A notable percentage of students are those living on campus. As of the fall of 2016, 84 percent of students and 98.5 percent of first-years live on campus.This high percentage received some attention during the recent Student Senate campaigns and debates, with many cabinets advocating for more flexibility with campus housing policies. But Ernie Stufflebean, associate dean of students and director of residence life, spoke to the rationale of Student Life and the College for having the majority of students living on campus.

“The College’s objective is to have as many Jewell students as possible experience the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in a community that prioritizes learning and engagement, in and out of the classroom. Living in community most effectively prepares students for their future through opportunities to navigate real-life challenges in a challenging yet supportive environment before moving onto the next chapter of their lives,” said Stufflebean.

Another notable percentage is made up of the athletes on campus. In the academic year of 2014-2015, 471 of the 1043 students were WJC athletes. Dr. Darlene Bailey, director of athletics, spoke to the size of the department and how it has changed.

“I am happy with the size of the athletic program. We are at just about the right size in terms of the total roster for most of our sports programs. In a couple of instances, there is still room for growth. Since the 2009-2010 academic year, we have grown the athletic program by about 100 student-athletes. About half of the 100 can be attributed to the adding of men’s and women’s swimming, the rest to deliberately growing the rosters in some of our other sports. For the 2015-2016 academic year, we began with 418 student-athletes. I believe that number could grow by 10 to 15, but that is probably the maximum in the next couple of years,” said Bailey.

Arguably, the second most popular form of participation for Jewell students is Greek life. Currently, about 39 percent of women and 40 percent of men are Greek on Jewell’s campus.

“Panhellenic is very pleased with 39 percent [of] women on campus belonging to a sorority. We aim for all greek women to be actively involved within their chapters and the community. Knowing that almost 40 percent of women at William Jewell College are experiencing leadership opportunities within their chapter and contributing to their community through philanthropy and volunteering is exactly what Panhellenic exemplifies,” said Camille Love, junior chemistry major and president of Panhellenic, the organization in charge of formal recruitment in the spring and that offers other services to the sororities on Jewell’s campus.

Feature photo by Kyle Rivas.

For total and complete transparency, I will let you know that when I last saw Weezer in concert, I cried. Yes, this has happened at previous concerts, and, no, it wasn’t because I was being elbowed in the neck and couldn’t see anything. I have loved Weezer for a significant part of my life, and when you become attached to a band over a long period of time, it becomes a little difficult to be critical of them.

Weezer released their newest album “Weezer (White Album)” Friday, April 1 (no, not an April Fool’s joke). In comparison to other releases in 2016, this has received less attention, and I would argue that it has had less attention than their previous album, “Everything Will Be Alright In the End.” But, in many ways, this new album returns to the original sound that I fell in love with so long ago more so than “Everything Will Be Alright In the End” was able to.

Rolling in only 10 songs, this album opens with a classic-sounding Weezer song. “California Kids” has echoes of the “Green” and “Red” albums. But a real powerhouse of this album is “L.A. Girlz.” This song is catchy as hell, and I have woken up many times with the lyrics repeating in my head. Another strong hit is “Thank God for Girls” (have you picked up on a theme here?). It features hit lyrics such as, “The girl in the pastry shop with the net in her hair / Is making a cannoli for you to take on your hiking trip” and “God took a rib from Adam, ground it up in a centrifuge machine / Mixed it with cardamom and cloves, microwaved it on the popcorn setting / While Adam was like ‘that really hurts.’”

While the lyrics are fun and moderately artful, it is hard to get into this album when it is over so quickly. I don’t want to set a minimum number of tracks for an album to be complete, but 10 is just not doing it for me. In comparison, “Everything Will Be Alright In the End” has 13, and “Raditude” has 14; while “Weezer” (this one has the blue album cover, not a white one) has only 10 as well, it features amazingly strong and classic tracks such as “My Name is Jonas,” “Buddy Holly” and “Say It Ain’t So.” In order for this new album to pull off being so small, the tracks need to have the same punch as the ones I listed above. Unfortunately, in that area, Weezer just doesn’t deliver.

As excited as I was for this album, I am little disappointed. Weezer has a lot of fun with “Everything Will Be Alright In the End,” but in their attempt to return to an original sound, they don’t make the mark. In the iconic words of the best track on “Everything Will Be Alright In the End,” I think that Weezer needs to return “Back to the Shack.”

Competition has been a driving force for me in the classroom. I live on the thrill of being right and of knowing that my professor knows that I have studied what I needed to. When I picture myself in class, I don’t picture myself stomping on my classmates so that I can climb past them. I don’t prepare for class so that I can smash my peers into pulp. I do know that I would much prefer to be the most prepared person in a classroom than the least prepared.

So the issue at hand really is this: why can’t I apply how I approach my competition in the classroom (you know, when I said that I didn’t want to put anyone down in my pursuit of being right?) to how competitive I feel about and around other women.

I don’t want you, reader, to picture the scene from “Mean Girls” when Lindsey Lohan imagines the cafeteria as a watering hole. Instead, imagine something less physical and more similar to the gossipy, bitchy, never voiced internal dialogue of the meanest girl in your high school.

Instead of lunging over tables, I find myself not hesitating to put a woman down because of something trivial. Maybe s1he happens to be speaking to a boy I like, maybe she happens to be wearing something that I don’t like, maybe I’ve literally never met her. It doesn’t matter because I find myself having a gut reaction that I am not too proud of.

We can have a long conversation about how women are or are not conditioned by patriarchal systems to fight each other for the attention of “A Man.” We can talk about how that is heteronormative and not good for the women or men expected to be involved; and, it just wouldn’t get us very far into how I am able to recognize that my behavior is bad and hurtful or why I haven’t changed it.

I think that it is still this way because no one can check my inner thoughts the way my friends can tell me when I’m being “too” “dramatic.” I think it is this way that because I am the only one who can chastise me, who can stop and remind me of how wrong my behavior is. Because who wants to be lectured by the one person who should always be on your side, that is, your inner voice?

At the end of the day, I know who is responsible for fixing my behavior, for checking myself, for stopping those thoughts. At the end of the day, I have to be responsible for what I say, what I do and, just as importantly, what I think.

The first two I have actually watched on Netflix, but the two that follow are what I recommend despite the fact that I haven’t seen them.

Hot Girls Wanted

Rashida Jones produced this documentary for Netflix and I was happy to see other women on the writing, directing and producing teams. The focus of this documentary is the amatuer pornography industry and centers on a small group of women, aged 18-21, who live together and work for “Hussie Models,” which I am sure that you can guess is not a modeling agency.

Let’s get a few things straight. If you are looking to watch porn, go to PornHub. If you are looking for something that shows how fun the porn industry is, I’m not sure where to direct you but this is definitely not that place. Also, what the documentary fails to show the viewer are the distinct differences between amateur porn and professional porn. This failure has brought a lot of criticisms to the documentary and has angered some members of the professional pornography community.

In this documentary, we follow Riley, who achieves the most supreme balance between fuckboy and irresponsible agent, and the women he convinces to come live with him in Miami. He places Craigslist ads or finds women, again, women who are aged 18-21, online and convinces them to fly out, shoot porn and make tons of money.

We meet Tressa, or “Stella May,” and she receives a lot of attention from the documentary because, spoiler, she ends up leaving the industry after awkward conversation after awkward conversation with her mother, father and boyfriend. There are other women who the documentary features, but by the end of it, Riley has a house full of new women.

Look, pornography at its most basic level does have the potential not to be exploitative or harmful to the men and women who watch it, produce it and act in it. But with the rise of the Internet and online platforms for pornography, amateurs flooded the marketplace, and, to be fair, there is a market for watching real people have real sex. But the issue is not that these women are making a choice to go into porn or that I may or may not disagree with their choice. The issue begins with Riley and the rest of the industry. A professional agent for porn stars has the knowledge and the desire to make sure that his or her clients will be successful in the long term. Riley’s focus on the short term and his inability to explain to these women the consequences of their actions show that he is not interested in these women as clients or people but as a quick buck.

This documentary educated me in so many ways, and if you have ever watched porn, whether professional or amateur, if you have ever expressed distaste with the industry, if you have ever wondered what it would be like to be a porn star in Miami, I would encourage you to watch this documentary.

Tig

From how Tig Notaro runs her Twitter account to how she appears on stage, it is so obvious that she is a comical genius. She is one of those comedians who is well-connected (she’s friends with Sara Silverman) but has also probably skipped past your radar.

But one night, Tig Notaro came out onto a stage and started her stand-up with “Hi, I’m Tig Notaro and I have breast cancer,” and it is that performance and aspects of Tig’s personal life on which this documentary focuses.

In the span of a very, very short time, the following happened to Tig: she was diagnosed with C. diff, a very deadly and dangerous bacterial infection; her mother died with no notice; her girlfriend dumped her; and she was diagnosed with breast cancer in both of her breasts. But she had agreed to do a show at the Largo a few days after the cancer diagnosis and instead of cancelling, she ran with it.

This documentary is a very personal account of a comedian who did a full act about all of the worst things that we shouldn’t joke about and how her life changed afterwards.

Jesus Camp

When you say Netflix and documentaries together, this one typically comes to mind. Plus, part of the documentary takes place in Lee’s Summit, Mo. After viewing it, you can probably travel to where part of the documentary is filmed. From what I have heard from those who have seen it and from what critical responses I’ve read, this documentary is about how religion turns children crazy, or maybe it is about how children turn religion crazy?

Blackfish

Surely you’ve heard of this one. This documentary brings to light the horrific and cruel practices of SeaWorld through the narrow lens of one killer whale. Not surprisingly, SeaWorld and its employees have come out against this documentary, but everyone else seems to believe in what the film presents. As I have only been to Shed’s Aquarium in Chicago, I can not personally attest to the treatment of killer whales at SeaWorld. However, I can imagine that a corporation looking to profit from wild and dangerous animals does not also have strong ethical standards.