Bryan College Triangle

by Lana Douglas
Photo Editor

Movies, friends and fun; what more could you ask for?

Arnold’s Dorm Council hosted the first Movie Madness on Wednesday, April 13, complete with 11 films, free popcorn and candy under a dollar.

Sophomore Liz Olsen and junior Maggie Bailey hosted people on their hall for Movie Madness.// Triangle photo by Lana Douglas

Each hall had its own theme from a “Memory Lane” hall, which showed classic films like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “The Wizard of Oz,” to an “Adventure” themed hall which showcased “Sherlock Holmes” and “National Treasure.”

According to Beth Hale, Arnold resident director, about 90 students participated in their event.

“The responses have been very positive,” said Hale.  “We’ve heard comments such as, ‘I wish this happened every week,’ and ‘I had no idea it was going to be this cool.’”

“I thought it was really well done, and it brought a lot of people into the dorm,” said freshman Thalia Edmons.

According to Hale, this event was created with the intent of becoming an annual event similar to Robinson’s Harvest Bash.

“I would go again,” said Edmons.  “I thought it was a lot of fun.”

by Tim Baldi
Staff Writer

Returning students will no longer have the option of living on Huston 4th and Long 2nd or in any triple rooms next semester.

Because there are so many unoccupied dorm rooms on campus, the admissions department is not expecting a need for triple rooms, according to Long Resident Director Matt Williams. In the past, there has been a lack of space on campus due to large incoming classes and small graduating classes.

There is always a possibility that triple rooms will become necessary, said Williams, but admissions does not anticipate that will be a problem.

Huston 4th and Long 2nd are still reserved in case there is a need for triple rooming, according to Huston Resident Director Karie Harpest.

“Usually freshmen have an easier time adapting to triples,” said Williams, so if the need arises the freshman halls will be tripled first. Read full story »

Freshman Ashton Alexander prepares for Nationals./Triangle photo by Daniel Jackson

by Daniel Jackson
Staff Writer

Never before has someone argued so passionately, so eloquently about the topic: “Resolved: that this house should just do it.” Three students sit silently as the fourth speaks. He has been talking for several minutes now, all the while the other team develops its counterargument,

Welcome to the world of intercollegiate, parliamentary debate.

This spring break, five members of Bryan’s Debate Club will travel to Azusa Pacific University (Calif.) to participate in the national tournament of the NCCFA, the National Christian College Forensic Association.

There they will debate students from all over the nation in a form of debate called parliamentary debate. Instead of debating values, the future policies of the United States, parliamentary debaters can face a wide range of topics from healthcare legislation to the value of truth to even why “this house should just do it”—all with no prior preparation before the tournament starts.

“This spontaneity is thrilling and this spontaneity is like no other,” said freshman Ashton Alexander.

The debaters receive their debate topics 15 minutes before starting their round. From there, they draw from logic, common knowledge, stories and examples to craft an argument to persuade a single judge.

Debate, for these students, teaches them to think on their feet and to present arguments quickly and clearly. This skill helps them in their school and real life by accustoming them to analyze arguments and finding responses, all while it is happening.

“In Parli, every speech is an on your feet speech,” said freshman Grace Hasley.

Many of these students, if they debated in high school, were accustomed to policy debate. This was a debate style which the students researched heavily and prepared before a debate round about an area of current events.

However, in college, homework eats up their time so that they cannot research effectively. Hence the switch to the more impromptu parliamentary debate style.

“Mainly, parliamentary focuses on extemporaneous style and oratorical abilities,” said Alexander.

According to junior Vincent Smith, Debate Club coach, Bryan’s teams win at a regional level through their speaking ability—they are more articulate and more personable than the other team, and therefore they do well at a regional level. At the national tournament, the debaters that win will be the ones who focus on organization of the arguments as well as clear, engaging speaking.

by Andrew Wilber
Staff Writer

2002 Bryan graduate Dan Evans and Bryan College I.T. employees James Sullivan, Network Administrator/Dept. Manager and Matt Meloncon, Online Applications Programmer, have created a web-based application to help bloggers locate and use photos in a way that is easy, free and most importantly, legal.

The service, called Wylio, searches the photo-sharing site flickr.com’s Creative Commons database of over 40 million files for photos that match the user’s search. It then allows the user to resize them and generates a code that can be easily copied and pasted into a blog post.

The search engine for Wylio. com./ Photo courtesy of Wylio.com

Wylio also generates a footnote containing the photo’s copyright information, making it legal to post. This cuts what is normally close to a 20-step process down to just three steps, according to Evans, who was inspired to create the application by seeing how long it took his wife, Rachel, to add a photo to one of her online articles.

“She was taking all this time writing the article, and then to put an image in just to spice it up a little bit was taking her 20-25 minutes,” he said, counting up all the steps required to legally add an image to a blog post. “She ran into the problem, so I said: ‘You know I bet there’s a way we can actually solve this.’ So I brainstormed about it, and then I came to James and Matt,” he said.

While the idea was born out of Evans’s personal interest in helping his wife, it soon generated a level of excitement in the online community that no one could have anticipated. When the technology news website TechCrunch.com featured Wylio in a Nov. 5 article, referring to it as “a startup out of Dayton, Tennessee” with a solution for bloggers, viewership for their website, wylio.com, rose exponentially.

“The weekend TechCrunch picked us up it was in the millions,” said Sullivan, who collaborated on back-end programming for the project.

“It was really kind of a shot in the arm,” said Evans of being featured on TechCrunch. “It’s like whoa! It gives you legitimacy,” he said, adding how he feels they have created a service that people really need.

“Even if you’re not that concerned about copyright, the ease of just getting an image is there too,” said Sullivan. “We’re trying to play both sides. We’re trying to be nice for the bloggers, where it’s nice and quick and easy for them, but also we want people who are putting their images out there to be happy as well.”

“Like recently I saw an article from a pro photographer who was happy with Wylio,” said Evans. “It’s good when you see the photographers are happy with it and the bloggers are happy with it.”

While the application has had major success in it’s current form, all three developers stress that this is only the beginning.

“Just keep watching,” said Meloncon, also a Bryan grad who worked on the front-end programming for Wylio. “I think it will continue to improve and continue to grow. According to our stats, we’re constantly growing.”