News

Diversions Café is starting a new sustainability program called Grizz Groundz. The program will include packaging used coffee grounds and giving them back to the campus community; neighbors, students, faculty and staff will be free to take home the used grounds. Community members can use these coffee grounds in their gardens, as coffee can be reused for many types of soil enhancement; this serves the dual purpose of reducing the campus’ carbon footprint as well. The community can pick up Grizz Grounds outside the Diversions Café/Wheelock Student Center entrance. “Instead...

This September, the Race and Pedagogy Initiative will be hosting its third National Conference. First appearing in 2006, and again in 2010, the conferences are collaborative efforts with the University of Puget Sound and members of the South Sound community, intended to encourage students, educators and other community members to think critically about racism and issues pertaining to racial equality. The conference will host a number of different speakers from around the country, each one a distinguished academic in their respective fields. The university is especially lucky to host the...

Puget Sound seniors Kelsey Crutchfield-Peters and Haley Andres have been awarded the prestigious $28,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. They were two of 43 winners chosen from over 700 student candidates worldwide and the only ones from the Pacific Northwest. Watson scholars are given the opportunity to pursue a research project in four countries for a year. Haley Andres, a double major in painting and psychology, will be researching the use of art therapy in helping victims of trauma through their recovery. Her project is titled, “Art, Trauma, and Creative Healing:...

Physics professor Andrew Rex recently wrote a book entitled Commonly Asked Questions in Physics. Published in February, this book is intended for anyone who would like a concise, introductory explanation of modern physics. “This book is definitely going for a broad audience,” Rex said. “I wouldn’t say the whole general public, it’s not like a novel, but there are a lot of people that are curious about physics.” Rex, who is also the chair of the physics department, was propositioned by the publishers of the Commonly Asked Questions series to...

Relay for Life has been involved in a lot of fundraising this year to prepare for their annual event on Saturday, May 3 from 4 p.m.—10 a.m. Students and families can participate individually or in teams. Some teams camp out overnight on the field and each one is asked to have at least one participant on the track at all times doing laps. The event honors cancer victims and survivors while raising money for cancer research. According to the Relay for Life website, over “14 million cancer survivors” will celebrate...

On April 22, a special re-election will be held for proposition no. 1, which failed to pass last November. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma, this proposition would use approximately $198,000,000 for street improvements and safety upgrades. “From what I’ve read, it seems to be a relatively reasonable solution to keep Tacoma safe and maintained,” freshman Katelyn Rosen said. The money would be generated by placing an additional two percent tax on the revenue of utility companies such as electric, telephone and natural gas companies. However, almost 75...

University of Puget Sound participated in the Ethics Bowl on April 4, a statewide debate tournament in which students from 10 colleges discussed topics that demonstrate their understanding of applied ethics. The competition, presented by the Independent Colleges of Washington at Seattle University, consisted of three preliminary rounds, a semi-final and a final. In each round, two opposing teams of five students debated on the ethical issues presented in two cases involving actual or hypothetical scenarios. Students were judged based on their abilities to apply critical ethical reasoning to the...

Actress and spoken word poet, Yazmin Monét Watkins stepped onto the stage at Puget Sound’s Take Back the Night, fearlessly declaring, “This is what a feminist looks like.” She is a queer woman of color (QWOC) who has had personal experiences with sexual violence. Watkins has no timidity approaching social justice issues through unorthodox methods. When Watkins was a student at Dickinson College, she was part of a group called the Silent Poets. “We would spit out poems to the faculty, saying to them, listen to us, these are our...