Tag: residence life

Campus Life, Features

Gender-Inclusive Housing: An Interview with Em Rademaker

Kaylyn HaslundIf anyone has started applying for future housing, you may be seeing a new option at the bottom of the online application, one that has the option for Gender Inclusive housing. Now what that entails is being able to live with people of, well, all genders. We were able to get in touch with housing Resident life coordinator Em Rademaker and get their input on the new policy and how the staff came to making it a reality. Continue reading “Gender-Inclusive Housing: An Interview with Em Rademaker”

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Campus Life, Opinion

Not-Quite-Spring Cleaning

BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong

The end of every semester is brutal, and I would argue that the end of fall semester is more so than the end of the spring one. At least at the end of the spring semester, you’re just getting ready to launch yourself into summer, a fairly laid-back time of year. Fall semester, on the other hand, bounces you off a springboard of stressing over homework, class, and other adult college student responsibilities, and into stressing over holiday travel plans, what to buy your friends and   family, and exactly how many Starbucks holiday beverages you can consume before the people in your life who love you stage an intervention. It’s also the time of year when we gotta clean our college residence halls and apartments in preparation for moving out over winter break, which is not something any of us like to think about. Well, maybe some of you do – I used to live with a girl who loved cleaning and bought herself a vacuum cleaner for Christmas. I’m proud to report that this attitude wasn’t contagious and I still hate cleaning as much as I always have. However, that doesn’t negate the fact that it needs to be done, and we might as well start now while we finish up finals and wait with baited breath for test results. I thought I’d pass on some of my advice regarding the tidying process, so you can get a head start on your roommates – and maybe borrow their Christmas-present vacuum cleaners before they leave for the winter. Continue reading “Not-Quite-Spring Cleaning”

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Features

#Nature

BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong
If you have spent over an hour in my immediate presence, you’ve probably heard me voice something regarding my distaste for nature. That being said, it then becomes understandable that several people have approached me regarding my participation in the recent camping trip up to Windfall Lake Cabin that UAS Housing put on. So in answer to the not-infrequent question “Why did you go camping?”, I respond that my reasoning was precisely because I do hold little affinity for nature. I don’t like being outside, amongst the elements, “roughing it” in the style of true Alaskans – but I still know how to go camping, and enjoy doing so occasionally, and I have also read many writings that extol the virtue of the Great Outdoors™ and Fresh Air©. Also, I have a Very Alaskan Father who makes fun of me if I don’t do at least one outdoorsy thing each year.
But on this particular occasion, there was even more to it than that. On this particular occasion, my presence on the Windfall Lake Camping Trip of 2015 was a serious case of Hardcore Investigative Journalism to compare it with the Windfall Lake [Winter] Camping Trip of 2014. That was an Experience of an entirely different kind from regular camping, filled with snow and ice and wet gooey marsh and a 5-hour hike in the rain and dark with failing flashlights. (There are some who would argue that the hike took us only 3 hours. I will maintain to my deathbed that it took us 5.) So, my participation in this camping trip was as much to see if conditions had improved and the housing department had listened to our feedback from last year as it was for my own personal edification and exposure to the outdoors. Continue reading “#Nature”

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Features

(Fake) Cash Money Dolla Bills

BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong
I first heard about the Casino Night event, I was a little dubious. An evening of gambling hosted and orchestrated by the campus Housing Department? It seemed a little shady. Almost like a trap. Kind of like that time I was doing jury duty and the questioning lawyer asked one of the potential jurors if he’d ever committed murder. I mean, you can’t just ask someone if they’ve committed murder – but that’s tangential to the subject at hand. I have since attended every Casino Night that’s been held since my arrival at UAS in 2012, and I’ve had a blast at every one.
For those of you unfamiliar with the principal of Casino Night, allow me to enlighten you. When they walk in the door, attendees are handed a plastic cup full of custom UAS poker chips. They are then given approximately 2 hours to try their hand at a variety of classic casino games, such as blackjack and roulette. (There’s also some kind of cowboy card game – Texas Hold ‘Em, I think – but my eyes tend to glaze over after the first 5 minutes of someone trying to explain the rules, so I generally just stick to the former two.) The idea is that for every set amount of chips – 10 this year – you receive a raffle ticket, which you may then place in a box at the end of the night in an attempt to win either one of many general prizes, or one of just a few grand prizes. Grand prizes in the past have included a Tempur-Pedic mattress topper and a flat screen television of not-inconsiderable size. Given what’s at stake, there is obviously no little impetus to try and do the best you can at gambling in order to turn in as many chips as possible to get as many tickets as possible. Continue reading “(Fake) Cash Money Dolla Bills”

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Campus Life, Opinion

Code 2319: Housing Health Inspections

BY ALEXA CHERRY
For the UAS Whalesong
Before you ask, my title is in reference to the film Monsters Inc., specifically, from a scene where a monster returns from the humans’ world but has been “contaminated” by a sock, so he’s promptly tackled by monsters in biohazard suits shouting about a “Code 2319.” I thought that the title and scene were at least remotely applicable when discussing the topic at hand, which is the new Health and Safety Inspections that are soon to be enacted by Residence Life.
I’ve heard friends and classmates express alarm and confusion over these inspections, so I thought I would write an informative article clarifying what they are and how they will affect students living on campus housing. You probably got a brightly colored sheet of paper telling you what a Health and Safety Inspection is and why it’s happening – but in case you lost it, or didn’t read it, I am here to remind you. Continue reading “Code 2319: Housing Health Inspections”

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