Tag Archives: WWU

Eyecatchers: Do Ho Suh

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Thanks to my friend Paul Brower, who works at the Western Gallery at WWU, for alerting me to a super cool art installation coming soon to campus, by South Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh (Photo courtesy of The Stranger):

At first glance, it’s impossible to understand exactly what’s going on in this piece. Sure, it looks amazing, like a tornado made entirely of candy, but thanks to another photo posted at The Stranger, it’s clear that there’s much more to the piece, titled Cause & Effect, than that:

Wow. That’s a lot of little orange men! Let’s see what the artist intends it all to mean (via WWu Office of Communications):

“’Cause & Effect’ evokes a vicious tornado. This vast ceiling installation is a composition of densely hung strands that anchor thousands of figures clad in colors resembling a Doppler reading stacked atop one another,” said Do Ho Suh, adding that the artwork is a “physical realization of existence, suggesting strength in the presence of numerous individuals. The work is an attempt to decipher the boundaries between a single identity and a larger group, and how the two conditions coexist.”

The artwork at Western metaphorically places the individual within an intricate web of destiny and fate. “It comes from a belief that every individual is spawned from the lives he/she may have lived previously. The vertical context of the figures becomes a collection of past influences, and again, begins to define the inherent powers and energies that characterize an individual,” he said.

It strikes me that no photos can really duplicate the experience of actually viewing Cause & Effect on site, so I’m really looking forward to spending time with it when it arrives.

Autumn Grace

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I was looking out my office window here on campus this morning, and I saw a maple leaf falling, like the one in the photo here, and I could see a student walking toward it, and the student noticed it and reached out and caught it, ever so gently, not breaking her stride in the slightest, and she smiled and gazed upon the leaf, as if to notice that that was the most beautiful, serendipitous of moments, a moment she will keep with her all day, the leaf a treasure to remember it by.

Lovely.

Bellingham Herald Goes Tabloid

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Shame, shame, shame on the Bellingham Herald, for their sensationalist tabloid reporting in today’s paper.

One has to wonder who at Western Washington University (full disclosure: my employer) pissed off who at the Herald, because two substantial hit pieces were published today — At WWU, few safety changes made a year after freshman’s death; WWU defends police chief’s vacation during search for Clark. And, even if someone was pissed, how incredibly irresponsible and unprofessional to vengefully publish two sleazy articles that try to expose problems that don’t even exist?! (More on that in a moment.)

As I mentioned last week, this is the biggest weekend of the year at Western, when 4,100 students move into their on-campus housing ahead of Wednesday’s first day of classes, with many thousands more students moving into off-campus housing. These students have an ENORMOUS amount of stuff they are dealing with: many are moving away from home for the first time, or moving out of the supportive on-campus housing communities for the first time, their tuition and fees have been steadily going up, there are fewer student jobs available on campus and off, they’re worried about getting the classes they need, about moving into their rooms, meeting their roommates in person for the first time, saying goodbye to their parents, buying books, getting their student ID cards, learning their way around campus, getting used to dining hall food, etc.

The LAST thing they and their parents need is a reminder of a terrible tragedy that befell a Western student shortly after move-in last year, a tragedy that hit me and the whole campus pretty hard, one that I wrote several posts about — The Value of a Life, The Terror of Being a Parent, Happiness is a Verb.

How can the Herald be so heartless? A lot of folks are still healing from that experience!

As I said above, the articles are blatant attempts to claim controversy where there isn’t any, offering absolutely no substantiation for assertions that Western hasn’t done enough to improve safety by educating students about the perils of drug and alcohol use, or that the University Police Chief was in any way negligent for having gone on vacation once the investigation of Dwight Clark’s disappearance was taken over by the Bellingham Police Department. The disappearance happened after Dwight left a house party held off campus, and all indications suggest that he headed to the waterfront from there, rather than returning to campus first.

Western can’t be expected to be responsible for safety issues off campus, nor the poor choices students often make off campus.

Speaking from the experience of ten years working at Western, the campus Counseling, Health & Wellness department works in concert with other departments all over campus, through a variety and frequently refreshed programs, to promote healthy lifestyles and safe choices, and, really, that’s about all they can do.

Video Fridays: Todd Rundgren

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Apropos my post on Monday, students here at the university start moving in in droves today and throughout the weekend, meaning I’m working all weekend, not getting a day off until a week from tomorrow.

But it’s ok! I go through this every year and prepare for it all summer, and it’s even a heckuva lot of fun…

…when things are running smoothly.

Oh, the problems pass, of course, but this week’s Video Fridays installment pretty much sums up how I feel this morning, as some key things aren’t going well.

It’s the kind of song that will stick in your head all day, and if it’s a song that you don’t like, well, I apologize, but I just wish I had me one big mother of a drum to bang on for while, until I get back to enjoying my work.