Fengyi Zhang is not sure how much longer he will be in America. He is a transfer student from Dalian, China, which is near the North Korean border. As global tensions rise in response to North Korea’s fervent displays of nuclear power, he spends each day questioning the fate of his hometown, dreading the news of nuclear escalation that would send him back to China.

“North Korea wants to use nuclear weapons,” Zhang said. “If that happens, my city will be in big trouble. If they have some problems, I think that I cannot be here … if things happen there, I do not have support, and my family might be needing me there.”

In the event of a nuclear war — regardless of which side China fights for — he claims his hometown will be prime real estate for civilian casualties. Should China move to aid or defend against North Korea, they will likely move through Dalian, a thriving port city, to reach the border. What’s more, its proximity to North Korea makes it vulnerable to becoming collateral damage during an assault.

Either way, this city is in the danger zone.

“(North Korea) is close, and if a war happens,” he said, “no matter which countries (it’s) between, it can cause lots of problems for my city. You can see a different country from across my river.”

Jane Cramer, an associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon, claims North Korea’s nuclear demonstrations are most likely theatrical in nature. According to her, Kim Jong Un’s mounting threats of nuclear display are a response to domestic resistance to his assumption of the dictatorship and an attempt to extort money from the Chinese government.

Should North Korea initiate a nuclear war, it would most likely collapse and  be consolidated into South Korea, according to her own studies. Because sharing a border with South Korea would mean sharing a border with an American ally, China is determined to maintain the stability of North Korea. Personally, she believes North Korea’s current nuclear threats are nothing more than their latest demand for money from China; however, she concedes that their true intent is impossible to determine, especially considering Kim Jong Un’s relative inexperience on the national stage.

Should nuclear tensions escalate, Zhang’s return to China is the last thing his family wants. Despite their constant reminders that he is safer in America, he is determined to return to protect his family should the need arise.

“If things happen badly,” he said, “they don’t want me to come back home. The more they don’t want me to go back, the more I want to go. I am the only son of my family. If my parents have something bad happen, I do not want to be away from them.”

His rationale for returning to China is strategic: His parents, who he currently believes are safe from harm, will most likely choose to remain living in Dalian, despite escalating military tension. If he believes their situation has become dangerous, he will return home to force their relocation.

“They think of me as the future,” he said of his parents. “They care about me more than themselves. If I come back home, they will have to move away from my hometown to keep me safe.”

For Zhang, returning to China would mean not only the loss of his close friends, girlfriend and social sphere here in America, but also the deterioration of his career prospects. In order to resume his education in China, he would have to return to high school to prepare to retake rigorous university entrance exams. Then, assuming he passes the exams, he would still be faced with the challenge of finding a college willing to accept him—  despite his nontraditional student background and advanced age.

“I think I would be really pissed off and really disappointed,” he said. “If I come back to China in this way, I have nothing. I have no degree. I have friends here, I have my girlfriend here — if I go back, I have just kind of lost everything.”

Cramer believes that although North Korea’s threats sound intimidating, Zhang’s family and educational goals are safe for now.

“It can feel big to us because it’s so outrageous,” she said. “They’re going to be very careful not to do anything to cause a war because a war is suicide for them.”

For now, Zhang will continue his studies in America, facing the future with an optimistic outlook.

“I really enjoy to spend time here,” he said. “I’ll just be positive and think it won’t happen.”

University of Oregon alum Alec Zimmerman went missing earlier this week in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, according to The Oregonian. She was last seen in the early morning on Tues., April 9, headed to meet a truck driver for transport from Buenos Aires to Peru.

Sunni Campbell, a friend of hers, told The Oregonian that Zimmerman had been checking in regularly with friends and family throughout her journey, leading them to suspect something was wrong when they hadn’t been contacted by her for an unusually long time.

Argentinian authorities claim record of Zimmerman entering the country on March 3 but have no record of her movement up to Fri., April 12. Four days have passed since anyone has seen or heard from her.

Upon graduating from the UO, she spent over a year living in Ecuador and established herself as a vigilant, adept traveler, according to Campbell. In an email to her mother, she claimed that Angel, the truck driver with whom she was scheduled to travel to Peru, had seemed to be a “grandfatherly” type.

Zimmerman’s father will fly to Argentina on Monday to participate in the missing person’s search. Anyone with information about her whereabouts is asked to contact Argentinian authorities or the FBI.

Garrett West sees the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon as the best of two worlds. According to him, small class sizes and a rigorous academic program give the honors college the intimate appeal of a prestigious private school, while its placement within a large university provides students with a variety of academic, social and extracurricular opportunities often absent in academically focused institutions. For him, this duality made all the difference in the process of evaluating potential colleges.

“I love that the honors college has an intensive and demanding curriculum and is nestled within a flagship university,” West said. “The reason I chose the University of Oregon was because of the honors college’s ability to offer a valuable education while allowing its students to study in any department that we wished. To me, this represents an education rich both in depth and in broadness.”

It was West’s firm belief in the prowess of the honors college that drove him to campaign for an executive position this spring in the Clark Honors College Student Association — the student organization affiliated with enhancing the student aspect of the honors college, specifically through providing opportunities for academic, social and community engagement.

West believes he understands the range of obstacles faced by students within the honors college and has developed the critical thinking skills and resource connections necessary to remedy them effectively. He served in a leadership position within the honors college for the last two years as the student representative for his graduating class in addition to transportation coordinator over the current academic year.

“There are a lot of things I’ve noticed as a student that people have been talking about improving for years and I really want to improve them,” West said. “I am proud to say that our CHCSA is one of the widest reaching, dedicated and impressive associations in the entire nation … I know of its strengths and intend to improve upon them, making it even better.”

Shortly after he declared his intent to run when his only position withdrew from the race. However, West’s official appointment as the college association’s president occurred at a weekly meeting on April 8 after a student courtesy vote, in which he went unopposed and secured his place as executive.

As president, he will devote himself to the oversight of approximately two dozen student officers; maintain close relationships with Honors College administrators, faculty, staff and alumni; coordinate the almost 100 social, academic and service events hosted by the Clark Honors College Association throughout the year as well as coordinate events with other student associations and aid in the management of student outreach.

In his own words, “It’s a really, really big job.”

“I knew that if I decided to run I would be able to affect change in the lives of students in the honors college,” West said. “I want to make sure that students who choose to enroll in the honors college have the services they need, the programs they deserve and that Chapman Hall feels like a second home.”

West’s primary agenda is to expand upon existing honors college resources and programs, improving their efficiency, making them more accessible to students and in some cases reviving them from the dead.

He hopes to utilize the connections and expertise of honors college professors, alumni and upperclassmen by creating an internship bank in which students could easily access opportunities for professional advancement.

Michael Sugar, outgoing president of the CHCSA, believes in the potential of the programs that West plans to initialize to enhance the reputation of the honors college. Sugar is optimistic about West’s ability to perpetuate the honors college’s legacy of excellence that he has worked hard to uphold in his term as president.

“I feel like he has a vision for the future, which is the strongest of any student in the honors college,” Sugar said of West. “Garrett has a lot that he wants to do and I think that he’s going to do it extremely well.”

This is the Emerald with live coverage of the ASUO presidential debate in the Fishbowl of the Erb Memorial Union. Lamar Wise and Sam Dotters-Katz face off in a series of questions hosted by Emerald news reporter Ian Campbell. Which candidate will get your vote? Hopefully this debate will help you decide.

When Tony Glausi thinks about the future he doesn’t envision riches, fancy cars or a mansion in Beverly Hills. In fact, he doesn’t have much of a plan for himself beyond finishing graduate school. Occasionally he ponders becoming a composer, a professor or a wandering artist. Honestly, Glausi says, his number one ambition is just to keep grooving with jazz music.

“For musicians I think it’s kind of weird because there’s no specific thing that you do after school, you just graduate and sort of get gigs if you try hard enough,” Glausi said. “If I had nothing else better to do, I’d just travel the world and play, and make a net loss of money.”

Now a freshman at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, Glausi began his music career playing piano as a child. At the age of 10, he began taking trumpet lessons, learning the ropes of the brass instrument quickly thanks to his background in piano.

Over the years, Glausi’s aptitude and passion for trumpet increased with lessons and exposure to jazz music, however, it wasn’t until high school — where he won the Oregon state trumpet solo competition both his sophomore and senior years — that he decided to professionally pursue his musical inclinations.

“Although I always had a knack for music and a like for music it was never something that was so fun or exciting that I thought ‘wow this is for sure what I’m going to do’ until my senior year in high school,” Glausi said. “It was a handful of really, really successful gigs that I got to play that I really enjoyed that made me think, ‘Wow that was so fun, that was awesome, this is what I want to do.’”

As a jazz studies major, Glausi participates in the Oregon Jazz Ensemble as well as a small jazz ensemble in the music school. He also heads a group of musicians and participates in a friend’s group. Glausi’s ideal jam session is in the intimate setting of a relaxed jazz group in which each individual builds on the creativity of others and unintended accidents often inspire the improvisation of a whole new song.

“My ideal setting is just a standard quintet. There’s just a total unique vibe, setting and groove,” he said. “There’s a crucial reliance on everyone else … If those guys aren’t solid, then you’re not solid. It’s totally a group effort.”

Despite his preference for a team dynamic, Glausi has recently gained acclaim on a national level as a solo jazz trumpeter. In mid-May, Glausi took third place in the National Trumpet Competition hosted by George Mason University in Farifax, Va. To qualify for the tournament, Glausi submitted a video of his trumpet performance. He was then chosen as one of 12 applicants nationwide — ranging from high school to graduate students — to participate in the jazz division of the trumpet competition at George Mason. Of those 12, Glausi made it into the final round of competition and was awarded third place.

“It was a good experience. It was fun, I got to meet people,” Glausi said.

Regardless of his recent achievements, Glausi maintains a humble mindset, recognizing that his success depends upon the specific preferences of competition judges.

“It’s totally subjective. Those five people thought I got third place, cool — another five people could have thought I deserved 12th,” Glausi said. “It’s art and everyone has their own opinion.”

Because of the inconsistency in judging musical performances, Glausi sees competitions as more of a fun way to gain experience than a serious indication of his musical progress, a view shared by his musical adviser and trumpet professor Brian McWhorter.

Although Glausi is still in the preliminary stages of his jazz education at the UO, McWhorter believes that regardless of the career path his student chooses to pursue after college he has the potential to become a driving force in the trumpet world.

“Competitions are more like chances to play, chances to meet more people in the future and just to kind of gauge how it will feel in the real world,” McWhorter said. “The main thing is that Tony shows all of the potential for being an evocative artist when he leaves, in the field of jazz and the field of music and the field of trumpet. That for me is way more important.”

Mattilda Berstein Sycamore doesn’t like to be called gay. Instead, she prefers the term queer – a word that she believe carries a stronger connotation of the kind of all around liberal defiance she hopes to embody.

Sycamore, a queer activist and author based out of Seattle grew up in Washington, D.C. in an assimilated upper middle class Jewish family. She was sexually abused by her parents at a young age, but her parents were able to hide the abuse through a veneer of their outward success. She felt pressure to beat her parents’ torment through educational accomplishment and eventually landed herself at Brown University. Staying only a year, she realized academia wasn’t the place to express herself and moved to San Francisco in the early ’90s to live among “radical queers and direct-action activists and freaks and outsiders and sluts and whores and transformative radical politics on the streets of San Francisco.”

She will be on campus to read and sign her most recent book, “The End of San Francisco”. The reading will take place on Thursday, April 4, in the Ben Linder room of the Erb Memorial Union at 6 p.m.

So, did you start your work around the gay rights agenda in San Francisco?

Yeah, when I first arrived in San Francisco in the early ‘90s I guess that’s where I first was involved in ACT UP in the early ‘90s, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. You know, that was a radical, direct-action activist group centered around challenging the government’s role in facilitating the deaths of so many queer people and others due to aids. ACT UP in San Francisco at that time centered around universal healthcare and prisoners with AIDS, women with AIDS and needle exchange. The term “gay” to me has become such a normative term based on accessing straight privilege that it’s a term I would reject. I am in favor of “queer,” which is a more liberatory, fluid and transformative category based on challenging all hierarchical norms and creating something defiant and transgressive and challenging the status quo and creating our own way of living with and loving and taking care of one another.

What do you personally hope to prove or facilitate through your writing and your artwork?

For me, especially writing – but, you know, all forms of art – have sort of been the one thing that I have had access to in order to express myself and the world that means something to me. So, really I write in order to stay alive. It’s the way that I can make sense of the world and its contradictions and express the complications and vulnerability and histories. The book in particular — “The End of San Francisco” — it’s an emotional history. I’m talking about the people and places and moments of loss and connections and fear and transformations that have sort of made and unmade me. That’s why I write, in order to express contradictions and complications and intimacies that I experience in the world. Usually, these are worlds that are not really allowed to exist in most media outlets.

Do you think that there is a significant difference in queer lifestyle between the early ’90s and today?

Coming of age then and moving to San Francisco and living in a radical outside culture of queers and freaks definitely gave me a certain kind of lens that I think doesn’t quite exist in the same way now, just in terms of the possibility for living outside of straight or gay normalcy and trying to challenge convention and the limitations of the world around us and to create something else. There was a little bit more possibility in certain ways, but at the same time it was a really desperate time because everywhere around us we could see people dying of AIDS and drug addiction and suicide. I would find out about elders, like artists or activists or writers that I respected mostly in obituaries, or I would go to a movie by a director and think “wow, that was amazing,” and then within two years they had died of AIDS. In that sense, it was a very desperate time. In the book I’m really resisting nostalgia because I think that nostalgia has a certain kind of violence because it sort of creates the false idea of some sort of golden age, and I don’t think that we really have golden ages, I think we need to make that in the moment we exist – whenever that is. There are different possibilities and different limitations at different times, and the important thing is to find a way to exist in challenging and comforting ways at the same time.

By sharing your memoir, what kind of an impact do you hope to make, specifically on a college age audience here at the University of Oregon?

I think it’s interesting. I did an event in Portland and afterwards a few people came up to me and kept telling me how important they thought that my book would be for youth in particular — you know, teenagers and people in their early twenties. The book is really vulnerable, you know? I’m challenging the conventions of a memoir – I think “memoir” kind of creates a kind of false simplicity to peoples lives – and for me I don’t want to follow that tidy, linear narrative. Instead, the book is kind of everywhere at once. I’m talking about drug culture and I’m talking about club culture and I’m talking about sex work and I’m talking about activism and I’m talking about surviving sexual abuse. The book starts in my childhood, but I think the formative moments of the book are starting in the early ’90s. To me, the early ‘90s weren’t that long ago, but I realize that for people who were born in the early ‘90s the kinds of activism and relationships and community building that existed then – that may or may not exist now – this provides a very unique way of really looking at that time period, not in an analytical or theoretical way, but actually through talking about relationships and community building and loss, all at once.

The University of Oregon’s Nu chapter of international music fraternity Mu Phi Epsilon will host a benefit concert at Emmaus Lutheran Church at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 4.

The proceeds of the $10-per-ticket benefit will facilitate the attendance of a high school student at the UO Concert Band Camp this summer. The co-ed fraternity — composed of music students at a variety of educational levels representing an assortment of instruments — views service opportunities, such as benefit concerts, as a way to give back to the community by utilizing their musical talent.

“The aim of Mu Phi Epsilon is to promote musicianship, scholarship, therapy and education with an emphasis on service through music,” Nu chapter President Grace Ho said. “We wanted to raise money for a good cause, and this is something that we can believe in. We can believe in a person, and it is something that the community can get behind as well.”

The concert will showcase individual performances from eight of Mu Phi Epsilon’s top music performers playing a broad range of instruments from violin to percussion. The organization hopes to raise at least 600 dollars, which is the approximate cost of sending one student to the six-day camp. According to Ho, the scholarship will provide an important opportunity to a deserving high school student in the midst of funding cuts to the arts in public education, especially in Oregon.

“We are looking to support someone who really needs it. They’re cutting down on funding for music education in public schools, so if a school doesn’t have a strong program, then it would be nice to provide a musician from that school with this opportunity,” she said.

Ho believes that events like the UO Concert Band Camp can make a significant impact in performance of aspiring young musicians.

“It’s really great to be in an environment where you have this intensity where all you do is really live and breathe music. You’re around people who are the same as you and it’s a really inspiring experience,” Ho said. “It’s a great opportunity to really make a lot of improvement in one week.”

After the concert, the Nu chapter’s primary objective is to choose a scholarship recipient. Interested high school candidates will apply for the scholarship electronically by the end of May by submitting both a video performance of their chosen instrument and a testimonial with responses to questions about their future musical aspirations. According to Ho, the candidate will be selected based not only on their need and performance ability, but also according to their creativity.

“As musicians, it’s important that we can show our personality, not just hide behind our instruments,” she said. “We really want to get to know the applicants and a video allows them an opportunity to show their personality.”

Thursday’s benefit concert is the Nu chapter’s inaugural attempt at providing scholarships for attendance at the UO Concert Band Camp. Although the group is focused on providing funding for only one student this year, they are optimistic that Thursday’s event will provide the success necessary to continue scholarship endeavors in the future.

“If we are able to raise enough money, it opens the possibility of creating a fund to continue this scholarship effort in the future, or even be able to sponsor more than one kid this year,” Ho said.

“Chef” shows up to Matthew Knight Arena two hours before a basketball game starts, standing before closed doors with fellow members of the Pit Crew. He waits for admission into the holy temple of Oregon’s indoor sports and as the doors open, he dawns his toque and gets down to business. For the hour leading to tipoff, Chef is busy with his pregame duties: handing out free gear to early birds, preparing signs to distract the other team’s players, passing out pamphlets defaming the opponents and dancing to tunes played by the pep band.

It’s eight minutes to tipoff and, in culmination of the pregame ritual, Chef and his fellow fans rush the tunnel to the University of Oregon locker room, where they shout the lyrics to school pride songs and jostle each other to get excited. Chef stands in their midst, leading chants and jumping up and down as he yells at the Pit Crew to “pump it up.” As players stream out of the locker room, Chef and his compatriots high-five their favorite athletes, offering final words of encouragement before the game begins.

Welcome to a game night in the life of Cody Karlin — the infamous “Chef” of the student section and Pit Crew co-director for men’s basketball events.

Karlin has always been a sports fan.

In high school, he was captain of the student cheering section and won the title of “Most Spirited” in his senior class. Although he’s been a Duck fan since the moment he decided to attend the university, Karlin’s notoriety in the campus student section began in earnest last year when he decided to dress up for a basketball game. His costume of choice: a black apron with a neon “O” one of his friends had given him and a matching chef’s hat — the signature toque — he found on a whim at the Duck Store.

“I got those, and I wore them to a game one time, and it was fun,” Karlin said. “So, I just kept doing it. It stuck, and this year, I’ve done it at all women’s volleyball games and men’s basketball games.”

When he’s not attending sporting events or Pit Crew planning meetings, Karlin spends his free time playing sports, serving as the philanthropy chairman for Alpha Epsilon Pi and cooking. His participation in collegiate leadership positions has inspired him to pursue an education in public relations, a degree he hopes will secure him an occupation in the events planning and management industry he’s acquired a knack for through his work for the Pit Crew.

After getting to know some of the organization, Karlin decided his place as a fan was as part of the Pit Crew Administration Board, where he would help coordinate student participation in sporting events.

“I’ve always been a huge sports fan. I’m passionate about a lot of things, and I like to yell,” he said. “And this is a great place to do that.”

According to Karlin, this year’s Pit Crew is much more organized and expansive than in the past. The organization has an official president, vice president, men’s and women’s sports directors in addition to directors for every individual sport. It’s a transformation from last year’s crew, which he describes as having fewer administration positions.

Karlin’s role on the Pit Crew is as one of three directors for men’s basketball. He says one of the most important parts of his job is helping promote the publicity he believes UO student athletes deserve.

“We want these athletes to be recognized and we want people to go and see that (games are) fun,” he said. “Especially because tickets are free anyway, so if you’re not going and you’re not checking it out it’s really just a waste of money.”

Pit Crew member and sophomore Brianna Case is inspired by Karlin’s dedication to the basketball team and to the student section.

“He’s in control and (is) the motivation for everybody,” she said. “He gets the chants going and gets us all rallied up. I’ve been to every game, and he’s been there, too. He gets us fired up … It’s awesome.”

On days when sunshine dares pierce the haze of Eugene’s grey skies, you’ll find Sydney Talbott outside. Like most University of Oregon students, she takes advantage of each second of vitamin D afforded by the Pacific Northwest. However, unlike most students, her preferred method of outdoor entertainment is spent suspended off of the ground, barefoot, using her toes for balance while shimmying across two inches of flat, semi-taut nylon webbing, practicing a sport called slacklining.

A slackline is defined as “a cable (as in a lumbering operation) suspended slackly between spar trees and adapted especially to yarding downhill.” In the rapidly growing balance sport, nylon slacklines, ranging in their elasticity and width, are strung between trees or other vertical objects and walked upon in a manner similar to tightrope walking for meditation, physical and mental training purposes.

“It’s super fun,” Talbott said. “It’s exercising without really noticing it. A good way to get outside to do something new, meet new people — and it’s relatively simple.”

Within five minutes of stringing up the line that she received as a Christmas present from her parents, she attracts a conglomeration of spectators. Close friends, familiar faces and first time strangers gather around her line to watch, cheer and try a turn for themselves.

“A lot of people like to just come up and try it out,” she said. “It’s really funny, but I feel like I’ve met more people slacklining than going to class.”

She was drawn in to the sport only a few months ago. As an incoming freshman from Louisianna, slacklining wasn’t something she’d ever heard of before coming to the UO. After meeting fellow freshman Ian Shapen fall term and trying the sport for the first time, she was hooked.

The first time she tried, Talbott could only walk two or three steps at a time before falling off. Determined to make progress, she spent an entire weekend discovering her unique walking technique and making it a few steps farther each time.

A term and a half later, she can make it across the line easily and is working on her ability to sit and stand without falling off, spinning and balancing tricks.

Slacklining holds a special appeal for her in its ability to make her feel both mentally and physically balanced. A self-proclaimed klutz, she says that balancing on the line has an unusual ability to make her feel graceful and centered.

“It totally centers you,” she said. “You figure out how your body is positioned. You’ve got to find your center of balance and totally be in tune.”

Both she and Shapen say slacklining is an individual sport in the aspect that everyone who tries it has their own approach and style.

For example, Talbott prefers to walk barefoot, whereas Shapen wears his shoes. She describes her style as “static” — meaning she prefers balancing tricks and maintaining self control — as compared to Shapen, who practices a more “dynamic” method, including jumps and more explosive tricks.

“I like it just because it’s fun,” Shapen said, “I get to exercise, I get to jump around and stuff, and it’s a nice conversation piece.”

Regardless of their difference in styles, both enjoy the group dynamic that comes out of practicing with their friends and introducing their sport to new people.  As more onlookers are drawn in to the student slacklining community, Talbott, Shapen and the other regulars hope to expand their gear repertoire, adding more lines for the group to practice on and investing in harnesses that would allow them to safely try their hand at “high lining”  in the tree tops.

In the meantime, you’ll find them in their usual spot on sunny days — suspended between the trees behind the sand volleyball pit next to Carson — cheering, joking and encouraging participation.

“We love having people out here. We definitely encourage it,” Talbott said. “You have to jump in, you have to try it. It’s so much fun.”

Taylor Hacmac thought she knew all about Christian ministry groups. They were a weird, pushy, hypocritical and condemning inside group — something that she had no desire to participate in. At least, that’s what she thought before she started college at the University of Oregon and discovered a network of friendship and support at the Collegiate Christian Fellowship, a student branch of the First Baptist Church of Eugene.

“This was one of the first campus ministries I gave a chance,” Hacmac said of CCF. “It wasn’t until I started talking to the people at church that I realized there was something different about their hearts. They wanted to get to know me, who I really was, and not just to convert me.”

Four years later, after graduating from the Family and Human Services department at the UO and becoming a Christian herself, Hacmac still actively participates in the group that changed her opinion of Christianity, hoping to help debunk the Christian stereotype for others skeptical of the religion as well. As co-director of the Fellowship’s Outreach Team, Hacmac and her team members work to spread love in the community around them, performing random acts of kindness, no strings attached.

“I was nervous at first because I didn’t want students to think I was trying to preach at them or push my beliefs down their throat,” Hacmac said about serving as part of the Outreach Team. “I just wanted to be an example of Jesus’ love without them feeling like there is a catch. I love the smaller outreach events because we get to love on people in practical ways, and if they are curious as to why, then I can talk about the God that sparked my curiosity years ago.”

Among the outreach efforts offered by CCF are collecting and making food for Eugene’s hungry neighborhood beautification and offering pick-me-ups for sleep-deprived students. Each Monday in an event called “Bikes and Burritos,” church members and community members gather at the Alpha Omega house (a live-in house for male members of the CCF) to assemble burritos and distribute them to Eugene’s homeless. Throughout the fall, the group hosts “Bake and Rake” volunteer days where they distribute baked goods to houses in surrounding neighborhoods and offer their yardwork services.

CCF’s ministry extends to campus as well. Each term on the Friday of architecture final review week, the outreach team invades Lawrence Hall with platters of brownies to cheer up overworked art and architecture students. In addition, every Friday the group stands outside the AO house (behind Taylor’s Bar on Kincaid Street) and offers free coffee, hot chocolate and tea to the passerby — a ritual they will extend to an everyday routine on Finals week in an attempt to help students finish the term strong.

For Keely O’Brien, a brownie recipient during architecture’s final review week, the CCF’s outreach efforts don’t seem like an overbearing attempt to convert, but just a friendly gesture from some strangers.

“It was awesome,” O’Brien said of receiving a free brownie after having spent 10 hours straight in her architecture studio. “I just thought it was cool that they were giving us food. It didn’t really seem like they had much of an agenda behind it.”

In addition to community outreach, the CCF hosts almost daily community get togethers and weekly Sunday night worship services. Although communal gatherings are geared specifically toward those looking to grow in the Christian faith, Outreach Team Co-Director Brandon Bray maintains that the CCF creates an atmosphere of acceptance, and that all events are open to absolutely anyone who wants to observe or participate.

“We’re open to anyone and everyone. We’re not Catholic, or Protestant … we’re nondenominational. There are no requirements to come check us out,” Bray said.

Students who stop by the AO house for a cup of coffee on their way to finals won’t get a lecture or a sermon — only a hot cup of caffeine and a friendly smile. It’s by serving the community with the intention of creating a better world — not for media attention or as a conversion effort — that Hacmac and the Outreach Team hope to create an alternative dialogue as to the nature of Christian ministry groups.

“A lot of stuff that the majority of Christians do goes unnoticed,” Bray said. “We’re kind of humbly serving people. We just want to help out and spread love.”