There is a lot of troubling international news these days, but things are relatively quiet in Oxford.
In an article headlined "Miami University Backs Skunk Safety," the Hamilton Journal-News reported,
"On September 14 Oxford police responded to a call near the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house, 200 E. High St., for a report of a 'drunk skunk' who had his head stuck in a beer can. An animal control officer was able to free the skunk without being sprayed, according to the Oxfore police."
It's graduation weekend in Oxford. Families of graduating students have swelled the town's population for a few days, and the streets are filled with U-Hauls and students clad in red caps and gowns.
Some of the houses in town are decorated with bedsheets with messages from graduating students, usually thanking their parents.
For example, one this year says
"The tassle was worth the hassle. Thanks!"
The sheets display varying degrees of literacy. I cringe a little to see misspelled words (like "tassle"), but I guess it's the thought that counts.
This morning I received an email announcement of an upcoming university event:
The AccessibleTechnologiesCommittee (ATC) is planning its first annual technologysymposium, entitled "Access For All: AccessibleTechnologies Symposium," which will be held at King Library on Friday, April 4, 2014, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm.
Space is limited! Those who plan to attend are encouraged to register as soon as possibleat the following link:
So to have access to the access for all symposium, one has to hurry.
The other night Sherry was craving chocolate chip cookies and asked me to pop over to Kroger's to get some.
Kroger's is a short walk from our house, so I went on foot. But I ran into a surprise on the way home. When I got to High Street, there was a freight train on the tracks that run through Oxford, and it wasn't moving. I heard later that a car from the train had come off the track somewhere south of town.
I thought for a second about trying to crawl under the train where it crossed High Street, but quickly decided I didn't really want to do that.
Fortunately the front end of the train (which had been headed northwest) was just a little bit north of High Street, and it eventually occurred to me that in the late 1980s, when we rented an apartment near the tracks, I used to climb over these tracks all the time. It was a short cut to get to places on US 27 north of town.
Sure enough, there were still some good places to climb across. Otherwise, I might have been stuck for awhile.
Miami University is now on Christmas break, so more than half of Oxford's normal population is gone for a few weeks.
With the people away, there is more opportunity for animals to hang out on campus. A few nights ago I spotted a couple of deer near Culler Hall. Then this afternoon at 2:42 I saw a skunk on Talawanda Street. When I drove by, it started meandering toward the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.
The skunk seemed to be taking its time and didn't travel in a straight line. Was it "drunk as a skunk"? Did it hope to tap into the fraternity's beer supply while the brothers of Phi Delta Theta were out of town?
Today is the second Tuesday after Labor Day, so it was no surpise this morning to see some Gideons on campus distributing pocket New Testaments. The Gideons always come to Miami on the second Tuesday after Labor Day.
At the corner of Campus Avenue and High Street, one of the Gideons asked me if he was standing in a "free speech zone". I had to confess that I didn't know. I told him I thought the entire United States was supposed to be a free speech zone.
However, exercising the first amendment on campus can be a touchy business sometimes.
All of a sudden the students have returned to Oxford. Ready or not, it's time for a new academic year at Miami University. Classes start on Monday, August 26.
The first event of the academic year is Convocation, attended by the entire freshman class and anyone else who would like to come. The keynote speaker of this event is usually the author of the book that has been chosen for the Freshman Summer Reading Program. (The first-year students are given a copy of the book in June at summer orientation.)
This year's book has the provocative title Reality is Broken. Such a title would be appropriate for a theological discussion of the consequences of sin. The book's subtitle,: "Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World" , gives an idea about the actual topic of the book.
The author, Dr. Jane McGonigal, explains how important games have been throughout human history. Her definition of game is a broad one---games have a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
McGonigal talks about how various aspects of life can be enhanced by using principles of game design. Setting up ways to take on bigger goals, putting...
Tonight I walked down to Ace Hardware to pick up some oil for our mower. On the way back I saw I man carrying a large wooden cross over his shoulder. The longer piece trailed behind him, but it wasn't dragging on the sidewalk. A small wheel complete with a tire was attached to the bottom, so he could walk smoothly down the street. Nifty!
He headed north on College Avenue, taking the crosswalk (appropriately) over Spring Street. He then headed east on Collins.
Was he on a cross-country journey? I'm not sure. Perhaps his intention was to remind us of Matt 16:24:
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."
Graduation was four days ago, and Oxford is quiet with most of the students away.
The town and university use this time to help maintain their infrastructures. The red brick section of College Avenue will be resurfaced. Construction of the new Student Center continues. The campus will host summer camps, conferences, and other events. (This week the Hamilton and Fairfield police SWAT teams held some training exercises on campus.)
And there will be some summer classes and freshman orientation while the University gets ready for another academic year.
A few months ago Miami University made the local news when three students were caught hacking into a professor's online gradebook by making use of a key logger on a classroom computer.
In response to that incident, the University has instituted some safeguards. In particular, professors receive an email whenever questionable changes are made in their online gradebooks.
I found out last week how the system works. At the end of the semester, students will sometimes ask what score they need to earn on the final exam to obtain a certain grade.
Years ago I would sometimes answer that this is an arithmetic problem, and arithmetic is certainly a prerequisite for any college math course.
These days, though, it is easy to answer such queries with a few keystrokes. When one student asked me the question the day before his final, I went to the online gradebook and typed in a few possible scenarios. The gradebook program immediately calculated what the student's final grade would be for each exam score that we entered.
Shortly thereafter I received an automatically-generated email, reporting that a series of grade changes had occurred in my gradebook and telling me what to do if...
For me, one of the worst forms of environmental pollution on campus is the posting of signs containing bad English.
One recent example is an announcement of a campus lecture sponsored by the Wilks Leadership Institute. On the poster were pictures of David Petraeus and former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright, respresenting leaders who had been involved in scandals.
The poster read, "Why do We Care?" with the subheading, "Discuss how falling from grace effects good leadership."
So how does "falling from grace" serve to implement good leadership? I missed the lecture, so I'm still not sure.
There's been a lot of excitement in Oxford, Ohio, this week.
On Wednesday night, Aug 15, Miami alumnus and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan came to Oxford for a campaign event. I walked by the event on the way home to see what was going on. The speakers' platform was set up behind the Engineering Building, and a line of people hoping to attend stretched back a few blocks.
The line didn't appear to be moving very fast. There was tight security checking out people as they reached the front of the line. Local newspapers estimated the total attendance at around 5500.
On Thursday, new students arrived in town and moved into their dorms. There was lots of traffic; just crossing Patterson Avenue was a nontrivial task.
At about 2 PM I crossed Patterson and headed through Bishop Woods toward Benton Hall, where I would be helping some new students schedule their classes. In the woods, just a few feet from all the traffic, were some deer having lunch. There were still deer there at 5 PM when I came back.
It's not unusual to see deer on campus in the summer, but I was surprised to see them in...
Each year the members of the new freshman class at Miami University are asked to read a book over the summer before they arrive. They then discuss the book in small groups on the Friday before the beginning of classes.
This year's book is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It is the story of William Kamkwamba, a young man from Malawi who is now an engineering student at Dartmouth. William grew up with a passion to learn, especially to find out what makes radios, automobiles, and other machines work. He also had quite a knack for using the materials he had at hand to build things.
After a drought and famine in 2001/2002, William's family could not afford his secondary school tuition. William spent time in a small library in the local primary school, where he found three fascinating science books. One, called Using Energy, helped give him the idea of building a windmill to bring electric power to his home. (Only about 2 per cent of the people in Malawi had access to electricity at the time, according to William.) And even though he had very little to work with in the way of money...
Coming north into Oxford on US 27, drivers entering Oxford will see a sign announcing
"Heavy Pedestrian Area"
I am frequently one of the pedestrians crossing that street, and I haven't noticed that those who walk across it are any heavier than average. But maybe I haven't been paying attention. The food at Miami is known to be fairly good, so it can be easy to indulge in large amounts of it.
This isn't the only judgmental road sign I have run across over the years. I seem to remember one somewhere in Indiana that announced
"Slow Children at Play"
Who decided that the children in that particular neighborhood were "slow"? To be politically correct,shouldn't the sign have described them as "special"?
Today is Mother's Day, one of the biggest of the Hallmark holidays.
But in Oxford, it's also U Haul Day---or, to be more inclusive, U Haul/Ryder/Budget day. Students leaving for the summer are loading their stuff into rented vehicles.
From the corner of Church and Beech at about 1 PM, I count eight of them parked on the surrounding streets. While I am counting, another van drives south on Beech, and one more is going east on Church.
On campus families of graduating students stroll around, taking snapshots and enjoying the scenery one more time. One student in a red graduation robe comments that he has now become an alumnus, and his father informs him that solicitation of donations from Miami will soon commence.
Things will be much quieter tomorrow. And by Tuesday, there will be nary a student to be seen.
Ah, peace and quiet! Time to rest, but not for too long. Oxford will be reloading in August.
It was raining early this morning, but the rain had stopped for awhile by the time I started walking to work. At one point I walked past some trees and felt a splash of water on my back. I figured water that had collected in the trees during the shower was now falling as the wind blew through the trees.
When I got to campus, I found out what had really happened. A man walked past, saying, "I think a bird got you in the back. Yeah, it sure did. Now you're going to have good luck. Have you heard that? You're supposed to have good luck when that happens."
When I got to the office, I took off my shirt and wiped off the bird manure. I didn't feel especially lucky. In 27 years of walking back and forth across Oxford, I don't think I've ever been bombarded by a bird before. But on the other hand, what if that weird guy hadn't walked by and informed me of what had happened? I might have stepped in front of my first class with bird manure on the back of my shirt. I guess I was lucky after all.
For several years now, the Mid-American Conference has been scheduling some late-season football games on weeknights in November, as part of a TV deal with ESPN..
This made sense for ESPN when a game featured, say, a matchup between Ben Roethlisberger and Byron Leftwich. There have been some excellent quarterbacks in the MAC over the years.
More recently, the big news in these games has often been the weather. A couple of weeks ago, when ESPN2 carried Miami's game at Bowling Green, a fog rolled in early in the second half, making the action difficult to see for both the play-by-play crew and the television audience.
There can be other problems. Miami's home game with Temple was scheduled for Nov 23, the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break. By the time the game started at 7 PM, most of the student body had already left town.
Knowing that the crowd would be sparse, the University offered free tickets to faculty and staff and their families and friends. There were a lot of reasons not to go to the game.
At a recent Miami U. football game, a spectator was removed from the stadium for the egregious offense of wearing an American Indian headdress.
Here's the Associated Press story carried in today's Hamilton Journal-News:
OXFORD — A student at Miami University says an American Indian headdress he wore to show school spirit got him thrown out of a home football game.
Victor Kopen, a senior at the southwest Ohio university, said he was not at the Oct. 23 game “to make a political statement of any kind, just to support the football team,” Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV reported.
University trustees, citing respect for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, voted to drop the name Redskins as its athletic nickname in 1996 after the tribe approved a resolution saying it could no longer support use of the nickname. Trustees adopted the RedHawks name the following year.
Although the university does not have a written policy addressing American Indian attire, it is discouraged by staff at athletic events, university spokeswoman Claire Wagner said.
“We want students to be able to express themselves, but to do it responsibly and respectfully,” she said Tuesday.
University officials are looking into Kopen’s claim.
Classes start up again next week, and so the students are pouring back into town and getting ready for the new academic year.
Tonight on the walk home I noticed two unusual cars drive by on High Street. They were Red Bull cars, with giant cans of Red Bull on the back. (I wonder what sort of fuel these cars use.)
Five minutes later I saw the cars again, parked at the corner of College and Church. Four students were busily hauling boxes from the cars to their house. Apparently they were stocking up on some basic necessities.
Will I walk by again during exam week and see the house shaking on its foundation? Will it someday take flight? Stay tuned.
One of the liveliest blogs that I visit is the Evangel blog hosted by First Things.
One of the bloggers there, David T. Koyzis, recently posted a humorous poem about a professor struggling to grade student papers. This poem is a take off on one of some of Lewis Carroll's nonsense verse, to which a link is provided.
He invited people to add stanzas of their own, and I managed to construct one.
One of the blogs I check out frequently is Zondervan Publishing's Koinonia blog. One recent post there struck a chord with me.
This particular post discussed the benefits of participation in Toastmaster's Club and suggested that churches make use of this kind of experience.
I had to agree with Bill Mounce, the author of the post, since I have experienced what he was talking about firsthand. In the old Worldwide Church of God, it was pretty much obligatory for adult males to participate in Spokesman's Club, which was our version of Toastmaster's. I came to enjoy it a lot, and it was a big help with public speaking situations.
One concrete example: Every April our department has an awards banquet for the students. I have often served as emcee for the banquet. This is a task that many of my colleagues find rather intimidating, but it doesn't bother me because of those years in Spokesman's Club.
It's been several years since I've seen Saturday Night Live, but I can remember that before they went to a commercial, they would sometimes focus the camera on someone in the audience and put a funny message on the screen that made a comment about that person. A message of that type occurred to me yesterday:
"Can't talk to himself without an interpreter."
Why did I happen to think of this? Well, in discrete math class yesterday we were talking about relations--sets of ordered pairs. One of the exercises in the textbook dealt with the relation R consisting of pairs of people (A,B) who speak a common language. So, for example, if person A speaks English and Chinese and person B speaks Russian and English, the pair (A,B) is an element of R, as is the pair (B,A).
The exercise asked whether the relation had a certain list of properties. One was the reflexive property. (A relation S is reflexive if the pair (X,X) is in S for all X in the underlying set.) The class quickly agreed that the relation R in the exercise was reflexive. We can all talk to ourselves, after all.
This was a busy week on campus. Historian David McCullough was in Oxford on Monday night, giving a lecture entitled "Leadership and the History You Don't Know."
On Tuesday, archaeologist James Russell gave an Archaeological Institute of America lecture called "Chasing a Roman Soldier."
On Wednesday a representative of Feminists for Life spoke out on behalf of the unborn and their mothers.
On Wednesday and Thursday there was also a miniconference on the legacy of Lincoln, Darwin, and Poe, with historian Daniel Walker Howe as a keynote speaker.
Then on Friday there was a conference celebrating the creation of the new Statistics Department, with a number of alumni reminiscing about their time at Miami and reporting on how they've used their training in statistics and mathematics in their careers.
One detail that I'll always remember about September 11, 2001, is that it was a Tuesday.
I know it was a Tuesday because the Gideons, the folks who place Bibles in hotel rooms and elsewhere, were on campus that day, handing students tiny green King James Verson New Testaments. The Gideons always visit Miami University on a Tuesday, exactly eight days after Labor Day.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I stopped to say hello to one of the Gideons as I walked across the campus on my way to work, and he was the one who told me about the terrorist attacks that were occurring.
Life in a college town has very regular rhythms. The same things happen year after year, on a predictable schedule. I take some comfort in that predictably.
Since today is eight days after Labor Day, I knew the Gideons would be on campus again. In preparation, I packed one of the tiny green New Testaments in my briefcase. That way when I walked past them I could show them that I had a copy already, and they would not feel obliged to hand me another one.
