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Archives: May, 2012

Student staff member of the year: Katy Ahlvin  May 31st, 2012

Katy Ahlvin poses with her family just after being presented the Student Staff of the Year award on May 22.

Name:  Katy Ahlvin

Major:  Anthropology

Class:  Senior

Student Job:  Food Service Worker

Years of Service: 8 years

Job Duties:

Katy is responsible for opening our pizza concept on the weekends including making sauces, preparing pizzas and specials, and making sure that we are providing a safe and consistent product.  During the week she works the service line, providing great customer service to our students and staff.  During weeks that we are shut down, she comes in and helps with deep cleaning and reorganization of the concept

Reliability:

Katy is exceptional in reliability.  She is always at work when scheduled, covers shifts for other students when they need time off, and often fills in when the concept lead needs to attend trainings or meetings.  On the weekends, she is responsible for opening the concept and always arrives on time.  She makes sure that we are serving a safe and consistent product to our students and staff by monitoring product, temperatures and quality. When we are short staffed, Katy is the first to volunteer to stay and always make sure to set the next shift up for success by making sure all tasks are completed.

Quality:

Katy sets a great example for her peers.  She does a great job in all areas of the concept.  When things are slow she looks for tasks that can be completed ahead of time for the next shift.  While working 20 hours a week, Katy has maintained a 3.92 GPA and is finishing up her Senior Thesis that focuses on her time abroad in which she worked with youth on developmental skills.

Initiative:

Katy has made it a point to learn every position in the dining center.  She often hops in and helps in areas when she sees they are short staffed, and her versatility has made her useful in all areas of the business.  She is a leader amongst her peers, often creating an environment with the team of friendly competition to help increase sales on slow nights.  Earlier this year, we held a student meeting to share with our students that we would need to make cut backs due to sales being lower than anticipated.  After attending the meeting, Katy took it upon herself to talk to her peers, and put together a 7 page initiative on ways that we could increase sales, motivate the students to increase sales and keep moral high during these tough times.  She researched business initiatives, added graphics, and put together a working document that we are currently utilizing in our facility.  Her ideas to keep moral up were creative and successful, and her graphics suggested ways to reach our international students who struggle with the language barrier.  Her initiative helped increase sales, and create a great culture with our team.

Teamwork:

Katy is a leader amongst her peers, a partner to her concept lead, and a valuable asset to the building.  She comes in to work each day with a smile on her face and a can do attitude.  When we are short staffed, she jumps in where needed and faces the struggles with a positive approach.  She is the first to help a new student learn a process and has trained students, staff, and members of the management team.  If unsure of a process or procedure, she asks for help, and makes sure to share her learning’s with her peers.  She does a great job of including everyone in the process and respecting the diversity our team.

Contribution to Employer:

Over the past eight years, Katy has been an exceptional member of our team.  She has had to maintain 20 hours a week to help pay her way through college.  She always gives 110% of herself in all that she does and her work ethic is exceptional.

This past year, her senior year, our business has seen struggles, changes in management, and a different flow of business.  Each step of the way, Katy has been part of team, leading by example, and helping to create a positive and dynamic environment.  She spent time talking to her peers about her ideas, and asked customer what they would like to see offered in our business.  She goes above and beyond and we appreciate what she has brought to the team.

CONGRATS, KATY!!


Gold or Platinum? Beyond the (Incomplete) ‘Golden Rule’  May 31st, 2012

 

The so-called Golden Rule, “Treat others as you wish to be treated” is something we probably heard from teachers, parents, peers, etc. The rule was a way for us to think about how our actions or words impact other people.

I recently read a philosophy excerpt titled “The Moral Insight” by Josiah Royce. It explains how we do not see other people as real as ourselves. We come from a selfish self-centered point of view where we see other people as objects whose feelings are not as powerful or real as our own.

Royce explains how pity and sympathy are not enough to gain moral insight. When we hear of someone else’s experience we never really take it in as our own; instead, we may hear their experience but quickly forget it as if it really never existed. Sometimes we may feel their pain or joy in the moment but this quickly dissipates. The only way to gain true moral insight is to acknowledge others and their experiences as real as our own. Royce explains the moral insight:

 

“If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee; his will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems, of faithful decisions; his pains are as hateful, his joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and then with clear certainty add: SUCH AS THAT IS FOR ME, SO IS IT FOR HIM, NOTHING LESS.”

This passage is very true for me. Would there be so much violence and hatred if we understood that the people we hurt are as real as we are? Would someone be able to bully and pick on others if they understood the pain they were inflicting, especially if they have experienced that same pain? Would it be as easy to use derogatory words like “gay” and “lame” as part of our everyday speech if we felt or understood the hurt these words caused? Just because these examples may not hurt you directly, the pain others feel from these experiences is as real as the pain you have experienced in other ways.

Understanding this makes it impossible to excuse our actions by simply saying “I don’t know why this word offends “them,” it’s just a word!” or my favorite “But that’s not how I meant it”.

The reading from Royce was very insightful; it completely changed my way of viewing the “golden rule”. I began to reflect on: What if someone doesn’t want to be treated the same way I want to be treated? Like Royce stated, our viewpoint comes from a self-centered experience and the pain one feels might not be the same pain another feels.

I grew up hearing the golden rule but it wasn’t until I began learning about how I can become a better ally, that I realized the golden rule was incomplete. I learned that treating others as they wish to be treated is a better “rule”; people often call this the Platinum Rule. One experience that helped me realize this rule happened my first year in college. I said a joke that hurt the LGBTQ community. I am not proud of this experience looking back but I was fortunate to have a friend of mine confront me about it. He explained to me how the joke was offensive and had the power to hurt people. I became very defensive; I told him that I saw no harm in my joke and to stop being so sensitive. I walked away feeling bad but not understanding why I felt that way. I kept thinking about the incident and realized that I did not need to “understand” why it hurt my friend, but simply that it had. I realized that just because I couldn’t understand his pain it did not make it untrue. Thankfully, I had the courage to speak to my friend about the joke and my reaction. I apologized for invalidating his feelings and this allowed us to have a very good conversation that taught me a lot about his experience in the LGBTQ community at OSU. I know that if I remained defensive I would have never learned all that I have from him.

Through my development I learned that the Platinum Rule is especially crucial when working towards becoming an ally to a marginalized community. The targeted community knows best what I can do to be an ally. I learned that I cannot approach allyship it thinking: “I know what to do and how to fix things.” I am not part of the community and do not know the experiences and pain they may feel. As an ally, you are coming from a point of privilege, so it may be hard for you to understand some of the feelings a targeted community may have. Acknowledging those feelings as true and valid as your own is the first step in becoming an ally.

Miguel Arellano, Community Relations Facilitators

 


The “Hispanic” or “Latino” Question  May 15th, 2012

Hispanic. I hear this term a lot in the media to describe people that look and sound like me: brown skin, Spanish speaking, ancestry from Latin American countries, or, simply someone who has a Spanish-sounding last name.

However, I also hear the term Latina/o to describe the same people. So what is the “correct” way to refer to a person like me? I have asked myself the same question because a lot of people are now confused of the difference is between Latino and Hispanic. To even begin to understand this topic we need to ask the real question: Where do these terms originate and why?

Well according to an article entitled The Origin of the Term ‘Hispanic’ it all got started in the 1970’s when Grace Flores-Hughes worked as an assistant in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Flores-Hughes created the term “Hispanic” to categorize people for governmental data. The category was created for people that spoke Spanish as their first language. Ten years later in 1980, the term Hispanic was used in the U.S. census to define a group that was hard to determine by other factors such as race.  From my understanding, the term was only created to artificially categorize people.

As I did my research on the terms, I found in an article called Latinos or Hispanics? A Debate About Identity by Darryl Fears. This is what the article had to say on the matter:

“Hispanics derive from the mostly white Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal, while Latinos are descended from the brown indigenous Indians of the Americas south of the United States and in the Caribbean, conquered by Spain centuries ago.”

The source of each term has a very different root and is often interpreted in different ways. So, again I ask, who is Hispanic and/or Latino? Well it depends how each person identifies. For example, I see myself as a Latina. I always thought of the term Hispanic as something “bad”; probably because I associate the term “spic”, a derogatory racial slur for the Latino community.

What I have learned is that your identity as a Hispanic and/or Latino also depends on what region you live in the US. For example, in my personal experience, people that live on the east coast are more acceptable toward the term Hispanic, while people on the west coast see themselves as Latinos. I’m not sure why this occurs, but I imagine it has to do with cultural legacies and norms in that particular region. The use of either terminology is a hard topic to discuss due to the influence of the media and the stereotypes people create in their mind about the terms as well.

The question still comes up, who is Hispanic or Latino? I don’t really think there is a right or wrong answer to this question. No one individual or authority can really factually say who is or isn’t Hispanic and/or Latino; people see themselves differently and identify as such. The important thing to remember is to pay attention to how people identify. The best way to learn more about this subject is to bridge a conversation with individuals. You may ask, “I heard you describe yourself as “Latino”; what does that mean to you?” You may be surprised and learn much by their answer.

Thank you for reading,

Angelica Perez, Community Relations Facilitator


Weatherford resident travels to Guatemala with SIFE team  May 2nd, 2012

OSU SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) is a member of an international service organization dedicated to using business skills change the World. OSU SIFE is ranked in the top 20 nationally and has 3 major projects including work on solving world hunger, helping people with disabilities, and working with entrepreneurs in Guatemala.

One first year resident, Abigail Dahl, had the opportunity to travel to Guatemala with the OSU SIFE team over winter break.  Here is her perspective about the trip:

“As a freshman from a small town, there aren’t many diverse cultures. However, traveling to Guatemala this year with OSU SIFE has given me a different perspective. I had the chance to help families start up businesses and tour coffee fields where they work every day. For anyone who loves coffee, you have no idea how hard these people work to make it! The experience has given me a look into another society and a way to appreciate the “small things,” like tap water.  I would encourage anyone to try this experience and look at life through someone else’s eyes.”

To learn more about SIFE and how to get involved, email Jennifer Villalobos at Jennifer.Villalobos@bus.oregonstate.edu.