‘PICASSO’ POWER TAMING TIGERS
‘EVER PROGRESSIVE’ FEATURES
ARTS & REVIEW
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A celebration of Black History Month along with the BC sesquicentennial, B10
Picasso at the Lapin Agile had Bonn audiences in stitches, A10
After five straight losses, men’s basketball picks up second ACC win over Clemson, B1
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HEIGHTS
THE
The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College
established
1919
Monday, February 4, 2013
Vol. XCIV, No. 5
UGBC PROPOSES RESTRUCTURING BY ANDREW SKARAS Asst. News Editor In last year’s UGBC presidential election, Chris Osnato, A&S ’13, campaigned on bringing change to the UGBC. During his term, Osnato and his vice president, Kudzai Taziva, A&S ’13, have worked with the heads of ALC, GLC, and Senate to draft a new constitution for UGBC. This coming Sunday, ALC, GLC, and Senate will vote on the final draft of the constitution and, if passed, the new constitution will take effect for the 2013-14
academic year. “The impetus behind this process was to take the organization, strip it down to its bare parts, and build it back up,” Osnato said. “We came up with three things that we wanted our student government to be: gets work done through policy and action, student oriented, and representative. The way UGBC is structured is with four branches. There are four presidents and four vice presidents. When you look at our organization, there is no distinct constitutional power structure.”
Under the current constitution, UGBC is broken down into four branches: ALC, GLC, Cabinet, and Senate. The president and vice president of UGBC lead the Cabinet, and each of the other organizations elects its own leadership. In the proposed constitution, there are only two branches: the executive branch and the legislative branch. The new legislative branch is the Student Assembly, which would replace the current Senate. It would retain many of the functions of the current Senate, as
PRESIDENT
well as add some new policy related responsibilities. The executive vice president, elected with the president as in the current constitution, would serve as the president of the Student Assembly and be responsible for appointing the chairs of the different committees. “We have expanded the Student Assembly to 50 students,” Osnato said. “This includes the current class structure, but it also guarantees representation for every school. There are the two representative board chairs,
See UGBC, A4
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
VP OF FINANCIAL AFFAIRS
VP OF STUDENT PROGRAMMMING
STUDENT ASSEMBLY
BC TO BOSTON
(FORMERLY SENATE) 50 VOTING MEMBERS
BC HERITAGE
VP OF STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS BOARD FOR STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
ON CAMPUS PROGRAMMING
VP OF STUDENT INITIATIVES
VP OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
CAMPUS AWARENESS
AHANA LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
STUDENT CONDUCT CONSULTANTS
GLBTQ LEADERSHIP COUNCIL
INIATIVE PROGRAMMING LINDSAY GROSSMAN / HEIGHTS GRAPHIC
Eco-friendly floor to open in Edmond’s
Asian Caucus relaunches magazine
Sustainable community will start up in Fall 2013
BY BRIGID WRIGHT Heights Staff
hoped would eventually be a series of events for students upon their return to BC. “Back at BC,” sponsored by the McGillycuddy-Logue Center for Undergraduate Global Studies and put on by the Career Center and the OIP, focused around a fiveperson panel sharing their experience and advice with a room full of undergraduates who had recently returned from studying abroad. The panel consisted of Dara Fang, CSOM ’13, who studied abroad in Venice
The Asian Caucus’ literary magazine, ASIAM, is returning this semester in digital format. The magazine prints prose, poetry, essays, and all forms of visual art, in hopes of capturing the identities and experiences of Asian American students. Founded in 1993, the magazine was formerly named True Colors and published similar content focused on the past and present experiences of Asian American students. True Colors was printed until 2005. In 2010, the magazine was renamed ASIAM, a fusion of the words Asian and American, to continue to provide a creative outlet for students of any background about their experiences with the Asian American identity. ASI AM aims to provide a space where students can showcase artwork of all kinds. According to the magazine’s website, ASIAM works to “cultivate this unique composite of culture through informative journalism and engaging narratives, centered on our perception of Asian America, both on and off campus.”
See OIP Panel, A4
See ASIAM, A4
BY ELEANOR HILDEBRANDT News Editor This fall, Boston College’s Special Interest Housing, which now includes residential programs such as the Healthy Alternatives Lifestyle floor, the Romance Languages floor, and Honors Program housing, will be joined by a new program: the Sustainable Living and Learning Community. Located on the seventh floor of Edmond’s Hall, the program will consist of 24 students, split up into six four-person apartments. The application period ends on Friday, Feb. 8, and is only open to rising sophomores. “We chose sophomores for this pilot because sophomore year is an important time of transition for students,” said Executive Director for the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs (VPSA) Katherine O’Dair, in an email issued jointly with Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs Donald Hafner. “In our discussions with sophomore, junior, and senior students, we discovered that sophomore year can be more isolating than freshman year, as the close-knit community that students had during freshman year has changed … The conversations, joint activities, and interaction with faculty and upperclassmen that can take place in a living/learning community organized around a theme of shared interest can be an effective way for sophomores to form lasting relationships, explore future possibilities, and build skills.” According to O’Dair and Hafner, the program was, in part, a product of a meeting that the Office of the VPSA and the provost’s office held in the fall of 2011. A group of 30 faculty and staff members discussed ways to integrate students’ academic experiences with their lives outside of class, which produced the idea of a living and learning community. They said that the program has garnered positive responses so far, noting that, in recent years, the topic of sustainability has cropped up more and more frequently, and that members of the
See Sustainability Floor, A4
ALEX GAYNOR / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Nick Gozik, director of OIP (above left) spoke at Thursday’s event. Kathleen McGillycuddy and Ron Logue (above right) were also present.
OIP hosts panel for students back from abroad BY ELEANOR HILDEBRANDT News Editor “For many of those who go abroad, we expect to experience some sort of culture shock,” said Nick Gozik, director of the Office of International Programs (OIP). “On returning to the States, however, we expect to feel the same.” So began “Back at BC: Marketing Your Experience Abroad,” an event aimed not only at reacclimating Boston College students who had returned from a study abroad experience, but also
at coaching those students in ways to put their time overseas to use when applying for jobs and internships. Gozik, who recently moved to BC from Duke University, noted that the University has traditionally put much effort into preparing students before they go abroad, and has supported them while abroad—but had no similar support system in place for the time after their return. Last Thursday’s event, which began at 4 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons, was the first of what Gozik
Professor honored for international humanitarian work BY DEVON SANFORD Assoc. News Editor Professor Brinton Lykes, chair of the department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at the Lynch School of Education and the associate director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, was recently awarded the American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2013 International Humanitarian Award. The APA Committee on International Relationship Psychology (CIRP) recognized Lykes for her sustained and enduring humanitarian services and activism with underserved populations. As a community-cultural psychologist, Lykes has focused her efforts in documenting and responding to human rights abuse and the effects of state-sponsored violence.
She has worked across the country—in Boston working with Latino middle school youth, in New Orleans partnering with African-American and Latina communitybased health promoters to develop new models of cross-community leadership post-Hurricane Katrina, and in Guatemala assisting Mayan women survivors of army conflict and sexual violence. Lykes grew up in New Orleans during the Civil Rights and desegregation movement. Her experiences in high school affected her perspective on social injustice and the need for social change. “I saw firsthand the ways in which exclusion and prejudice affected people’s everyday life,” Lykes said. “I saw the lack of tolerance that sometimes characterizes all of us as human beings.” As a college student, Lykes traveled to
Paris, France, where she witnessed student protests for equitable education and workers’ protests for fair pay. For the first time, Lykes was exposed to community organizing and protest. After receiving her undergraduate degree, Lykes attended the Harvard Divinity School, studying Liberation and Theology. She became more heavily involved in Latin-American issues and protests against America’s involvement in the wars of El Salvador and Guatemala during her time at Harvard Divinity School. With her studies, Lykes obtained a Ph.D. at the interface of psychology and sociology, combining her interests in activism with academic work. “In many ways, I think of my involvement as continuous with the ways in which
See Lykes, A4
ALEX GAYNOR / HEIGHTS EDITOR
LSOE’s Brinton Lykes was recently honored with the APA’s Int’l Humanitarian award.