The Auraria Board held an open forum Wednesday, August 20 at 7:30 a.m. to vote on changing the policy for carrying handguns and other weapons on the Auraria Campus.
The current policy states that no student is allowed to be in possession of an illegal weapon on campus but there is no mention of persons with a permit to carry. The board met to discuss the new gun laws passed by the state government, which went into effect earlier this year.
The new Colorado gun laws state that only persons with a certified handgun or concealed weapons permit can carry their registered weapon anywhere in the state including school campuses such as Auraria. But the board wants to change that to not allow even persons with a permit to carry a weapon on campus.
The board will make its decision, then form a committee with faculty and staff from the three schools to decide how the new policies will be enforced.
At press time, the board’s decision was unknown.
If approved, the new campus law would go in effect immediately following the meeting. Officials will enforce the new law by distributing the information throughout the institutions then on to the different departments. They will also be searching students, but only if there is probable cause to do so. There will be no mass searches for weapons and no checkpoints will be set up on campus.
According to Vice President of Administration Dean Wolf, board members feel that, because of the recent law passed by the state, the campus now needs to pass a new law banning concealed weapons on campus.
“The reason for this is our concern about the general welfare and safety of the students, faculty, and staff on campus,” he said. “I support the recommendation and it only makes good sense.”
More or less, the law will be a reaffirmation of existing policies at each institution.
“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Wolf said.
Attorney General Spokesman Ken Lane had no comment concerning the Auraria Board’s meeting but added, “The state is currently in litigations defending the new weapons laws that we recently put into place.”
Chris Colelli, owner of Lexington Arms and Supply, said he feels the university shouldn’t have the power to change the laws set by the state.
“I’m pleased by the two new laws that were passed by the state: the CCW law and the Local Preemption,” he said. “The board is taking a position that is very common among those who don’t like guns.”
Colelli went on the say that people with handguns who carry permits are a group of people who shouldn’t be feared.
The board’s meeting has not only brought concern to the community, but to the students as well.
“As Americans, we have the right to bare arms, that’s one of the things our country was founded on,” Metro Senior Melissa Capps said. “I think it’s our right to have them, but a place of education is not an appropriate arena to have weapons.”
UCD Freshman Etienne Boudreau had a different view.
“If they are not violating the laws and have a permit, I think they should be able to carry a weapon,” she said.
Boudreau is not a gun owner but said, “If the society got hostile enough I would have one just to keep around.”
Metro graduate student Lisa Puckett is up in arms about the board voting to ban weapons.
“I think it’s a contradiction in terms,” she said. “If the state says it’s legal to carry concealed weapons then I don’t think (the board) can counteract that; I don’t think they shouldn’t contradict a state law.”
Puckett believes that the students are the ones that should be voting on this issue.
“They shouldn’t allow one small group to decide on the campus environment.”
But not all students feel the same. Some would feel safer if a ban were passed.
Auraria Board member and CCD President Kristen Johnson wants to ensure that the campus remains a save environment.
“I’m supporting the weapons ban, because it’s a public safety issue for students and because of Auraria being an open campus.”
According to Campus Police Chief Heather Coogan, there have been some arrests of people carrying illegal weapons (guns and knives) on campus, but it doesn’t happen very often.
“All I want is that there is consistency between the three schools and that the policies are uniformly enforced, and that they are fair,” Coogan said.

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Auraria’s Student Legal Services (SLS) office will remain closed for the fall semester as a result of a decision made by Metro’s interim President Ray Kieft and his administration last week.
The office was closed April 29, following accusations of mismanagement concerning the activities of attorney and SLS director Christian Rataj.
William Safford, the former SLS vice president said he and his wife, former SLS president Beth Ott, have hired attorney Roger Fraley and plan on filing a lawsuit against Metro’s Board of Trustees, under the “whistle-blower” protection statute.
Safford and Ott sparked an investigation by disclosing information of Rataj’s activities to members of Metro’s administration. Both lost their jobs as a direct result of the SLS closure.
“(Metro) can’t punish (Safford and Ott) for telling them what Rataj was doing,” Fraley said. “Even if an investigation turns up nothing, Safford and Ott should not have been retaliated against.”

Metro attorney Lee Combs said any lawsuit brought against the college would be vigorously defended.
Safford said he and Ott noticed Rataj’s involvement in numerous questionable activities: Students paid by the department and federal work-study logging hours doing work for his private clients, falsification of annual reports, and sexual discrimination.
Safford said they began to realize last spring semester that much of the legal writing they were doing was not for students.
“The catcher was when we saw some of those people come and drop off checks made out to (Rataj),” Safford said.
According to Safford, Rataj also lied to his superiors by making up numbers on his annual reports and was trying to convince both UCD and Metro to each pay him a full salary, which would have doubled his income.
Ott and Safford also said he spent a lot of time making offensive remarks about homosexuals, minorities, and women; therefore creating a somewhat hostile work atmosphere.
“It became clear after awhile that (Rataj) gave straight, white males the good work,” Safford said.
He said the women were generally assigned the rote work, while the men received all the interesting research projects.
According to Safford, Ott decided to approach Rataj about his behavior. She told him there was a perception of unequal treatment in the office, which he disputed and told her it was her responsibility to stamp-out any such talk, and if she did not do so, she would lose her job.
Rataj was unavailable for comment.
Safford said it was at this point that the couple decided they had a responsibility to report these activities.
A friend and professor pointed Safford and Ott in the direction of Percy Morehouse, Director of Equal Opportunity for Metro. They had their first meeting on April 23, during which, according to Safford, Morehouse told them he had a duty to investigate their concerns and reassured the couple the office would remain open, their jobs would remain the same and they would be protected from retaliation.
Safford said they scheduled a meeting for the following week with Morehouse and Karen Raforth, Associate Vice President for Student Services and Dean of Student Life.
He said that, apparently, Rataj found out by April 24 that they had complained and somehow obtained a copy of the list of concerns they had typed up regarding his activities and behavior.
Safford also said Rataj spent almost all of April 29 “cleaning out his office.”
“We saw him taking trips to the shredder room with stacks of files,” Safford said. “We saw him taking trips out of the building with files.”
The couple notified Raforth and Morehouse who replied by saying it was fine, that Rataj had been instructed not to take any files out of the building.
Ott and Safford said they received a phone call from a fellow office employee that evening saying the office had been closed.
“We wanted to keep our office open for selfish and non-selfish reasons,” Safford said. He explained that he and Ott had put a lot of work into the development of SLS, and their employees were also people who relied on the office for academic purposes and life experience.
He also said they felt it was important for Auraria to have a service for students who need legal counseling and cannot afford to seek it elsewhere.
Safford and Ott said they proposed several alternatives to Raforth and Morehouse and ways for the office to remain open without violating client confidentiality.
They said Raforth told them the alternatives were not acceptable because Rataj did not see any way it could work.
“That was the first sign that the school wasn’t going to help us,” Safford said.
The office remained closed for the entire month of May, and into early June.
At that point, Safford and Ott hired Fraley to represent them.
According to Cathy Lucas, Director of College Communications, the office closed due to a personnel issue that resulted in an investigation.
Rataj resigned from his position June 11 during the investigation, and Metro considered the matter to be closed.
Lucas also said the decision to close SLS for fall semester was made due to the loss of the director, and left with only a part-time staff, the college did not feel it could run a quality program.
SLS was a service provided for students from all three institutions at Auraria, which offered legal advice and counseling free of charge because the services are paid for with student fees.
However, they provided no legal representation.
The services were restricted to students enrolled at any of the three schools.
Since the majority of students at Auraria attend Metro (20,300 currently enrolled for the fall semester), the SLS program was mainly funded by Metro student fees and therefore more Metro students will be affected by the closing of the office.
Lucas said Raforth will be meeting with the Student Government Assembly (SGA) and Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board (SACAB) in the next couple of weeks to get their recommendations and determine alternative ways students can still receive free legal advice and counseling.
Lucas also said the office, located in Tivoli room 219, will be used to house all the SLS files until Jan. 31, the deadline for students who used the service in the past to pick up their files or submit written authorization for the files to be transferred to a different attorney.
Any files that are unclaimed will be shredded.
The Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) and SACAB will determine future use of the office space after Jan. 31.

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An auction was held Aug. 18 at 11 a.m. by the Colorado Department of Revenue to sell all of the contents of The Boiler Room to alleviate overdue taxes.
The exact total take of the auction was not available at press time, according to Tivoli Finance Manager Dave Caldwell, because not every payment has been received and it hasn’t been completely tallied, but several preliminary bids to buy the whole kit and caboodle were at and above $12,000, according to several bidders.

photo by David Merril - The Metropolitan

Auctioneer William Dickensheet sells off the contents of the Boiler Room Aug. 18. The restaurant was seized for nonpayment of taxes and for not making payments on their lease.

Those bidders said they thought the auction probably exceeded those bids in take, but the property was sold in pieces rather than all at once.
The buyers claimed and removed the items on Aug. 19 as Dickensheet and Associates Auctioneers representative Kenny Bryant watched and oversaw.
“Every bar item was sold,” Bryant said. “Everything that was allowed to be sold, sold.”
The only things not allowed to be sold were things that were attached to the building, like the bar and the railings, he said.
“It seems to have been a pretty good auction,” Bryant said.
Rick Roos thought so too.
Roos is the owner of Roosters, a bar in Broomfield.

He bought most of the furniture, including the bar stools, chairs, tables, kitchen equipment and even the leftover condiments like ketchup and mustard. It was the tables he was excited about finding.
“The bases of the tables are antiques and are worth a fortune,” he said.
Roos said he has many memories of The Boiler Room from college and wanted to bring that feeling back to his bar. He said he plans to sandblast and refinish the tables and add them to Roosters.
“Everything in this place will be recycled,” Roos said.
He said he bid by phone, piece by piece to get what he wanted. He had initially bid around $12,500 on the whole place, but the bid was rejected.
He said that, buying in pieces, he probably bought about 20 percent of what was offered, but he bought a lot of the big stuff.
Denver resellers Bryan Farr and Rob Hart also took advantage of the auction.
They purchased the freezer, the sound system, the cash registers and the point of sale computer system to resell to restaurants, bars and wholesalers.
They also bought all of the leftover liquor. That, Farr said, was for personal reasons.
“We dropped about $2,000 yesterday,” he said, “but we got enough stuff to be happy.”
Hart said the auction seemed to have been well-run and well-represented, with everyone from restaurant and bar owners to wholesalers to resellers to students.
“We saw plenty of students who got to get trinkets from the campus bar,” Hart said.
Caldwell agreed that the auction went well.
He said the auction was well-orchestrated, with the auctioneers stopping to answer questions from the bidders, like where to make their payments and when to pick up their purchases.
One of the things Farr and Hart bought was the industrial freezer, and they had a hard time getting it out.
“We didn’t think about the logistics of moving (it),” he said. “It was very difficult to move out.”
Roos said if anyone has old or current photos of The Boiler Room, they should e-mail him, as he would like to put the photos into the tops of the tables he bought. If you have a photo to share, go to Roostersbar.net or e-mail roosters@qwest.net.

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Metro President resigns
Metro President Sheila Kaplan resigned on June 13, in front of the Metro Board of Trustees, after serving a 10-year term. Kaplan was the first female president in Metro’s history, serving the longest term since the college opened in 1965.
Kaplan’s last day was on July 1, and it is still unclear why she resigned. Some speculations for the resignation were the lack of support from the Board of Trustees.
Kaplan successes while president included getting the approval for Metro to have its own government, the re-establishment of the African-American and Chicana/o studies department, and during her tenure the Metro State Foundation Board raised $17 million for the college’s gift campaign.
Kaplan has returned to teach history classes and will act as an administrative consultant to the college.

RIF Considered
Tenured faculty was placed on the back burner for what was known as more budget cuts. A RIF, or Reduction-in-Forced policy was introduced, which, if utilized, could eliminate the job security of tenured faculty.
Faculty said they believe that the RIF policy allows termination of tenured faculty. The RIF policy would only be used if all other means of getting funds for the college were exhausted.
Cutting highly-paid tenure faculty would be more economically intelligent than cutting part-time faculty, if needed. A new contract was written up, stating that if a faculty member signs this new contract they are, in effect, accepting this handbook, which destroys tenure.

Boiler Room’s Doors Close
After operating for 15 years, the Boiler Room closed its doors on July 11.
The owners of the Boiler Room did not pay the lease of $11,812.93 for July and had also defaulted on three previous months payments. The manager of the Tivoli Student Union was forced to close the Boiler Room, even though the lease was not up until June 30, 2005.
Students said they felt disappointed by the termination of the only bar on campus, and are upset that they will not have a place like the Boiler Room to rest and get away from the stresses of schools.

photo by Joshua Buck - The Metropoitan

Students converse outside the Tivoli Aug. 19, a sure sign of a new semester after summer break.

Mercantile now Einstein Bros.
Since the late seventies, the Mercantile restaurant was known for its grilled burgers, warm French fries, crisp salads, and fresh sandwiches. But on June 27, the Mercantile cleared the way for the new Einstein Bros. Bagels to move into the space.
The Mercantile building was constructed in 1906, and prior to being a restaurant it was a grocery store with the same name.
When the Mercantile’s lease was almost up, everyone had a fair chance to bid on the building. The owners of the Mercantile, Mark Roberts and Vincent Hoyos, said they thought they would be the winners of the bidding process since they were already an established business.

Budgets Cuts Kept on Cutting
Metro students felt the impact of budget cuts in the financial aid office because of a $1.5 million cut which will go into effect for the 2003-2004 school year, despite efforts of the state government.
Some work-study positions were eliminated by a $1.9 million cut from that program, with $187,000 coming out of the Metro work-study program. There was a 10 percent elimination of work-study positions.
Merit-based scholarships were hit as well, with a 55 percent cut at all schools in the state. The Colorado Student Grant also took a hit with a $730,00 cut.

Headlines

Summer thefts on Auraria campus
•July 28: A Cannondale mountain bike belonging to student Brian Flaherty was stolen from the bike racks located near the PE building between 6 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. The bike is worth an estimated $1100.

•July 30: Treva Pearcy reported that her coin purse containing $65.50 was stolen between 9:30 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. in the Central classroom. There are no leads at this time and no one saw the incident.

•Student Gregory Hooper reported that his laptop and case, worth an estimated $200, was taken in the Tivoli sometime between 5:30 p.m. on July 29 and 6:30 a.m. July 30.

•Jennifer Frank, a CCD employee, reported her front license plate stolen from her vehicle in Lot E. The theft occurred between 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.

•In Lot B, speakers from student Thomas Skokan’s car were stolen between 12:45 p.m. and 3:25 p.m. The speakers are worth an estimated $125.

•A Raleigh mountain bike and cable lock were reported stolen by student Justin Migocz. His bike was locked in front of the North Classroom. The bike is worth $515.

•Douglas Unfug also reported his bike missing from in front of the North Classroom. His specialized mountain bike, worth $1778, was taken between 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. His cable lock, water bottle and bike cyclometer were taken along with the bike and are worth an estimated $55.

•Aug.1: Eric Trout reported his bike and chain lock stolen between 1p.m. and 1:15 p.m. at 10th and Curtis. His bike and chain are worth about $520.

•Aug. 2: Roy J. Sand, an employee at the Starz Film Center, reported a break-in at the theatre’s money storage closet. The thief took the daily receipts from Aug. 1, as well as $3,615.75 in petty cash. The closet had been pried open with a screwdriver-like tool. Sand noticed that the projectionist’s door had been propped open, but at this time there are no leads.

Aug. 3: A series of break-ins happen in Lot A.
•Rebecca L. Tucker reported her Alpine audio system, estimated worth $250, stolen from her car as well as some CDs. Her driver’s side window was smashed in.

•Mark Duffy reported his stereo missing as well as some CDs. His car window was also smashed in. His loss is estimated at $275.

•Melissa Valenza’s detachable-face Sony stereo was stolen from her car, as well as $10 cash. The stereo is worth about $400.

•Ellen Boswell, an MSCD employee, reported an attempted burglary. Her car window was smashed in, but nothing was stolen from the vehicle.

•Evan Vars, an AHEC employee, reported criminal mischief in Central Classroom 101A. A hard object broke a window in the classroom. The damage is estimated at $900.

•Aug. 5: MSCD student Ronald Fulkerson was arrested at 2:40 p.m. in the Auraria Campus Bookstore for shoplifting, possession of drug paraphernalia, unlawful acts in or about schools, colleges and universities, and possession of injection devices.

Have a news tip? Contact the news room at (303) 556-2507, or email the news editor at:  leavittn@mscd.edu

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photo by Joshua Lawton - The Metropolitan

Metro student Allison Musser organizes paperwork and notebooks in her Denver apartment in preperation to begin student teaching high school Spanish this fall. Musser and her husband plan to be working for the Peace Corps in a Spanish speaking country in the spring of 2004.

Allison Musser: Student, future Peace Corps volunteer, and student teacher says she has a passion to impact people.
Musser, who’ll graduate this December, began her journey at Metro in 2001.
A well-traveled student, Musser found her home here in Colorado after touring several different areas. Just before graduating from high school, Musser was an exchange student in Honduras where Musser’s passion to impact people was sparked.
“It was an amazing experience,” Musser said, describing her time in Honduras. While there, Musser taught a kindergarten class, organized a group of volunteers, and volunteered herself at an orphanage. Musser’s connections with a Mission allowed her to allocate resources to other areas. Above all, Musser gave the kids love, she says.
“Being a foreign exchange student gave me a love for Spanish and the Latin American people,” Musser said. “The orphanage definitely touched me – being able to give of myself and live a simple life. It also taught me the importance of an education.”
Musser says she realized at that point she was going to need an education to be as powerful – or do what she wants to do.
In March, Musser plans to volunteer for the Peace Corps in either Central or South America. “It’s always been my dream,” Musser said. In addition to helping, and beyond her Spanish education from the classroom – Musser wants to immerse herself in the Spanish language. The Peace Corps calls for 27 months of service. After the Peace Corps, Musser has her sights set on teaching in the classroom. “I’m real interested in doing some ESL (English as a Second Language) or ELA (English Language Acquisition).”
“I love working with the Spanish speaking population,” Musser said. Musser also says that working with ESL or ELA would allow her do work with different age groups.
This semester, Musser is looking forward to a student teaching position at Overland High School – provided everything works out.
Musser has worked extremely hard in her days here at Metro.
“I’ve really worked hard,” she said in an interview last Friday. Truly humble in spirit, Musser never shares her GPA with anyone. After prying it out of her, I learned that it is, not surprisingly, 4.0.
“I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” she said.
Musser is one of the first recipients of The Reisher Scholarship, which focuses on academic potential, community service and financial need. All of Reisher recipients are continuing or transfer students. Reason being, Musser says, these students have shown potential to succeed in academics and their community.
“These people (The Reisher foundation) are a blessing because they are really helping people,” Musser said. “It’s special that it’s a family taking it on, not the government,” she added.
Musser worked as a liaison between the Reisher Foundation and scholarship recipients in the Student Services office here at Metro.
Musser says her initial time at Metro was difficult. But, after getting dialed into her major she found the true essence of Metro State.
“I feel like everyone has invested in me. I feel like I have received an amazing education (here at Metro),” she said.
Musser has shown her work ethic through her perfect 4.0. She has offered herself as a volunteer in Honduras. She was the recipient of a notable scholarship. And now, she has taken up student teaching and the Peace Corps. Allison Musser has proven herself to impact peoples lives.

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New fitness center at Auraria opens for all three schools
Work-out facilities available for all three schools; students need ID
by Noelle Leavitt
The Metropolitan

A new fitness center opened at Auraria at the beginning of the summer semester in the Events Center Building available for students from all three schools.
The center provides students, faculty, administration and staff with a larger variety of physical equipment and space to utilize.
“There’s a vast difference,” said Alexa Hanke, UCD graduate student and work- study employee in the fitness center. “This new facility is so much better than the one we had previously.”
The old fitness center was located in the Green Room on the second floor of the Events Center Building; the new fitness center is twice the size and is located in the auxiliary gym on the first floor.
The idea for a new fitness center started three years ago by Campus Recreation at Auraria and Human Performance Sports and Leisure studies.
“After several months of discussion, we took our plan to Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board,” said Tony Price, director of campus recreation at Auraria.
SACAB is made up of students from the three schools on campus and their role is to review and make recommendations for approval of policies, construction and maintenance of facilities, financial requests and fee structures at Auraria.
“They [SACAB] are very cautious how they spend student dollars,” said Dick Feuerborn division director for facilities planning and use.
The money for the new fitness center came out of an Auraria bond fee which students from all three colleges pay as part of their tuition.
The bond was set up to finance potential projects for the Tivoli, Events Center and Child Care Center.

photo by Chris Stark - The Metropolitan

Auraria students and staff take advantage of the new fitness center on the first floor in the Events Center June 9. The center opened over the summer semester, and offers many new features.

“Close to a half-million dollars came out of the Auraria bond fees to make this project happen,” Price said. “This all got approved at the end of last summer, right before everything hit with budget cuts.”
Price said campus recreation has not had any negative feedback concerning the new fitness center in regard to the budget problems all three schools face.
The total cost of the remodel for the auxiliary gym to be renovated into a new fitness center was $227,139.
Feuerborn said the rest of the money went toward the renovation of the racquetball courts which cost $160,850.
In order to make the new fitness center possible, campus recreation had to do a lot of remodeling that did not pertain directly to the auxiliary gym.
The Events Center had eight racquetball courts, but the use of the courts had declined over the past several years and was being used for classes and gymnastics, Price said.
“We felt like the racquetball space was the most dead space in the facility,” Price said.
The racquetball courts were connected, but walls separated them.
The renovation money was used to tear down the walls to make one big room, along with patching the floors.
The former courts will now be used for aerobics, additional weight training and gymnastics.
The new fitness center has more windows than the previous one, and Price said students have given him positive feedback on how the windows give the gym a more comfortable feel.
“I love it. It’s really nice,” said Metro junior, Ana Lugo.
Many students did not utilize the old fitness center because of the lack of space and equipment, Hanke said.
She also said, “A lot of people got very intimidated and didn’t want to start their workout there.”
She said the new fitness center has several new attractions that students will like, such as six TV’s with VHS and DVD capabilities and FM stations that students can tune to as long as they bring their own radio with them.
Mirrors line the walls of the gym, which Price said is a feature many students rave about.
Price said he is very excited about all the features the new fitness center offers students and is confident it will continue to be a success in the fall semester.

Headlines

Comedy class teacher a real stand-up gal
by Tabatha Dial
The Metropolitan

Do you think you’re funny, like a clown, here to amuse us? Then Stand-Up Comedy 275 is your course and Julie Ireland is your comedienne. Ireland has performed in comedy shows around Denver for 20 years, and after teaching tiny little kids, high school students and Corporate America, she’s ready to encourage and educate all students on the Auraria campus.
Stand-Up Comedy 275 focuses primarily on the art of improvisation. It has never been offered at Auraria before, and beginning August 18th, it will be offered to all students through Community College of Denver.
Ireland is “looking for completely, 100 percent, totally inexperienced students,” she says, adding that the 275 in the course number shouldn’t scare anyone away. There will be no books, no tests, and each student’s grade will be based almost entirely on attendance.
The class will resemble Drew Carey’s “Whose Line is it Anyway?” except that each episode will run from 1-2:15 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, and will be full of college students earning 3 semester hours. Ireland doesn’t resemble Drew Carey, except for the fact that she’s an accomplished homo-sapien with a great sense of humor. And please don’t expect Wayne Brady to drop in.
After 20 years of teaching improvisation, Ireland knows what she is capable of doing in the college classroom. The ability to think fast (a skill demonstrated by those who perform improvisational comedy) will be developed through practice. Ireland plans to use classroom time for practice time, and encourages people who have stage fright to take her class, because she never forces anyone to go on stage.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? There must be some exhausting homework, mustn’t there? Where is the catch? Ireland is thinking of asking her students to attend an improvisational show in Denver, but the real homework and learning will happen in the classroom.
“People learn by doing it,” she confesses with a warm smile that can almost be seen over a cell phone, carrying with it an aura of warmth that has resulted in previous students begging for a chance to perform in front of her class.
One of the biggest challenges facing the instructor now is getting word of her class out to the public.
This theatre class, offered by CCD, but open to all students at Auraria, will help students develop public speaking and job interview skills. Furthermore, it will provide Auraria campus with “A Night of Comedy at the Rawls Courtyard Theatre at the King Center.” A Night of Comedy will be presented at the end of the fall semester.
With no reading assignments and no tests, this course may become one of the most coveted at Auraria. Finals can be entertaining, and Ireland’s stand-up comedy class will prove it when they make a combination of performance and humor look easy at the King Center. But we’ll all have to wait until mid-December to see it.
Ireland would love to see more students enrolled in her course. If you are interested in getting credit for goofing off in class, call Instructor Julie Ireland at (303)894-0160.

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Upheaval Dome Project’s The Blind Watchmaker, theater review
by Jonelle Wilkinson Seitz
The Metropolitan

Saturday, August 16, 8 p.m. at The Bug Theatre
How many angst-ridden, eco-friendly, twenty-something campers does it take to make a play?
The seven multi-tasking artists of Upheaval Dome Project created The Blind Watchmaker while camping in Moab for seven weeks this summer.
According to the program notes, the artists, who hail from New York, San Francisco and St. Louis, collaborated on nearly everything: Script, designs, music and acting.
The play is surprisingly cohesive (I suppose being alone together in the desert helped) considering it was a group effort and written, presumably, without the support of aids like coffee or the Internet.
However, the program reveals that they did have beer, which could account for elements such as the wonderfully personified pig, the shoddy bird puppets made of umbrellas and the ridiculous clock-making dance (although I would not be surprised if a substance other than alcohol was involved here).
The play opens on a man working in a laboratory as a turtle scoots across the stage in front of him. The man is Karel Hoennikker, a DNA scientist. The turtle (Sophie Nimmannit), like the rest of the menagerie that appears throughout the play, seems to be there to remind us that the world extends beyond the self-torment of the human characters.
Soon it is revealed that Karel is dead and his daughter, Zeke, has been left with a burdening choice: If she releases the virus in the vial Karel has left her, 98 percent of the human population will die.
She wears the vial around her neck and broods around her small town, painting, writing and drinking. Elizabeth Watt, who also played Karel, well portrays the stubborn, lonely Zeke.
Zeke’s downward spiral is interrupted when Judas Castle (Nathaniel Schenkkan) comes into town and invites her to come aboard his boat and sail to a faraway jungle where his father supposedly owns a hospital.
Zeke and Judas seem to click, both being in fear of and concerned for humanity, so Zeke accepts. Once on the boat, they alternate strangely between rash, ugly arguments and anguished camaraderie.
Simply put, they are spoiled children who take themselves far too seriously. The dance mentioned earlier occurs on the boat as Judas shows Zeke the large clock he is making.
In reference to the idea of a creator who set up the world’s gears and then left it to run on its own, the campers seem to be trying to tell us here that Judas sees the importance of his own decisions in such largess.
Whatever the symbolism, the frantic dance that occurs out of nowhere and includes many badly-mimed twists of imagined bolts with a real wrench (I suppose there are no wrenches to practice with in the desert) is laughable.
For a while, Zeke keeps the contents of the vial around her neck a secret. When she finally does tell Judas, he decides that he, Zeke and Ishmael, the fabulous pig Zeke has adopted along the way (played by Lear deBessonet), should disembark and wander through the rainforest for awhile.
Once they have paid $500 to a bureaucrat who controls entry to the forest, Judas takes off, shaken by Zeke’s secret. During his leave, Zeke is consoled by Ishmael, and then witnesses a series of animals that show how nature deals with death.
By the time Judas returns, both of them have made a conclusion about the vial. Having visited a lumber factory and confirmed that technology is the terrorism of the planet, Judas advises Zeke to release the contents of the vial. Zeke’s experience, however, has helped her regain her faith in humanity, at least a little, and once Judas falls asleep, it is Zeke who leaves.

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Corrections

In last weeks issue, the women’s soccer team was said to have won the National Championship last year, which they did not. Instead, they made it to the final four of Nationals. They did, however, win the RMAC Championship.

The Student Government Assembly story in last weeks issue said that the president, Felicia Woodson was asked to resign, that was incorrect. The SGA is made up of 13 members not 10 and they were appointed to office this past spring, not last fall.

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