1. Zach Weeks seemed to be shout-
ing to himself in the Forum Theater
in the Radio-Television Building.
“Hold there. … Lock it,” he called
out.
With the house lights off in the the-
Many students drive around
campus with maybe a few text-
books bouncing around in the
back seat and a half-eaten sand-
wich on the dashboard.
On Tuesday, the sisters of Al-
pha Omicron Pi drove over to Kon-
neker Alumni Center with almost
1,000 cans filling the car, accord-
ing to the Student Alumni Board’s
Vice President of Student Out-
reach Allison Zullo.
Pack the Pantry, run by the Stu-
dent Alumni Board with partner-
ship from Greek life, was held at
the alumni center Tuesday, where
members of Greek life donated
5,774 cans of food to the Athens
County Food Pantry, according to
Amanda Moline, a junior studying
strategic communication and the
vice president of philanthropy for
the Student Alumni Board.
Pack the Pantry is an annual
food drive for all students to par-
ticipate in during Homecoming
Week, but this year was the first
time a separate food drive was
held for members of Greek life,
said Katrina Heilmeier, the asso-
ciate director of campus relations
and the advisor for the Student
Alumni Board. Greek life members
could donate from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
to participate in the competition.
As part of the Greek organiza-
tions’ Homecoming competition,
Heilmeier said the different teams
of fraternities and sororities —
each named after a young adult
book series — dropped off canned
food.
Tim Clark, a freshman studying
sport management, dropped off 15
cans in the box representing Beta
Theta Pi, the fraternity he’s rush-
ing. He said he knows a lot of other
members were dropping off cans,
too.
“I’m happy to do it. It’s for a
great cause,” Clark said.
The Greek teams competed to
bring in the most cans. The Stu-
dent Alumni Board has a plaque
University ups price to $50 for Halloween
guests staying overnight in residence halls
The best things in life may be
free, but not when it comes to having
a guest for Halloween in Athens.
The cost to have a guest stay in a
dorm room during Halloween week-
end has increased from $35 last year
to $50 this year, Pete Trentacoste,
Ohio University’s executive director
of Housing and Residence Life, said
in an email.
“The fee has not been increased
since 2012 and expenses were ex-
ceeding the revenues generated by
Halloween Guest registration,” Tren-
tacoste said in an email.
In 2012, OU raised the fee from
$25 to $35, which was the first time
the university had increased the cost
to stay on campus in four years, ac-
cording to a previous Post report.
The new 2015 rate is double what
guests paid in 2011 for the Halloween
weekend.
The fee for having guests stay in
the residence halls is used to fund
Alcohol.edu for students and to off-
set the cost of managing Halloween,
Trentacoste said in an email.
In past years, the university had
extra staff members on duty for a
majority of the weekend in the resi-
dence halls watching doors to make
sure no one snuck in, according to a
previous Post report.
Caleb Jacobs, a sophomore
studying biological science, was in-
spired to start a petition against the
increased fee upon hearing about
the $50 charge from his resident as-
sistant.
He said last year’s fee of $35 was
“pushing the limit.”
“Any other time of the year they
don’t charge us to have guests in
our room and we are already paying
thousands of dollars to stay in the
dorms,’” Jacobs said.
Jacobs plans on having at least
one friend come down for Hallow-
een, but he doesn’t “know if they are
going to be able to now because of
the increased fee.”
“They are driving already two
hours to come down here to have a
good time, not including paying for
gas money, food and everything else,
and they have to pay $50,” Jacobs
said. “It’s like a hotel or something.”
Trentacoste said in an email
that the university only charges for
guests who check in to the residence
halls on Halloween weekend, which
is normally about 80 percent of reg-
istered guests.
Jacobs said he is considering tak-
ing his petition to Housing and Resi-
dence Life and saying “look, this is
not fair and a lot of people agree.”
His petition, launched Monday
night, had nearly 150 signatures as
of press time.
Dozens of letters sent each month to
guardiansofstudentsarrestedinAthens
By JULIA FAIR
of The Post staff
By MEGAN HENRY
of The Post staff
Some students’ weekly call to
their parents or guardians can in-
volve discussions about classes,
significant others, internships and
sometimes an explanation of why
they were arrested.
Each month, the Athens Police
Department sends out about 30
“letters home” as part of its Let-
ters Home program that informs
parents or guardians of any ar-
rests their student may hold.
The program began in the early
1990s and continues today as a
way to inform parents.
“It was presumed at the time
that they were funding their chil-
dren’s education, … (and) they
might be engaging in high-risk
behavior that their parents might
want to know about,” Athens Po-
lice Chief Tom Pyle said.
When the program was initiated
by a previous police chief, Pyle said
most letters were sent out for al-
cohol violations, but sometimes it
would be due to a DUI or a serious
assault arrest.
Studentshangfromceilingstolight
uptheaters,setambienceofshows
By MERYL GOTTLIEB
The Post culture editor
Post photo by Patrick Connolly
Haleah DeMio, a freshman studying theater, works on hanging and focusing lights for an upcoming production of The Penelopiad in the Forum
Theater in the Radio-Television Building. The lighting grid is about 22 feet above the stage and houses more than 200 lights.
(continued on page four, LETTERS)
(continued on page four, MUSIC)
(continued on page four, CANS)
(continuedon page four,HALLOWEEN)
OU Greek life collects 5,774
cans to benefit Athens County
Food Pantry for competition
By MADELEINE PECK
For The Post
Make-shift
studioslet
localartists
record
tunesclose
toAthens
By ELIZABETH BACKO
of The Post staff
When Water Witches began re-
cording its latest album, the band
had to get a little crafty.
“We took big quilts and put them
across little clothing racks and put
that around the drum kit or around
me with my guitar so we could block
the sounds,” Ethan Bartman, a gui-
tarist in the band, said.
Musicians in Athens have differ-
ent resources available for creating
an album or producing sounds, but
it’s up to the musicians to decide how
they want to achieve an end product.
Water Witches decided to record
its album outside of a studio to cut
costs, but also because Bartman had
some experience in audio engineer-
ing, Charlie Touvell, the drummer,
said.
“I think it fit for the aesthetic we
were going for,” Touvell said. “If we
were going (for) a clean, studio pop
aesthetic, I think it wouldn’t have
been as ideal. But we were going for
something a little more organic —
something a little more ‘in the dirt.’ ”
The group went to 3 Elliott Stu-
dio, the closest recording studio to
Ohio University’s campus, to mix its
album following the recording.
The studio began in 2000 in a
garage but has since developed into
a five-room facility, Josh Antonuc-
cio, an owner, said. The studio has
remained busy for the past 15 years
and has brought in students as well
as local, regional and national mu-
ater,hiscrewisalmostinvisible.They’re
also about 22 feet above him in the grid.
Weeks is the lighting designer
for the Division of Theater’s second
mainstage production, The Penelo-
piad, and he and his staff of about
a dozen had to focus more than 200
lights for the show. These lights are
housed in the grid, which is directly
above the audience.
Lighting design is more than just
illuminating the actors and the set,
Jeremiah Stuart, a third-year gradu-
ate student studying lighting, said.
“It’s about the atmosphere and
the ambience (of a show),” Stu-
art said. “You have to light the air.
Whenever you start thinking about it
in those terms, there’s a lot more to
it. … Our job is to shift the light and
sculpt what the action is.”
To highlight the action of The Pe-
nelopiad in the desired and planned
way, the team spent nearly 24 hours
focusing the lights during the past
weekend’s “lighting priority.”
“We take about two minutes per
light, and when we have over 200
lights, it slowly adds up over time,”
Weeks, a third-year graduate student
studying lighting, said.
The amount of time spent focus-
ing the lights highlights how much
time and effort goes into lighting de-
sign as a whole.
“(People think lighting design-
ers) just hang lights and there’s not
a whole lot of thought that goes into
it,” Weeks said. “When in fact, we
spend hundreds of hours thinking
about where to put just one light
some times. I‘ve been working on
(The Penelopiad’s lighting) plot
since May.”
Each lighting crew has a pro-
grammer who works on a board that
can remotely position lights, howev-
er, most of the lighting instruments
must be manually arranged. This is
where the lighting grid comes into
play.
Located about 22 feet above the
stage, the lighting grid is a chess-
board of square frames covered by
metal grates, which shift, clink and
rattle as the crew walks overhead
where the audience will soon sit.
The lights hang below these grates,
which have numbered columns and
lettered rows. New students are
typically timid about walking on the
grid, so Stuart said he jumps on the
grid to show its sturdiness.
To focus a light, the grate must
be removed and a worker essentially
stretches down to position the light
accordingly.
“You have to be really careful up
there, but I get a little bit of a rush doing
it, kinda hanging out of the grid,” Kata-
rina Radujkovic, a second-year gradu-
ate student studying lighting, said.
“What we have to do is just lay on our
stomachs and hang out down there.”
In trying to focus a larger unit
that might not be easily reachable,
Radujkovic said she’s had to get cre-
ative.
“I’ve actually had someone hold
my ankles and gone in,” she said.
The unstable surface, low ceil-
ings, a sea of pipes and an I-beam
that only leaves one-to-two feet of
clearance make the grid an “inher-
ently dangerous environment,” Jeff
Russell, the director of the Science
and Health in Artistic Performance
program, said.
Because the SHAPe Clinic most
commonly sees patients with con-
cussions, Russell said this year saw
a mandate that people wear hard
hats while in the working space, es-
pecially if people are in the grid.
“We’d rather prevent an injury
than treat it,” he said.
Being that the grid is entirely
metal and the lights use a high volt-
age, Russell said there is also a risk
for electrocution.
One of the biggest things that can
help prevent injury is communica-
tion, Stuart said. Thus, the crew of-
ten shouts “safety calls” to make oth-
ers aware of what someone is doing.
Previously, the grid was not struc-
tured to allow for the metal grates to
be down at all times nor did it have
more than one entry and exit point —
a ladder backstage. But about eight
years ago, Lowell Jacobs, master
electrician and master audio, said in
an email that the school updated its
safety procedure and welded the grid
into its current square structure and
installed a door on the first floor of the
Radio-Television Building.
“I feel that we are being proactive
about creating our own policy, as
opposed to waiting for policy to be
mandated,” Jacobs said in an email.
The Division of Theater part-
nered with the SHAPe Clinic to run
training drills for removal of an indi-
vidual from the grid in an emergency
situation.
“If I hadn’t had that training time,
I don’t know how I would react (in
an emergency situation),” Emily
Griswold, a first-year graduate stu-
dent studying athletic training and
the lead athletic trainer for theater
in SHAPe, said. “My very first time
up there, it was scary. You can see
through the floor. … It’s intimidat-
ing, but once I was up there, I be-
came more comfortable.”
Despite the potential dangers,
Weeks said the craft is irreplaceable.
“Light, to me, is I guess sort of
life,” he said. “Without light there is
no life, so you have to keep enough
light to keep the action and it lively
on stage as well as in real life.”
ohio university
athens, ohio
wednesday, oct. 7, 2015
vol. 106, no. 32
H O M E C O M I N G T H R O W B A C K W E E K | T H E F R O N T P A G E C I R C A 1 9 7 7