The Times-Delphic (03.01.17)

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THE TIMES-DELPHIC The weekly student newspaper of Drake University

Vol. 136 | No. 17 | Wed. Mar. 01, 2017 timesdelphic.com

CAMPUS NEWS

Student talks about living with an eating disorder

CAMPUS NEWS Photo by Adam Rogan | Managing Editor

Katherine Bauer News Editor katherine.bauer@drake.edu @bauer_katherine Most 7-year-olds worry about learning how to add and subtract or sitting by their friends at lunch. For Olivia Orichiella, at 7 years old she was thinking about being an athlete in the best shape possible. However, excessive training and comments about her weight turned her drive into an eating disorder. “I’ve suffered with anorexia since I was 7-years-old,” the senior elementary education major said. “It’s always been that pressure of not being good enough.” Orichiella explained that there were dreams of being a collegiate athlete in her future, specifically in soccer. She was also training as a triathlete by 7. Tennis, basketball, track and cross country were all added when she turned 11. “(I was told), ‘You need to lose more weight so you can be the best’,” Orichiella said. “‘If you looked like that girl, you would be better.’” The hard hours of training at 8 a.m. soon turned into unhealthy habits. Orichiella said she used laxatives to keep her weight down and avoided eating. Orichiella pinpoints her eating disorder to this environment. Fourteen years later and she is still fighting to be in control. “There’s that voice in my head,” Orichiella said. “She’s always there. She gets quieter, but she’s always there in the back of your head.” Melissa Nord, who is a counselor at Drake’s health center, explained how eating disorders affect people’s mentality. “The mind totally plays tricks on the individual with an eating disorder,” Nord said. “The individual might look into the mirror and see someone with curves and ‘extra weight’ when they’re really so sickly thin that their bones are poking through their skin and they are barely strong enough to stand. They truly do not see the true them.” Orichiella explained that an eating disorder is not about losing weight. The desire to lose weight is a result of a mentality. “The whole idea of food in general is terrifying,” Orichiella said. “Losing weight comes from a side effect of having that mindset and having those voices telling you all these things.” Some people have the mentality that they will reach a goal by not eating, Nord said. “Sometimes eating disorders convince the individual that they don’t deserve to eat, for whatever reason,” Nord said. “Sometimes eating disorders convince the individual that if they do this one more thing (eat less, exercise more) then they’ll have everything they’re wanting.” Anorexia had a detrimental effect on Orichiella’s body. Standing at 5 feet 10 inches, she dipped to 115 pounds at her lightest weight. Someone at that height with a healthy weight could weigh between 130 and 170 pounds, according to the BMI index.

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Hillel, Drake Public Safety respond to hate crime Anti-Semitic message on campus part of national trend

Adam Rogan Managing Editor adam.rogan@drake.edu @adam_rogan On Feb. 22, a Jewish student found an anti-Semitic message carved into one of the wooden chairs in Meredith Hall 101. Drake Public Safety was notified and had the chair removed, as repairing the physical damage couldn’t be done in the lecture hall. Provost Sue Mattison sent a campus-wide email the next morning, informing the student body and faculty of the incident. “We will not tolerate acts of oppression and hate, and will do everything in our power to deal with this,” Mattison said in her email. “This is not who we are, and is against our values.” Tali Eisenstadt is the president of Drake University Hillel, a

Jewish community on campus. Eisenstadt was notified on Feb. 22, the day before the email went out.

“We will not tolerate acts of oppression and hate.” Sue Mattison Provost

Eisenstadt pushed for mass notification ot the student body. She wanted the entire Drake community to know. “We couldn’t let this go unnoticed by campus,” Eisenstadt said. “Jewish students can’t be kept in the dark and the other students on this campus need

to know what happened, that they know that no act — no antiSemitic act, no act of hate — can be or will be condoned by this university.” Eisenstadt added that some people felt unsound after hearing about the act. “A lot of people woke up feeling very unsafe, and that’s an issue,” Eisenstadt said. “None of us should feel like that.” Despite the act itself, Eisenstadt and other members of Hillel, said that they were extremely satisfied with how Drake handled the issue. President Marty Martin and other administration members reached out to Eisenstadt personally, both before and after the campus-wide email was sent, to express their support for her and the Jewish community at Drake. “The media attention we are currently getting has been very …

supportive of us as a group, as a community, as Jews,” Eisenstadt said. An impromptu gathering was organized at the Hillel House on Feb. 23 where Jewish and nonJewish students came together to share their thoughts, reactions, fears and feelings after hearing the news less than 12 hours earlier. After that meeting, Public Safety promised to do extra passes by the Hillel House and be especially attentive to graffiti around campus. Eisenstadt said that she is not aware of what was scratched into the chair, as doing so could interfere with the investigation. Regardless of what the marking specifically depicted, Eisenstadt believes that it is equally serious and distressing.

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Student asks where Senate was after vandalism on desk Jake Bullington Digital Editor jacob.bullington@drake.edu @jakebullington Jewish students at Drake are “terrified.” The university is responding to yet another hate crime, the first that has been directed at Jews in recent memory. First-year Samantha Bayne, who is Jewish, says she felt Student Senate wasn’t standing in solidarity with her community last week, after anti-Semitic vandalism was discovered on campus. “…This is something that’s impacting real students and today I felt like there wasn’t that much solidarity shown,” Bayne said. “Especially today when I went to Hillel and I know there were other conflicts, obviously there were many conflicts, but the only two senators were Senator (Jackie) Heymann and Senator (Russell) White and no one from exec (the three executive positions on senate) was there, and that was really hard.” Heymann, who is also Jewish, spoke at senate’s meeting, providing further context and

campus reactions to the antiSemitic vandalism. “First off, there (were) several students, Hillel students, that came (to the house) today and said people were coming up to them and saying ‘Why is Drake making such a big deal out of this,’ stuff like that,” Heymann said. “One, that it was an awful thing that was written and hurt a lot of members of the community, but also explaining that there is a greater national context right now…(a) greater national trend where anti-Semitism is really, really on the rise…” A campus-wide email was sent out last Thursday morning from Provost Sue Mattison, alerting students to the vandalism. In response, Drake’s Jewish community and its allies met at the Hillel house to express their feelings about the vandalism. They also came together with steps to move forward from the incident. The perceived lack of support from members of the executive seats on senate, according to Bayne, “…meant to me that Drake wasn’t showing support.” Student Body President Thalia Anguiano conveyed concerns

that senators around the table apparently communicated amongst each other throughout the day. She said they were critical of the amount of time it took for Student Senate to release an official statement. “If you have an issue or any concerns with the timeline of when I actually post these things on social media, come talk to me instead of talking amongst each other,” Anguiano said. “We have to keep in mind that I’m also a student and I’m also a person that has needs and that needs self-care,” Anguiano continued, rebuking these concerns. “I’ve been away for seven days, and I have work that I need to get done and I need sleep. So as far as sending me messages and as far as being concerned that I wouldn’t speak out on an issue like this is bothersome.” Anguiano said she felt she had built up credibility for not “staying silent” on issues such as this instance of anti-Semitism on campus. “Honestly, I feel disrespected that people felt that I wouldn’t be sending out a statement because I didn’t do it earlier in the morning … quite honestly, I would hope

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that people have more trust in me in not staying silent on an issue that is so important, especially with the political and social climate going on right now around the nation,” Anguiano said. Bayne, in addition to criticizing the overall response to the vandalism, granted senate several suggestions on how to move forward. “Action is way more important than talk,” Bayne said. “What I really needed to hear was not like a vague statement about how we need to do better, but something that reinforces that actions have consequences.” Bayne suggested creating a senate ad hoc group on hate crime, taking another look at what Drake’s hate crime policies are and creating diversity training during welcome weekend alongside Mentors in Violence Prevention. “Hopefully there isn’t a next time, but with everything going on, who the hell knows?” Anguiano said. If students want to voice their concerns, senate meets at 9 p.m. in the fishbowl (room 201) of Cowles Library every Thursday.


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