Conservative Rumblings

SUGAR GROVE, Illinois - Waubonsee students received a chance to practice their fire evacuation skills on Friday, October 6th, when the campus fire alarm interrupted classes and forced students outside.

“The administration office in Bodie smelled smoke, and called campus police,” Joe Monstwillo, Campus Police Chief, stated. “Upon arriving, campus police confirmed the smoke, and I pulled the [fire] alarm to initiate the call.”

Kane County dispatch received the call at 9:32 a.m., and units from the Sugar Grove fire department arrived on scene at 9:37 a.m., and entered the building to determine the cause of the smoke. Eventually, firefighters from both Sugar Grove and Elburn arrived to answer the alarm. The department personnel used a heat-imaging device and located the hottest item in the office where the smoke was reported, which was the large photocopier. “Once they determined that [the copier] was the hottest thing in the room, we went on the assumption [that the copier had overheated] and moved the machine outside,” Monstwillo explained.

Several students commented on what they felt was the tardiness of the fire department’s response, but Monstwillo explained that he felt the response was timely. “With situations like this, you never hear people say ‘how’d you get here so quick?’ because time just seems to go in slow motion. I thought the response was timely, and if you would have put a stopwatch to it, I don’t think it was more than ten minutes,” Monstwillo said. As shown above, the first units did arrive on the scene within five minutes.

Students evacuated their classrooms, then moved outside for safety reasons. While Monstwillo said the evacuation went “very well,” there will be some fine tuning to the plan next time. “We kept people a bit too close to the building; had it been a real fire, there may have been some injuries,” Monstwillo stated, “We also need to make sure there is a clear path for emergency vehicles.”

“We appreciated the students’ cooperation today; the evacuation went well, and it was a good practice exercise,” Monstwillo explained.

No injuries were reported, and students were able to re-enter the buildings in time for their 10:00 a.m. classes.

SUGAR GROVE, Illinois - Roy Hazelwood, a veteran of both the military and the FBI, spoke at Waubonsee Community College on September 19. Hazelwood served as an elite FBI profiler for a number of years, and now serves as the Vice President of Academy Group, Inc, a Forensic Behavioral Science Company that provides consultation and training.

Hazelwood’s lecture covered a number of topics about criminals, predators and FBI profiling, but he was quick to point out the difference between real profilers and so-called FBI profilers portrayed in movies and books.

“Silence of the Lambs has an FBI profiler [as a main character],” Hazelwood said, “The only thing that was realistic in that movie was the elevator; if you go to Quantico, you can see that elevator, and that’s about it.”

“People often ask if Hannibal Lecter was a real person, and the answer is no,” Hazelwood explained, “The character was a composite of a number of different of serial killers. Thomas Harris [author of Silence of the Lambs] met with us to develop the character.”

Hazelwood went on to describe the three primary jobs of an FBI profiler: conducting research, consulting on cases, and education and training.

For research, profilers like Hazelwood often interview serial killers and offenders, but they also interview wives and girlfriends of those offenders. Hazelwood said that the significant-other interviews were often much more interesting, because they had a different perspective of the offenders. The wives and girlfriends could give insight into actions taken by killers that the killers themselves could not provide.
“We are after predators,” Hazelwood stated, adding that the term ‘predator’ is thrown around so much that it doesn’t mean much to people anymore, but explained that “sexual sadists are the true predators.”

Hazelwood, throughout his career, consulted on a number of high-profile cases involving such killers and offenders.

He was retained by the United Nations to examine statements of rape victims in the Bosnian War Crimes case in the 1990s. This case involved a number of heinous crimes committed against women and children, and was the first international war crimes trial since World War II.

Hazelwood also took part in the hunt for the infamous Bind-Torture-Kill (BTK) killer three times.

The BTK case was Hazelwood’s longest active case, spanning over 31 years, and Hazelwood considers the BTK case his most frustrating case professionally, because, as he said, the killer was “seemingly invisible;” he would appear and disappear so quickly that it was extremely hard to pursue him.

The BTK case also had a number of very interesting surprises (which Hazelwood did not elaborate on), that makes it one of the profiler’s most interesting cases.
Project CARE, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police initiative that involved 33 investigators, was another case that Hazelwood consulted on.

The project revolved around the murder of seven prostitutes in Canada. “Prostitutes used to be ‘throw-away’ victims, [they were] considered not worth the time,” Hazelwood explained. “It shows how far law enforcement has come, [because] now we are investigating the murders of prostitutes.”

Hazelwood went on to explain the three principles that have guided him in his job.
First, he says that common sense, what he calls “practical intelligence,” is extremely important. Hazelwood said that while a college education is extremely important, people should never “let education get in the way of common sense.”
Another principle is that in all cases there are no absolutes.

“There are exceptions to every single thing,” Hazelwood said. He explained that making assumptions or letting personal bias enter into profiling a killer are the makings of a failed case. Hazelwood elaborated further when he listed words such as “sick,” “pervert,” “weirdo,” and “psycho,” that are banned from FBI profiler terminology when talking about an offenders.

“What does a ‘weirdo’ look like?” Hazelwood asked, continuing, “How do you find a ‘weirdo’? How do you define ‘weirdo’?”

He mentioned a number of serial killers he pursued over the years that looked and acted completely normal when they had to interact with the world.

A study that Hazelwood took part in profiled 20 sadistic killers in an attempt to find commonality that would assist in apprehending future criminals.

The shocking part of the study was how “normal” many of the killers appeared.
“Seventy-five percent had stable employment, 50% were married, only 35% had arrest histories, and just one was actually psychotic,” Hazelwood said, “When they had to, these people could walk down the street just like you or I.”

The final principle Hazelwood adheres to is one he learned in the military. “K-I-S-S. Keep it simple, stupid!” he said with a laugh.

Hazelwood closed his presentation by mentioning a few myths about FBI profiling. For example, he said that profiling is actually a “very small part” of what FBI profilers do, about 10% of their work. “We only profile when other means of investigation have run dry.”

Another myth is that sexual sadists and other predators are psychotics. In fact, nearly none of the serial offenders Hazelwood worked to catch were true psychotics (psychotics are out of touch with reality; they exist in their own sphere of existence and have an extremely hard time comprehending the normal flow of the world).

“Only 3% of serial offenders are true psychotics,” Hazelwood explained.
Hazelwood also talked about confusion as to what causes violence. “Poverty, brain damage, drugs, mental illness, music, video games, TV, chemical imbalances. These are all things you hear about that ’cause’ violence. In reality, none of them do,” Hazelwood said, adding that while none of the above cause violence, some of them can have an impact.

“In the end each person reacts differently to different things; it’s all about culture and values,” he said. “Our society is making this worse, because we have lost important brakes on behavior. We’ve lost our sense of responsibility and our sense of shame. We’ve moved from explaining behavior to excusing it.”
An interesting point of interest is how Hazelwood started to work in law enforcement.

After starting in college majoring in business, Hazelwood gave up on that major when he got stumped on an accounting class.

“I switched to sociology at that point,” Hazelwood said with a chuckle.
When he went to join the ROTC, Hazelwood said he wasn’t sure which branch of the military to go into, until he watched demonstrations by each group.
“The army guys were just covered in mud, and I was thinking, ‘well that’s sure not for me,’” Hazelwood said, continuing that neither the tankers who drove “steel coffins” nor artillery officers who were “deaf” offered the right choice for him.
When the Military Police unit came out, however, Hazelwood was immediately interested in the “shiny white boots.”

“Honest to God, that’s why I joined [the military police],” he said.
Hazelwood served a two year contract as an MP with the U.S. Army. He enjoyed his time in the Army so much, he continued to serve for a total of 11 years.
After leaving the Army, Hazelwood served 22 years in the FBI. Sixteen of those years were spent in the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy.
Hazelwood has published more than 40 articles and has co-authored five books.
He served as an Affiliate Professor of Administration of Justice at George Mason University, an Adjunct Faculty member of the University of Virginia, a member of the Associated Faculty with the University of Pennsylvania, a faculty member of the FBI Academy and the U.S. Army Military Police CID School, and the Technical Faculty of the Southern Police Institute.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The solar system as we know it received an overall August 24th, when the International Astronomical Union voted to remove Pluto from the nine major planets in the solar system.

Under historic new guidelines presented and adopted by the Union, Pluto has been downgraded to a ‘dwarf planet,’ a smaller type of celestial body. Joining Pluto as dwarf planets are two other objects from the solar system, objects that nearly made the cut as full-fledged planets, until the new standards were put in place.

2003 UB313, an icy object almost the same size as Pluto, was also placed into the dwarf planet category, along with the asteroid Ceres, which is the largest object in the mid-solar system asteroid belt that cuts off the inner and outer planets.

Ceres was discovered at beginning of the 19th century, and was considered a planet for a number of years, until scientists reclassified it as an asteroid.

The original draft that the International Astronomical Union created called for Ceres and Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, to be classified as planets, however, opposition to this plan led to the creation of the second and final draft, which established the ‘dwarf planets.’

Charon, under the new classifications, receives no further upgrade in status.
The definitions set out by the Union call for a three-tier system to classifying the solar system: planets, dwarf planets, and “small solar system bodies,” a term that will be applied to a number of celestial bodies that orbit the Sun but do not fit the requirements for either of the higher level categories.

One requirement that must be met to be considered a “planet” is that the body in question must have an orbit is large enough to be nearly circle, and must also “clear the neighborhood around its orbit.”

These new rules disqualified Pluto, whose orbit intersects with Neptune’s, from planet status.

Twenty-five hundred astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, however, only 300 actually voted on the proposals.

Scientists have argued and debated over a universal definition for planets since the time of Copernicus, and many scientists were overjoyed at a set of guidelines finally making their way into the history books.

Clyde W. Tombaugh, an American astronomer, originally discovered Pluto in 1930.
The departure from nine planets in the solar system also led to some hurried restructuring of curriculum at schools across the country.

SUGAR GROVE, IL - Veteran students know, and new students will soon find out, that parking is a challenge at Waubonsee Community College. Everyone knows that, especially at the beginning of a semester, you have to get to campus early, and you have to be willing to either walk, or claw and fight for prime parking spots.
A number of theories have emerged as to how to best avoid parking incidents and how to maximize your chances at getting a parking spot somewhere within 300 miles of the front door.

These strategies play out every semester, however, no one was prepared for the debacle that awaited students the first day of class.

Waubonsee lost a number of parking spots this semester due to a variety of construction projects around campus. To combat this problem, a new West parking lot was built to hold additional cars.

The only problem was that the West lot was not finished on time. Instead, the entrance was still blocked off as the contractor struggled to complete the work. Waubonsee students were faced with a daunting task; find a parking place where none existed.

Waubonsee students, faculty and staff literally used up every parking spot on campus.

Cars began to appear on grassy medians, parked in no parking zones, and even, comically so, on a hill that leads into the side of a maintenance building on the north side of campus.

To their credit, campus police helped alleviate the stress by suspending the issuing of parking tickets for the duration of the parking issues.

Many students voiced their displeasure over the situation.

Most students interviewed for this article gave a resounding “terrible” as their answer for how parking was the first week of class.

The overwhelming majority also gave comments that were a variant on the theme of “it sucks,” “it can’t possibly be worse,” and “are you kidding me?”

Amanda Selk, a Waubonsee student, began carpooling this semester in an effort to avoid the parking situation. “It’s ridiculous,” she said, stating further she often had cars following her waiting for her to leave so they could take her place.

Most students seem to agree; Marisella Urbina said that parking has been “pretty difficult […] I have to come here at least twenty minutes before I would if parking were semi-decent.”

Waubonsee has experienced tremendous growth in the past few years, leading some students to question whether or not Waubonsee administration has been paying attention to those figures.

“They know what volume of students [attend WCC], and they should have had the new parking ready,” Leslie Moore, Waubonsee student, stated.

Campus Operations did not return calls seeking comment.

Waubonsee Community College officially kicked off their 40th Anniversary Celebration on Friday August 25th, with the dedication of the new Science Building.

The 46,590 square foot building, located in the center of Waubonsee’s Sugar Grove Campus, is a cornerstone of Waubonsee’s 2020 Plan and the second building to be completed.

The dedication ceremony featured an hour of self-guided tours for guests, as well as a formal ceremony.

Guests were welcome to explore the various labs and areas of the new building; most of the science labs featured displays and exhibits, and were open to the guests, while a number of science faculty demonstrated and explained the various disciplines.

Tracy Dosch, a biology instructor, took samples from participants to isolate their DNA, and numerous other instructors were on hand to explain the various facets of the new labs.

Waubonsee’s new Science Building offers many significant upgrades and opportunities for students and faculty alike.

Some of the special features include an overhead camera system in the anatomy labs that can be used for in-depth study of cadavers, a fossil preparation lab that contains more than 100 unique mineral, rock and fossil samples, a weather station that gives students the chance to view real-time weather information, and a seismograph for students to view earthquake data.

Another event taking place at the Science Building Dedication and 40th Anniversary Kick Off was the internment of the Waubonsee time capsule, a project that will preserve this date in history.

Waubonsee’s time capsule was filled with a variety of items: various science faculty members placed flora and fauna samples from on-campus into the capsule, and a number of other science related materials such as textbooks, air and water samples, Mastodon Dig DVDs and brochures, and groundbreaking photos of the Science Building were placed in the capsule.

Additionally, copies of current Waubonsee publications were placed in the capsule, including Fall 2006 class schedules, staff newsletters, and a copy of this very publication, Insight.

The time capsule is scheduled to be opened in precisely 40 years, which will be August 25th, 2046.

In conjunction with Waubonsee’s 40th. Anniversary, WCC began a recognition program called the “Fabulous 40,” an elite group that will honor 40 alumni and students from Waubonsee Community College who embody the mission, ideals and vision of the college. These chosen few will be recognized over the next year.

The first such candidate was Dr. Jose Magana, a physician working for Dreyer Medical Clinic. Magana graduated from Waubonsee in 1986 with an Associate in Applied Science degree, and continued on in his education to earn a Bachelor’s degree in physics and a medical degree.

The theme for Waubonsee’s 40th Anniversary is Celebrating 40 Years of Student Success.” Special events are planned for the next year, including the grand opening of the Academic and Professional Center in August 2007.

AUSTRALIA - Steve Irwin, known worldwide as the exuberant and khaki-clad Australian with a love for nature, died September 4th after being stung in the heart by a stingray. He was 44.

Irwin was filming material on-location at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s northeast coast for a number of television segments, including “The Ocean’s Deadliest.”

When the waters proved to be too cloudy to effectively tape that footage, Irwin decided to use the time to film a school of stingrays for his daughter Bindi’s Discovery Channel wildlife show.

While swimming in shallow water no more then 10 feet deep, Irwin swam over a large bull ray, which, while docile, can grow up to seven feet wide. Inexplicably, the ray whipped its razor-sharp tail into Irwin’s chest, puncturing his heart.
Irwin pulled the barb out just seconds before the crew of his ship, Croc One, pulled him back onboard. They tried to stem the bleeding, but Irwin died before the rescue chopper could arrive.

Stingrays rarely kill humans; most often, any deaths from stingrays are due to allergic reactions to the venom, rather than any sort of trauma.

Irwin was known across the world for his wild antics and conservation projects as the Crocodile Hunter. His television shows have been seen in over 100 countries.
Irwin is survived by his American wife Terri, an eight-year-old daughter Bindi and three-year-old son Robert.

Dateline NBC, in what most news outlets have considered an attempt to portray NASCAR fans as racist, staged an operation to insert Muslim-looking men into a NASCAR event while using video cameras to record fans’ reactions.

NBC claims in a statement released shortly after the operation became public knowledge that “We were intrigued by the results of a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll and other articles regarding increasing anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States.”

NBC contacted a man named Tarek El-Messidi, and that man sent out a press release asking for Muslim-looking men to volunteer for the project, men who were successful and spoke fluent English. Their requirements did not even list actually being Muslim as a requirement; instead, the volunteers needed only “look Muslim.”

These men would be sent to NASCAR races and marched through the stands and infield, while cameras captured the discrimination and racist remarks directed at them. Or so Dateline hoped.

Michelle Malkin, a popular conservative columnist, first posted the story on her blog on April 4th. By then, Dateline had already staged the first of its ’stings’; they sent some of their Muslim-looking recruits to the NASCAR Nextel Cup event at Martinsville, Va. on April 2nd, accompanied by an NBC camera crew.

To Dateline’s dismay, these men did not even cause a ripple in the stands. Ramsey Poston, NASCAR’s managing director of corporate communications, stated that there were “no incidents” reported at the track, and various fans that this writer spoke to noticed the Muslim men as an oddity only because they were constantly trailed by an NBC camera entourage.

Martinsville’s director of public relations, Mike Smith, says that NBC’s camera crew wasn’t as unnoticed as they thought. “Our security knew immediately that they were here,” Smith explained, “They were not disturbed [by any fans].”

Not to be discouraged, Dateline planned to send their crew to the race the next weekend in Richmond. It was only at the last minute that they realized that the race was actually in Texas, but by then so many journalists and fans knew of the planned event that Dateline cancelled their visit to the races.

NBC and Dateline have been the subject of scornful remarks from fans, news media and journalists across the country for this stunt.

“It’s hard to even call it journalism,” Poston said, “Any legitimate journalist should be ashamed.”

George Ryan, former Illinois governor and Secretary of State, was convicted on April 17 of all 18 charges leveled against him; the most serious of these being a racketeering charge that could land him in jail for 20 years on its own, with the 72 year old Ryan facing a possible grand total of 95 years in prison for all charges.
He may also receive up to $4.5 million in fines.

Ryan’s co-defendant, lobbyist Larry Warner, was also convicted of 12 charges.
Ryan is perhaps best known for the infamous “License for Bribes” scandal, a long-running ordeal that involved the illegal selling of government licenses and contracts by state employees to unqualified drivers.

The scheme was revealed when a Federal investigation into the deaths of six children in a Wisconsin crash showed that the truck driver who caused the crash had obtained his license illegally while Ryan was the Secretary of State.

A total of 76 officials, truck drivers and lobbyists have now been charged and convicted in the investigation, with Ryan and Warner being the latest.
Ryan served as governor of Illinois from 1999 to 2003, when political pressure from mounting corruption charges led to him declining to run for another term.

Neither Ryan nor Warner took the stand during the trial, citing that nothing they did was illegal. The trial was often hampered by jury problems, including two jurors being dismissed after they lied on their questionnaires, and another juror who says she was intimidated and coerced into reaching the verdict.

Defense lawyers made every effort to stop the trial and declare a mistrial due to the jury issues. Sentencing will take place in August, and Ryan has announced he will appeal the verdict.

When the Fall 2006 schedule for Waubonsee comes out in a few months, students are going to notice a brand new section of classes available for their learning pleasure: Japanese.

The interesting thing about this curriculum addition is that no one on the board of directors proposed or seconded this motion. No teachers spoke to their deans about it.

In fact, the person who spearheaded the effort to add Japanese to Waubonsee’s classroom offerings was none other then your fellow student, Bethany Meadows.
After months of hard work, Meadows succeeded in a project she started last November.

As of the fall 2006 semester, Japanese will be added to the growing list of foreign language classes offered at Waubonsee.

Meadows, who attended Oswego High School and is currently in her freshman year at Waubonsee, compiled a list of people who were interested in the course, and circulated a petition to add the class that garnered approximately 40 signatures.

She began this effort as a leadership project for Gustafson scholars, and she worked closely with the Liberal Arts department during the whole process.

Meadows’ inspiration for adding Japanese to Waubonsee came from her interest in Japanese culture. “It’s one of my main interests,” she explains. Meadows is a huge fan of Japanese animation and comics, otherwise known as ‘anime.’

Meadows expressed how she would love to go to Japan sometime in the future: “Tokyo, Okinawa, Kyoto, I’d love to see them all,” she says.

Meadows interest in anime may also prove to be a possible career. She would like to go into animation and illustration, and she is hoping that she can eventually work in that field.

“I’d love to work on illustration and maybe storyboarding,” she stated. “I’d prefer to work in animation as opposed to comics because there’s much more output and it’s more widely viewed.”

Meadows gave the Liberal Arts department much of the credit for the success of the project. “Dr. Marzano and his secretary Sue [Baier] were very, very helpful…everyone was willing to put forth some extra work,” she explains.

Dr. Marzano said this project is a great indication of Waubonsee’s “Learning First” ideology.

Meadows will be taking Japanese next semester, and plans to transfer to North Michigan, Northern Illinois or University of Illinois when she finishes her studies at Waubonsee.

The colors of your workspace can have a profound affect on the quality of your work, experts say.

Studies have shown that a person’s heartbeat is slower in a more colorful room. A slower heartbeat means a person is more relaxed, and able to think more clearly.
The best colors for an office include blue and green. Blue promotes creativity and stability, while Green brings a sense of vigor and tranquility.

Among the worst colors for an office are the neutral colors; shades of gray, white and beige, which are considered “dull” environments.

These colors can cause people to become restless and irritated, as well as making concentration difficult.

Beige is considered a “non-color;” when placed alongside other colors, beige will take on the attributes of those colors.

However, beige on its own is a very boring color, which can sap energy and dampen spirits. Workers are more likely to take longer breaks and leave a beige office than an office painted a brighter color.