TECHNICIAN
vol.
xcvi cviii issue
technicianonline.com
thursday march
24 2016
Raleigh, North Carolina
IN BRIEF NCGA passes bill to bar LGBT rights Staff Report
NC State professor wins prestigious Canadian award
Rodolphe Barrangou, a food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences professor and a discoverer of the adaptive bacterial immune system, is one of the winners of the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award, one of the world’s most esteemed medical research prizes. Along with the award comes a prize of $100,000 (Canadian). Earlier in the month, he was awarded the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. Barrangou joined the NC State faculty in 2013, and in 2014 he was awarded the NC State Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the Rene Descartes University in Paris, France; a master’s degree in biological engineering from the University of Technology in Compiegne, France; a master’s degree in food science and a doctorate in genomics from NC State; and a MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. SOURCE: NC State News
New Jersey bill would outlaw texting and walking
A bill was introduced in New Jersey last week that would outlaw texting and walking. Violators could be fined $50, spend 15 days in jail or both. New Jersey already has tight laws on distracted driving — those caught texting and driving could be fined up to $400 for the first infraction. Distracted walking incidents have increased 35 percent since 2010 and people texting while crossing the road are twice as likely to be hit by a car than people talking on their phones. SOURCE: Huffington Post
Raleigh deliberates water, stormwater fee hikes The city is trying to update old pipes, which would result in a $1 hike in residential water bills and a $14 increase for commercial bills. This week the Raleigh City Council gave preliminary approval to increase fees for water and stormwater management. Even with the fee increase, Raleigh still has some of the lowest water management prices in the Triangle. SOURCE: The News & Observer
The North Carolina General Assembly sent a bill to Gov. Pat McCrory Wednesday that would bar local governments from passing nondiscrimination ordinances and prevent people to use bathrooms based on the gender with which they personally identify. After three hours of debate, the Senate voted 32-0 in favor of the bill. Eleven of the Democrats present left in protest because they said they were excluded from writing or amending
the bill. The next step for the bill is McCrory’s office, and as of press time, his office did not make a comment of whether or not he would pass it. The bill was prompted by Charlotte’s nondiscrimination ordinance that included the bathroom provision, which McCrory opposed. The bill is named House Bill 2 and would strike down Charlotte’s ordinance because it prohibits local governments from enacting their own legislation to ban
discrimination. Instead, the bill would create a statewide law that would ban discrimination on the basis of “race, religion, color, national origin or biological sex” at businesses and other “places of public accommodation.” However, the law would not prevent citizens from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nomi-
BILL continued page 3 Gov. Pat McCrory
SOURCE:WIKIMEDIA
Virginia native talks southern upbringing Kat Kirby Staff Writer
Lambert said. “When I first got here, I had no idea what the Free Expression Tunnel was. I really liked what NC State has done in preserving that space, so I felt that we should try that here.” Lambert communicated the idea to head coach Elliott Avent, who was very interested in the plan and the potential impact that it could have on students within the community. “John came to me and said ‘Coach, what are we known for?’” Avent said. “I started with the Free Expression Tunnel, and he said, ‘let’s make the top of the dugouts the Free Expression Tunnel.’” The third base dugout was completed Wednesday while the first base dugout will be completed Thursday. The change is a big step from what the dugouts looked like in the 2014-15 season, according to Lambert.
A charismatic Virginia native and former NC State professor, Lee Smith, read excerpts from her new memoir, “Dimestore: A Writer’s Life” during a Friends of the Library author event Wednesday. Smith has been telling stories all her life — stories of fact and fiction. “I write for the reason I’ve always done so: simply to survive,” Lee said. “To make sense of my life. I never know what I think until I read what I’ve written.” This is Smith’s first nonfiction book, as she said she is much more comfortable with writing fiction. “I was uncomfortable the whole time doing this book,” she said. “In fiction, you have a control you never could in real life. I’m real glad I did it, but it was very unsettling.” In “Dimestore,” Smith becomes the main character as she recounts stories she heard throughout her life, particularly in Benjamin Franklin Five-and-Dime, the dime store her father, Ernest Smith, ran and owned for 55 years. According to Smith, on the last day the Five-and-Dime was open, her father fell and broke his ribs causing him to hemorrhage to death. “Thinking back on it, everybody has always said they don’t know what daddy would have done with his days, and I don’t either … He always put on his tie, and his nice little knit vest, and his jacket and then he went to the store, every day,” Smith said. Smith spoke fondly of her father, telling the audience about the “little writing house” he built her. Her first experience with narration occurred behind the one-sided glass of her father’s dime store office where she vividly remembers watching the customers. “I couldn’t stand for my favorite books to end so I would write more and more to the end of them,” Smith said. She also recounted her earliest memories of writing. In one instance, she made her own neighborhood newspaper. “Martha Sue, my best friend, and I started a neighborhood newspaper which we named the ‘Small Review,’ and I wrote out laboriously and sold it to the neighbors for a nickel … this was my first experience with the power of the press,” Smith said.
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SOURCE: TWITTER
NC State’s baseball team unveiled the first of its new “Free Experssion Dugouts” Wednesday. The artwork was created by Sean Kernick a local Raleigh artist and director of Oak City Hustle. According to John Lambert, director of player and program development for the team, the goal is to better incorporate the dugouts and the baseball field into NC State history.
Wolfpack unveils Free Expression-themed dugouts Joseph Ochoa Staff Writer
For years, the Free Expression Tunnel has been one of the most hallowed places on NC State’s campus along with the Bell Tower and Reynolds Coliseum. Now, the NC State baseball team has taken the Free Expression Tunnel as source of inspiration for a new tradition. The baseball team unveiled the first of its new “Free Expression Dugouts” Wednesday. According to John Lambert, director of player and program development for the team, the goal is to better incorporate the dugouts and the baseball field into NC State history. The dugouts will be available for public viewing on April 6, when the Wolfpack takes on the UNC Charlotte 49ers following its eight-game road trip. “This is the first year that we have this being done with the baseball team,”
insidetechnician
Distance Education expands reach, quality Gavin Stone Staff Writer
NEWS Women in NC State’s ‘Herstory’ See page 2.
SPORTS Wolfpack heads to Florida State See page 8.
College students in North Carolina will soon have access to a wider range of accredited online courses available to them in the coming months. The UNC Board of Governors has approved a recommendation from UNC’s 17 constituent institutions, the North Carolina Community College and Independent College Systems to join SARA, or State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement. SARA is a voluntary agreement that centralizes program authorization by establishing universal standards for Distance Education courses across state lines so that an institution will only need to meet their home state’s standards to be able to offer distance education to students of any other member state.
Adult ADHD?
T he rec iproc it y ag reement means that the perception of distance education courses as sub-par education could soon be a thing of the past, according to Rebecca Swanson, associate vice provost of distance and distributed education for DELTA. “I think ultimately what [joining SARA] is going to do is remove the last barrier to that perception that Distance Education is second rate which certainly was fostered, fueled in fact, by a number of institutions that were in the business to make money, not serve students,” Swanson said. “That ability to point to a membership in something that says, ‘if you join this organization you will abide by these standards’ helps everybody.” The consumer assurance that SARA membership carries with it could save North Carolina money by allowing the state to avoid
costly regulation fees designed to protect students from the possibility that their coursework will be discounted due to the uncertainty associated with taking an online course. “By having regional groups that provide reciprocity among all the states, what it says is that every state that joins SARA is going to have a common standard of student advocacy, where we are attesting to the quality of the programs we offer and that what we say we are doing and what we are delivering is happening and that students are not being given sub standard education with profit as the motivation,” Swanson said. One of the limitations that have impacted Distance Education programs are physical presence triggers. If an institution is found to have stepped beyond the dense set of rules barring face-to-face meet-
ings with students from another state or advertising across state lines, they could face large penalties. Even proctoring an exam could trigger a physical presence issue. Adding to this issue is that each state interpreted these rules differently. “If you did any online advertising you might run up against somebody in a state that had that as a physical presence factor and then are we liable because a student happened to see something on the internet that was sent out to everybody,” Swanson said. “What SARA is doing is saying ‘Let’s have some common sense around this. Let’s look at the physical presence factors let’s set things that make sense for all of us.’ If a faculty member just meets a few hours a
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