Page 3 – The Waltonian

After committing to Eastern, I faced one real internal struggle: would I be able to live away from home? I knew that I would be able to live on my own, but I was not sure in my capabilities of living in PA after being raised in FL.

Originally, I was planning on going to school in Tampa, Florida, but my mom was set on me attending a school in PA. We had planned on moving back to PA after I graduated high school. I appeased my mom by applying to Eastern. After being accepted, my reality of becoming a PA resident was starting to scare me. However, after growing up in the same city for 18 years, I did not know what I would exactly miss when I would get to college.

Now, after attending Eastern and living in PA for almost three years, I think I can pinpoint the obvious things that I miss from being home in FL everyday. I miss my best friends, Ashley and Marissa. I miss talking to them everyday and seeing what they accomplish. I miss seeing my niece and nephew, Ariana and Jace, change and grow. However, there is something else that I miss, something that is perhaps less tangible.

I miss the smell of burnt oranges from the Tropicana factory next to the water of the west coast, making it a weird combination for my nose to take in. I miss the feeling of anticipation while watching the amazing workers at Publix make my chicken tender pub sub– a Floridian classic. I think I miss the vibrations of metal stands during a high school football game. I miss the taste of my saxophone reed. I miss the feeling of humidity, something that I hated while living there, but I soon began to miss the feeling of being hit with a wet towel as soon as I stepped outside. I miss my casual interactions with alligators and iguanas. I miss the feeling of being immersed in the Sunshine State.

However, perhaps the thing I miss the most in FL is my mom. After getting accepted to Eastern in Feb. of 2016, my mom passed unexpectedly the next month. Now when I’m in FL, I am surrounded by the air that she last breathed. I like to think that her spirit paints the sunset over the Gulf. When I go home during breaks, the weather seems to be gentle on me. I think my mom works hard to make it pretty when she knows I’ll be down. I try to remember her final months in FL– the final moments of me knowing her.

When I go home, I take pictures of all that I love. I take these pictures and look through them every once in a while when I miss FL. I have pictures of entire aisles of orange juice. I have photos of signs stating ‘don’t feed the alligators.’ I also have to admit that I have way too many pictures of Publix. I also have videos of my niece and nephew, so I can remember each moment I spend with them.

I share my photos with my friends here at Eastern. I think inviting them to see what I grew up with makes us closer. I did not realize how important my Floridian upbringing impacted me until coming to Eastern. I often get called “Florida” when I complain about weather lower than 75 degrees being too cold for school. And my northern friends tend to pick up on my southern take on enunciating my a’s.

In the end, I think there is art and beauty in home. At first when I came to Eastern, I thought that a home had to be a tangible place. Never would I had thought that it would be a hot and wet southern state. I do not think that I would have noticed the beauty of FL unless I was discovering a new place.

After each long day of class and work,

I eagerly head to my dorm for peace, solitude, and, of course, my cat. This is not the reality for a lot of Eastern students, but it has been my reality since the spring semester of my freshman year when I decided to apply to have an Emotional Support Animal. This spring marks as the fifth semester I have lived on campus with my cat Troy Bolton. I promise you that this is his real name. I got him when I was nine– prime time of the High School Musical era.

Many can understand the general comfort of having an animal around in any situation, but Troy’s true test of being a support for me specifically is when I face the symptoms of my anxiety and depression.

Emotional Support Animals in dorm rooms are relatively new. It was not until 2015 when colleges and universities started allowing emotional support animals on campus. However, the process to acquire an ESA is long and strenuous. This part of The Fair Housing Act can be taken advantage of, as there is no concrete way to assess the importance of a mentally ill person having an ESA. In addition, an ESA is different from a service animal. My cat was not trained professionally to aide to a disorder. Instead, he is classified under an assisting support system; therefore, he does not have the same rights as a service animal.

Apart from the legality of having an Emotional Support Animal, I think that I personally dealt with a lot of internal stigma when it came to my fight to have Troy in my dorm. I thought that seeking help in any way was a form of weakness and that a cat would not cure me.

It turned out that Troy did not cure me, but I think that he did so much more. He allows me to live with mental illnesses and still be able to smile. I do not know how Troy learned to care for me, but for some reason, he can sense when I am starting to panic, dissociate, or cry. Most of my panic attacks happen at night when I am trying to sleep. When they start to come, I feel Troy travel toward me on my bed and curl up on my chest. When I dissociate, or disconnect from my body mentally, I am unable to move for minutes to hours at a time.

After awhile, I think something tells Troy that I should be moving. He seeks me out and headbutts me whenever he can to get my attention. Most of the time, he nudges me back to reality and to my body. Also, I think Troy knows when I cry. He tends to let me cry while he sits next to me. Once I calm down, I pick him up as he purrs and hold him close to my face, still soaked with tears. I do not think he minds being saturated with my tears if it means he is doing his job.

Living with Troy for the past 12 years, three as an Emotional Support Animal, has been the greatest honor a cat mom could ever have. Apart from being an ESA, Troy is a normal cat. He plays with string, sleeps often, and loves treats, but there is a spark in him that makes him different. I think knowing an animal for so long, developing that bond over a decade, allows us to subconsciously connect. I think that this bond makes him a spectacular ESA. I no longer think that Troy can cure me, but I firmly believe that he aides in my process toward healing, whatever that may look like.

Sources: HUD

Originally hailing from Long Island, New York, Professor Sophia Sunshine Vilceus, Professor Sunshine for short, has made her way to Eastern as an English professor for Fundamentals of Writing as well as College Writing.

Sunshine also teaches similar introductory English courses to eager students at West Chester University. This affiliation with West Chester allowed her to first learn about Eastern.

“I didn’t even know Eastern was a Christian college,” Sunshine said when she first applied to teach at Eastern.

Within her first semester at Eastern, Sunshine has made it her duty to implement current events into her essay prompts for students.

“If we aren’t talking about relevant things, what are we doing?” Sunshine expressed this after explaining how she will stay up late at night in order to revamp essay prompts and topics to be the most current to the country’s climate.

She sacrifices her time after seeing the perspectives of her students shifting. She loves watching students engulf themselves in topics that may be uncomfortable for them to discuss but are important to hold conversations about. These topics include the recent attempted bombings of notable Democrats and the hearings of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford among others.

As a Christian woman, Sunshine also expressed the importance in discussing how we as a community should be aware of certain public tensions in order to protect the marginalized, similarly to Jesus and his actions. Even though Sunshine also teaches at secular institutions, she is extremely blessed that she can openly incorporate her faith into the topics she discusses in class. She enjoys the ways that she and her students are able to integrate faith into real life topics.

Before teaching at Eastern, Sunshine attended Cuny City College of New York as well as Howard University. In New York, she got a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Ethnic Studies, and in Washington DC for her graduate degree, Sunshine studied Media Studies and African Studies.

Apart from teaching, Sunshine likes to read memoirs, write for a Christian website and spend time with her dog, Bizoux (French for “kisses”) who is a Maltese-Shitzu mix. Sunshine confessed that the last powerful book she read was The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton. In this memoir, Hinton discusses how he was arrested in 1985 and was sent to death row for a crime he did not commit. In addition to memoirs, Sunshine is also a sucker for a good poetry collection, especially if written by Maya Angelou. If not reading, Sunshine puts her mind to writing, often creative nonfiction. Sunshine is a freelance writer for the Christian lifestyle website called The Praying Woman. In addition to this, Sunshine expressed the importance of writing.

“I began writing as a maneuver to talk about my grief,” Sunshine said. She lost her mom as a teenager. After this, she took her middle name of Sunshine as her identity to be closer to her mom and to honor her. Due to this, she knows that teaching was not a mistake for her.

“It is not random… the writer and educator part of me has merged,” Sunshine said.

Sunshine also expressed the importance of students, especially those struggling with grief, having writing as an outlet. Being able to put your story into words is something that Sunshine herself has found especially healing, and she hopes that students can find healing in this as well.

Eastern’s community is extremely blessed to have Sunshine on our campus. Her passion for relevance has the power to elevate Eastern to an even more 21 century community.

On November 8th, gunshots rang through the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California killing 12 including the perpetrator. In response to the gunfire, many politicians, celebrities, and civilians asked for thoughts and prayers. Among the slain was Alaina Housley, a student and niece of Sister Sister actress Tamera Mowry-Housley. Many of the killed were young college students from the area.

In addition to Housley, Telemachus Orfanos, age 27, was another victim of this mass shooting in the quiet area of Thousand Oaks. Although this event was horrific and new to its victims, Orfanos was not new to the realm of domestic terrorism. Orfanos survived the Las Vegas shooting that occured a little over a year ago that killed 58 people and injured hundreds of others. His mother does not want thoughts and prayers– she wants action.

“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control. And I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers. I want gun control. No more guns,” Orfanos’ mother, Susan Schmidt-Orfanos, said to CNN.

This horrific event occurred just a week and a half after another mass shooting occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this act of terrorism, a gunman entered a synagogue and murdered 11 people as they worshipped. California Governor elect, Gavin Newsom, spoke about the shooting after winning the election the night prior.

“This is America…This doesn’t happen anywhere else on the planet. We can’t let folks forget that. We can’t allow this to be normalized,” Newsom said.

In light of these horrific actions, many have turned to social media to honor the lives lost as well as demand stricter gun laws in hopes of minimizing the possibility of future mass shootings.

Sources: CNN, Vox

I thought I would have been safe from the black hole of kpop. Let’s just say I was wrong.

Last semester, I was taking a media and culture class that discusses the relationship between pop culture, technology, and society. I selected the presentation topic of economy and fandoms as well as queer spectatorship in kpop. This, I should have known, would have been the beginning of the end. I was working on the later presentation, and I concluded that I wanted to include a music video at the end. I quickly went to YouTube and searched ‘kpop.’ The first video that appeared was BTS’ “DNA,” or, also known as, the beginning of my slow, enjoyable death.

In each of my presentations, I talked about the passion fans have for artists that they stand behind. This act of obsessive fanship can also be referred to as the act of stanning an artist. Stanning, coming from the word ‘stan,’ in pop culture is a mix between fan and stalker. Although there may not be any stalking going on with where I am, there is this innate obsession that cannot be explained.

When I tell people I listen to kpop, I think I am usually given the response “but you don’t know Korean. How can you understand what they are saying?” Although there is the obvious ability to use subtitles, I also have something else to say. Music does not have any barriers. The stream of lyric, tone, and music have the ability to transcend cultural and language barriers. I think that this fantastic ability in why we are seeing groups like BTS do so well outside of Korea.

I think what fans like the most about kpop groups is their ability to relate to and interact with their audiences. They are heavily engaged on social media and are frequently on live videos on an app called Vlive. In addition, kpop groups are able to have such duality: they can be serious and in ‘character’ on stage but completely silly and ridiculous when interacting with their fans. This personality switch allow audiences to see different sides of their idols. I also think audiences, Western audiences specifically, appreciate the lack of staunch gender stereotypes, especially in the male kpop groups. Many of the popular male kpop groups often wear makeup— a practice that is often seen as taboo in Western culture.

These are practices we see in the popular group, BTS. BTS consists of seven members: Namjoon, “RM;” Jin; Jimin; Taehyung, “V;” Jungkook; Hoseok, “J-Hope;” and Yoongi, “Suga.” Some members of the group are singers while some are rappers, but all of them dance with talent and passion. Over the past few years, BTS has grown in popularity, especially overseas. Recently, they have one two awards for Favorite Social Artist. They were also the first kpop group to perform on the AMA’s.

My dark hole of kpop stanning started with the “DNA” music video. It spread to the songs “Dope” and “Blood, Sweat, Tears,” and then it spread to full albums like Wings and Love Yourself: Her. This hole expanding immensely by coming into contact with other kpop groups. I think I have a problem— whatever YouTube recommends to me, I watch. Maybe it is not a problem. I mean, it has gotten me into amazing groups that I did not hear of previously. I started listening to iKon, Monsta X, Blackpink, Seventeen, and more recently, EXO.

I feel like kpop is good music for everyone. Within it, there are genres for everyone like hip hop, rap, pop, literally everything.

Long before Carson Wentz, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, was drafted in 2016, he was a teenager with a love for God that spawned from football. While attending North Dakota State university, Wentz learned how to grow in his faith through his other teammates. Wentz owes a lot of his spiritual exploration to Dante Perez, a teammate from college who brought up reading the Bible during a football practice. At first, Wentz was confused as to why his teammate was bringing up faith during a football practice, but that instance changed his life forever. Wentz began to give glory to God through each of his actions on and off the field.

This passion did not dwindle after Wentz became a professional football player. After being drafted by the Philadelphia National Football League team, Wentz felt called to use his platform to help others. In 2017, Wentz created his foundation, Audience of One, to help fulfill the Kingdom of God. Within his foundation,Wentz gives back to the community by providing a free food truck named “The Kingdom Crumb,” Haiti Sports Complex, helping over 15000 children develop active lifestyles, and outdoor experiences, an outdoor camping trip that teaches about God’s world.

It is important for celebrities to use their platforms for good. However, I think that it is also important for celebrities to be open about what they believe in. Wentz is a great example of making a practice like football that is seldom considered a form of worship and transforms it to a place to grow in a godly relationship.

Source and photo credit: AO1 Foundation

After the release of their highly successful album, “Blurryface,” in 2015, musical duo, Twenty One Pilots released their highly anticipated album, “Trench” on Oct. 6.

“Trench” follows the narrative that became prevalent in “Blurryface” as well as the previous album, “Vessel.” This narrative takes the fans, coined the Skeleton Clique, through the alternative universe the band has created. After the release of one of the tracks off of the album, “Jumpsuit,” the fans including myself, began to speculate if this had a direct relation to “Blurryface.” The beginning of the “Jumpsuit” music video was the end of the last music video released by the duo in Feb. of 2017– two years after the release of the album the song is attributed to. There is also correlation to the character “Blurryface,” that has been often referred to the name given to depression that follows the duo. This character became the title of the 2015 album but is referenced in the “Jumpsuit” music video as well as the videos “Nico and the Niners” and “Levitate.”

Apart from the theories the album’s hidden meanings created, the musical duo, consisting of Josh Dun and Tyler Joseph, have managed to create something spectacular. Each song adheres to the band’s ability to cross genres in everything they release. Twenty One Pilots is often referred to as including the genres pop rock, alternative hip hop, rap rock, electro pop, and others. This cross-genre ability has allowed Twenty One Pilots to gain fans with varying tastes in music. However, Josh Dun and Tyler Joseph have talked about how their music is not for everyone but that their music is for those who need it. Because of the intentional themes of mental health, the songs are created to put words, sounds, pictures and feelings together that can accurately represent what it is like to struggle with depression or any other mental health issues that are seldom represented in society.

After its release, “Trench,” has received great reviews and listeners. “Jumpsuit” spent three weeks at the top of the alternative charts. After the album’s release, Twenty One Pilots unveiled a world tour to give their audiences a chance to experience the album live. The tour has been given the name “Bandito” with its ‘o’ having a line slashed through it to mimic the band’s logo. Twenty One Pilot will be playing at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on Oct. 8 of next year.

Source: Billboard

On Oct. 3rd, students, faculty, and guests of Eastern gathered in the gym to celebrate weekly chapel together.

The university Chaplain, Dr. Joseph Modica introduced the question he wanted us to ponder that morning.

“Does God’s word still matter today?” Dr. Modica kept in tune with this essential question as he introduced the morning’s speaker, professor Dr. Peter Enns.

Dr. Enns spoke on and reflected on the Book of Malachi. In his discussion, he spoke about the ways in which we can relate to this book in the Old Testament. Dr. Enns began with briefing the audience on what the book roughly translates to in modern language. In a simple sense, God’s people did not live up to their covenant with God.

They were struggling with the idea of God’s love amid their own struggles. However, the people did not take responsibility for their turmoil that was caused by their sinful nature. God, through Malachi, points to the people themselves, encouraging them to admit their role in their turmoil.

Dr. Enns continued by relating this to our own lives. God in this book wanted His people to help one another. That’s a part of worshipping God– doing things for the benefit of other people whenever possible.

“Worship and justice are not disconnected” Dr. Enns said. Dr. Enns went on to quote from the Book of Malachi. He called from Malachi 3:5 which in the New International Version states,’”so I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,”’ says the Lord Almighty.”

We are called to read between the lines because this book was not written to us but was written for us in order to learn more about what God wants for us.

This book, often overlooked or only studied in Sunday school, is “worthy of our adult attention,” Dr. Enns said.

Dr. Enns ended with encouraging the audiences to dig deeper and to not look for verses that relate to us but challenge ourselves to understand what is meant by each verse in relation to the book, Old Testament and Bible as a whole.

For many years, Eastern students have been visiting Eastern State Penitentiary to get themselves into the spirit of Halloween. The large inclination audiences have is that Eastern State Penitentiary is known for its paranormal activity. The Penitentiary, a National Historic Landmark, was first established in 1829 and became famous for its unique tactics for inspiring penitence within a prisoner.

A few prisoners are still remembered today by their criminal branding, such as Al Capone and Willie Sutton. As their punishments were rather cruel and unusual in such a depressing setting, many stories arose from the prison and have since been passed down for other audiences to hear. More than likely this only increases the Penitentiary’s attendance for their annual Terror Behind the Walls event.

Terror Behind the Walls, the most frightful haunted house in the tristate area, brings to life everyone’s worst nightmares. Eastern State Penitentiary holds the haunted house, or may we say haunted prison, each year beginning in September and ending the first weekend in November. This event takes you through six horrifying attractions within the penitentiary itself, creating the environment of jeepers and creepers.

The six attractions take you on a journey of the “prisoners” breakout of the Penitentiary. As you travel with your friends, you can decide whether you would like the experience to be interactive or passive. If one decides to opt in for an interactive experience they should not be surprised if they are grabbed, taken away or sent through hidden passageways by themselves. You may wish you chose to be passive, as you may find yourself very alone in a dark corridor with no one to help.

When we attended this horror attraction, senior Madison Messics wore a glow in the dark necklace to indicate that she consented to being touched and potentially taken away by each of the attractions’ monsters. Junior Kelsey Fiander-Carr, on the other hand, decided against the interactive experience. In one instance, Messics and Fiander-Carr, who came as a group, were separated. Throughout the infirmary, Messics was asked horrific questions like “can I have a hand?” Although this seems like a harmless question, the monsters in the infirmary, who were zombie nurses, wanted Messics’ real hand. After this request, Messics was taken to a hospital bed and was only able to reach Fiander-Carr after the nurse released her.

Terror Behind the Walls brings the idea of a paranormal breakout to a whole new level. With each attraction comes a different theme and setting. One may be in the infirmary ward, trying to get past nurses who would love to practice an unethical surgery on anyone they can get their hands on. You may also find yourself making your way through the very sharp and dangerous machine shop filled with tools and gruesome scenes. As you travel, be sure to have a sharp eye as what you believe you see is not always how it appears. During one attraction, there was a 3-D section that altered the way its audience saw the scene. At one point, Fiander-Carr thought that she was going to fall off of a platform that was holding her. The 3-D glasses the Penitentiary had her wear in addition to the flashing lights, many goers fell once they entered the section. At another point in time, the scare fanatics were chased by a monster with a chain saw. These are among dozens of situations that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

If you are looking to be in a horror movie of your own in this season of Halloween, Eastern State Penitentiary is the place for you. Tickets range from 19 dollars to 45 depending on how busy the attractions are. For more information, look through their website at www.easternstate.org.

When coming to the decision to major in Journalism, I concluded that my interests went beyond the confines of that major. I like reading, writing and leading the newspaper, but I also am an advocate for social justice, and I wanted at least a part of my education at Eastern to reflect this. My love of social justice brought me to become interested in minoring in Gender Studies, especially after I went to Maine for Seminar by the Sea to study gender disparities with a group of Eastern students led by faculty and alumni of Eastern. This minor allows me to learn about the passion I grew for gender equality after starting college. This knowledge has brought me to seek out gender equality in my other English classes.

I have learned that women in literature have unique perspectives that were not introduced to me until I sought out courses that were designed to showcase females authors and their stories. For example, the course on Postcolonial Women’s Novels (ENGL 225) opened my eyes by being a course dedicated to all female authors. This minor program has also taught me about intersectionality and how one’s gender is not the only sect of their identity that can hinder them from being privileged in society.

In Postcolonial Women’s Novels, the female authors were also women from previously colonized nations, so many of the authors were from different racial and ethnic groups that are not openly embraced in western society.

This course was life changing for me. I think that it is our job as a society to understand disparities in gender and how they interact with other disparities that can oppress individuals of a bigger marginalized group. In choosing to minor in Gender Studies, I learned about my own gender’s oppression, the discrimination of the other gender on the binary as well as the underrepresentation of non binary individuals.

However, I also felt that there was something else missing in my educational program. My love for advocating for gender equality was and is still very present in my life, but I did feel that another minor would fill this other social justice void I found within myself.

This is why I chose to add the minor of Social Welfare last spring. This minor allows me to put into practice helping individuals who are overlooked in the system. This allowed me to advocate for more marginalized groups other than just those defined by gender. Currently, I am taking Social Work with Families (SOWK 253) and Services to the Aging (SOWK 254). In Social Work with the Family, I am able to articulate the importance of making an all-inclusive definition of family, and I am able to understand that there are a lot of different variations of a family rather than just the mother, father and children “nuclear family” that society paints as “normal.” In addition, in Services to the Aging, I am able to learn how to better care for and understand our society’s aging community who are often overlooked.

Minors allow you to investigate topics that may not be part of your future career. For instance, you can be very interested in dance, but want to pursue a career as a teacher– dance can become your minor. Although I am biased and I think that everyone should choose Gender Studies and Social Welfare as possible minors, a minor program should be something that ‘grinds your gears’. Minors allow you to learn about topics that you are passionate about. Even if you decide on not incorporating them into your future career, minor programs still allow your brain to grow in passionate learning.

As a student of Eastern, I recommend that everyone, if their their major’s course load allows, pursue at least one minor.