THE STERLING KANSAS BULLETIN * THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011, PAGE 7*

The offical student-­run newspaper of Sterling College Volume 115 issue 1

Today.

Fuel @ 8 PM

Friday.

Volleyball Sterling vs. South-

western College 7 PM

Saturday.

Cross Country @ Tabor

Women’s Soccer vs. Northwest-

ern College 2 PM

Men’s Soccer vs. John Brown

University 3 PM

Football vs. Southwestern Col-

lege 6:oo PM

Sunday.

Chapel @ 7 p.m.

THISWEEK

NEWSBITES

When I stepped onto campus in the middle of August for my final year at Sterling College, I could tell some-thing was different. I felt a new vibe in the air, and this vibe has remained throughout the start of the fall semes-ter. After pondering about the change, I finally concluded that the difference is an increase in school pride.

I’ve made a few observations that scream school pride to me.

1.) Over 60 students volunteered to be on Orientation Staff. They returned a week early and completed campus service projects to help prepare to wel-come the new students.

2.) Students are buzzing about the first SC athletic events, and each team is embracing the support and getting involved on campus like never before. A new student even showed up to Highland Games in a kilt!

3.) People are hanging out in the Union, enjoying making memories together before homework piles up.

Speaking of classes, how about the new faculty and staff on campus!?

In addition, thanks to everyone for taking the email debacle in stride, and understanding that small inconve-niences like this now mean better re-sults in the future.

SC Warriors, here is my challenge to you: Embrace the pride that is build-ing on campus, and help it develop throughout the year. Support the ath-letic teams. Go to events and per-fomances and gently correct people when they get down on your college. Warriors, we have something special here. Take pride in each day and re-member that you are what make this college great.

As the Student Government Presi-dent, I’m excited to watch the pride in Sterling College grow. SGA has many plans to continue enhancing the student experience and improve the campus. I hope you will continue to be involved in all of the great things that SC has to offer and that you take ownership in making SC great! Go WARRIORS!

By JON FAULKNERStaff Writer

After two weeks of des-perate scrambling on the part of the Sterling College IT department that saw four power outages, a loss of one of the school’s hard lines, and a total network crash, campus email ser-vices have finally been re-stored to SC.

“Woohoo, we get to sleep!” Director of Infor-mation and Technology Mykeal Pitts said.

“It [restoring the email] feels great. It has been a long long week.”

Dealing with older hard-ware and a very limited amount of RAM, the IT Department, which was it-self a completely new staff from the last semester, had predicted that a crash was not only possible, but also extremely likely.

“We have too many sin-gle points of failure on this network, across the entire campus, across the entire network,” Pitts said.

“The day I walked in, the first thing I looked at was, ‘single points of failure ev-erywhere.’ From the begin-

ning our goal has always been, ‘we can’t have all these single points of fail-ure; not like this.’”

Calling the crash, a ‘cata-strophic failure’ and ‘the worst situation’ that he had seen in over twenty years of working in the internet field, Pitts knew that the system would re-quire much more than just a patchwork job like had been done in the past; it would require a complete upgrade of the system.

“The corruption was just so deep that even doing all the recommended steps, everything that you’re sup-posed to do, we’d run into issue after issue after is-sue,” Pitts said.

“Both the server crashed and the database crashed, not just one or the other. So one problem was lead-ing to another problem and that’s why we ended up having to rebuild the whole thing.”

Having successfully ac-complished upgrading the entire system in less than a week, Sterling can now move forward with some very exciting technological

additions for the campus including new printers for the dorms, the ability for students to print files di-rectly from their personal computers to the library printers, and a segment-ing of the system that will make everything on the school’s network run faster. SC should be able to stream video online at a previous-ly unthinkable speed and Moodle and email, also, should both be operating at an efficiency unlike any-thing SC has ever known.

While all of these are ex-citing developments, per-haps the most important is that SC should now be able to handle the growth that the college has been push-ing for in recent years.

“Everyone’s going to see a huge performance in-crease,” Pitts said.

“With the support of the faculty, staff, the vice presidents, and Dr. Mau-rer, that’s what they want. They want us to be moving into the 21st century with this network, and we’ve got to, to support the stu-dents the way they need to be supported.”

New IT department initiated

through e-mail server collapseBy TIM LUISIEditor-In-Chief

If you are in the Arts and Communication building this semester you might see a new face teaching commu-nications classes. His name is Dr. Raymond Anderson, and he’s the new communications professor here at Ster-ling College, replacing Dr. Don Frick in a full time capacity.

Dr. Anderson comes to SC from Jamaica, with a degree in Marine Biology from Regent. He worked in business management for a large fishing market, and then as he got older he began to find his interest in media being renewed so he decided to go back to school to get a degree in media.

During his time in school he was asked by George Fox to build up their communications department.

Since then he has worked in churches in Jamaica but felt like he needed to go back into teaching so he applied to work at the Oregon-based American Inter-continental University. After teaching there for a while he felt like he needed to go some-

Getting to know:

Dr. Raymond Anderson

SC Freshmen

Demographics

Have experience in journal-ism? Interested in layout experience? Want to help run the STIR? Send an email to tluisi01@sterling.edu or fs-quires@sterling.edu. We look forward to your application.

Editor Wanted

Sterling Drinking WaterIn a letter sent out to all Ster-ling residents by the Sterling water company it was said that Sterling’s drinking water contained an unusually high amount of uranium and was dangerous to people with certain medical conditions. It might be time to start consid-ering bottled water instead of the drinking fountains.

Sterling College freshman class start their journey on the front steps of Cooper Hall Photo

by Courtney Huber

Starting the year with spiritBy Sarah TuckerSGA President

Number Enrolled: 206 Freshmen: 133Transfers: 73

Average Freshman High School GPA (fully admit-ted): 3.3Average Freshman ACT (fully admitted): 22.2Average Transfer GPA: 2.94

Number of Alumni Kids: 14Residents: 192Commuters: 14Valedictorians: 3

Female: 89Male: 117

Baptist: 31Non-Denominational: 30Catholic: 26Methodist: 15Presbyterian: 10

The new students repre-sent twenty-four states, with 91 from Kansas, 28 from California, and 17 from Texas. For the last three years, 25 randomly chosen incoming students have taken an evaluating writing test. On a scale of 0 to 6, 2011’s representative sample scored an aver-age of 3.875 on the essay. The sample of students enrolled in 2010 and 2009 scored 3.727 and 3.5 re-spectively

where in the mid-west and that is how he end-ed up at Sterling Col-lege.

What does that mean for you and I? It most definitely means an im-proved Communica-tion department, which has struggled to keep a consistent professor in the past. One of the areas Anderson hopes to build up is in media production.

“I want to see a Media Major… one that em-phasizes multimedia, media ministry, and sound design,” Ander-son said.

Anderson also said that he was looking for-ward to continuing to work with students like he did previously in Or-egon.

“I want to be a part of forming young minds” Anderson said.

“I really like the ser-vant leadership aspect of Sterling College.”

I hope that you are looking forward to what Dr. Anderson is to bringing to Sterling and that you will make sure if you get the chance you stop in and greet the newest addition to the Sterling Staff and family.

SPORTS & OPINIONS

PAGE 8 * THE STERLING KANSAS BULLETIN * THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 S!"#$%&' S!%#stir.sterling.edu

S!"#$%&' S!%#Established in 1889

Editor-in-Chief.....................................................................Tim LuisiAssistant Editor..............................................................Ryan CorwinSports Editor........................................................................Erik DahlStaff Writers..........................................................................Tim Kerr Jon Faulkner Vance Stegman Photographers......................................................................Tim Luisi

Hans NickelFaculty Advisor.............................................................Felicia Squires

Contact us:E-mail: stir1@sterling.edu

The Stir is produced by Sterling College students and printed weekly in and by the Sterling Bulletin, Sterling, Kansas.

We seek to serve the Sterling College community with news and information. We work toward goals of honesty and integrity while always seeking the truth. We also work with an understanding of service to a Christian community.

Letters to the editor must be signed and legible. Letters are subject to editing for style and spelling and will be printed at the editors’ discretion. Letters should not be longer than 350 words. Letters must be received by 3 p.m. the Tuesday before the print date (Thursday). Opinions presented on the Opinion page do not necessarily represent the views of Sterling College.

Address letters to The Stir, SC Box 8, 125 W. Cooper, Sterling, KS 67579. E-mail submissions are accepted and must be sent to stir1@sterling.edu.

As a film fan there is prob-ably nothing more frustrat-ing then beginning a movie and loving what you are see-ing, only to witness it take a wrong step and continually unravel the longer it keeps going. Unfortunately and despite an incredibly gutsy and moving performance at its core, The Beaver is one such film.

Starring Mel Gibson, An-ton Yelchin, and Jodie Fos-ter (who also directed the film), the film tells the story of Walter Black (Gibson), a man who struggles to find mean-ing in his life. In the films own words “It was as if Walter had died and had forgot-ten to take his body along with him.” Ready to kill himself, he is stopped only when he hears a voice come from a beaver puppet;; his voice. Taking on this new persona of the beaver, Black is able to see life through fresh eyes and tries to make amends with the people in his life who he has hurt including his estranged wife (Foster) and son (Yelchin).

When focusing on this part of the story, the film is engaging and thought pro-voking, thanks mostly to Gibson himself who gives a career best performance here and one that is en-tirely worthy of Oscar at-tention. Gibson takes what could have been an absurd portrayal and makes it feel entirely genuine instead. Whenever he is onscreen and no matter how ridicu-lous some of his dialogue may be (more on that in a second) the audience will be glued to him, an actor giving two different per-formances simultaneously: one as the charismatic bea-

ver and the other as the si-lent Walter who is desper-ately trying to reemerge. There is a subtlety and skill here that has seldom shown through in Gibson’s career. Instead of just playing an-other version of himself he is truly digging to find a character and he succeeds wildly, bringing forth lay-ers and emotions that bury anything else in the film.

If this were only a charac-ter study, it would be one of the best films of the year. Its script, however, seems to

want to be something more ambitious: a message to all depressed people that there is hope out there. Unfortu-nately by trying to make this larger point, the film includes a host of subplots, each more generic than the last and characters that are far closer to caricatures, each coming with their own grocery list of quirks that only help to take away focus from the one great thing the film possesses. The people surrounding Walter are not real;; they are annoying and useless, much like the film’s biggest problems: its edit-ing, script and direction.

Whenever the film seems to actually be building to something, it cuts away, content to let these piv-otal moments happen off-­screen. What could have been potentially brilliant becomes lost among a host of frustrating montages and terribly clichéd mo-ments. The pacing too is poor, going far too fast at the beginning and end of

the film and never allowing true character development to take place.The music that drowns out several key moments doesn’t add any-thing to the film and just as pointless are the inane camera angles that Foster chooses to employ, mak-ing it look as if nothing was preplanned for the film, but was just thrown together on the day of shooting.

As muddled as the tech-nical work on the film is, it seems to have even less of an idea of what it wants

to say, hav-ing no clear message for its audience other than a very ge-neric hang in there. This is especially in-sulting, since the character the audience is supposed to identify

with in the film, clearly states at one point that this message is worthless, but it is the one the filmmakers choose to tell its audience anyway.

By the time it reaches its cringe worthy final mo-ments, the audience will have lost all interest, an-noyed by the writer’s ap-parent apathy towards his own subject and Foster’s incompetence behind the camera. Gibson is a rev-elation in this film and it is worth checking the film out on his merits alone, but it is nothing if not a shame that the rest of the film could not have lived up to his stan-dards, hiding what should have been one of the most acclaimed performances of the year under a pile of poor decisions and choices that would have been more befitting of a student film than one made by one of Hollywood’s supposed elite.

Initial Rating: 4/10

Talking Cinema With Tim

The Weekly Sports WrapThe Warrior Women’s Soc-

cer team wrapped up a tough

week against some stiff compe-

tition finishing 1-­2 after a trip to Nebraska. On Tuesday the

women played host to a Strong

Bacone College team that came

ready to play. After four injuries

to Warrior players and 1-­0 lead in the first half, Bacone capi-talized by adding three more

goals leading to a 4-­0 shutout. Over the weekend, the Lady

Warriors drove to Nebraska for

a two game set. On Friday, the women played York College in

York, Nebraska. A good offen-

sive attack and solid defense

helped Sterling to a 3-­0 victory. On her first game back off inju-

ry, senior Paige Farmer earned her first shutout of the season.

To wrap up the road trip, the women dropped a game

to Concordia University in a

2-­0 loss. Also on the trip was the Men’s Soccer team. The

men didn’t fare as well as the

women, dropping both their

games over the weekend.

The men and women’s teams

both play on Friday; the wom-

en host Southwest Oklahoma

and the men, looking for their first win of the season, travel to play John Brown University.

Playing four matches during the week was the Women’s Vol-leyball team, going an even 2-­2 on the week. The ladies took on

conference rival Friends Uni-

versity Tuesday in what turned

out to be a real grudge-match.

After winning the first set in decisive fashion and dropping

the second and third sets, Ster-ling fought to win the fourth

set and forced a fifth set. The deciding set was a grueling

test for both sides, but Friends came out on top. On Thursday

the Warriors took on another

KCAC rival in Tabor College.

This match was another

heartbreaker for Sterling as

they lost again in five sets. The weekend fared much bet-

ter for the lady’s when they

won two matches against Cen-

tral Christian and McPher-son, earning them their first

conference win of the year.

The Lady Warriors host Beth-

any College on Wednesday and

Southwestern College on Friday.

The Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams traveled

to Lubbock, Texas Friday for the Texas Tech Red Raider Open.

The Men’s team, running an 8k race, were led by sopho-

more Jared Reimer and fresh-

man Cody Rodriguez who both moved there names up in the

Sterling record books. Reimer moved to third on the list with a

time of 28:21 and Rodriguez up to eighth with a mark of 28:40.

The Warriors top-5 run-

ners all ran under 30:00, which had only been done by 15 other men in the last 12 years.

On a very long 5k course, senior Sara Doll, followed closely by senior Jillian Lin-

nebur, led the Women’s team. “We are in shape and getting

faster,” said coach Jack Dillard. “Times should start dropping

for both the men and women.” Both teams run next at Har-

vey County East Lake for the Tabor Invitational on Saturday.

By ERIK DAHLSports Editor

The Beaver starring Mel Gibson

TOP: A group of Warrior runners make their way through a grueling 8k course in Lubbock, TX. Photo by Hans Nickel

BOTTOM LEFT: Sophomore Ciara Ramos tips a ball over her opponents during tournament play last weeken. Photo by

Hans Nickel BOTTOM RIGHT: Junior Anely Laguna shields the ball from an opponent against York College. Photo by

Hans Nickel

In a year that has seen the return of many great names in Christian Music it is good to see Falling Up give an ad-dition to that list. After 2009’s “Fangs” it seemed like the band had all but dissolved, but 2011 sees the return of Christian Radio’s favorite al-ternative Rock band with the release of “Your Sparkling Death Cometh”, an indepen-dently released full length album that does not fail to deliver.

Although the album is a bit lengthy, with the shortest track being just under four minutes and the longest just over six, and there are no real radio friendly tracks, the al-bum still shows that the band can play their instruments. It also displays the band’s abil-ity to grow and branch out into different styles while staying true their own in-dividual sound. Fans of the bands earlier music will find just enough of the sound on tracks like “Circadian” and “The Light Beam Rider” that made earlier albums popu-lar, while new fans will find the diversity in the tracks very desirable.

Falling Up Your Sparkling Death Coming album reviewBy JON FAULKNERStaff Writer

Lyrically, Falling Up couldn’t have gone deeper if they had tried. Each and every track has a message to be heard, exploring the darkest places of the soul and showing how the light of the gospel penetrates us. “The Light Beam Rider” deals with our ability to de-stroy others but then shows us that grace is present when we act out. “Oceans” speaks to the heart but also serves as a great worship song. “If your hearts and ocean I will drown, under the waves, I will find love”, the song pro-claims. “Blue Ghosts” goes deeper into the transforma-tive work on Christ while also talking about his return-ing. Each song also discusses the theme of God’s grace and how it works in our hearts.

If you are looking for an al-bum that will encourage you and challenge you or just one with good music and lyrics you don’t have to look any further than Falling Up’s Your Sparkling Death Co-meth. In short, this is a nearly perfect example of the writ-ing ability and musicianship of this great band!

Rating 5 out of 5 (ARL 9/10)