Slayton Rous, senior health promotions major, adds ingredients to his skillet during UAC and Sodexo’s first Top Chef Cook-Off Monday night in the Webb Lecture Hall. Rous won the competition and hopes to have a chance to defend his title in the future. Kathi Walker/The Bulletin.

After 60 minutes of cooking, UAC and Sodexo’s first Top Chef Cook-Off produced champion Slayton Rous, senior health promotions major.

“Everything turned out terrific tonight,” Rous said of Monday’s competition. “I usually use different ingredients for the recipe I used tonight, but everything came out great in the end, so I’m happy. I started with a beef sauce, then moved on to a cheese sauce, made the noodles and the ratatouille at the end. I figured it would be quick, tasty, and I know how to make it well.”

More than 100 students cheered as the six competitors crafted their culinary creations.

“I’m actually surprised at how many people came out to support the chefs,” said Kyra Strobel, senior communication major and UAC’s public relations committee chair. “We were really pleased by the turnout and hope this will start a trend of really getting involved in events like this in the future.”

Jeff McCullough, general manager for Sodexo at ESU, said he was also pleased with the turnout.

“Considering that this is our first time and that we’re dead up against another event tonight, it’s really hard to find a night this late in the semester where nothing’s going on, and I’m really pleased with the turnout we got for this event,” McCullough said. “I was especially pleased with the amount of non-contestants that showed up… I mean everyone has their own contingencies and plans for the evening and yet they all showed up to support the contestants.”

While only six chefs were selected to participate in Monday night’s competition, over 35 students competed in last week’s qualifying Quick Fire competition.

“There were around 37 or 38 contestants at the start of the Quick Fire event, and now we’re down to six,” Brown said. “I think based off of the response we saw to this event, maybe there’s a future for a culinary arts series of events at ESU, or even a program.”

The novelty of this type of competition at ESU played an important role in choosing the theme.

“We based this first challenge off of a Pasta Challenge, because it was fairly basic, and we didn’t want anyone getting too scared or nervous, so we just went with this basic kind of ingredient,” McCullough said. “We made sure we had several different kinds of pasta out there, and all sorts of ingredients, which really makes this about putting together different kinds of ingredients in a unique way.”

Some chefs at Monday night’s competition brought a secret ingredient or a recipe they had experience with, while others chose to show up and let their experience do the cooking for them.

“Each contestant was allowed to bring one secret ingredient with them, which three of the contestants did –  one brought a walnut and blue cheese crumble, one brought beef broth, and one brought tomato sauce with sage,” McCullough said. “Three of the contestants are using a recipe, but three are just cooking from memory, and both are interesting strategies.

“On Friday, the six contestants who were drawn from the top 30 percent of the Quick Fire competition were given a list of the ingredients that would be available on our Bounty table so they had the weekend to work on recipes and such.”

In addition to providing cookware and uniforms for the contestants, Sodexo also helped to create the formatting for the evening’s competition.

“We needed to do one of these events to get the format down,” McCullough said. “Now that we’ve seen how it can work and seen the crowd that just this first-time event drew, we’d like to do a longer event next time, starting with a larger pool, and narrowing it down to some final contestants after five or six events like this over several weeks.”

Rous said he would like to participate in the Top Chef Cook-Off again.

“It’d be awesome to defend my title if they did another event like this,” Rous said. “I’d come back and do it – hopefully they can make it even bigger. I’d like to see a lot more events like this again, hopefully they can involve other groups around campus.”

Chelsea Brown, UAC featured events chairperson and sophomore health promotion major, said that the turnout from Monday night’s event could lead to future cook-off competitions.

“Based off of this event’s attendance and the excitement in the air tonight, I think this was a big hit,” Brown said. “I think if we do it again, it’ll be an even bigger event than it was this year.”

Send article as PDF to

At a time when the hip-hop scene is seeing resurgence in the Midwest, local bar Beer:30 will host a collaborative hip-hop concert.

The concert, titled “Kansas Invasion,” will feature artists both local and regional, including hip-hop artists Stick Figa, A Train, MWP and Wichita singer-songwriter J Tuck.

The concert will be held on this Saturday, April 11, with seating beginning at 9 p.m. Weather permitting, the concert will take place in the outdoor area of Beer:30, called the Beer Garden.

“We expect attendance will be actually very high, around 500 people not counting the setup crew or promo teams,” said Josh Olson, co-manager and bartender at Beer:30, referring to the Crazygirls Promo Team advertised by flyers promoting the concert. “It’s going to be a very good night for business.”

Cover charges will be $3 for those 21 or over and $5 for underage attendees, something Olson said he hopes is a selling point.

“That’s one of the nice things about this concert, is the cover charge is cheap, so we hope that will encourage attendance,” Olson said.

For some, concerts like this present a welcome change.

“There aren’t a lot of hip-hop shows coming to Emporia, so we’re happy we’re getting this one to host,” Olson said. “I’m a fan of all music, but I like it when local artists come around to play… It’s just nicer, you know?”

Olson also said that he’ll be watching for one artist in particular.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing J Tuck,” Olson said. “He’s good at his thing and he DJ’d in town for a long time so it’s good to see him around again. He’s got a new mixtape or album, one of those, so that’ll be good to hear.”

According to J Tuck’s MySpace page, he is originally from Wichita but attended Emporia State.

The fact that the musicians playing are local has made the event attractive to some.

“I like that they’re local Kansas artists,” said Shelley Marsh, senior secondary English and Spanish education major. “They’re just kind of from-the-earth people trying to make it big in the music industry, so there’s that appeal, and as far as Emporia bringing in groups overall instead of just one band, I like that, it’s more involving.

“I like all kinds of music, and I always like it when they bring organized events to Emporia, but it’s nice to see stuff targeted to your everyday college student.”

For some students around campus, the appeal of this concert has less to do with the style of music and more with how it has been advertised.

“They’ve done a lot of promoting lately,” Marsh said. “I’ve seen a lot of flyers around recently and Facebook advertisements, there’s even a group about the concert on Facebook and that really got a lot of people fast, so I decided to check it out.”

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to

‘Freedom Writers’ speaker to visit ESU

Erin Gruwell, an educator and inspirational speaker, will speak at 7 p.m. April 28 in Albert Taylor Hall. Her lecture is titled “Becoming a Catalyst for Change.”

In 1999, Gruwell published “The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them,” based on journals kept by her students. Actress Hilary Swank portrayed Gruwell in the 2007 film adaptation titled “Freedom Writers.”

Gruwell is the founder and current president of the Freedom Writers Foundation, an organization that spreads Gruwell’s Freedom Writers teaching method around the nation.

Blythe Eddy, associate director for Student Involvement, Programming, and Community Service said that Gruwell’s message is something every student should hear.

Eddy also said she took pride in the collaborative effort students at ESU showed in getting Gruwell to come speak.

Over 15 student organizations on campus are sponsoring Gruwell’s visit, especially Community Hornets, Eddy said.

Community Hornets is “a program dedicated to connecting Emporia State University students to the surrounding community through service projects,” according to the organization’s Web site.

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to

As the spring semester winds down, Greek members of Emporia State are preparing for a week of competition, recognition and community service.

Greek Week 2009 begins next Monday and for Associate Director for Student Involvement in Greek Life Jason Bosch, “things could not be more exciting.”

“Greek Week is always a blast,” said Bosch, who was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Wichita State. “It’s a good chance to mingle with the various organizations.”

Bosch also emphasized the newly adopted focus on community service among Greeks this year.

“One of the things we are moving toward is putting an emphasis on philanthropic activities, so our street project came about as a result of that,” Bosch said.

The project, which will start at 2:30 p.m. Monday, is a street cleanup that will cover Commercial Street between the 6th-13th Street intersections.

“Our big change is the community service,” said Marisa Bade, senior elementary education major and member of Alpha Sigma Alpha. “We’re going back to what Greek really stands for and trying to show people that we’re not just partiers… and that we’re into scholarship and service and so on, so that’s our big focus for this year.”

As Panhellenic Activities Chairman, Bade also spoke on the differences in this year’s activities with involving the faculty at ESU.

“I would say pretty much we have a lot of sports that we’re playing this year,” Bade said. “We’re also trying to involve the faculty more, so we challenged them to a softball game Monday night at Trusler Fields, winner take all.”

Jeremy Walter, Interfraternity Council (IFC) chairman and junior crime and delinquency studies major, has also been involved with Greek Week’s evolution in the past.

“I actually helped plan Greek Week two years ago, then this year,” said Walter, who is a member of Phi Delta Theta. “The first year we had a campfire theme, but this year we don’t really have a center theme.”

Walter said he thought it was better to not have a theme so that there are more options in terms of events.

“We don’t have to be so rigid and try to create events that tie back to that central theme,” Walter said. “We’re free to experiment and do what we want to do to represent the Greek community.”

One new event that will be included this year is the fraternal “Punt, Pass, and Kick” competition, which will be at 7 p.m. next Wednesday at Welch Stadium.

“The ‘Punt, Pass, and Kick’ event is brand new, because it was hard to get the guys involved in lip-synching with the sororities, which is what they’ve always done,” Walter said. “But the structure of Greek Week is similar enough that, except for the new events, we aren’t doing anything noticeably different, so there aren’t any real surprises for anyone.”

All events of Greek Week are open to the public except the Banquet, which will be at 6 p.m. Thursday in Webb Lecture Hall.

“We really welcome everyone,” Bosch said. “Anyone can come and hang out, see what we’re all about, if you have a friend in a fraternity or sorority or if you’re just wanting to come check it out, we always welcome it.”

Bosch said that his favorite part of Greek Week is the banquet.

“It’s a chance to recognize the various Greeks that have done well, who have stood out and represented our organizations best, and who deserve our thanks,” Bosch said.

Every year, Greeks collect money in the Penny War competition throughout Greek Week. Jars for each organization will be displayed in the Union throughout each day and all money collected goes to a charity selected by the Greek Week Committee.

“This year, that money is going to supporting the Emporia Rotary Club in their efforts to eradicate polio,” Bosch said. “Only four countries left in the world have polio and the Rotary Club is an organization that’s dedicated to ending it everywhere. We really admire their efforts.”

For many involved Greeks, the primary benefit of the experience seems to be unity.

“This week is less about recruiting new members and more about coming together in brother- and sisterhood,” Walter said. “I really think it’s a valuable part of being Greek at Emporia.”

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to

COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

“Monsters vs. Aliens” is perhaps the single best example in the last few years of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get movie that makes no pretensions and lets you know exactly where the bar is being set right up front.

This is, first and foremost, a movie in which a bunch of monsters fight a bunch of aliens. While small little lessons and plot points may be present throughout the movie, they all take second chair to the whiz-bang action fun of a 1950s comic book or monster movie.

The humor in the movie is designed to appeal on several different levels, including its appeal to a college audience because of the previous roles of some of the actors that make up the cast. “Monsters” seems to have been written with the aim of creating a movie that contains a little something for all ages, and, in achieving this objective, the movie is a complete success.

As the movie opens, average woman Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is preparing for her wedding to local jerk weatherman Derek (Paul Rudd). Since it’s not that kind of movie, a radioactive meteor naturally falls on Susan and she promptly grows almost fifty feet tall and gains silver hair in one of many instances of homage to classic monster movie tropes.

Susan is imprisoned with other monsters, including a giant blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogan), a brilliant cockroach-headed scientist appropriately named Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a fish-ape hybrid named The Missing Link (Will Arnett), and a taciturn giant grub called Insectosaurus (Conrad Vernon in a not-quite-speaking role).

Naturally, a mad alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) shows up to steal the meteorite’s precious material, and the President (brilliantly played by Stephen Colbert) agrees to free the monsters if they fight off the alien menace.

All of the above occurs in approximately the first 25 minutes of the film, and that’s it for plot points. No real attempt at any kind of ‘it’s okay to be different’ or ‘true love overcomes all adversity’ message here, just a solid hour or so of monsters and aliens fighting on earth, in space, and with lots and lots of explosions.

Also included are references to virtually every science-fiction trope to come out in the last fifty years, including a particularly brilliant “E.T.” reference that you’ll have to see to believe. Top it all off with a terrifically chaotic final battle sequence worth multiple looks on its own, and the movie seems to deliver on virtually every front.

In 3D animated films like this, the quality of voice-acting is becoming more and more important, and “Monsters” delivers, with Seth Rogan’s B.O.B. receiving most of the punch lines and Rainn Wilson stealing the show as Gallaxhar in the single best ‘alien from nowhere’ bad-guy role I’ve ever seen. Other characters are voiced at least adequately, with even the minor roles providing the necessary flavor for humans (who, in a movie like this one, aren’t all that important anyway).

One complaint is the declining usage of 3D as the movie progresses. Normally I wouldn’t complain about this, but if a movie is going to advertise the usage of 3D as one of its big selling points, it’s kind of a bummer when the movie virtually abandons its usage at about the halfway mark.

Also notable is the lack of any real back-story to the otherwise amusingly varied cast members, although this could also fall under the ‘who cares about plot, let’s have monsters fighting aliens!’ umbrella under which the movie operates.

All in all, and as long as you don’t go into the theater expecting anything more than the title suggests, “Monsters” is a terrific little movie that more than delivers on its premise and provides some of the most brilliantly kitschy moments of any movie this year.

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to

With environmental concerns pushing student organizations to ‘go green’ and a boom of networking technology offering more varied options for efficiency and ease of communication among organizations, Emporia State’s Associated Student Government is attempting to kill two birds with one stone.

ASG will switch from a primarily paper-based communication system with the various Recognized Student Organizations to an online networking system called OrgSync.

“We had the chance to switch to a paper-free online system, which would provide a networking opportunity as well as a place we could put all the paperwork of ASG on,” said Sarah Schulte, senior microbial and cellular biology major and vice president of ASG. “I think this will make things a lot easier for ASG, especially for communicating with RSOs.”

According to the OrgSync Web site, the system provides unlimited user accounts, data storage and bandwidth for its users (primarily college and business organizations) to have a networking site dedicated to information exchange. OrgSync also offers efficient services for organizations traditionally mired in paperwork.

In addition to the environmental benefits, OrgSync’s benefits also include the efficiency of online networking.

“The real benefit is providing a networking opportunity both for each individual RSO and for better communication between RSOs,” Schulte said. “Papers always get lost, or got turned in to the wrong person, or there was miscommunication about what needed to be filled out and when or by whom, whereas now we can do all this back-and-forth instantaneously instead of taking a few weeks going between people with the paper route.”

Schulte said she believes that the benefits of switching to a paper-free system look even better when the number of RSOs that ASG deals with is taken into account.

“There’s 140 plus organizations we deal with and each one has to fill out at least one form every year, but at the same time, we then have to send out additional forms, at least two reminders per group,” Schulte said. “We also have to release forms and notifications, all sorts of things, so there’s a lot of paper running through the entire process to make sure everyone gets notified, whereas we can now just do all of that online.”

For ASG, another expected benefit of going paperless is a reduction in turnaround time and missed deadlines.

“We’re requiring that at least one member of every RSO be on OrgSync who is responsible for the organization and who sets up contact information for everyone, so that should make things go a lot smoother,” Schulte said. “OrgSync is now automatic, and has deadlines that everything has to be submitted by or their extension is dropped, and the organization loses its recognized status… we’ll have to sort things out a lot less.”

Reaction from RSOs to the new switch is mixed and some believe that the switch to a relatively new networking site is unnecessary.

“The new RSO system is not necessary, because I don’t think students should have to learn yet another new Web site,” said Zhaoguo Yu, business graduate student and president of the Chinese Student Association. “I think we can use the social networks like Facebook just as well and this new one is not as useful.”

Other reactions to the change have been positive, with some saying that they believe there will be an increase in efficiency.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea and it will be successful,” said Turki Al-Zahrani, IDT graduate student and president of the International Club and Arabic Club. “In terms of making it easier to communicate, you’re not just saving papers and trees and so on, you’re actually making it easier to communicate through the web, so there’s no need to keep papers around, and plus you have an archive of information now.”

Schulte said that the Web site will not be the only way for students to find out information about ASG. However, only people involved in RSOs or ASG will normally have access to the exchanges on OrgSync.

“We’ll continue to update our bulletin boards and Web site and continue to put out paper notices and make sure the word gets out there about ASG,” Schulte said. “We’re not planning on having OrgSync as the sole means of communication for ASG, just as a way to make networking easier.”

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to

Fans of shows like Bravo’s “Top Chef” or FOX Network’s “Hell’s Kitchen” will soon have a chance to test their own culinary skills when the Union Activities Council and Sodexho host an on-campus competition inspired by “Top Chef’s” competitive format.

The idea for the event originally came about as part of a larger effort by UAC to come up with never-before-tried events that would involve the student body, said Chelsea Brown, sophomore health promotions major and UAC’s featured events committee chairperson.

“We wanted to do a smaller version of the show for ESU students… we were just coming up with lots of ideas for a competition and decided to go with this one,” Brown said. “We wanted to try something completely new, something we hadn’t ever attempted before.”

The event will be held in two stages. A qualifying round will create a pool of eligible contestants, who will then compete in the showdown at 7 p.m. April 13 in Webb Lecture Hall.

A Quick Fire Challenge will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 6 and 7 on the Memorial Union Main Street.

“This will help us to create the pool for the actual competition,” said Jeff McCullough, general manager for Sodexho at ESU.

At the Quick Fire challenge, which is open to all students, there will be a selection of culinary ingredients inside a closed booth. Students can pick up an entry sheet and attempt to identify the ingredients.

“After Friday, we will take the top 30 percent of scorers and from those people we’ll select the actual contestants for the Top Chef challenge,” McCullough said. “We’ll send an invitation out to the contestants and explain how the competition works.”

Contestants who make it to the second round will be given a list of ingredients, which will be provided on-site the day of the competition. Contestants will have the weekend to come up with ideas for recipes, presentation styles and any other ideas.

“At the actual competition, all (non-competing) students who show up will be given a ballot to vote for their favorite chef with, so it’s not strictly a culinary competition,” McCullough said. “Some of it is interaction with the students, and presentation style… things like that.”

There will also be a judging panel of professionals whose votes will comprise one-quarter of the voting power of the competition. Students’ votes will make up the other three-quarters of the total voting power. There is also an added incentive for students to vote on the competition.

“If you vote for the winning contestant, your ballot will be entered in a drawing for a prize from UAC,” McCullough said.

McCullough said he is excited about this event because he has past experience in the culinary arts.

“I actually used to be a culinary arts instructor for eight years (at Flint Hills Technical College), so this is really kind of up my alley,” McCullough said. “Our service staff is getting excited about it. I think we’re pretty excited about the format we have.”

Several years ago, ESU hosted a culinary competition, styled after the hit TV show “Iron Chef.”

“This is before my tenure, but we did have a competition here, which was our corporate chef inviting corporate chefs from some of the other local colleges and just competing here on campus,” McCullough said. “That was probably five or six years ago.”

However, this competition takes a more student-oriented approach.

“It’s really to try to find the student talent out there on campus,” McCullough said. “I think we will be surprised at the level of culinary expertise among the students here on campus, they just never get the chance to use it or show it off.”

McCullough also said that, with an increased focus on culinary arts, it is important for students to embrace cooking skills now more than ever.

“It’s a big push in society now, with all the cooking shows, Food Network and all the awareness about proper nutrition and techniques for cooking,” McCullough said. “It’s a survival skill for college students, so I think that that perspective should be very exciting to all the students on campus.”

Working with Sodexho, the Featured Events Committee said they are working hard to get ready for the competition, including deciding on ingredients and themes, as well as how to set up the booths for the Quick Fire preliminaries on Thursday and Friday of next week.

“We’re all really excited to see this happen,” Brown said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Zachary Hughes/The Bulletin

Send article as PDF to