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Volume 43 | Fall 2012
BEHIND
T H E S C E N ES
A look at
the members of
Chancellor Boschini
SENSELESS
ACTS OF
COMEDY
GET DOWN
FUNKY TOWN
The Fort Worth music scene
MIDNIGHT
MUNCHIES
’
A trip to OL SOUTH
COLBY
HALLOWEEN
40 years of the
trick or treat tradition
C
12
JULIEN BRUN
14
STUDENTS IN POLITICS
18
HEALTHCARE LAW
22
MUSIC FESTIVALS
28
A LOOK AT THE
CHANCELLOR
34
A DAY IN THE LIFE
42
COLBY HALLOWEEN
48
SENSELESS ACTS OF
COMEDY
64
COLUMNS: VIEWS ON
THECREW
CONTENTS
FALL2012
2012 l l IMAGE
IMAGE l l 11
SPRING
If you couldn’t tell just from the first few pages, Image has taken a new look this semester. With an almost
entirely new staff, we took a step back and thought about
what we really wanted to be.
We wanted more student profiles- so we not only have
profiles of three students (Julien Brun, Cody Westphal,
and Brittany Henderson), the fashion section has profiles
of three fashionable students around campus.
We wanted to get more in depth with the chancellor,
and he not only spoke with our reporter and gave him
access into his life (pg. 28), but he also let us have a
photographer spend a day with him (pg. 34).
We wanted to celebrate anniversaries in the community- from Ol’ South, to Colby Halloween and Senseless
Acts of Comedy.
In the journalism school, things are always changing.
This year, the Skiff, TCU360 and News Now all became
digital-first and are all now one big news team. With their
change to digital first, it got us thinking about how to
make Image more web friendly. So starting this semester, Image has some online-only exclusive stories that
everyone should go to tcu360.com and check out. Colby
Halloween even has an exclusive online video, which you
won’t want to miss out on.
And always, if you have any questions, comments or
just something you want to say about this issue of Image,
always feel welcome to email us at [email protected].
Mary Muller,
editor-in-chief
From top to bottom: Daniel Ethridge, Alex Apple,
Jessica Nenow, Mary Muller, Rachel Smith.
J.D. MOORE
LAUREN CUMMINS
Major: Journalism
Year: Junior
Interesting fact: I grew up 20
minutes from the Las Vegas strip.
Major: Journalism
Year: Junior
Interesting fact: I’m legally
ordained, meaning I can officiate
a wedding in 39 states.
JAKE HARRIS
RYAN OSBORNE
Major: Journalism
Year: Junior
Interesting fact: My goal is to
become a foreign correspondent
after I graduate.
Major: Journalism
Year: Junior
Interesting fact: I have a golden
retriever named Bogey and a border collie named Birdie.
Managing Editor
Director of Student Publications
Robert Bohler
Bitsy Faulk
Design Editor
Visuals Editor
Production Manager
Director of the Schieffer School
Mary Muller
Rachel Smith
2 l IMAGE l SPRING 2012
Business Manager
Editor-in-Chief
Alex Apple
Jessica Nenow
Vicki Whistler
John Lumpkin
BOSCHINIʼS EFFECT
ON CAMPUS
SEE PAGE 28 FOR STORY ABOUT BOSCHINI
In 2002, 23% of our undergrads were from out of state. In 2012 32%.
In 2002 TCU was classified as a second tier college.
2012 weʼre ranked 92nd in the nation. In 2002, 4% of the students are from another country
In 2012, 5%. COURTESY OF TCU FACT BOOKS
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 3
Comfort
Food
Professor shares
favorite recipe
From meals at the dinner table to potlucks and
special festivities, family recipes can link generations and
families. Food is not only a source of nourishment, but a
way to bring diverse groups of people together to bond and
celebrate life.
Hailing from the United Kingdom, Darren
Middleton’s cooking is influenced by the Indian influence
there. “Although I have never been to India, there is a
very large Indian population in the United Kingdom,”
Middleton, a professor of religion, said. “Indian food is on
practically every corner.”
This love for Indian food was sealed during his
time as an undergraduate student at the University of
Manchester.
“There was a long road called University Avenue
and every other store was an Indian restaurant in this community,” Middleton said. “The running joke at the time
was that you would graduate on time if you ate at every
restaurant.”
Middleton’s favorite Indian food dish is Chicken
Tikka Masala.
It’s made with roasted chicken in a spicy sauce called masala. Masala is often made of garlic, ginger, and onions, and
is served with Jasmine basmati rice or Indian naan bread.
The creamy curry sauce can satisfy a range of palettes. It can be varied for a diner who prefers more spice,
or for someone with a taste for milder foods.
“Some say that all Indian food is very hot. It does not have
to have a heat to it, although it can,” Middleton said.
Although it might be ordinary to some, the significance of Chicken Tikka Masala to Middleton is anything
but simple. The meal is significant, reminding him of the
pluralism of the United Kingdom and his memories as a
student back home.
In 2001, Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary, stood up in the House of Commons and announced
that the national dish of the United Kingdom was now
Chicken Tikka Masala.
“It’s that popular”, Middleton said. “You can get
it anywhere, even in a British pub”.
Not only is Middleton’s favorite food readily available
in the UK, it can also be found locally in Fort Worth. The
Bombay Grill on Donnelly Avenue is known for their Chicken
Tikka Masala recipe. Middleton, a regular patron at Bombay
Grill, joked that he should have a frequent flyer card for all
the times he has eaten there. For Middleton, Chicken Tikka
Masala tells the story of a group of people and a culture much
different than his. But it has shaped his life.
By Corley Padgett
4 l IMAGE l FALL 2012
YOU’LL NEED
1 cup yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
4 teaspoons salt, or to taste
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts,
cut into bite-size pieces
4 long skewers
1 tablespoon butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons paprika
3 teaspoons salt, or to taste
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Middleton uses a variation of
this recipe from Allrecipes.com
how to
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
In a large bowl, combine yogurt, lemon juice, 2 teaspoons cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, black pepper,
ginger, and 4 teaspoons salt. Stir in chicken, cover, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat a grill for high heat.
Lightly oil the grill grate. Thread chicken onto skewers, and discard marinade. Grill until juices
run clear, about 5 minutes on each side.
Melt butter in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Saute garlic and jalapeno for 1 minute. Season with
2 teaspoons cumin, paprika, and 3 teaspoons salt. Stir in tomato sauce and cream. Simmer on low heat
until sauce thickens, about 20 minutes.
Add grilled chicken, and simmer for 10 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, and garnish with fresh cilantro.
Photo from http://getinthekitch.blogspot.com
FALL 2012 l IMAGE l 5
Fifty Years of Good
Ol’ Southern
Cookin’
The smell of fresh food, the friendly wait
staff, the soothing atmosphere of ‘80s music and
clanking silverware, and the family friendly ambiance. These things are what have helped make
Ol’ South Pancake House a nightlife fixture for
generations of students.
The popular pancake restaurant celebrated
its 50th anniversary this summer, and a lot has
changed since the Benson and Brozgold families
opened shop in 1962, according to CEO Rex
Benson.
The changes included adding healthier menu
items such as Greek omelets and salads, ramping
up the restaurant’s social media presence and focusing marketing on students. The biggest change
was adding a point of sale system to track orders,
which helped to ensure better service.
“I came in and took over around April of
2008, and I tried to change it up a little bit but
still keep that nostalgic feel to it,” Benson said.
“All of those were just subtle changes because we
have people eating here that have been with us
since its inception. And if you change one little
thing, they think we’ve turned into a sushi bar or
something.”
That fan base has kept coming back to Ol’
South because of its familiarity and accessibility.
People such as former mayor of Fort Worth Mike
Moncrief could be found sitting a booth over
from college kids and a table away from a family
of four.
“
We want you to
feel like you’re getting pancakes at
your grandmother’s
house. You can’t get
that by walking into
a Chili’s....
”
Benson co-owns Ol’ South with his first cousin, Marvin
Brozgold. The restaurant has been completely family
owned and operated for 50 years.
Ol’ South was started by Rex’s father, David Benson,
and aunt, Betty Brozgold, in 1962. Its first location was
where Romano’s Macaroni Grill on South University is
located now. The location moved to the space it currently
occupies right next to Romano’s Macaroni Grill in 1973.
The menu has had few additions since the restaurant’s
founding, and the walls are still made up of the wood
paneling that was in style almost half a century ago, according to Benson. Ol’ South prides itself on making allnatural food 24 hours a day, all year long. Even the ranch
dressing is made from scratch, according to Benson. He
said the healthier foods were a new idea when he took
over ownership.
“We are not a health food store, but at the same time,
we want to have a good variety for the people that eat
here,” Benson said. “If you want to eat healthy, you can
eat as healthy as anyone in town. If you want to have a
nice southern homestyle meal, you can do
that as well.”
Menu staples include pancakes, German pancakes,
Dutch Babies and chicken fried steak. For the more health
conscious, there are Greek omelets, salads, and fruits and
vegetable sides. All are available at any time of the day.
The feel of the restaurant is more down home diner than
franchise chain restaurant,
Benson said.
“We’re not a chain restaurant; we’re unique. We know
that we’re different, and that’s the thing. We want to try
to stay different,” Benson said. “We want you to feel like
you’re getting pancakes at your grandmother’s house.
You can’t get that by walking into a Chili’s or something
like that.”
Located on South University Drive just before the onramp to I-30, Ol’ South’s close proximity to the university
has ensured it is frequented by students in need of a late
night meal or a quiet place to study.
Students now make up a key part of the restaurant’s
demographic, but before Benson began a heavier social
media marketing approach in 2008, that was not always
the case.
“We kind of lost TCU for a while because they built
a lot of on campus eateries that cut into our business.
Back in the early ‘80s, this place was considered TCU
study hall,” Benson said. “One of my main focal points
was to market more to TCU, get back involved into
Frog Alley and hand out coupons during football games,
things like that.”
One of the restaurant’s big draws for college students is
the quiet studying atmosphere late at night. Compared to
other restaurants that are open 24 hours, Ol’ South is the
study spot of choice because of the free Wi-Fi, free coffee
refills and friendly service.
This student-friendly reputation was in place long before
the current generation of TCU students was even born.
Barry Lewis, a 1987 alumnus whose niece, Zoey
Murzyn, currently attends the university, said that he
would always go to Ol’ South to study.
“When I was at TCU, we would frequent the place, especially late at night. I think the only time I would ever go
there during the day time was Parent’s Weekend,” Lewis
said. “My most vivid memory of the place was that it was
the place to go for late night studying, especially right
around finals time.”
Photos by: Emily Bailey
Lewis said that those late night excursions were always
more about studying than actually eating.
“Yes, we would indulge in some pancakes at some point,
but it was more about the coffee. It was darn good coffee,
and for a cheap price, you could have coffee refills coming all
night long as you were studying,” Lewis said. “I remember
the mismatched tables and chairs, the booths with the tears,
the wooden chairs that just didn’t sit right until you found just
one position to be in, the inevitable smoke and the over-thetop personalities you’d get with the wait staff, especially those
that took your order with the cigarette in their hand.”
The days of waitresses taking orders while smoking cigarettes are long gone, but the mismatched tables and chairs,
cheap coffee and over-the-top wait staff personalities are still
alive and well.
Zoey Murzyn, a junior religion and sociology double
major and Lewis’ niece, said that she can identify with her
uncle’s stories because she has experienced the same thing.
“It’s always funny hearing him tell stories about going to Ol’ South late at night because I’ll just sit there
and smile and nod. The late night studying, the coffee--it
hasn’t changed much over the years from what I can tell,”
Murzyn said.
Shift manager Heather Jones said that the staff enjoys
serving students.
“We kind of cater to the students. We have a back dining
room that’s closed during the evening and overnight shifts so
that people can have a quiet place to come study,” Jones said.
“And the proximity to TCU definitely helps with business.”
According to Benson, business has definitely been booming, even in the current economic recession. Benson said that
sales have grown into the double digits in the last four years,
and sales keep increasing.
“
By Jake Harris
...the mismatched
tables and chairs, cheap
coffee and over-the-top
wait staff personalities
are still alive and well.
”
Midnight
Everybody knows that if you are going to go to Ol’ South
Pancake House, you have to do it right. And by right, I mean
at two in the morning.
Maybe you just came from Billy Bob’s on a Thursday
night. Maybe it is just the last stop before you go home and
you need a midnight snack. Maybe you came there to study
for a late night cram session. Maybe you are drunk. Maybe
not. It does not really matter because you are going to have
an interesting time regardless of why you are there.
Since Ol’ South is open 24 hours a day, it makes sense that
some of the hours with the most traffic are the graveyard shift
hours, especially in a college town.
The types of people you will see and the conversations you
will have will be some of the most interesting of your college
career. The wait staff is made up of lots of different characters like the old lady who knows your order by heart or the
sassy middle-aged woman who is always quick with a joke.
There is no limit to the things that you will see and hear
if you go to Ol’ South in the wee hours of the morning. For
instance, here is a brief sampling of the many things I have
seen while eating at Ol’ South late at night:
-EMT crews taking a break from the ambulance
-Drunk college kids
-Post-Billy Bob’s two stepping crowd
-Paranoid college kids (Especially around finals time)
-A waitress wearing bunny ears (It was around Easter time)
-Two drunk ex-football players arguing about who could
bench more back in high school and getting into a fight about
it (The cops were called; it was pretty cool)
-A fraternity trying to complete the pancake challenge
-Scantily clad women dressed in miniskirts, heels, fishnets,
low-cut shirts and too much makeup pay for their dinner by
pulling singles out of their bra. They may or may not have
been prostitutes, but hey- Who am I to judge?
My favorite experience was when the cops were called
because of the drunks fighting about football. The whole
incident started when one man started yelling at another man
from across the room. Apparently the two knew each other,
and both had played football on rival teams in high school.
The men were adults now (and both clearly inebriated),
and they started insulting each other about the amount of
weight they could bench press back in high school.
The comment escalated until the obligatory “Oh yeah?
Then let’s settle this outside!” By this time, everyone in the
dining room was looking around wondering if something
would happen. The women that were eating with the men
wanted them to stop. Obviously, the men said no, and then
they went outside into the parking lot.
Once this happened, everyone in the restaurant was
watching the fight by the windows like grade school kids
watching a nerd fight a bully. The fight started, and each man
got a few punches in before the police showed up and broke it
up. Then everyone went back to eating like normal.
Maybe it is just me, but I thought the whole series of
events was hilarious. It felt just like something straight out of
a movie. At no time did my friends or I feel threatened--we
just started watching the fight unfold in front of us like it was
just a typical Thursday night.
That fight and all of the other events mentioned above
make my late night dinners at Ol’ South that much more enjoyable. To me, it really speaks to the appeal of a restaurant
when you do not really know who you will see once you walk
through the door, and the more interesting the people are, the
better.
I have had some really good meals there late at night. It
is a great place to go with someone just to talk, but it is also a
great place to go with a huge group of people and enjoy each
others’ company. So I would say, especially if you are a freshman, to go to Ol’ South at least once after midnight. You will
not be disappointed.
By Jake Harris
“So I would say, especially if you are a freshman, to go to Ol’ South at least once
after midnight. You will not be disappointed.”
1 0 l IMAGE l FALL 2012
Munchies
Ol’ South gets crazy after midnight
And just to prove that any time you go to Ol’ South you are guaranteed an interesting
time, I decided to go there at 2 a.m. on a Thursday night and live tweet what I saw.
The EMTs across from me are talking about life, love and work.
I an currently witnessing a man in a suit copy down
TCU’s Big 12 football schedule from a poster on the
wall
— Jake Harris (@JakeHarris4) September 14, 2012
EMT on workplace relationships: “You don’t s*** where you eat.”
Old guy just checked out two college aged women
#haha #caughtyou
Group of hipsters just walked in. Jorts, tattoos, v-necks, whole 9
yards. The EMTs are not impressed: twitter.com/JakeHarris4/
st…
And “Take Me Home Tonight” just came on the radio.
Turns out they have just as much potty mouths as sailors/cops do
#whoknew
Can’t tell if the dude in the booth over from me is taking a general interest in our waitress or if he’s just hitting on her
My waitress also serves as a campaign volunteer. Interesting.
Either the ladies that just walked in came from the club...or
they’re hookers. Can’t really tell.
Someone just shouted “Amuricuh.” My night has been made.
Big ol biker man and his woman just strolled in. Apparently
he’s a “hustler,” or at least that’s what his shirt tells me.
F A L L 2 0 1 2 l IMAGE
l 11
If
there was anything Julien Brun did more
of last year - as in more than any TCU golfer
ever - it was win.
He took three tournaments, a school record,
including his first college event last October.
But it’s hard to forget the rest of the Frenchman’s freshman year, which combined with the
wins made it the greatest individual season in
program history.
Consider: Brun was a first team all-American.
He maneuvered his way into Golfweek’s top 10
individual rankings, finishing the year at No.
8. And in May, he posted a 4-under 67 in the
final round of the NCAA Tournament at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. As the sun
hovered behind the Santa Monica Mountains
that evening, Brun stood in second place, three
strokes from winning the national championship.
But Brun, who in October represented France
at the World Amateur in Turkey, isn’t ready to
turn professional even as it’s become a “common
question” thrown his way.
And he’s OK with that.
“To turn pro, you have to be ready,” he said.
“You don’t want to turn pro to work on your
game. You just want to turn pro and play.”
Golf is a mental game.
It’s unique in that a 16-year-old can have as
much talent as a touring pro, but a middle-aged
man can compete with the kids. Jack Nicklaus
was 46 when he won his last major. Tom Watson
nearly won the Open Championship at 59.
So much is decided within the mind.
“For me, [mental game] is the biggest part,”
Brun said. “It comes around on every shot. You
have to decide what shot you’re going to do, what
club you’re going to hit.”
Julien
BRUN
From France to Fort Worth, few have dominated
the amateur golf circuit like him.
TCU coach Bill Montigel sees a certain level of
maturity in Brun.
“He’s the best player I’ve ever had as a freshman,” said Montigel, who found Brun two summers ago at the European Amateur Championship.
“If he makes a bogey or a double, he just takes
his clubs and puts it in his bag and walks to the
tee box,” Montigel said. “He doesn’t really try any
wild shots out there. He just gets out of trouble.”
Golf is an uncertain game.
Sometimes success at the collegiate level doesn’t
translate to the pro level, at least not immediately.
Peter Uihlein won the 2010 U.S. Amateur and
the 2011 Ben Hogan Award but missed the cut at
Masters and U.S. Open last year. He returned to
Oklahoma State last August but decided to turn
pro in December.
Ten months after leaving OSU, Uihlein (as of
Oct. 1) sat in 23rd place on the Challenge Tour
money list, Europe’s version of the Web.com Tour.
Uihlein left after a successful junior season. One
extra year might not have made a difference, but
his early struggles to break through show how difficult making the jump from the collegiate to pro
level can be.
Patrick Cantlay’s career path could provide
a better Litmus test for leaving early. Cantlay, 20,
turned pro in June after his sophomore season
at UCLA. Like Uihlein, Cantlay was the world’s
top-ranked amateur. He missed the cut in his first
event as a pro but earned $92,683 over his next
five tournaments. Cantlay turning pro “was the
right time, probably,” Brun said.
Every situation is unique in its own, but staying
in college is rarely a bad option, Montigel said.
“There’s so many more things involved,” Montigel said. “I can go on and on of guys who stay
in college and stay on the PGA Tour. They get so
much more out of going to college.”
Golf is a lonely game.
In college and high school, there are teams. The
pros have the Ryder Cup. And, in 2016, golf will
make its Olympic debut.
Still, teamwork can only help so much. Brun
grew up in Antibes, France, a resort town on the
country’s southeastern edge. Northern Italy was
an hour up the coast. The winds off the Mediterranean would sway the palm trees and breeze over
the red-topped buildings lining the city’s crowded
streets. Florida reminds Brun of home, he said.
When he was 6, Brun would trail alongside his
father, Christophe, up and down the fairways of local courses. Julien eventually picked up the game.
By the time he was a teenager, he was competing on a regular basis, and when he was 15
he started playing throughout Europe. He would
travel alone.
“[Europeans] are more used to being on our
own more of the time,” Brun said. “Our parents
are not on us all the time.
“You know what life is. You learn life.”
A few days before TCU’s fall opener at Pebble
Beach, Brun and teammate, Paul Barjon, stood
in a white-sanded bunker near the edge of a
practice green at Colonial Country Club north
of campus. Barjon, a freshman, went to high
school in Antibes.
The August sun blistered across the course, and
the swelling humidity of a coming rain shower suffocated any cool air being blown over the greens
by the giant fans dotting the practice area.
Brun and Barjon hacked away, blasting balls onto
the green. After a while, Barjon fetched a couple
cans of Gatorade and some water from the clubhouse. The poked fun at each other as they cooled
off, two countrymen with similar backgrounds chasing greatness. They laughed like brothers.
But golf is a lonely game.
The teammates finished their fun. Brun grabbed
his putter and three balls and went to a corner of
the putting green, taking an orange string from his
bag and staking it 10 feet from the hole. Barjon
fiddled with another training device on the other
side of the green. Brun was alone with his stroke.
Behind him, back toward Colonial’s red-bricked
clubhouse, a monument to the game’s greatest
shined in the sun. Brun can walk onto the first tee
and stand close enough to run his fingers over the
names engraved in to the club’s wall of champions. Snead. Palmer. Nicklaus. Mickelson.
“You know where you are,” he said.
If he wants, Brun can picture his name next
to theirs. He can feel the club’s red-plaid winner’s
jacket sliding onto his shoulders. He can dream of
the dollars and endorsement deals.
Brun would go onto win by three strokes later
that week, his fourth career title. Later that month,
Brun went home to France and won the Allianz
Golf Open, becoming only the sixth amateur to
win on the Challenge Tour. The victory vaulted
Brun to No. 7 in the World Amateur Rankings.
But Brun isn’t ready for the pro game.
And he’s OK with that.
“I don’t think my game is that ready to turn
pro,” he said. “I have so much to improve. And I
think college is the place to improve.”
By: Ryan Osborne
Photo courtesy of TCU Daily Skiff
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 13
STUDENTS
POLITICS
in
In 2012, President Barack Obama and
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney face off for
the presidency. While this election may have
direct implications on Generation Y, some
students do not feel as though their generation is
actively involved in the race.
Chris Pierce, a junior political science major
from Dallas, believes that there are “hot topics”
in this election that directly affect himself and
his peers.
Chris Lamoureux, a freshman engineering
major shares Pierce’s sentiments. Both Lamoureux and Pierce did not vote in the 2008 election
because they had not reached the legal voting
age of 18, but both plan to vote in this election.
“This is a major turning point in the United
States,” Lamoureux said. “The two parties are
completely opposite and our votes will determine the next four years.”
Pierce said that he doesn’t feel as though
TCU students are as engaged as they should
be. Pierce said he does not know exactly why
students do not seem very active, but believes it
is crucial for that to change in order for young
people’s ideas to be represented.
According to Rock the Vote, national advocates for young voters in America, there are
44 million eligible young voters. Their official
site says that young people make up the largest
generation in history and represent one-fifth
of the electorate, according to Rock the Vote’s
official site.
Sophomore art history and writing major
Leanne O’Donnell agreed that she has not seen
much enthusiasm in this election, but believes
that the issue might be that students are more
concerned with specific topics and enacting
change in their communities, as oppose to fighting for national change.
“I think that there’s too many factors at play
to say that it’s just the student demographic,”
O’Donnell said. “I think that there is some validity to the idea that people are more engaged
in their communities and affecting change that
way than as to doing it through an election.”
Brett Hildebrand, a sophomore political science major,
does not believe that students do not care about the election,
but that their insistence in maintaining cultural courtesy
prohibits them from being as vocal as voters in the past.
“I think with just changes in technology, first of all,
and also just changes in cultural norms,” Hildebrand said.
“People don’t like to discuss political opinions because it can
offend people and it just divides. So, they just avoid talking
about it.”
Hildebrand believes that because of the urge to be
neutral to a large audience, students will tend to take to personal blogs or conversations amongst friends to share their
political beliefs.
“Young people care more about people than the politics,” Hildebrand said. “It’s not that they don’t care, they
just don’t want to offend people.”
One political science professor may find some truth in
Hildebrand’s statements.
Michael Strausz, assistant professor of political science
at the university said he chooses not to discuss his opinions
on the candidates in the classroom. Strausz did not make
this decision because he is worried about presenting conflicting ideas, but instead because he does not want students to
be swayed by his ideas.
“I am concerned that if I took a partisan stand in the
classroom, students would take the same stand whether or
not they agreed, instead of critically evaluating the evidence
on their own,” Strausz said.
Pierce, Lamoureux, O’Donnell and Hildebrand all
agreed that like Strausz, many of their professors do not
push for active election conversation and seem to stay neutral in the classroom.
While he is not aware of any official policy regarding bringing one’s opinions about the election into the classroom,
Strausz does enjoy talking politics with his students, but
wants students to learn and evaluate several viewpoints and
decide on one for themselves, he said.
According to Lamoureux, regardless as to why students
may or may not be vocal in regards to this election, it is
absolutely crucial that they still cast their vote, he said.
“It’s part of our duty,” Lamoureux said. “That’s why
we’re in America.”
By Andrea Masenda
Photos courtesy of Associated Press
FALL 2012 l IMAGE l 1 5
This is a major turning
“point
in the United States.
...Our votes will determine
the next four years.
”
- Chris Lamoureux
http://www.schiefferschool.tcu.edu
SPRING 2012 l IMAGE l 1 7
ASSURED TO INSURE
The Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act will provide benefits to students
and young adults.
Mjhgfdyklkj
Photo by
Daniel Ethridge
By Kezhal
Shah-Hosseini
The Affordable Care Act affects students by allowing them to
stay covered under their parents’ insurance until the age of 26,
receive free preventative services, covering any student or person
with pre-existing conditions, and offering more affordable care.
According to the WhiteHouse.gov, The Affordable Care Act,
most popularly known as ObamaCare, will allow all children up to
the age of 26 to be covered on their parent’s plan.
Brenda Reed and her
students, in a class discussion,
said that this new law would be
beneficial to students at TCU.
“The new law is an asset
for students here at TCU and
across the nation,” Reed said
in an email. “The Affordable
Care Act allows students and
young adults to remain on their
parents’ health insurance until
the age of 26. This is extremely
helpful due to the fact that
insurance is generally very
expensive, and many students
cannot work full time or have
access to benefits like healthcare insurance.”
The Affordable Care Act will
make it easier and inexpensive for young adults to obtain
health insurance coverage, as
stated in the WhiteHouse.gov.
Dr. Melissa Sherrod, a professor at the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, said
she finds the Affordable Care Act
beneficial to the United States
“The Affordable Care Act
gives families the security they
need and important benefits,”
Sherrod said. “The law holds
insurance companies accountable, gets rid of the worst insurance industry practices and puts
patients first. It is also expanding
young adults’ affordable options
for health insurance.”
The plan, according to the
White House website, states
that children can join or remain
on their parent’s plan if they
are married, not living with
their parents, attending school,
not financially dependent on
their parents or eligible to enroll in their employer’s plan.
Another way university students could be affected by the
Affordable Care Act is through
preventative care. Under the
ACA, preventative services,
such as flu shots, HIV and cancer screenings, contraceptive
counseling and
FDA-approved birth control
are free. Effective as of August
1, 2012, women will be fully
covered for services such as
breast cancer mammography
screenings, contraception,
Hepatitis B screenings, HIV
screening and counseling,
and more, as stated on WhiteHouse.gov.
In addition to being covered
until the age of 26 and free
preventative care, students will
also be covered even if they
have a pre-existing condition.
According to the WhiteHouse.gov, beginning in 2014,
health insurers will not be allowed to discriminate against
anyone due to pre-existing
conditions.
The WhiteHouse.gov also
states that those who have
been uninsured for six months
and cannot buy private insurance because of a pre-existing
condition may join the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan.
Under this new law, no insur-
ance plan can deny coverage to
anyone under the age of 19 with
a pre-existing condition.
Lastly, we have the new
80/20 rule. According to the
WhiteHouse.gov, the 80/20 rule
states that policies must spend
at least 80 percent of premiums on direct medical care if
selling to individuals or small
groups. In a big group of about
50 or more employees, the
policy must spend 85 percent
of premiums on care.
According to Reed, her
class was divided on their
opinions regarding the Affordable Care Act.
“It is the general consensus
that even though the United
States is one of the richest
nations, we have one of the
worst health care systems in
the nation,” Reed said. “The
United States spends approximately 17 percent of our Gross
Domestic Product on health
care and does not cover all
citizens. We could learn from
other countries and adapt the
best method for health care by
overhauling our system.”
“The Affordable Care Act gives
families the security they need ad
important benefits. The law holds
insurance companies accountable,
gets rid of the worst insurance
industry practices and puts
patients first. It is also expanding
young adults’ affordable options for
health insurance.”
Dr. Brenda Reed
A NATION’S
STRUGGLE
by Alex Apple
Health insurance reform has never come
easily in America, but few issues strike the
passions of so many Americans.
Photo by
Daniel
Ethridge
Since the dawn of the 20th century, a debate over
health care has raged in America.
The debate centers around the argument over whether
the federal government is obligated to ensure that its
citizens have health care, thus preventing them from
economic headaches associated with rising costs of basic
medical care.
Historian and sociologist Paul Starr wrote in his book,
“Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle
over Health Care Reform,” that efforts to “provide all
Americans access to medical care and protect them from
economic ruin” have long been a “liberal inspiration.”
Beginning in the early decades of the 20th century,
reform from the Progressive Era gave Americans antitrust
laws, labor legislation, the Federal Reserve and workers’
compensation, but reforming health care proved to be
more challenging.
Reform has come slowly. After the New Deal, social
security was passed to give seniors a fiscal safety net in
their later years. Along with social security came the GI Bill
and the minimum wage.
For decades liberals sought a system of universal health
care that would protect all Americans from the pain of illness and burdensome medical bills.
With the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid, progressives hoped they had broken through -- not so.
Starr wrote that “if Americans came to know one thing about the history of battles over health insurance, it was that a
government program to make health care a right of citizenship had always been defeated.”
Early ideas for government-led health insurance programs came from Europe.
Workers compensation shows similarities to German sickness funds, but the idea of national health care similar to Britain was, to the chagrin of progressives, politely frowned upon in the States.
In 1912, progressives within the
Republican Party established the
Progressive Party that included
in its platform support for social
health insurance.
Canada boasts a single payer
system with striking similarities
to the United States’ Medicare
system. Progressives had hoped
that the Medicare system would
serve as a precursor to a more
wide-reaching program to establish
a system for all Americans, offering
insurance akin to the coverage offered to seniors by Medicare.
President Bill Clinton spent a
good chunk of political capital on
an attempt at health insurance
reform in 1994, but progressives
split over whether an employer
mandate should be used to force
universal coverage.
Instead, progressives began
to adopt an idea known as the
individual mandate, an idea identified with moderate Republicans
in the 1990s (Starr).
A century of trying to produce
health care reform produced
mixed results, but progressives
saw a ray of hope when Massachusetts crafted a health care
system that would become the
reference for health care proposals drafted by candidates during
the 2008 election.
When President Barack Obama
took up the issue of health
insurance reform, progressives
sought to avoid the problems that
plagued the reform efforts in the
1994 debate.
A small window for progressives opened in 2008 after
Democrats gained control of both
houses of Congress as well as
the White House.
Unlike Clinton, Obama left the
writing of the bill to Congress,
including the following specifics:
What services to cover, whom
to cover, how much to subsidize
coverage, and how to play for
the expansion of coverage and
control cost.
Much like Clinton, Obama
spent a lot of political capital
on crafting a bill to curve rising
health insurance premiums.
In 2010, progressives would
take a centrist approach in hopes
of coupling insurance reform with
long-term deficit reduction.
Persons opposed to health care
reform and assumed government
intervention in one of America’s
largest industries have called the
Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act “socialized medicine” or
“government health care.”
In reality, none of the proposals
in the United States even closely
resemble true government health
care like Britain’s universal health
care system.
Reality shows that Democrats
largely played on Republican turf.
Coupling reform with deficit reduction, championing the originally
Republican idea of the individual
mandate and dropping advocacy
for a government-run “public option” meant that Democrats sought
compromise on the bill.
They sought agreement on
one of the most divisive issues in
America’s history. Agreement may
have been sought, but discord
was found.
Perhaps the fact that the debate
requires Americans to draw upon
deep-seated ethical principles
precludes agreement.
Or perhaps the problem
is deeper.
Perhaps Americans are truly
divided over the role government
should play in people’s lives.
Americans fought for independence from a “tyrannical”
king in England. Now, Americans are fighting for a government that maximizes the freedom so desperately craved by
our founding fathers.
Beginning in the early decades of the 20th century, reform
from the Progressive Era gave Americans antitrust laws, labor
legislation, the Federal Reserve and workers’ compensation,
but reforming health care proved to be more challenging.
Play
That
Funky
Music
Story by Taylor Prater
From Dallas to Fort Worth to Austin,
the music rings out around Texas
Let’s take a moment to review the
things that makes Fort Worth, Fort
Worth: Billy Bob’s, the stockyards, the
Fort Worth Zoo, Bass Performance
Hall, Amon G. Carter, the National
Cowgirl Museum and a well known
culture of independent music.
Did you catch it? One of these
things is not like the other.
And in an area like Dallas/Fort
Worth, where the cities could be
hardly more different, this should
come as no surprise: The independent music scene is more centralized
in Dallas, considering the environment. But let’s not count out TCU
quite yet.
ROOTS
Tiffani Rodriguez is a junior criminal
justice and sociology double major
here at TCU, which in itself entails copious amounts of time and studying,
but not so much that she can’t plan
her way through whatever live shows
she can get in her time off. From what
she says, you would likely find her at
the Granada Theater in Dallas before
you would find her two-stepping, trading in a pair of cowboy boots and hat
for combat boots and a fedora.
“I’ve been to pretty much every
music venue in Dallas,” Tiffani says.
“I would say I’ve been to, at the very
least, 20 concerts, and that doesn’t
include the festivals I’ve been to.”
Tiffani considers herself a big
proprietor of indie music, saying she
takes whatever chance she can get to
make CDs for her friends to get them
interested in lesser-known bands, or
doing her best to convince them to go
to yet another show with her.
But living in Fort Worth, finding other
TCU students at those same shows is
not a regular circumstance.
“I think Fort Worth’s main focus is
the Stockyards and the rodeo and
cowboys and Billy Bob’s,” Tiffani says.
“Fort Worth, even downtown Fort
Worth, isn’t really a place where there’s
much room to have [indie] shows.”
And she could have a point – Fort
Worth is known to its core as “Cowtown,”
the place along the Old Chisholm Trail
where millions of cattle were driven northward to market in the 19th century.
Visitors come to the Stockyards
downtown on a consistent basis to learn
more about the country western history
of the city. Every Thursday night, hordes
of TCU students brandish their boots for
a night of two-stepping at Billy Bob’s.
If you want to see an artist or band
outside of the country genre, you’re going to have to venture eastward.
BATTLE OF THE VENUES
In Dallas you have the House of
Blues, Palladium Ballroom, The Door,
and endless other small, intimate venues like Club Dada and Trees that will
give you more than enough choices of
which indie artist you’ll see that day.
Fort Worth used to be void of any
“big name” venues until the Ridglea
Theater returned over the summer,
thanks to the tireless efforts of
now-owner Jerry Shults saving
the historic building from demolition in 2010.
Ridglea, which originally
opened in 1950 as a classic
movie theater, played host
to its first live music show in
two years on Oct. 25, when
Australian indie rockers
The Temper Trap took
the stage.
But does this mean
Fort Worth is beginning to put
up a battle of indie music venues in the
metroplex?
“Having Willy Nelson or someone
play at Billy Bob’s, and then having a
band like The Killers down the street
wouldn’t really work with the Fort Worth
vibe,” Tiffani says. “But I feel like it’s
up-and-coming. Fort Worth would be a
good place for folk rock because it’s a
good mix of country, rock, and alternative. It would be cool to have a place
where all of those can come together
at once.”
And perhaps Ridglea Theater can be
that very place, where fans of country
and alternative and indie and electronica can come and not feel out of place.
“It depends on how Fort Worth
represents itself,” Tiffani continues.
“People need to promote Ridglea more,
and [Ridglea] needs to bring in acts that
people know so Fort Worth can be back
in the competition. It’s good to have the
local bands and singer/songwriters,
but you have to have the big names to
really draw people in first. If [Fort Worth]
brings in Red Hot Chili Peppers or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, it
would make an impression on people,
and they would come. That’s what
Dallas gets. Even Denton has festivals
and that kind of ‘hippie vibe.’ Fort Worth
needs some kind of vibe like that.”
UNDERGROUND
In the battle of indie music venues,
Fort Worth’s right hook could be utilizing that country history in conjunction
with the growing indie music scene to
capture the attention of TCU students
and music fans alike.
“I don’t think Fort Worth will be as
big as Dallas in the indie scene for a
little while because Dallas is set with
that already,” Tiffani asserts, “but Fort
Worth can start to bring it in with bands
like Mumford and Sons who are folkish,
but also indie and are sill kind of big
with people.”
Mumford and Sons’ most recent
full-length release, Babel, which came
out in September, has seen significant
radio play and album sales in the
short time it’s been available, which
Tiffani attributes to the album’s hype
over the summer.
“My Facebook feed since the
album came out has been ‘Mumford,
Mumford, Mumford,’ she says. “I think
bands like them and Florence and the
Machine, Of Monsters and Men, and
Imagine Dragons have really gotten
people at TCU to open up and start
talking about [indie music]. You might
not expect it from some people but
Facebook is a good way to influence
other people through music.”
Even online music streaming stations like Pandora and Spotify are good
ways to turn people onto different,
lesser-known artists, Tiffani says, since
social media allows friends to see what
others are listening to, piggyback off of
their choices and even discover similar
artists. And then there’s always the
traditional “word of mouth” method.
“In a matter of two weeks, I heard
an Imagine Dragons song, told a friend
about it, and then he bought the CD
not long after and is now going to the
concert,” Tiffani laughs.
SMELLS LIKE INDIE SPIRIT
With everything Tiffani suggests
about Fort Worth’s steady rise in the
indie music world, Austin City Limits
comes up as a foundation.
And rightfully so – ACL is arguably
Texas’ most anticipated and celebrated
live music festival every year, and Tiffani says she’d been looking forward
to ACL 2012 since not long after ACL
2011. This year will be her first time
going to Austin for the festival, but she
seems to already know it’ll be nothing
short of amazing.
“It’s exciting to see these bands
live, because all I do is listen to them
every day,” she says. “It’s a spread
out environment and ACL has that
variety of different kinds of music that
really completes the experience. Fort
Worth City limits wouldn’t have the
same impact, because automatically
I would think, ‘Oh, a bunch of country
music,” she continues. “Austin already
has that atmosphere and spirit that
indie music has. It’s kind of like a
remake of Woodstock.”
But she says not to discount Fort
Worth from the indie scene quite yet.
“It’s not as big as the country scene
or top 40 around here, but there’s an
underlining of people who like indie
music or have some idea of it,” she
says. “You just have to get people to
open up and start talking to them about
[indie music] and it’ll grow from there.”
So let’s ultimately call it a draw
in the battle of the metroplex music
scenes, and continue to foster that
Cowtown spirit with some Wrangler
boots and a pair of horn-rimmed RayBans to go along.
photos by associated press
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 23
PHOTO GALLERY
photos by: Maggie Simmons
“I took this panoramic photo at the first TCU Football game in the new stadium. I wanted to capture the stadium lights
and the packed stands to remember this exciting night.”
SPRING 2012 l IMAGE l 25
“I’ve spent a good chunk of my last three summers out in a valley in Southwest Colorado. You’re constantly surrounded by beautiful mountains, rivers and lakes.”
“I’ve always enjoyed nature photography, and this shot is from a plant on the TCU campus”
“This is a photo of two blended self-portraits taken on the rooftop of a house I stayed at in Santa Barbara. It was
an overcast, 60 degree day and I was so happy to be out of the 110 degree Kansas (where I’m from) weather for
a few days.”
“This photo is of an old bottle collection I found in an antique store in Sherman, Texas. I thought the case they
were in was just interesting as the bottles themselves.”
VICTOR
photo courtesy of TCU Daily Skiff
BOSCHINI
To understand the complexities and depth of Victor Boschini, you’d first have to
understand this: He doesn’t take himself very seriously.
Ask him, and he’ll tell you what he
thinks: He’s not very smart, he doesn’t
reflect on much and he doubts the university will ever reach the same academic
stratosphere as Harvard, which, to him,
is a good thing because he hopes it never
will. He doesn’t own an iPod, or “whatever those things are called.” He works. He
spends time with his family. He travels. He
watches Jeopardy.
Even as the university’s chancellor,
Boschini teaches a freshman education
course. He answers his own emails. He
meets with students.
On some nights when the rest of the
third floor of Sadler Hall is emptied out,
Boschini will plug his phone into a docking station by the window in his office and
put an eight-song playlist on repeat. Connie Francis and Kid Rock echo through his
office space.
And, really, it seems odd Boschini would
even hang around Sadler that late at night.
The campus administration building, as
renovated as it might be, is in fact the “only
thing more boring than me,” he called it.
But even Boschini knows boring doesn’t
build buildings, nor does it open financial
floodgates. Boring doesn’t re-energize an
alumni base, and it doesn’t attract donors.
Boschini has seemingly done all of the
above since coming to TCU in 2003.
“The first thing everybody is surprised
at when you meet him is that he’s so young
and upbeat,” said Bud Kennedy, a colum-
nist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Since Boschini’s arrival, the campus has
undergone a physical transformation that
rivals any other period of construction in
the university’s 139-year history.
All but two residence halls have been
renovated, and the sea-of-pavement parking lot spanning from Stadium Drive up to
Frog Fountain has been replaced by a new
student union and the Campus Commons.
The football team opened a new stadium
this fall, and construction on a new Greek
village is ongoing. Plans for an Intellectual
Commons by the library on the east side of
campus are already in place. More students
live on campus, and eventually every student will be able to.
The university has changed, and Boschini, who will simply say he’s been along for
the ride, has been at the forefront of mostly
every major development.
So, yes, Boschini might claim to be boring, un-revolutionary and over-simplistic,
but the changes to campus and the changes
to the academic side of the university, have
been anything but.
To understand the impact of
Boschini, you’d first have to understand the era before him.
“Chancellor Boschini is a victim of good
timing,” said Don Mills, the former Vice
Chancellor of Student Affairs who transitioned last year into a faculty position in the
School of Education.
Mills has been at the university since
1968 when he attended Brite Divinity
School. Mills, a Harvard graduate, ended
up staying at TCU serving in some administrative capacity over the next 40 years.
“When I first got to TCU, it was a very
regional West Texas school,” Mills said.
Over the course of the next 20 years,
the university made more of an effort to
expand academically, raise admission standards and recruit nationally, Mills said.
The changes being made weren’t as
flashy as those in the post-World War years
when the university expanded physically,
building residence halls and academic
buildings across campus.
Although few buildings were going up,
the university wasn’t standing still, Mills said.
“I think [TCU] was moving, but it was in
many ways moving under the radar,” Mills
said. “There were lots of things happening –
not as flashy as facilities are and not as broad
based, but I probably wouldn’t have stayed
here if I thought TCU was stagnant.”
Something else happened during the
1970s – TCU began expanding its financial base.
In 1979 when Bill Tucker was sworn in
as chancellor, the school’s endowment sat at
around $52 million, according to the Associated Press. When Tucker retired in 1998,
the school’s funds had ballooned up to $558
million, more than 10 times the amount it
was 18 years earlier.
FALL 2 0 1 2 l IMAGE
l 29
“Chancellor Tucker had two priorities:
Improve the faculty by improving the salaries and increase the endowment,” Mills
said. “He knew TCU could never achieve
national attention without a stronger financial base.”
But that meant having to save, save
and save some more. Building dorms
and academic halls weren’t completely
stalled, but construction projects were
limited, Mills said.
“[Tucker] knew if he spent [money]
building buildings, then he couldn’t build
up the endowment,” Mills said. “He was
a good fundraiser, and he was very conservative in expenditures of university
funds.”
With that financial footing in place,
the university was able to build the Tom
Brown-Pete Wright apartment complex in
1998. The University Recreation Center
followed shortly thereafter, marking the
beginning of the school’s shift away from
its days of ultra-thriftiness.
“That sort of helped people to see how
a facility can change the student experience,” Mills said. “People began to think
more broadly about what we can do with
the space we have.”
Boschini saw that same opportunity.
Shortly before accepting the job, he and
his wife, Megan, took some time to visit
Fort Worth and get a closer look at the
campus.
“I rented a car, drove to the union and
parked there –probably illegally too, I don’t
know – and I just sat in the Old Main and
kind of talked to people,” he said.
Boschini saw the obvious (“The first
thing that hit you was that parking lot,” he
said.), but he saw the potential, too.
“We both thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, every
element is in place for this place to really
skyrocket,” he said.
As Boschini sat in the old student union
that day, he would be on the brink of a
new career and TCU would be on the
edge of a decade-long construction project, a constant overhaul of renovations
and new buildings that would leave the
campus looking and feeling different.
But that potential, which is continually coming to fruition, was perhaps more
a product of what happened under the
years of Tucker as chancellor than what
was envisioned by Boschini or anyone else
on campus at the time. Tucker laid the
foundation.
“If Tucker didn’t do that, Boschini
couldn’t do what he did,” Mills said.
But not just anyone could have led the
university the way Boschini has, especially
considering the construction, Mills said.
Boschini was driven enough to succeed.
“I wouldn’t call the chancellor a planner in the traditional sense,” Mills said.
“But he’s very strategic. When he has
a goal that he wants to accomplish, he sets
out and says, ‘OK, what do I need to do,
who do I need to get on my side to move
forward and accomplish this goal?’ That’s
why he accomplishes so much.
Mills used the development of the
Campus Commons as an example.
When the idea first arose, there was
some debate among university decisionmakers as to how to go about carrying out
a massive construction project right in the
middle of campus. Some people wanted
the building phases to be staggered, closing off the area portion-by-portion over
the course of several years. Boschini made
the decision to go all in.
“He said, ‘Nope, let’s just do it all at
once. Let’s just be torn up for three years
and then we’re done,’” Mills said.
The response wasn’t entirely warm.
“I think when the Chancellor first got
here, he was reluctant to take a giant step,”
Mills said, “because there was some push
back from the trustees. But once he saw
the logic of it and he tested the idea with
various folks, and once he became convinced it was right, he set about to make
the trustees understand what we wanted to
do, and why we wanted to do it.”
Boschini’s plan might have been seen
by some as a risk, but it worked, Mills said.
“For three years, the middle of the campus was unavailable to students, and he
got some criticism about that,” Mills said.
“But it was the right thing to do.”
Along with the joy that comes from
being chancellor, Boschini also deals with
the pain.
Boschini got a call on Feb. 15, 2012
around 4 a.m. It was happening.
Thirty minutes later he was in his office discussing with his cabinet how they
would address the 18-student drug bust
happening that day. Arrests were being
made as they met. He didn’t go home until
after midnight, answering calls from parents and handling media requests.
“I’m a big believer in transparency, and
that was a real test for me,” he said. “Do I
walk the walk? Do I talk the talk? And so
we just felt we had to be open about it.”
The arrests turned Boschini’s stomach.
“I was bitterly disappointed about it,”
he said. “I had diarrhea for days. I had a
stomachache for two weeks.”
“I think the hard part is that all those
kids have families,” Megan Boschini
said. Megan Boschini could see the hurt
in her husband.
“It just doesn’t affect the kid – it affects
the whole family. All of that hits home.
It could be anyone. I think he feels all of
those kids are his kids.”
On top of that, Chancellor Boschini
and the rest of the administration had to
handle criticisms that too much was made
of the situation and that the university was
almost being too transparent causing the
media to swarm around the school with
coverage when, really, campus drug stings
occur all over the country.
“I think that’s been the only disappointment,” Kennedy said. “It was com
ing off the heels of other scandals, and
TCU was worried about being as open as
possible. The university called too much
attention to things the university didn’t
know or control.”
Boschini heard the criticisms at the time.
“If one person is selling drugs, it’s one
too many,” he said. “Does it happen at every campus in America? Maybe. But does
that make it right? No.”
Lying in bed at night, he
stresses over whether there’s
enough faculty or if the sidewalks criss-crossing through
campus are clean or if the
flowerbeds are blooming
Boschini decides where he is taking the
university while imagining where he
thinks it should go and why he thinks it
will get there.
“Will we ever become elite academically? I don’t think so, and I hope not,”
he said. “I think other schools already
have that niche in America, and that’s
not our niche.”
Instead, TCU focused creating an experience and molding that experience into
something special, Boschini said.
“I think what we’ve done these last 10
years is try to make the experience on the
ground for the person with their feet on
the ground -- the freshman, the sophomore, the junior, the senior – better at
TCU,” Boschini said. “Here’s when we really know if that works – when [students]
are 40. Because when you’re 40 and you’re
willing to give back to TCU, that means
this worked.”
Despite the significant strides that the
university has made during Boschini’s tenure, he still sits up at night with worry.
“I’m a big worry-wart,” he said. “I
worry about everything.”
Lying in bed at night, he stresses over
whether there’s enough faculty or if the
sidewalks criss-crossing through campus
are clean or if the flowerbeds are blooming.
He stopped to grin.
“But I’m not very introspective,” he
said. “I’m not very smart. I really mean
that. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking
about all that kind of stuff or examining
my navel.”
And so the progressive came back into
the picture, the let’s-go-get-it, keep-moving-forward mantra that has been so definitive of Boschini’s tenure at TCU. He
had to keep moving ahead.
“I’m more like, ‘what’s going on tomorrow?’ and, ‘let’s make this happen,’”
he says. “I’m more like, apologize for my
mistakes and move on.”
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 31
photo courtesy of Sharon Ellman
To understand the opposite ends of Boschini’s world,
you’d first have to see them intertwined together.
Earlier this fall, a group of first-year
students trudged up to the third floor of
the University Union. They lugged along
their backpacks as a late-September sun
flashed across the Campus Commons and
peeked its way through the large glass
windows on the building’s east side. One
by one, they filtered up the steps and filed
into the Chancellor’s Dining Room.
The students marveled at the long,
white-clothed table in the middle of the
room. They pointed at the engraved silver
platters encased inside the glass cabinets
along the wall.
Boschini was holding a brunch for his
freshman education class, a seminar on
the American University Experience.
“I always say I got into [education] because I like seeing students,” he said.
“But you could never see a student in my
job if you wanted. You could totally work it
out that way. And actually, it would be a lot
easier and a lot lest time-consuming and a
lot less messy. But why would I do this job?”
Shortly after the students settled in to
eat their meals, Boschini called a group to
the head of the table – they had a presen-
tation to give. Ironically enough, part of
their PowerPoint involved a class debate
over the legalization of marijuana.
The two sides exchanged points for
30 minutes, then promptly asked Boschini
to pick a winner. (For the record, Boschini
chose the team arguing to keep it illegal.
He is still a chancellor, after all.)
And so the progressive came
back into the picture, the
let’s-go-get-it, keep-movingforward mantra that
has been so definitive of
Boschini’s tenure at TCU.
He had to keep moving
ahead.
“It’s kind of weird at times,” said
Mitch Titsworth, a freshman in the
class. “You would think he would have
his own agenda on it. But he’s so open.
It’s a fun environment.”
Fun sometimes means holding class
at the zoo or inside Boschini’s luxury
suite at Amon G. Carter Stadium, where
the group met the week before. Boschini
doesn’t shut off communication once
class is over, either.
“He was on a conference call, and
I kind of waved at him and he walked
over to me to shake my hand and talk to
me while he was still on the phone,” said
Dominic Moreth, who’s also in the class.
Titsworth and Moreth were seemingly carbon copies of Boschini’s student experience blueprint. They were
engaged with him, and he was engaged
with them.
A few days after the class, Boschini
explained his goals again. As he talked
about the university knowing its niche,
it became clear he was a man who saw
both the good and bad in the school. He
certainly was not blinded by success.
But he saw the potential, too. He
saw the chance to be unique. He saw the
chance to stand out.
“I don’t want to be Harvard,” he said.
“There already is a Harvard. I don’t
want to be Rice. There’s already a Rice.
And I think those are great schools.”
He paused for a moment before delivering the pitch he’s been selling for
nearly a decade.
“But I think we have something different here,” he said. “Something better,
actually.”
By Ryan Osborne
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 33
A
DAY
IN
THE
LIFE
photos and story by matt coffelt
8:27 a.m.
Victor J. Boschini Jr. is a busy person. Having already been in the
office for almost an hour, he agreed to let me follow him throughout
his day so that we could document a day in his life.
“Most of what I do is fairly mundane, I just have to keep up with it.”
The chancellor lets me into his office and allows me complete photographic access. He is checking through mail and emails that have
piled up before his first appointment of the day. If he doesn’t keep up
on his email, he said it’s overwhelming how many he would have at
the end of the day.
This gives me time to explore his office and observe the personal
touches he has added to his work place.
Photographs cover almost every visible surface. Each photograph
tells a story of places he’s been and of friends and family.
The odds and ends help tell this story, too.
From the Elvis coasters to the collection of intricate, miniature frog
statuettes, the chancellor’s office is adorned with personal items that
add his uniquely personal touch to the office.
Quietly, music selections from his iPhone fill an otherwise quiet yet
busy office but something is just slightly odd.
After hanging out in the chancellor’s office for about a half an hour,
a song heard earlier cues up again. The next song, too, was a repeat.
It turns out he only plays about eight songs on repeat from his iPhone.
He likes it this way though he said. That way he knows all the words by
heart. Some of the songs in question were Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling
Stone” and the Sheryl Crow with Kid Rock duet “Picture.”
“
From the Elvis
coasters to the
collection of intricate,
miniature frog statuettes,
the chancellor’s office is
adorned with personal
items that add his
uniquely personal touch
to the office.
”
8:50 a.m.
While reading through his daily stack of mail, the chancellor finds
out that the new TCU football stadium has made the cover of the
Fort Worth Business Press. He smiles and holds up the front page.
9:31 a.m.
Next is a meeting with the Brian Gutierrez, the vice chancellor of finance and
administration, in his office down the hall.
The two speak about the financial issues of the school, such as the budget for
the coming year, and other related topics
such as new staff hires off of a pre-written
agenda.
The meeting is relatively brief and consists of efficient conversation about the
topics at hand.
9:50 a.m.
After the meeting, it’s back to the office and returning calls that were
missed before the meeting with Gutierrez.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 35
10:16 a.m.
After some more checking of emails and
brief phone calls, it’s time for another meeting
in the chancellor’s office.
Director of Special Projects Sheri Miller
wants to talk about a dinner planned for Family Weekend. Miller and the chancellor agree
on the logistics, and Miller quickly leaves.
10:55 a.m.
It’s also Fall Convocation and the chancellor is checking emails backstage in Ed Landreth Auditorium while the procession begins.
11:15 a.m
Convocation is well underway at this point
and the chancellor is moderating a panel while
talking about TCU. This is the first time a panel
discussion has ever been incorporated into a
TCU Convocation.
12:10 p.m.
After Convocation, the chancellor goes to
meet with the Wassenich family, who established the award in 1999.
Mark Wassenich asks the chancellor about
the guy tagging along. (He points to me.)
1:40 p.m.
At this point the chancellor had to take care of some
business that he couldn’t have a photographer following
him for, so we split up for a short while and agreed to
meet back up when he was going to talk to the Faculty
Senate Chair Marie Schein.
3:07 p.m.
The chancellor meets with Schein in her office. Her office is almost completely empty. A computer, a file cabinet,
and an old school desk in the corner are the things in the
room. They discussed different issues concerning faculty
members and possible solutions to them before they left
for the actual faculty senate meeting.
1:11 p.m.
There is a lunch held after Convocation
with the winners of the faculty awards for the
year and the year prior in addition to other
faculty. Both Linda and Mark Wassenich
were in attendance.
Everyone spoke about what mentorship
meant to them and how they were seeing it
in the TCU community.
3:36 p.m.
Boschini sits and listens to the meeting as different
topics are discussed and things voted on.
4:30 p.m.
At this point the chancellor has to excuse himself from the
meeting and head to Dallas for a meeting with Dallas alumni
for a dinner.
This event takes up the rest of the evening and he
said that finally made it home at 9:40 p.m.
1
Yes, I definitely did. I lived on my undergraduate campus for four years in a residence hall and in a fraternity
house at various times. I also lived on another campus during my graduate work for my master’s degree.
2
I was a history major and loved all of my history classes…..though my favorite was any one of I took from
Dr. Saffell. I especially enjoyed a class I took on the Civil War.
3
This was probably my public speaking class because I was too young to realize how important it really
was. I thought I already knew how to speak and did not comprehend the importance of that entire
subject matter.
4
5
Yes, I was involved with a few student groups: SGA, Union Board and IFC were three of them.
6
Never – I was never a big drinker as an undergrad.
Just once. I changed from Business to Social Studies Comprehensive (History-Poly Sci- Sociology). I
changed in my sophomore year after realizing that my interest really centered around the study of history.
I admired almost all of my history professors. There was one I really did not like – he was mean to all of the
students and I resented that.
7
Hanging out with my friends. I did not have a lot of money so I did not have tons to spend on weekend
activities so I mainly enjoyed the events that were sponsored on campus by SGA and Union Board or my
fraternity. I do remember that in our res halls we only got 20 meals per week and I hated not getting a
“free” dinner on Sundays! Ha.
8
I was one of the kids who hung out in the Union – my friends, like me, were all nerds and we enjoyed the
simple pleasures! I am now – and always have been – kind of boring so I really was never enamored with the
bar scene or anything like that.
10
9
When I went to school back in the Stone Age we did not have the option of repeating a course – so no.
Again – I was a boring kid – so not much to report on this one either. I did once cut an English class with my
best friend and we both got caught by the professor as, unbeknownst to us, she had another person teach our
class that day and she caught us walking to his car. Like I said – I lived right on the edge.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 37
RALPH CARTER
by Pearce Edwards
From small town Witchita Falls, Ralph Carter
is now one of the Princeton Review’s top 300
professors in America.
It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday, and 30 students sit
dolefully in a classroom.
It’s too early to be
lucid and too late to
make any excuses about
it. Never mind cloudy
skies and impending
midterms, because when
their professor bounds
in the door as the alma
mater tolls on the chapel
bells, the academic day
turns upside down.
Walking is not the
right term for how Ralph
Carter, professor of political science, enters a
classroom. He comes in
filled with enthusiasm,
the spring in his step
reflected in his rugged cowboy boots, big
belt buckle and neatly
trimmed mustache.
He sets a manila folder down on the podium,
steals a quick glance at
his notes for the day and
begins a veritable tour
de force of an American
foreign policy lecture
from memory.
Carter has been a
member of the faculty
and a favorite of students
since his arrival at the
university 30 years ago.
Now lauded and
ranked among the nation’s best 300 professors
by the Princeton
Review, Carter’s journey
to professorship started
out as a desire to go to
law school.
Born to an Air Force
family and raised in
Wichita Falls, Texas,
Ralph Carter attended
his hometown university
of Midwestern State and
studied in its government program.
Initially set on going
to law school, Carter
heeded the advice of his
father, who pushed him
to find a line of work that
he would find enjoyable.
Far from being daunted,
Carter found a love for
professorship.
“It’s a good deal,” he
explained. “Professors
get to stand around and
talk about interesting
stuff all day.”
The drive to achieve
pushed him to the top
of his class. He had the
potential to set out a path
of success and excellence
in political science, yet, if
he had stayed at Midwestern State, he might
still be in Wichita Falls.
He recalled an adviser
who urged him to leave
his hometown for the
prestigious graduate
program at Ohio State
University by declaring,
“if you stay at Midwestern State, you’ll end up
being the most popular
professor at Sul Ross
State [a tiny college in
rural West Texas].”
Carter’s desire to
teach at a Southwest
Conference school,
such as Rice or TCU,
lit a fire inside him and
made graduating from
a top-ranked doctorate
program his best and
only choice.
While at Ohio State,
the Texas Ph.D. candidate set about networking with the
most accomplished
scholars in the discipline, interacting with
the president of the International Studies
Association, learning from the likes of future
Lockheed Martin executives and working at
Yale University’s conference center, where
he met prominent American ambassadors.
Not content with just passive participation in his future, Carter got into a disagreement with the director of placement
at Ohio State.
Carter stubbornly protested when he
found out his name was unknowingly submitted for a professor job. “I told him, ‘you
can’t define my interests,” he recalled.
TCU turned out to be the next important step in the road. With his grandparents
as longtime residents, Carter emphasized
the “tremendous appeal to Fort Worth.”
The university hired him for a temporary
position which eventually transformed into
a tenure-track position. Carter was offered
quality instruction and a nurturing professional environment full of instructors who
shared a similar passion for students.
Thrilled to come to the university from
what he called an isolating “publish or
perish” environment in which universities
judged professors only on the volume of
their research, Carter asked, “shouldn’t we
be worried about students’ quality of life
from here on out?”
The simple question about how a university should work highlights the essence
of Carter’s impact as a mentor, teacher and
friend.
His longtime colleague in the political
science department, Jim Riddlesperger,
described him as among “the most talented
classroom instructors that I know of.”
Fellow political science professor Jim
Scott, who has worked and written with
Carter for two decades, asserted many
professors try to reach what he has done,
“but few manage to achieve it.”
With room to grow at the university,
Carter continued his relentless efforts to
improve. Scott described Carter’s impact
as being “widely regarded as a model
teacher-scholar whose commitment to engagement with students is exemplary.”
Riddlesperger echoed the praise of
Carter, noting “the key is that he prepares
for his success.” The accolades and the
Photo by Kristen Kilpatrick
decades of loyal students came not by
accident, but by a determined design to
measure his own success by the success of
those in his classroom.
What resulted from his labors on the
path of academic and scholastic excellence
is a what Carter describes as an excitement
in front of classes, a feeling that interacting
with students is the best part of the day and
something to which to look forward.
Even if students without any special love
for political science take a course Carter
teaches, he strives to have students make
more informed decisions in their daily lives,
to urge them to reach for success, just as his
college adviser encouraged him. In some
cases, Carter has become a close friend to
students in years after their graduation.
“The Chancellor and Provost have a
vision of what they want the university
to be,” Carter said. “As administrators,
faculty and staff, [we] are all rowing the
boat in the same direction.”
By beginning his fourth decade at the
university in 2012, the professor from
Wichita Falls continues his decorated academic journey. As evidenced by his smile
and his mastery of professorial practice,
Carter said he enjoys where the road has
led him so far.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 39
What’s Happening?
@OnlineFriendship #BeMyFriend
@ToriCummings
Four years ago, Cassandra Tennison joined a Jonas Brothers fan site through MySpace. Little
did she know that the people she met there would end up being some of her closest friends.
Tennison, like other students, has made friends through social media. Tennison said she has
met people from Ohio, New York and South Carolina. She said she met sisters in South Carolina
who feel like a part of her family.
“Everyone that I’ve met is really through music, through like artists that we both like,” the
sophomore mathematics major said.
Over the summer, she visited a friend in Ohio for the first time. Tennison’s parents were nervous
about their daughter going to meet someone she found through social media, but Tennison said
she was eager to meet her friend.
“With the girls that I’ve known for a while, it’s actually more exciting to meet them because
I’ve talked to them on Skype and on Facebook and on Twitter and texted them for like, ever, but I
haven’t been able to spend time with them,” she said.
Tennison said that distance is a big problem in maintaining these relationships because she
lacks daily interaction with them, like the kind she gets with her roommates.
Assistant professor of communication studies Andrew Ledbetter specializes in understanding
how people use communication technology to maintain interpersonal relationships.
He said people turn to Facebook and other social media because they’re convenient and can
transcend long and short distances.
Students have a hard time imagining the time before technology like Facebook or texting were
a ubiquitous part of society, Ledbetter said.
Facebook communication helps strengthen offline relationships and keeps people connected
to their social networks, he said. Research shows that people who use social media, such as
Facebook, aren’t lonely or disconnected from others.
“The way I think about that, is the closer you are to somebody, the more your lives are connected,” Ledbetter said.
Some students use chat features on games to meet people through social media.
Senior nursing major Clara Garcia uses the chat feature on Words with Friends to interact with
people from all across the country including California, Ohio and New York.
“It’s a fun way to interact with people,” she said. “ You never know who you’re going to find out there.”
Tennison said the transition from fan site friends to Facebook friends was slow. She talked with
people on the fan site for months before exchanging any personal information.
Before moving a relationship to Facebook, Tennison said, she also checked their Facebook
profiles to learn more about them.
Facebook profiles reverse the self-disclosure process, Ledbetter said. Profiles supply a lot of
information to people before they even interact with each other.
Although technology can connect people, when people spend most of their time with
technology, they could miss out on important relationships, Ledbetter said.
“I do kind of become concerned that these technologies sometimes make us ignore the
local in favor of the global, so to speak, or we ignore what’s right around us in favor of the
opportunities we have for people that are far away,” he said. “But we lose some of the richness of that face-to-face community.”
Facebook is a pro-social tool and a motive to get online, Ledbetter said. People feel like
they miss news or events if they aren’t online.
Garcia said she likes meeting people through social games because the other person
doesn’t have her personal contact info. They don’t have any mutual friends and she can use
a fake name.
When it comes to becoming Facebook friends, Garcia said, she wants to interact with
the person in real life before she meets them on Facebook.
There is no good way to explain a friendship created through online interactions, Tennison
said. There is a lot of “skirting around” the subject when people ask about the relationships.
“It’s a touchy subject because there’s just been so many situations that have gone poorly,” she said. “But we’re always like ‘oh we grew up together and she moved away when I
was little and we just so happened to get back in touch.’ ”
When people use sites like Facebook to find friends, they get a limited view of the other
person, Ledbetter said. They might lose certain aspects of someone’s personality because
not everything is posted online.
Online friending allows people to jump to conclusions about other people, Ledbetter
said. People could also self-select their friends based on common interests and ignore
people who are different from them.
Tennison said she never thought she would be the person to meet people through online
websites, but she is grateful for the people she has met there.
“They’re very close friends of mine,” Tennison said. “It’s weird to think about what
would’ve happened if I hadn’t met them.”
Following 576
Followers 894
Trends:
#FearTheFrog
#TCUfootball
#Image
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 41
By J.D. Moore
CELEBRATING 40 YEARS
OF COLBY HALLOWEEN
For 40 years, the women of Colby Hall have given back to the community,
grown closer in friendship and celebrated the spirit of Halloween with an
annual event known as Colby Halloween.
Each year in October,
residents cover Colby Hall
from the floor to the ceiling in
elaborate decorations, ranging in themes from “Scary
Swamp” to “The Land of Oz”
in order to serve the campus
community. Carnival games
are added to the lobby and
run by residents, while a
haunted attraction is built in
the basement to appeal to
older children.
Children of faculty members and staff, along with
members of the Starpoint and
Kinderfrogs schools, come
to enjoy the festivities, trickor-treating down the halls of
Colby Hall as residents pass
out hundreds of pieces of
candy during the night.
The tradition has grown
to be one of the most-widely
known and most celebrated
traditions in university residential life.
Craig Allen, the director
of Housing & Residential
Life, said the event not only
stands as a mark of good
will to the community, but
also stands as an established tradition with which
members of the community
identify and recognize.
“It’s a great community sereen to the well-executed prepa- Schomp said. “There were many
vice event,” Allen said. “Students
ration the residents do, along nights spent bonding in the lobby
give back to the TCU community with the community that builds in while making decorations for
and faculty and staff appreciate Colby Hall itself.
the event. There was a sense of
it. It’s always very
unity we all had.”
well-done, wellThis sense
decorated and you
of bonding and
can’t find a better
unity is not lost on
place to go trickformer Colby resior-treat with your
dents. Ruth Tusi,
Craig Allen
little ones.”
a junior movement
Since joining the university’s Former Residents Reflect
science major, was a freshman in
staff in 2005, Allen said he’s seen on Colby Halloween
Colby Hall in 2010 when she had
major changes to Colby HallowThis annual tradition, known
her first experience with Colby Haleen. One of the biggest changes as a landmark event for resiloween.
and challenges is that the event dents, has left a lifelong memory,
Tusi said it was a time out of the
becomes more and more popular former residents said. Judith
school year when everyone could
each year, Allen said. Schomp, a 2011 alumna and
plan, decorate and work together
“It’s to the point that it’s chalformer Colby Hall residential
to see a common goal be reached.
lenging to get that many people
assistant, said the most rewardOn the night of the event, Tusi said
through the building safely
ing part of Colby Halloween was
the reactions of the kids participatand efficiently,” Allen said. “It
seeing the continual building of
ing in the event made that bonding
requires a whole new level of
university tradition.
experience solidify, as the residents
logistics and planning.”
“When I think back on Colby
of Colby Hall got to see their work
In 2011, more than 1,900 chil- Halloween, I think about all the
come into fruition.
dren and parents went through hard work that my residents, felMichelle Nguyen, a sophomore
Colby Halloween, Bianca New- low RAs, and myself put into it,”
business major, agreed, and said
ton, the hall direcher fondest memories
tor at Colby Hall,
of Colby Halloween
said. For the 40th
came from working
incarnation of Colby
together with her fellow
Halloween, Newton
hallmates and making
said Colby Hall was
connections with other
prepared to take up
Colby women.
to 2,000 individuals.
“It helped the girls
Allen said lines
converse with each
for the event form
other more,” Nguyen
long before the event
said. “We welcomed
opens in the evening,
everyone’s creativity,
and the line normally
and the final result was
extends down the
really worth it. It was a
street. He said he
great way to bond with
credited the popularmy roommate and
ity of Colby HallowPhoto by Rebecca Philip
my neighbors.”
“Students give back
to the TCU community and faculty
and staff appreciate it.”
Photos by Glen E. Ellman
courtesy of TCU Magazine
Brittney Luby, a 2006 alumna
and former Colby Hall RA, said
those bonding moments turn into
major social gap between women
in Colby Hall.
“Colby Hall is always notori-
lifetime friendships. Luby, who
ously divided into Greeks and
office of religious and spiritual
the divide is made, something
nows works in the university’s
life, said the event brought her
together with her fellow residential
assistants, who she called “some
of her closest friends to this day.”
Although friendship is a direct
result of Colby Halloween, the
tion that took her by surprise was
the positive relation with the local
business community, she said.
During fundraising efforts, local
non-Greeks,” Bettis said. “Once
branches of Target, Walmart, and
has to be done to bring everyone
donate candy and other goods
together. For us, it was Colby
Halloween. We were able to go
door-to-door and meet neighbors
because we had to work together.”
A co-chair of Colby Halloween
other national brand stores would
based on recognition of the event,
Bettis said. Other stores, such
as local bakeries, were glad to
donate as well.
“The community of Fort Worth
event does more for the residen-
in her freshman year, Bettis said
showed up,” Bettis said. “But
Melissa Bettis, a 2003 alumna.
involvement from all groups, not
knew this event was a safe place
tial community than that, said
The event helped to bridge a
she was always impressed to see
just Colby residents. One connec-
it’s because they knew us. They
for kids, they knew it’s a positive
event for TCU and there’s some-
thing to be said for the recognition
this event gets every year.”
History & Growth
After 40 years of outreach to
the community, Colby Halloween is
widely recognized by the university
older and younger children to
introduce them to the university.
Because schools such as
KinderFrogs and StarPoint came
to the university, the annual
event expanded to include them,
Bettis said.
community. However, the exact
A Legacy of Tradition
to be unknown.
narrative of Colby Halloween, the
recognition of Colby Halloween
successful residential tradition on
origins of Colby Halloween appear
The earliest documented
in documents comes from a 1978
yearbook, six years after the first
Colby Halloween was held. In
the yearbook, there is only one
sentence about the event, which
states “Colby continued its tradition of having a Halloween party
for faculty children.”
Regardless of the historical
event is the best-known and most
campus, Allen said. The event has
inspired a number of other traditions, such as Samuelson and
Carter Hall’s Frog Fest, Foster
Hall’s “Fosterotica” sex-education
week and Brachman Hall’s “Family Dinners.”
With a tradition that creates
No other articles from the
such nostalgia and participation,
publications could be found with
become the standard-bearer to
come back to it. No other hall has
was blown away by the amount of
It was our thing. It made us at-
Daily Skiff or other university
a story of the first incarnation of
Colby Halloween.
Out of the dozens of sources
interviewed for this article, including current and former residents,
Allen said, Colby Halloween has
all incoming traditions. He said he
an common unifier like Colby does.
love the community gives back to
tached to that hall.”
Colby Halloween.
“I’ve seen seniors who live
The hall itself will host only one
more Colby Halloween. Colby Hall
hall directors and staff, only Bettis
off-campus return to help volun-
will be torn down in 2014, in order
ning of Colby Halloween.
to see what a community this
ing, Allen said. Due to the construc-
claimed to know about the beginBettis said she was told about
the first Colby Halloween as a
teer,” Allen said. “It’s incredible
to build a new version of the build-
event forms.”
tion, Colby Halloween will need to
This community expands every
get creative, he said.
“I don’t think Colby Halloween
freshman by a former hall worker,
year, and women involved will
said she was told the event was
year they participated in it, Bettis
said. “Nobody here will say ‘Let’s
helps define the university experi-
another building, it may be outside
“It’s an identifier,” Bettis said.
lenge. We’ll find something to make
who is now deceased. Bettis
started as a way of bringing the
children of faculty and staff in to
engage in a safe part of the community. She said it was originally
designed as an outreach to both
relate to one another, despite what
can afford to have a year off,” Allen
said. The event is something that
just not do it’. It may be in another
ence for Colby residents, she said.
Colby Hall, but that will be our chal-
“We move away, but we always
it happen.”
WESTPHAL
If you just look at Cody Westphal’s long list of organizations, you might think he is one of the people who get
hyper-involved to boost his or her resume. But he’s not.
Westphal’s passions are what guide his involvement
and how he spends his time at TCU. He said he is busy
with a long list of organizations, but he knows each one
has a purpose.
Westphal joins organizations if their ideals match
with his own, he said.
“You only have so much time and so much energy in
the day,” Westphal said, “I just kind of let what I care
about guide me.”
Westphal said he is passionate about a lot of things,
and the number of organizations he is in reflects that.
During his first year at the university, Westphal joined
the Chancellor’s Leadership Program, the Chancellor’s
Scholar Program, Students for Asian Indian Cultural
Awareness, Beta Theta Pi fraternity, the SGA House of
Representatives, Frog Aides, and was a John V. Roach
Honors Blogger.
This year he took on leadership roles by becoming
the Beta Theta Pi pledge class president, a retreat coordinator for the Chancellor’s Scholar Program and an SGA
representative on the finance committee.
“It was less of trying to get involved,” Westphal said.
“It was kind of just being drawn towards things, and feeling what I am passionate about, and seeing if there was
an avenue for that.”
Westphal said he stays involved because he loves
people and learning from them.
“It changes your view on the world,” he said.
He said he has probably learned the most about other
cultures through his friends in Students for Asian Indian
Cultural Awareness, or SAICA.
He said when you get to know people, you discover
that they want to make a difference in the world.
“People are out to do just a little bit of good and have
a little bit of fun,” he said.
Austin Marple, Beta Theta Pi’s President, said Westphal looks at situations critically to improve them. He also
strives to go beyond normal standards to see if change
could make a positive difference.
Marple, an executive team member for Frog Aides last
year, saw Westphal grow through the program.
As a friend, Marple said Westphal gets others to help
him in his efforts to make changes, yet stays humble anytime he steps up to be a leader.
Becoming a leader on campus teaches lessons like
time management, people skills, sending emails and working to accomplish goals, Westphal said.
Westphal said he hopes that his future career will
incorporate skills he learned because of his involvement
at the university.
If nothing else, he said he knows his interactions with
others through organizations have made him a better person.
“I think that is one of the most undervalued things—
time that you just get to work with others,” Westphal said.
Marple said Westphal really does get to know those
around him and make the best of a relationship.
Ann Louden, the chancellor’s associate for external
relations, said Westphal has a confidence and enthusiasm
that gets others excited.
Louden said she worked with Westphal to improve
the Chancellor’s Scholar Program after he presented her
with ideas.
Westphal’s idea for a retreat to better connect the
chancellor’s scholars was planned by the university’s
administration 24 hours after the initial conversation,
she said.
Westphal said he was especially amazed at how
Chancellor Victor Boschini responded to his idea.
“He emailed me and had me in his office,” he said. “I
was a freshman. I was 18 years old, and he cared enough
to give me the time of day.”
After working with the university’s administration
and other students, Westphal saw his idea become a reality on Aug. 25. The Class of 2016 Chancellor’s Scholars
went on the retreat, which Louden said was a success.
Westphal said that after the event, he realized how the
university equips its students to succeed.
“On every single level, TCU makes it happen,” he
said. “I pointed something out, and people cared.”
Getting involved and reaching goals outside of the classroom are exceptional things, but Westphal said he knows
that academics come first.
Sophomore year presented some problems for Westphal because he said the difficulty of his classes increased.
But every year he sets academic expectations for himself to help him succeed in his business and economics
double majors.
He said people need to be selfish when it comes to
succeeding in classes. And, when limits are pushed, they
need to be honest about how they are spending their time.
“I can’t be superman,” he said. “One of the realities of growing up is prioritizing, and grades are the
top priority.”
Outside of school, Westphal writes and performs his
own music. He said he brings his guitar to Stay Wired and
Potbelly to showcase his music when he finds time.
Westphal says he stays true to who he is and what he is
passionate about, even with a super-involved schedule.
And through it all, he does not even need a planner.
by: Kaileigh Kurtin
photo by: Daniel Ethridge
SPRIN
FALL
G 2012
2 0 1 2l lIMAGE
IMAGE l l4 7
9
SENSELESS
COMEDY,
ACTS OF
Ten years of laughs, quips, and
quirks has made Senseless Acts of
Comedy a force on campus.
By Lauren Cummins
Multi-colored ties
and multi-dimensional talent; that’s what
one finds at a Senseless Acts of Comedy
(SAC) show.
The TCU students that comprise
SAC are from all
different majors
and backgrounds in
improvisation, but
each incorporates a
piece of their unique
identity and style into
the troupe.
This close knit
group has raked in
some serious audience
numbers, increasing
from an audience filled
with a mere group of
friends in attendance
when the troupe
started in 2002, to the
300+ crowd they bring
in today.
All members mentioned that cohesion
and chemistry are key
reasons why the troupe
has thrived in its 2012
fall season.
The troupe practices short form, a style
of improvisation that
is high energy, free
in form and involves
short improvisation
games. The games include character games,
scene games and situational games.
Each week the comedians put together
a digital short that is
played at the show to
stir up audience energy
and show off their
scripted talents. One
week students might
see a musical, public
service announcement
or tribute to the 90s.
Expectations are
not allowed during
a SAC show, as the
members and audience never know what
they’re in for; whether
a joke will flop, be a
hit, or be completely
unexpected. You might
hear some ridiculous
thing about elephants
or some weirdly serious
thing about windows.
That’s the beauty
of improv, and these
students are masters.
Nevertheless, this
goofy yet brilliant
group brings something different to the
table every week,
keeping audience
members coming back
for more.
Kellye Moore
Grant Moore
Co-president Grant Moore is getting down to business when it comes
to this crazy troupe. His organizational skills and interest in graphic design
have helped the group immensely
with promotion and getting the
troupe’s name known across TCU’s
campus. As the mastermind behind
the comical videos, this junior filmtelevision-digital media major incorporates the skills he’s learned in the
classroom and applies them behind
and in front of the camera weekly.
Comedy on the Internet has been
the biggest inspiration for his work,
as he tries to capture a wide range
of material as well as take his own
original twist on everyday happenings in pop culture. Moore realized
his passion for comedy in high school
when he would make comedic videos
for fun with his friends. Oftentimes
the fun, sometimes embarrassing
moments that happen to him and his
friends daily become the inspiration
for his videos.
You may have seen her half-moon
you during a show or play a deaf
character with a mom named Stef.
Known to dye her hair crazy colors,
this silver tied chick is the glue that
holds SAC together. Co-president
Kellye Moore is SAC’s oldest member of the group and has been a part
of the troupe since her freshman year.
Today, SAC does not accept first
year students during tryouts; they
first must participate in “Loose
Ends,” otherwise known as SAC’s
improv workshop.
The troupe veteran was inspired
to join SAC as well as attend TCU
after seeing the then group of four
perform at Mondays at TCU.
“Even If I couldn’t perform in the
troupe, I knew I had to be a part of it
somehow,” she said.
While Grant is the president that
handles business-type affairs, Kelly is
the improv mastermind of the group.
She hosts, leads and teaches the
members during practices and preshows. She uses skills and games she’s
picked up from former members who
have been her mentors to lead the
group to success.
After she graduates in December,
the FTDM major said she hopes
the troupe builds upon their already
great communication and community, as those are the reasons why it
has thrived this season.
Jeremy Culhane
The name’s Jeremy Culhane,
and improv is his game. With four
years of high school improv under
his belt, Culhane joined the troupe
in 2011 ready to jump into the
university’s improv scene without
looking back. The junior philosophy
and economics double major with
a minor in theatre has a mouthful
of plans for himself, but making a
career out of improv is top priority.
He said he hopes to head to Los
Angeles or Chicago to make his
name known in one of these bustling
cities. He said he enjoys being a part
of a group that can make fun of each
other and have a good time, while
enjoying a communal way to celebrate comedy. The unpredictable
nature of comedy keeps him coming
back for more, and sharing laughter
with the members and audience is
an experience not easily comparable.
This SAC newcomer is in no way a
stranger to the likes of comedy. Kelly
Ryan, seen wearing the purple tie on
stage, landed a spot in SAC with a sixweek New York program, experience on
Broadway, and a whole lot of spunk in
her repertoire. Ryan realized her love for
stand up after her friends dared her to go
up and start talking and telling jokes during a talent show meant for singing and
dancing in high school.
The audience got a kick out of her
humor, and her new talent was realized. From that moment, the once shy
valedictorian of her high school broke
out of her shell and found her comedic
identity, and it has taken her farther than
she ever imagined. Her chameleon-like
ways of transforming into a vast variety characters has made her a force
to be reckoned in SAC, and she said
becoming a member has been one
of the most validating decisions she’s
ever made.
For her, coming to practices with
SAC every week is the best way to get
outside of her comfort zone, as she
admits she oftentimes likes to fall into
five go-to characters (including her
infamously hilarious Asian characters). For her, humor and a bad mouth
go hand in hand, as her first words on
the SAC stage may not have been the
cleanest. But luckily for her, the audience is always dazzled by her natural
stage presence.
Kelly Ryan
MC Yoder rocks his bowtie and
runs the show as he gets the crowd
excited at weekly SAC shows. He
auditioned last semester as a first-year
student for the part by telling a funny
story and had the judges mesmerized
by his natural humor.
“I told a story about how freshman
year I was in Milton Daniel meeting
a friend, and down the hall I saw a
girl in a bathing suit looking as if she
was ready to hit the pool,” Yoder said.
“Then I hear her yell ‘Guys, it’s not a
pool party, it’s a party for swimmers!’
I thought it was hilarious.”
His favorite moment in SAC so far
has been the first show this fall, when
over 300 people were in attendance.
“I had one side shouting ‘Ben’ and
the other side ‘Yoder.’ It was an awesome first show,” he said.
Increased promotion is what he
says has brought the audience numbers up and the troupe’s morale up
as a whole. His biggest priority is the
audience and making sure they feel
like part of the SAC family. Introducing each game and familiarizing
the audience is part of getting them
acquainted with SAC’s style.
Ben Yoder
The teal-tied senior uses Thursday night performances on the SAC
stage as an escape. The biology
major spends her week hitting the
books and was desperate for a way to
blow off some steam. With that, she
discovered improv.
Saturday Night Live was what she
knew of comedy growing up, before
she understood what half the jokes
even meant.
“I always liked comedy, but I
never had a good outlet for it until
improv,” she said.
SAC brings a unique twist to the
TCU campus, which is something
that attracted Whitt to the group.
The self-proclaimed “pessimist”
or “dry humored” one of the group
enjoys calling her troupe members
out while still keeping it light-hearted and fun. As a senior, she said that
this year she hopes to see the group
move up even more in audience
members and gain more comedic
respect in the TCU community.
Holly Whitt
Bradley Gosnell
People may know Bradley
Gosnell as the “red and bearded”
SAC member, or even as the “cute
theatre kid” of the troupe (but in
actuality, these are all names he has
given himself).
But one thing we do know is that
he puts the oil in the mechanics of
the show. The junior theatre major
brings his theatre background
center stage during improv performances, as well as brings a range of
styles under his belt.
The California native brought
an angle of improv from his experiences and has immersed them
with the Texan style SAC practices
today. Focus, tempo and energy
are what he has deemed as keys to
success during an improv performance. He has taken advantage of
using older SAC members as well
as graduated members in learning
how to improve as a member.
“Letting yourself be helped by
others is one of the biggest strengths
to have in improv,” he said.
Performing on stage is his
dream, and improv has only
strengthened his skills to get there.
He’s all about the technicality of
performance, as he warms up vocally before shows as well as goes
home and writes notes for himself
after. But he’s also not a bit afraid
to admit when he fails.
Daniel Floren
Connor Paden
The troupe’s youngest member,
Connor Paden, is anything but
amateur when it comes to giving a
good performance. The former high
school jock was turned off by the idea
of improv in high school, but ended
up falling love with the comedy style.
He peps the group up daily with
his team spirit approach he learned
in high school sports. He admits
puns are his favorite, and he brings
a good balance of corky-ness and
awkwardness to the already diverse
group. Whether he’s writing a poem
to Kristen Stewart for cheating on
Robert Pattinson or performing
on “News Later,” SAC’s version of
SNL’s Weekend Update, he’s brought
an interesting flare to the group.
“If I’m ever half as funny as any
of these guys, I’ll feel extremely accomplished,” he said.
The first-year SAC member and
sophomore sports broadcasting and
journalism double major has discovered that improv has helped him
think on his feet and experience being a team player through a different
means at TCU.
As the resident “nice guy” of the
troupe, Daniel Floren rocks his pink
tie and embraces his love of film as a
member of SAC. Floren first learned
about SAC in TCU Announce, not
knowing anyone personally in the
troupe. Since then, SAC has become
his primary group of friends that he
said are the most open and accepting group of people he’s ever been a
part of.
“When I hang out with people,
go to parties or even just have a bad
day, the member of SAC are the
ones I turn to,” he said.
The senior FTDM major and theatre minor said that SAC opened his
eyes to the world of improv, and improv has had a positive effect on his
acting. The enjoyment he gets out of
the shows comes from the close-knit
bond he has with his fellow troupemates as well as the audience.
“SAC has put me with a network
of people that have been some of my
closest friends at TCU,” he said. “It’s
not just the group that comprise this
network, it’s audience members too.”
Hallie Caruthers, the unofficial “team mom” and official
tech of SAC, didn’t experience the
world of improv until discovering
SAC at TCU.
“I told my mom I wanted to do
improv and she was like ‘Are you
kidding me? You were so shy in high
school!” Caruthers said.
The former high school valedictorian has finally broke out of her
shell in SAC and her improv career
has blossomed. She frequents Dallas Comedy House where she takes
classes and workshops, and hopes
to graduate from her current program and get into a troupe there.
She describes herself as the listener and empathizer of the troupe,
keeping the group grounded. As
the tech of the troupe, Caruthers
stays behind the scenes, running
music and cutting the scenes, but
she admits she yearns to be on
stage performing with the others
and looks forward to hopefully
getting promoted to an official performer in the coming semester.
Hallie Caruthers
Quirky, fun and never dull, this
troupe highlights some of the talent TCU has amongst its campus.
SAC always brings hilarious and
entertaining moments to the table
without much direction as they
preserve the art of improv in it’s true
and rawest form.
No filter, no structure, and no
judgements is what they’re all about.
Audience interaction is key, so expect
to be thrown into one or two of their
improv games.
The videos that open their shows
can be seen on SAC’s Youtube page,
with some of their digital shorts
reaching 2,000 hits.
See their talent unfold Thursdays
in the BLUU auditorium weekly at 9
p.m or participate in their workshop
“Loose Ends” to learn the ropes of
improv Tuesday nights. Who knows,
you might end up opening for SAC
or starring in the show yourself.
Photos by Daniel Ethridge
BRITTANY
HENDERSON
Junior fashion merchandising major wants to
make girls to feel as good as they look.
By Audrey Swanson
Brittany Henderson aspires to inspire young women, and she hopes to
use her radiating passion for fashion and style as the medium for encouragement. Chatting over coffee and bagels in the TCU Barnes & Noble
café, she explained her ideas and motives of what she hopes to do. Her
plan is two-fold: create a fashion line and travel to high schools to encourage girls to embrace their own personal style. It hasn’t been a simple
discovery to find what she’s meant to do, though.
Long-legged and curly redheaded, she talked about her own development of personal style and confidence. In a school where Nike shorts
and oversized t-shirts are the norm, she was dressed in cute high-waist
shorts and sandals. But like most, she went through an awkward stage,
complete with questionable clothing and hair choices, but she embraced
it with a laugh and a shrug of her shoulders: “It made me who I am now.”
Today, she prefers to put her best foot forward and exude confidence
on the daily, and she does so not only through attire, but attitude, too.
And hers is a good one. A positive one.
For her future fashion line, the goal is to enable women to discover and
flaunt their own signature style. Her biggest tip is figuring out a women’s
best asset and then playing up that area via clothing. Hers, she said, are
her legs, so oftentimes she’ll go for cuts higher on the waist to elongate
the leg even further. “Everyone has an area that they love the most,” Henderson said. The trick is to find things to accentuate whatever that area is
for different people.
Her line—though only in the very earliest of planning days—will encompass styles that can fit a variety of body types and shapes. Henderson is realistic about women’s bodies; she knows they aren’t all the same,
and she wants all kinds to feel welcome to shop her brand. She has
played around with a couple different names for the brand, and so far she
has two favorites. One is a combination of her first initial plus last name,
“Benderson.” The other is a phrase that one of her good friends made
very well known by those close to her, “Oh Hey It’s Britnay.”
Photo by Minh Nguyen
Stylistically, she plans to create a
modest but youthful feel for her clothing. Think J. Crew meets Forever 21.
Her target audience will be young,
high school to college aged women,
so she still wants to keep it fun… With
a few boundaries. “Modest is hottest,”
Henderson proudly proclaimed. She
wants to steer young women away from
the notion of dressing to impress other
people, and more specifically, away
from dressing in ways meant to catch
a man’s eye. “What you wear should
make you feel good about yourself as a
whole.” She promotes that style should
be a personal thing, a medium for which
to express yourself. Everyone’s heard
the old “If you look good, you feel good”
spiel, but Henderson almost has the
opposite belief: if you feel good, you
look good. It shows through how a person dresses and carries him or herself.
Confidence does come from within,
she said, and it then resonates through
style choices.
A junior fashion merchandising major,
Henderson did not always know that
fashion and design would hold an important place in her future. Prior to landing
in her current major, she took a shot at
three others: communication studies,
graphic design, and strategic communi-
“If you
feel good...
cations. While she respectively enjoyed
each of them, she couldn’t truly picture
herself finding and enjoying a career in
any of the three. She has always loved
clothing and exploring her own personal
style. When it clicked that she could
transfer this love into a career, her mind
was made. The fashion merchandising
program is small, but that aspect draws
her into her major just that much further.
She’s been able to form close relationships with both her professors and her
peers. Patricia Warrington, associate
professor of merchandising and textiles,
said, “She’s very high-energy, very personable, very excited about what she’s
studying and how she’s going to translate
that into her future.” Henderson said the
close-knit feeling of the department has
...you look
good.”
really pushed her to grow in her studies. She was even inspired last year to
design and make her own dress and her
date’s bow tie for her sorority’s formal.
From some experience working in
retail as well as participating in a list of
activities at TCU, she’s learned that she
has a passion for people, as well as
style. This realization got her thinking
of ways to further help people beyond
the creation of a fashion line. That’s how
she stumbled upon the idea of travelling
to high schools and speaking to young
women. She would call it a “Beauty
Day,” and the topics would vary. Basically, she would take the day to discuss
style, body types, and confidence with
young women. Incorporated into the
day, she would help the students find
where they could put together outfits that
suit them. She would bring in stylists and
make up and hair artists to share their
knowledge on bringing out inner beauty
with some simple tips, as well.
Planning and chasing her goals one
sketch at a time, Henderson seems to
have found the knack for developing her
future into something that is completely
tailored to her. From fashion design to
inspirational speaking, she is setting no
bar to limit where her career may go.
And that, in itself, is a beautiful design.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 55
FASHION
Ellie Smotherman
Profiles by Samantha Ehlinger
When Ellie Smotherman walks
into a room, despite being “fun-sized”
as she calls it, she commands the attention of everyone inside.
She wore high-waisted leather
shorts, a jean top, and black wedges
with her signature fedora, the piece
she said she wears “as much as possible.” Smotherman, a junior sociology
major, Spanish minor from Austin, is a
lover of all things fashion.
“I will forfeit food for fashion,”
Smotherman joked. “If it’s between
buying groceries and a pair of shoes, I
think the shoes win.”
Her next big buy? “I have my
eye on a pair of Jeffrey Campbells,”
Smotherman said. The shoes, Smotherman said, are wedge booties, a fall
trend she is ready to incorporate into
her wardrobe.
Smotherman said she likes to read
Teen Vogue to see what is new for the
season, but she doesn’t strictly adhere
to every trend. “I definitely adapt it to
kind of be myself,” she said.
She said her favorite stores are
H&M, Urban Outfitters, Forever 21,
and Target. Smotherman thinks the
most essential item to a college woman’s wardrobe is “a cute pairs of shorts,
because it’s comfortable, but you can
dress them up.”
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 59
As for the fall fashion season,
Smotherman is looking forward
to wearing some of the current
emerging trends, like studs, maxi
skirts, and collared shirts with baggy
sweaters on top.
Trends aside, Smotherman said
that style is all about attitude. “If
you act like you like your outfit and
totally rock it, other people will love
it too.”
“I always say to people, why be
like everyone else when you can be
yourself ?” Smotherman said.
“Don’t be afraid to take risks.”
Tiana Lewis
Tiana Lewis has an energy that is infectious. She sits down in Union Grounds
with her passion tea, talking non-stop,
from fashion advice, to advice on personal confidence and identity. For Lewis,
a strategic communication graphic design
double major from Nashville, fashion is
about more than just what-to-wear: it is
about expressing who you are.
“Don’t let anyone else dictate who
you are, and who you are going to be,”
Lewis said when asked what advice to give
to college women.
Lewis said her style is eclectic, classic, and ever-evolving. “I think anybody
can make anything work, but you have
to make it work for your body and your
personal style,” she said.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 59
To get ideas on how to wear something new, Lewis said she searches it
on Pinterest to see how people have
styled it in the past. She said she has
also started looking at fashion blogs
for inspiration.
Her most essential item, she said,
would be a maxi dress or maxi skirt.
“They’re simple, they’re beautiful,
you can dress them up or dress them
down,” Lewis said.
Lewis said that she loves looking
in small boutiques for unique pieces.
She also frequents stores like Forever
21 and H&M.
“You can buy things there that you
can make look expensive,” Lewis said.
“If you want to be trendy on a low
budget that’s the way to go.”
For fall, Lewis said her favorite
look is a large knit sweater paired
with leggings and combat boots
or Hunter boots. “I also love the
new fall colors on my nails too,”
Lewis said, referring to fall colors like
hunter green or burgundy.
College students are aware of the
pressure to conform to trends, Lewis
said, pressure that comes largely from
magazines and advertisements.
“People are so aware of it... But I
don’t think people truly take to heart
and truly understand that who you
are and who you want to be comes
through your style,” Lewis said.
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 61
George Madjitey
George Madjitey looks, in the most
general sense possible, worldly. His style
seems indefinite, employing a creativity and ingenuity that could only come
from his extensive traveling.
Madjitey, a junior biology major on
the pre-med track, has style.
“Sometimes you might catch me in
a preppy look, or you might see me in
a more urban look,” Madjitey said. He
described his style as versatile, diverse,
and chill.
Madjitey said he gets inspiration from
the people he sees while traveling.
“Wherever you go, everyone has their
own tweak on it,” he said.
He has traveled to Paris, France,
Portugal, Ghana, Tunisia, Hong Kong,
Singapore, and Italy, just to name a few.
His favorite place as of late is
Cannes, France.
Wherever his career takes him, Madjitey said that he never wants to let go of
his favorite hobby: traveling.
“Interactions you make, and just the
sites you see have an influence on you,”
Madjitey said.
When searching for clothes, Madjitey
says he gets a large portion of his wardrobe from traveling, and the rest online.
Madjitey says he looks on Topman.com
and even ebay for good vintage pieces.
“I honestly feel when you come down
to it. . . The thing people most often see
first is what you wear,” Madjitey said.
“People can influence what you say, but
they can’t really influence what you wear.”
Profiles by Samantha Ehlinger
FALL 2012 l IMAGE
l 63
Views On
theCREW
By Veronica Jones
Each year TCU and its students can always look
forward to theCrew producing mega ideas for mega
fun! The scale of their ideas and events grow massively each year. Put it like this, if you can’t get to the
zoo theCrew will bring the zoo to you.
The events I have attended were electrifying and
exciting because I met new friends as well as connections. This shows that not only does theCrew activities
bring excitement to campus but draws friendships and
establishes memories for college scrapbooks.
I went around campus to interview a couple other students to share their opinion about TCU’s Crew. Junior,
Delisha Ford expresses her love for the Crew by saying,
“I love theCrew. I feel what they do is well deserving and
they put so much effort into what they do, which makes
it enjoyable.” I must agree; theCrew has always kept me
perked on my toes because I never new what activity
they were going to spur next.
TCU sophomore, Logan Mittie also agrees by stating,
“They always have cool stuff that is worth taking a look
at.” By cool I think she may be referring to the bull riding,
Velcro wall, batting cage, petting zoo and the other wild
activities theCrew may spontaneously come up with.
theCrew is a positive light; they help to keep the
words and meaning of family fun on TCU’s campus by
bringing students together for a mind-blowing good time.
Thanks to theCrew, they’ve given us a much-needed
infusion of innocent fun with structured activities’ that
keep TCU’s campus fun and memorable.
By Spencer Heath
My father tells some fantastic stories about his time
in college. Most begin with a sly, reminiscent grin and a
“do you remember...?” followed by some tale of adventure. The common thread through all of these stories is
spontaneity and fun with friends.
TCU’s theCrew aims to provide fun activities for the
on-campus student body, but I can’t help but think that
spontaneity is missing from the equation.
theCrew provides about 5 activities per week which
are open to the entire student body (although, honestly,
how many upperclassmen find themselves in the right
place at the right time to participate?).
They have a budget of $257,000 a year from SGA,
which comes from a $90 student body fee that is
charged to each student’s account. As one of the
largest organizations on campus, they are staffed by
student volunteers who are looking to have fun and
give back to the TCU community.
I don’t doubt the validity of theCrew’s mission, their
funding or their volunteers. My concern lies with the
structure of events. While puppies in the commons,
bull riding and real-life Mario Kart racing are all fun and
creative ideas, are they really what the college experience is about? To me, these events seem more like
extended summer camp fare than part of a place of
higher learning.
With the ‘market‘ flooded by numerous theCrew
events each week, do students still have the motivation to seek out and create their own unique college
memories? In my opinion, students encouragement
or motivation to go out and seek adventures beyond
the standard campus fare.
My favorite college experiences were unplanned trip
made with friends. Perhaps, I simply can’t appreciate
theCrew the way that those who live on campus can.
www.tcu360.com | [email protected]

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