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Vol. 88, No. 40 Thursday, March 1, 2012
Contentions, errors in club budgets
Poultry power
SGA debates over funding for organizations By Georgina Buckley The Breeze
laura wilkins / the breeze
Panel discusses poultry-themed energy as option to clean up Chesapeake Bay By Sean Byrne The Breeze
An energy activist organization thinks it may have a solution to the energy consumption problem – one that lies in poultry waste. 25x’25 Alliance’s goal is to support 25 percent of the United State’s energy spending with renewable resources by the year 2025. The organization, which has a branch at JMU, held a panel on Tuesday and discussed its plans for renewable energy. Brent Bailey, a state facilitator for 25x’25 was the keynote speaker. The panel consisted of five professionals associated with the topic at hand and five professionals from the poultry industry with Craig Honeycutt moderating. Poultry litter is made up of the waste from poultry birds, mainly chickens and turkeys. “When we utilize natural resources, think sustainably, move past non-renewable resources and grab what we have in front of us, we can come up with better solutions,” Bailey said. The basic idea revolves around burning the excess poultry litter not used as fertilizer. Currently farmers spread all the poultry litter across their fields and the litter ends up as run-off and dips into the watershed, causing phosphorous and nitrogen spikes. These spikes have led to an increase of toxins in fish that’s potentially harmful to both humans and marine life in the Chesapeake Bay. John Logan, a poulterer from Eagle Green Energy Inc., found that his own production had environmental issues and wanted to find a way to resolve them. “I began to seek out a methodology and means to solve the problem,” Logan said. “It became obvious that this poultry manure could become a very successful anaerobic digestive project.”
ryan freeland / the breeze
A panel of poultry farm and green energy representatives share plans for renewable energy solutions in Virginia on Tuesday.
Lauren Ingram, an employee of poultry litter energy company Fibrowatt, has proposed a poultry litter plant here in Virginia. The plant will produce 55 megawatts of power and have the potential to burn approximately 50 percent of poultry litter and other woody bio-grass for energy. “In our proposal, we have identified how the plant actually reduces nitrogen and phosphorous dumping to the bay,” Ingram said. “We came up with 2.3 million pounds of nitrogen reduction.” Fibrowatt plants meet the highest Environmental Protection Agency standards, according to Ingram. “Our plant takes the litter that produces the chemicals and does something else with it,” Ingram said. “In our process the nitrogen is released into the air as di-nitrogen and the phosphorus is contained in the ash which can be used for other projects.” Scott Laskowski from Bio-Burner, Inc., see Poultry, page A4
SGA’s budget approval of some of the most active organizations on campus didn’t go as smoothly as planned on Tuesday. A conflict arose when some SGA members went beyond the call to approve EARTH club’s front-end budget and instead voiced their dissatisfaction with its position as an FEB club. FEB organizations are clubs that receive consistent yearly funding from SGA. Non-FEB clubs can only receive SGA funding from the contingency fund, and applications for funding are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Susanna Chacko, speaker for the Senate, had to remind the senators this was the incorrect time to debate EARTH club’s position. “It doesn’t make them lose their FEB status if you vote against their budget,” Chacko said. She added that SGA can vote on the club’s FEB status in the fall. Every two years, SGA votes on whether FEB organizations can maintain this status. After the meeting, Rheanna Martino, senior class president, said she couldn’t speak for SGA as a whole but personally feels EARTH club hasn’t reached its potential with the money it’s allocated. “The reason you’re granted FEB status is because you make a large impact on the campus,” Martino said. “Ever since their initial funding, I don’t think they’ve done anything that has been monumental or far reaching on the campus.” UPB’s budget also came under heavy fire. This year, a miscalculation on UPB’s behalf meant that its budget was cut by roughly eight percent instead of the three percent that SGA requested all FEB clubs to cut from their budgets. Jordan Descovich, SGA finance committee chair, said no one
laura wilkins / the breeze
caught the mistake when UPB’s budget was submitted, and by the time it had been noticed, it was too late to edit. This three percent cut was required because SGA wanted see SGA, page A4
paul jones / the breeze
The SGA finance comittee members Aaron Brown (right) and Priyen Patel (left) motioned an increase in UPB’s budget at the meeting on Tuesday.
Psych through art
Filmmaker creates documentary on late grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, psychologist By Laura Weeks The Breeze
corey crowe / contributing photographer
Alex Vesley traveled the world for three years collecting interviews from friends and family of his late grandfather for his documentary, “Viktor & I.”
For Austrian filmmaker Alex Vesely, what began as a small archive project of his late grandfather Viktor Frankl turned into a documentary of transforming human tragedy into triumph. While many students attending Monday’s screening of “Viktor & I” credit Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, for establishing “logotherapy” — a psychotherapeutic school defined as healing through meaning — the film isn’t centered around his experiments or his tragedies at Auschwitz. “It’s a very personal film … about the man who came up with this concept, Vesely said. “It’s Viktor seen through the eyes of the people who knew him best.”
Vesely traveled the world for three years interviewing his grandfather’s friends, family, colleagues and former students. The interviewees’ anecdotes of Frankl’s life and work illustrate the impression Frankl made on their lives. Frankl, who lost his entire family over three years in various concentration camps, authored 39 books over his lifetime. In 1991, The New York Times cited “Man’s Search for Meaning” as one of the “10 most influential books in America.” According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, Frankl’s work is “perhaps the most significant thinking since Freud and Adler.” He received 29 honorary doctorates from universities worldwide. The film incorporates home videos of Frankl with his children, grandchildren and wife.
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There were also photographs of Frankl rock climbing, a therapeutic activity that Vesely said his grandfather pursued until age 80. Among the interviews are clips of Frankl speaking at Holocaust commemoration events and lecturing on logotherapy. JMU psychology professor William Evans invited Vesely and Mary Cimiluca, CEO of Noetic Films to JMU when he heard about the completion of the film. Evans reads Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” at least once every year, because it “gave me a sense of hope that life is worth living.” Sharon Lockaby, a secondyear graduate student in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program, appreciated the hands-on documentary about
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Softball loses Tuesday’s doubleheader to Radford University.
“famous people’s lives, people who’ve really changed the psychology world.” Frankl’s life maxim of overcoming tragedy by searching for meaning in life was one of the film’s messages. The film reminded John Clarke, a second-year graduate student in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program, of the importance as a therapist to live out what you teach. “Once we’ve found meaning, so many things like anxiety and depression might be underlying a lack of meaning,” Clarke said. “Viktor & I” had its first screening last week at the University of Mississippi, as part of a college tour around the United States and
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see film, page B4
life ‘Beer heaven’
An inside look at Capital Ale House’s premiere selection of brews.