Sodexo secures dining contract

Danton J. Thompson

Managing Editor

It has been announced that Sodexo, MUW’s previous food service provider has been granted a contract to continue its services on campus after months of interviews and proposals from various dining service providers across the nation.

Sodexo is a world-renowned multi-national food service provider and is the 22^nd largest employer in the world. With services present in over eighty countries, Sodexo employs over 413,000 employees at 33,400 sites.  Sodexo’s presence has been felt on campus since the early 90s and has an impeccable track record at outbidding the competition when it comes to MUW’s dining services contracts. Though Sodexo is clearly pro at what it does, its services have lately been under much criticism by the students who eat in the café.

Senior communication and business major Janna Perez-Dakhalla voiced her disappointment with the café’s offerings in a February interview.

“I personally have been disappointed by Sodexo’s food services, I don’t think anything that they cook is worth the $7 per meal, and that’s why I never eat in the cafeteria. I haven’t eaten in the café at all this semester,” she said.

Coincidentally, shortly after several student interviews were published, Sodexo began to implement various well-received changes in the cafeteria. The café began turning more focus toward the suggestion box and began to actively and openly reply to the students’ many suggestions. The workers began decorating the offerings more festively and some even began to use different recipes on café classics.

Perez-Dakhalla recently changed her tune.

“The café is so much better than it was when I first began school here in 2009! The improvements are way better,” she said.

Amanda Johnson, a freshman biology major expressed a similar sentiment.

“I haven’t really noticed many changes around here, but the sloppy Joe’s taste better now. I don’t know why,” she said.

Looking at the wall full of suggestions and cheerful feedback, one would believe that the entire student body is on board with the changes implemented by Sodexo, but there are still students out there that don’t buy it quite yet.

Senior culinary arts major Mark Kimball has not been impressed.

“There’s been changes but they’re not that significant. I mean, they’re just making things pretty, but that’s about it. I’d say the food is about the same as it’s always been.”

Daniel Fulton, a freshman paralegal studies major has been oblivious to the changes implemented.

“What changes? I legitimately haven’t noticed that many. Every once in a while they have really good days, but that just seems to spring up randomly.”

With many changes having already taken place and many more to come, students in that café have been told to direct their questions and suggestions towards the suggestions box, which are all read and most answered by the Interim Director of Dining Services, Roy Platt.

Platt, who is filling in until a replacement is hired for former Director of Dining Services Roger Busby, has almost 30 years of experience in the food service industry and has been with Sodexo, Inc., for over 18 years. Over the last few weeks, Platt has been very vocal in answering the students’ concerns over the menu, variety, information provided and the physical environment of the café.

District Manager Terry L. Woodard was on site today greeting staff and students, answering questions and taking suggestions. Woodard is responsible for being a liaison and support between the General Manager and the corporate office. He is looking to have the General Manager position filled within the next thirty days.

“The General Manger is the onsite manager and is responsible for the day-to-day operations. We hope to have that position filled before the summer, hopefully within the next thirty days.”

Woodard also expressed interest in hiring a student promotion coordinator that would help with marketing and promotional activities throughout campus. The promotion coordinator would work with the campus on student events and help incorporate the dining services in these events.

Along with the student promotion coordinator, Woodard talked about creating a food service committee that aids the dining services in preparing menus and implementing changes that the students themselves would like to see around the cafeteria. The students in the organization would assist with menu planning, campus-wide surveys and one-on-one talks with other students. The food service committee would be another way to get students’ opinions voiced in a more comfortable way.

Various other exciting changes set to be implemented will be detailed in the upcoming weeks once announced by Dave Haffly, Director of Output Enterprises at the Plymouth Bluff Center.

Campus gears up for Homecoming

Ariel Keon

Contributing Writer

Mississippi University for Women faculty, staff and students have been busy preparing the campus for Homecoming 2012.

Homecoming each year is a special event for alumni to visit campus and reconnect with college buddies and meet current students through a variety of organizations on campus.

This year is special for several members of the Long Blue Line, the nickname for “W” graduates.

The year 2012 marks a special time for the graduating class of 1962. The women of this class will be celebrating their 50^th reunion and inducted as Golden Girls. Several events will be held throughout the weekend to celebrate the Golden Girls.

All members of the class of 1962 are encouraged to make an interview appointment with Dr. Bridget Smith Pieschel for The Oral History Project of MUW. This is an ongoing project to collect oral histories from “W” alumni for the MUW archives.

The Mississippi University for Women will also be celebrating the 30^th anniversary of admitting male students into the university. The celebration for male alumni and students will take place at the Bryan Green Gazebo where a barbecue dinner will be served. Tickets are $15.

Another unique event happening at Homecoming 2012 is the athletics reunion, “Legacy of the Blues: A Century of Athletics at The W.” This special event will take place in the Pohl building lobby and gymnasium. At the event there will be a book signing and reception for the alumni athletes, alumni and friends of the Blues.

A special congratulations to the D’Belle social club as it celebrates its 50^th anniversary at the Lee Home, located on 7^th Street North next to the Columbus-Lowndes Library.

For more information please refer to the pamphlet and schedules for Homecoming 2012.

One-act productions are truly student-oriented

Liz Kennedy

News Editor

This year’s one-act plays at MUW are giving students real-life training in the process of creating a theatre production.

The event is especially exciting for theatre majors LaVosha Kern, Joseph Musgrove, Clara Seitz and Casey Duke, each of whom has written one of the five plays being performed.

As opposed to last year, when the one-act performances came from professional playwrights, this year’s shows are truly student-run. There are also students directing the shows, acting in them, designing the light and sound, and doing all of the technical jobs one would find in theatre.

“It’s been enlightening for both sides,” said Duke, a sophomore.

As a playwright, Duke gets to watch director Kayla Manzolillo produce her play while she gets to put in some input as well. Students who wrote and submitted a play get to be involved in the process just as a playwright in a professional theatre would do.

This also gives the directors an experience they have not gotten in the past.  They get to work with the playwrights on what the show is supposed to look like, as opposed to just going off what the script gives them.

The directors include Manzolillo, Dustin Gibson, Brittany Trimble and theatre professor Lee Crouse.

According to Duke, it has been a great experience seeing one of her plays coming to life onstage.

“I’ve known these characters for years. They’ve been in [my head] and now they’re going to be out here and it’s very exciting.”

Duke’s play “Jimmy Gets the Girl” is actually a comic book she wrote when she was eleven years old.  It is about a boy named James who has a crush on a girl who does not feel the same.  Finally fed up with him following her around she decides to set him up with another girl.  The play follows James throughout the night on this date.

In addition to the student-written one-acts, senior English major and theatre minor Lizzie Locker will be presenting two scenes from Shakespeare, performed in the original pronunciation that would have been used during Shakespeare’s day. The two scenes, from “Much Ado about Nothing” and “The Tempest,” are part of her undergraduate honors research project, which is focused on the way the use of Shakespeare’s original pronunciation changes an actor’s performance.

“It’s a whole bunch of world premieres,” said Locker about the weekend performances.

The plays will be performed on April 12, 13 and 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the main theatre in Cromwell.

Showing how it's done

Liz Kennedy

News Editor

Before a senior graduates, that student will focus all of his or her efforts into one last “big bang” for the W to remember him by, whether in the form of a final prank, a final party, or more often, a final project. Senior English major and theatre minor Lizzie Locker is doing just that in her academic field.

Locker is doing her undergraduate honors research project on the original pronunciation of Shakespeare’s works and how it affects an actor during rehearsal and performance. Locker has learned how to speak Early Modern English, the pronunciation style from Shakespeare’s day, and is teaching it to a group of volunteer theatre students.

As part of her project, Locker will be directing the students in two scenes from Shakespeare’s plays: Act Three, Scene Five from “Much Ado About Nothing” and Act One, Scene Five from “The Tempest.” Those performing in “Much Ado About Nothing” will be Casey Duke, LaVosha Kern, and LaSqizzie Kern. Casey Davis and Locker will be performing in “The Tempest”.

According to Locker, she has learned many things from her project, the biggest thing being the ability to apply a change in language to a character and her performance.

In her project she is looking at how the simple pronunciation, not the accent or dialect, can add to and change the way the actor performs their role. She has noticed that those without dialect training pick up on the differences in the words better than those who had previous dialect training.

Duke, a sophomore theatre major recruited by Locker to perform in “Much Ado About Nothing,” says she is very excited to be a part of this process.

“How often do you get to learn this stuff?” said Duke.

Locker had to teach each of her actors the original pronunciations of the words in Shakespeare’s plays. According to Duke she applied a “Rosetta Stone” approach to the process and forced her actors to learn a lot of information very quickly.

“I immersed myself in it,” Duke said.

Locker has many different faculty members helping her with the project as its advisors. She asked William “Peppy” Biddy, chair of theatre and communications to help her with the theatre aspect of it, Dr. Nora Corrigan, assistant professor of literature and philosophy to help her with the literature aspect and Dr. Leslie Stratyner, professor of literature and philosophy as a linguist to help with the history of the language.

“I thought it was really exciting,” said Corrigan.

To see Locker’s performances and others come watch the student written and directed one-act plays being performed on April 12, 13 and 14 in Cromwell Hall.

Students organize against injustice

Danton J. Thompson

Managing Editor

On March 5, a short film created by Invisible Children, Inc., discussing efforts to bring to light the crimes of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony went viral all over the internet.

The video, “Kony 2012,” graphically depicted the enslavement, abuse and kidnapping of thousands of Ugandan children, and has since been watched over 85 million times on YouTube and has amassed over 16 million views on Vimeo. Almost immediately after seeing the video and researching the plight, MUW’s own senior history major Whitney Russell put forth efforts to organize a committee of students to help out with the cause.

“I wanted to do something, and I thought it was a good cause to get involved in,” Russell stated.

On March 22, students met in the W Room to discuss their future possible actions and involvement in the Kony 2012 movement. Russell used Facebook to recruit a group of more than 20 students to attend the meeting. The students in attendance discussed the viral video, the truths behind it, and some discussed the many criticisms that had sprung up with the Invisible Children organization since the video’s creation.

Within hours of the video going viral, several celebrities including Nicki Minaj, Bill Gates, Rihanna and Taylor Swift announced their support either formally through their respective websites or by tweeting the link through their Twitter accounts. Luis Ocampo of the ICC stated that the semi-amateur video “mobilized the world.”

The Kony 2012 movement has also come under heavy criticism. In November of 2011, while “Kony 2012” was in production, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article stating that several organizations, including Invisible Children, had "manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders" and were "portraying Kony – a brutal man, to be sure – as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil". The campaign has also come under criticism for “oversimplification” of some of the events in the region.

More recently, the campaign took a harsh blow after the founder and director of Invisible Children, Jason Russell, was detained by police and hospitalized after vandalizing cars and running through San Diego traffic nude, allegedly due to exhaustion and dehydration.

“I don't think the controversy changed anything except made the guy look bad, but not the cause. I still think it is important and it should be something that people pay attention to, and I hope to try to get involved on April 20th,” Whitney Russell stated.

“Kony 2012 Part 2″ will be released Tuesday and will include an update about the “Cover the Night” nationwide awareness-raising event scheduled for April 20. On that day, supporters of the Kony 2012 movement will take to the streets to put up posters and signs provided to them by the campaign to raise acknowledgement of Joseph Kony and his many wrongdoings.

“This is the day when we will meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city until the sun comes up. We will be smart, and we will be thorough. The rest of the world will go to bed Friday night and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice on every corner,” Jason Russell proclaimed in the viral video.

A new meeting discussing organizing on April 20 has yet to be announced, but Russell has been actively planning to get an event together.