Run Run Rudolph Run

I volunteered to help out with the Run Run Rudolph Run that Kate Volpe put together. The run took place on Saturday, November 19. We, the volunteers, arrived to start setting up, decorate, and make posters at 7 in the morning. I made a poster that said “Gotta Go Fast” and had a lovely drawing of Sonic the Hedgehog and a picture of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell’s character in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. After we finished putting up Christmas decorations and singing along to Christmas songs my friend Maggie and I headed out to the front of the campus center in order to direct people as to where to go for the run.

The run was well planned, just not very well advertised. I believe only about twelve runners showed up. For next year, we need to try and advertise better off campus and make it more of a donation. Having it set at a standard $10 price may be a little expensive for poor college kids who can barely afford food. Also we could see if we could get more of the school teams involved, such as cross country, track and field, softball, etc. This would encourage students to get involved and perhaps donate more to the cause. If we could get posters out at local shopping stores and restaurants it will also allow for more people off campus to hear about the run. We could also put an add into the local newspaper for it and onto the Stockton Newspaper as well. The run was a great idea and well planned, but if we can get the word out more I believe it will be even more of a success next year.

Freshman Blog: October

On October 2^nd, the honors program took a trip into Philadelphia. In Philadelphia we got the opportunity to see a play/musical (there was a fair amount of singing) called This Is the Week That Is. It was about the upcoming debate, which has been a major topic of discussion within our honors seminar. Seeing as this is one of the more “entertaining” campaigns and debates, people are constantly talking about it. The production was a comedy that mocked the whole campaign. There were a lot of jokes made about both candidates, and a recurring theme of terror for the future of the country.

I thought that the production was funny but I personally am not that into politics. I prefer to keep to myself about my beliefs because I understand that everyone has his or her own beliefs and I find people tend to get rather heated about their opinion or belief being correct. That being said I did enjoy the production as a whole. I thought it was very tastefully done in that it was rather unbiased (perhaps a little left leaning) and the jokes were respectful. Considering some of the things that have been said and done throughout the campaign there were many opportunities to use disrespectful jokes and I feel the actors/actresses all did a wonderful job.

Also, every one of the performers had amazing voices and I loved listening to them cover songs. All of the songs they used were funny, catchy, and well known so it was easy to see how they changed up the lyrics. All in all it was a fun day for the honors program and a great way to spend time off campus with friends.

Freshman Blog: September

On September 13 I attended the Stockton University’s Women’s Volleyball team match. The team played against Montclair State University in Big Blue and was sponsored by Stockton Athletics. The game started at 7 o’clock but we arrived at about 10 to 7 in order to get seats. There was a fair amount of parents there to support their daughters, as well as a student section. My friends and I sat in the second row because we had never been to a volleyball match and were unsure of what was going to happen.

The match started and the girls took the court. It was surprisingly intense as people started cheering. There were two people sitting in front of us that explained the game to us throughout the match. Volleyball works that when the serving team loses the serve the other team receives a point. This is called rally scoring. Each team gets three hits to get the ball over the net, and a block does not count for one of the hits. The game consists of three sets each to 25 points, or if it gets to 24-24 then a team has to win by 2 points.

As the game progressed the crowd was getting super into the match, especially the student section. One student started screaming at a girl on the Montclair team that he apparently knew, seeing as he called her by her name. He would yell things at her such as “Natalia, the ball goes over the net,” or “You can’t hide from me Natalia” when she was not on the court. It was so much fun because the everyone was there to support the girls and they were playing amazingly. They won the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th sets and therefore won the match. They have multiple matches throughout the season. I honestly cannot wait to see another match.

Upon watching our last girl cross the line, I broke down into tears and whispered, “We did it.”
Rewind.
Sidelined by a patellar stress fracture, I took on the both physically emotionally demanding position as a spectator at our cross country conference meet. I watched our girls team start at the gun, and immediately they were off, our top athletes leading and pacing the front group while our other girls held down the back. The Stockton Ospreys tattoos on their faces and ribbons in their hair didn’t do them justice; these girls were more motivated now than they had ever been.
I saw the pain in their eyes as the lactic acid built up and made their muscles sear, but they kept pushing. I watched them conquer the open field, running off rolled ankles galore. As the front pack became visible in the open field, conquering their final 800 meters of the race, the race became a test of strength. The first 5,000 meters of a 6k are a test of mental toughness more than anything. The last 1k is dominated by the runner who feels her legs exploding beneath her and decides that, yes, she can take more. Our top two hang on to each other until the moment they cross the finish line, followed by a gap, and then our third and fourth girls. Five, gap…Six, gap…Seven. Stockton uniforms were blurred by the rainbow of other runners. Our last girl finished, and the tears started flowing.
Truthfully, I couldn’t even identify the real reason why I was crying. I had no idea what our score was, and I didn’t have the patience to add up our runners’ places myself. Regardless, I broke into a dead sprint, despite my aching knee, toward the finish line 400 meters away. I toppled onto my exhausted teammates, sharing tears and sweaty hugs with them before helping them to their overworked feet.
My mind was racing, probably faster than the girls had raced that day. Did we just win NJACS? Did we make Stockton history?
The scores were added up, and sure enough, Stockton University women won NJACS. My team and I shed tears of joy and pride, and we quite literally ran off into the sunset.

The freshman convocation for the graduating class of 2020 featured Ellen Forney, the illustrator who worked in partnership with Sherman Alexie to bring life into his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. Upon entering, general consensus exhibited a mass of fatigued, stressed out, nearly lifeless bodies serving as an audience.
When Ms. Forney walked on stage, however, the usual dull lull of conversation halted. She looked interesting – very different from other presenters. Forney wasn’t dressed in business casual attire, and she did not sport a look of stern, condescending all-knowingness. Rather, she wore jeans, and she boasted an expression of appreciative wonder. She immediately became more relatable than every other presenter we’d seen so far. The second she opened her mouth to speak, she was no longer an adult that we were being forced to listen to. She morphed instantaneously into a fellow victim of pain, stress, and life in general. This was the person we wanted to listen to.
Forney talked about her struggles with bipolar disorder, and she poured her heart out on stage in the best way possible. She gave the entire freshman student body insight into her mind, and the life of Ellen Forney suddenly became a life we related to. Her success story became one we wanted to emulate. Forney unknowingly lifted thousands of tons off the shoulders of unsuspecting college students.
So, my fellow honors students, the freshman convocation is NOT as awful as you all may at first perceive. When dragging yourself out of your Netflix-induced stupor and trudging out your bedroom door to go to your honors event, hope you are lucky enough to hear from someone like Ellen Forney.

by Emily Calhoun

On November 11, 2016, I visited the Drawing Against Oblivion art installation.  It has been open and available to the public since September and ended on November 13, three days after I visited.  The art installation featured two floors full of hand-drawn portraits of various children affected by the Holocaust.  Each portrait was accompanied by a small description of the child featured, usually including the child’s name, if known, and how he or she was affected by the Holocaust.  Most of the children were sent to concentration camps.  Many of them died there.  Only a handful survived.  The coolest part of the installation, in my opinion, was the part called Writing Against Oblivion.  This part encouraged the visitors to the installation to take an envelope and write a short letter to one of the children featured in the installation.  The letters really allowed me to become personally involved in history and form a real connection with the children whose stories and pictures I spent an hour looking at.  I found Drawing Against Oblivion to be very moving.  Reading the personal stories of the various children featured in installation really helped me connect personally to their experiences.  I did my senior research project on the Holocaust, and in all the research I did for that project, I never connected with the experience as much as I did in the hour I spent at Drawing Against Oblivion.  I know that there is a documentary on the installation, and I hope to watch it soon and become even more connected.  I highly recommend a visit to Drawing Against Oblivion to anyone interested in any way.

by Emily Calhoun

The Animal Friendly Organization sponsored a private screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s new documentary of Before the Flood on Tuesday, October 11, in the Campus Center Theater. Before the Flood tells the story of DiCaprio’s journey as the appointed United Nations Messenger of Peace. DiCaprio focused on the real crisis facing the world: climate change. The documentary provided evidence to show the realities of climate change. It also gave predictions of what the future will look like if we globally continue to live the damaging lives we currently live. Finally, it gave examples from around the world of how the crisis is currently being handled and how people are attempting to stop it. The documentary was followed by a brief question-and-answer period with a representative from the Defenders of Wildlife organization. The question-and-answer session was informative and truly got the audience engaged with the subject matter of the documentary. It also helped us gain a better understanding of the small changes we could make in our lives in order to help reverse climate change. I knew that I would enjoy this documentary, as one of my favorite things to do is watch documentaries on humanitarian issues. I was surprised, though, at how much the documentary really impacted me. As a result of this experience, I have stopped eating beef and am limiting my consumption of dairy products in order to reduce my impact on the planet.

Honor’s Olympics

    On Friday, November 18, Stockton’s Honors Program held the Honors Olympics in the I-wing gym. Upon entering the pizza filled gym, we were split into two teams and thrown onto the court for an intense game of knockout. The winner would be the team captain and choose their team. While I was knocked out after three rounds, it was an intense game. We crowned a victor, chose teams, and began.

    The first game was dodgeball. Foam balls were flying across the gymnasium and, in the end, my team won both rounds. We quickly moved on to volleyball with the score 3-0. We used a beach ball and mapped out the borders after much deliberation over the most appropriate bounds. They started with a classic basketball jump, and the other team got the first serve. The rules were simple — no out of bounds, no spiking. The rest was fair game. After thirty minutes of intense play, profanities, and dives we won, pushing us further into the lead.

    Finally, we moved onto the most intense game of all, the hulla hoop. Each team member held hands and attempted to get a hula hoop over their head, past their feet, and onto the next member. The team to drop the hoop on the floor first was the winner. We won the first round easily, however, we dropped the ball on the second, allowing team two their first victory. In the end, we were able to have a ton of fun and we won by a landslide.

-Eryn Swineford

Last Saturday, October 16, Stockton hosted the Boilermaker Jazz Band in the Performing Arts Center. Their show, “When Swing Was King,” was comprised of famous jazz musician Benny Goodman’s greatest hits. Opening with The Jersey Bounce, and closing with perhaps Goodman’s most famous song, Sing, Sing, Sing, the Boilermaker Jazz Band put on a wonderful concert.
Although the PAC wasn’t packed, it was clear that everyone in the audience really enjoyed the performance. Despite the old age and limited mobility of most of the concert-goers, nearly everyone clapped and gave a standing ovation when the band had finished playing. Apart from one kid who looked to be around 7 or 8 years old, my girlfriend and I seemed to be the youngest attendees (you could get a pretty good estimate of how many people were there by counting the piles of walkers left at each entrance). Based on age, I would wager that to most of the audience, the music wasn’t new. The songs the band performed were the songs they grew up with- my generation’s equivalent of Justin Bieber or Katy Perry’s latest hits. However, even as someone who enjoys and listens to jazz, I only recognized a few songs out of both sets the band played.
I love going to jazz concerts. In addition to discovering new music to listen to (and to learn how to play), I enjoy trying to understand the context of songs: what was happening in the world when they were written, and how these goings-on made people feel. Jazz, I believe, is unique in the way that it allows musicians to express emotion. Improvisation, a staple of the genre, allows artists to “play how they feel.” Although improv dates back to the classical era and continues into modern music, it plays a more central role in jazz that isn’t achievable in other genres. I’m fascinated by the thoughts and stories that went into writing each song.
I really enjoyed the concert, and hope the Boilermaker Jazz Band will be back at Stockton soon!

Kate Doherty

Blog 3: Reindeer Games

            On November 19, 2016, the honors program hosted the first annual Run Run Rudolph 5k. For the event, runners donated to participate in the run. The money raised is going to be donated to a local family to help them buy presents and have a great Christmas. My role in the event was registrar. I manned the registration table and made sure each runner signed a waiver and handed in their donation. We sold reindeer antlers and jingle bells as well as ribbons to support the cause further. A trail around the lake was marked and other volunteers held signs and encouraged the runners to keep going. After the event, all of the volunteers participated in a discussion session to reflect on the event and make suggestions for next year.

I think that the event had a lot of potential. For a first annual event, I think it was very well organized. We had plenty of volunteers to help set up the Christmas decorations and to man the trail. The only thing that really needed improvement on was the amount of people who participated. In future years, I think it would be beneficial to collect money for participation ahead of time instead of just providing a preregister form. This might encourage more turnout for the event on the day of. Otherwise, the money would have already been donated and overall, more money would be collected for the great cause. I am excited to promote this event in future years and get more involved in helping at the event. Hopefully we have even more success in my next 3 years at Stockton.