PARKING Arguments for more parking in light of bus system issues are self-undermining
see opinions, page 6
‘tell them we are rising’ Film documents rich history and culture of HBCUs
see InSIDE BEAT, page 8
baseball Rutgers loses 2 of 3 in weekend tournament down South SEE Sports, back
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Anti-bullying legislation supports family after student death Ryan Stiesi Associate News Editor
The family of Lennon Baldwin, a student from Morristown High School who died by suicide in 2012, will receive $625,000 from the school district in light of anti-bullying legislation. GOOGLE MAPS
Morris School District will pay $625,000 to the family of Lennon Baldwin, a 15-year-old who died by suicide in 2012 after being bullied at Morristown High School. Attorneys for the family announced the settlement with the school district on Friday, according to the Associated Press (AP). The basis for the lawsuit relied on anti-bullying legislation passed in the state after Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers first-year student, died by suicide in 2010, according to the AP. His death happened after his roommate used a webcam to spy on Clementi during a romantic encounter he had with another man. “If one school, one Board of Education or one educator recognizes that the problems of violence and bullying are real, and that rules and regulations regarding these acts must be more than just words on a page, and
that definitive action to protect a student must be taken quickly — then we, and Lennon, will have made a dif ference,” according to a statement from the family. Baldwin died by suicide after three students at Morristown High School robbed and terrorized him, according to prosecutors. A few weeks before his death Baldwin had been assaulted by a student at school. The student then pressured Baldwin to tell school officials it was a prank, but the student was still suspended. A student, then 19-year-old Michael Conway, and the other juvenile student confronted Baldwin in a parking lot three days later and robbed him of cash, allegedly in retaliation for the first student’s suspension, prosecutors said. The three teens were charged with offenses including robbery and making terroristic threats, and Conway plead guilty to lying to authorities, according to AP. The lawsuit filed in 2014 alleged that the school was negligent and
failed to follow its own anti-bullying policies, said attorneys Frederick Gerson and Jeffrey Youngman. In 2010 the New Jersey Assembly and Senate passed the “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights,” the legislation that made the Baldwin family’s lawsuit possible. The legislation requires things like training for public school employees on how to spot bullying, a mandate that all districts form school safety teams and making school superintendents report bullying incidents to the state Board of Education, according to NJ Advance Media. It also states that administrators who fail to investigate repor ts are subject to being disciplined and students who bully are subject to being suspended or expelled. “The bill, in the works for almost a year (at the time), gained publicity and momentum after the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi,” according to NJ Advance Media.
Rutgers engineers print 4D gel with futuristic qualities Christopher Robertson Contributing Writer
Engineers at Rutgers University have discovered a way to 4D print a smart gel that could potentially prove invaluable to the future of science and medicine. Led by Howon Lee, an assistant professor at Rutgers’ School of Engineering, the manufactured material — or hydrogel — is highly reactive to heat and its shape and size is dependent on the surrounding temperature. The gel is initially 3D, but because it possesses the ability to change in shape and size, it is classified as 4D. The process in which a chess piece made of the hydrogel material responds to the change in temperature can be seen in a video on the Rutgers Today site. As the temperature around the object increases beyond 32 degrees Celsius, the hydrogel shrinks, according to Rutgers Today. Conversely, as the temperature decreases, the chess piece grows in size. This reaction is due in part to the hydrogel material releasing and absorbing water vapor in response to temperature. “The highlight of this project is that we are able to quickly print temperature-sensitive hydrogel of 3D complex shape in micron scale,” said Zhaocheng Lu, a doctoral student at Rutgers in the School of Graduate Studies who is also working on the experiment.
It has high fabrication speed, because the whole layer feature can be printed with one projection of a digital mask, Lu said. And because of the material’s water-absorbent and temperature-sensitive nature, its potential to function within the human body is ver y plausible. “Possible applications include soft robotic microdevices, targeted drug delivery and tissue scaffolds mimicking active bodily functions — all of which are exciting to us,” Lee said about potential uses in the future, according to Tech Briefs. It could also create a new area of “soft robotics” and enable new applications in flexible sensors and actuators, biomedical devices and platforms or scaffolds for cells to grow, Lee said. Though an accomplishment, Lee said further development is still needed for it to become applicable in modern science. He explained that with full control of size and shape, people could create motion, program different functions or even make it work similarly to a robot. “To better use this temperature-responsive shape-changing properties we should measure the mechanical properties of this printed hydrogel and dynamic theories can be applied on it,” Lu said. The idea for the 4D printing method arose from curiosity about what 3D printing would look like with an added dimension. Lee said he was working on micron-scale 3D printing with
Rutgers scientists have developed a process that prints 4D gel, which molds its shape and size based on heat exposure. The Rutgers Today website features a video where chess pieces made of the hydrogel respond to changes in temperatures of more than 32 degrees Celsius. RUTGERS.EDU different kinds of photo-curable polymers. He decided he wanted to add another dimension, and chose a temperature-sensitive and photo-curable hydrogel. “We were already working with 3D printing and wanted to find a way to add another dimension to it in order to give it different properties,” Lee said. “This project definitely has the potential to be used in the future for science, especially for administering drugs and medicine within the human body.”
The material is commonly found within everyday products such as Jell-O, contact lenses and diapers, according to Tech Briefs. The machine uses a broad-spectrum light source to cure photopolymers by projecting 2D images using a Digital Micromirror Device known as microstereolithography, according to Dreams (Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems). The process is a “lithography-based additive manufacturing technique
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that is fast, inexpensive and flexible in material selection,” according to the team’s report on the project. “I got my master degree under Professor Lee’s advisement and both he and Professor Daehoon Han (a graduate student in the School of Engineering and co-author on the smart gel project) helped with my research,” Lu said about his role. “This is the first project in our group, and I’m really proud of what we have accomplished.”