is paramount in the creation of citizens who won’t sit by, complacent and complicit with the injustices around us. Becoming responsibly engaged in the world means that we are becoming opinionated, strong young people who will speak up against oppression and unfairness. We, the future of the world, are being taught at Concordia to hold each other with the highest regard, to celebrate brilliance, to discuss ideolo- gies, and to change the world. We are encouraged to be amazing at Concordia and to bring that wisdom out into the community. And that is paramount to creating the world we want to live in.

We, my fellow Cobbers, are lucky enough to be the students who learn from teachers in every discipline and who are taught to create dialogue and ask questions. We are privileged enough to be the few who get to go to this beautiful school and learn from its brilliant faculty. We are fortunate enough to go to a school that has administrators like President Craft and Bruce Vieweg who care more deeply and passionately about their students than any person I’ve ever met. We are blessed to go to this school.

I will miss the hallowed halls of Bishop Whipple and Old Main. I will miss the quiet stacks on the fourth floor of the library. I will miss this place but I will keep with me the importance of its mission regardless of where the rest of my education takes me. As I write this, sitting in my cozy Brown Hall dorm, looking out the window at the setting sun shining against Knutson, I raise my mug of tea in a toast to Concordia: to the school that makes its students ask questions and find answers. To the school that demands the most from its students and gives its best in return. To Maize fries and the amazing memories I’ve made here. To chicken nugget night in DS. To the school that changed my life. To the school that taught me to be pas- sionate. To becoming responsibly engaged in the world. To Concordia. Thank you for all the wisdom you’ve given me and may you give it to many, many more.

Language Department update: Native Assistant positions eliminated

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Concordia’s budget cuts have been hard on several departments, but will especially affect world language students. In addition to the removal of several majors and teaching positions, there will be no German, French or Spanish native assistants the coming school year.

The native assistants have been a resource for students learning second languages, allowing them to practice conversation skills, as well as gain insight into the culture of the language and country they are studying. As of next fall, this opportunity will be gone.

Alejandro Piqué, Spanish department native assistant, leads a conversation group with Spanish students. Photo by Maddie Malat.

Alejandro Piqué, Spanish department native assistant, leads a conversation group with Spanish students. Photo by Maddie Malat.

According to Dr. Mary K. Rice, chair of world languages and professor of Spanish and Hispanic studies, all of Concordia’s departments were asked to make a 12 percent cut in their budgets last year. The world languages department cut a much larger percent of their expenses, about 28 percent, because they did not want to let go of their native assistants.

“We made some big sacrifices this year in order to keep the native assistants,” she said.

Some of the things they had to cut back on were special events, department- funded weekends at the Concordia Language Villages and work studies.

Though the department managed to keep their native assistant positions one extra year, the college deemed further cuts were necessary, and all native assistant positions were cut for the 2016- 2017 academic school year.

Rice said she argued against the removal of the positions, but it was ultimately the dean’s decision.

“I know there is some hope. If enrollment turns around, this may not be a permanent cut,” Rice said. “If the coming classes are stronger in number, we may be able to have native assistants again.”

Katharina Kunze, a German native assistant, agrees that cutting the positions permanently is not ideal.

According to Kunze, there are several different aspects of the native assistant position, all beneficial to language students. Part of her job is to speak the language as much as possible and arrange events like cooking and movie nights. Last semester she even made German Christmas cookies with students.

Another important aspect of her position is to lead German conversation groups. There are usually three to six students per group, and they meet once a week for 45 minutes.

“The idea is that students get to talk outside the classroom, without the pressure,” Kunze said.

The group will talk about random subjects, play games and listen to German music. Kunze also tells her students about movies and music that people are watching and listening to in Germany right now.

She’s also willing to help students with their German assignments.

“Sometimes when [students] need help with their projects, they’ll ask me for help, and we’ll just go over some things,” she said.

French native assistant, Baptiste Aufrère, agrees with Kunze about the removal of the positions.

“I think it’s a shame,” Aufrère said.

Baptiste Aufrère, French department native assistant, talking with students. Photo by Maddie Malat.

Baptiste Aufrère, French department native assistant, talking with students. Photo by Maddie Malat.

The students who participate in his conversation groups have made a lot of progress with their understanding and pronunciation of French, he said.

Aufrère said he is worried that future language students will have fewer opportunities to practice conversation skills and improve their accents.

In addition to practicing conversation skills, students enjoy the social interaction that comes with the group. Spanish native assistant Alejandro Piqué has demonstrated how the conversation groups are a good way to learn, and a nice way to have fun while doing so.

“If it’s nice outside, I’ll take [the students] to Dairy Queen or someplace else, and we’ll talk in Spanish on the way there,” Piqué said.

Rice said the world languages department is working on cheaper alternatives that can replace the native assistant positions in order to compensate for the budget cuts, at least for now. She also said Concordia currently pays for the native assistants’ housing, and gives them an allowance for food and books. Since these costs have to be cut, the department is considering — if funds allow it — to hire international students to have conversation groups with language students. Another option they are considering is having advanced language students who have studied abroad do the same.

“We’re hoping that we can maintain some of the functions that the native assistants have had,” Rice said.

According to Rice, the world language department is also currently testing an online program called “Talk Abroad,” a learning tool they are considering using next year.

The program allows students to sign up for 30-minute conversations with a native speaker of the language they are learning.

“That conversation gets recorded, so that is going to be useful as a teaching tool,” Rice said.

Because students can go back and listen to the conversation, they can hear their own mistakes, and think about alternative or better words they could have used. The teacher can also listen to the conversation, Rice said.

“What [the program] lacks is the ability to get to know the native speaker over time, and the social interaction that comes with having native assistants here all the time,” Rice said. “But it will be a good supplement in a different way.”

French major Colton Dabrowski said that he thinks future language students will not have as rich of an experience studying world languages as current students do.

“The native assistants have been an incredibly valuable addition to my learning,” Dabrowski said. “They offer insight into a culture that a book can never recreate.”

Retiring Concordia faculty

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Thank you for your dedication to your students

David Boggs
professor of painting and director, graphic design, Art, 31 years

Dr. Marilyn Guy
professor of Education, 40 years

Dr. Gretchen Harvey
assistant professor of History, 20 years

Linda James
assistant professor of Nutrition and Dietetics, 19 years

Dr. Linda Johnson
professor of History, 36 years

Connie Jones
Librarian, Carl B. Ylvisaker Library, 16 years

Maggie Jorgenson
assistant professor accounting, Offutt School of Business, 15 years

Dr. Barbara McCauley
professor of Classical Studies, 20 years

Catherine McMullen
associate professor of English/program director Multimedia Journalism
and adviser for The Concordian, 21 years

Dr. Constance Peterson
associate professor of Nursing, 30 years

Dr. Linda Scott
associate professor of Nursing, 16 years

Leonor Sillers
associate professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies, 29 years

Duane Siverson
instructor/head coach Men’s and Women’s Golf, Athletics, 38 years

Dr. Karla Smart-Morstad
professor of Education, 30 years

Dr. Scot Stradley
professor of finance, Offutt School of Business, 15 years

Daniel Thureen
assistant professor of computer science, Offutt School of Business, 37 years

Henry Tkachuk
professor of Communication Studies and Theatre Art/co-director of Oral Communication Center, 44 years

Dr. Michael Wohlfeil
professor of Education, 29 years;

Forecasting class to predict enrollment for upcoming year

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Students in Reber’s forecasting class. From left to right: Mark Switajski, Zach Lipp, Tom Dukatz, Phil Manley, Rachel Swedin and Alex Reichle. Photo by Maddie Malat.

Students in Reber’s forecasting class. From left to right: Mark Switajski, Zach Lipp, Tom Dukatz, Phil Manley, Rachel Swedin and Alex Reichle. Photo by Maddie Malat.

Nine students in Dr. John Reber’s forecasting class are working to predict Concordia’s future enrollment numbers, which could greatly benefit the college’s budget planning.

According to Eric Addington, associate vice president for Enrollment and Financial Aid, the projection will benefit the school because the college’s budget will be built on a specific number of future students.

Forecasting enrollment is a complicated process, but junior Phillip Manley explained the essence of it.

“We’re essentially trying to predict how likely a student is to move from one level to the next, so to go from submitting the application, to being admitted, to depositing, to becoming a student,” Manley said. “And then from there … you can get a prediction of what you think the total number [of freshmen] will be for the next year.”

Tom Dukatz said the process can be complicated, but the approach is simple enough.

“If a person submits an application, we can with a high amount of confidence tell if they are going to come here or not,” he said.

According to senior Zach Lipp, the idea of the class came about after last year’s Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition. Lipp, Dukatz and other peers of the forecasting class are members of the team and have won the last three years of competition. Reber advises the team, and figured a forecasting class would help get people into data analytics.

“We were on the ride back and Tom and I were talking to Dr. Reber, and he kind of casually mentioned ‘What if we had a forecasting course?’ ” Lipp said. “And from there, [Reber] took charge to offer a special-topic forecasting course.”

Lipp said the class was originally a theory-based course. About a month in, the class voted and decided to try to apply their knowledge.

Junior Mark Switajski said that the class wanted to work on a long-term project. They decided to work on forecasting future enrollment numbers for Concordia. Admissions provided the data they needed.

Reber and Addington had previously talked about potentially involving students in a project like this.

“The class was excited about it, and I think it’s been a great experience for them seeing how challenging real data can be to work with,” Reber said. “We’ll spend an entire 50-minute class discussing a single variable.”

Addington said he was impressed by students’ success in some of the data competitions they’ve been participating in.

“[Dr. Reber and I] thought that it might be both fun and practical to see what work we could do with this talented bunch of students,” he said.

He also said he visits the class from time to time to talk about the work and why it’s important; students present some of their findings and ask a lot of good questions.

“The talent and the energy that these students have is pretty infectious and fun to be around,” Addington said.

According to Switajski, the class was given student data from the last two years, but they do not have access to any student names or other identifying data. Some examples of what they are looking at is high school GPA, as well as SAT and ACT scores. The whole class had to sign non-disclosure agreements, which means they are not allowed to talk about the specifics of the data.

He said a big part of the project is data-cleaning. There are values missing, and sometimes inaccurate values in the data they receive.

“Sometimes someone will enter an SAT score for an ACT, and it’s inconsistent,” Switajski said. “The first step is to clean all that up and fill in missing values; make it workable.”

The second thing to be done is to explore the data, and finds trends within it. According to Switajski, the class has found that students with certain attributes are more likely to attend Concordia, or less likely to.

“The second part of the process is modeling, and modeling is where the real art and the math is,” Switajski said. “How do we best predict a student’s likelihood of coming here?”

According to Lipp, they are not yet at the modeling stage.

“Modeling is fitting some function to the information that we have to try to predict a number,” Lipp said.

But though the project is slow-going, Dukatz said the class has gotten an incredible amount of data-cleaning done.

“A lot of that is due to [Manley’s] work,” Dukatz said.

Manley primarily cleans data, and he also outlined the project.

Manley said he has decided to extend the project and work on it next semester as well.

“I think I’m going to be doing it as an independent study,” Manley said. “It’s not finalized yet, if that’s what I’ll be doing or not, but that’s what the plan is.”

He is planning to work on the project by himself, with help from Reber and possibly other math and computer science faculty, he said.

“We hope to have our models built by the end of the year,” Manley said. “My hope is that next semester I’m going to try to build a software for [the project], so people in Admissions can look at any given day what their expected number of students is.”

Manley said he thinks the project can be very beneficial to the college.

“If we can help Admissions with forecasting enrollment, we won’t have as bad budget cuts in the future, because we’d plan better,” Manley said.

According to Manley, the plan is for Concordia to properly apply the forecasting methods for the fall of 2017.

 

A new balancing act

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Cell phone usage in Concordia classrooms

Concordia professors each have their own policies on cell phone use in class. Photo by Maddie Malat.

Concordia professors each have their own policies on cell phone use in class. Photo by Maddie Malat.

In one classroom, a student is told to put her phone away and pay attention. Next door, students use their cell phones to take an in-class quiz. Down the hall, a professor asks a student to look up a fact on his phone. The use for Smartphones in our society is rapidly expanding, but classroom use still varies greatly.

Dr. Lisa Sethre-Hofstad, associate dean of the college and former professor of psychology, tried to balance the use of technology in her cell phone policy.

“Technology can be a problem in the classroom… but on the other hand, I am starting to find ways to say, ‘How can we use that technology in a way that’s helpful?’” Sethre-Hofstad said.

At Concordia, professors are allowed to create their own policies regarding cell phone use in the classroom. However, as Smartphones continue to improve and offer more uses than simply communication, the once strict policies are softening and professors are finding new ways to use technology in

their classes. Still, new challenges are arising in balancing the positive and negative uses of cell phones in the classroom

Sethre-Hofstad last taught classes at Concordia in 2013, but now feels like her once strict policy is out of date.

“What I used to do was ‘I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to hear them,’” Sethre-Hofstad said. If she were to update her policy now, she feels like she would try to find more ways to incorporate cell phone use into the classroom.

Dr. Stephanie Ahlfeldt of the communication department encourages cell phone use in certain situations, like in-class quizzes or entering dates into mobile calendars. However, when it comes down to it, her cell phone policy is all about participation.

“When we’re in class, obviously your attention needs to be on being a good participant, a good classmate, and if you’re on your phone during class, then other people are thinking about being on their phones, so it’s a distraction,” Ahlfeldt said. “So the policy is essentially to not be a distraction, to be positively contributing in class.”

According to some students, they would like more freedom with their cell phones in class, but they also feel like some guidelines are healthy for the classroom. Sophomore Kasey Finch thinks students need to understand the consequences of frequently checking their phone in class.

“I think people need to take their own responsibility,” Finch said. “If they’re going to use their phone then they’re obviously not going to be listening as well, and that’s their choice, because their education is their choice.”

Despite feeling like students should be liable for their cell phone usage, Finch also feels like a classroom cell phone policy is important.

“It’s nice to have some guidelines from professors as to what they’re looking for and what their expectations are, too,” Finch said.

Ahlfeldt agrees, and she believes a classroom without a cell phone policy wouldn’t function well.

“We are such an instant gratification culture, that we would go right to responding without waiting,” Ahlfeldt said. “We all need boundaries and we all need to know what’s expected of us.”

Conversely, sophomore Lankin Tyll believes college students are at an age where an open policy wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

“I think it should mostly be up to the students, and I think we all have a basic un- derstanding of what is appropriate at this point in our lives,” Tyll said. “We’re adults now.”

Sethre-Hofstad struggles with how to balance these opposing ideas, and understands that college-aged students deserve a degree of freedom.

“How do you guide students now that they are more independent and have more capacity to make their own decisions?” Sethre-Hofstad said.

However, Sethre-Hofstad says she believes her role is to prepare students for life after college, when using phones during a meeting or on the job may have much larger consequences than having it out in the classroom. She thinks students don’t always know what is acceptable and what isn’t.

“If you have no parameters, or no guidance, I think that students can fall into a trap of a behavior that they don’t understand is disrespectful,” Sethre-Hofstadsaid.

The professors also feel like this issue expands beyond the classroom and into our everyday lives. In a 2014 Educause report, studies found that 86 percent of college students own a Smart-phone. They also found that on average, students use their phones 3.6 hours a day. Ahlfeldt sees this as something that pulls us away from not only learning, but reality as well.

“The minute we went to Smartphones, people just have so much available on them, and so we are on them more,” Ahlfeldt said. “When you look at the way cell phones take us away from being together, being present… I have to really work to find positives for cell phones in the class because there is so much darkness there.”

Sethre-Hofstad recognizes the familiar struggle, and hopes to make use of the bright side of expanding technology.

“Rather than fight with technology, I’d like to find ways to utilize it in healthy ways,” Sethre-Hofstad said. “In a way that would be helpful to learning and helpful to student engagement.”

As technology continues to grow and our devices become even more integrated into everyday life, new challenges will continue to arise. But despite this, Ahlfeldt feels we have to deal with each new problem as it comes and accept the role of cell phones in society.

“They’re a part of our lives and they’re here to stay,” she said.

This article was submitted by Bailey Tillman, contributing writer.


Concordia turns 125

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College prepares for quasquicentennial

125Oct. 31, 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of Concordia College and there are many events planned to take place throughout the year to celebrate this milestone in the history of the college.

“There’s a wide ranging series of events to celebrate the faith and the imagination and the courage of the founders 125 years ago,” said President William Craft.

On the actual anniversary date, Student Government Association will throw a “birthday party” for the college in the atrium.

SGA president Rachael Schauer said the “come when you can” type of celebration happening the entire day of the anniversary.

“We wanted to make it not only during a specific time,” Schauer said. “This way it allows people to stop by quick to the atrium. More people can have the opportunity to feel invested in it.”

She said the atrium will be decorated, people will be able to take photos at a photo booth, cake will be served and the Alumni and Advancement offices will be handing out Concordia-themed gifts such as temporary tattoos.

Later that day, students from sports, music ensembles and other student organizations will make the shape of “125” on the football field for an aerial photo.

To go along with the celebration, Schauer said SGA hopes to host a service day on Oct. 30 that focuses on helping refugees in the F-M community.

Chief of Staff Tracey Moorhead and a committee has put together a list of events they think will help celebrate the college throughout the entire year. They wanted to use some of the events Concordia already has in place to do this.

“We do so many good things on an annual schedule that we needed to take advantage of that,” Moorhead said. “Plus we wanted to pay tribute to the past but still look to the future.”

This year, Concordia will hold five President’s Seminars rather than the usual three or four. Three will feature a Concordia faculty member and include accomplished graduates of Concordia. The mentoring relationships between faculty and students at Concordia will be showcased.

“The idea here is that we are featuring two things,” Craft said. “We are featuring graduates who are living out the mission and at the same time we are featuring the relational genius of the college.”

Peter Halverson, associate professor of voice, led the first President’s Seminar on Sept.18. Dr. Kristi Loberg, associate professor and director of the social work program, will lead on Oct.28 and Dr. Douglas Anderson, professor of mathematics will lead on March 17.

The other two President’s Seminars will feature nationally recognized people external from the college.

On Nov. 10 Dr. Carol Geary Schneider, president emerita of the Association of American Colleges and Universities will lead the President’s Seminar. She is one of the most prominent advocates for the liberal arts, said Craft.

On Feb. 9 David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author will lead a President’s Seminar about Concordia’s role as a liberal arts college of the church.

The “History and Heritage: Celebrating 125 Years of Concordia College” exhibit opens in the Cyrus M. Running Gallery Oct. 6. Then in March the “Women at Concordia” exhibit will open in the Cyrus M. Running Gallery. Faculty and students have worked on the exhibits for approximately two years.

Another project that will be taking place this year is Concordia Stories, which is inspired by StoryCorps. Audio recordings will be collected from alumni, current students and future students.

Dr. Greg Carlson, director of film studies and media activities will be working along with students to record short clips that capture the stories of people associated with Concordia.

“We’re trying to have Concordia reside at the heart of the conversation,” Carlson said.

They will be collecting the stories publicly during homecoming and also already created some recordings over family weekend. These require no appointment.

“They’re stories that we don’t get otherwise,” Moorhead said. “We need to have them in the archives so we can enjoy them.”

Recording the stories will add many more Concordia-related memories to the archives of the college for people to cherish and enjoy.

“There are almost limitless stories of alums that we’re hoping to gather,” Craft said.

They will be seeking out stories from some certain individuals as well, and Carlson would be happy to set up an appointment to record with anyone who wishes to throughout the year.

“In one sense it’s the kind of thing you could do any year,” Carlson said. “Our expectation is not that these interviews will try to make grand, broad, overarching statements about the philosophy of what Concordia means. We expect they will speak to the highly personal, the very specific.”

The clips will be put into digital format, and Carlson said they plan to upload them onto Soundcloud and link that to the Concordia website.

“People can go and at their leisure can listen to different stories from different people,” Carlson said.

The first Concordia Stories could be available online as soon as the end of this semester.

These events, and many more that can be found on pamphlets around campus will help to celebrate the 125th year of Concordia College.

Hispanic students speak to lack of diversity

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As the college strives to find a diversity officer for its new diversity initiative, some hispanic students on campus find the lack of diversity to impact the campus in negative ways for both national and international students, but also find avenues where Concordia exceeds in incorporating other cultures onto campus.

According to College Scorecard, Concordia is 84 percent white, 2 percent Asian, 2 percent hispanic, 2 percent black, 1 percent American Indian, 1 percent of one or more races, 3 percent non-resident and 6 percent unknown.

Freshman Esmeralda Mancilla, Pelican Rapids, Minn. student with parents from Mexico and Guatemala, was surprised at the little diversity when she first moved to Concordia.

“It [lack of diversity] does bother me,” Mancilla said. “Going in, I thought there was more diversity because how they were so big on diversity. I got here, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable or anything, it’s just one of those things where you feel so much like the minority.”

Senior Rosa Argueta, previous resident Crookston, Minn. with parents from El Salvador, had a similar experience to Mancilla’s.

“I don’t consider this a bad thing, but realizing that you’re the only hispanic or non-white person in the classroom, and you’re like, ‘Oh wow, I didn’t realize this before,’” Argueta said. “I never realize it until I’m halfway through the class. I think that goes to show that it doesn’t matter.”

Freshman Sara Villalobos, Shakopee, Minn. native with Mexican roots, struggled to grasp the whiteness of campus when she moved in.

“My other impression was, it’s very white,” Villalobos said. “That was one of my biggest struggles was coming here and I didn’t realize before coming here just how white it was. I thought it was going to be a little easier to find a hispanic community.”

Villalobos said at the beginning of the academic year, the college hosted an event for the hispanic community on campus. Out of the 43 hispanic students on campus, only eight students showed for the event, leaving Villalobos feeling more isolated.

Villalobos took initiative and joined el Circulo Hispano, the Spanish club, and became one of the coordinators. Her experience with the club has improved her feelings.

“I’m very involved with the hispanic community, more involved than I was in high school,” Villalobos said. “It’s really nice and what makes it nice I think is that we’re so small here compared to other areas, like my high school, it feels like I’m finding family.”

These students have ideas on ways to improve the atmosphere on campus to help current students feel more welcomed and help them stay all four years. Mancilla believes having a Spanish class for native Spanish speakers would be helpful because she grew up in an environment where she spoke in the language, but did not write a lot. A Spanish class for native speakers would help bring the hispanic community closer, according to Mancilla.

Villalobos has a grander proposition for the college.

“I think we can strive even more to become diverse if we drop our tuition,” Villalobos said.

Villalobos acknowledges that lowering tuition may be a long shot, but she believes it’s necessary.

“If you look at it in a social-economic standpoint, a lot of hispanic-latino communities are not in the upper-class, and that’s the same thing with a lot of other minorities,” Villalobos said. “There is always the exception, but if they look at it generally, that is the case.”

Villalobos knows individuals whose college experiences has been affected tremendously due to the lack of finances.

“A lot of the reason why people can’t come to Concordia is because they cannot afford it,” Villalobos said. “I do know students, who are minorities, are transferring because of this and I do know that there have been students who are minorities, have considered transferring because of the situation of tuition.”

The fact that some students cannot afford tuition, raises concerns for Villalobos.

“That, for me, is really worrisome, especially for a college that is looking to improve diversity,” Villalobos said. “There needs to be representatives reaching out to these groups because if there’s a reach-out, or if there’s something that can happen that can benefit that community, or things that we can do to bring that community in, I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

To lower tuition, Villalobos believes the college should give up some luxuries to put that money towards lowering tuition. What luxuries the college should abrogate, Villalobos does not know, a decision she thinks the college should make for itself. The benefits would be worth it though in Villalobos’s eyes.

“In that economic principle, it’s what you give up to gain,” Villalobos said. “And if you give up a couple luxuries on campus equals more diversity, which ultimately in the end would equal more open-mindedness across the campus whether you’re black, white, latino, Asian, whatever. It’ll provoke a new sense of thinking and that not only goes for being ethnically diverse, but with being ethnically diverse becomes being more economically diverse amongst the students and seeing what the backgrounds are that students come from. If we are allowed to gain a new perspective, I don’t think our luxuries we’re giving up aren’t going to be as great as what we would gain.”

While Argueta agrees increasing diversity is important, she thinks it should be a natural process for the student, not pushed.

“I don’t think we should force it [bringing in more diversity],” Argueta said. “I think it should be the choice of the student, whether they want to come here or not. Once you force diversity, it becomes a little more like, ‘Oh you’re doing this because I’m hispanic, or you’re doing this for my culture.’”

While Concordia has areas it can improve on with diversity, the college is excelling in other areas. Mancilla has experienced an atmosphere where people are motivated to learn about people different from themselves.

“From what I’ve seen, everyone is super open-minded,” Mancilla said. “I’ve seen everyone’s understanding, everyone’s willing to compromise, and at least from the people I’ve talked to, they think it’s really cool to learn about the different cultures.”

Before Concordia, Argueta felt inhibited from speaking Spanish due to the reactions of community members.

“Sometimes I’ve gotten dirty looks when speaking Spanish or people felt uneasy and you can feel that in the air,” Argueta said. “It was like that throughout most of my elementary and my high school was that I felt super uncomfortable speaking in Spanish.”

That changed when Argueta arrived at Concordia.

“Once I got to Concordia and I took my first Spanish class, I was like, ‘Heck yeah. I love this,’” Argueta said. “I love teaching it and I love sharing that with people.”

Argueta also appreciates the different forms Concordia utilizes to engage students in other cultures.

“I really appreciate the fact that they’re trying to bring in different people, whether that is to speak, the summer book reads, symposium and bringing in experts from the community to talk about their culture is the best thing we could possibly do,” Argueta said.

This past fall, Villalobos experienced what it would feel like if Concordia had a more diverse student population. In her inquiry class, Women and Gender Roles in Latin America, her class was made mostly of international students, which increased the students’ awareness to other cultures, according to Villalobos.

“When we came into the classroom the first day, what she [Fanny Roncal Ramirez, inquiry professor] told us was that we were the ideal class of Concordia because we were so different from each other,” Villalobos said. “In our class, we had mostly minorities and that’s something that doesn’t ever happen [on campus]. It’s eye-opening.”

To continue the diversity narrative and help make a difference, Villalobos will be an RA next year.

“I want to avoid students feeling that they’re away from everything they come from,” Villalobos said. “I think by being an RA who happens to be a minority and a woman, I think that’s going to allow them to see that it’s possible and we can use a little more of that, having minority head figures.”

Lack of campus art damages students in unpredictable ways

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New year, new mindset, same walls.

Concordia as we all know and love, has the theme of old-timey religious architecture (that’s the technical term). The library is just one example. It is under consideration to be remodeled, but I guarantee many will fight the demolishing of its ancient smell and hidden stacks. The ancient, outdated charm that is embodied in the library is something we all signed up for. But unfortunately for students, part of the college’s perception on the college’s ancient decor marks artwork and color as irrelevant. The current status on campus has color, and artwork overlooked and campus ends up feeling eerily similar to the high school classrooms we thought we escaped from. I am not expecting campus to turn into The Museum of Modern Art in New York,  but a color here and there, or an updated picture would go a long way.

This convenient choice to abstain from colorful campus and artwork can be seen in the newly remodeled science building. The college ended up going with an industrial feel and decor, an ode to the particularism nature of the science world, but it feels cold. To any outsider that hasn’t memorized the identical hallways it feels like a labyrinth of carbon copy classrooms. Even the separate departments have no sense of expressed individuality. This approach only sets the student up to feel like they are being cranked through the college system and any other student could replace them, a detrimental effect for a student’s mental health and their expectations with a liberal arts education. While these may not be conscious thoughts, they are subliminal messages that students absorb over time, and art could be the difference.

The complex kinetic sculpture that sits in the science center’s entryway is an amazing example of what art can do and be if it is more present in our lives. If only the positive impact of that art was present in other pieces across campus. If only there weren’t white walls everywhere. If only murals were not a fictitious term or a far off reality. Last year, I and several other art students had to go through an enormous amount of appeals to do wheatpasting and apply the fun shapes and circles to the wall of Olin facing the hill. They are applied with all natural wheat and the understanding was that they would stay up and bring color and fun to a part of campus as long as winter allowed before the weather uprooted the adhesive. We ended up having to scratch it off the wall early because a professor and or staff complained of its lack of professionalism.

Why is art expendable?

I can’t tell you how many students walked by that art and smiled, a true and joyful smile, having a brighter day even just for a moment. Why isn’t the joy from even this one art installation a priority on campus? Students aren’t always happy, college is hard and art helps. A huge part of setting a truly happy tone around campus is color, and it doesn’t even have to effect the professionalism of the college.

Doctors’ offices, lawyers’ offices, and courtrooms are all places considered ”strictly business” that possess color. There is beauty in clean white like in the Skyway and the countless professional headshots it has been the background to. But, look up or reflect on the walking bridge over interstate I-94 connecting the Sculpture garden and Loring Park. The bridge was reimagined this summer and countless people have taken pictures and fallen in love with its modern playfulness. It’s the same bridge that looked worn out and overlooked just a year earlier but it has been created in a different way, a better way, and all they did was paint it. Art transforms a space and the people that inhabit it. Color could transform Concordia.

New year, new perspective, same walls.

Disability awareness event raises consciousness on campus

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Speakers and attendees at Tuesday’s disability awareness event. HALIE WEAVING.

Although National Disability Month is in October, Concordia is making sure the students on campus get a jump on being informed. According to Census Bureau Reports, 1 in 5 people have a disability in the United States. Some disabilities can include vision impairment, hearing impairment, mental health conditions, brain injury, autism spectrum disorders, physical disability and intellectual disabilities.

On campus, the Counseling and Disabilities Center is located in Academy 106. Here, students are able to seek accomodations for their documented disabilities. The mission statement of the disability office states, “The mission of the Concordia College Disability Services office, in partnership with the college community, is to create an accessible, inclusive campus where students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to fully participate in and benefit from all aspects of the educational environment.” At the office, anyone is able to make an individual appointment with Matthew Rutten in order to determine eligibility for accommodations and services that are offered.

One person who benefits from these services is Sadie Mendenhall-Cariveau who has post traumatic stress disorder along with a physical disability that was sustained from a injury in the military, as well as degenerative disc and joint disease. She talks about how student events are not set up in a way that makes it safe for people with disabilities to maneuver in a secure manure.

There are many times that I have had to miss class because of weather conditions making the grounds unsafe. I have missed class events and campus events because of my PTSD” Mendenhall-Cariveau said.

In order to bring more awareness to campus, on Sept. 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Barry Auditorium, there was a student lead discussion held by sophomore Hannah Papenfuss and freshman Noah Hanson. In this discussion, they each spoke about how their mobility in a wheelchair has impacted their lives on campus with both social situations and infrastructure.

Papenfuss spoke of an instance where a fire alarm went off in her dorm at 4 a.m. and she was left stranded in her room because no one was there to assist her into her wheelchair.  

“We put guilt on the people with the disability rather than on the infrastructure,” she said.

When she went to the disability office, she left with a buddy plan in place to make sure that in the case of a fire alarm, or any other evacuation, she has two people that will assist her in these instances. In these cases, faculty, staff and residential assistance are used as a last resort to help. Hannah also said she finds people assuming that she can do less than she actually can, rather than pushing her to what she can do.

Hanson spoke of different social situations where there have been preconceived notions of being in a wheelchair. He spoke of condescending behavior and people acting overly nice to him.

“Treat people like me with the same respect you treat everyone else,” Hanson said.

He also spoke about the Park Region elevator glitching on the first floor and not being able to use it right away, which brought attention back to Park Region being the only dorm with an elevator in it. Hanson also touched on people walking on eggshells around him.

“Just because I’m in a wheelchair doesn’t mean you can’t tell me I’m wrong. See me as a person, not by my wheelchair,” said Hanson.

Overall, this event will hopefully have made awareness more common on campus in order to help our fellow students with disabilities to have a safe, and enjoyable time at Concordia, although there was a low attendance rate of 14 people for this discussion. While the discussion was fast-paced and there were many questions asked, this is still an example of the lack of awareness on campus.

Papenfuss and Hanson both agreed that while they want the campus to be more welcoming to disabled people, they also want the campus to be welcoming to the current residents as well. When asked what they could change, Hannah simply said, “A way to eat independently in (Dining Services).” As it is now, the shelves in the serving areas are too high for both Hannah and Noah to reach. They both agreed that this is one of the biggest issues on campus, along with the winter conditions and pavement of sidewalks.

“We are invisible, as students, as staff, as people because people rarely have to slow down or want to slow down for us. It would help if the campus was more aware as a whole,” said Mendenhall-Cariveau.

For information or to book an appointment for accommodations, visit the Counseling and Disabilities Center in Academy 106 or call 218-299-3514.

Authorities determine fire on Concordia property to be arson

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The person responsible for starting the fire across from Concordia is still unknown. ANDREW RUDSER.

On the night of Sept. 25, several fire crews were called in to tackle a fire near Concordia College. Present alongside firefighters were other first responders including the police department and paramedics.

Authorities were alerted of the situation at 9:36 p.m. by the Red River Regional Dispatch Center, which reports emergencies from both Cass and Clay Counties. When the fire crews arrived at the scene, they found the flames at the house growing quickly, with most of the fire located on the first and second floors.

According to Moorhead Fire Department Capt. Eric Berg, who has worked with the department since 1999, “It was fully engulfed when we arrived.”

Neighborhood resident Lily Farrel said she believed the house on the corner of 5th St. S and 8th Ave. to be unoccupied since its previous owner passed away last year. Berg confirmed that the home was completely vacant. Officials found no people or furniture within the building.

“Nobody lived here,” Berg stated. “The building was owned by Concordia and was scheduled to be (demolished) sometime in the future.”

Concordia College’s Office of Communications and Marketing verified that the house, just a few blocks south of the Mugaas Plant Operations Center, was purchased and owned by the school. The 1,500-square-foot-home had been built in 1902 and was scheduled by the college to be demolished in late October. Even if it was decided to be maintained, the damage by the fire was so extensive that Berg guessed it to be a “total loss” anyway. Concordia had not experienced a significant fire on its property since 2015, involving an incident in Hallett Hall, in which a fire was caused by a cell phone’s battery that overheated and was left unattended in a room.

Neighbors stood watching as the fire department worked to contain the blaze. At the time, authorities did not know what had caused the incident. Mitch Ogren however, a junior from Concordia and witness of the event, noticed suspicious activity before first-responders arrived.

“As soon as I walked out of Fjelstad, I was walking in the parking lot, and I saw these two fireworks going off near the house. They must have been at least twenty feet tall… I was on my skateboard and as I was skating towards Anderson commons, I saw that they stopped, and it looked like a fire had started,” he said.

Ogren said that he did not see who may have been involved in the incident, but he went to the street and was present with a neighbor as they called 911. The flames kept spreading as they waited.

“It started at the front door, and moved into the living room,” Ogren explained, describing how the fire began to grow. “The fire started going upwards, and it was like, five, six, seven minutes later when the police, ambulance, and fire trucks all came.”

The house had four floors, which created a challenge for the department’s ability to contain the spreading blaze. Firefighters used chainsaws to open points on the walls and roof to let smoke out, which helped by reducing heat within the building. They worked until 10:30 p.m. before they were able to completely put out the fire, although most of the emergency services did not leave the scene until 12:15 a.m. An official from the fire department remained there overnight in order to keep the area secure until the fire marshal was able to investigate.

The department announced the next morning that the suspected cause of the fire was arson, however Moorhead Fire Assistant Chief Jeff Wallin said they do not know if the incident was started by an individual person or if there were more people present. The situation is still under investigation by authorities, and the department encourages anyone possessing further information about the fire to contact Fire Marshal Chad Stangeland at 218-299-5433.

Concordia’s annual Campus Public Safety Report provides information regarding crimes committed on campus and school property, as well as recommendations for security practices.  According to the report there have been no cases of arson within the last three years. Concordia wishes all students to be aware of safety issues on campus, and practice safe habits to prevent any emergencies. The Campus Public Safety Office (218-299-3123) is staffed 24 hours a day as a resource for them.





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