(originally published May 4, 2009 in The Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer
Jacob Willis saw a demand.
He found that wedding photographers needed to spend excessive amounts of time and effort designing wedding albums, but often cannot due to the requirements of their businesses.
By creating a business plan though PLNU's 2008-2009 Entrepreneurial Enrichment Program that took these requirements out of the hands of the photographers, Willis, who graduated from PLNU last spring with a major in Managerial and Organizational Communication, was named 2009 the Student-Entrepreneur of the Year.
The Entrepreneurial Enrichment Program (EEP), which first started at PLNU in 2007, guides PLNU students through the process of turning their business ideas into workable business plans. At the end of the seven-month process, the best plan, as determined by a panel of 15 judges from around the country, wins its creator $3000 for the business, and the title of Entrepreneur of the Year.
“Nearly all of the other competitions that I see everywhere else, students present, they're judged, and the very best one gets additional care.” said Randy Ataide, the Director of both the Fermanian Business Center and the EEP. “Ours is the complete opposite. All of our students get the care all the way through the process of building a plan, and yes, we do select an entrepreneur of the year, but all of the plans are rewarded for the two-semester-long entry process.”
Willis' idea for the company, which he calls Allure Album Design, came to him while working as an intern for Bauman Photography during his Senior year. The photography studio, working with its customers mailed its photographs to a company in Washington, which sent a draft back for the studio and customer to make corrections to. Willis figured that if the design company, not the studio, worked directly with the customers, valuable time would be saved.
Eventually, the photography studio realized it would take less time to use Willis' talents to produce the albums in-house.
“Album design used to take our studio anywhere from four to six months. Now, with me handling it all, it takes about 2 months,” said Willis. “It's nice, because we have a studio manager and two other photographers, and it doesn't consume any of their time, because I handle all of it.”
After signing up for the EEP in April, Willis prepared his idea for the first step in the process—the September presentation. A total of 13 students, including Willis, set up presentations to explain their ideas to potential mentors, who judged the plans and decided if they would be willing to work with the students.
Willis' idea attracted the attention of Suzi Grunau, a self-employed property manager.
“Jacob is very talented in graphic design, and putting together all the technology that it takes to put together the album,” said Grunau. “I just liked his concept.”
Willis' now-full-time work for Bauman kept his schedule busy until January, when he could finally find the time to work on his plan. He communicated with Grunau by email about once per week, who helped him with aspects of the plan he had not yet focused on, such as marketing and researching his competition.
“I went to a big wedding photographer in Vegas,” said Willis. “ I talked to other album design companies, and basically pretended that I was an interested customer, and got all their price points. Feeling out the industry was a huge thing that really helped me shape my plan.”
The months of work spent on the project all culminated at the awards banquet held last Friday, April 29, where Willis was named Student-Entrepreneur of the Year, receiving the $3000 prize.
As the wide-eyed, smiling entrepreneur stood up to receive his award, it was clear that he was excited to have won.
“I never did the competition to win,” Willis said later. “I got involved because I knew I needed to write a business plan if I wanted to create an album company. [...] But as you put more effort and time into something, you get more attached to it. When the banquet came, I really did want to win.”
The creators of the eight other business plans involved in the project all received $500 for their business. Several students also received scholarships for their work, including Amanda Kleen, who created a lightweight bear-proof food container called LIGHTER1.
“This was probably the most valuable experience I've had at Point Loma so far,” Kleen said after the banquet. “I've been treated like an adult, and put in the real world with real equations and real problems to solve, with real people that hold you accountable.”
Along with his work for Bauman, Willis already has one client that is outsourcing its album design to him. He plans on expanding his company, starting with the creation of a website that allows for clients to create accounts and submit requests. He estimates that raising capital and creating the website will take eight months.
For the 2009-2010 EEP, 27 students have applied. Though the deadline for submissions was April 15, Ataide says he'd possibly consider late submissions. Students from any major can submit a plan, along with seniors graduating this spring.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Bumpy Road Bill
(originally published March 17, 2008 in The Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer
Student Congress unanimously passed a bill to petition Public Safety and the Physical Plant to modify the speed bumps on the north side of campus to comply with city standards on Feb. 25. The current speed bumps are as much as two feet narrower and one inch higher than standard city speed bumps.
The bill, dubbed the “Bumpy Road Bill” by its author and presenter, SC member David Livingston, mentioned that the bottoms of students’ vehicles have been known to scrape the speed bumps while passing over them, which could potentially damage students’ cars. Livingston said he has personally had to spend $500 on repairs as a result of his unmodified 1992 Honda Accord scraping the speed bumps. This figure does not include the cost of fixing his cracked radiator, another damage that he attributes to the speed bumps, which he has not yet had repaired.
SC members also raised a concern about the danger of the high speed bumps. The damage the speed bumps cause to cars, members said, could potentially cause accidents that may lead to serious injuries. In addition, the current speed bumps may be in violation of California fire code, which states, “Roadway design features (speed bumps, speed humps, speed control dips, etc.) which may interfere with emergency apparatus responses shall not be installed on fire access roadways, unless they meet design criteria approved by the Chief to accomplish the purposes of this Code.”
Livingston said he is pleased with the results of the meeting and thinks that the unanimous vote will call attention to the need for lowering the speed bumps.
“With unanimous support, it’s hard for the administration to not see our concern,” Livingston said. “Out of a select elected few that are supposed to represent the student body, every single one of them agreed to this, so hopefully the administration will adhere to the bill and we can actually improve campus life.”
Livingston said he now plans on meeting with Archie Yates, the director of Public Safety and Richard Schult, the director of Physical Plant to try to convince them to lower the speed bumps.
Schult said he had not yet heard of the complaints about the speed bumps, or of any plans to adjust their size, but he acknowledged that the largest speed bump, the one located on the hill east of Nease Hall, as being an inconvenience.
“That [bump] is a tough one even for my trucks to get over,” Schult said. “They just have to go real slow.”
According to Schult, if the administration agrees to lower the speed bumps, the school would hire an outside contractor, such as RCK Paving or Atlas Asphalt, to grind the speed bumps down, possibly removing them completely and rebuilding them.
The work, Schult estimated, would cost less than $1000 per bump, adding that “you might be able to do three or four bumps for a little over $2000.”
Schult said that each speed bump would take about one day to alter.
Yates did not respond to requests for comment.
During the Feb. 25 meeting, members of SC discussed whether the administration would be willing to pay for the work and touched on the subject of whether congress members would be willing to raise funds to pay for the altering. Nothing concrete was decided, but some complained that the students should not have to pay to “fix the school’s mistakes,” while others countered that “it wouldn’t be horrible to pay for it ourselves.”
by Phillip Moyer
Student Congress unanimously passed a bill to petition Public Safety and the Physical Plant to modify the speed bumps on the north side of campus to comply with city standards on Feb. 25. The current speed bumps are as much as two feet narrower and one inch higher than standard city speed bumps.
The bill, dubbed the “Bumpy Road Bill” by its author and presenter, SC member David Livingston, mentioned that the bottoms of students’ vehicles have been known to scrape the speed bumps while passing over them, which could potentially damage students’ cars. Livingston said he has personally had to spend $500 on repairs as a result of his unmodified 1992 Honda Accord scraping the speed bumps. This figure does not include the cost of fixing his cracked radiator, another damage that he attributes to the speed bumps, which he has not yet had repaired.
SC members also raised a concern about the danger of the high speed bumps. The damage the speed bumps cause to cars, members said, could potentially cause accidents that may lead to serious injuries. In addition, the current speed bumps may be in violation of California fire code, which states, “Roadway design features (speed bumps, speed humps, speed control dips, etc.) which may interfere with emergency apparatus responses shall not be installed on fire access roadways, unless they meet design criteria approved by the Chief to accomplish the purposes of this Code.”
Livingston said he is pleased with the results of the meeting and thinks that the unanimous vote will call attention to the need for lowering the speed bumps.
“With unanimous support, it’s hard for the administration to not see our concern,” Livingston said. “Out of a select elected few that are supposed to represent the student body, every single one of them agreed to this, so hopefully the administration will adhere to the bill and we can actually improve campus life.”
Livingston said he now plans on meeting with Archie Yates, the director of Public Safety and Richard Schult, the director of Physical Plant to try to convince them to lower the speed bumps.
Schult said he had not yet heard of the complaints about the speed bumps, or of any plans to adjust their size, but he acknowledged that the largest speed bump, the one located on the hill east of Nease Hall, as being an inconvenience.
“That [bump] is a tough one even for my trucks to get over,” Schult said. “They just have to go real slow.”
According to Schult, if the administration agrees to lower the speed bumps, the school would hire an outside contractor, such as RCK Paving or Atlas Asphalt, to grind the speed bumps down, possibly removing them completely and rebuilding them.
The work, Schult estimated, would cost less than $1000 per bump, adding that “you might be able to do three or four bumps for a little over $2000.”
Schult said that each speed bump would take about one day to alter.
Yates did not respond to requests for comment.
During the Feb. 25 meeting, members of SC discussed whether the administration would be willing to pay for the work and touched on the subject of whether congress members would be willing to raise funds to pay for the altering. Nothing concrete was decided, but some complained that the students should not have to pay to “fix the school’s mistakes,” while others countered that “it wouldn’t be horrible to pay for it ourselves.”
Monastic Living LLC Hopes to Take Off
(originally published February 11, 2008 in The Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer
Nease West RD Danielle Brown became interested in the monastic lifestyle when she took a Christian Tradition course with former PLNU professor Herb Prince. She wrote a paper on Thomas Merton, a 20th-century monk, and read The Rule of St. Benedict, a book of statutes for monks living in a community.
“I became very intrigued by the life that they lived, and envied it in some ways,” said Brown. “I realized that there was a lot to learn from them.”
Later, when she became the RD for Nease Hall, she realized that there were similarities between living in a dorm and living in a Christian monastery.
“Both [lifestyles] are centered upon living with other people in small quarters and sharing in this thing we call community,” she said.
Over the past two years, Brown has studied the monastic lifestyle and spoken with faculty about creating a Living Learning Community that applies the ideas of monasticism to students’ life on campus.
In the meantime, the two other LLCs she leads in Nease Hall, Art Speaks and Healthy Living, were running into problems this school year.
“From the get-go, there didn’t seem to be the same level of interest as there was before,” said Brown, noting that she received less than half the number of applicants for her LLCs than she did the previous year.
And while members of Art Speaks had a high amount of student involvement, there were several Healthy Living events for which no students showed up.
“[The lack of participation] is a good indication that it’s just not something that they’re interested in, or they don’t have time for it,” said Brown.
Brown’s LLC was not the only one to run into trouble. Post-Collegiate Life Experiences, an LLC intended to help students transition from the undergraduate experience to life outside of college, also suffered difficulties this year. The LLC, led by Goodwin RD Steve Leader, ran into a number of problems, such as members moving to Flex and scheduling conflicts between the LLC’s meeting times and students’ classes, jobs and internships.
“I could have initially been a bit more organized,” said Leader, theorizing that if he had established the times for the LLC’s meetings before students signed up, much in the way students sign up for specific class times, such conflicts could have been avoided.
To help avert this problem next year, Leader said, the LLC will be replaced by a service that teaches the same concepts but is made available to all students in Goodwin, instead of just LLC members.
Brown’s issues were compounded by a new rule passed by Residential Life, which states that, starting next year, a person can only be the sponsor of a single LLC. This year, however, Brown’s talks with faculty about a monasticism-based LLC came to fruition when Brandon Hill approved her proposal. Brown decided to discontinue Healthy Living and Art Speaks in favor of her new LLC: Monastic Living.
Working together with PLNU theology professor John Wright, one of Brown’s former professors, and Connor McClenahan, a junior at PLNU who gained similar interest in monasticism after taking Wright’s Christian Tradition class, Brown hopes to use the LLC to take 22 students—12 women and 10 men—through an experience she said will “focus on the rich traditions of Christianity that I think oftentimes we, as Protestants or maybe evangelicals, tend to forget about.”
Students involved in the LLC will be required to take or audit Wright’s Christian Tradition class, as well as take part in daily prayer, weekly meals with faculty and staff, and regular “works of mercy” such as serving the homeless. Students will also study Wesleyan and monastic traditions in order to understand the purpose of the vows and rules made by practitioners of those traditions. Members of the LLC will then develop their own set of rules and vows.
“Obviously, it’s hard to make going clubbing part of the monastic tradition,” said Wright. “It is a tradition that has certain practices that are enfolded in already. The particular way [these practices] should be manifested will be worked through with the students.”
One of the main focuses of Wright’s Christian Tradition course is the idea that today’s society has created an artificial distinction between people’s public lives—their careers, academics and involvement in society in general—and their private lives—their beliefs and faith. Separating these two things, Wright argues throughout the course, is not the proper way to lead a Christian life, and he hopes that the LLC will provide the opportunity for students to overcome this unnatural division.
McClenahan, who will be the leader of the men’s Monastic Living group in Flex, holds similar sentiments.
“I hope that we get stoked on serving others, and that we get really excited about devoting ourselves communally to God, instead of just personally, and about practicing hospitality, humility and servitude,” McClenahan said. “When we are at college, trying to pursue our own interests, trying to make our own lives, I think sometimes we can forget about aligning our life with Christ’s life.”
According to Brown, more than 20 males have made inquiries about the LLC, though the amount of female interest has been considerably less. Brown hopes that more advertising will change that.
“The only advertising I’ve done for it [so far] is in the Alert, in a chapel flier and an e-mail,” said Brown, adding that she plans on putting up posters and talking about the LLC in classes to help generate interest.
McClenahan was excited about the amount of male interest, though he recognizes that will make the process of selecting members more difficult.
“I don’t know everyone,” McClenahan said. “How do you choose who is in something like this?”
Despite the large amount of interest in the LLC, McClenahan is concerned about whether the students’ enthusiasm will last.
“The biggest difficulty, when you look at something like this, is losing steam halfway through,” said McClenahan. “I think that’s the biggest problem with any LLC: You have a hundred good ideas, but when it comes to it, it’ll dissipate because all the responsibilities may be on one person, or not everyone is participating or has anything that they take upon themselves that they want to do.”
To try to avoid this pitfall, McClenahan plans on taking measures to ensure that all members has a stake in the direction the group goes.
“I want to try to delegate different responsibilities to different people in the group, so that it becomes our group, not just my group that I’m trying to fuel, so that it becomes our passion,” said McClenahan.
by Phillip Moyer
Nease West RD Danielle Brown became interested in the monastic lifestyle when she took a Christian Tradition course with former PLNU professor Herb Prince. She wrote a paper on Thomas Merton, a 20th-century monk, and read The Rule of St. Benedict, a book of statutes for monks living in a community.
“I became very intrigued by the life that they lived, and envied it in some ways,” said Brown. “I realized that there was a lot to learn from them.”
Later, when she became the RD for Nease Hall, she realized that there were similarities between living in a dorm and living in a Christian monastery.
“Both [lifestyles] are centered upon living with other people in small quarters and sharing in this thing we call community,” she said.
Over the past two years, Brown has studied the monastic lifestyle and spoken with faculty about creating a Living Learning Community that applies the ideas of monasticism to students’ life on campus.
In the meantime, the two other LLCs she leads in Nease Hall, Art Speaks and Healthy Living, were running into problems this school year.
“From the get-go, there didn’t seem to be the same level of interest as there was before,” said Brown, noting that she received less than half the number of applicants for her LLCs than she did the previous year.
And while members of Art Speaks had a high amount of student involvement, there were several Healthy Living events for which no students showed up.
“[The lack of participation] is a good indication that it’s just not something that they’re interested in, or they don’t have time for it,” said Brown.
Brown’s LLC was not the only one to run into trouble. Post-Collegiate Life Experiences, an LLC intended to help students transition from the undergraduate experience to life outside of college, also suffered difficulties this year. The LLC, led by Goodwin RD Steve Leader, ran into a number of problems, such as members moving to Flex and scheduling conflicts between the LLC’s meeting times and students’ classes, jobs and internships.
“I could have initially been a bit more organized,” said Leader, theorizing that if he had established the times for the LLC’s meetings before students signed up, much in the way students sign up for specific class times, such conflicts could have been avoided.
To help avert this problem next year, Leader said, the LLC will be replaced by a service that teaches the same concepts but is made available to all students in Goodwin, instead of just LLC members.
Brown’s issues were compounded by a new rule passed by Residential Life, which states that, starting next year, a person can only be the sponsor of a single LLC. This year, however, Brown’s talks with faculty about a monasticism-based LLC came to fruition when Brandon Hill approved her proposal. Brown decided to discontinue Healthy Living and Art Speaks in favor of her new LLC: Monastic Living.
Working together with PLNU theology professor John Wright, one of Brown’s former professors, and Connor McClenahan, a junior at PLNU who gained similar interest in monasticism after taking Wright’s Christian Tradition class, Brown hopes to use the LLC to take 22 students—12 women and 10 men—through an experience she said will “focus on the rich traditions of Christianity that I think oftentimes we, as Protestants or maybe evangelicals, tend to forget about.”
Students involved in the LLC will be required to take or audit Wright’s Christian Tradition class, as well as take part in daily prayer, weekly meals with faculty and staff, and regular “works of mercy” such as serving the homeless. Students will also study Wesleyan and monastic traditions in order to understand the purpose of the vows and rules made by practitioners of those traditions. Members of the LLC will then develop their own set of rules and vows.
“Obviously, it’s hard to make going clubbing part of the monastic tradition,” said Wright. “It is a tradition that has certain practices that are enfolded in already. The particular way [these practices] should be manifested will be worked through with the students.”
One of the main focuses of Wright’s Christian Tradition course is the idea that today’s society has created an artificial distinction between people’s public lives—their careers, academics and involvement in society in general—and their private lives—their beliefs and faith. Separating these two things, Wright argues throughout the course, is not the proper way to lead a Christian life, and he hopes that the LLC will provide the opportunity for students to overcome this unnatural division.
McClenahan, who will be the leader of the men’s Monastic Living group in Flex, holds similar sentiments.
“I hope that we get stoked on serving others, and that we get really excited about devoting ourselves communally to God, instead of just personally, and about practicing hospitality, humility and servitude,” McClenahan said. “When we are at college, trying to pursue our own interests, trying to make our own lives, I think sometimes we can forget about aligning our life with Christ’s life.”
According to Brown, more than 20 males have made inquiries about the LLC, though the amount of female interest has been considerably less. Brown hopes that more advertising will change that.
“The only advertising I’ve done for it [so far] is in the Alert, in a chapel flier and an e-mail,” said Brown, adding that she plans on putting up posters and talking about the LLC in classes to help generate interest.
McClenahan was excited about the amount of male interest, though he recognizes that will make the process of selecting members more difficult.
“I don’t know everyone,” McClenahan said. “How do you choose who is in something like this?”
Despite the large amount of interest in the LLC, McClenahan is concerned about whether the students’ enthusiasm will last.
“The biggest difficulty, when you look at something like this, is losing steam halfway through,” said McClenahan. “I think that’s the biggest problem with any LLC: You have a hundred good ideas, but when it comes to it, it’ll dissipate because all the responsibilities may be on one person, or not everyone is participating or has anything that they take upon themselves that they want to do.”
To try to avoid this pitfall, McClenahan plans on taking measures to ensure that all members has a stake in the direction the group goes.
“I want to try to delegate different responsibilities to different people in the group, so that it becomes our group, not just my group that I’m trying to fuel, so that it becomes our passion,” said McClenahan.
Sorority Deemed 'Unconstitutional'
(originally published November 19, 2007 in the Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer
Greek life almost made a comeback this year. In September, the ASB Board of Directors accepted a charter for an on-campus organization proposed by the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, a community service-oriented sorority noted for being the first sorority established by black college women.
The charter was approved despite concerns that the officers for the proposed organization were not PLNU students.
“There’s nothing really explicit in the constitution or any handbook … and there’s nothing that says that’s something you can’t do, so we decided to go forward with the chartering process,” said Jeff Nelson, the director of Student Relations.
After the organization was chartered, however, Melissa Burt-Gracik, director of Community Life and the adviser to the ASB Board of Directors, brought forward complaints raised by an anonymous staff member.
“There were rumors about how Alpha Kappa Alpha might be more OK with drinking and things that would be looked down upon at Point Loma,” said Nelson.
Other concerns raised included the lack of control PLNU would have over the organization’s activities, since none of the organization’s officers were PLNU students, said Nelson.
The staff member was also concerned about a 2002 lawsuit filed against AKA, which alleged that the sorority was responsible for hazing that resulted in the death of two of its pledges, even though the sorority’s official policy forbids hazing.
Also, there were worries about previous attempts to establish AKA on campus.
“I felt a little unease because last year one of the Alpha Kappa Alpha people … was trying to push [the AKA charter] ahead without any kind of student initiative whatsoever, and that’s not how we start clubs here,” said Burt-Gracik. “We start clubs by students coming forward and saying, ‘This is a need; this is a desire; we want to make this happen.’”
A representative of AKA could not be reached for comment.
“Due to the circumstances, in order to bring about what should happen and kind of to appease everyone, we decided to take it in front of the Board of Review,” Nelson said.
The Board of Review met to discuss the issue on Oct. 2 and decided in a 4-2 vote that chartering the organization was unconstitutional. The written decision stated that the wording of the ASB constitution implies that “all members of clubs and organizations, as well as their leaders, must be under the umbrella of the Associated Student Body.” The decision cited Article I of the ASB constitution, which reads, “The name of this organization shall be ‘The Associated Student Body.’”
The two dissenting members in the Board of Review challenged this claim, saying, “We believe that the wording of the Constitution in no way seems to discourage the ASB from sanctioning outside leadership, based on the fact that it is simply not addressed. We believe that the ASB is potentially depriving students of a valuable off-campus networking resource by establishing this precedent for future organizations.”
One of the dissenters was Ben Powers, the chair of the Board of Review.
“I believe that one of the things you sacrifice by choosing a small private school, as opposed to a larger institution, is the opportunity to network more,” Powers said. “In my opinion, the school should encourage ties to organizations that could be a great networking tool for many students. A lot of college grads maintain ties with fellow members of their sorority or fraternity that help them later in their careers.”
The Board of Review’s decision was then presented to the Board of Directors, which decided how to handle the ruling.
“The ASB Board of Directors only has jurisdiction to do anything that’s in the ASB constitution,” said Powers, who added that, since the original chartering of the organization was unconstitutional, the charter “ceased to be recognized by the office of student relations and ASB.”
However, for students who wish to become members of the sorority, there are plans in motion to create an AKA “interest group” officiated by PLNU students.
“It’s not that [PLNU] students cannot be Alpha Kappa Alpha members,” said Burt-Gracik. “If our students who gather together on their own initiative try to become Alpha Kappa Alpha members, then great for them. We just can’t have non-PLNU students as officers in a school-recognized club.”
Speed Bumps Scrape Vehicles
(Originally Published Sept. 24, 2007 in The Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer
Driving over the new speed bumps on the north side of campus has proven costly for David Livingston, PLNU junior. Some of the speed bumps, which were installed this past summer, scraped the bottom of his 1992 Honda Accord, causing damage to the car’s engine exhaust fan and radiator.
Repairs for the exhaust fan cost him $190. He has not yet received an estimate for the cost of repairing the radiator.
Livingston is accustomed to bottoming out on the new speed bumps, particularly the one on the hill by Nease Hall.
“It seems that every time I go over it, no matter how slow I’m going, I still scrape a little bit,” he said. “It’s kind of an annoying thing. Even just to go out and get burritos with friends, I have to beware of the speed bump, and I have to go really slow. When I have three or four friends in my car, it makes it even worse. It’s a hindrance, you know?”
Current regulations for speed bumps on city streets require that they be three and a half inches tall and 12 feet wide, with six feet of gradual incline on either side of the bump’s crest, said Mariano Castro, an assistant traffic engineer for the city of San Diego. He added that most speed bumps installed on private roads follow the same standards as the city, though sometimes that is not the case.
The new speed bumps do not follow the city-approved standards. The new speed bumps are about 10 feet wide and vary in height. The speed bump located just before the entrance to Wiley Hall is three and three quarters of an inch high, and the one placed just before Finch Hall is four and a half inches high. The speed bump on the hill by Nease Hall has an uneven height, reaching three and a half inches high on the west half, and four and a half inches high on the east half.
According to certified master mechanic Robert Waters of Waters Consulting in Sacramento, bottoming out on speed bumps can damage many parts of a car, including the car’s engine, cooling, exhaust, braking and steering systems.
“Any one of these system failures could result in anything from an expensive repair to possibly a serious accident,” Waters said.
Chris Wolnick, whose 2003 Jetta GLI came from the dealership with its frame lowered half an inch from its stock height, has a different problem.
“I can’t make it over the speed bump at all,” Wolnick said. “I had to back up all the way up the hill, go in Nease parking lot and then go back up, because I can’t make it over that first bump.”
Wolnick now drives a stock 1989 Mercedes Benz on campus, which still bottoms out as he drives over the speed bumps. His car has since started making rattling noises.
“I don’t know what the purpose of those huge, roller-coaster speed bumps are,” Wolnick said.
Forrest Adams, PLNU senior, tries to avoid using his car because of the new speed bumps.
“It takes me about 15 seconds to go over one bump; that’s how slow you have to go. I have to angle to get one wheel on, then two wheels on, then switch wheels, and switch wheels, and switch wheels, so I’m like, slithering over this thing, and I still scrape,” Adams said.
Adams noted that part of the problem has to do with the fact that his car, a 1994 Honda Prelude, had been lowered before he bought it. The car’s height is adjustable, but Adams states that he does not have the money, the time or the tools to do anything about it.
“I totally, whole-heartedly agree with putting speed bumps [on campus], especially in the areas they have done so. I think they’re in wonderful areas,” said Adams, “I just think they’re ridiculously sized.”
Adams claimed that he talked to Archie Yates, the director of Public Safety, about the problem, but was not able to convince him that the speed bumps needed to be altered.
When asked about the size of the speed bumps, Yates declined to comment.
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