Late-night saboteurs CIE candidate speaks
page 2 The Signal December 5, 2012
Pop mirror off car, signs stolen
By Jamie Primeau Editor-in-Chief
A male student appeared heavily intoxicated when Campus Police arrived in his dorm room at 1:25 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 29 in Wolfe Hall. According to reports, he consumed large amounts of vodka at an offcampus location. An odor of alcohol emanated from his breath. Lions’ EMS arrived and assumed patient care. He was transported to Capital Health Systems at Hopewell for further treatment. He was issued a summons for underage drinking. ... A student reported a theft from Phelps Hall on Friday, Nov. 30 at 3:30 p.m. after realizing an unknown person entered her room sometime after Monday, Nov. 17 and removed $231.08. Nothing further has been reported. ... Police received a report of criminal mischief at 1:55 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 2 after a Pennington Road resident heard a group walk up his driveway. A voice yelled, “Do
it!” and the man saw a male “pop the mirror off” of a car, reports said. When police arrived, they noticed damage to the vehicle’s driver’s side mirror. Males matching the description provided by the resident were found, but the resident could not confidently identify anyone. Nothing further has been reported. ...
Signs belonging to the Center for the Arts, which were located outside of the Music Building, were reported stolen, according to police. A woman reported the theft at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 2. The two 12-by-18-inch white and blue signs had been located in the outside area adjacent to the building. These signs were unsecured and had gone missing sometime after 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 30. Two other signs, secured to the music building with a bike chain, were defaced. The laminated front portion of the signs, which read “Center for the Arts The Nutcracker” were ripped off their plastic frame. Nothing further has been reported.
By Brianna O’Connor Correspondent
The second candidate for Assistant Provost for the Center of Institutional Effectiveness addressed the campus on Monday, Dec. 3 in an open forum held in the Library Auditorium. Ann Marie Senior spoke to the campus community in a presentation called “Monitoring Institutional Effectiveness: Reflection on the Performance Standards Project.” “This project was one that was near and dear to us because it got the college excited about assessment,” Senior said. “It was a simple project that had a big impact.” According to their website, the CIE has a two-fold mission to provide data through assessment and analysis to inform resource allocation, and to promote a culture of assessment and continuous improvement at the College. The project was conducted at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, where Senior currently serves as the director of the Office of Institutional Research and Quality Assurance. Senior previously worked at both Rider University and the University of Michigan. The “Performance Standards” project’s goal was to see if Thomas Edison State
College, which serves adult students over the age of 21, was adequately serving students in an efficient and timely manner. “Assessment has benefits that people don’t realize, and until you point that out, it seems more punitive,” Senior said. “Assessment is not meant to be specific to a person or program. It is meant to demonstrate how well our college is graduating students.” Senior noted that assessment is an integral part of ensuring that an institution’s services and products adequately meet certain standards, or “benchmarks of success,” in terms of student needs. Assessment also functions to indicate where changes can be made in order to improve student services and products. “We didn’t just stop and say ‘this is broken.’ We said ‘this is broken and this is how we are going to fix it,’” she said. When asked about faculty resistance to assessment, Senior was positive about the effects and outcomes of self-directed measurements of achievement. “Assessment is a team effort. We were communicating with each other to ensure we were doing what needed to be done,” Senior said. “And overall we do all of this not just to improve our workflow, but to improve our services to our students.”
NYU professor speaks about identity politics By Leah Depalo Correspondent
A New York University professor visited the College this past Thursday, Nov. 29 and spoke to students about white identity politics and its effect on the presidential voting process in America. In the lecture entitled “White Identity Politics in the Obama Era,” Eric Knowles, an assistant professor of psychology at NYU, spoke to students about his study of white identity politics and how white group identity has created an era of post-racialism in America. “Identity politics is the formation of political beliefs based off in-group alliances intended to further the interest of that group,” Knowles said. As explained in his lecture, identity politics has the power to shape the decision-making process of voters when voting for political candidates. In order for Knowles to theorize his notion of white identity politics, he first had to conduct a study to prove if people associated themselves with “white identity,”
since very little research was previously conducted on the matter. Knowles then went on to explain his notion of the “White Identity Blind Spot,” which explains how, in the field of social psychology, the study of white identity is drastically understudied when compared to the study of African American or Asian American identity. “The white race is hegemonic, meaning that they represent the norm or default in society numerically, politically and are considered to be socially dominant,” Knowles said. “Due to the fact that the white race is hegemonic, membership of ‘white identity’ is usually transparent,” and is challenging to study. In order to collect valid data, Knowles conducted his research by both explicit and implicit means. Explicitly, Knowles used an identity questionnaire. Implicitly, he used a “White Identity Centrality Implicit Association Test,” which unconsciously measures white identity characteristics of the subject being tested. “The implicit test measures an automatic association between themselves and being white,” Knowles said. When asked by Professor Hughes of the psychology
department if he preferred the explicit or implicit measure, Knowles said, “Though both tests are valid, I prefer the implicit measure because interpretation of subject answers is not necessary.” Results of Knowles tests were quite conclusive in supporting that white identity does exist, and that this identity does influence voting opinion. According to Knowles’s study, Americans with high white identity tend to vote for Obama in order to justify a post-racialist America. By voting for Obama and creating a post-racialist era in America, those with high white identity seek to justify that racism in America is no longer an issue. After the lecture, senior psychology major Sara DiGiacomantonio, reflected on Knowles’s findings. “Currently I am enrolled in a developmental seminar about racism and prejudice views in young children, and the same results of our implicit and explicit findings reflect Knowles results,” DiGiacomantonio said. “It is really interesting to see how beliefs and children can carry through to adult beliefs and affect the psychology of social politics.”
Application of analytical chemistry Dr Pepper / Student By Sara Torres Correspondent
The College’s chemistry department held a presentation on crystal engineering as a part of its fall seminar series on Wednesday, Nov. 28. The seminar, “A Material Chemist’s View of Crystal Deposition Disease,” was presented by Jennifer A. Swift, a chemistry professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The seminar, attended by both students and staff, focused on an application of analytical chemistry, an area of science concerned with qualitative and quantitative examination of the chemical components of matter. The presentation traced ways in which analytical chemistry could be used to research the formation of kidney stones and gout. It was also shown how examining molecular crystals can be applied in cases of crystal deposition disease. This disease causes pain, swelling and sometimes redness in joints. Methods discussed throughout the presentation included optical microscopy, X-ray crystallography and in situ atomic force microscopy. Swift said that her objective for
the seminar was to present different applications of techniques in analytical chemistry using methods that students have some familiarity with, as well as introducing new methods. A PowerPoint presentation covered topics such as uric acid precipitation, chemical force microscopy, adhesion trends and crystal growth mechanisms. Swift discussed the technology of atomic force microscopy, which can give a topographical map of crystal molecules. “We can watch in real time shots of what happens to that surface as its growing,” Swift said. Kartik Rai, junior chemistry major, said he thought it was interesting how Swift showed how analytical chemistry can be applied to the research of disease. “She was able to present a lot of information, and her research was pretty impressive and interesting,” Rai said. Swift’s research has real-world applications that span the spectrum from kidney stones to explosives. The professor taught courses in organic chemistry and food chemistry at Georgetown this semester. Her work with molecular crystals has applications to the medical,
wins big scholarship continued from page 1
Lianna Lazur / Staff Photographer
Jennifer Swift lectures on Crystal Deposition Disease.
pharmaceutical and food-product industries. One course she taught focuses on examining the explosive components in rockets. Her students are exposed to areas of chemistry and material science including X-ray crystallography physical characterization methods, atomic force microscopy, organic synthesis and computational modeling.
and his friends set up a mock competition in their dorm room to help him practice. They cut a two-foot diameter hole in a piece of cardboard, which was hung from the ceiling. With only three balls available for practice, his friends stood behind the cardboard, catching the balls and returning them to Radfar while timing him. “We pretty much mimicked what we saw on TV,” Radfar explained. Although Radfar admitted he does not drink soda often, Dr Pepper is the one soda he likes, now probably more than ever. “Who knew drinking a soda would get you $100,000?” Radfar said. Out of 5,500 videos received, 20 were selected and then narrowed down to five semi-finalists. Out of the five contestants there from the preliminary round, he tied for first place.
Radfar lost the tiebreaker, but won when it mattered. “I was on cloud 9. I jumped up, I yelled, I screamed,” Radfar recalled when he realized he won the toss. “I was probably the happiest kid in that stadium of 70,000 people.” It was also a relief for him that his parents would not have to pay his whole tuition. Radfar said he could not use his phone because he kept receiving text messages and phone calls of friends and family congratulating him. His Facebook page has been swarmed with posts and he even got over 400 “likes” on the photo of him holding his big Dr Pepper check. This scholarship helped Radfar’s dreams become a reality. “When I submitted this video, I didn’t think I was going to get it, and I got it. Now I have college paid, and if I get into medical school, I know I can become a doctor and change the world.”