The Waltonian

At Eastern’s production of “A Year with Frog and Toad” on Saturday evening, I heard a child’s nasally little voice in the audience behind me earnestly say, “Daddy, I don’t – I don’t ever want to leave this!” Everyone else’s mental, “I know, right?!” was so loud I almost heard it, too.

Frog and Toad is a movingly simple meditation on friendship. Robert and Willie Reale created the musical, based on books by Arnold Lobel. Jessica Bostock directed and choreographed Eastern’s rendition. This timeless tale (Toad’s clock was broken) leads the viewer through the irony of care. For example, when Toad and Frog each raked the other’s yard of leaves as a secret surprise, never intending to tell the other even after the fact, neither ever found out that the leaves got messed up again in the interim. Both got home and raked their own yards.

While Frog and Toad led the show, in a sense, the air of cooperation embedded throughout the entire piece ensured that the supporting cast (including our memorably in-sync bird trio, amongst other such characters) had substantial weight in the culture of the world unfolding onstage. In the best way, not a single ensemble member was an ensemble member.

On the technical side of things, the show was punchy when necessary, without feeling insecure or overwhelming, and was evocatively pleasant. Scenes with the Snail (Aniya Sanchez) highlighted, well, the lighting work, especially: a precisely-timed spotlight caused her to burst to life onstage to start each of her scenes. Speaking of which, she committed something like temporary show theft in the second act with a song about finding her purpose in life – although actor accolades are in snail mail and will come a little later in this piece.

The musicians elicited their own bouts of applause throughout. The instrumental ensemble, expertly led by David Schwartz, was the colorful, tightly-woven hammock in which the show securely swung. Costuming delightfully crowned ‘this is a living room play for mom and dad and we’re using the dress-up box’ with actual aesthetic taste, and I went cookies for the resulting outfits. (Although, Toad looked funny in a bathing suit.) Comprised of a few cleverly designed, rotating and moving pieces, the set felt like a real home, even in its swampy elements.

Besides the Certificate of Merit in Ensemble Achievement (awarded to the production team at large) and Certificate of Merit in Directing (awarded to Julia Bostock, director) from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, I heard a host of accolades from audience members about the performance.

“I absolutely loved the seed-growing scene,” Ada Germany, an Eastern senior, said. “I just loved how [Toad] was talking about them.” Christian Lengkeek, her fiance and fellow senior, agreed, and commented on Richie Izzo’s performance as Toad more generally. “I really liked Richie’s ability to capture fear, anguish, depression and sorrow,” he said. Izzo communicated this string of heavier emotions without shading the show’s warmth. Izzo’s Toad was endearingly frank. He delivered Toad’s lines with a blend of matter-of-factness and self-consciousness that turned out just right, especially in the scene where he first admits to Toad that he has never gotten a letter before.

Luke Baker, as Frog, used his build strategically to emulate frogginess, and it paid off. “I really liked Luke Baker’s use of his long body,” one student said after the performance. Baker shared with me that he had watched hours worth of frog footage in order to study his character. Baker immediately set the tone of his character in the show’s first song, with a long, froggy step towards his friend Toad. Like Izzo, he unveiled an impressive range of emotion throughout the piece. Baker’s capacity to act with subtle emotional dynamism especially struck me in the scene where Frog tells Toad how nice it is to be alone, while simultaneously maintaining a selfless and sensitive posture towards Toad, who was not leaving him alone.

The actors and actresses were not only dedicated to their roles, though; they were dedicated to the diverse needs of their audience. Carter played the Great and Terrible Frog with such commitment that some of the children watching (of whom there were a good few) got a little scared, Hannah Gerber, Eastern sophomore and light board operator tells me. “Children screamed,” she said. So, after the performance, Carter came out in his “scary” costume and showed the frightened younger audience members that he was, in fact, just an (accomplished!) actor. Besides the above anecdote, Eastern ensured that a “relaxed” matinee performance would run April 6, to provide a more comfortable audience experience to patrons with diverse needs.

This caring attitude fit with the show’s overall tone. Eastern’s production of “A Year with Frog and Toad” crucially depicted a reality in which a child’s sensitivity, quick self-sacrifice, and honesty could plausibly exist in an adult friendship. I (and others, I think) left wanting to be a better friend.

According to a study done by Institutional Research, in the Fall of 2024, Eastern was made up of 17% Evangelical church-goers, 12% Catholics, 1% Orthodox and 40% listed no affiliation or left it blank. With this statistic in mind, how do we welcome students of all Christian traditions, without denying our historical Baptist identity?

“I would say we are robustly ecumenical… with an affection to our Baptistic roots,” said Rev. Joe Modica, the university’s chaplain. “We say to our mother, ‘we still love you, but we’re very different.’” He explained to me that all professors must assent to and annually sign the Apostle’s Creed. “It’s kind of I think a good blueprint for what it means to have unity in the essentials and liberty in the nonessentials and charity in all things,” he said. “We want unity in essentials because we come from [different] backgrounds. The reason why we chose the Apostle’s Creed is that it’s a little bit more minimalist.” Holding onto the school’s original Baptist identity seems far from his mind.

“I’ve been kind of delighted by the context at Eastern, because I think we have a school that embraces Christianity in the broadest sense,” Dr. Jonathan Reimer, a history professor here at Eastern and the faculty sponsor of the Newman Club, agreed. “I think one of the things that’s kind of great about this place is it is a place for… universal Christian faith. Not one that’s homogenizing. … [it’s] a place where genuine disagreements can happen,” he said.

Reimer noted that it could be difficult to pin down exactly what a Baptist identity would look like in the case of Eastern, anyways, considering the history of the American Baptist tradition. Eastern began under the American Baptist branch. “American Baptists have always been a little more expansive,” Reimer said. In other words, Eastern was birthed from the DNA of a Baptist type that is a little more progressive, in the first place–theologically and otherwise. “What would be the utility of holding onto particular Baptist distinctives,” he asked, especially considering the fact that those distinctives historically grew on live theological soil?

On the student side of things, Ambrose Bushelli, vice president of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, exemplifies how Eastern’s ecumenical lifestyle can be lived out on campus. He opened up about life as a liturgically practicing student participating in a non-liturgical worship group on campus. “When I went to Wednesday Night Worship, I was like, wow, these songs are really something,” he said. “I could see how everyone around me… really loved God in the way they were praising Him.” He was able to appreciate non-liturgical worship, right off the bat. “The first time I went, they played the song “Lord, I Need You” and I remember… it was an endearing song that I could connect to, and it was spiritually profound,” he said. “It’s not backed up by a thousand year tradition of music… but there was still so much beauty in it.”

Overall, it seems that this last statement of Bushelli’s encapsulates Eastern’s faith identity in a nutshell. The university has become a place where beauty in different forms of worship is appreciated, while acknowledging that all these forms unify around one beautiful God. The expansive-leaning theological roots of the college show in students like Bushelli, who are willing to broaden their mental schema of what might be included in holy worship.

What does it really mean to ask a girl to be your Valentine, gentlemen? There are a few options in translating the question.

1) First off, you should be asking a grown man, not a girl. You have found yourself in a tricky situation: the government has just outlawed your upcoming wedding to your bride-to-be, because you haven’t served your time in the military. It happens, I know. (In 3rd-Century Rome at least). You’ve become desperate – you really love your fiancée, you have no desire to serve in the military, and you’ve basically just been sentenced to die single in the army while your beloved weeps to death at home. When all hope seems lost, you stumble upon a priest by the name of Valentine. He hears your difficulty and – what a blessing! – offers to secretly officiate the marriage ceremony between you and your betrothed, at risk to his own life! So, that’s one meaning. If you want to marry your sweetheart, ask someone to be your officiating Father Valentine.

2) Do you have epilepsy? It turns out that Saint Valentine traditionally healed many sicknesses, notably epilepsy, with his prayers and care. You are essentially asking someone to pray intensely for your physical and spiritual healing. “Hey girl, I hear you’re a doctor…”

3) “Hey girl– wait, who’s this?” Yes, so, there were actually two Saint Valentines. Christians have celebrated the feast day of Saint Valentine of Rome on February 14, ever since Bishop Gelasius I established the feast in 486 AD. Saint Valentine of Interamna, a bishop who also lived in the third century, is the one known for the healing of epilepsy and other illnesses. For most of Christendom, he is celebrated on July 30.

4) “Hey girl, die for me!” Both Saint Valentines were martyrs. Roman officials killed Saint Valentine of Rome on February 14 in 286 AD, apparently for his disobedience of the royal decree that no marriage ceremony could be performed for men who had not served their military obligation. Saint Valentine of Interamna was martyred for refusing to worship idols; he endured torture and was eventually beheaded.

In the martyric sense, married couples are the best Valentines to one another. On their wedding day, they choose martyrdom: getting married is saying, “I will die for you – I will get up early to make you coffee even though I slept terribly last night, I will help you with the kids when I get home from work and am exhausted, I will drop my lovely plans because you’re unwell, I will stay with you even if I cannot stand you sometimes – for the rest of my life.” In most of the weddings I have attended, the bride and groom are crowned. Two crowns, with a ribbon or something similar connecting them to each other, are placed on the couple’s heads by a priest who says, “O Lord our God, crown them with glory and honor!” and the choir responds with a hymn: “O holy martyrs who fought the good fight and have received your crowns, entreat the Lord to have mercy on our souls!” This part of the service is beautiful, aesthetically, and the message is: this is the moment the two of you agree to die.

Although Valentine’s Day is more so in honor of Saint Valentine of Rome, both Saint Valentines stand as excellent examples of sacrificial love, which is incredibly romantic and deserves celebration! Saint Valentine of Rome’s dedication to the sacrament of holy matrimony gives the holiday its core flavor, although Saint Valentine of Interamna equally exemplifies the spirit of sacrificial love a couple (or any friendship!) should follow. It looks like asking someone to be your Valentine, and being someone’s Valentine yourself, is quite the glorious task.

When President Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025, he executed 46 presidential actions. Of the latter, several had to do with governmental DEI initiatives. To list a few major ones…

• Trump dismantled federal DEI programs in an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” The order calls for the termination of all DEI, accessibility, and environmental justice offices and positions across the federal government.

• He repealed several Biden-era DEI directives which centered around LGBTQ ideology promotion in the educational setting, and repealed an order expressly allowing transgender persons to serve in the military.

• The U.S. government must now recognize two genders only – male and female – and will no longer view “sex” as including the concept of “gender identity,” in relation to passports, visas, Global Entry cards and all other forms and documents, and in all programs and communications.

• In an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” Trump forbids federal money, including grants, from being used to “promote gender ideology” and direct the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.”

From the wording of the orders, most of these DEI-related actions took place on the basis of the belief that DEI initiatives spread discrimination and danger rather than eliminating them. It looks like the federal government has stamped its punctuation mark on the denouement of DEI programs already happening in American businesses.

Sources:

AP News and TIME magazine

“Varied,” “random,” “scattered,” “diverse” – does anyone have a defined music taste anymore? After interviewing about thirty students around campus about their musical preferences, I discovered a trend of what I will call “country-and-rap-exclusive openness.”

Students leaped to tell me that they listen to anything. To describe his music taste in three words, “1) I, 2) Like, 3) Everything,” a junior, said. Many answers flowed in that vein: “Pretty much anything,” “Scattered, exotic, anything,” etc., and even if a student included words in their 3-word description that were more definitive, they would often have at least one word included that communicated some sort of randomness or broadness or variety in their taste. “I can go from rap to orchestral…I like music if it’s musically decent,” Isaiah, said.

If there were something that students were more emphatic about than their diversity, it would be the frequency of their listening, and the location – the car. “[I listen] mostly in the car,” Lillian, said. “I can’t drive somewhere without music playing.” Caelin agreed: “All day, but I listen at night the most.” he, said.

The strongest response I got from people was when I asked them what they considered “bad music” to be. Nearly everyone I asked said rap or country, with moderate vehemence. Both could be considered “mainstream,” according to an article by TIME (“How Rap Became the Sound of the Mainstream”) and an article by The Atlantic (“Why Country Music is More Popular – And More Angsty – Than Ever”). I would have been surprised to see just how many people detested “mainstream” music, had they not been so adamant about having an eclectic taste. “Bad music is overly produced,” by which she meant “the creativity of the artist is taken out of it and it lacks individuality.” a senior Leah, said.

These three observations – a) emphasis on eclecticness, b) listening all the time and especially in transit and c) individuality with a side of mainstream hate – all point to an expansion of music’s purpose in the modern age. While music used to be entirely a community activity and an activity in its own right, it has expanded from concert-esque-events-only and entered the realm of individually helpful background noise. Music is no longer a building block of culture, bringing people into the same physical atmosphere. Instead, we are quick to say our music has no rooted sound – it is as varied as we can make it, safe in our ears. The real result of all these interviews on music taste is that I have this exceedingly groovy song called “Still Feel” by Half Alive stuck in my head because an interviewee suggested it to me and I am, as they say, utterly hooked. If you would like to experience a similar phenomenon, the Waltonian just used these interviews and created a campus playlist. It’s fantastic and appropriately quite varied for the diverse listeners of Eastern.

Unfortunately, this will not be the most spicy, opinionated, outrageous article you have ever read about racism, but hopefully, you will leave feeling slightly more informed about something. Sources tend to disagree about the actual trajectory of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the workplace, but overall, it seems the initiatives and policies have been fading out of trend.

Do we just hate each other now? Has the age of the white male returned?

Rewind!

Everyone can recall the surge of anti-racist activism that immediately followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. A CNBC article by Jennifer Elias notes that vocal commitments to install D.E.I. programs in the tech industry flared brightly just after Floyd’s murder.

A few years later, in 2023, the Supreme Court “rejected the use of race-conscious admissions in higher education,” according to NPR. In other words, affirmative action left the higher academic table. This set off “a wave of similar lawsuits and legal threats against company diversity programs,” according to a New York Times article titled “D.E.I. Goes Quiet”.

The fall of affirmative action did not directly cause the decrease in DEI programs, though. Rather, it was an earlier symptom of a broader movement. “Even before this year, corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have come under harsh criticism, including that they’re expensive, performative, even a source of division themselves,” writes Andrea Hsu for NPR. “[C]onservative legal activists… argue that DEI policies and programs constitute racial discrimination,” she says. This is not too difficult to understand; drawing attention to a difference can create undue and unhealthy polarization between the parties.

Although some would argue that, four years after the anti-racist explosion, DEI is being naturally nudged out of the spotlight, others claim that it has immediate relevance to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Elias claims that “the cuts come as the tech industry doubles down on artificial intelligence. With fewer diverse voices represented in AI development, the resulting products could be less accurate or more harmful to users,” she writes.

However, let us not get ahead of ourselves. Before continuing to see whether there are side effects of the loss of DEI, it would be prudent for the reader to hear that perhaps DEI is not really declining. “Despite what… stories suggest, in reality DEI is growing,” writes Julie Kratz, for Forbes. Kratz cites a Littler study that shows that “More than half of U.S. executives say their organizations have expanded their [DEI] strategies over the past year,” Kratz writes. Kratz passes the difference in her statistics to everyone else’s off as the product of a “negativity bias” that exists amongst humans at large. “Even when the DEI naysayers are small in number, their voices can be extremely disruptive to the rest of the people who still believe in it.” This was the line when Kratz entirely lost my sense of this source’s unbiased outlook.

The programs look like they are dying out entirely but in reality, Catalina Colman was working in DEI jobs, and while she was searching for a new job relatively recently, the positions would get eliminated “midway through the interview process,” she says to NPR.

Perhaps, though, the programs are being absorbed rather than obliterated. The New York Times chalked the slide in DEI policies up to disguise. Companies are putting the same ideologies and positions under different guises and in different sections of their organizations. Essentially, a massive rebranding is taking place, and all of the work to restore diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace is being done through a different approach. For example, a program designed for furthering the success of black men in the workplace would instead become much broader and vaguer, at least in title.

All-in-all, this article is boring, but if you want an absolutely wild ride alongside a certified DEI expert, go watch “Am I Racist” and learn more about what DEI programs can look like.

Dr. Tim Brown, the new dean of Eastern’s Arts and Humanities College, was on academic probation when he was our age. He arrived at Westchester College with his eye on a communications degree and finished his first semester with eyes boggled by boatloads of impossible writing assignments. Confidence flagging and GPA in the dust, the unprepared student weighed his options. Fast-forward ten years, and this same young man was boss of the communications department he had nearly failed.

This is one of those phenomena that Dr. Brown referred to as a “Joseph Moment” during my interview with him. Have you ever had a “Joseph Moment”? Have you experienced one of those poignant moments of reflection on how God used a trial in your life for your good? This past week, I leafed through chapters of “Joseph Moments” in Dr. Brown’s personal history.

To quickly describe how he “got here”, after working several years at West Chester University as chair of the communications department and founder of the Multicultural Faculty Committee, Dr. Brown took a step further and became Dean of Queens University in Charlotte. Next, Montgomery Community College hired him as Dean of eighteen different programs, after which Dr. Julie Morgan connected him to Eastern University.

Surveying Dr. Brown’s Christian walk showed me his determination to serve the needy. He and his wife attended a church of what he referred to as “real people” in Buffalo, New York, where many parishioners worshiped in church on Sunday morning and slept on the street that evening. The switch to his current non-denominational church in the suburbs of Philadelphia provided Dr. Brown with a new category of service to navigate.

“Everyone’s needs are taken care of. Non-denom is different in the suburbs,” Dr. Brown said. By this I assumed he was referring to the fact that none of his fellow churchgoers slept on a bench the night before, and could concretely call a place aside from the church “home.”

Homemaking – a concerted effort to make one’s fellow humans feel at home in a given place – lives at the center of Dr. Brown’s Christian life. “Everyone needs a place where they feel like they are valued,” Dr. Brown remarked, “like ‘The Homeplace’” by Bell Hooks. “I feel like I bring that to the table as a leader,” Dr. Brown pondered as we talked about awareness of the need for a Homeplace. “When people feel [at home], great things can be done.”

I researched Hooks’ essay a little further and found that it aligns with the literature which Dr. Brown and I began our conversation discussing: “The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass” and “The Color of Water” by James McBride. All of these pieces revolve around a racial theme, especially centering on the African American identity. An African American himself, Dr. Brown felt the impact of racism notably in his childhood and highschool years in the ‘70s. Reflecting on the time when his high school football coach asked him to step down as the team’s quarterback, Dr. Brown asserts that God used the racially motivated decision to teach him to use his skills even when yanked from the leadership positions he wanted. Yes, you guessed it, this was also a “Joseph Moment.”

What struck me most about my conversation with Dr. Brown was the way he reliably named and praised his mentors. His frequently voiced appreciation for the helpers in his life highlighted for me his grateful, “you-first” worldview. In this vein, Dr. Brown affirms that he feels no pretentious or status-driven attitude in the Eastern faculty. “They really care about their students,” Dr. Brown said. By carefully and caringly naming pastors, professors, department heads, and family members who pushed and pulled him towards all sorts of success, Dr. Brown revealed to me his drive to not only think of the students of our college before himself, but to be to us what those mentors and friends were to him. He commemorates all these positive forces in his life much more fully in his book, “No-one Cheers for Goliath” (winner of an NYC Big Book Award) than I could here.

On a practical level, Dr. Brown has Goliath-sized plans for the Arts and Humanities College at Eastern. “Let’s think big,” he said. Dr. Brown wants to involve us in Philadelphia communications and will go even further.“Let’s have our own sports channel!” Dr. Brown, said.Having grown up playing sports seriously, Dr. Brown got involved in his local sports newscast early on. His focus on athletics could prove perfect for our gradually more-and-more athletic University. These are practical considerations, and the Dean is practical when it comes to prospective students’ future careers as well. Dr. Brown wants the college to establish its identity to prospective students as a private institution which will present signature experiences that are meaningful to students looking for jobs post-graduation.

At the end of our interview, Dr. Brown asked if he could pray for me. His kind and thoughtful prayer has inspired me to end this article with this prayer for him: that the Lord would grant to him “the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD” as he creates “homeplaces” and “Joseph Moments” in the lives of our students here at Eastern University (Isaiah 11:2-3).

By: Katherine Thomas

I can see why women might not want to take their husband’s last name. I mean, what if the poor guy had a name like “Barth”? Would you be Mrs. Barth? (My apologies and condolences to the Barths reading this.)

Barth aside, there could be other reasons for her avoidance of this rule. Perhaps she sees taking his name as some sort of mark of his ownership of her, and wishes to “smash the patriarchy” as the young upstarts say nowadays. Or, less controversially, she simply loves her original family name: perhaps it holds ethnic pride or historical importance.

On the flip side, though, what is the benefit of taking your husband’s name? Bear with me; I would like to explore a few views in defense of this tradition. First, we will hear from G.K. Chesterton, then God.

“Of the two sexes, the woman is in the more powerful position,” G.K. Chesterton writes. “For the average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes… women represent the despotic [element in life].” A ruler is, by title, associated with the domain that he or she rules. “King Charles of Spain,” or “Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi, Princess of Genovia” might serve as examples here. If one takes G.K. Chesterton’s (radically feminist) view that the wife is a despot over her family life, it follows that she, like any ruler, would want her domain in her title. “Mrs. Smith” is telling you that she governs Mr. Smith, his progeny Smith, and belongings he purchased with a check signed “Smith”.

Excuse my satire in that last paragraph – unless you actually believe that reasoning. If you do, rock on, I guess. Moving to a more serious mindset, one might peruse the Word. I’ve heard this is a Christian University. How might a Christian woman benefit from taking her husband’s last name? How might the nominal adoption impact her growth in Christ?

When Christ married the Church, dressed to the nines in a bloodstained, purple robe and crown of thorns, he gave men and women a snapshot of what true marriage looks like: the Bridegroom (Matthew 9:15) dies for the sake of the bride (Ephesians 5:25). What does the Church do in turn for her Bridegroom? She takes His name as her own: “Christian” (lit. “Little Christ”). We are the Body of Christ: the Christian Church (1 Cor 12:27). Christ’s Body and ours are united, and we become one – under His name. Mrs. Dust becomes Mrs. Christ, essentially. I laugh too; it looks weird.

So, I would argue that it could actually be helpful for the wife to remember her marriage to Christ by taking her husband’s last name. It reminds her that her husband represents Christ in their marriage (Ephesians 5:24). She took Christ’s name at her baptism when she became “Christian”; she might also take the name of Christ’s image (e.g. Mr. Smith) when she marries him.

If you are still reading, I commend your perseverance through this rather tangled thought process. Of course, I am not dead-set either way, and am not saying that taking the husband’s name is “the Christian way to go.” It just seems like it might be a good reminder that marriage to a husband should look like marriage to Christ – but this might not be helpful for anyone else, and that is totally fine. Let me know your thoughts on this controversial tradition. Should modernity kill it off? I take my leave as the yet unchanged – Miss Thomas.

By: Katherine Thomas

Ok, she’s awake. Let’s go.

Deep in the heart of Eagle Residence Hall, a music education major opens weary eyes. The birds outside the window wail notes that register in her mind as named pitches.

(Wait, what?)
(She has perfect pitch relative to middle C.)

(Oh word. Carry on.)

On this crisp Tuesday morning, the not-too-elusive creature emerges from the depths of her dorm to breakfast at the DC, then trots off to her first class. At special education, fruitful discussions about teaching take place. “We talk about making an inclusive environment for children of all needs,” Amelia explains.

As TA of the freshman honors chorale, Amelia flaps her arms at some fetal Templetonians around noon every Monday. However, since a new day has dawned, she instead leaps into her sedan (dented from where a deer likewise lept) and screeches off to a nearby elementary school. Here, she observes different musical teaching styles, and how the children receive them. Amelia loves kids, which means this is either a lovely or distressing time for her, depending on the quality of the teacher she observes. It is important for music ed majors to observe like this, that they might pick up practical models of teaching to implement or discard for their future careers.

A brief “break” ensues. No, who am I kidding, this chick never catches a break! After observation hours, Amelia sinks grandly and gracefully to the bench of her electric keyboard, nestled back in the comfort of her room.

Well, actually, not necessarily. Sometimes she treks over to Workman and pours her soul out on the Steinway there. Or, alternatively, she uses this time to swim in the ridiculous pile of honors college work she manages exceptionally well by the grace of God.

(Yeah, when you say exceptional, what are we talking about? You can’t expect too much with everything else you’re talking about…)
(Straight A’s.)

(Carry on.)

Knock, knock, knock. Surprise! It is I! 4 p.m. is upon us, and Amelia and I both must skip to University Choir practice with the fabulous Dr. Perry Brisbon. He tells us to do crazy things like “match the color of your sound” and “sing that ‘e’ with your mouth shaped like an ‘o.’” I think it turns out well. Come to Chapel and find out! We sing there occasionally.

“Farewell!” she bids me before bravely dodging out once more to her next class: instrumental conducting. Here, she practices conducting using a baton. Exams partly consist of identifying instruments by name in Italian, German, English and French. Transposing instruments also comes into play: the sheet music might tell Amelia to play one note, and the pitch coming out of her instrument is another, but it follows the same pattern as the written music.

Surprise, again! It is I – again! 6:30 p.m. strikes. Skip-dee-dee, off to choir practice part two; this time, though, we head to Turning Point rehearsal. At Turning Point, we like to plow through music faster than Dr. Brisbon has anticipated. Amelia sings alto 1 (the higher alto part), and I sing soprano 2 (the lower soprano part). We share many pieces with the University Choir, but also enjoy some of our own.

After reading this account, I know what you might think: this seems like a double major. It essentially is one. I wanted to give you a view of the music department from a student who is studying music with the specific goal of teaching future students. If you would like a final candid quote from this positive (albeit overloaded) student: “Music education is kind of awesome. I am so glad I’m majoring in it!”

By: Katherine Thomas

The leaves are turning, and you know what that means! Well… do you know what that means? What should you do now that the leaves are turning, really? The usual responses are as follows: pick some apples! Jump in a leaf pile! Rake your yard! Eat caramel apples! If you were looking for answers like that, there they are. I will now suggest a few more unique ideas you might try this cozy fall season.

Go crunch some leaves! This is always a satisfying fall activity. At this point in the semester, we all suddenly hear the words “mental health” exponentially more than we do at almost any other time of year. Take those anxieties you have about the myriad essays on your plate and crunch them under your new boots. Oak and maple leaves often do the trick, but the science of leaf-crunching involves low expectations. If one gets his or her expectations up for the crunchiness of a leaf and is sadly disappointed and the leaf makes barely any sound, this can be extremely destructive to the psyche.

Take pictures of Simon Kwilinski taking pictures. You read that sentence twice! And that is totally okay. So is Simon Kwilinski! He is great, actually. Some say the Eastern Geese are the main fascination on campus. Others might say it is the new security bikes. Still others might say it is the fact that no student has been killed by the UPS truck whipping around at 80 mph. Many, however, would argue that the main fascination around campus is Simon Kwilinski taking photographs for the Waltonian. So, take this new fall challenge: go on that leaf-crunching walk, and while you are at it, make sure you capture Simon Kwilinski capturing the leaves you might soon crunch underfoot on his camera.

Have a people-watching picnic in a pretty park with plenty of red, orange, and gold trees around. All you need to bring from your room is a picnic blanket, dark or reflective sunglasses, some hot apple cider in a thermos, and a picnic basket or bucket of some sort. You may also want to bring a little speaker to set the mood with some fall tunes, if any really exist. For your lunch, have our very own Sodexo workers toast you a wrap or hoagie, then put said sandwich into your basket (it already will be wrapped in brown paper for you). Alternatively, pick up something from zime that you can take in a to-go box. Bring a board game or two while you are at it, if there are not enough people around to watch! Or find a busy park where a crowd is definite.

Have a white girl outing! You do not need to be caucasian or female for this fall activity. Simply donn a pair of comfortable uggs, black leggings, and a beanie, then take a field trip to Starbucks and order a pumpkin spice latte. Alternatively, you can do this activity at our very own Zime! The prices are just as inordinate as at a regular Starbucks, but the equally inordinate cost of gas will not be included in the travel expenses. Make your judgmental stereotypes into a fantastic fall field trip! Be creative.

Now that you are equipped with some new ideas for fall fun, go frolic in the crisp autumn air to your heart’s content. I wish you all the best.