Cornerstone is Fun!!

You know, I think it’s easy to get the wrong impression about the “Cornerstone Learning Community”. We may be kinda nerdy, and we do go to class together and all that jazz. But we know when it’s time to time to kick back and have a good time! Come to think of it, we really consider almost every moment a good time to kick back and have a good time.  Take this picture for example:



Left behind on some random subway in Germany? No problem. Let’s take a picture!




In my opinion, one of the most fun things that my Cornerstone class ever did was an EPIC game of Assassins.
Assassins is a serious game. It is always going on, meaning that you can “die” at any point, and must remain on edge indefinitely. Everyone is assigned a target, and everyone has a “killer”. Check out these rules, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how epic it was:

The Rules (may be amended)
-Everyone will receive one target.
-You kill your target by striking them with a rubber band and/or paper wad.
-After you kill you're target, you inherit THEIR target, and continue assassinating people.
-The last person left alive wins! (NOT the person with the most kills)
-You may be killed at any time! EXCEPT:
-30 minutes before and after any organized Cornerstone event, including Cornerstone classes.
-DURING class lecture. (you're NOT SAFE while waiting before class starts, or after lecture is over!)
-In the MSC
-In Evans Library
-In All Faiths Chapels
-If you are in a group of four Assassins players (or former players), attacks don't count. (Important: if you are in group of 3, your attacker can't kill you, because they form the fourth person)
-If you hit your killer with a rubber band or paper, they can't kill you for six hours.
-Assassins, please remember that any action against the law is against the rules, and please try to respect others, while you are killing them. (No bathrooms, dorm rooms only when ppl are NOT changing, you get the idea)
-Prepare to die!"


My freshman year I ended up dying (lame!) as I was going out to assassinate someone in a DIFFERENT Assassins game! (Lauren, I WILL get you back for that you know.)

Anyways, Cornerstone is fun! Be prepared for hard work, excellent conversations, good friends, and just a wonderful time.

P.S. You can check out latest Cornerstone Assassins game at: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?search_terms=Assassins#/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=86067011592

The Common Link

Being a college freshman is one of the scariest experiences in the world. Sure, we were all excited to move out of Mom and Dad’s into our places with no curfews, no rules, and the ability to eat ice cream for dinner whenever we wanted. But out of the blue, you discover that you don’t know how to do your own laundry, your roommate is a lunatic, and on-campus dining fare is less than palatable. Then suddenly in a fit of panic, you realize that oh my goodness, I go to a school of 45,000 people and I maybe know 10 of them? Or 4? Or no one at all? Did I mention I only know people who are majoring in dairy science? What is the world is dairy science!? I’m a history major, I don’t know anything about dairy! Who are these people?

The College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M is the largest college on campus. That’s right, larger than engineering, business, and the sciences, all of the areas of specialty that A&M is known for. In addition to hosting its own group of majors, the college plays host to every single student on campus who is required by the University Core Curriculum to take English, Communication, History, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Visual and Performing Arts classes, which are all part of the college of Liberal Arts. So if we’re the biggest and the best, why was it almost impossible to meet anyone in the College of Liberal Arts? I didn’t know a single liberal arts major until the day that I sat down for my first class of Cornerstone. And once I met my Cornerstone classmates, I was so glad that I was a liberal arts major if I could have these individuals as my peers.

The best thing about Cornerstone is the people. Some of the best friends that I’ve made at A&M are in Cornerstone. We are a like-minded group of people with a like-minded focus. That isn’t to say that we agree on everything all the time. In fact, when it comes to discussions, we rarely agree on anything at all. It is a group of academically driven students who push to reach the highest level of excellence at Texas A&M. We take classes together, study together, stress out over the same tests, papers, and presentations. We draw from one another’s experience to become better students. We’re the classic group of over-achievers but we have a blast doing it. Our class especially is good friends outside of the program. We study together at the library, we go to movies, eat lunch together. Another Cornerstone classmate and I are even going on a study abroad trip together next summer. For me, it is the people that make the program. Yes, the opportunities afforded by Cornerstone are beyond anything that I could have imagined. The international trip is a huge perk as well but it truly is the individuals and the friends you make that make it worthwhile. It is that commonality of liberal arts that provides a structure for creating relationships with both your classmates and the faculty and staff members that you will encounter. I wouldn’t trade a single second of it for the world.

Research, it's Fun! - Part Two

If you missed out on Part One, take a look here!

The best thing about Cornerstone research is the way it breaks the ice and gets you ready for more reserach at Texas A&M. The opportunities for research involvement here are endless, and they're a wonderful way to learn about something you enjoy or have a passion for. Seriously, you could research almost anything here! Don't believe me? Take a look at my apartment the other night...

A friend, a roommate, and me.

Between the three of us we had research happening on 1) The spinal cord and its capability to learn without the brain, 2) Models of diseases and how they spread, and 3) Solar panels and satellites. It was like a little factory for knowledge. These are all topics we jumped into because we were interested in them, and we're getting the chance to work with professors we really connect with.

So what do Kim and I have to say about all of this? Well...

What sort of research have you been involved in since Cornerstone?

Kim: As an English major I have had many other projects to do, including Hawthorne, Poe, Shakespeare, and my favorite Tolkien's perspectives on death in the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. Right now I am researching Classical Mythology and Milton's demonology.

Katie: In addition to various projects for classes, I spent last Spring and Summer as a research assistant in the Doss Psychology lab for PSYC 485 credit. I helped with a study on couples' therapy for veterans, and a study on couples having their first child. I also completed a literature review on couples' therapy issues for elderly couples for PSYC 491 credit. Currently I'm researching the spinal cord's ability to learn independently of the brain as part of a course I am Honors contracting.

Would you recommend undergraduate research?

Kim: I would absolutely recommend undergrad research to other students because I feel it is a fantastic way to learn how to do research and really apply it in a form that can be shared with others. It gives you an opportunity to think far more deeply about a subject than you ever would have had you not been researching it, and it sheds light on new perspectives based on the reading you do.

Katie: I would definitely recommend undergrad research! Being involved in research has not only allowed me to learn about things I really care about, but it has also provided me with a clearer understanding of how research works, and how our society goes about increasing our knowledge of a subject. I would especially recommend doing research for class credit (485 and 491 classes)...485s and 491s are wonderful ways to obtain elective hours, and they aren't like any other class you'll take! 

So in summary, undergrad research is an amazing thing, and Cornerstone gives you a great introduction! Oh, and one more thing...if you ever have a research party in your living room like we did, make sure to grab some Hot N' Ready pizzas so you don't go hungry! 

Research, it's Fun! - Part One

One of the greatest things about Cornerstone (I mean...in my humble opinion), is that it provides an amazing foundation for high-achieving students to build the rest of their academic careers upon. Cornerstone is challenging and enlightening, and I can guarantee you that each and every one of us comes out of the program with a broader, more confident view of the world than when we started.

Sure, the overseas trip is great (and I plan on blogging more about mine soon!), but the one thing from Cornerstone that stuck with me the most is the exposure to undergraduate research that we received. In Cornerstone, the last few months of your freshman year are totally devoted to a research project. BUT, this isn't your typical,-high-school-five-page-requirement, teacher-picks-the-topic-and-you-hate-it research. To illustrate the Cornerstone research project, I'm going to share my experiences, along with those of a fellow Cornerstone student, Kim.

Kim @ the airport during our Cornerstone trip. Hi Kim!

The Cornerstone project is your chance to pick a topic you're in love with and dive head first into the amazing wealth of resources at A&M, emerging a few months later as an expert on a subject with a great presentation and paper to prove it. Your only restriction is that your topic must be somehow related to the overseas trip (in our case, Munich & Vienna). Let's take a look at how we did it...

Katie: My Cornerstone project was about the German education system. I studied its advantages and disadvantages, as well as what the German government is doing to remedy some of the problems in the system.

Kim: My cornerstone research project was about the Grimm Brothers and their influence on the language and folklore of the Bavarian community.

Soo...how did we decide on those topics?

Katie: I’ve been interested in education policy for quite some time. I have a lot of teachers in my family, and it seems as though people are continually criticizing the American school system. I wanted to delve into a foreign system and find out what made their system different from ours.

Kim: I have always loved fairy tales, and I really wanted to trace their roots as far as I could. I was very surprised with what I found. Our idea of fairy tales has morphed from what they originally were.

And how did we feel about our research after it was over?

Katie: I was amazed at the wealth of resources available to me both in Germany and in the libraries here at Texas A&M. Many of Germany’s education policy issues are universal, and the reforms Germany is making were really interesting to compare to those of the United States. I had never been given the opportunity to spend so much time focused on one topic, and I ended up being really proud of my research.

Kim: It was my first college research project, and it was a lot of fun. I loved getting so deep into a topic that I already had a great interest in. It definitely made research enjoyable. I really loved the excuse to spend hours reading all the fairy tales as well!

So, now you have a little more information on what Cornerstone research entails! Stay tuned for "Research, it's Fun! - Part Two" to find out how we continued being involved in undergraduate research after our freshman years were over!

I'll leave you with a few pictures that I took at schools in Germany...

German equivalent of a Montessori preschool

Aren't the little people on the sign so cute? Way better

than our neon yellow signs with stick figures.

Time to go home for the day!

Re-Thinking Prostitution in Bryan

*Warning: Responsible, constructive discussion of mature content to follow*

Problems are bigger, more complicated, and more intractable than they seem. That seems to be a lesson that I am continually learning. Even in comfortable College Station, huge societal ills are right in among us.

This past summer, I did an internship that helped to launch an anti-sex trafficking initiative, and I did weeks of research on the connections between sex trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. It’s not a pretty picture.

One of the main lessons I took away was the knowledge that commercial sexual exploitation happens everywhere, in every major town, whenever a supply of desperate people meets a demand for commercial sex. So when I got back to Texas A&M, I wanted to find out what’s going on here in Bryan/College Station, in terms of prostitution and sex trafficking. For some reason, I somehow assumed that my summer’s experience would give me some knowledge that I could use to solve some gaping hole in current policy. The reality was far from being that clear-cut.

A quick search for “prostitution” and trafficking in local news outlets yielded multiple stories of police busts for prostitution, and a few for human trafficking. Just like everywhere else, it turns out that College Station has a craigslist section entitled “adult services”, a weak pseudonym for prostitution. I emailed several police officers from the Bryan and College Station Police Departments, asking for interviews and information, and got several quick responses. One officer on the Neighborhood Enforcement Team in the Bryan PD was particularly helpful. We arranged for a meeting.

As it turns out, prostitution in Bryan is a complex story of drugs, immigration, poverty, and a thousand other societal factors. Most prostituted women are impoverished, middle-aged souls addicted to crack cocaine, desperate for that next rock. As the Bryan police officers pointed out: “this is not Vegas”, and the prostitutes are not a pretty picture. Most of the “johns” (sex buyers) are Hispanic men, who are first or second generation immigrants. They may be far from wives and families, and prostitution in Mexico doesn’t carry the same cultural stigma that it does in the United States. The police do conduct occasional busts, but the women involved are already caught in the nasty cycle of poverty and addiction, and the simple instrument of law enforcement cannot bring transformation, restoration or healing.

Poverty and drugs are just the most salient features of a deeper, swirling web of issues. Prostitution is closely related to the break-down of the family, sexual stereotypes, police paradigms and methods, the history of drugs in the United States, immigration patterns, human trafficking, racial issues, cultural norms, and the huge demand for pornography in the United States and the world over.

Right now, I’m still digesting the huge amount of information that I just received about my own town. Eventually, I need to come to grips with the reality of what’s happening, formulate a transformative perspective, and think through some next steps.

For right now, I am just re-learning this valuable lesson: issues are always deeper than they seem.

Remember, Remember

"And then it all went up in flames..."

Bonfire. This year marks the centennial anniversary of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Bonfire. What began as a trash heap in 1909 grew into a massive wedding cake design, which at its tallest stood 109 feet, 10 inches. Bonfire symbolized A&M’s burning desire to beat the hell out of t.u. It was a task of a monstrous size instituted and executed almost entirely by students over the course of a near-century. It brought to together the Corps of Cadets, non-regs, residential halls, men, and women to build this monument to Aggie dedication and fervor. Bonfire became emblematic of Aggieland and held a meaning greater than just the desire to win a football game. It symbolized the Aggie spirit and a dedication and drive for building something greater than ourselves. Those who saw it burn on campus have said there was nothing like it. The heat and flame was so much that it even burned their shadows into the ground. Those who built it can attest to the sheer amount of strength and manpower it took to construct a project of that size and magnitude. It was absolutely incredible. As we mark the 100th year anniversary of this tradition, we also mark the 10 year anniversary since the collapse. 2009 is a bittersweet year for the tradition of Bonfire. On November 18, 1999 at 2:42 AM, the history of the Aggie Bonfire changed forever. The stack collapsed and taking with it the lives of 12 Aggies. It stunned the campus, the state of Texas, and the entire nation. No one ever considered that the stack might ever fall and if it did, that it would take the lives of those who put their blood, sweat, and tears into it.

The Aggie Community did not miss the significance of the loss of exactly 12 Aggies. The number 12 is particular important to Texas A&M as a referral to the 12^th Man. We all know the story of E. King Gill and his willingness to stand at the ready for when his team needed him. His sportsmanship and spirit of giving is carried on by all Aggies at football games, who stand at the ready in case our team might need us. The 12^th man is what Aggieland stands for. Which leads me to talk about Timothy Doran Kerlee, Jr. Tim Kerlee was on the stack when it fell the night of the 18^th. When the stack fell, Tim’s pelvis was crushed, his arm was broken, and there was massive damage to his internal organs. But instead of allowing emergency workers and the rescue team to remove him from the stack, Tim told them that he had a better vantage point for seeing other injured students. The rescuers were directed to five other wounded students before Tim allowed them to remove him from the stack. He went into emergency surgery, lived long enough to bid goodbye to his parents before he passed away. Tim Kerlee was the 12^th and final Aggie to be taken by the Bonfire tragedy. He was a hero in every way and I am immensely proud of the fact that I share the same school as this young man who epitomized selfless service and Aggie values right down to his last breath. As Aggies, we should strive to be more like Tim Kerlee.

As for the fate of Bonfire, Lord knows what’s going to happen. Governor Rick Perry has suggested that Bonfire will be returning to campus within the next few years. Of course, he’s Governor of Texas, not President of Texas A&M University so his opinion is rather moot. There is an open and active student interest in getting Bonfire back on campus. As for me, I would love to see Bonfire return to campus but I understand why it does not. It is a huge liability for the University and no one ever wants a repeated tragedy. But in the mean time while this is all being decided, I hope that people take a moment to look back on what Bonfire means to us. It means dedication, perseverance, and firm resolve. It also means tears, tragedy, and maybe even hope. In moving forward in the history of Bonfire and of the University, we shouldn’t forget to look back and to remember.

I wanted to share the poem called “The Last Corps Trip.” Traditionally read before the lighting of Bonfire, it now adorns the memorial to those who lost their lives in the 1999 collapse. It is emblematic of Aggieland and for me personally, it reminds me of all the things I love about this place.

THE LAST CORPS TRIP

By P.H. DuVal, Jr., Class of 1951

It was Judgment Day in Aggieland
And tenseness filled the air;
All knew there was a trip at hand,
But not a soul knew where.

Assembled on the drill field
Was the world-renowned Twelfth Man,
The entire fighting Aggie team
And the famous Aggie Band.

And out in front with Royal Guard
The reviewing party stood;
St. Peter and his angel staff
Were choosing bad from good.

First he surveyed the Aggie team
And in terms of an angel swore,
"By Jove, I do believe I've seen
This gallant group before.

I've seen them play since way back when,
And they've always had the grit;
I've seen 'em lose and I've seen 'em win
But I've never seen 'em quit.

No need for us to tarry here
Deciding upon their fates;
Tis plain as the halo on my head
That they've opened Heaven's gates."

And when the Twelfth Man heard this,
They let out a mighty yell
That echoed clear to Heaven
And shook the gates of Hell.

"And what group is this upon the side,"
St. Peter asked his aide,
"That swelled as if to burst with pride
When we our judgment made?"

"Why, sir, that's the Cadet Corps
That's known both far and wide
For backing up their fighting team
Whether they won lost or tied."

"Well, then," said St. Peter,
"It's very plain to me
That within the realms of Heaven
They should spend eternity.

And have the Texas Aggie Band
At once commence to play
For their fates too we must decide
Upon this crucial day."

And the drum major so hearing
Slowly raised his hand
And said, "Boys, let's play The Spirit
For the last time in Aggieland."

And the band poured forth the anthem,
In notes both bright and clear
And ten thousand Aggie voices
Sang the song they hold so dear.

And when the band had finished,
St. Peter wiped his eyes
And said, "It's not so hard to see
They're meant for Paradise."

And the colonel of the Cadet Corps said
As he stiffly took his stand,
"It's just another Corps Trip, boys,
We'll march in behind the band."

Service: A Core Value of President Obama and Texas A&M

Last Friday Texas A&M University had the honor of hosting President Obama. We rearranged our bus schedules, closed buildings and streets, and even sent the campus landscaping guys on a last minute quest to beautify all of the trees, bushes, and flower beds surrounding Rudder Auditorium (seriously, did anybody see those guys on Thursday afternoon? It was like a giant swarm of pruning shears had descended upon central campus!).

Honestly, when I first heard President Obama would be making a visit to Aggieland, I was more than a little worried. I cringed and recalled the infamous "Anti-Obama Carnival" of last October. If a small group of students can stir up such a huge mess of negative publicity , what would those same students do when actually sharing their hometown with the man whose photograph they threw eggs at?

(Source - more pictures at this link)

But this time, it wasn't about politics. It wasn't about the economy, or foreign policy, or health care. Instead, Preisdent Obama was here to speak about volunteerism, a cause that draws us all together. The President's visit was about serving others, something the Aggie family holds near and dear to our hearts. In fact, "Selfless Service" is a tradition here at A&M. It's one of our five Core Values, and it's the meaning behind one of the five stars on our Aggie Rings. Even the Cornerstone Program cites a "service component" as part of its purpose.

Sometimes Texas A&M gets criticized for sticking to our traditions. We get called "closed-minded" or "stuck in our ways." Admittedly, I was once wary of the tradition and apparent "brainwashing" as well, but after two and a half years as a student, and two years as a Fish Camp counselor, I'm here to tell you that at Texas A&M, our traditions are meaningful. Tradition in Aggieland is about something bigger than ourselves, and I'm proud to be a student at a school that teaches much more than academics.

I could cite many examples of this, but (in order to prevent this blog post from being way too long for any sane person to read) today I'd just like to talk about a tradition called Big Event.

(Source)

Big Event was started in 1982, and has been going strong ever since. As the country's largest one-day, student-run service project, Big Event allows Aggies to make a giant impact on our community, and to say "Thank You" for the support we get from Bryan/College Station residents.

One of my past Big Event groups, what a great way to serve our community!

Students can sign up individually, with friends, or with an organization. Last year over 12,500 students worked on over 1,200 projects (painting, landscaping, cleaning, etc.). Big Event is expecting around 14,000 students and 1,500 projects for the next Big Event, happening March 27, 2010.

Amazing traditions like Big Event embody the Texas A&M Core Value of "Selfless Service," and make me proud to be an Aggie. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes about Big Event from the Points of Light event President Obama spoke at last Friday:

I know this is one of countless ways Texas A&M is performing selfless service, and I know that is why President (George H. W.) Bush chose this outstanding university for his library.

-President Obama

I salute Mallory Myers and Big Event, a wonderful program exemplifying selfless service, as does the entire student body of Texas A&M.

-Former President Bush