Chemistry professor dies unexpectedly at age 67

By Bethany Grov?

Retired McDaniel faculty member Dr. David W. Herlocker will always be remembered for his passion for running, his family and dogs. He’ll be remembered every time his friends pour a Pepsi (not Coke) over ice or purchase a lottery ticket.

Herlocker, a chemistry professor on the Hill for 40 years, died at home on Wednesday March 19 at 67-years-old.

Herlocker was department chairman and was named professor emeritus upon his retiring in 2006.

“Under his leadership, the Chemistry Department doubled in size, moved into high-tech labs, founded a chemistry honor society, Gamma Sigma Epsilon, and graduated scores of students who have gone on to impressive graduate schools and careers in industry and the medical field,” according to the memorandum e-mail sent out by President Joan Coley on March 21.

Herlocker graduated cum laude from Knox College in 1962 with a degree in chemistry, as stated the memorandum. He earned his M.S. from the University of Illinois in 1964 and in 1966 earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and served on numerous committees on campus.

As a member of the Westminster Road Runners Club and founder of the Main Street Mile, Herlocker was quite a fan of track and field. He remained an avid runner until 1995, when an accident left him seriously injured. A year later through persistence and hard work, he was able to finish the Main Street Mile.

“I used to visit him while he was in rehab after his horrific accident,” said Coley. “I would always bring him lottery tickets. I accused him of holding out on me when he told me that he never won the jackpot, and when he retired he claimed that he had a secret Jaguar stashed away from his lottery winnings.”

Herlocker was a very uniquely intelligent man with great drive and work ethic. Former Provost Sam Case made a speech at Herlocker’s memorial ceremony on March 25.

“Neither was Dave a quitter,” said Case. “An example of this was his first marathon, the Marine Corps marathon, back in the late 70’s. He dropped out at 17 miles due to fatigue. He was not happy about this so we drove back to Washington over Christmas break to run the last 9.2 miles, giving him a time of 42 days, 6 hours and 12 minutes for his first marathon, but he did not quit. Obviously these qualities were exhibited in his remarkable recovery from the terrible accident.”

A story shared from biology laboratory coordinator, Robert Repsher, an alumnus of Western Maryland College, portrayed Herlocker’s same dedication, as well as disgust with Maryland drivers in the snow.

“He was a very unique man. He was known for never being late to classes and never cancelling classes,” Repsher said. “I had an eight o’clock chemistry class with him. I remember when the provost would close the college due to inclement weather, he decided to meet his classes anyway and expected the students to show up.”

Herlocker was a man filled with knowledge and trivia.

Coley said in faculty meetings they would often turn to him for questions about course prerequisites, academic calendar dates or any other trivia because he always knew the answer.

Other things he enjoyed, according to Case, were Jeopardy, dogs, the Carroll County Dog Show, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Bears. He took a special interest in McDaniel women’s volleyball and basketball. He was dedicated to seeing his students succeed and was often seen cheering on the athletes and writing lengthy graduate school recommendation letters.

Herlocker is survived by his children and partners Caryn Herlocker Meade and Adam Meade of Raleigh, NC, and Daniel Herlocker and Ellen Keelan of Brattleboro, VT; father Donald Herlocker of Canton, IL; brother and sister-in-law William and Hilda Herlocker of Kildeer, IL; sister and brother-in-law Linda and Peter Speck of Wanganui New Zealand; grandchildren Evan and Georgia Meade; former wife and friend Helen Herlocker; and numerous friends.

By Gail Beveridge, Contributor

The new Brussels exchange program is garnering mixed reviews among students, prompting college officials to call a meeting on March 5 that assessed the pros and cons of the Belgium experience. Officials hoped that it would draw McDaniel’s best and brightest.

Dr. Thomas Falkner, the provost and dean of the faculty, said that he called the meeting to “evaluate where we are,” concerning the exchange program with the Facult?s Universitaire Saint-Louis (FUSL), “and to make plans for the future.”

Some students are not very excited about the program. “There are issues,” said a senior who participated in the fledgling program last fall. “Big issues.”

“Frankly,” said Brenden Aston, a fall 2007 participant in the program, the meeting was called because “none of the administrators or deans knew anything about the program.”

Provost Falkner said he was “disappointed” to learn that students do not trust him in his familiarity with the university in Belgium, given his extensive work with administrators there. “I think Iim as informed about the program as I can possibly be,” he said.

One student in particular sent an email to Rose Falkner, director of international and off-campus study and the wife of Provost Falkner, to express concerns over the Brussels exchange experience just three weeks after arriving at FUSL last fall.

“I am not angry, just curious,” about “some issues”” with the program, wrote the student, who prefers to remain anonymous.
“Classes, credit transfers and language barriers,” were cited as the three main concerns in the e-mail, along with the lack of attention from FUSL faculty and staff.

The FUSL faculty responsible for McDaniel students is Ms. Paulus in FUSL’s office of international programs. She held her first meeting with the students “two weeks after classes began,” according to the e-mail.

“We were the guinea pigs in this situation,” said Oliver Cima, a senior and political science major who attended FUSL in 2007 who agrees with many of the complaints outlined in the e-mail. According to Cima, the program in Brussels “wasn’t organized from the get-go.”

Two of the five students in the group that went to FUSL confirmed having failed at least one class; four of them believe they were unprepared for the European curriculum.

“I didn’t know the language would be such an issue,” Cima said.

“All courses taught in English” is written under FUSL on the “Affiliated Programs” page on the McDaniel website. On the “About FUSL” page, it states that there is a “wide range of bilingual and trilingual courses” available.

Of the ten classes purported to be offered in English during the fall of 2007, McDaniel’s website lists two independent studies, one internship and one French class, taught in French, narrowing the number of available classes taught in English to six.

To the surprise of McDaniel students, six classes taught in English at FUSL are not enough to equal a normal course load of 16 credits at McDaniel. Before Paulus’ meeting, the credit value of classes at FUSL was allegedly “a series of rumors and guesstimates on everyone’s part,” wrote the author of the e-mail.

“2.5 credits is the most I could get out of a class,” said Cima. “You’re paying full time and getting part-time credits.”

McDaniel does not decide how many credits students receive for their work abroad, according to Provost Falkner.

“There are agencies that do that sort of thing,” said the provost. “We hope that students would receive approximately the same number of credits in Brussels as they would here.”

Credits are difficult to earn at FUSL. Aston, for example, took eight classes in Brussels, including an independent study worth four credits, totaling what would have been 18 credits at McDaniel. He only earned 11.5 credits from FUSL, not enough to constitute full-time status at McDaniel despite the full-time bill he paid.

Meanwhile, students here from Brussels are facing a different credit-transfer issue.

“We have to take five courses here,” said M?lanie Pecher, an FUSL student at McDaniel this semester. “It’s harder,” she said of her current work load, “but you just have to be used to the system.”

According to Pecher, the extra work will pay off for FUSL’s students, who will earn a total of 60 credits by the end of the year. Each class taken here is worth six credits at FUSL, she said.

Provost Falkner denied some students’ claims that McDaniel and FUSL had made a deal ensuring more credits for students from Brussels. “What our credits are worth in Europe is their decision,” he said. “We have nothing to do with that.”

Several Brussels students have made their own deals with professors, opting to take an independent study “in lieu of the fifth class,” according to Falkner.

Frederic Delmotte, another FUSL student at McDaniel, is not satisfied with the way FUSL is handling credit transfers. In February Delmotte received word from the head of the economics department at FUSL that the grades he earns at McDaniel will be lowered upon his return home, due to McDaniel’s allegedly easier curriculum.

“That’s crazy,” Delmotte said, “because I work more here than I do in Brussels.”

Aston said that because of credits and language barriers, he would only recommend the Brussels exchange program to students who “can think on their feet, not the general population.”

Falkner tacitly agrees with Aston. “This program is for strong, motivated, independent students,” she said. “It’s not the cushy experience you get with other programs.”

According to Mary Beth Bounds, another participant at FUSL in 2007, the curriculum in Belgium allows students freedom from attending classes, which means freedom “for traveling or discovering Brussels.”

There is a question of whether even strong students are willing to take on the exchange program with FUSL. The issue of credit transfer led some participants to question the tuition they paid for the program. One McDaniel student said that he paid $15,000 more than the “around one thousand” dollars that Pecher said FUSL’s students pay to come here.

Provost Falkner explained that McDaniel’s students never paid tuition to FUSL, nor are the students from Brussels paying McDaniel, outside of meal plans and housing.

“You pay home tuition,” he said, “and study away.”

“It’s completely fair,” said Aston of the variance in tuition. “Europeans pay taxes so they can go to school. We don’t.”

As for the discrepancy between the full-time tuition paid by McDaniel students at FUSL and the part-time credits they can transfer between schools, the provost said it is up to the students themselves to earn the credits they need while they are abroad.

“Although, there is a concern” that completing a 16-credit course load at FUSL would necessitate “an unreasonable amount of work,” said Provost Falkner.

Some students agree that there are concerns because the program has not been fully explored. “I won’t say it’s not ready,” said Delmotte about FUSL’s program for American students, “but it’s not developed yet.”

One student who attended the meeting said that there was no clear decision made about the future of the Brussels exchange program.

Falkner, however, said that the administration and faculty is sure of one thing: “We don’t want the program to die.”

By Juliann Guiffre, Features Co-Editor

Betsy Gravenor only made it about two hours before she started to feel hungry. Worried, she knew she’d have to make it for 28 more. At 5:00 p.m., her stomach started growling for dinner. By the middle of the night, she felt a dull ache in her stomach, and she was tempted to eat something just to make it go away.

Yet somehow she was comforted by the fact that she knew when her next meal was coming, and there are so many others who can’t say the same.

To support the 29,000 children under the age of five who die each day from hunger, on Friday, March 28 at noon members of the Christian Fellowship and other students began what would be 30 hours of fasting, called the 30 Hour Famine.
“Even the hunger pains I [experienced] are only mild when I put them into perspective; I’m sure they are nothing compared to what other people around the world experience every day,” said Gravenor.

All donations will go to World Vision, a Christian Humanitarian Organization that provides food and other aid to countries all around the world.

According to Debbie Diederich, the 30-Hour Famine national director from World Vision, more than half a million students in the U.S. chose to “be hungry” to raise money for children around the world. She says that every $30 raised can help feed and care for a child for one month.

Junior Lauren Howe, a social work major, coordinated Hunger Day as an event for her Christian Fellowship affinity group. It has been held annually for many years, but this year Howe decided to open it up to the entire campus.

“We are so blessed,” she said, “to live where we live, and have an education; it’s easy to forget there are starving kids out there.” Howe thinks many causes supported by World Vision are important in helping to raise awareness.

She can’t participate in the fast because of medical reasons, but Howe helped plan it and participated in the games and activities.

“I definitely don’t eat in front of the others though, that would be mean,” Howe said.

Senior Amanda Eubank, a biology and art history major, first became involved with the 30 Hour Famine in high school with her local church.

“The first time you do it it’s hard because you’re used to eating. We have to play games and find ways to distract ourselves,” she said. One such game is called Tribe: Indonesia, where they participate in activities to help them experience some of the obstacles many must overcome just to survive.

“We’ll have to walk around with a limp or walk with a heavy backpack on,” Eubank said, “ It helps us identify with what children are going through in third world countries.”

Other activities include a Friday movie night and a Saturday night Bible study, as well as a sponsored pizza dinner for breaking the fast, usually donated by a local pizza place.

Each year, members of the Fellowship create a visual representation of their cause. Last year they constructed a 29,000 link chain around red square- one link to represent one person who dies each year from hunger.

“29,000 links…that took a long time,” said Howe, “but afterwards we sat outside Glar and sold the links for 25 cents each to raise money for World Vision.”

Eubanks said that the important thing to do is drink juice to keep the hunger pains from getting too strong….and don’t “gorge yourself on pizza when you break the fast, after the first time you know that eating too much will make you very sick.”

She also said that one girl, who wanted to be “hardcore” with the Famine, only drank water instead of the allowed juice and ended up throwing up because of it.

Eubanks hopes this event and its message reaches other people on campus.

“These are big issues that everyone can relate to,” she said, “Starving children, AIDS, this is a common interest in helping people that need it.”

“Maybe people will think twice before complaining about Glar all the time,” Eubank added.

By Becky Snider

Editor’s Note: This weekly piece highlights some of the more inane calls and incidents to which campus safety responds.

Time certainly does fly. April is almost here which only brings May. Excitement there, no? Hopefully Spring Fling is not a complete wash out this year. As bad as it sounds, let’s wish for less rain—for several reasons.

One reason being that we already have enough liquids on campus for half the population of Westminster. The liquids that I’m talking about just happen to be of the alcoholic version. A version that seems to have worked its way all across campus these last few weeks. On March 8, one student thought that it would be a good idea to walk around Decker with an open container of alcohol in a public area. Then there was the student in Whiteford who had to be taken to CHC for alcohol poisoning.

Now there’s a smart way to start spring—woo, party hard. I guess that “possession under 21” offense wasn’t enough.

There is of course the escapades on PA Avenue that we all know and love. This time there is an entire page devoted to our love of the alcohol found on PA Avenue. On March 8 (seems to be a popular date), students were documented for violating multiple policies. One student was documented with failure to comply and dishonesty. The policy violations include: keg, multiliter container, beer bong, hard liquor, drinking games, possession under 21, providing false information, failure to comply with Campus Safety and furnishing to a minor. Quite a list if you ask me. Must have been one hell of a party.

The same night, two students were documented for underage alcohol possession in Rouzer. On March 9 there were several incidents documented in Decker College Center. One student was documented for underage possession, another student was found intoxicated. The cup, err, scale was tipped when a Greek organization had their party shut down early due to violating clubroom policies. Gee, wonder who they were? It’s all fun and games until someone steals the tequila.

More recent drinking events on campus include the multiple students in North Village who were charged much the same as the ones on PA Avenue. Other incidents include a sprinkling here or there on PA Avenue or off campus.

Just wait though, I guarantee you there will be more; there always is. So keep your little red plastic cups ready.

Seems that the only thing worthwhile to do is drink and well, punch holes in stairwell windows. That’s right. On March 25 one student decided that it would be really fun to punch through a glass window in Blanche. Sure, fun.

Of course the student could always turn to tampering with fire equipment, which happened on PA Avenue. Or maybe students can start making their own parking permits.

Oh wait, someone already attempted to do that. I guess the parking permit was a bit too altered. Well better luck next time, you know with punching in the window and all.

And with that let’s start bringing the semester to an end. Study hard, have fun and don’t get caught. I mean, well you know what I mean.