Butler University students who want to crack open their textbooks this summer outside of the Butler Bubble may have to jump through a few extra hoops in order to get credit.

Getting transfer credit for courses requires approval from the department head, the dean of the college or the core administrator and the student’s adviser before the student can apply for summer courses at another college, said Sonya Moore, coordinator of transfer credit.

Students are not allowed to take pass-or-fail courses elsewhere, and they must complete their last 30 hours at Butler.

Some of Butler’s colleges have different requirements for obtaining transfer credits. Most colleges and majors require a grade above a C- for the credit to transfer, but COPHS has tighter restrictions.

“Students must make sure to read instructions according to their college,” Moore said.

In order to get transfer credits, students must fill out a transfer credit approval form, which is available online on the registrar’s page of the Butler website.

There are two different forms: one for core curriculum and one for courses in a certain college. Advisers are utilized throughout the process to make sure the student takes the right course and gets the desired credit.

Proximity to home and lower cost are common advantages of taking courses elsewhere over the summer. Several courses, such as chemistry, are difficult to get into, which makes taking them elsewhere an appealing option.

“If a student lives far away from Butler, they will choose a school closer to home,” Registrar Sondrea Ozolins said. “It’s all the student’s choice.”

Tory Patrick, who graduated from Butler in 2011, decided to take two courses in financial accounting and organizational behavior over the summer at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“I was abroad previously, and I wanted to graduate early,” Patrick said. “It was just convenient to get those six credits out of the way.”

A disadvantage of non-Butler summer courses is the inequality in the learning environment. Summer terms at other schools can be different than Butler’s.

Contact hours are squeezed into a shorter period of time. Credit is based on contact hours, so the workload is usually different than it would be during a regular term.

“The transfer policy applies to all colleges, but in some cases, it is difficult for students to find pharmacy or chemistry classes that meet the standards required for advancement,” Ozolins
said.

Ozolins explained that, with chemistry, if a student is not happy with the original grade he or she receives, he or she can retake the course to achieve a higher grade.

However, the grade does not change if the course is taken at another
school.

Ozolins said she is always glad to see a summer term fill up, and the school is examining how to make the term more interesting for students.

“We try to keep students interested and involved,” Ozolins said.

When deciding to take summer courses elsewhere, students have a few restrictions regarding schools.

The college must be regionally accredited and a part of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

According to their websites, Indiana, Purdue and DePauw Universities follow a similar set of rules for recognizing transfer credits from other universities and colleges.

When a summer course is completed, an official transcript must be sent to Registration and Records here at Butler.

Butler University incorporates service learning—volunteer work—into several courses.

Frankly, Bulldogs should be even more involved in the community, and the university should incentivize them.

I’ve heard faculty and students complain about the confines of the Butler Bubble, of being trapped in a world unrelated to Indianapolis.

My advice? Go out and volunteer around the city.

Bulldogs should get active, and the university should encourage this by requiring volunteer work  even more classes.

It seems the university has latched onto this idea, and service learning appears to be a more frequent requirement in many classes.

“In service-learning courses, students are thinking about the work they are performing in the community, why they are doing it and how it connects to issues of diversity and social justice,” Donald Braid, director of the Center for Citizenship and Community, told The Collegian.

Normally, college students live in a very localized community where they live and learn all in a few-block radius.

Students live with strangers, listen to professors give sometimes-crazy, sometimes-crazy-boring lectures and pull all-nighters fueled by stress and energy drinks.

To me, it’s marvelous and unforgettable. At the same time, it’s easy to lose perspective.

After graduation, Bulldogs have to be a part of their community, and that means both applying what they’ve learned in college  and by helping their neighbors.

Volunteering achieves practice in both.

Butler already encourages a community perspective, one not just about making the job but about enacting change.

Bulldogs shouldn’t just hear about that from the administration.

If the university adopts a system where, for example, all students had to volunteer for a total of 80 hours a year, they’d get out into the community.

Undergraduates would help people across Indianapolis and bring to reality the liberal arts philosophy that Butler loves to publicize so much.

And there’s a practical aspect to it as well.

“It’s not just about sending people out to do charity work,” education professor Arthur Hochman told The Collegian. “There’s a reflective nature about it in which you’re learning through the work you’re doing out in the field. Students may like it because it’s a true sense of utilizing knowledge.”

Volunteering gives students ways to practice the skills they’re trained in and applications for the lectures they attend.

On top of that, they can build networks of support and even friendships with potential employers.

Butler would gain tons of positive public relations, too. There aren’t many things better than some 4,000 volunteer workers.

Students are busy. But I’m pretty sure most of us could find a few hours a week to get involved.

The university as a whole should give students a gentle push in the right direction.

Individual involvement is fantastic, but it’s not enough.

Bulldogs stand to gain a lot of real experience and personal development from this service, and the community needs the help and support.

Students sign up and get out of the Bubble.

Administrators, give us a stronger hint of motivation.

Baby-sitting small children sounds like fun for some people. I am not one of those people.

I am all for helping the world. My version of helping the world though is not making sure that all the students at a community center have their afternoon snacks and play nicely on the playground.

Through the university’s Indianapolis Community Requirement, students are required to complete a course that would “involve active engagement with the Indianapolis community,” according to the Butler University Core Curriculum website.

I’ve taken two service-learning courses during my tenure at Butler.

In one course, I was required to complete 20 hours at the Martin Luther King Community Center.

If service learning is meant to show us life outside of the Butler Bubble, why do I remember nothing even though it’s only been three short semesters since then?

Even after completing my 20 hours and writing my research paper, I felt little connection to the semester of work I had just completed.

I started to think it was solely because I was an awful person—which could be true—but then I started to realize that the point of volunteering is to get you involved in something you care about.

While I think service learning is a fine idea in concept, making students participate in something takes away from the point.

Most students, when told to complete something off campus on their own time, will start to resent the idea of going, and that really ends up taking away from what they get out of it.

By the time midterms rolled around, I was tired of going to the center because I really had other homework to do; I had other things that I could have been doing.

It’s important to give back to your community. But it’s also important to want to give back to your community.

People should do something good because they have an urgency to do—not because the university tells them to.

We’re in a position that some people never even get to see. We’re attending a private university with tuition higher than the average income of Hoosiers. We’re lucky, so it’s only fair to help out.

But that idea of doing something for a noble cause gets lost in the mix of course requirements and volunteer hour logs.

College graduation is a big deal. It’s a huge deal. It’s a deal big enough that schools like Stanford University, Harvard University and the College of William and Mary have had commencement speakers such as Steve Jobs, J.K Rowling and Jon Stewart.

While Butler University is not Harvard or Stanford, it is unacceptable that the university doesn’t put forth more of an effort—or a check—to have influential people speak to graduates.

Butler does not pay, and the Board of Trustees now decides who can come to speak at Butler’s commencement based on eligibility to receive an honorary degree.

This is problematic because students don’t have much of a say as to who they would like to see as commencement speaker.

Although students can nominate someone for an honorary degree, it is ultimately the board’s decision.

“I wish a student or a couple of students served on the committee that decides the commencement speakers, especially senior class officers,”  senior class president Chris Beaman said in an interview with the Collegian.

Butler prefers to stick to commencement speakers who have a close tie to the university, such as the speaker having a family member who attends the university or if the speaker previously has worked for the university.

It is admirable that Butler wants to keep the close connections that it has made throughout the community, but after spending four years within the bubble, students should have someone from outside who can bring a fresh perspective instead of the same, tired speech about The Butler Way.

The issue with this system is the lack of compensation on Butler’s part. Although the university covers the cost of travel and lodging, it does not pay the speaker.
There also is a sentiment that a degree is worth more than money to our commencement speakers.

“I think it is important for a school our size and for a school of our stature to say that an honorary degree from Butler is much more meaningful than a dollar amount we could give,” Beaman said.

While an honorary degree is quite prestigious, it is seemingly insulting of the university to offer nothing more to commencement speakers than a handshake and a diploma. Butler is not as large as the Ivy League universities who attract high-profile speakers, but the university should still offer a stipend to those who come to speak.

Even last year, the opportunity to have a fresh commencement speaker was shot down in favor of Butler’s outgoing president
Bobby Fong.

While Fong did a lot for Butler, it was unfair to students to hear the same speaker from freshman year at their graduation ceremony.

A commencement speaker should be someone who has attained success, is well-known, but can also impart a fresh perspective onto a crowd of terrified students who are being turned out into the professional world.

While Butler has to stay within its monetary limits when it comes to deciding upon a commencement speaker, university officials should still work to ensure that the quality of the speaker coming for graduation students isn’t suffering.

Tennis, anyone?

If you aren’t a member of the Butler University tennis club, the men’s or women’s teams or tennis for enrollment credit, then you most likely won’t be enjoying a game of tennis
today.

Butler has succeeded in making some of its best sports facilities nearly inaccessible to students who aren’t athletes.

If students were to attempt to use the indoor or outdoor tennis courts for an average game of tennis, their plans likely would be impeded by practice for the university teams or physical well being classes.

While I understand that the athletic department can’t give students keys to the Butler Bubble, it is the university’s responsibility to make sure that all students have access to the athletic facilities at the appropriate times.

The problem is not that students do not have options to play any sports on campus unless they are on a team; the problem is that some sports are more accessible than others.

Students wanting to play a pick up game of basketball have to look no further than Ross Hall or the Health and Recreation Complex.

If students want to play a game of volleyball, they can set that up at the HRC or visit Phi Psi’s yard.

Butler should work harder to increase the availability of their facilities to all other students.

For example, the HRC, for which students pay a fee to use, is claimed to be accessible.

It isn’t always open for swimming, though.

According to Butler’s HRC website, “swimmers who want more privacy should consider our off-peak hours: Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.”

To swim for pleasure, students are provided nearly five hours out of 24. Never mind that these hours awkwardly are placed in the realm of a student’s schedule.

Most classes and lunches occur between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. I don’t know a soul who is not an athlete who has the willpower or desire to wake up for a swim at 6:00 a.m.

Also, even though students can’t always access facilities at a more convenient time than sunrise, they still pay a fee—$275 per semester.

If all students are going to pay $550 per academic year for the HRC, shouldn’t they be allowed more flexible hours to swim, play tennis and do the activities they want to do?

Teams need time to practice. The swimming teams and tennis teams need to have access to their facilities for practices, meets or matches.

But when student-athletes aren’t practicing, why can’t we be playing?

The university needs to succeed in making its students feel as though they are part of the bigger community.

Allowing time to use athletic facilities would help this. Let’s continue the tradition of focusing on all students, including non-athletes.

Four student organizations will hold events both on campus and around Indianapolis in honor of Peace Week, in hopes of raising awareness about the issues of the world outside of the “Butler Bubble.”

Books for Peace, Amnesty International, Butler Peace and Justice and SGA are the four organizations collaborating to run events for the week.

There are many events throughout the week including movies on campus and events in the community to help raise awareness.

Books for Peace President Ana Baracaldo is originally from Colombia and started Peace Week with the help of a peace studies class.

“Books for Peace is an organization that I started in high school as a nonprofit,” said Baracaldo, a political science and international studies double major. “We work to start libraries in developing countries as a way of providing tools for education.”

Baracaldo’s Peace Week initiative seeks to spread awareness to campus from around the world.

“I believe that education is an important pillar in development,” she said. “When people have the tools for education they can contribute to society in different ways.”

Caleb Hamman, president of Butler Peace and Justice, is a senior double major in political science and philosophy.

He will be giving a presentation on his fieldwork in Israel and Palestine during the Peace Week festivities.

“I hope to build a campus community around themes of peace and justice and create an awareness of issues around the world,” Hamman said.

Hamman said he created this organization because he wanted a club that was more closely related to the academic offerings of peace studies at the university.

Amnesty International is also involved in peace week with petitions and letter writing projects involving Libya, the death penalty, immigration and women’s rights.

“For us, Peace Week is a chance to reach out to the Butler community and make them aware of these global complex issues,” Matt Kasper, junior political science major and president of Amnesty International, said.

Kasper also discussed how refreshing it was to have four organizations coming together this year. They hope to have even more in the future.

Their collaborative goal is to raise $2,011 for Peace Week 2011.

Clowes Memorial Hall is bringing in a new line-up of performers in different genres and backgrounds.

This season at the concert hall, students in the “Butler bubble,” will be exposed to  different culture and forms of art.

The fall 2010 schedule features concerts from “American Idol’s” Adam Lambert and Indiana’s own John Mellencamp.

Other musical performances include Cats, Blue Man Group and Butler’s own symphony orchestra.

Beyond music, other guests will include the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain along with Bravo’s Eric Ripert. High-lights for the upcoming month include:

Aug. 31:

Adam Lambert

2009 “American Idol” runner-up Lambert will bring some glam rocking entertainment to Clowes when he makes his Aug. 31 appearance. Lambert’s hits include  “Whataya Want From Me” and “If I Had You.”

Showtime is 8:00 p.m., but unless you jumped at the opportunity, you might be out of luck. According to Cloweshall.org, tickets for the performance are sold out.

Sept. 12:

Jordan College of Fine
Arts Music Showcase

Support your Butler peers as they mix classical and modern music in this concert featuring the Wind and Jazz Ensembles.

This is also an opportunity to fulfill the freshman class’s new arts requirement.

The Butler Symphony Orchestra is under the direction of Richard Auldon Clark.

The BSO has performed classics including Holst’s The Planets.  The show is Sept. 12 at 3:00 p.m.

Sept. 15:

An Evening with
Coach Brad Stevens

Listen to the Butler men’s basketball Coach Brad Stevens talk about life before Butler basketball, the Bulldogs unbelievable road to the Final Four, and his life-long dedication to coaching.

Stevens is  also in the running for this year’s commencement speaker.

This is a great chance to hear personal stories from the leader that has shown the NCAA that the Butler Bulldogs are never the underdog.

The talk will take place Sept. 15 at 7:00 p.m.

Sept. 23:

Yusef Komunyakaa

Hear Pulitzer Prize winning poet Komunyakaa discuss his collection of written works including Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975– 1999, Talking Dirty to the Gods and Thieves of Paradise.

Komunyakaa comes as part of the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series. The kick-off will be Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Sept. 30:

An Evening with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert

Hear the Travel Channel’s Bourdain and “Top Chef” guest judge Ripert share stories about their adventures in food from a global perspective.

These two chefs explain life while wearing  the apron. The conversation will take place Sept. 30 at 7:00 p.m.

Oct. 2:

Eric Johnson, Andy McKee, and Peppino D’Agostino

The guitar trio will grace the stage of Clowes October 2. Johnson, McKee and D’Agostino perform at 8:00 p.m. Johnson is known for his song on electric guitar, “Cliffs of Dover.”

For a preview of McKee and the other two artists, search their Youtube videos for performances, including McKee’s cover of Tears for Fears’ “Everbody Wants to Rule the World.”

Nov. 8:

John Mellencamp

Indiana’s own John Mellencamp will be holding two performances at Butler this November.

Kicking off his “No Better Than This” tour, Mellencamp will perform Nov. 8 at Clowes  at 8:30 p.m.

Mellencamp will hold a second performance Nov. 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse at 6:45 p.m.

Nov. 12-14:

Blue Man Group

This November, Clowes is offering up the famous Blue Man Group, shown in cities across the country including Chicago, New York, Las Vegas and Boston.

A mixture of comedy, music and theatre, Blue Man Group is a unique experience that is influenced by modern day art and rock music.

Segments of their shows incorporate  neon paint, percussion ensembles and multimedia elements.

The show runs Nov. 12-14.

Some of these events are still a few months away but consider buying your tickets early.

Tickets for events can be bought during business hours at the box office in Clowes, or online, by phone, or mail from TicketMaster.