For many students, it can take months of adjusting to college life before getting involved in anything. Miles Sisk, on the other hand, started his work with the ASUO three months before his freshman year started.

“I moved to Eugene early and I was living off-campus and I knew I wanted to get involved in student government,” said Sisk, now a junior and political science major. “So I contacted the people who were in the (executive branch) at the time and I said ‘Hey, what can I start doing to help?’”

Sisk began as an intern, but by the end of his freshman year had been appointed to Senate Seat 9. He then ran for Senate Seat 6, on the EMU board, which is the seat he currently holds.

“I think it’s great to have someone on Senate who works in the EMU. He deals with students every day,” Senator Francisco Morales-O’Connor said about Sisk.

Sisk has a fond and well-established relationship with the EMU, a building that many on campus see as utilitarian, or simply just there. However, to the VP and chair of the EMU Board, it’s the people that make the Student Union special to him.

“It’s just filled with very awesome people that I really enjoy being around all the time, that are extremely helpful, that like to see students succeed,” Sisk said. “I knew that this was where I wanted to spend a lot of my time throughout my college career.”

He began work in the EMU in the scheduling office as a freshman. In addition to his place on the board, Sisk also holds the position of building service coordinator. What that means is that he’s in charge on the weekends. As far as the renovation goes, it hasn’t done much but make his job a little easier. Unsurprisingly, the over 100 doors that needed locking after hours has been reduced dramatically since the demolition began.

Nevertheless, his duties as Senate VP have not been diminished in any degree. Sisk is responsible for leading Senate meetings in the absence of Senate President Rebecca Rhodes, he keeps track of minutes and oversees personnel hiring and also works closely with the ombudsperson to ensure senators are fulfilling their duties.

Current ombudsperson Samantha Cohen, who began work with Sisk spring term, commented on working with him, “I didn’t know him last year, but I always appreciated how honest he was in meetings, but also how friendly.”

Looking ahead, Sisk is eager to improve ASUO’s image and relationship with the student body. He hopes to re-brand the association to increase awareness as well as to recruit dedicated students to fill positions in the Senate with the enthusiasm and commitment they require.

“We are making big decisions here. We’re deciding how student dollars are being used, and we can make decisions that have a huge positive impact on students’ lives  or we can make decisions that don’t,” Sisk said. “So that’s a challenge that we have to face. It’s really just making sure that we have our own members really paying attention to that and really caring about that.”

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Resolutions were the source of speeches at last night’s Senate meeting. In particular, the resolution regarding gender-inclusive bathrooms provoked eloquent testimonies and a spirit of community among speakers and Senate members alike.

The resolution is focusing on creating safe spaces for all University of Oregon students to tend to their needs regardless of conformity to a male or female gender binary. The group aims to eventually have a gender-inclusive bathroom in every building on campus, and include signs directing people to both gendered and gender-inclusive bathrooms.

The Senate rallied in full support of the action.

“Everyone deserves the right to have a safe space to take care of themselves,” ombudsperson Samantha Cohen said. She went on to discuss how an unspecified group was misusing the only gender-inclusive bathroom in MacArthur Court earlier that day and condemned the behavior as inappropriate and unacceptable.

Some senators, including Andrew Lubash, questioned whether the group, composed of members of LGBTQA, the Women’s Center and other such resources, are contacting other groups on campus to try to engage them in action. For example, the University Senate is in a more opportune position to enact change.

Later, Senate VP Miles Sisk advocated for the resolution championed by the Student Mental Health Association, which calls for emergency aid and resource numbers to be printed on the back of student ID cards. Sisk detailed rationales for these numbers; among obvious justifications like ease of access, it would be a helpful reference for international students used to different emergency numbers.

Both resolutions passed.

Special requests went fairly smoothly. Petitioners included the Black Student Union that received partial funding to attend the Nation BSU Conference in November. Divisi received funding for transportation to the West Coast A Cappella Showcase in Berkeley, California and Kultura Pilipina received money for their upcoming culture night.

No further word was given with regards to the blogs Sisk denounced as cyberbullying at last week’s meeting.

The Senate is still looking to hire a minute-taker and interviews for a Freshman Representative will be held soon, according to Senate President Rebecca Rhodes.

The ASUO Senate meets every Wednesday, starting at 7 p.m. in the Walnut Room in the EMU. More information can be found on the ASUO website.

Live coverage of Wednesday night’s ASUO Senate meeting

Agenda

Death, life and the joys of teenage confusion and angst – they’re themes we are all intimately familiar with and usually dread discussing, or worse, when they’re depicted in artsy, staged representations. However, the Oregon Contemporary Theater is featuring a play that manages, almost unbelievably, to present these ideas that are horrendously prone to clichés and after-school-special resolutions, in a work of original and dramatic near-genius.

I and You, written by Lauren Gunderson and directed by Craig Willis, strays far from a feel-good, triumph-of-the-will formula. Only two actors are featured throughout the play. Actress Liv Burns plays Caroline, a teenage girl struggling with a life-threatening disease, and Anthony (Jonathan Thompson), a vulnerable high school athlete who is attempting to work through a project on the writings of Walt Whitman. All the drama takes place in Caroline’s room, to which she is confined because of her illness.

Initially, the storyline seems to be looming dangerously close to a cliché, a guarded girl and a friendly but somewhat sensitive guy, about to be stuck in a room together for the next 80 minutes. But Caroline isn’t guarded because she’s had her heart stomped on by some dirtbag guy. She’s borne the weight of living a life spent staring death in the face and feeling obligated to be flourishing with youth at the same time.

And Anthony isn’t Andrew from The Breakfast Club whose dad won’t accept him if he fails. He enters the stage blazing with enthusiasm for Whitman’s poetry, and his persistence in making Caroline open up to him isn’t the sort that makes you go “aww” but rather strikes a chord with that part of us that knows exactly what it feels like to be on either end of the exchange.

Tensions are high at almost every point in the play, go figure when you’ve got an introverted, irate girl suddenly getting her inner sanctum invaded by an outgoing basketball player and poetry enthusiast. At times it can be exhausting (or annoying) as Caroline and Anthony’s walls of communication go up and down and back up with a vengeance. Nevertheless, there is something highly sympathetic about their relationship as it develops.

The two go from constantly being on opposite sides of the room to sitting together sharing their hopes and fears on Caroline’s bed, all to the soundtrack of Walt Whitman’s poetry. As they discover more about each other and delve into the minutiae of Whitman’s use of pronouns (specifically, the evolution of his usage of “I” and “you”), the many dimensions of these characters are revealed to the audience as well. They are as messed-up, beautiful and nuanced as real people. And as life often goes, the play ends with a twist you can’t see coming, but makes a strange kind of sense.

Overall, I and You is a captivating work, and the OCT has produced a magnificent show under the direction of Craig Willis and with the talents of Burns and Thompson. The show will be running until Nov. 15 at the OCT Theatre at 194 W. Broadway. Student discounts are available for tickets. Learn more at the website.

Follow Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @ka_tornay

At tonight’s Associated Students of University of Oregon meeting, Senate Vice President Miles Sisk offered an ultimatum.

Senate President Rebecca Rhodes had broached the subject earlier of personal attacks on Senate members through social media. This has been a problem in the past and is continuing with this year’s Senate. Members referred to the social media activity as cyber-bullying.

Senate VP Miles Sisk expressed his dismay at the continuation of such behavior and has no plans to allow it to continue.

“Last year there was an hour-long closed discussion of this matter… What is happening on these blogs is cyber-bullying and I believe that this is a crime. The people running these blogs are criminals,” Sisk said. “Frankly, I’m done with it.”

Sisk went on to announce that he will be taking firm action to ensure that the blogs are terminated.

“In response to this, I have communicated with a friend of mine. He has acquired the IP addresses of those blogs. If these blogs are not shut down within the next 48 hours I am turning these in to the administration. They are able to connect these IP addresses to the people running them.”

The discussion was kept short in hopes that the situation will be brought under control quickly.

Senate President Rhodes communicated her distaste for the situation, calling the behavior, “Ridiculous, pathetic, and completely unacceptable.”

Live coverage of Wednesday night’s ASUO Senate meeting

Senate Agenda

University Theatre is bringing a diverse portfolio of plays to campus this year. The fall features a work founded on the trials and tribulations of love. A modern and abstract piece highlights the winter. The spring term will begin with the story of a climate scientist that poses grave ecological questions and will conclude with a farcical tale of mistaken identities.

University Theatre, the premier performance sector of the University of Oregon’s Department of Theatre Arts, puts on several productions every year that showcase the talent of university students both within the Theatre Arts department and the community. This year’s schedule includes four plays and a faculty dance concert. Here’s a look at what the University Theatre has to offer for the 2014-2015 season.

First on the agenda is John Jory’s stage adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Countless adaptations of the classic Jane Austen novel exist, as director Michael Malik Najjar can attest. The story holds special significance to Najjar, as a vintage edition of the book was the first gift he gave his wife. Upon attending a number of stage variations of the play, Najjar settled on Jory’s rendition of the play because “it highlights all the best parts of the novel. Certain versions were extremely long, over 400 pages…this one cuts away a lot of the fat.” The production, while retaining the original dialogue, will translate the immutable charm of Austen’s original work to a modern audience. Pride and Prejudice will be showing Nov. 7-22.

Winter term will feature contemporary playwright Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information directed by department head John Schmor. The play, a free-form and abstract work, features a cast of more than 100 characters to be played by a dozen actors and no cohesive plot. Love and Information uses fragmented scenes to raise questions about love and identity in a shifting digital world. Schmor remains confident that the play will be well received on the UO campus.

“A college audience is gonna get it right away,” Schmor said. “This generation is really the first to be fully comfortable in the social media world and understanding the weird separation of love and information.”

Love and Information will be performed in the Hope Theatre Jan. 22-Feb. 1.

Dr. Theresa May will direct Sila: An Arctic Tale, which will run during the spring 2015 term from Apr. 16 through the 26. Sila is the first installment of Montreal playwright Chantal Bilodeau’s Arctic Cycle series of eight plays, each focused on a different Arctic country where the changing climate can displace ecosystems and disrupt lifestyles. The particular work, set in Canada, weaves a story of conflicting interests of a climate scientist, an Inuit activist and her daughter, an Inuit elder, two Canadian Coast Guard officers and two polar bears as they struggle to coexist.

Finally, the year will end on a comical note with Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors directed by Joseph Gilg. It tells the story of two sets of twins separated at a young age, and the resulting confusion when they suddenly end up reuniting years later. This is Gilg’s first time directing a Shakespeare work with University Theatre and he is aiming for a modern and unique take. Comedy of Errors will be running May 22-Jun. 6.

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Strange dreamscapes, creatures without name, and dazzling contrasts in color and texture mark the newest exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art: “Awakening” by contemporary artist Ryo Toyonaga.

The collection is an assortment of Toyonaga’s art, inspired by recurring dreams and subconscious influence. The Barker Gallery of the JSMA is arranged with nineteen drawings and paintings of varying size, as well as multiple works of sculpture. Toyonaga’s sculptures are ceramic and papier maché, and he works primarily with sumi ink and acryclic in his two-dimensional art.

“He’s working with very opposite mediums here, but there’s a shared vernacular,” said exhibit curator Lawrence Fong to audience members of a staff preview on Friday.

Indeed, Toyonaga’s works are striking for much more than their demonstrative technical prowess, visually, they are captivating to say the least. He often relates his creative process to peering into an ocean (meaning his subconscious mind) and discovering the creatures that live there. Describing Toyonaga’s creatures is an almost impossible task, and really, letting the visuals speak for themselves is the only true way to do the art justice. There are some recurring elements, however; the shapes seem to reach out to the viewer with multiple strange appendages that make the painting or sculpture an amalgam of natural and bionic. Toyonaga’s ceramics include a variety of textures within one work. Meanwhile his paintings juxtapose his mysterious, visceral dream-creatures with elements of an urban infrastructure, usually set in the context of a vast landscape.

Toyonaga may be inspired by his subconscious mind, but it seems his environment plays some role in his creations. He grew up in Matsuyama, a coastal city in Japan, and moved to New York City in 1986. It doesn’t seem coincidental that cityscapes and water both have heavy presences in his acrylic works. From 1995 to 2003 he worked solely in sculpture at a secluded cabin in the Catskill Mountains called Red Kill studio. It was only in 2005 that Toyonaga began working with papier maché, and since 2010 he has worked with acrylics. The most recent work in the exhibit is from earlier this year.

“I don’t use any high-tech equipment. I just use my hands,” Toyonaga said at the preview. A shy and quiet man, he speaks very humbly about the origins of his art.

Fong, meanwhile, has no shortage of praise, regarding the scale on which most of his work is created in particular. “When you draw small, it’s easier to control what you’re doing. When you do something eight times bigger, it’s going to be harder. He can transform his ideas that way. It’s extraordinary talent.”

Members are invited to come view the exhibit or attend one of the monthly lectures or concerts built around it. Membership at JSMA is free for University of Oregon students, and allows for access to member receptions and events. In addition, any student with a membership is granted an alumni membership after graduation. “Awakening” will be open at the Schnitzer until January 4th, 2015.

While seeing a familiar, time-honored play can be great, it’s always worth discovering a new work, never-before witnessed by the public and performed in an intimate environment. This month, the Pocket Playhouse is offering such an experience with its production of “The Royal and the Zippo,” written by University of Oregon graduate student Jamie Nathan.

The Pocket Playhouse is one of campus’ best-known performing venues. For the most part, productions come directly from theater arts students. However, every year, the department offers any student on campus a chance to put on an original play through the New Voices competition. Scripts are submitted during the winter term and are reviewed by a committee of one faculty member, one graduate student and one undergraduate student. To be considered, a work has to be 45 minutes or less in duration and completely written by the student. This past spring term, Nathan’s “The Royal and the Zippo” was selected as the winner.

“I found out I won and I was amazed by it,” Nathan said. “When I got it back there were all these notes, like ‘We like your play but here’s what we suggest.’ I’ve never had that experience of actually getting to go back and rework and reform a script. It looks very different from the play I submitted, in a good way.”

Nathan did her undergraduate work at Eastern Washington University and taught drama in high and junior-high schools before she decided to return to school in 2008. She is now a second-year MFA student in theater arts.

The winners of New Voices are assigned a member of the faculty to direct the production and guide the writer through developing his or her script. Adjunct instructor Joseph Gilg volunteered to direct “The Royal and the Zippo.”

“It’s a fun play, not real serious,” Gilg says. “It’s about people maturing and moving on, not staying stuck in a rut.”

“The Royal and the Zippo” tells the story of a highly successful young adult fiction writer and her increasing frustration with her enthusiastic audience, who refuses to allow her to expand into other genres. In an act of defiance, she begins to kill off her main characters, at which point they appear onstage and argue for their lives. The idea first came to Nathan just before the release of the final Harry Potter book.

“We were doing improv at the high school one day and we were talking about who was she going to kill off in the last book. The whole kind of idea of characters pleading for their existence came up…you know, in a funny way. I thought there was something there,” Nathan said.

“It’s the same kind of thing with Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent, they’re super marketable but not necessarily high-quality fiction. I thought, what if these writers were really better than what they were writing but that’s all the public would allow them to write? What if they were stuck?”
“The Royal and the Zippo” will be performed in the Pocket Playhouse Theatre (Villard 102) Oct. 23-25 at 5 p.m., plus an additional 3 p.m., performance on Oct. 25 . The show is open to the public.

The University of Oregon’s theater department provides drama lovers with intricate, faculty-directed productions that take months of preparation. As a community, Eugene is no stranger to the theater and has a variety of theaters around town.

One of the oldest and most established venues is the Very Little Theatre. A volunteer-based operation, the VLT invites members of the community to get involved in all aspects of production from ushering to acting to stage crew. Tickets can be purchased at their box office—located at 2350 Hilyard Street—or online.

The next Very Little Theatre production, Private Eyes, is written by Steven Dietz and directed by Chris Pinto and runs Oct. 10-25. This comedic mystery leaves the audience to decide the true verdict of guilt or innocence in the twists and turns of love and betrayal.

Oregon Contemporary Theatre is another sophisticated stage in Eugene. The 2014-2015 season just kicked off with another Steven Dietz play, a comedy called Becky’s New Car. It will be running until Oct. 4, and then a comedy-drama called I and You by Lauren Gunderson will open on the Oct. 24.

In addition to volunteer openings in marketing and production, OCT offers an opportunity for script submissions. Its website (http://www.octheatre.org/) has more information. The theater is located at 193 W Broadway.

The Actors Cabaret of Eugene is a great source for frequent entertainment and hosts performances almost every weekend. Also run by volunteers, Actors Cabaret not only presents plays, but also offers acting lessons at the ACE Youth Academy.

ACE offers dinner-and-a-show packages for Friday and Saturday night performances, or brunch tickets for Sunday matinees. Currently running until Oct. 18 is a musical comedy called The Addams Family. ACE is located at 996 Willamette Street.

Finally, another great on-campus resource is the Pocket Playhouse, which seeks to provide all students with chances to experience theater in any capacity, regardless of prior experience. Run by students with some faculty supervision, the Pocket puts on about three or four shows per term. First up this season is a student-written piece called The Royal and the Zippo to be performed Oct. 23-25 in Villard Hall’s Robinson Theater.

Plays are never hard to find in Eugene, especially with knowledge of the right venues. Volunteers and a returning audience are what keep local theater flourishing, and that’s something from which the whole community can benefit.

Check out the map below for all the theaters in Eugene:

Follow Kaylee Tornay at @Ka_tornay