Students to present at OCSS Annual Meeting

Matt Fox, Brian Hoefel, and Aaron Stiger will be presenting, along with Dr. Crawford, at the Ohio Council for the Social Studies Annual Meeting at Worthington, OH on March 27th. The title of the presentation is Using Sport to Teach the Social Studies. Other social studies students will also have the chance to attend. This meeting brings together social studies teachers from across Ohio to present their lesson plans, discuss common concerns, and carry away bags full of free teaching materials.

Studia Socialia Americae holds its Winter Meeting

SSA members braved the snow Tuesday night and met at Dr. Crawford's home for their Winter Meeting. Ashley Reiff, who is currently student teaching shared her experiences with the group, who will soon be going out into the field themselves. We also discussed the Ohio Council for the Social Studies Annual Meeting that will be held in Worthington, OH on March 27th. Matt Fox, Brian Hoefel, and Aaron Stiger will be presenting, along with Crawford at this meeting. The group also discussed finding jobs and other teaching concerns. Sophie Crawford provided the dinner of tortilla soup with bite-size quiches as starters, and dessert was a gallette de roi, or king cake, a traditional French treat that is eaten after the start of the new year.

Pictured are (left side, front to back) Aaron Stiger, Brian Hoefel, and Ben Kretz. (right side front to back) Vice President Joy Kessler, Ashley Reiff, and President Matt Fox.

Football on Film Weekend Seminar

During the weekend of January 17-18, four ONU students and professor Crawford journeyed to the Metzgar Nature Center to explore how football had been imagined in the popular culture. During the weekend, we watched Knute Rockne-All American (1940), The Male Animal (1942), North Dallas Forty (1979), Brian's Song (1971), and Gridiron Gang (2006) (or would have if snow hadn't forced an early departure).

Students also read articles about the positive and negative views of football, including "My Crusade Against Football," an article by Wade Thompson published in the Nation magazine in 1959, and a recent article by Terrence P. Jeffery entitled "What Politicians Could Learn from Football," which took a more positive view of the game.

From the scholar athlete to the dumb jock, the class explored the various ways in which football players and the game have been depicted in film and discussed the cultural contexts that gave rise to the varied depictions.

As always, Wayne and Carol King, who run the center for ONU, provided high quality food and more than we could possibly eat.

Pictured above are (L-R) Joe Kent, Matt Cuffari, Chad Turner, and Eli Lange.

Professor Waters publishes book

Professor Rob Waters of the History Politics and Justice Department, has a new book coming out soon. The Historical Dictionary of United States-Africa Relations is published by The Scarecrow Press, which has a series exploring America's diplomatic relations with the world.

The following description of Water's book appears on the Scarecrow Press website:

"The image of Africa among Americans at the beginning of the 21st century is tragic; America's image among Africans is of a place that is splendid but arrogant and unfeeling. Both have large elements of truth. Poverty, coups, corruption, pandemic disease, and tribal, racial, and religious violence are all too common in Africa. So too is Americans' lack of concern about the people of a continent that suffers from these tragedies, as well as their government's support for African governments that treat their people as prey instead of citizens.

The Historical Dictionary of United States-Africa Relations encompasses the relationship between the two from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the George W. Bush administration, with particular emphasis on the Cold War. It focuses on political and economic aspects of the relationship and includes cultural relations. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key persons, places, events, institutions, and organizations."

Phi Beta Delta hosts talk on sexual abuse in Kenya

Tuesday evening Dr. Carol Plummer of the Louisiana State University School of Social Work gave a talk on sexual abuse in Kenya to ONU students and faculty. Plummer’s talk, entitled “What we can learn and what we can do about the worldwide epidemic of sexual abuse: Current Efforts in Kenya,” was sponsored by Dr. Harry Wilson and Phi Beta Delta. Plummer told the audience that addressing the problem in Kenya was complicated by several factors, including a lack of training by medical and educational professionals, and the difficulty young victims who complain face from their families and communities. Data on the prevalence of sexual abuse is difficult to come by in many African nations, but Plummer cited evidence that that around forty percent of Kenyan victims are abused in school, and coupled with the danger of walking long distances to school, this keeps many young girls out of the schools. The high incidence of AIDS in Africa also contributes to the abuse of young victims who are seen as being more likely to be free of the disease. The solution, according to Plummer was continued efforts to educate public officials. She noted the success of a Kenyan programs that enlisted taxi drivers, who are often asked to drive sexual tourists to where young children are available for sex. The drivers are trained to spot such predators and to refuse them service or to turn them over to local police.

ONU Hosts University Mock Trial Tournament

This past weekend the ONU Mock Trial Program led by JoAnn Scott hosted the third annual University Mock Trial Tournament. Forty-six teams with ten members each took part in the two-day tournament, with teams from as far away as California, Florida, and Mississippi gathering to argue a civil defamation case. Ohio State took top honors, with Case Western Reserve, Eastern Michigan, Illinois State, and the second Ohio State team rounding out the top five. Ohio Northern fielded three teams with team 450 finishing 4 – 4, team 449 3 – 5, and team 448 4.5 – 3.5. ONU Forensic Biology Senior Katie Elsass (Lima, OH) earned the award for Best Witness.

ONU’s tournament provided a valuable chance for the participants to warm up for regional competition leading to Nationals. Unlike many Mock Trial Tournaments, ONU’s was not restricted by region and drew teams from across the nation, giving competitors a diverse competitive experience.

Scott said, “This gives our students and other colleges a chance to compete against other top schools in the nation.”

Filmmaker Khashayar Darvich presents film

On Monday January 26^th, Khashayar Darvich presented his film Dalai Lama Renaissance to students and faculty in the Dicke Forum. Ellen Wilson, who knew the director as a child in southern Ohio, introduced Darvich. The director gave a short introduction to the film, which chronicled a meeting that took place in Dharamsala, India between a group of Western thinkers and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. While the purpose of the conference was to come up with innovative ideas for changing the world, the film is more of an exploration of the clash of egos that developed among the participants and between the participants and organizers of the conference. In the end, the one proposal was to call for a boycott of all Chinese products until Tibet gains its freedom from China. The Dalai Lama, however, turned down this suggestion because he thought that it would hurt the Chinese people, rather than their government. Darvich answered questions after the film and told the audience that his crew of thirty went into the project with a great deal of excitement that they would be filming a world changing story, but after a few days realized that the real story was the clash of egos. He also answered questions about the economics of documentary making, explaining that the real money for such projects is made in dvd sales. Without prompting he described the opportunity he had to direct Harrison Ford, who did the narration.