"How awake are we to the culture around us?" was Terry Mattingly's opening question last Thursday's chapel.

Mattingly, director for the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, challenged students to be aware of the media culture that surrounds them.

Culture is the software of our brain, everything in our life affects our culture, he said.

To try to exemplify students' awareness to the media they were consuming, or lack thereof, Mattingly showed a five-minute clip from the film "Signs."

After the clip was shown, Mattingly asked students what was the last image that was shown. There weren't many responses.

The last frame of the film was an Amish door depicting a cross.

Mattingly explained that there were two main schools of thought of how media affected us.

The first is the Magic Bullet theory. This theory claims that media affects consumers' actions.

"Media can make you do things," Mattingly said.

The second theory is Stalagmite. This is a "drip, drip, drip" process. This is the consistency of a product in the media, such as jingles that get stuck in your head, he said.

Mattingly said that Christians tend to produce media based on the Magic Bullet theory.

Christians believe that if they produce the perfect movie or song then people will suddenly realize that they are sinners and need Christ, Mattingly said.

This is what Mattingly called the "Christian Brick."

The Christian Brick is a piece of media dense with Christian symbolism. Christians take this brick, walk up to secular people and hit them in the head with it. Then Christians expect consumers to like the brick enough to buy it and hit themselves with it.

"Christians lack the patience to do what works-stalagmite theory." Mattingly said.

In a personal interview, Mattingly said Christians needed to let go of their constant desire to change the culture.

"We need to get over the [idea] of 'We need to impact the culture.'" Mattingly said.

Christians need to create stories that are good enough for mainstream audiences and stop making products that are directed solely to the Christian subculture, he said.

"I don't think that [Charles] Dickens wrote a story about sin and Christmas for Christians only," Mattingly said. "Dickens wrote for all the English."

"If your content is good enough, it will attract an audience," Mattingly said.

In chapel, Mattingly also spoke of five ways Christians approach and can approach the media.

1. Separatism: "When in doubt, burn the culture."

2. Baptize the culture. This assumes the culture is right, and the church has to mold to it.

3. Photocopy the culture. This is the dominant way evangelical Christians approach culture. Christians simply photocopy everything that the secular media is producing, for example Christian country, pop, and books.

Through this approach Christians are "pretending to be hip without having to go into the real world," Mattingly said.

4. The idea that we can change the culture on our own. This cannot be done.

"The good news is that the Messiah has come. [The Messiah] is not you," Mattingly said.

5. Learn the culture. Be like missionaries and debate the culture. Study the culture and see its strengths and weaknesses.

In a personal interview, Mattingly expanded on his idea of how we should approach media consumption.

First of all, he said, people need to consume less.

There is a better chance of understanding media if we try to be selective of what we consume, Mattingly said.

Mattingly said that movies should not be watched in order to simply have something to do for two hours, but there should be a reason behind why someone watches a movie.

Watch a movie because you are interested in the director on a specific topic, he said.

Mattingly said a good idea would be to take a notepad to the movie theater. This would be a sign that your brain was "turned on."

Second, he said, that consumers needed to make choices according to their interests and beliefs.

"I am particularly offended by depictions of violence against women in movies," Mattingly said.

For this reason, he does not watch movies that illustrate violence against women.

There are images that we don't need in our minds, but it's the consumer's choice to decide what he or she are going to watch, Mattingly said.

Mattingly said that all consumers should make this sort of decisions. They should rely on their convictions to decide what media they will consume.

Third, we need to debate what we are consuming, Mattingly said.

"Don't just accept what the media is giving you," he said.

Get together with your friends and have coffee after the movie and discuss it.

"It's not, 'Don't go to the movies.' It's 'Don't watch every movie,'" Mattingly said.

As a conclusion to his chapel message Mattingly said. "The modern church has managed to be of the world but not in it," Mattingly said.

Mattingly challenged students to be critical of the media they were consuming and to engage with it.

"Can you learn to see the cross even when it appears in the most unlikely places of our culture?" Mattingly said.

Only four students will be studying abroad next semester-all in Seville, Spain-but Billy Stevenson, director of international programs, said that the numbers are actually right on track in terms of JBU's goals for numbers.

This semester, there are 14 students participating in non-JBU semester programs, such as Council for Christian College's (CCCU) Uganda Program, Semester in Spain and others. JBU allots 16 spots for non-JBU sponsored semester programs each year, so between the fall and spring semesters, there will be 18 students participating in non-JBU semester programs.

"If our goal is 16, we're happy if we hit it," Stevenson said. "It can be one or two above or under."

Although the four students who will be studying in Seville, Spain, next semester were approved to have 100 percent of their JBU financial aid transferred for the program, if more students had chosen to go, the amount of financial aid transferred would likely have been lower.

Mindi Stevenson, international studies coordinator, said the current weak economy, more so than JBU funding, is playing a role in whether students choose to study abroad and what type of program they choose.

"Students seem to be very hesitant to incur more expense per semester for a studies opportunity than in the recent past," Mindi said. "The CCCU programs by and large are simply more expensive, some up to $4000 more, than JBU per semester. Those involved in the Seville program are paying a few thousand more than JBU, even with their full JBU institutional funds."

Mindi said that because the JBU Irish Studies Semester is able to run without much additional cost, there has continued to be a great response. There are already five on the team for next fall, which is ahead of the number of accepted applicants for prior years. There are 15 spots set for this program.

On the other hand, there has been an overall decrease in interest in CCCU programs. For example, CCCU's Russian Studies program is set to close after fall 2010 because of an inability to attract students in sufficient numbers.

"[The decrease in interest] could well be due to the economy, but not necessarily," Stevenson said. "Some programs simply didn't have the mustard. You have got to have people on the other side of the world with academic credentials and passion. Take away credentialed faculty and you are left with nothing but an empty bucket, regardless of your destination."

The economy can also be attributed as being one of multiple reasons for an increased interest in summer programs.

Ed Klotz, chairman of the International Programs Committee, said that according to the Institute of International Education, the expected primary growth area for 53.7 percent of universities are short-term international programs sponsored by the institution.

Stevenson said summer study programs are increasing in popularity because of their affordability. He said some students also want to spend a shorter amount of time away from peers and family than in semester programs, and summer studies trips are a way to speed up the college process.

"It looks great on a resume, whether it's a summer program or semester program," Stevenson said.

This summer JBU will have several new summer programs, such as Guatemalan Studies, Ukraine, Scotland Studies and Mission trip for students in the Leader Scholars Institute, and Irish Studies for Family and Human majors.

At 1 a.m. on October 17, Preston Jones, associate professor of history, found himself in Anchorage, Alaska, which he and his wife used to call home. He had spent several summers in Alaska and his wife was from there.

Jones was interviewed for a PBS documentary called "Icebound" by Danny Anker. It focuses on the 1925 diphtheria outbreak in the lone, northwest town of Nome, Alaska, when the only way to get to a serum was by sled dog.

Because Jones had written a book about Nome titled "Empire's Edge: American Society in Nome, Alaska, 1898-1925," Anker asked him to be on the film's advisory board and requested an interview. "Icebound" will not be finished until the beginning of 2011.

At 7:30 P.M. on Sunday, Jones spoke at the 5th Annual Alaska Day Polaris Lecture at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. His speech was titled "Anchorage and Empire: The Last Frontier in Global Context, 1900-1916." It focused on how Alaska played into the American Empire during the early 20th century because of its geographic location.

About 90 people attended Jones' lecture, far more than he expected.

"My main concern," he said, "was that I would be talking to empty chairs because of the late Sunday evening event. But there were lots of people."

Several who had helped Jones with his research along the way were there as well.

"The lecture was nicely received," he said.

Jones said that most articles written about Alaska focus on its internal politics and culture. He wanted his lecture to be different, so he came at it from a different, broader context, using original materials that have not been discussed, such as newspaper articles from the early 1900s. The two main points in his lecture, according to Jones' synopsis, were to "focus on the global context of Anchorage's founding and early settlement" and to "describe what the founding of Anchorage meant to the people who first built and settled it."

He was invited to speak at the UAA shortly after he submitted an article to the Anchorage Daily News last July titled, "Early Anchorage was too harsh for racism." Jones thought it was because of this article that the director of the Lecture Series invited him to speak.

"One day I just thought about sending an article in to my hometown paper in Anchorage," he said. "Had it not been for that article, I wouldn't [have gone]."

The lecture was free and open to the public. After it was over, Jones was rewarded with a small tumbler-like souvenir inscribed with his name and a monetary gift.

Jones' next step will be to write a scholarly paper on this subject.

Though he said he knew the entire trip would be extremely grueling, he confirmed that it was a big honor.

Christian business faculty throughout the United States and Canada assembled in northwest Arkansas to engage in fellowship, scholarly presentations on business-faith integration methods and guided business tours, at the annual fall conference of the Christian Business Faculty Association Oct. 15-17.

It was the first time for John Brown University, a founding member of the organization, to host the event. Close to 195 faculty members, representing 77 colleges and universities-Christian and non-Christian alike-gathered at the Embassy Suites in Rogers, Ark.

John McCullough, conference coordinator and chairman of the business division, and Joe Walenciak, conference coordinator and board member of the CBFA, said they wanted to design the event in a way that would encourage interaction, relaxation and relationship building with other business faculty but would also retain a structure that upheld the mission of CBFA.

That mission, they said, involves striving to improve teaching techniques, learning good administrative practices over business programs, sharing ideas, challenges and successes from the respective schools of faculty members, and encouraging each other in their service to students and their communities as they work to apply Biblical truths to business fundamentals.

"I think it was a successful weekend," McCullough said.

"It's kind of like a reunion and seeing a lot of dear friends," Walenciak said. "I took away a great deal a pride for the people of JBU."

The conference featured two full days of panels and speakers, including 68 paper presentations from faculty. The keynote speaker was Rollin Ford, executive vice-president and chief information officer for Walmart Stores, Inc., who has overseen Walmart's global information systems division since 2006. Ford is a graduate of Taylor University in Indiana, and his youngest daughter is currently a JBU student.

President Chip Pollard said Ford spoke on Walmart's approach to handling continual changes in culture-especially in technology-and its effects on education. He said Ford also related the power of relationships, trust and accountability to attributes in effective business leaders who work to keep up with those changes.

"It was enjoyable to see Rollin Ford and hear his witness of how he is helping to lead the largest corporation in the world," McCullough said. "He seeks to implant integrity into those people and share with them biblically based life values and truth."

Speakers from JBU included Pollard, who addressed the importance of balancing work and family commitments, Rod Reed, University chaplain, who talked about "teaching as discipleship" and Robert Cupp, chairman of the Board of Trustees at JBU and founding pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Lowell, who spoke at a morning devotional.

Eulalia Castro, a staff member of the Soderquist Center, also gave a presentation on Chosen People, an organization that has raised over $60,000 to help children living around the Guatemala City garbage dump.

Walenciak said that what JBU was able to uniquely offer as part of this year's conference was the opportunity to visit the Walmart home office.

Several trips were made to Walmart for guided tours in its Innovation Lab, Distribution Center, Visitor Center and Home Office to view business innovations, financial reports, profit and loss sheets, and store advertisements. Highlights included a viewing of a section of the store dedicated to the Walton family, Mr. Sam's old office and red pickup truck, and thousands of photographs and memorabilia dating back to the company's inception.

The event costed JBU close to $80,000, from hotels reservations, food, transportation, guest speakers, music and business tours to social events, such as a trip to the War Eagle Craft Fair in Rogers and the Great Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Ark.

It was designed under the leadership of McCullough and Walenciak, a designated planning committee and several business graduate assistants from the Soderquist Center.

Both McCullough and Walenciak said that a significant challenge to planning this event over the last few years was the deterioration of the economy, which resulted in a slashing of faculty travel budgets for many universities. Originally planning for 250 faculty members, the financial risk fell back on JBU's business program.

However, Walenciak said that a reduction in faculty travel expenses has not significantly affected JBU's faculty.

"JBU operates very conservatively," he said.

Walenciak mentioned that JBU has maintained enrollment where other sister institutions have not, and only supports programs that administration feels are most beneficial to faculty and students, while other schools have only recently started cutting financial support of some programs.

Even so, the challenge gave conference attendees from JBU another reason to converse with other faculty about using teaching methods that fall within strict budgets, Walenciak said.

"We don't come together feeling like we're in the midst of competitors," he said. "We are often dealing and struggling with some of the same problems at our schools."

The CBFA has been a support network for Christians teaching business for nearly 30 years. Over 400 Christian business faculty are members of the organization. The CBFA publishes two peer-reviewed journals: "The Journal of Biblical Integration in Business" and the "Christian Business Academy Review."

Major awards established by the CBFA are the Richard C. Chewning Award, the Johnson Award and the Barnabas Award. They are given to Christian business faculty who model the same fervor, integrity, leadership and dedication to business-faith integration ideals as the individuals they are named after.

The University has voted on a $1.3 million project to replace the campus mainframe computer system. The current system that is housed on the upper level of the LRC is known as a Legacy system and is almost 30 years old.

The project officially began this month and is scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2011.

The University has teamed up with Datatel. According to the Datatel Web site, its services aim to "address the complex business and academic needs of an institution" in a solution they call "Strategic Academic Enterprise." The new Datatel system is called the Colleague.

"We feel really good about our partnership with Datatel because they really hit the sweet spot of reliability that we were looking for," said Paul Nast, chief information systems officer.

The University is calling the new mainframe ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning. Nast said this name is a standard "industry term" and that many other industries use similar names for their mainframes.

Over the next two years, Nast said that "a large percentage" of the $1.3 million for the project is going toward the implementation of the system and training the staff to use the new equipment.

The mainframe system houses all of the core functions of the University. Administrative records, human resources records, student records, and business office records are just a few examples of what the system is responsible for.

With the technological advances made in the past 30 years since the current systems were installed, Nast said that a lot of the processes that are being run today are custom interfaces that were written by the University IT staff to meet the needs of the campus. He went on to say that the decision to move ahead with the new mainframe came when the cost to maintain and upkeep the current system began to equal the amount it would cost to replace it.

"This is the right time to do this, it [the current mainframe] has served us well," Nast said. "This is new system in technologies that we are familiar with."

Nast said that the current mainframe costs the University about $100,000 a year, and that the new system will cost the same amount and possibly less money to run and with that they get all of the amenities that come with the advanced technologies. He said with the old system the University got "very little in return."

"There comes a time when you cross that threshold," Nast said. "We crossed it decades ago."

To continue to keep the system running, Nast and the IT staff have used the custom interfaces they have written to make up for out of date equipment and system functions.

Even though it's a two-year project, Nast said that some of the changes being made will be seen as early as six months from now. There are offices on campus that are housing records in systems that still have a black screen and green letters, similar to what was seen in the late 1980's.

Along with the new mainframe, EagleNet will be replaced with a portal that is more integrated with the new design called Share Point. This won't take place until late in the implementation stages, though. Nast said the current form of EagleNet is a product that was created by the University to meet its needs. He said Share Point will give EagleNet a whole new look and feel.

Nast said that the goal is to provide the same services and hopefully more services when the switch is made. He did say that the Share Point software doesn't meet all of the needs that the University has for EagleNet, citing the software needed for students to be able to track chapel credits as one. He said that the IT staff will be looking for the best solution to handle the issue and others that may be encountered as they learn how to work with the new system over the next two years.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Student Loan and Fiscal Responsibility Act Bill on Sept. 17. The Washington Post said this bill would cut out the middleman in federal lending.

The overhaul of college lending may generate up to $87 billion in savings over the next 10 years and will allow spending on student grants, community colleges, school construction and early childhood education.

Even though the Senate has not yet signed the SAFRA bill, John Brown University's financial aid department has switched to federal direct lending, said David Burney, financial aid counselor.

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators reported that the bill may not be ready or signed until November or December and that if Republicans use the Byrd Rule, the Senate can prohibit Democrats ability to create and fund all of the programs and provisions they include in the bill.

"I believe there could be a possibility that Senate does not pass the bill," Burney said.

NASFAA reported that democrats can, but will not, accomplish their goal by extending the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, an act that includes the temporary authority to purchase student loans. The ECASLA expires July 2010.

U.S. representative John Boozman (R-Ark.) voted against the bill.

"Over the past forty years, the Federal Family Education Loan program has provided more than 200 million loans," he said in a release Sept. 17, "These services are delivered at very little cost to families struggling to provide their children with a college education. A switch to this government-run lending program will be bad for students, bad for schools and bad for jobs. This new government-run program will provide the bare minimum in services to students and families."

If the SAFRA bill passes, it will eliminate the FFEL program that includes four components:

1. The subsidized Stafford loan has interest that is paid by the government when a student is in school and during periods of grace and deferment at 6.8 percent.

2. The unsubsidized Stafford loan has interest that is not paid by the government when a student is in school or during periods of grace and deferment at 6.8 percent.

3. The Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students enables parents to borrow and pay costs for higher education for their dependent undergraduates and graduate students at 6.5 percent interest.

4. Consolidation combines more than one federal education loan into a single loan-capped at 8.25 percent interest.

National Journal reported that republicans and banks said that student default rates will go up and customer service levels will go down under the direct lending system.

The SAFRA bill stated that the direct loan program is entirely cut off from market swings and can guarantee students access to affordable college loans, at the same low-interest rates, terms and conditions, no matter what happens in the economy. It will ensure that non-profit lenders have the opportunity to continue servicing loans, preserving a role for lenders and maintaining jobs in communities throughout the country.

The bill calls for $40 billion to be set aside for Pell Grants- the maximum award would rise from $5,350 per student to $5,550 next year and would eventually be $6,900 in 2019. $10 billion would go to community colleges to renovate campuses, improve instruction and forge alliances with business and job-training programs, and $4 billion would go toward modernizing public schools over the next two years.

The bill will also attempt to help returning veterans get a Pell Grant in addition to GI benefits, ease the burden on community colleges that are overwhelmed with new students and renovate schools. It will attempt to provide students at all colleges with the Perkins loan, a low-interest loan that has been limited to 1,800 secondary institutions.

New York Times columnist Gail Collins said that through the current loan system, the Federal government provides private banks with capital, pays private banks a subsidy to lend the capital to students and guarantees said loans so the banks don't have any risk

She reported that, in the proposed form, the federal government makes the loans.

"You really do wonder why nobody came up with this idea before," Collins said.

There will be a community-wide free clinic with seasonal & H1N1 vaccines at Eastgate Church of Christ on Hwy 412 on Friday from 6:45 a.m. to 6 p.m.

JBU will be offering rides at the flagpole every half hour on the o'clock and half past, and returns will be made as the van returns to campus. Seating will be first come, first served.

Food drive

The Halloween Canned Food Drive will be on Saturday from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Students can sign up in teams of five to seven people, which will compete to collect the most nonperishable items from neighborhoods in Siloam Springs. Sign-ups are will be available at lunch in the cafeteria today. The food collected will be donated to the Manna Center.

'Cosi fan Tutti'

The John Brown University music department presents the opera "Cosi fan Tutti" ("Women are like that, It's True") on Oct. 29-31 and Nov. 5-7 in Jones Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. The opera will be in English with a dash of Italian.

Tickets are free to JBU students, $10 for adults, $8 for alumni and seniors and $6 for non-JBU students. Call 479-524-7382 for reservations.

BLUE concert

The BLUE Halloween Concert featuring "I Heard a Lion" will be held at Friday at 7:30 p.m. in J. Alvin. Students can dress up for the costume contest. Individual and group prizes will be awarded.

SPARKS, Nevada - Two University of Nevada students spent almost an hour pinned between a car and their bed after a drunk driver allegedly drove into their bedroom at 4 a.m., believing it was his ex-girlfriend's house.

Emergency workers were able to free them, and they only suffered minor scrapes and burns despite being under the weight of the car.

Attacks in Iraq

cnn.com Tuesday, Oct. 27

BAGHDAD, Iraq - More than 500 people were wounded after twin car bombs exploded near three Iraqi government buildings Sunday in Baghdad-the deadliest attack in Iraq in more than two years.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to punish "the enemies of the Iraqi people who want to spread chaos in the country and derail the political process and prevent the parliamentary elections from taking place as planned."

The attacks triggered questions about security at upcoming national elections in January, but no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.