May 2016

REPORTER MAY 2016 reporter.rit.edu

SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS’

2015 MARK OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS WINNER: BEST STUDENT MAGAZINE Awarded to the Reporter staff for the November 2015 “Taboo” Issue

WINNER: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION Awarded to Kelsey Skutnik for “Freaky Fears and Fascinating Phobias”

FINALIST: FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY Awarded to Cindy Roblero for “The Genesee River Killer”

FINALIST: BEST DIGITAL PUBLICATION Awarded to Joe Jankowiak and Samuel Shiffman for Reporter’s Mobile App

T H E N E W YO R K PR E S S A S S O CI AT I O N ’S

2015 BETTER NEWSPAPER CONTEST FIRST PLACE: PHOTOGRAPHY Awarded to Kristen McNicholas for “Friends Fighting Hunger” 2 May

Please Recycle

REPORTER EDITOR IN CHIEF Alyssa Jackson PRINT MANAGING EDITOR Mandi Moon ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR Alex Jones COPY EDITOR Grace Guadagnino NEWS EDITOR Taylor Derrisaw TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Natasha Amadasun LEISURE EDITOR Claire Fleming FEATURES EDITOR Bryanne McDonough SPORTS EDITOR Liz Peterson VIEWS EDITOR Jake Krajewski WRITERS Bryanne McDonough, Ryan D. Black, Brad Boice, Claire Fleming, Nathan Lichtenstein, Taylor Derrisaw, Nicole Howley, Liz Peterson, Jake Krajewski

ART ART DIRECTOR Dennae Makel ONLINE ART DIRECTOR Max Yeager CONTRIBUTING DESIGNERS Lauren Mays, Olivia Konys, Annie Wong, Kevin Zampieron, Carina Singeltary, Emma Fleming, Paula Piedrahita, Caleb Payne CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Ryan Kovar, Max Yeager, Unique Fair, Madeleigh Place, Alyssa Minko, Cassy Smithies

PHOTOGRAPHY

EDITOR’S NOTE My first ever editor’s note ran in the Orientation Issue two years ago. It encouraged the students to wake up, get involved and get a little mad about the world around them. For my last editor’s note, I want to encourage students to do one of RIT’s buzzwords: innovate.

Here at RIT we throw that word around a lot, and I think that not many of us have stopped to consider what that word really means. I think that innovation can mean a lot of things, but for me, innovation means new beginnings or new starts.

Innovation has never meant more to me than now as I’m facing graduation. If ever, this is the time in my life when I will innovate myself most, and the prospect of that is so exciting to me.

My advice to students in this last editor’s note of mine is not to wait until graduation to innovate yourself and change. Never become complacent with where you are in life, and don’t let others make you feel like you can’t or shouldn’t move forward. Demand the best from RIT and don’t roll over just because someone says so. Challenge yourself to grow, and challenge those around you to grow as well.

My graduation signals an era of my life in which I can grow endlessly, but I didn’t need to wait until now to do that. Don’t wait. Stay awake. Innovate.

Alyssa Jackson Editor in Chief

PHOTO EDITOR Kristen McNicholas ONLINE PHOTO EDITOR Rob Rauchwerger CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Kristen McNicholas, Cindy Roblero, Joseph Ressler, Daniel Vasta

BUSINESS BUSINESS MANAGER Jaclyn Bergin AD / PR MANAGER Danielle Sanderson PRODUCTION MANAGER Ryan Walsh ONLINE SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR Nathan J. Lichtenstein WEB MANAGER Joe Jankowiak VIDEO EDITOR Sara Caruso

Letters to the Editor should be sent to rpteic@rit.edu. No letters will be printed unless signed. All letters received become the property of REPORTER.

ADVISOR Rudy Pugliese PRINTING EPi Printing CONTACT 585.475.2212 Online Video Component

Reporter Magazine is published monthly during the academic year by a staff comprised of students at Rochester Institute of Technology. Business, Editorial and Design facilities are located in Room A-730, in the lower level of the Campus Center. Our phone number is 1.585.475.2212. The Advertising Department can be reached at 1.585.475.2213. “This piece of trash has my name on it.” -B.M. The opinions expressed in Reporter do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute. Reporter is not responsible for materials presented in advertising areas. Reporter takes pride in its membership in the Associated Collegiate Press and American Civil Liberties Union. Copyright © 2014 Reporter Magazine. All rights reserved. No portion of this Magazine may be reproduced without prior written permission.

May 3

TABLE OF cover and TOC photography by Cindy Roblero

TECH

NEWS 6

PARKING PAINS Reporter addresses common complaints about parking

8

RIT’S VERY OWN AUTONOMOUS GOLF CART

LEISURE 10

Self-driving cars: a new reality

What the new analytics lab brings to business

14

@reportermag 4 May

SAUNDERS: AT THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

AYL RIT facts

CONTENTS F E AT U R E S 16

AN EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION: COS’ LA PROGRAM Learning Assistants are changing the way classrooms are structured

18

22

MESSAGE WITHOUT A BOTTLE A forgotten policy affects bottled water availability on campus

THE CONTINUING CONVERSATION OF RACE AT RIT

SPORTS 24

FAIR COVERAGE: THE UNSEEN EFFORT There’s more to the story when covering 24 teams

VIEWS 26

50 WAYS TO LOSE YOUR NUMBERS: WHY CREDIT CARDS NEED TO GO Credit cards pose more security issues than they’re worth

28

30

WORD ON THE STREET What’s your favorite place to visit in Rochester?

RINGS Text or call (585) 672-4840

Understanding different cultures in the past and present

May 5

PARKING

PAINS 6 News

by Bryanne McDonough illustration by Ryan Kovar design by Lauren Mays

O

ne of the most common complaints about parking on campus is the paid parking model. Recently, students and administration came to a head over increases in rates.

Parking at RIT was free until 2013, when President Destler introduced the paid parking model. Student passes were set at $100 and have stayed at that rate. The transition did not go over easily with those used to parking for free. “It was to keep tuition down,� said Adam Petzold, operations and events parking

manager at RIT. “It was part of the cost saving initiatives that [Destler] put forth.”

Petzold stressed that Parking and Transportation works hard to listen to students and address their complaints.

The department reads the RIT Reddit posts and Pawprints that involve questions and complaints about Parking and Transportation.

“We obviously want to hear from students,” said Petzold. “We’re here for them.”

The paid parking model makes it so that only those who are bringing their cars onto campus have to pay extra for the privilege, instead of the associated cost being applied to everyone’s tuition. The money from parking pass sales does not go directly to Parking and Transportation, but rather to the general institute fund.

“We’re not in it to make money,” Petzold said.

Parking and Transportation is not an auxiliary of RIT, like Housing Operations or Dining Services. This means that they are not tasked with making money for the Institute. In fact, the money collected from pass sales and tickets would not be enough to cover the operation of Parking and Transportation, according to Petzold. While the administration cannot promise to keep the parking fees constant, students can expect only modest, inflationary increases in rates.

“Complaints I’ve heard ... [are] the general parking that they give out permits for will be completely full, [but] reserved parking will have more than half the spaces open,” said Bridget Hurley, president of the Association for Commuter Engagement and third year Management Information Systems major.

“You park there, you get a $30 ticket.”

Petzold confirmed that this was a common criticism that the Parking and Transportation department sees through Reddit or PawPrints.

When paid parking was implemented, the reserved parking prices remained the same as before. It was decided around 2005 or 2006 that reserved parking would account for a third of parking spaces in any lot. Parking and Transportation will sell reserved passes up to that number, according to lot.

“We do lot counts the second week of every semester,” Petzold said. “Our guy is going out there and physically counting how many spaces are open and reserved throughout the day.”

The busiest times for parking are from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The amount of reserved parking spots must be able to accommodate all reserved pass holders during the busiest times. This means that during non-peak hours, it seems as though there are too many reserved spaces open.

Based on the information collected during the first two weeks of the semester, Parking and Transportation decides exactly how many reserved spaces there should be per lot, while remaining under the one third limit. Reserved parking passes in popular lots often sell out, while less popular lots like F and J do not.

Another common grievance is that general parking passes are not issued to Park Point and Province residents, although they can purchase after-hours passes. The reasoning behind this is that RIT provides free bus service to and from Park Point and Province.

“We don’t have room to park those cars,” explained Petzold.

Instead, Parking and Transportation has worked to improve bus reliability and ease of use by ensuring a stricter schedule and creating an app to track the buses.

“They have worked to make the bus timing much more consistent,” Hurley said. “To the point where ... the complaints of that have gone significantly down.”

One of the new technologies that Parking and Transportation is looking into is Parkmobile, a variation of metered parking without a physical meter. This would allow students who are running late to class, or who do not regularly park on campus, to have a way to pay for parking hourly. This app would allow commuters to add time to the “meter” by paying on their smartphone or online.

Petzold and others in the department are constantly evaluating technologies like these that could improve parking for students.

Petzold’s primary job is to coordinate event parking at RIT. Many complaints occur when events take up spaces that are usually available to students. Emails about lot closures for events are sent out through Message Center so that commuters have advance warning. Petzold tries his best to ensure that the events are only given what they need.

“It’s difficult to manage, but you’re doing it for the greater good, for the students,” Petzold said, adding that all of these events are geared toward students.

During these events, they tend to be much more lenient about ticketing, according to Petzold. In fact, Parking and Transportation tends to be very lenient about parking violations in general. Of tickets issued, 56 percent of them are warnings. This is uncommon for parking services on a college campus, but it is possible because Parking and Transportation is not an auxiliary.

“We’re able to be lenient, to work from an educational standpoint,” Petzold said. In the real world, violating parking laws can result in heavy fines and even jail time. By issuing warnings, Parking and Transportation is able to educate students about what is allowed and what is not without the hard consequences.

As for the tickets with fines, these often go to repeat offenders.

“Technically, everyone only gets one warning per academic year, but like I said, we’re very lenient,” Petzold said.

“I think they’re pretty reasonable with the appeals process for tickets,” Hurley confirmed.

Petzold explained that the Parking and Transportation office is always looking for input from students about what they can do to improve.

“I do, from working with them, strongly believe that Parking and Transportation does look into these options and are doing everything they can to help the students,” Hurley said.

News 7

RIT'S VERY OWN

autonomous people mover

by Ryan D. Black photography by Joseph Ressler design by Olivia Konys

W

ith the likes of Google, Tesla and a myriad of other tech giants now seemingly more devoted than ever to the prospect of self-driving cars, a group of engineering students right here at RIT have been hard at work on an autonomous vehicle of their own. Over the last two semesters, a group led by project manager Joe Hudden, a fifth year Industrial Engineering, and overseen

by Computer Engineering professor Dr. Ray Ptucha, have been hard at work on the “RIT Autonomous People Mover” — a golf cart capable of driving itself. If all goes according to plan, their intentions are to to demonstrate their work at this year’s Imagine RIT featival.

Cody Smith

Computer Engineering student, demonstrates the capabilities of the self-driving car on April 14, 2016

8 Technology

A team of engineering students shows off its self-driving car project at the RIT campus in Rochester, NY on April 14, 2016.

They aim to show off the vehicle’s capabilities in a pre-programmed closed course, complete with obstacles, within the circle at the end of Lomb Memorial Drive, right next to The Sentinel.

“The cart will be able to drive people without any human intervention from point A to point B,” according to Cody Smith, a fifth year Computer Engineering student working on the project. Ptucha emphasized how prudently the team will be handling the presentation. “We will have a person on board the golf cart just for safety measures,” he said. “If everything goes wrong or something [like that], they could always manually hit the brake or hit the E-stop to kill the car at any point in time.”

The capstone project brings together a diverse collection of students — including the likes of Electrical, Mechanical, Industrial and Computer Engineering majors — to collaborate and utilize each others’ respective knowledge and skills.

“It’s been a really big learning experience being able to work on a team of people where they have expertise you don’t necessarily have and you have expertise they don’t necessarily have,” noted Smith. For him, experiencing how a lengthy and complex venture like the “People Mover” is split up into “lots of small parts, that individual people can contribute to,” has been a valuable learning process.

Hudden, who handles the aforementioned organization, expressed a similar sense of appreciation for the team’s dynamic. “The makeup of [this] team and how different it is really helped [us] produce the cart that it is today,” Hudden said. He also explained how everyone’s respective background helped with a different system or element of the cart, as well as bringing it all together.

Through such collaboration, the team has been able to design both hardware and software that works synchronously.

Specialized computer algorithms interpret what the cameras on the cart see with corresponding 360-degree photos of campus from Google Streetview. In doing so, the “People Mover” can determine what area of the campus it is actually in. After utilizing particle filters, the cart then knows its exact position. This “Computer Vision Method” is used in conjunction with both high- and low-precision GPS, the latter of which is comparable to what’s on your phone.

All of this is made possible by advances in machine learning, also known as “deep learning.” Almost every recent improvement in speech recognition software in smart phones as well as other devices and applications is a direct result of this. As The Economist pointed out in May of last year, this sort of technology typically used to be able to only interpret large amounts of data as one layer of analysis. Yet within the past

few years, it is has become capable of several “distinct, hierarchical [and interlinked] layers.” Imagine jumping from only “dozens or hundreds of neurons” to a level more equivalent with the human brain.

“It’s pretty awesome,” admitted Hudden when asked about working with cutting edge technology like deep learning. “I think that’s what RIT is all about: innovation.”

With research and testing for automated vehicles being so sought after at the moment, Ptucha also noted how RIT could be well positioned to attract investment from private companies. Just last year the University of Michigan opened a 32 acre test facility for autonomous vehicles named “Mcity,” and in November Ford announced plans to use it to test their own self-driven vehicles.

They are not alone; Toyota has funded $25 million worth of research for both Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology respectively in 2015.

Looking past this year’s Imagine RIT, the plan is for a whole new team of engineering students to pick up the torch come fall 2016. Hudden definitely wants what they’ve accomplished to be a “platform” for that group, something which they can build upon. At next year’s Imagine RIT, Ptucha hopes to demonstrate a golf cart capable of maneuvering “a fixed” route along one of the driving paths, but for now he just wants to see how this year goes.

Technology 9

SAUNDERS

f o n o i t c e s r e t n I e h At t phy by Daniel Vasta

otogra

by Brad Boice | ph

10 Leisure

| design by Annie

Wong

Busine

ss and S

Techno l

ogy

aunders College of Business is undergoing renovations over the course of the summer to construct a state-of-theart business analytics lab in place of one of the student lounges.

This change comes with the new popularity of the Master of Science degree in Computational Finance being offered at Saunders. With new facilities and new graduate programs, this news comes with a question: where does this put Saunders in comparison to other schools?

It’s no secret that finding and deciding on colleges is all about competition: rankings, comparisons and hundreds of “Top X Schools to Visit” lists. The flood of information is difficult to sift through. While Saunders is already highly regarded nationally — a top 100 ranking for best undergraduate business programs in 2014, a ranking of 14 for Management Information Systems nationally

by Bloomberg Businessweek and a ranking for their online MBA program in the Princeton Review’s “Top 25 Online MBA Programs of 2015” — there’s one thing that every business major gets drilled into his/her head: innovation is everything.

Right from the beginning of a Saunders student’s experience at RIT, they are exposed to real-world and practical scenarios. The Business I and Business II introductory classes go in-depth with studying stocks, starting a business and developing a new line of products. The simulations are about as real as

you’d want to present to a group of first years, and the experience is presented as a highlight of a business student’s first year.

Saunders isn’t limited to its presence within national borders. RIT’s international campuses in Croatia and Dubai provide the world-class RIT educational experience outside of our snowy slice of paradise. The Croatia campus, located in Dubrovnik, has high quality Marketing and Finance majors within the business realm, and the emphasis on working within the global business environment makes the studying experience truly unique. The Dubai campus offers the same undergraduate and graduate programs offered at RIT, and being located in such a global innovation center, the experience and resources available to students are astronomical. While Saunders is establishing itself on the global front of education, domestically the resources are ever-expanding.

The business analytics lab will not only take the immersive experience that Saunders is known for providing and enhance it, but it will provide the hardware and software for Computational Finance graduate students to access data in a professional environment on campus. Computational Finance is a unique combination of financial knowledge, data analysis and differential and stochastic calculus. Given the nicknames “Quants” and “Rocket Scientists of Wall Street,” this program is popular for its high salaries, high demand

In the vein of harmony between business and technology is the business analytics lab.

Leisure 11

and its ranking as one of the top 50 finance programs nationally.

The features of this lab that support Computational Finance students are the 12 Bloomberg terminals. Bloomberg Terminals are computer systems that can access the vast financial data goldmine that is Bloomberg Professional service, which allows students to view the data in real-time as stocks and securities are being traded on markets worldwide. This allows Computational Finance students to practice and implement the skills they learn in the classroom with real data. The terminals come with specialized keyboards, which have hotkey commands built in specifically for market trading and financial databases. These functions access market sectors, such as mortgage securities, money markets and currency markets. The ability to quickly access this information is crucial for the tasks of a Computational Finance student.

As Saunders has grown and innovated, it has been assumed that its alreadydistinguished rankings will reflect the effort that the college puts into its students.

Dr. Jackie Mozrall, the dean of Saunders,

12 Leisure

expressed that the college is evolving to where it needs to be.

“I think we’re positioning ourselves very well,” Mozrall said. “We’re positioning ourselves based on our strengths. We’re a business school at an institute of technology.”

The emphasis of technology in Saunders is apparent: every major has a mandatory information systems course in its list of required credits, Management Information Systems is the largest undergraduate program in the college and the MBA program has two required analytics courses.

“We’re positioning ourselves at the intersection of business and technology,” said Mozrall. “Every company is becoming a tech company. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hospital, a bank, Wegmans, Google — they’re all tech companies. I was talking to the CTO of M&T Bank, and she said ‘We’re not a bank, we’re a tech company. We have to compete for talent with all the other tech companies in the country.’ I think it’s important no matter what major you’re in that you understand and appreciate and can work in this technical world in which we live.”

“It’s all about data. Accessing data,

analyzing data and being able to use that data to drive decision making,” she continued.

Ideally, the lab will be open to all RIT students, but the logistics behind that still need to be ironed out. “I think it comes down to ‘Do we have enough seats?’” questioned Mozrall.

“We really want it to be a workspace for the students, so why not have it open for everybody? We just have to see how utilized it is.”

The business analytics lab isn’t the end of the list of renovations and improvements set for Saunders. Active Learning Labs — the funky rooms with the rolling chairs and monitors everywhere — will be placed in the first floor rooms that are utilized by Business 1 and 2 classes. These labs will enhance the first year experience and senior capstone projects by promoting group work and providing valuable workspaces and resources for students. Consistently making changes to programs, staff and work space, Saunders shows no signs of stopping innovation and evolution.

the cure for awkward silence 585.672.4840

by Nathan Lichtenstein illustration by Cassy Smithies design by Caleb Payne and Emma Fleming

14 Leisure

1. Originally called the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, we didn’t become the Rochester Institute of Technology until 1944.

2. The Corner Store (under Nathaniel Rochester Hall) now occupies what used to be a burger joint called Nate’s – and before that a bar called The Cellar, a great place to grab a beer on campus before the drinking age was changed.

3. RIT moved to the Henrietta campus in the late 1960s.

4. There are more than 15,615,000 bricks on the RIT campus.

5. The Campus Center used to be the Edith Woodward Memorial Pool; the construction and redesign of the space was finished in 2010.

6. Contrary to popular belief, the RIT campus design was not originally intended for a southwestern campus to amplify the wind in the summer months. The buildings are close together due to uneven grading of the landscape.

7. The music space in the basement of the SAU was originally designed as the RIT bowling alley.

8. Originally, we were the RIT Tech Men and our school colors were blue and silver; we changed our mascot to the tiger around 1955.

9. The pelt of the original tiger mascot (SpiRIT) is housed in the archive in The Wallace Center. You can look, but don’t touch.

10. President Destler’s house is owned by RIT and is called Liberty Hill. It is located about 15 minutes from the main campus.

Leisure 15

AN EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION: COS’ LA PROGRAM

by Taylor Derrisaw | photography by Kristen McNicholas |design by Carina Singletary

A view from the second floor of the Gosnell Atrium on April 14, 2016 on RIT’s campus.

Many of the classes with Learning Assistants are science courses held in Gosnell.

We’ve all struggled in a class at one time or another, and it can be quite frustrating when it comes to classes or subjects that aren’t really your thing.

In an effort to help students with learning difficult subjects, particularly in STEM fields, RIT’s College of Science has implemented a Learning Assistant (LA) program. The program involves students who have already been through the class working with the faculty to revise their classroom approach. The students, referred to as Learning Assistants (LAs), help lead outside discussions, assist students with homework trouble and develop new course materials. This program has led to a complete shift in the way lectures are being taught in the College of Science.

The LA program was originally developed at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Its most basic goal was to get physics students interested in teaching. At the time, there was a severe lack of K-12 science teachers, especially those trained in physics. As the program developed further, other universities saw its merits and began to implement their own versions of the LA method. RIT was one of those universities.

In 2013, RIT began its own LA program with a slightly different goal. As RIT does not have a school of education, it instead focused on helping teachers revise classrooms and lecture styles. Currently managing the program is Corey Ptak, a lecturer within the College of Science.

16 Features

“We were surprised by how much it helped faculty take their classroom ideas and put them into action,” Ptak said.

Traditionally, lectures have been taught through univocal discourse, where the teacher simply spouts information to the students in the classroom. Ptak, other faculty and students saw an opportunity to revise the classroom so all participants can be included. This required classrooms to take a more student-oriented, discussionbased approach.

“Dialogical discourse has dialogue, so it’s about multiple people talking ... The sharing of information is not just one way,” said Ptak.

This style of learning is just one way that LAs are trained to help in classrooms.

In order to become an LA, students must apply to the program and go through a series of interviews. After the program managers interview the applicants, faculty members will interview them to see if they are the right fit for their class. From there, students and faculty will team up to develop learning plans and class materials that will work best for the students.

LAs are also required to attend a pedagogy course. The course takes up two credits and instructs LAs in classroom management and cognitive science. Its basic premise is to help LAs understand how students learn in a classroom.

Ptak was surprised to see how assertive students were about the program. Students who wished to be LAs were incredibly enthusiastic.

“[LAs] are agents of the class. They’re not just there to answer questions.”

As a result of the program, Ptak and other coordinators have found that classes with LAs have had an increased rate of student achievement, a decreased workload on the part of the faculty, an increased rate of engagement and generally more positive evaluations.

For the future, the initiative has a variety of goals. For one, Ptak hopes to see more students get interested in teaching. The pedagogy course they are required to take helps them understand teaching dynamics and learn teaching strategies. The LAs can then go out into the classroom and help their peers understand the subject more than they would be able to on their own. The course also involves a high degree of reflection. The LAs are required to reflect on strategies that work for them, as well as what they can do to improve.

The program is also expected to branch out into other areas.

Recently, the LA program has spread to the College of Applied Science and Technology, and Ptak expects the program to spread to other colleges and disciplines.

Future goals for the faculty include a further transformation of classes from univocal to dialogical styles of teaching. Ptak ultimately believes that the program will help RIT be more progressive with less of a focus on lecture-style classes.

“This allows [us] to promote diversity in the classroom ... In terms of diversity of learning styles, diversity of backgrounds, and still get the same outcome of student success ... This is a culture of students helping students,” he said.

To an outside observer, it might be difficult to discern an LA from a Teaching Assistant (TA). The LA program emphasizes a relationship with faculty. In order to be an LA, students must work closely with teachers to develop lesson plans and other materials needed for the class. TAs traditionally don’t offer feedback, whereas feedback for the faculty is essential for LAs. Ptak also likens the idea of an LA to that of a peer, where the LAs can offer a second perspective on things. “[LAs] are agents of the class,” he said. “They’re not just there to answer questions.”

Overall, Ptak believes that feedback from both faculty and students has been generally positive. Current LAs believe that they’re learning more than they would have in regular, univocal classes. Faculty like Ptak believe the LA program is helping them develop new ways of teaching material.

“Without my LAs, my class would be very different,” Ptak commented.

“I did have trouble getting into that teaching mindset,” said Devon Christman, a first year Physics major and current LA. “But now everything’s running really smoothly and I’m finding that I learn more through being an LA ... I know my knowledge has greatly improved.”

If any student wishes to become an LA, Ptak encourages them to contact him at cxpsbi@rit.edu.

For more information, please visit https://www.rit.edu/science/la.

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Message withouta

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18 Features

by Nicole Howley illustration by Max Yeager design by Olivia Konys

Walk into any RIT-hosted event and you’ll find many choices of canned sodas or maybe even juice. One thing is missing, though: bottled water.

The reason for this dates back to an RIT policy established in 2012. The policy disallowed university funds to be spent on single servings of bottled water, which can sound like an agreeable idea when considering the economic, environmental and social issues with bottled water. The tap water at RIT comes from Hemlock Lake, an undeveloped water source, which “is of high quality and is at least 2000% less expensive than bottled water,” according to a 2012 report by the Camps Environmental Committee at RIT. The policy was eventually passed, and in the years since, it seems to have fallen off the radar of the RIT community.

Few have questioned why, despite the policy’s original timeline, bottled water is still present in most of the dining locations and vending machines on campus, including the vending machine in the sustainability building.

Additionally, little question has been raised within the community as to what impacts the portions of the policy that have been enacted have had thus far. It is time for a review.

the policy: The bottled water policy was one of Enid Cardinal’s first assignments when she was hired as RIT’s Senior Sustainability Advisor, handed directly to her by President Destler himself. Nonetheless, it has been a long process.

“It wasn’t something I was going to move forward on without input from everyone,” said Cardinal.

RIT’s bottled water policy states in its most basic form that “University funds may not be used to purchase single serving bottles of water.” After being implemented in 2012, the policy was phased in for events held at RIT over six months “to provide adequate time to make adjustments.”

There are reasonable exceptions to the policy, including when tap water is of questionable quality. Additionally, the policy allowed for Dining Services to continue to sell bottled water in vending machines, retail locations and at sporting events. However, the policy stipulated that “after the current vending contract expires, no new contracts for bottled water will be entered into.”

This section was published in 2012 with the rest of the policy. Just two years later, in 2014, RIT entered into a new contract with Coca-Cola after the campus’s contract with Pepsi expired and new brands of bottled water appeared on campus. Cardinal explained that, despite straying from the original policy, the new contract was entered into with a plan in mind.

“We actually worked very closely together when the pouring rights contract went out, and bottled water was explicitly called out in there that we were looking to phase it out. So it was structured with that so we don’t necessarily get penalized,” said Cardinal. “It was my call to okay the removal of bottled water from vending machines and from retail, but I wasn’t okay with the availability of hydration stations.”

Construction code has been updated so that hydration stations are included in all new buildings. In addition, many water fountains have been retrofitted to easily refill reusable water bottles, but

there is still more work to be done. While Cardinal has a priority list of buildings to add hydration stations to, many buildings, such as the residence halls, do not have the proper plumbing in place. Adding hydration stations to those buildings would come at a great cost to the university.

In years to come, Cardinal, members of RIT Dining Services, Coca-Cola and other partners will slowly work to reduce the presence of bottled water on campus, and to someday fully adhere to the original policy. In the meantime, some issues have been raised with the policy, and some question whether the goals of the policies have been reached or should be reevaluated.

the present:

Molly Rockford and Karlee Bushnell are both fourth year Nutrition Management majors and co-presidents of the Student Dietetic Association (SDA).

They were interviewed just a week after an event they put on encouraging students to drink more water and less sugary beverages.

Rockford recalled an event she went to the weekend prior. “I was just thinking, I was at the Connectology conference this past weekend and they mentioned that they couldn’t do water bottles because of the policy,” she said. “When we went to lunch, we got a box lunch and it was just cans of soda, and I was like it’s a good thing I have my water bottle with me.”

Both students carry around their water bottles everywhere. But Rockford and Bushnell worry that some other students are not as readily prepared with water bottles in hand, or as willing to search out water fountains.

This is one of the issues with the policy: events are not able to provide single serving bottles of water, which leads some event managers to provide no water at all.

“One of the commitments we also made was that we weren’t going to force users to make a choice between sugary beverages and remove the healthier water option,” said Cardinal about writing the policy. The bottled water

policy even states, “For all other catered operations, bottled water will be replaced with bulk water.” But this is not always the case. Some events now go without water and instead only serve soda products.

Mary Anne McQuay, the Registered Dietitian for RIT Dining Services, advised that soda is okay on occasion. From her perspective, the occasional lack of water is more of a customer service issue. Nonetheless, McQuay said, “It can obviously, over time, have an impact on somebody. I don’t want to say health and wellness, but possibly it can depending on what the event is.”

The lack of water is usually observed at events catered by offcampus organizations and by students themselves. Guests to campus, students new to event planning and outside caterers alike seem to struggle the most with understanding the policy and providing water.

“We are one of the minorities in schools that ban bottled water, and people just don’t understand it, so there’s a lot of education that still needs to go on,” said Todd Raethka, manager of Catering Operations for Brick City Catering. As an entity working within RIT’s campus, Brick City Catering struggles less with providing water. In fact, Raethka says that they try to throw in water for events they cater whenever they can, but “it’s just not bottled.”

Raethka was working for Brick City Catering before the policy change and noticed that they went from ordering 20 cases of water a week to about 5 cases in the last year. Instead, they have moved to providing water in large, clear containers consistent with the RIT policy.

Cardinal advises organizations providing beverages without Brick City Catering to follow a similar strategy. Bulk water was intentionally unmentioned in the policy so that events could still have the option of buying water, although Cardinal hopes that people will seek other alternatives. She also mentions that some departments have started ordering their own reusable pitchers and containers for water.

Brick City Catering also offers lemonade and iced tea in bulk containers, and has started offering infused water as a healthier bulk option as of this past fall.

As for soda, they switched from 20 ounce bottles to 12 ounce after noticing that

KEEP READING Features 19

2012 RIT REMOVES BOTTLED WATER ON CAMPUS & AT CAMPUS EVENTS

2014 END OF PEPSI CONTRACT ON CAMPUS RIT CONTINUES TO SELL BOTTLED BEVERAGES IN VENDING MACHINES AND AT EVENTS

PROPOSED TIMELINE FOR CAMPUS-WIDE HYDRATION STATIONS

2026

there were often many half-empty bottles left at the end of the night, according to Raethka. These smaller bottles have been beneficial in many ways. “It provides us with more space in our storage facilities and our coolers, it’s less waste and less things going into the recycling stream,” said Raethka. But to some, the permissions for single-serving bottled soda over water seems contradictory.

“Why would you just take away the water? That’s really sticking with me.

Like the soda is still in plastic bottles,” said Rockford. “It is limiting the plastic on campus, but the soda still comes in a plastic bottle, so it’s not really offering a better nutritional option.”

Kevin Kane, a third year Business Management major and manager for Cardinal’s sustainability team, had similar thoughts. “I do think it’s a little weird that bottled soda is still okay, because then at these events on campus, there’s Coke and Diet Coke and Sprite, and 20 Features

it’s everywhere, and there’s these really dense bottles that have a lot more plastic than bottled water bottles do because they have to contain the carbonation,” he explained.

Even after removing bottles, there will always need to be a vessel to contain beverages, and there is still waste associated with that. Some see the removal of bottled water, or any other bottled beverage, as an infringement on their choices. Or it may simply throw them too far out of their comfort zones.

For some, it can be strange to trust tap water if they are from a place where it isn’t of great quality. Those used to bottled water may not be happy if it were suddenly removed from campus.

Evan Zackary, a fourth year Environmental Sustainability, Health and Safety major and a member of both the Student Government’s Sustainability Committee and the Student Environmental Action League (SEAL), understands the need for a conscientious transition. “You can’t make the transition to being more sustainable unpleasant, or people disengage and go to Wegmans and buy like pallets of bottled beverages, and you’ve taken steps backwards,” he explained.

Determining how to make the transition pleasant involves addressing concerns about nutrition and worries about either not going far enough or going too far with reducing plastic bottles.

Looking into the future of the policy and implementation, it is important that these factors are taken into consideration.

the future:

“Right now, [the future is] really working on rolling out the remaining portions of [the policy]. So the next phase of it will be lightly pulling it out of our dining venues where there’s tap water already readily available, whether that be through a fountain or whether that be through a hydration station or a freestyle,” said Cardinal. Sometime next

academic year, retail dining locations on the academic side of campus will start phasing out bottled water, she predicts.

“But we are still working on the logistics.

It is not finalized yet.”

Kory Samuels, the executive director of Dining Services, agrees with Cardinal on the next steps. “The next piece of it as of now would be to limit flat bottled water beverages in our retail locations, and we’ve started right now with concessions. I don’t think we really publicized that, but every concessions we have from Ritter to the [Gordon Field House] to Polisseni, we don’t sell base bottled water.” This may be a change that students have not noticed either due to the availability of options or the fact that Smart Water is considered a value-added product, not water.

“You can get a Smart Water or other enhanced water beverages, but we do not sell Dasani water,” said Samuels. The added electrolytes in Smart Water are enough to differentiate it from water out of the tap, according to Cardinal and Samuels, meaning that the policy doesn’t apply to it.

Students interviewed for this article, though, viewed Smart Water and others as one in the same. McQuay saw the difference between the two but mentioned that “within the waters, there’s water that’s enhanced with electrolytes, things of that nature, which really aren’t necessary for normal people.

I mean you really have to be working out for better than an hour to have to replace those electrolytes ... but for most people, just plain water is fine.” The issue of Smart Water versus other waters brings back the question of whether or not all bottled beverages should be removed from campus.

Samuels said the focus is exclusively on bottled water because, when removing bottled water, you are not removing an item or option other than the bottle itself; the water is still available. Samuels said with soda bottles, it’s different: “It is sensitive because you are taking away choice.”

With the new Coca-Cola Freestyle machines, though, there are hundreds of options, including ones that are not available in bottles, and water was specially programmed into the RIT machines in order to make that option more accessible. Zackary believes that RIT’s campus is almost ready to start removing bottled beverages across the board. “This is kind of frustrating

because we have already done the work to shift away from this,” he said. “We have made the step forward already. It’s been done.”

For the next steps, he believes that we should start pulling bottled water from our shelves in locations whose products you sit down to eat and drink directly after purchase, like Brick City and the concessions stands, which Samuels and Cardinal also believe in. All three also agree that snack locations like the Corner Store, where products are often bought to consume at a later time, should go through the transition from bottled beverages later.

“Long term vision is 20 years from now, every building has hydration stations in it so you don’t have to worry about this,” Cardinal said. “It will probably take that long to get to some of the buildings that are harder to update, 10 years at least.”

Ten to twenty years from now is a much longer timeline for implementation than the original proposal, which set the removal of water bottles on campus to the end of the Pepsi contract in 2014.

One of the main barriers standing in the way is ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to access water as an option.

From Cardinal’s perspective, there is just not equal access yet, leading her to believe that it is important to keep water in most campus vending machines, at least until that point is reached.

All except those in the Sustainability Hall. “We will likely pull it out of the sustainability vending machines this year,” said Cardinal. “That was the first place I got complaints because we have hydration stations on every floor of that building, so we don’t need them.”

In the end, Cardinal and her team are trying to make the policy work for the campus while avoiding any negative impacts, although it can be difficult to predict consequences.

“As much as we want to do all our research and talk with folks before we get our stuff done, we also don’t want to be in a standstill for the next 20 years,” said Samuels. Their teams are planning to take their time, but they are moving, and it appears that the teams need to be receptive to others’ perspectives if they want to make their voices heard.

As everyone gets used to the change in the way water is accessed, there have been and will continue to be bumps. Kane gave a final reminder: “We do care. We are trying. Really hard.”

RIT IS A PLACE THAT ACKNOWLEDGES THAT BOTTLED WATER IS A PROBLEM AT AN INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL.

Features 21

THE CONTINUING

CONVERSATION OF RACE AT RIT

by Claire Fleming | illustration by Unique Fair | design by Emma Fleming

THEN “It’s way beyond time that whites start studying some black history.”

These words were spoken by Dr. Norman Coombs, a General Studies professor at RIT, in an interview with Reporter 47 years ago. Coombs’ words are just as relevant in 2016 as they were when they were printed in the April 11, 1969 issue of Reporter.

Coombs was being interviewed by Reporter in 1969 because he was about to do something no professor at RIT had done before. He was about to start teaching a new course called “Black History,” and was awarded a federal grant to study the subject.

While courses in college about black history or the history of other cultures may be common today, the reason this class was to be added is still relevant.

When asked if the new class was being implemented because of the growing number of black students at RIT, Coombs explained that there 22 Features

is more reason for white students to study black history than for black students to do so.

“What is important for the white to face up to is not so much that black people have done something, made contributions to our society, but that we have to realize the amount of white racism in our society throughout its history and now in its present,” he said.

Here, Coombs is pointing out that white people should understand black history in order to understand the racist actions of white people toward black people. He made it clear that it is important for white people to understand their privilege as well as to understand the cultures of people around them. This is still true in 2016.

The question of why and how black history should be studied was considered further by Neil Shapiro, a student at RIT and Reporter’s Editor at Large, in his article “Firing Line” in the very same issue.

“Firing Line” was a weekly column written by Shapiro questioning authority and asking some hard questions.

Shapiro supported the idea of adding a Black Studies curriculum, writing, “More power to them,” but he brought up the point that a student should also have a good understanding of history and current events regarding race in general to understand the racism in it. He

noted, “Here at RIT, the students have no background to build this course on. There is no previous course on Current Events, nor is there a course dealing with the influences of recent Segregationist and Integrationist groups on present American Society.” Shapiro argued toward having a more wholesome General Studies program in order to truly understand racism.

NOW While RIT’s College of General Studies is now called College of Liberal Arts, and neither Coombs nor Shapiro work at or go to RIT, it is important to understand what they and their peers with similar ideas have accomplished and what they still stand for.

RIT is now more diverse than ever, having clubs and organizations, classes and events all in the name of different cultures. RIT, as of fall 2015, has 2,635 international students from 102 different countries around the world. The university now offers 10 modern languages, having added Portuguese to its repertoire in 2013.

A student at RIT can now declare immersions or take classes in Africa and the Diaspora (11 classes), Latin/a/o American Studies (21 classes) and Diversity in the U.S. (19 classes). The Diversity in the U.S. classes not only cover different races, but different genders, language, queer identities and minority groups in general. There are also various classes centered around different races, cultures and minorities in the history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political science, criminal justice and other departments.

Besides classes, at the core of diversity at RIT are the studentrun organizations. Of RIT’s 205 campus organizations, 32 are cultural organizations. These 32 organizations include Global Union, Latin American Student Association, Unity House, Black Awareness Coordinating Committee, Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Korean International Student Association and International House (I-House).

While there are many great and diverse cultural classes, programs and clubs, there is always progress to be made. The need to understand racism and other races and cultures is a need that Coombs and Shapiro emphasized 47 years ago and people on campus closely related to cultural organizations still emphasize today. One of these people is Ethelia Lung, a second year New Media Design student who is from Hong Kong, China and is the historian of I-House.

Lung said International House’s main focus is “to take care of and help assimilate international students into their new environment, while also spreading the values of cultural diversity to students who are local.” She asserted how important it is to celebrate all cultures and to make everyone feel comfortable on campus and emphasized the importance of both the international community and the local community being celebrated and recognized together.

It is easier said than done to bring many cultures together in such a large university. One thing that could change is placing emphasis on events that celebrate the international students and their cultures.

“I definitely think that having more awareness of the cultural events going on would help the RIT community better understand and get to know various cultures,” Lung explained.

Some of Lung’s suggestions to better include diversity in the RIT community are to organize larger cultural events with many cultural organizations or even having the College Activities Board (CAB) get involved in sponsoring cultural events.

“I believe that the community just needs more exposure to the diverse range of cultures on campus,” she said. She explained that because CAB and other major student organizations reach out to a vast majority of the RIT community, it would help make cultural events and therefore other cultures more visible on campus.

In 2016, there is still a need for cultural visibility and for understanding the diversity that is on our campus. It is up to the community to promote ideas of other cultures, and major student organizations may just be the key to helping us learn more about and to accept each other for who we are. As Shapiro said in his column 47 years ago, “More power to them.”

Features 23

FAIR COVERAGE: THE UNSEEN EFFORT

by Liz Peterson | photography by Kristen McNicholas | design by Lauren Mays

24 Sports

R

IT is clearly not a sports school, and with all but two teams being classed in Division III, it’s not hard to see why sports aren’t at the forefront of the community’s mind.

Although it might seem that our sports teams’ class is what discourages students from going to games, matches and meets, it’s not.

“I feel as though DI sports are the only sports that are covered, and if it isn’t DI sports then it’s lacrosse and basketball that receive the most coverage,” said Markus Hines, a second year Media Arts and Technology student on the track team.

From the outside, it looks like all any campus news outlet cares about is our Division I hockey teams.

However, that is not the case. RIT’s Athletics Department has a team that is extremely passionate about making sure all 24 teams feel valued and get the coverage they deserve.

Director of Sports Information Stephen Jaynes made it very clear that “If there’s a result, a story, we’ll post it.”

When you’re dealing with 24 teams, it is easy to miss things, but Jaynes assured that the Sports Information office tries to make up for it in some shape or form. They recruit the help of coaches and student athletes to help them get the story straight since they cannot always be present at every single game for every single team.

“Social media has allowed us to get the word out quicker,” Jaynes said as he proceeded to show off the welldeveloped Twitter and Facebook pages for RIT Athletes. “It draws people back to the website.”

However, the majority of the attracted crowd are student athletes, family, friends and alumni. Most students aren’t going to the RIT Athletics website daily. Our student athletes would still like to see more fans filling their seats and to step out from underneath the shadow of the hockey teams.

Each sport team gets one Tiger Den event per year.

Some would argue that’s not enough.

Gianna Heaviland, a third year Sociology and Anthropology major, commented, “We had a Tiger Den event at the end of the season last year. It brought out a lot of people and some actually stayed to watch the event.”

One of the biggest fears of student athletes is that Tiger Dens might attract a crowd, but after the free food and giveaways run out, they believe people won’t stay. In spite of this, attendance has increased thanks to the promotion of Tiger Den events. The Sports Information team also scouts for gravitating details to attract attention to each team, not just the few popular favorites.

“We look for the human interest story, to tell the story of the student athlete,” Jaynes explained.

This year, Sports Information introduced features which they will do for each sport team. They will look for a student athlete’s story to tell during that season and then upload it to the website. “We do the best we can,” he said.

All in all, the coverage that the RIT Athletics Department provides is more than most would realize. However, students choose not to notice, or in some cases, teams don’t take the prerogative to get themselves noticed.

Though the Twitter account for the department will advertise the results for every single team, not every single team has their own Twitter account. That utility is up to them to provide and is highly encouraged by the Sports Information office.

“You’d think that it’s an internal struggle,” said Joe Venniro, the executive Sports Information director. “But really, we’re competing against the Bills, the Syracuse basketball and football teams, the Sabers, the Amerks.”

On campus is the only site for thorough representation, and many students feel that not all sports get it equally.

“The coverage for women’s sports sucks,” said Victoria Otis, a third year Sociology and Anthropology student.

“I don’t know when there’s even a game,” said Emily Cook, a second year Liberal Arts Exploration student.

“I think more coverage on DIII overall would increase support. Even if it’s just coverage for important games or meets, that would be great,” Hines suggested.

Perhaps, if there were more collaboration from the student organizations on campus, that too could greatly increased attendance and support these teams would see.

Student organizations are more than welcome to host special events for the different sports teams or with SAAC and Campus Life when they do Tiger Dens. Free stuff does cost money, though.

Overall, though the coverage would appear to be lacking to students, the RIT Athletics Department as a whole tries its hardest to eliminate that visible divide students see between the hockey teams and the rest of the sports.

Maddie Bliss, a second year Photography student and cheerleader noted, “This year, they tried and things were a bit better, but it’s not there yet and we are still working on getting more recognition on campus.”

Agreeing with the sentiment, the Executive Director of the Athletics Department Lou Spiotti had this to say: “When I say teams are treated fairly, I speak about the total experience that student-athletes get at RIT. That means everything from facilities, to equipment, coaching, support for team travel, competitive schedules and recognition. We want them all to feel valued and supported whether they are Division III or Division I. I would be the first to say that it’s not perfect. But, I would also be the first to say that we are constantly working at improving the student-athlete experience. Our teams have been very successful. We rate very highly within the NCAA. That doesn’t happen by accident. We have an excellent program, tremendous coaches and outstanding student-athletes who are highly motivated. And we are very proud of them.”

Sports 25

50

WAYS TO LOSE

YOUR NUMBERS: WHY CREDIT CARDS NEED TO GO

by Jake Krajewski | illustration by Alyssa Minko | design by Paula Piedrahita

Y

our credit card has been stolen. If you have multiple cards, they have all already been stolen. Due to the absolutely atrocious security surrounding one of the most popular forms of payment, it is exceedingly likely that if you’ve ever used your card to pay for anything, the number is already floating around on the internet.

The first types of credit cards gained popularity in the 1950s and have only become more pervasive over the years. However, since the introduction of the magnetic stripe in the 1980s, not much has changed in the way of credit card technology. The entire way we make electronic payments is in desperate need of an overhaul. Maybe there’s no such thing as perfect security, but what protects our information these days is far from it.

Magnetic stripe technology has been out of date for years. Card skimmers are easy to install and can swipe data from tens or hundreds of cards before anyone realizes they’re there. They offer no sort of encryption or advanced security; if you can swipe someone’s card, you have all the information 26 Views

you need to use their account. Starting in 1990, in an effort to shift the burden of blame for credit card theft from credit companies to merchants and store owners, Europe began implementing a new form of card security known as the chip-and-PIN system, which is much more secure and much more difficult to steal than a simple magnetic stripe card. However, this technology is only just now coming to the United States — over 20 years after the system began. It’s no wonder America reports one of the highest rates of credit card fraud in the world.

Of course, chip-and-PIN technology isn’t entirely foolproof, either. The chips generate a string of supposedly random numbers to be scanned, then require the cardholder to enter their PIN. However, these “random” numbers are sometimes produced by a simple counter or a timestamp. A skilled hacker can check the current number and guess what the next number will be. Worse yet, a stolen card can become subject to what’s known as a “man-in-the-middle” attack, in which a second chip is soldered onto the card to make it

accept any entered PIN. Both magnetic stripe and chip-and-PIN cards share a set of large vulnerabilities.

When your waiter walks over to the register with your check, or when you read your card number to a cashier over the phone, there is very little you can do to stop them from writing down your number for their own personal use. You can’t see them, so you can’t stop them. The only way to prevent this would be to strip all visible credit card information, such as the card number and expiration date, from the physical card itself.

If that happens, however, one would be unable to enter the necessary information for making a purchase with that card online.

Then the issue becomes how to make online payments despite not having that data on-hand. Several online merchants and companies are working on projects that would allow the user to enter their card information once into their database and then use their service to make online payments. Furthermore, some of these new programs would have an app for smartphones

WE NEED SOMETHING MORE SECURE THAN A FEW STATIC NUMBERS BET WEEN CRIMINALS AND OUR BANK ACCOUNTS

that would allow the user’s phone to be scanned like a credit card to make physical purchases at a store. PayPal and Google Wallet are two such programs that fall into this general category.

However, digitalizing everyone’s credit cards has risks of its own. While physical thieves would be hard-pressed to steal information from you when your card is a few bytes of data in Google’s databases, online thieves might have a better shot. Although credit card information is kept behind some of the toughest encryption and digital security, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to steal. Target was breached in 2013, and Walmart was hit just last year. Online security is improving, but hackers are always looking for new ways to get your information.

With so many ways for credit card information to be stolen, it’s a very fair assumption to say that almost every currently existing credit card number is currently somewhere on the internet. Which is to say, somewhere on the internet that it should not be. There are numerous websites that allow

scammers to buy and sell card numbers like commodities. They can be purchased in the tens or the hundreds.

Becoming a victim of credit card theft is comparable to winning a very bad raffle; your number was pulled out of a sea of millions. If someone becomes a victim of card theft, they usually find that their bank will quickly reimburse the stolen funds. Banks know that card theft is nearly impossible to avoid, so they don’t really argue when fraud is claimed. In fact, they’re constantly monitoring cards for any shady transactions in an attempt to prevent them before they get approved.

This just goes to show how prevalent fraud really is: it’s become so frequent that even the banks accept it as a normal part of having a credit card.

Millennials, including college students who may be fairly new to carrying a credit card, are especially vulnerable to having their cards stolen, whether it be physically or digitally. They may be unfamiliar with how to avoid fraud and fall for scams. They might also be more prone to forgetting their card

somewhere, like at a restaurant or bar. It’s imperative that new cardholders take the time to learn how to recognize potential fraud and avoid it. A good starting point is learning to check one’s accounts more than once a month when the monthly statement arrives.

Account security in general is in dire straits. It’s filled with cracks and holes that allow thieves to steal money from anyone they please. Fully digitalized cards may be the most secure for the time being, but even then, they aren’t entirely safe. There might be no entirely flawless system, but we need something more secure than a few static numbers between criminals and our bank accounts.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the students and do not reflect the views of Reporter Views 27

WOTS

photography by Cindy Roblero | design by Kevin Zampieron

James Spann Applied Mathematics First Year The ice skating rink near U of R. It’s called the Genesee Valley Ice Skating River. Oh, and the river is right next to it, which is nice.”

Nasir Abdullahi Mechanical Engineering Third Year “The anime store near Park Point on West Jefferson Street.

The first time I went to an anime store with someone I geeked out because they had everything I liked.”

28 Views

Jessica Renn Biomedical Science Third Year “The lighthouse downtown.

It’s different from RIT.”

Rozie Yeghiazarian

Rich Dethomasis

Industrial & Systems Engineering Civil Engineering Third Year Third Year “The Hungerford Building. It “Park Avenue. I just turned used to be a factory, but it is 21 two weeks ago.” now converted to small studios.

Every First Friday they have galleries where they show art.

I like it because they have so much variety.”

Hye Joon Kim

Jesus Esquivel

Pheng Lee

Paige Beach

Chemical Engineering First Year

Computer Science Third Year

Biology First Year

Photojournalism Fourth Year

“I don’t really have a favorite place. I’m an international student.”

Samyukth Valluru Metal & Jewelry Design First Year “This place is really boring.

If it wasn’t for RIT I would be bored. It’s the only place I know. I don’t really have anything here.”

“I would say the abandoned subway. I’ve never been down there. So I guess it’s weird to say it’s my favorite place. But I like all the pictures I’ve seen of it.”

Zack Sayers Computing Security First Year “Tilt. It’s a night club.”

“I would have to say the Taichi Bubble Tea. It’s like five minutes from here.”

Cody Schuster Graphic Design Fourth Year “I would say Boulder Coffee.

They have really good coffee.

I go there every Sunday.”

“Probably Highland Park.”

Beau Riley Civil Engineering Third Year “Probably the grass field where we play our games.

I play lacrosse.”

The opinions expressed are solely those of the students and do not reflect the views of Reporter

Views 29

1:19 p.m. Thursday, March 27

RINGS 585.672.4840 compiled by Jake Krajewski illustration by Madeleigh Place design by Emma Fleming

The guy in my class on Tinder occasionally swiping right while also aggressively taking notes on the subject matter is a testament to the fact that life is about balance. [Text]

7:45 p.m. Saturday, March 12 I think I’ve watched enough anime to know how to fight by now. [Text]

9:44 p.m. Monday, March 14 I have to sing to release my inner demons. [Text]

5:27 p.m. Saturday, March 26 I can’t afford healthcare but I can afford these leeches. [Text]

11:38 p.m. Friday, April 8 When you accidentally send a typo to rings and know you ruined your chance at fame and success. [Text]

The opinions expressed are solely those of the students and do not reflect the views of Reporter

30 Views

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