Friday, Nov. 20, 2015 | Volume 211 | Number 62 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
Alex Connor/Iowa State Daily
Mohamed Ali, candidate for the ISU Dining director, speaks at his open forum Thursday in the Memorial Union.
ISU Dining hosts open forum
International students battle for right to stay Graduates navigate government regulations in order to work in United States By Jake.Dalbey @iowastatedaily.com
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or graduating international students, the end of the semester is focused on determining their future status in the United States. The months of December through February represent these students’ last chance at obtaining an Optional Practical Training form, known as OPT. Only through receiving one of these forms are students allowed to stay in the United States after they have completed their degree credits. The form allows them to stay though a job or co-op opportunity. Jessica Fincham, international adviser with the International Students and Scholars Office, explained that the form allows students to work for 12 months after they finish their degree requirements. “Twelve months is the post completion OPT. There are four forms of OPT: precompletion, postcompletion, cap gap and [science, technology, engineering and math] extension,” Fincham said. “Most of the students, if not all right now, are
asking for post completion, when they are nearing their postcompletion OPT, and if they are a STEM major, that will allow them to gain an additional 17 months.” The students Fincham is referring to are split into categories based on their education and timeline statuses in the United States. F-status students remain at Iowa State throughout the entirety of their program whether it be a four-year bachelor’s degree of four years or, at with the largest amount of time, six years with a doctorate. J-status students are part of an exchange program in which international students come to the country, earn a degree and then must return to their country of origin to share their gained knowledge. There are also H-1B students who, after completing a bachelor’s degree or higher, may work in the country temporarily. Of the 4,000 international students on campus, F- and J-status students are most common.
VISA p4
More women become ISU police officers By Kyndal.Reimer @iowastatedaily.com A smile shot across Deborah Larkin’s face as she remembered the early days of her career in law enforcement. There was one thing that worked against her: She was a woman. “Have I ever been treated differently on the job because I’m a woman?” Larkin said, a lieutenant at the ISU Police Department. “Are you kidding? Get out of town.” Larkin landed her first job in law enforcement by suing the department. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, had just been created. The department had hired a man who didn’t have a college degree; Larkin did. She explained lawsuits were a common method women used to obtain jobs. “[Women] had carved a path in the dirt to the equal employment office from all of our trips over there,” Larkin said. Larkin has been in the field since 1981, when she was at the University of Nebraska. She was there for six years and then came to Ames, where she has been for the last 26 years. She started as a patrol officer and then shuffled through a variety of positions including detective, patrol sergeant and patrol lieutenant. When Larkin first started her career, she was issued a uniform that included a pencil skirt, as opposed to pants like the men. Larkin asked a male co-worker to order pants for her because she was not permitted to order them
Iowa State Daily
Carrie Jacobs is one of seven women within the ISU Police Department. Three women are in training, which they complete at this month.
herself. She never wore the skirt. Larkin recalled that dispatchers used to screen calls and send only the men to the violent crimes, while women were assigned to routine calls that wouldn’t put them in danger. Often times, women cops were assigned to sexual assault investigations because they were believed to be able to connect with victims solely because they were women. However, Larkin said that didn’t always work out. “I worked with another woman officer that was the meanest of them all,” Larkin said. “She meant well, but she didn’t last long as a sexual assault investigator. She wasn’t sensitive enough for the victims.” Despite the start, law en-
forcement has made a lot of progress in the last several years. According to the National Institute of Justice, in the 1970s, only 2 percent of officers were women. Today, women make up about 13 percent of the police force, according to the Department of Justice. Despite the rising numbers, gender inequality is still evident in the police department today. ISU Police has 37 officers, seven of whom are female. It has three females on patrol who are in their training phase, three officers in administrative level positions and one at the academy. Natasha Greene is one of the three female officers who are currently in training with ISU Police. She got involved with the depart-
ment after working with it as the community liaison with Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support. After working alongside officers in the department, she recognized how communityoriented the department was and immediately became fascinated with law enforcement. Since she was raised in a gendered society, Greene never thought of law enforcement as being a realistic occupation for her. The laws have changed, but society has not. “We are gendered at such a young age,” Greene said. “We are given a false assumption of what law enforcement entails or how it
ISU POLICE p4
Candidate lays out plans for future By Alex.Connor @iowastatedaily.com Mohamed Ali, the third out of four candidates for ISU Dining director, participated in an open forum 11 a.m. Thursday in the Gold Room of the Memorial Union. Meeting with everyone individually before his presentation, Ali spoke to a room of about 20 people. Having 24 years of food industry management experience under his belt, Ali is the director of auxiliaries’ operations at Ohio State University. Ali currently oversees 17 retail dining locations and four regional dining facilities. Beginning his presentation, Ali spoke about how one of the things he has learned throughout the years is to focus on the quality of food. Ali then discussed the three trends that he intends to keep at Iowa State. These included buying local, product development training and collaborative partnerships. A plan of action that Ali hopes to introduce, however, is maximizing local food sources, using organic food whenever possible, using more grains and plantbased foods and re-examining the role of prime vendors. “Organic food is getting less and less expensive,” Ali said. Ali would like to make the food friendlier to people on campus who may have dietary restrictions, such as vegans or vegetarians, or have a religiously restricted diet. When discussing product development and training, Ali stated that he would like to centralize recipe development through processing and labeling by making sure ingredients and nutrition information is made available to ISU students. He would also like to provide more in-depth training and to create a culture of culinary excellence. Another focus of Ali’s was to provide more collaborative partnerships. Ali said he would accomplish this by establishing working relationships with local and regional schools by sharing experiences and pooling resources. He would also work with other university departments to enhance the local community partnership. Ali stated that he believes in being upfront because it a system that works best. “We all have the same mission,” Ali said. One of the major points that Ali hit was to have a focus on financial performance. Speaking on some ways that he had introduced partnerships back at Ohio, Ali discussed how the university had worked with student government when it came to dining, along with having monthly student critiques. Once Ali completed his presentation, the forum allotted a 15-minute question and answer session. John Gaughan, the last ISU Dining candidate, will have his open forum at 11 a.m. Friday in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union.