The Signpost: WSU HOLIDAY SWEATERS >>> DO YOU KNOW YOUR NEWS? A WEEKLY CURRENT EVENTS QUIZ

Tuesday | November 24, 2020 | Volume 93 | Issue 27

EMERALD CITY SKILLS >>>PAGE 8

(Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

CULTURE » PAGE 11

DANCING THROUGH THE LIVESTREAM

ROBERT LEWIS | The Signpost

COLUMN» PAGE 6

BURNING DOWN TWITTER IN A DRESS MATT SMITH |NJ ADVANCE MEDIA

2 | MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020

DO YOU KNOW YOUR NEWS? 2. Intermountain Healthcare set does the school currently have? the economy back on track. up a mobile COVID-19 testing site this past weekend in what local ela. 20 a. less taxes in 2021 1. President-elect Joe Biden has ementary school? already chosen ____ leaders of his b.10 b. unemployment checks foreign policy and national security a. West Weber Elementary teams. c. 30 c. direct cash payment b. Ogden Elementary a. six d. 18 d. higher wages c. Uintah Elementary b. nine 4. Rumors of a second stimulus d. Shadow Valley Elementary check from the government have c. three started to circulate. Economic ex3. Roy High School has returned perts and law makers, specifically d. five to online learning again as of Nov. Jason Furman, say that _________ 23. How many active cases of COVID for American families will help get

By MARISA NELSON Section Editor

WEBER CAMPUS COVID CASE UPDATES 7 days: 59 14 days: 100 total: 339 DAVIS COUNTY

WEBER COUNTY

7 days: 2,317 total: 15,002

7 days: 1,748 total: 11,987

COVID CASE UPDATES

COVID CASE UPDATES

UTAH total: 179,420

COVID CASE UPDATES

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

WEBER CAMPUS

President-elect Joe Biden has been working to find members for his foreign policy and national security teams.

ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS ON PAGE 15

NIKKI DORBER | The Signpost

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 3

WSU players go for a basket against San Diego in a game in Nov. 2019.

By ALEC CIPOLLINI

Reporter

The Big Sky Conference doesn’t start until Dec. 3, but Weber State University’s men’s basketball team will be back in action on Nov. 25 when the Wildcats face off against Adams State University in a non-conference game.

After going 8–12 in the Big Sky Conference and 12–20 overall last season, WSU is looking to have a much better season after coaches ranked the team third and media ranked the team fifth before league play begins.

This is the first game the Wildcats will play without former star guard Jerrick Harding. He signed a pro contract in the Czech Republic

with ERA Basketball Nymburk after finishing his fourth year of college.

Harding left WSU as the highest-scoring player in university history. He played in 122 games for WSU and recorded 2,266 career points with the Wildcats.

WSU will be forced to find other players to depend on scoring against Adams State.

The Grizzlies will come to Ogden after finishing last season with an 8–20 record. Adams State went 0–15 in away games last season, so the Wildcats should have some solid home court advantage.

The Grizzlies also lost one of their most important players from last campaign. Former

guard Juwan Green ended his college career last year; he led ASU with 110 assists and was second on the team in points by averaging 14.1 per game.

Adams State will have to rely on senior guard/forward Kaelin Crane if they want to have any chance of winning against Weber State. He was the leading scorer last year for the Grizzlies, averaging 14.3 per game.

These two guards were the best players for their college last year, but without Green, Adams State will find it even more challenging and difficult to win games this season.

The Grizzlies finished their 2019–2020 campaign losing six out of their last seven games.

WSU should be heavy favorites going into this non-conference game since the Wildcats are in Division 1 and Adams College plays in Division 2.

The last time the two played, Weber State won 85–77 in 2013.

The game starts Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. at the Dee Events Center. Fans will not be allowed to enter the stadium to watch the home opener. However, it will be available on Pluto TV channel 1004 or the radio station 103.1 “The Wave.”

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Story telling is especially important to Zulu natives and has led to a widespread appreciation throughout South Africa

By CATIE WEIMER Reporter

Weber State University students and staff from the International Student and Scholar Center created video presentations on language, artwork, storytelling, clothing and food for International Education Week, which took place Nov. 16–20.

It gave members of the WSU community the chance to learn more about the students’

cultures and homes. A questionnaire at the end of the presentations allowed viewers to answer questions after watching the presentations to be entered into a drawing for prizes.

The language category featured a video created by Surenkhor Oyuntesetseg on Mongolia and a presentation on Greece by Maria Argyropoulou.

“Today we write in the Cyrillic alphabet

we adopted in the 1940s during the Soviet Union, so it’s pretty much similar to the Russian alphabet,” Oyuntesetseg said.

Before the 1940s, there was a writing system for the Mongolian language known as “Hudum Mongol Bichig.”

“It was written in a vertical script, left-toright,” Oyuntesetseg said. “But today it is slowly going away.”

Argyropoulou’s presentation featured

STEVEN CLIFT | The Signpost

4 | MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020

some facts about Greece, information on the Modern Greek language and a few basic Greek phrases.

“The official language of both Greece and Cyprus, its neighbor, is Modern Greek,” Argyropoulou said. “Greek words are often used as a root for other languages.”

There was one video in the artwork category. It was on the style of Chinese traditional painting and was by Yuqi Liu.

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 5

“Chinese painting is one of the oldest, continuous artistic traditions in the world,” Liu said.

Liu showed two pieces of art; one was a Chinese traditional painting while the other was a Western oil painting.

“The Chinese painting is ink and wash painting, also termed watercolor or brush painting,” Liu said.

There were three videos in the storytelling category: a North American video by Billie Atsitty de Paiva, a Nigerian video by Princewill Agu and a South African video by Sebastian Buxman.

Paiva’s video featured Natanii Paiva, a young boy who talked about his family and the people they come from.

“My maternal grandfather is of the Tangle people,” Natanii Paiva said. “My paternal grandfather is of the Brazilian people.”

Agu told the story of a popular Nigerian folktale about a beautiful young girl named Obaledo who lived when monsters roamed the villages and took whatever they wanted.

Obaledo’s parents leave her alone for a day with a snail and a yam.

“They told her not to roast the snail before the yam,” Agu said. “If not, the water from the

snail would quench her fire.”

Obaledo used the last matchstick in the house to start the fire, but she went against her parents’ advice and roasted the snail first, which put out the fire.

Obaledo was unable to roast the yam, and the snail was not enough food, so she went to get a matchstick from her neighbors’ house.

“On her way back, beautiful Obaledo encountered a very ugly monster,” Agu said.

“She tried to run, but her legs could not carry her; the monsters took her beauty and left her with ugliness.”

Buxman spoke of the “Zulu culture and the Zulu oral tradition in Southern Africa” after telling some of the histories of the Zulu tribe.

“The Zulu word, the actual word, translates into “heaven,” which can show you how the Zulu people as a whole and the cultures are held in high regard,” Buxman said.

Buxman explained how many areas of Zulu culture are impacted by its oral tradition.

“Naming can serve as different aspects,” Buxman said. “For example, it could be used to rebuke a person who their family or the mother had a dispute with or a way of encouragement to try and uplift the whole little clan in the bigger Zulu clan.”

The traditional clothing category featured three videos showcasing customary garb. Niharika Mishra’s video was on India, Chaerin Yeom’s video was on South Korea and Mansour Alhajri’s video was on Saudi Arabia.

Mishra’s dress in the video is called a Lehenga.

“Lehenga is a massive designed skirt combined with a shirt like a top,” Mishra said. “It can either be heavily designed or simple, and you just combine it with a beautiful dupatta.”

Yeom’s video was about Hanbok, which is the clothing style that the Korean group BTS is wearing in their video for the song “Dynamite.”

“The Korean traditional Hanbok is usually more colorful than what they are wearing,” Yeom said. “People usually wear the traditional Hanbok on big holidays such as Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day.” Alhajri’s video talked about a variety of Saudi Arabian clothing like the thawb, the shemagh, the agal, the osbah and the bisht.

“I’m wearing the darker thawb,” Alhajri said. “Usually, they wear it in the winter; it’s not like the white — the white is worn in summer.”

The food category featured a video by Me-

lissa Gonzalez Munhoz Silva. In the video, Silva made brigadeiro, a common dessert in Brazil.

“It’s kind of a chocolate ball,” Silva said.

“If you go to a party in Brazil, you will always have brigadeiros because they love them.”

The ingredients in brigadeiros are condensed milk, cocoa powder, butter and chocolate sprinkles.

All of the International Education Week videos can be viewed at weber.edu/issc/internationaleducationweek.html.

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PRESENTS

MARY MAPES Will you be outside your personal vehicle?

No mask needed Are you going inside a building?

Mary Mapes, author of Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power. Award-Winning Former producer of 60 minutes.

DATE: TUESDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2021 | 7PM VIRTUAL EVENT!

www.mywebermedia.com

Honors Program

Are you outside?

Will you be in a classroom, hallway, bathroom, lobby, study space, office, stairwell, elevator or lab?

Are there people around?

Can you guarantee that?

Bring a mask just in case

Wikimedia

6 | MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020

Harry Styles attends the U.S. premiere of ‘Dunkirk,’ held at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX in New York City on July 18, 2017. (Dennis Van Tine/Abaca Press/ TNS)

DARYN STEED Columnist

Navigating Twitter is currently like walking through a minefield. Sixteen days after the election was officially called, Donald Trump was still dangerously claiming victory; Chris

Pratt is being picked on by an army of teenage girls and now a picture of Harry Styles in a dress has sent conservative pundits into an absolute tailspin.

After Styles became the first man to appear solo on Vogue’s cover for the December issue, popular conservative commentators on Twitter decided he was single-handedly erasing masculinity.

Political activist Candace Owens tweeted that “There is no society that can survive without strong men… The steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence.

It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.”

Ben Shapiro responded to Owens’ tweet with, “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.”

Of course, Styles isn’t the first rock star to wear a dress in front of a camera. David Bowie, Kurt Cobain and more wore dresses decades ago. But it is certainly not mainstream for men to wear dresses, especially in professional sectors.

In his Vogue interview, Styles said, “Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and

there’s clothes for women,’ you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes and think they’re amazing. It’s like anything — anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself.”

Such rigid lines around clothing and gender identity are a fairly recent development.

In humanity’s ancient civilizations, most men and women wore skirts. Egyptian men wore loincloths and gauzy wraps; Greek and Roman men wore togas; Aztecs wore military wraps.

Many ancient outfits included skirts because they were easy to construct and created free-

Wikimedia

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 7

Harry Styles performing in Denver in 2018.

dom of movement.

Alternatively, women didn’t start wearing pants until the 19th century, and it wasn’t commonplace until the mid-20th century.

Pants were first designed because they were practical. They covered up legs as protection from weather while still allowing for easy movement. But for women in the United States, Europe and beyond, pants came to represent power, equality, and freedom from social and physical restrictions placed on them.

Considering Owens often shows up to red carpets in a pantsuit, it appears she supports that freedom from social restrictions when it benefits her.

Women wearing pantsuits is now commonplace, but it wasn’t always. In certain departments of our culture, it is still taboo. It’s considered progressive for Mormon women to wear pantsuits to church, for example.

LDS female missionaries had to wear skirts

for almost their entire mission, including while riding bikes and proselytizing for hours, until a policy change in 2018 made pants acceptable. Even with the policy change, female missionaries must still wear skirts or dresses to church.

Forcing people to dress according to gender stereotypes is a long-standing problem. But our expectations for gender performance have evolved over the past century.

It is more socially-acceptable for women to perform masculine traits than for men to perform feminine traits, because we still deem masculine traits as more desirable.

For example, girls are called tomboys if they exhibit energetic or boisterous behavior considered more typical of boys than of girls. The word isn’t necessarily used as an insult.

When men are insulted for being weak, scared or annoying, they are almost always compared to women through labels like sissy,

pussy or bitch.

Since 1924, we’ve generally operated under Sigmund Freud’s assertion that biology is the key determinant of gender identity. But that’s slowly changing.

In a recent study conducted by the Intelligence Group, more than two-thirds of people ages 14 to 34 agree that gender does not have to define a person in the way that it used to.

It’s no longer uncommon to see men wearing nail polish, women declining to wear makeup and people of all genders rejecting previously-accepted norms.

But that doesn’t mean everyone is on board.

People of older generations especially are struggling to understand the defiance to follow outdated expectations.

Having such a mainstream artist appear on a major magazine cover in a dress forced the dialogue surrounding gender identity and clothing into national conversation.

Styles helms a list of mainstream artists breaking androgynous barriers — Halsey, Yungblud and Machine Gun Kelly, to name a few. These artists are able to express themselves so freely because queer people have been in this fight for decades.

Gender and sexual identities have placed restrictions on us for centuries. Breaking down barriers is crucial for freedom of expression. Clothing doesn’t have a gender. Gender doesn’t have a set list of required personality traits.

Athletic girls are not tomboys, they are just girls. Emotional boys are not effeminate, they are just boys. And men in dresses are still men, even when Owens throws her fists in the air and says they’re not.

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By RAYMOND LUCAS Section Editor

Weber State University senior point guard Isiah Brown has not had the traditional college experience.

He transferred from Northwestern to Grand Canyon and now finds himself in Ogden with the chance to lead a freshly-established WSU team. He’s packed and unpacked many bags throughout his college career and it’s helped shape him into the player he is now.

“I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been through probably every up and down and high and low that you could as a division one basketball player,” Brown said. “I feel like there is nothing that I haven’t seen, and there isn’t a situation that I haven’t been in, so that gives me comfort. I try to be that source of information for my teammates and teach them whenever they need it.”

Brown has always been tied to basketball. He began his walk of life in Anchorage, Alaska, which is where his father Gerald played the sport in college.

His father went on to play and coach at the professional level. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for Brown to fall in love with the game.

Although he lived in Alaska, Brown spent his summers in Seattle playing AAU basketball. Once Brown became

a 7th grader and the hoop dreams began to feel like an eventual reality, the family decided that it would be best to pack up their belongings and move to Seattle full-time.

In Seattle, Brown’s name would eventually go down in the record books.

When most people think of Seattle the first few things that come to mind are usually coffee, the constant rain and the gloomy grayscale that can make a bad day feel worse.

What many don’t realize is that there is a vibrant “hoop culture” awaiting anyone who ventures into the depths of the city. Despite not having a NBA team in the area since 2008, the city thrives off basketball and a lot of that is thanks to high school competitions.

Throughout Washington state, there are 1,016 high schools. 18 of those schools –– including an all-girls school –– are members of the toughest league the state has to offer: Metro League.

Metro is where a number of guys have been shaped and developed into NBA players, but there are two schools that regularly produce the most talent.

The Bulldogs of Garfield High School and the Vikings of Rainier Beach High School are two inner city teams that have dominated the past two decades.

From the championships won to the players that went onto play division one basketball and have made the

NBA, there is nothing in the state that compares to the legacy of Garfield or the intimidation of Beach.

Brown played in the Metro League but not as a Bulldog or a Viking: he was a Lion.

Brown went to the Lakeside school.

It’s a private institution and has a tuition fee of $38,160. Their most notable alumni are Microsoft co-founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates, which has led to the school seeping with wealth. However, when it comes to basketball, their history is not so rich.

In fact, the most notable player the school has produced is Brown.

In his time at Lakeside, Brown often found himself as one of the key talking points in town thanks to his scoring prowess. By the time his high school career came to an end, he was the alltime leading scorer in Metro League history, and the fact that he did it as a Lion makes it even more special.

“I take a lot of pride in being from Lakeside — representing that community and that school,” Brown said.

“I’ve always felt really entrenched in that community. They always supported me, believed in me and gave me the opportunity to have an incredible career so yeah, I take a lot of pride in that.”

Rather than electing to team up with the powerhouses of the city, he did all

he could to try and dethrone them. On a cold night in January of 2016, Brown scored 50 points against Garfield, yet his team lost by 22.

He stayed true to his roots, and although he never won a state championship, he did wrap up his career named Washington State’s Gatorade Player of the Year.

During that final year, he led the entire state in scoring with 33.8 points per game and was listed as a 3-star recruit.

His next step was Evanston, Illinois, where he would become a freshman at Northwestern University, a member of the prestigious Big Ten conference.

During his freshman year for NU Wildcats, Brown had a solid year. He appeared in 35 games and averaged 14.8 minutes a night while scoring 6.3 points per game and the team made its first ever NCAA tournament appearance. However during his sophomore year, his numbers began to dip.

He only saw action in 25 games and was averaging 10.8 minutes a game while scoring 3.9 points a night. To put it into perspective, Brown scored double figures 11 times during his time at NU, but nine of those came during his first year on campus.

On March 17, 2018, Brown announced that he was transferring to “pursue playing options at another institution.” He then ended up at Grand

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 9

tana State and Montana. In the end, Weber State was where he chose to call his next home.

“I knew a couple of days prior to when I called coach Rahe and told him,” Brown said. “I just wanted to sleep on it for a night or two and make sure, but I was really comfortable with the decision. I woke up that morning, called my dad first and we went over everything and checked all the boxes that we needed to check.”

Brown joined the program a year after it saw off it’s all-time leading scorer Jerrick Harding. Since losing Harding, head coach Randy Rahe spent the off-season reshaping the program in order to be competitive for the upcoming season. This gives Brown the opportunity to step into a big role.

Months ago, it seemed like this would be Brown’s final year of playing college hoops but that has changed due to the global pandemic. Thanks to the uncertainty that is surrounding the

country, the NCAA has awarded an extra year of eligibility to winter sports: a decision Brown feels was the correct one to make.

“I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s just kind of an unprecedented time and I’m glad that they’ve extended that opportunity” Brown said. “It was something that I wanted to see happen, not necessarily just for me but for anyone that was in a situation where this has put them in a bad spot.”

For an athlete, chasing your dreams is always an incredibly exciting time but back when Brown announced his decision to attend WSU, there was not much to smile about.

A country that was already tense over COVID-19 only became more divided during the protests and rallies demanding justice for the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the countless other innocent lives claimed by the hands of a police officer. Brown feels that although it has been chal-

lenging to cope, this is a time of importance.

“I think, at first glance, I wouldn’t want to be a part of this age and time, but as we’ve gone through the months, we’ve all realized how big of a moment this is and how much we can do,” Brown said. “Hopefully things will begin to shift. I feel a lot of responsibility to have a voice and to speak my mind while trying to also educate those who don’t get it.”

For this generation, there has not ever been a call for change like there is right now and while Brown and the Wildcats are set to make their season debut on Nov. 25 against Adams State, it has been made clear that basketball will not be a distraction, but a platform.

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ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ | Chicago Tribune/TNS

Canyon University.

Due to NCAA transfer rules, Brown was forced to sit out during his first year with the program.

The following year, when he was able to play, Brown appeared in all 30 games and started 18 of them. In those games, he averaged 9.3 points per game and knocked down 33 three-pointers, which was good for second on the team. ‘ The best game of his career came in a victory over Illinois State when he poured in 21 points and knocked down five three-pointers. Brown was finding his footing.

With his confidence returning and his college eligibility nearing its end, it was clear that the smartest move for him was to enter the transfer portal.

Once he did that, his name quickly began to float throughout the West coast.

Brown received interest from Pac-12 programs Oregon State and Washington State alongside Big Sky foes Mon-

Northwestern’s Bryant McIntosh (30) hugs teammate Isiah Brown (12) in the final seconds of a 79-73 against Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City on Saturday, March 18, 2017.

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 11

ROBERT LEWIS | The Signpost

Orchesis Dance Theatre and Moving Company presented “Sojourners” as part of the first set of “Dancing in the Stream” performances.

By KIERSTYNN KING Reporter

This year’s Orchesis Dance Theatre theme was about connecting and streaming Orchesis’s performances, which has never been done before, due to COVID-19.

Orchesis Dance Theatre and Moving Company presented “Sojourners” as part of the first set of “Dancing in the Stream” performances, directed by professors Joseph Blake and Erik Stern, on Nov 21.

The “Sojourners” performance demonstrated connectivity and sustainability. Throughout the piece, the dancers were working with sculptures created by Jim Jacobs.

Courtney Conover, moving company dancer, has been dancing since she was three or four years old. She didn’t want the perform-

ing part of her life to end when she went to college, so she auditioned for Orchesis.

Conover described the rehearsals as very communal.

“You can feel everyone’s energy even though we aren’t touching, we’re all working toward the same goal,” Conover said. “It’s been fun to see everyone come together and quickly put this show together. We’ve become a community.”

However, keeping her motivation up has been a struggle this semester.

“The changes really throw us for a loop sometimes, so it can be hard to adjust,” Conover said. “I just remind myself that this is where I want to be and who I want to be with.”

Conover said she hopes the performance of “Sojourners” will have audience members

stop and think about sustainability and how they can help make a difference.

Later in December, five performances created by student choreographers, and a piece choreographed by Blake, will be shown. The streamed performances will still be available to watch afterwards.

The six works were filmed during the weekend of Nov. 12.

Blake said the continual meetings to make a virtual Orchesis performance possible heightened the excitement for the choreographers and the dancers.

“I can’t speak for the students, but I know that they were stressed and worried,” Blake said. “We told them to continue as if they were on stage, as if there was an audience in front of them. We all got one take, and they

all did as any professional would. I’m just so proud of them.”

Blake said these pieces will give the audience the opportunity to see the student dancers in a whole different light.

“You don’t leave your home to see what we’re doing in the studio,” Blake said. “Hopefully this will inspire them to see what else is going on in the arts, locally, nationally and internationally, because the arts is the foundation of so much in terms of learning, community and education.”

“Sojourners” is available to watch on Weber’s Performing Arts website at https://www. weber.edu/PerformingArts/Orchesis_2020_ Dancing_in_the_Stream.html Comment on this story at signpost.mywebermedia.com

12 | MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020

The department of Campus Recreation

Congratulates our December

2020 Graduates

Benefiting Local Weber, Davis & Box Elder County Children

Ian Airmet Brittany Cahdbourne Anakah Groneman Reese Qualls Tanner Stephens Logan Toponce

Over 2,500 local children NEED your help this holiday season!

Select a tag • Buy the gifts • Drop off your donations!

visit: bit.ly/WSUChristmas20 Drop-off Hours: 1:30-5 p.m. | Monday-Friday

WEBER REC Weber.edu/CampusRecreation | CampusRecreation@Weber.edu

DEC. 7–18

Stuffed Toy

DRIVE Office of Diversity Weber State Police Access & Diversity

Women’s Center Student Involvement & Leadership Athletics

Help us provide stuffed toys to comfort children suffering from a traumatic event.

Police meet children daily who are coping from a recent car accident or the arrest of a loved one. A gift of a stuffed animal can provide them with a level of comfort.

Bring your new and un-wrapped stuffed toys to any of the drop-off locations:

Women’s Center (SU 323) Access & Diversity (SC 150) WSUPD (3734 Dixon Pkwy) Student Involvement & Leadership (SU 326) · Stewart Stadium Sky Suite · Miller Admin · Center for Diversity & Unity (SU 232) · · · ·

weber.edu/womenscenter

For more information or to request accommodations in relation to a disability, contact Jessica Pleyel at jessicapleyel@weber.edu

Jason Cowell, of University of Wisconsin, Greenbay, explains the differences in young children when it comes to the internal moral compass.

By LISSETE LANDAVERDE Reporter

The WSU Neuroscience Program and Club wrapped up their Neuroscience Lecture series on Nov. 19 by hosting a lecture presented by Jason Cowell called “Empathy, Morality and Fairness in the Brain” via Zoom.

Cowell, who holds a doctorate in developmental psychology with an emphasis in neuroscience, discussed morality, fairness and empathy and how it is found within children.

He began the lecture by going over what morality is and explained that, over time, there have been many discussions on the definition of morality. The fundamental aspect of these conversations is judging whether something is right or wrong.

It also focuses on if certain behaviors will knowingly cause harm to others, whether it be physically, emotionally or spiritually.

Morality also has to do with societal norms that stop us from evolved tendencies like nepotism — the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs — and tribalism — the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social

group.

“Morality is about controlling something of our evolved nature,” Cowell said. “Our evolved nature is going to be someone selfish in the first place, so we have to curb that ever so slightly.”

He continued to explain one of the experiments that he conducted with Jean Decety, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, showed moral dilemmas to a group of preschoolers to see if there was a link between neural processing and actual behavior.

They did this by showing the children cartoons depicting scenarios in which one character is either harming or helping the other character and watching the electrical signals in the children’s brains.

They also played a dictator game with the children to see the timing of children’s morality.

It turned out that there was an almost-immediate reaction toward the actions the children were seeing, with the children feeling more negativity toward the bad actions. The children would also think back on the positive actions, they saw more than the negative ones.

Cowell said some theorists argue that mo-

rality is about gut-level instincts while others think it is a process where one thinks through the situation and tries to figure out if it is right or wrong.

When going back to expand on the initial study, it seemed like morality is instead a combination of both when it comes to making an initial judgment. However, it is the actions one purposely has to control that one will go back to think about. This can predict different moral behaviors.

Cowell noted that the more an individual thinks about good things seems to be a predictor of how that person shares their own actions.

The same study was done on one- to twoyear-old children and showed that eightmonth-olds tended to reach toward the good characters rather than the bad ones.

In the negative scenarios, they would also pay more attention to the victim rather than the character doing harm.

To expand on the findings, Cowell and Decety also linked how the children individually processed the scenarios to their parent’s ideas on justice and fairness and how sensitive they are to being the victim of negative scenarios themselves.

NIKKI DORBER | The Signpost

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 13

It showed that, even within one year of age, there are already differences between how children will process and think about the scenario based on their parent’s sensitivity to different things.

The researchers then built on their findings by evaluating if fairness is processed in the same way as harm. They showed children three scenarios in which there were equal, slightly unequal and extremely unequal distributions of resources.

“It seems like most people in the long-term end up eventually shifting slight inequality to being more like equality,” Cowell said.

He ended the lecture by going over the future direction of his work. He also mentioned that this study is now also being done in different countries to see how these reactions change between cultures.

While it is ongoing research, it currently shows that children’s reactions not only rely on their parents but also the culture they interact with.

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14 | MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020

January 9

10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

WSU will be open on Saturday for you to access the resources you may need!

Free Parking!

weber.edu/StudentAffairs/saturday.html

YOU ASKED, WE LISTENED

SKI & SNOWBOARD RENTALS Coming November 2nd

Weber.edu/Outdoor

MyWeberMedia.com| November 24, 2020 | 15

DO YOU KNOW YOUR NEWS? QUIZ ANSWERS FROM PAGE 2

den Elementary. According to the building will be cleaned and cash payments are the quickest KSL, hundreds of people showed disinfected while students are and most effective way to get the up to the site to get asymptomat- online. economy back on track. ic testing.

4) The correct answer is c, diComment on this story at 3) The correct answer is d, 18 rect cash payments. According signpost.mywebermedia.com 2) The correct answer is b, Og- active cases. According to KSL, to CNBC, Furman says that direct

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1) The correct answer is a, six.

According to NPR, Biden has chosen a secretary, secretary of state, national security advisor and more.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, right, and economist Jason Furman listen during a personnel announcement in the State Dining Room of the White House in June 2013. In 2012, Krueger introduced the Great Gatsby curve, a graph that showed that the more inequality that exists between the rich and the poor, the harder it is for low-income people to climb up the socioeconomic ladder.

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Adviser Jean Norman jeannorman@ weber.edu Ad Manager KC Sanders kcsanders@weber.edu The Signpost is a student publication, written, edited and drafted by Weber State University students. Student fees fund the printing of this publication. Opinions or positions voiced are not necessarily endorsed by the university. The Signpost reserves the right to edit for reasons of space and libel and to refuse to print any letters. Letters should be submitted online to thesignpost@weber.edu and read letter to the Editor in the subject box. Letters should not exceed 350 words.

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ANNUAL SECURITY REPORT AND FIRE REPORT 2019-20 Welcome to Weber State University. Our Police Department is committed to providing a safe and secure environment for our students, faculty, staff, and visitors. To that end, Weber State University wants to work together with you to create a fun, healthy and vibrant campus community.

We are pleased to present the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. This report is issued the first of October each year and is intended to comply with the requirements of the Clery Act and associated Federal regulations.

The information contained in the annual report pertains to all WSU properties; more specifically you will find information on the University’s policies and procedures for reporting crime, safety and security prevention and protection programs, victim assistance services, fire safety, and other materials to assist you in maintaining your safety and security.

I encourage you to read the information contained in the report and consider how it can help you and the WSU community to prevent and protect yourself against crime. To request a paper copy of this brochure please contact the Weber State Police Department at 801-626-6460 or you can go to the link below and view an electronic copy.

Thank you for taking time to review this information and helping to make WSU a safer community. A copy of the annual report can be found at http://www.weber.edu/wsuimages/police/clery%20Book.pdf