I am a proponent of free speech, and I think it is vital to have feedback systems in web sites, to make them more accountable to the community they serve, as well as more entertaining and interactive.  That said, I believe that a certain responsibility comes with the capability to respond to something one has seen online.  When the proprietor of a web site creates a specific forum in which users can respond to content, it is intended to lubricate communication, not to flood the servers with near incoherent babble.
To conclude, when using a comment feature online, make it count. Its the same situation as if you were making a comment to someone in real life.

Anonymity does not excuse stupidity.

Chase Snyder, Editor in chief

A new feature has been added to the Perspectives page of The Record this semester.  “Beyond the Bubble” is a place where people who have had an educational experience, or one that shaped them personally, outside the confines of Goshen College’s often insular campus environment, can share it.  This feature came about when I asked a housemate to write a perspective about her off campus internship, and the more I thought about it, the more valuable I realized such a feature could be to me.

Upon reading about other students’ experiences with travel, I began to think about the nature of travel in our socioeconomic class.  For the most part, if you can afford to go to college, you can afford to travel, and there are many students who have traveled a great distance to come to this college at all.  Often, in my mind, I have associated being well traveled with a mysterious enlightenment or profound experience.  I am more inclined to ask someone for a lengthy story about their trip to South America than to ask them about their summer in Goshen. But why?

The more I read about travel experiences, and the more I reflect upon my own time in Senegal for SST, and other trips I have taken, the more I realize that the key to good traveling is to be content with my daily life.  No matter where I go, there are the same number of hours in a day, and I will need to fill those hours with sleeping, eating, interacting with people and generally pursuing the mundane activities that I do at home.

While the exotic nature of a faraway land will never lose its romantic hold on me, I feel that I am being led to the conclusion that only by taking joy in everyday occurrences, and learning to enjoy the repetitive activities that constitute daily living, can I appreciate a truly powerful experience when it comes along, whether at home or abroad.

During the summer, I picked up a book called “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink.  The book is about a trend toward more creative and right-brain oriented success in the world of business and industry.  Pink argues that lock-step, sequential, left brain style thinking is only valuable in conjunction with highly creative, artistic thinking, in every facet of modern business.  This is an attractive idea to me.  I have always seen myself as more of a right-brain thinker, and the idea that, with no particular effort on my part, my style of thinking is gaining relevance.

Another important element that deserves acknowledgment is the type of thinking that isn’t entirely “success” oriented. As we shift toward a creativity paradigm, we are also shifting toward a social paradigm.  Some of the fastest growing fields of employment in this poor job market are in human care.  Nursing is doing especially well as a field.  One reason is that people will always need medical care, and people don’t usually hesitate to pay for it.  Additionally though, it is because values are shifting towards good interaction and positive collaboration.

A large part of the Goshen College experience is dependent on shared experience between students and faculty.  Students live together, often in close quarters, and many have small classes that allow them consistent interaction with their professors.  While homework, term papers, final exams…et cetera, are all an important part of college, the social interactions and compromises are just as important, and according to Pink, growing more so.  In the new world of work, social skills, self presentation and empathy may be more important than a huge personal knowledge base.  It is easy to learn facts, but perhaps more important to learn how to interact.

In editing The Record, I have already learned valuable lessons about the importance of smooth and pleasant interactions with people in a work situation, and the importance of good socializing can only grow.

It is 11 p.m. on Wednesday, and Michael Neumann and I are finished with layout design. We’ve finished editing before midnight each week this semester, a tribute to an unprecedentedly effective staff. Thank you to everyone who has contributed this semester, and most of all, you, for reading this newspaper.

“I pledge to take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve those aspects of any organization for which I work.”

Last year, 90 Goshen College seniors signed this pledge and wore a small green ribbon at graduation ceremonies to signify their support.  Tamara Shantz, assistant campus minister and this year’s organizer, hopes to get over 100 participants.

Thanks to four years at an institution like Goshen College – a college that attracts top environmental leaders such as E.O. Wilson and Bill McKibben and that boasts (quietly, like a good Mennonite) the only LEED platinum-certified building in the state of Indiana – signing this pledge was a no-brainer.

Although I would have called myself an environmentalist before college, it was not until studying here that I truly became active in making changes in my own life and understanding sustainability as a primary value. Now, as I head into the work world, I find this pledge to be an important reminder that education does not stop when I leave the halls of academia.

I do, however, have one regret about signing this pledge. I wish I had done it earlier.

I wish that – as a first-year student – I had vowed to take into account the social and environmental consequences of the choices of the organization which I was about to join.

Would a campus full of green-ribbon-wearing students have allowed the sustainable farm gift rejection – an action that seemed, to many of us, to place a higher value on monetary gain than forward-thinking environmental action – to simply fade away? Or, would we relentlessly question the leaders of an organization preparing to re-brand itself as an institution that values environmental responsibility and hold them to such a fine ideal?

Would we consider the battle won when we turn off the lights in the Music Center when it isn’t in use, or would we embrace radical, life-altering changes, like a voluntary gas tax proposed by Ryan Sensenig, assistant professor of biology, and organize to develop five more similar ideas?

Goshen College has trained me well to see the flaws in the reason and logic of this world. Perhaps it is time to encourage us to turn a reflexive eye towards our own institution and hold ourselves to the visionary standards of peace, justice and sustainability that we are so effectively grounded in as students of this college.

I feel this guilt mostly because I know people are already so busy. The most popular conversation on campus goes something like this:

Harold (an ambiguous designation, not representative of Goshen College’s Harold population in general): “Ugh, this is going to be a miserable night. I have a ten-page political science paper due tomorrow that I haven’t even started yet, and then I have to study for my Spanish test. Plus, I have an intramural ping-pong game.”

Patty (a similarly ambiguous person): You think that’s a lot? (laughs derisively). Well I have chorale practice, and then I have a presentation to plan, two 20-page papers to write, five books to read and four tests to study for. I hate college.

Patty and Harold continue in this vein for some time, each boasting about how irresponsible he or she has been in putting work off until the last minute.

We college students lead such conflicted lives. We pay thousands of dollars to become educated, and then we spend all four years of college complaining that we actually have to learn stuff.

I realize that most of our complaining is just meaningless banter – the college student equivalent of the “How-are-you?-Fine” conversation. But if we took on a more positive attitude about schoolwork in our small talk, maybe when it came down to it, we would be more excited about actually doing homework.

The same goes for perspectives writing. It takes up time, yes. But there is something truly satisfying in the challenge of expressing your values and beliefs in a 400-word piece to be read by the entire campus community and beyond.

So the next time I approach one of you about writing a perspective, I refuse to feel (or act, you’ll be glad to know) like a predator. Surely you can spare an hour between practice for “The Gondoliers” and your biology group meeting to bear a little of your soul in Times New Roman ink. I think you’ll enjoy it.

What’s happening at Bethel College? Did Bluffton University finally finalize plans for a new recreation center? How is Eastern Mennonite University? And what about Hesston College? I think a newspaper produced by students that connects these five schools together would be awesome.

It’s possible now. Just this semester, Sheldon Good, the editor-in-chief of the Record, has helped our staff learn and adapt to an online software program called WordPress. We now upload our articles online, and everyone with access to WordPress can edit and read the articles.

A writer at Hesston could upload an article for a page editor at Bluffton to edit. A few hours later, a Goshen student could sit and read that same article in the Rott.

I think if the Mennonite colleges worked to become less individualistic and more holistic through a newspaper, the Mennonite church would benefit as well. There could finally be a place for college students to learn about the issues currently debated in Mennonite Church USA.

Who will replace Jim Schrag? Wait, who is Jim Schrag? What is the proposed health insurance plan that will be debated at Convention 2009?

What might happen if we became more connected and informed about each other?

What do I find funny this week? Will other people find it funny as well? Will my article cast some light on the human condition, exposing a peculiarity so truthful that the reader cannot help but to emit a chuckle of recognition? Or will I merely string together phrases such as “twangy banjos” and “dancing koalas” until I make myself giggle?

In general, I like humor. I like the way my body feels after I laugh. I like the feel of community that can be created by laughing at a shared experience. I like exposing uncomfortable truths with well-crafted satire. I like moments of absurdity that make our own incomprehensible lives seem logical in comparison. I like the mental image of dancing koalas.

But sometimes I feel that in our collective desire to be constantly entertained, we excuse some forms of humor that we ought to look at more critically. In the same way we have (and ignore) the food pyramid, I think that we ought to recognize that some types of humor are less healthy than others.

Here’s what I would put in my “Use Sparingly” box at the top of the funnies pyramid.

1.    Humor that revolves around cruelty. To some, this may seem too obvious to mention. But watch an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos or Family Guy and make a pie graph of how much of the humor depends upon people getting emotionally or physically hurt. (Editor’s Note: Don’t actually do this. This is a terrible use of time.)

Some level of laughing at misfortune may be part of our nature. As the old song almost goes, “If watching people fall off trampolines is wrong, I don’t want to be right.” However, we should always be conscious of what exactly we are laughing at, before we lose our capacity for empathy. Extreme examples of cruelty-driven humor are – especially with the power of the internet – never far away. Without limiting daily intake of Schadenfreude, actual tragedies may begin to seem a bit like slipping on banana peel.

2.    Humor that is a form of exclusion. This sort of humor is as bad as Chuckie Marie’s cake of rainbows. Get it? No, you don’t, and neither did 99 percent of the other students at my high school. Inside jokes are prime examples of humor as exclusion, a great way to alienate people who don’t have exactly the same history as the joke-teller.

This is especially important to keep in mind as Goshen College makes attempts to make its campus more diverse. It can be easy to assume that our audiences are more monolithic than they actually are. To give just one example, are we constantly telling Mennonite jokes, forgetting that Mennonite is just one of many backgrounds on campus and that not everyone will resonate with, say, potluck humor?

3.    Humor that deflects responsibility. In an episode of one of my favorite TV shows, The Office, Ryan (the temp) laughs his way out of a request to help with the cleaning, explaining that he would exacerbate the situation if he tried. Even with a simple task like running a paper towel through a spill, he would “find a way” to make it worse. A joke, but one that led to him not contributing.

I have used humor in this way before. If I don’t go to a blood drive, it’s easier to say that I’m a recovering vampire than to apologize for my misplaced priorities. If I waffle on my vegetarianism, it’s easier to say I am eating a murderous cow who deserved death than to justify my laziness. If someone asks about my religious beliefs, it’s easier to say that I have met the god of Twizzlers than to explain the tangle of contradictions, doubts and debates that dominate my thinking.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s fairly commonplace to use humor to deflect and distract, and this is not all bad. One of humor’s greatest functions is its ability to defuse tense situations.

Still, humor at its best reveals new truths and insights. If humor is used to avoid truthful discussions of real issues, it’s not good humor, and it’s not good for us.

These are three hard categories to avoid, and I certainly don’t always manage to steer clear of them. In my pursuit of humor, I’ve sometimes tipped a few cows that should have been left sacred.

But I urge you to think, without over thinking, about what exactly tickles your funny bone. Challenge others, including me, when you feel their jokes are making the universe just a little bit worse. Look for new types of humor, from new people and new places.

And be sure to have a good old laugh at a secret joke or dancing koala every once in a while – if that’s what you’re into.

I’m talking about the Record’s online archives. When we transferred to the Wordpress software – which now provides the foundation of our Web site – we retired the old site, including – for now – all the archives of past issues it had accumulated.

Those archives were far from perfect. They were poorly organized and impossible to navigate. The search function was just short of useless. But, with the right terms, a desired article was usually a Google search away.

I don’t expect anyone to be shedding any tears for the archive. In fact, unless (like me) you’re a senior communication major looking for writing examples to send to employers, you probably didn’t even realize it’s gone.

That said, I think that there is a loss here. Dustin George-Miller’s poignant and comical perspective on football and family life is no longer a few clicks away. Neither is Sarah Chamber’s evocative reflection on last year’s sexual assault, or Whitney Philipps’ 2008 article about President Brenneman’s trip to Egypt (which has since led to a new S.S.T. location).

To me, the loss raises an important question: is an issue of the Record of any use beyond the week it is published?

The answer, I believe, is a resounding yes.

Each issue of the Record is, well, a record. Each issue is a small piece of the mood and mindset on campus.

The perspectives page tells what issues students found important enough to write about. The features introduce the people and places that add color to campus life. The front page not only shows what events occurred but also those we considered the most significant.

For this reason, newspapers are sometimes called “the rough draft of history.” The Record is no different. In fact, when Susan Miller was writing “Culture for Service,” the official history of Goshen College, she used past Record issues as sources.

Fortunately, our rough draft is not lost. The Mennonite Historical Archive, the library and the communication department keep hard copies of back issues, and there are plans underway to do some online archiving this summer.

Until then, here’s to the old online archive, and here’s to the new archive we’re creating now on the new site.

As classes started up again, I felt sorry for myself as I loafed throughout campus with my head down, trying to figure out a way to finish all my work I had left until the last minute.

But as I sat down and began the reading assignment in Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott for my Feature Writing class, I was reminded that I hadn’t really been living at all. Lamott said:

“Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world-present and in awe.”

After reading this I felt more alive and part of the world than I had in a long time. Later that night when I walked hunched over in my puffy coat up the long sidewalk to the music building, I began feeling bitter about how freezing it was.

Then I remembered what I had read and lifted my eyes. With reverence I saw the grass, dazzled in frost and shadows dancing in the wind. I began walking in the grass next to the sidewalk so I could feel the satisfying crunch of the frozen grass beneath my feet. “Wow!” I thought, “Look at that golden moon!”

I realized that while I had spent the last few days being stressed out about starting school again, I had been missing out on being present in the world. As Lamott said, “There is ecstasy in paying attention.”

She had a purple necklace that would grant the wishes whenever she wanted, wishes such as the ability to breathe underwater and to have a pet chimpanzee. I don’t know why I wrote the story, and I don’t know where it is now. But it was my first timid step into the addictive and crazy world of writing.

I’ve kept a journal for the past eleven years. Over time, I’ve learned to communicate better through writing than orally. Apparently I’m a quiet person. I don’t believe this at all, but it’s what people tell me.

The truth is, sometimes I find speaking to be incredibly difficult. When I speak, everything comes out unedited and jumbled up; when I write, I can take my time, read, re-read and choose appropriate words. I have a quiet voice when I talk, but when I write, the words on the page speak just as loudly as anyone else’s.

Over the years I’ve fallen into a pattern of writing – what I like to call “humorous romantasy”, a self-invented genre combining romance, fantasy and silliness. I’ve tried to write serious stuff, but I just can’t pull it off. It’s awful!

Example: a novella I wrote in November that dealt with issues of body image as told through a college-aged woman. I don’t even want to think about it.

It’s easier for me to communicate through writing than by speaking actual words. I write silly because it’s safer for me. Humor is a wall of protection around my quivering, vulnerable self. If I can get people to laugh at what I write, then they probably don’t hate me.

The wall isn’t necessarily a good thing, though. I often feel isolated because of my inability to reveal my inner self.

Someday I’ll have to grow up and learn to stop hiding my feelings. Until then, I have a final writing project to finish for my creative writing minor! And yes, it’s silly.

The problem, however, was that I actually am too busy to spend any more time on the newspaper. My attempt to complete college in three years has pretty much taken over my life.

I didn’t explain this to Sheldon. He’s in my senior seminar, so a certain courtesy is required. If I wasn’t in that class, though, I might have more time for editorials and maybe even for things on my to-do list, like, oh, starting my independent study.

Senior seminars provide insightful experiences that I would have thoroughly appreciated last year, when I was terrified and clueless about resumes, interviews and personal statements. Unfortunately, by this semester, I’ve figured enough of that out on my own – at least enough to receive an offer from the graduate program at Brown University.

What if senior seminar became a junior year spring semester or May term class? It might also be helpful if Goshen College intentionally emphasized that the spring semester senior seminar was for students who don’t plan to go straight to graduate school.

It isn’t unusual for students to take time off after graduation. But does it make sense that almost every senior I’ve spoken with plans to do this?

What if some of them were just too overwhelmed to apply for schools and take the GRE or other exams while they were still at Goshen College?

Offering a senior seminar during junior year could be a more effective way to help students negotiate their options.

For many students, picking up the Record on Thursday is normal. But such an action is declining across the nation.

Newspapers everywhere are struggling to maintain their profits as many readers increasingly go to the Internet to get their news for free. The Record – which is free for its students – is not suffering from this shift, but has joined in the great debate of print media. What many of you may not know is that the Record is now primarily a blog.

Yes, the Record is still printed on newsprint. No, the staff is not made up of bloggers. Yes, we still deal primarily in news rather than the opinions of one or more contributors.

Our shift comes in the way that we write our stories. The software that we now use to write our stories is called WordPress – software used by bloggers to easily post articles online in a timely fashion. Once the stories are written and ready to be prepared for print, the layout staff takes the articles from WordPress and arranges the content in Adobe InDesign.

While this may seem like a small change that mainly affects us as a staff, it may have larger implications down the road. Much like the Campus Communicator – which was at one time printed off and posted in physical locations on campus – a change may someday come to the Record when students, faculty, staff and alumni get more familiar with digital media.

Personally, I’m a bit quaint when it comes to wanting a physical paper that I can hold in my hands. But in time, if that opinion becomes the minority, the Record may change form yet again.

Regardless of if or when we make that transition, the shift to WordPress is a nice assurance that whatever the future of print media, the Record will be adapting and changing to make sure that Goshen College gets its news.

And I think we can all appreciate that.

We read about the what’s happening at Goshen College, argue about peoples’ opinions and laugh at the funnies page.

Now I’m sure my friends and I aren’t the only people at Goshen College who have opinions about decisions made by the administration, general campus life and other college concerns. We all have opinions about news the Record publishes each week.

In last week’s issue, I’m sure people had opinions about the amount of money Goshen College is spending on the railway underpass or the Super Bowl commercials.

In this issue, others will undoubtedly have further questions and concerns about the new Egypt S.S.T. unit and the number of new students brought in by the admission department.

What better way to express such questions and concerns than over the Internet. In case you haven’t seen, the brand new online version of the Record gives readers the opportunity to leave comments about any story. You can even e-mail an author directly.

I know this campus is full of dialoge on a number of issues. So let’s take that dialoge from the lunch table to the broader campus community.