Kristen Agar, senior accounting major, has been on the Monitor for the past four years and served as Editor-in-Chief this year.

“The Monitor has taught me so much over the past four years,” Agar said. “I started out my freshman year wanting to be just a photographer. I thought my writing was awful. I owe so much to the staff members before me who encouraged me to push myself and helped cultivate my writing. They gave me the chance and helped me find my potential. I attribute all my success to them.”

For Agar, she will miss the people she has met at Jewell.  

“The thing I will miss the most about Jewell is absolutely the people,” Agar said. “The friends I’ve made are incredible. There truly is a special community of achievers at Jewell, and I will miss being challenged and inspired by these people.”

Agar will use her accounting major after graduation in a position at the KPMG office in Kansas City.

“I will be working as a tax associate in their [KPMG] Global Mobility Services department to provide tax services and consulting to companies who operate internationally,” Agar said.

Erin Melton, senior Oxbridge Literature and Theory major, served as the Monitor’s Chief Copy Editor for the past year.

Melton spoke about the inspiration the Monitor provided her over the years.

“The Monitor has always been a place for me that was really inspiring,” Melton said. “This has always been a place of a lot of really powerful, strong women in leadership positions. I’ve always felt a lot of camaraderie with the other ed staff members. It’s just always been a fun place to come together with people.”

Melton plans to work and then start a masters program in London.

“I will be moving to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to do a year with their Habitat for Humanity,” Melton said. “And then in September of 2019 I’ll start at a masters program at the London School of Economics and Political Science.”

Brianna Steiert, senior Oxbridge Molecular Biology major, spent the past year serving as the Monitor’s Features Editor and Managing Editor.

“If you had asked me in high school if I would join a newspaper staff in college, I would have said no,” Steiert said. “I joined Monitor with no newspaper experience, yet it became one of my favorite activities in college. I became more confident in my writing and learned to have a stronger appreciation for news both local and international.”

Steiert will miss the people at Jewell she gets to see every day when she graduates.

“It will be weird to not sit down at a table of ten people for dinner or to walk into a building and not see anyone I know,” Steiert said.

Steiert has no definite plans for after graduation, but has applied for jobs in her field and looks to pursue a masters or doctorate in either microbiology or immunology.   

Jesse Lundervold, senior chemistry and studio art major, served as Lifestyle (now Arts and Culture) Editor this year.

“I’ve been on the Monitor since first semester of freshman year,” Lundervold said. “It was a wild ride. It was the first year we had went digital and I just remember as a first year being incredibly intimidated by the ed [editorial] staff.”

Lundervold will miss the atmosphere of the Monitor, specifically, and Jewell, in general.

“Getting to know the ed staff more and having the Monitor being a very integral and incredibly positive part of my time on campus will be definitely something that I will miss,” Lundervold said. “I’ve met incredible peers and colleagues at Jewell and have such a great support system of current students, former students that I met and have since graduated, as well as outstanding and incredibly supportive faculty.”

Lundervold will attend a chemistry doctoral program at the University of California, Davis in the fall.  

Drew Novak, senior political science major, served as the Monitor’s Perspectives Editor this year.

“The Monitor has helped me refine my writing skills and has taught me the virtue of writing concisely. Beyond that academic influence it has had on me, I have also learned how to give Kristen a hard time,” Novak said.

Novak will miss the professors he has had at Jewell and the close friendships he has gained.

“I will miss the professors the most at Jewell,” said Novak. “I owe them a great deal of credit for molding me into the student and individual I am today. They have instilled within me a life-long passion for learning. Furthermore, I will also [miss] my dear friends Rylan, Trey and Conner and all the wonderful memories I have made and shared with them.”

Novak plans to travel after graduation and pursue graduate work next year.

“Following graduation, I will be traveling to Oxford, England, and the Amalfi Coast in Italy,” Novak said. “After returning to the United States, I intend to take a year off to substitute teach and then I intend pursue graduate work in security studies or international relations.”

Jake Marlay, senior biology major, served as Sports Editor this year.

Marlay said he learned that, “if you attack anything with a passion and a positive attitude you can motivate not only yourself but others to accomplish their goals.”

Similar to his fellow seniors, Marlay will miss the people he has met at Jewell the most.

“I’ve met so many great people in every nook and cranny of this little school on the hill that I will remember and forever cherish my time with them,” Marlay said. “I’ve met some of my best and lifelong friends, mentors, future leaders and innovators, and inspiring people right here on this campus.”

After graduation, Marly will begin coaching football at Fort Scott Community College.

“My plans after graduation are to begin coaching football at Fort Scott Community College in Fort Scott, Kansas,” Marlay said. “I start in the summer and will be special teams assistant coach there. From there I hope to just climb the coaching ladder and follow my dream, be the next Bill Snyder.”

It takes them to places and times they have never seen, introduces them to figures they have never known and fills them with memories of events they have never experienced. The facts are not what captivate them. Rather, it is the intrigue of knowing ideas, people and events that stretch beyond one’s lifetime.

For 52 years, 12 of which were at Jewell, Dr. Thomas Howell has taught history and, for 52 years, history is what has driven him. While Howell’s dedication to history is as unshakable now as it was when he first started, a career in history was not Howell’s first choice. Instead, he was poised to select a different path.

“When I came out of high school, I was aiming to be a chemical engineer,” Howell said. “However, upon entering college, I discovered calculus. Or, calculus discovered me.”

Howell’s brief brush with calculus caused him to move away from chemical engineering. As he thought about what to pursue next, he turned to an area that had previously caught his attention.

“When I was in high school, I was picked for a state history competition. I didn’t study, didn’t even think about it and won the state,” Howell said. “When I dropped calculus and started rethinking my options, it occurred to me that history was easy and math wasn’t. Once I started looking at it, I got fascinated by it. But in other words, I kind of backed into it because it came easily and I remembered things and put things together and so forth,” Howell said.  

With 52 years of hindsight, Howell believes he made the right decision.

“I am quite confident, very confident, that I am a better college professor of history than I would’ve been a chemical engineer,” Howell said.

As a historian, Howell has had the opportunity to engage a variety of different topics. However, the Second World War, specifically, had always fascinated him. The son of a Baptist preacher’s daughter and a soldier, Howell himself was a product of the war, which left a significant impact on him.

“Growing up as a child, I was kind of curious about this. I didn’t have a father because of World War Two. I had always been vaguely interested in it,” Howell said.

However, once he began studying history in college, his fascination with World War Two shifted from mere curiosity to intellectual obsession.

“It started out wondering why I didn’t have a father, and then it morphed into a kind of obsession as I tried to trace this thing out and how we got involved in it. It just grabbed me in a way,” Howell said.

After spending much of his life working on the subject, Howell has procured a seemingly infinite base of knowledge. He is able to cite the best authors on the subject, the work they did and the influence they had on him.

“Rick Atkinson, who has written a trilogy on the American army in Europe, Cornelius Ryan and A Bridge Too Far, he’s a guy who really grabbed me. There’s a guy named John Toland who writes on the Pacific War and does kind of the same thing that Ryan does,” Howell said.

In accordance with this passion, Howell’s World War Two and the Holocaust course is by far his favorite course to teach. In fact, he counts it has the best he has ever taught.

“That course is constantly developing. It has changed every year. I keep finding more angles and peeling more layers off the onion so to speak. That’s part of the reason you keep going. It just keeps going over and over,” Howell said.

Even though Howell is enamored with history, the courses he teaches and the work he does, many of his fondest memories are centered around his students.

“The students at Jewell are by the far best students I’ve ever worked with. The level of ability is well beyond any that I’ve ever worked with before. They keep you alive,” Howell said.

Retirement, however, is not far from Howell’s mind. Howell’s plans are currently in flux but that is the way he wants it.

“One of my daughters is getting married in September and that kind of controls the immediate thing. But my wife and I have some things we want to see. We have some friends in places that we’d like to see. The immediate thing is settle down and see some people,” Howell said.

Beyond those intentions, he and his wife have greater visions for retirement. Howell and his wife hope to visit Scotland and to see the Faroe Islands.

As Howell moves on to the next stage of his life, history will continue to guide him as it has done for 52 years.

Photos by Mykala Crews.  

NFL players protesting during the anthem is not a new topic. The story began last year with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick choosing to kneel to protest police violence and racial injustices. Since then handfuls of players across the league have joined, with their protests sometimes being tweaked, like Seattle Seahawks’ Michael Bennett and Oakland Raiders’ Marshawn Lynch choosing to sit during the anthem. All protests have been peaceful, including the mass protest last week. Reactions were mixed, and the subject throughout the weekend turned into a bloated mess with many complicated layers to cover. To help me wade through these layers, I, as Sports Editor, was privileged enough to sit down with our Perspectives Editor and Student Senate President Drew Novak to discuss the wild weekend.

The most significant difference between the previous protests and the mass protest in week three was the involvement of President Trump. Trump’s comments at an Alabama rally wishing that owners would fire these “son of a bitch” players, incited a massive reaction by players, coaches and owners of every team in the NFL.

Novak: “[Trump] has no right to tell Americans which liberties they should and should not follow. He has more important things to worry about like his tweet setting off a major war with North Korea, it never ceases to amaze me the things he says and does.”

Marlay: “[Trump] clearly just throws constitutional rights out the window to rile up a crowd.” I questioned why such an importantly objective political leader in the world would make such a stance on this issue. “It’s such a sensitive topic, it kind of always has been since it started with Colin Kaepernick. You have major themes of race, constitutional rights, the NFL’s image problems.”

Novak: “Trump obviously felt as though his poll numbers were slipping… but that should in no way justify anything he said in no way, shape or form. I think there’s no justification for the comments he made.”

It’s not anything new that players and coaches speak about political issues. What was relatively new about this event was the response of NFL teams’ owners. Almost all displayed some sort of support, whether through actions on the field or statements publicly released against the president’s comments and supporting players’ right to protest.

Novak: “I thought that was really incredible that they went to the lengths to do that. I thought it was incredible. I was very struck by Jerry Jones going out and kneeling with his team [the Dallas Cowboys].”

It was a historic day in sports history as a protest at this scale against the President or the state of the country had never been seen at this scale before.

Novak: “I think it’s something unique to American culture and American society that something like sports is able to transcend something so important to our society like politics. Over the course of history, we’ve seen athletes have a tremendous impact both in their sport and in politics as well,” referring specifically to trailblazing athletes Mohammed Ali and Jackie Robinson.

There were many different forms of protest. Some teams chose to lock arms, some chose to kneel, and a few chose to remain in the locker room during the anthem. The Pittsburgh Steelers were one of these latter teams.

Marlay: “It was a team protest, they wanted to show a unification there more than with an anthem protest.”

However, not all the Steelers’ players remained in the locker room. Offensive tackle Alejandro Villanueva, a former Army Ranger, chose to come out of the tunnel alone and put his hand over his heart for the national anthem.

Novak: “Villanueva was a special case in the fact that he was a veteran and served with the army rangers, and I very much understand that emotional attachment to the United States. I think he went out there due to a responsibility he felt due to his past.”

The timeline of the weekend played out strangely. Just after Sunday, Villanueva had the number one selling jersey in the NFL, showing many supported his solo act. His head coach, Mike Tomlin, and teammates such as James Harrison publicly stated they would have preferred 100 percent participation in their protest, as the purpose was to demonstrate that their unity as a team was greater than a political agenda. Then, surprisingly, Villanueva publicly apologized to his teammates for going out alone.

Marlay: “It clearly shows his mind and heart are in the right place.”

Many fans responded negatively to the protests, as happened with Kaepernick. One of the continued responses has been the drop in television ratings of professional football. The NFL has seen a decline in ratings over the past decade, and according to a poll by ESPN, the anthem protests are the leading reason as to why. DIRECTV, the company behind the very popular “NFL Sunday Ticket” television package even offered a refund to subscribers who cancelled their service specifically because of the protests.

Marlay: “It seems kind of strange to me to reward people for having a strong political stance or opinion on either side.”

It appears DIRECTV is providing a special service to specific politically-aligned people.

Novak: “I think that DIRECTV is definetily sending the wrong message and I think they’re pandering to whoever they want to prevent losing business. I think those responses are just silly frankly, we are all allowed to express our own viewpoints in the U.S. without feeling endangered. For the life of me I can’t understand it, people need to understand that these issues are a part of our society, that they do matter and that we have people that care very very passionately about these and we can’t expect them to compartmentalize these issues away from their everyday lives. Playing a professional sport gives you a platform to be an advocate for these issues.”

Marlay: “I don’t really get it either, as a fan, you buy and watch these things to watch football… I don’t get how this affects them viewing it.”

This response by a significant number of fans tuning out of the NFL puts the league in a strange spot. On the one hand, it is a constitutional right for each and every one of these players and coaches to protest. On the other, this loss in television revenue could equate to a loss of millions of dollars for the league and the owners. A big enough loss in revenue could push the league or owners to take some sort of action.

Marlay: “If you’re an owner, and you’re losing millions because of this, there’s probably going to be some sort of reaction. It’s a scary spot for professional football right now.”

Novak: “You could gridlock the NFL in doing something like that. I would expect significant infighting among the owners and the NFLPA would have a fit and could potentially file a lawsuit against the NFL.”

We both came to the conclusion that this puts the NFL in a perplexing spot as a whole and it will be interesting to see how the entirety of this plays out. This historic weekend in the NFL will almost certainly have a far reaching fallout, but it was a great moment in history to witness, and a pleasure to talk about with my colleague, Drew Novak.

Photo courtesy of ABC News.

As I write this, I am sitting outside with my friends Ben and Rylan on the steps of Curry Hall. Rylan is aggressively working on a research paper, and Ben is relaxing for a change. The smooth April breeze is gentle now. It moves serendipitously through the trees, the grass and the flowers, and it adds a certain flavor to an already tasteful day. As I continue writing, a hawk soars overhead. Its curiously large shadow frightens me, but I have the last laugh as it arrogantly attempts to confront a strong headwind with minimal success.

My attention then turns to the grass. As I recall, it was freshly mowed this morning. It is colored deep emerald in such a manner that it soothes the soul and makes one feel at peace. The checkerboard pattern in the grass adds a certain sense of formidability to its appearance. Oddly though, this only adds to its inherent beauty. Despite my own affinity for the grass, it is clear that there are others who do not feel the same way. I watch with utter horror as two ruffians walk across the grass. They notice my displeasure and proceed to call me out. A disagreement of sorts ensues, but, thankfully, it is quickly resolved. I would hate to cause a spat on such a beautiful day.

Disgusted, I glance away and happen to notice Zak Carroll in the distance, tying his shoe. He does so in a very blatant and methodical manner, a manner which is unique to him. Before I can continue my critique, I notice a leaf has blown up against my lower leg. I attempt to reach down and grab it, but a strong wind blows it into the bushes. Better luck next time. While disappointed, I am captivated by the rare appearance of a salamander. I gaze at it with a certain curiosity while its eyes emotionlessly bore into my soul. After what seems like an eternity, I unwisely make a sudden movement and it darts under Ben’s backpack. Before we can continue our investigation of the salamander, it dashes underneath the safety of a nearby pillar. Scalawag.

I turn back to my writing machine and ponder what else I could include in this piece. Immediately, I notice the trees. Yes, I have not talked about them yet. At this juncture, they are not particularly full but nonetheless demonstrate considerable potential. It is clear that they are preparing to bloom, and when they do, it will be a stupendous pageant of greenery. There is no doubt about that.

For one moment, there is peace. For one fleeting moment, all is quiet.

And then, dinner beckons.