Serving James Madison University Since 1922 breezejmu.org
Vol. 87, No. 54 Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Thunderstorms n 80°/ 64° chance of precipitation: 40%
off-campus housing
Clean Beech
April showers bring ... a spring photo collage, page 11
New carpets installed after Copper Beech flooding By Georgina Buckley The Breeze
The residents of two Copper Beech houses on the 2300 block of Bayberry Lane now have dry, newly carpeted and cleaned homes after both basements were flooded by sewage scented water on April 17. “They completely ripped it up Wednesday afternoon and it was replaced by Thursday,” junior Megan McCusker said. “They steamcleaned all of the carpets that we requested to be steam cleaned.” In addition to cleaning the carpet in her room, McCusker, an interdisciplinary liberal studies major, said they requested the living room carpet be cleaned as well, because of water that was tracked upstairs. McCusker and her roommate, sophomore Sarah Rourke, a political science and history double major, said they were relieved their basement level rooms no longer smelled of sewage water. “I slept there Friday night and it was the first night since last Sunday I’ve been able to sleep there,” Rourke said. “Our house smelled 10 times better once they removed the carpet from downstairs.” Rourke said she had previously been upset by the handling of her personal belongings after finding her hard drive in the sink and had complained to Copper Beech management. She said this prompted Copper Beech to ask for permission before moving her belongings this time. “They were careful and put everything back as it should be and we were very grateful for that,” McCusker said. Their neighbors, seniors Stephanie Monioudis, a business management major, and Jennifer Korman, an interdisciplinary liberal studies major, said they are looking forward to everything returning to normal but are still upset by Copper Beech management’s delayed response. “I’m definitely angry it took so long to get the response that was obviously nec-
Nate carden / the breeze
Carrier library
East Campus library
see Beech, page 5
caa
Four teams leave championship empty handed The JMU men’s and women’s tennis teams ended their seasons in loss at the CAA tennis championships, held at the Folkes-Stevens Tennis Center at Old Dominion University. The women lost in the quarterfinals to Virginia Commonwealth University 4-0 after beating Hofstra University 4-0 in the first round. The College of William & Mary emerged the champion. The JMU men’s tennis team finished their season with a record of 12-8 and lost to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington 4-1 in the quarterfinals. UNCW won the competition by beating VCU in the finals. The CAA championship for golf took place at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. JMU men’s golf came in fourth place, while UNCW won the competition. Sophomore Ryan Vince was the top finisher for the Dukes, coming in seventh place. Women’s golf also finished fourth, and UNCW won the competition. Junior Nicole Sakamoto came in second in the competition; freshman Ginger Mak came in third. — staff report
4/26 Inside
3
news Building bikes and relationships
Engineering class spends two semesters making a custom bike for a high schooler with cerebral palsy.
7 President’s birth certificate opinion The debate continues
dispute remains unresolved.
9 Tour for Life brings homeless life Must love dogs
animals to Harrisonburg in hopes of finding them homes.
13 JMU football still hasn’t chosen sports Quarterback issue
the centerpiece of their offense at the close of spring drills.
library rivalry By Kelsey Peters The Breeze
The infamous rivalry between the Carrier and East Campus libraries’ fans now fuels alternative transportation on Friday and Saturday nights. For $10, SafeRides is selling Team Carrier and Team ECL shirts instead of SafeRides logoed T-shirts for their annual T-shirt fundraiser. To help prevent drunk driving, SafeRides spends more than $900 to operate its four rental cars every weekend. Amy Pagano, the fundraising director of Safe Rides, hopes to run a fifth car with the money raised. So far, according to Pagano, SafeRides has made more than $400 on the Commons and Festival last week — and orders are still
coming in. The current money could fund a new car for one night. Because the university does not fund the organization, it depends on fundraisers like this one, as well as dues and donations. A couple of weeks ago, former student body president Andrew Reese contacted Pagano, a senior hospitality and tourism management major, with the idea of the competing T-shirts. Pagano handed the idea over to SafeRides members, junior Lindsey Leemis and senior Molly Rossberg, both media arts and design majors, who came up with the current designs. The Carrier shirt is gold with the words “Team Carrier: Studying harder in the stacks since 1939.” The purple ECL shirt reads “Team ECL: Raving harder than Carrier since 2009”
Jena Thielges / the breeze
drives fundraiser
across the chest. “I think it’s really funny, because students really do have this competition,” said senior Katie Jenkins, an English major. Pagano said even making the Facebook event “ECL or Carrier? What team are you on?” stirred up a competition. More than 990 are “attending” the event, and more than 100 people have posted the name of their favorite library on the event’s wall. “When people come up to buy the shirts, they will see other people they don’t even know, and say ‘I can’t believe you go to that library,’ ” Pagano said. Carrier is currently ahead, Pagano said. see Library, page 10
Environment
Second year of JMU Challenge produces eco-friendly plans By Megan Martin contributing writer
Sophomore Devin Patel, a finance major, wants to create an incentivebased recycling program for the community. Pitching this idea, Patel and his team, U-Recycle, beat 15 other teams in this year’s JMU Challenge. For the second year in a row, JMU Challenge called for students to present their ideas to create a “greener” campus. Each team created a video pitch that identifies a problem on campus and offers a solution to improve JMU’s eco-friendliness. Out of 15 applicants, U-Recycle and team Reusable Water Bottle, made it to the final round of the competition to face a panel of judges, including Anthony Smith, business and economics professor at Eastern Mennonite University; Stephen Plastino, a JMU graduate from the College of Business; and Megan Bauer, sustainability coordinator for JMU’s Office of Facilities Management. The two teams were selected based on four terms: the project’s potential impact, innovation, feasibility of implementing it, and group collaboration. Each team pitched their programs in an eight-minute
presentation, submitted as a video on April 1. U-Recycle aimed to develop an incentive-based recycling program for the American Campus apartments surrounding JMU. By partnering with Recyclebank, a company that offers rewards for recycling certain materials, Patel hopes to increase recycling rates 15-20 percent.
“We like to see students participate in creating projects that better sustainability on campus, so it’s great to see ideas like this, especially ones that are feasible.” Megan Bauer
sustainability coordinator
Reusable Water Bottles developed a plan to change JMU’s yearly reusable mugs into reusable water bottles instead. The team said the reusable water bottles would eliminate the need for plastic bottles, therefore decreasing waste on campus.
Last year’s winners, Matt Corbet, Matt Jeanes, Chris Nutbrown and Neil McNulty, developed a hand dryer called Xlerator that saves electricity, which was installed in bathrooms around campus shortly after. While the dryer saves energy, it also increases noise pollution. Students are still tweaking their dryer to limit this. Carol Hamilton, who works at the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business, said the competition helps students collaborate and network. Bauer said students have offered Facilities Management ideas to help make the campus more green. “Our office helps get ideas actually on the ground at JMU and facilitates these ideas into fruition,” Bauer said. “We like to see students participate in creating projects that better sustainability on campus, so it’s great to see ideas like this, especially ones that are feasible.” Patel said his involvement with a variety of organizations inspired him to apply for the challenge. “There was no real assignment that got me started on this program,” Patel said. “I got involved in NetImpact my freshman year and other entrepreneur organizations on campus. I saw there was a problem with recycling
in the area and I came up with a plan to fix it.” Patel presented his program in the annual conference at the Ross School of Business at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in March 2011. He also submitted the plan into the Wal-Mart sustainable business plan competition in February and pitched his idea at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania in March. After most recently presenting his program at the Dell Social Innovation Competition, Patel was referred and accepted to the StartingBloc Institute, which will host the competition from May 26-30. “Hopefully this program will get me more advice and feedback,” Patel said. “It worked out really well because one of the sponsors of the program is Recyclebank, so I’m hoping to make contact with some upper members of the company.” Pa t e l s a i d h e h a s n ’ t s p o ken to apartment complexes yet about implementing the idea because he wants to finalize the budget and business plan first. Contact Megan Martin at marti2mm@dukes.jmu.edu.