3-2-18

The Pitt News

The independent student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | March 2, 2018 | Volume 108 | Issue 123

Day of Giving raises more than $9 mil Cassidy Power and Samuel Ruppert For The Pitt News

Pitt’s second annual Day of Giving proved it’s the gift that keeps on giving — raising $9,029,828 in the span of 24 hours, nearly twice as much as last year. The 3,358 donations poured in from six continents and all fifty states.

Individual alumni and students alike pitch in on the Day of Giving to help support different schools, programs and student organizations within the University community.

Participating groups are separated into three categories — School Participation, Pitt ProJessica Benham, Director of Public Policy at Pittsburgh Center for Autistic Advocacy, holds an LED candle during grams and Experiences and Student Organizathe reading of victims’ names at Thursday night’s Disability Day of Mourning. Thomas Yang VISUAL EDITOR tions. Bonus cash prizes are awarded to those in each challenge who received the greatest number of donations.

The first annual Pitt Day of Giving was held Feb. 28, 2017, in honor of the University’s 230th birthday. It raised $5,772,518.

According to University spokesperson Kevin Zwick, Pitt raised $1.66 million for Hannah Schneider “The reason why a lot of people didn’t “help” them. Mauro, an autistic activist scholarship funds last year through the Day of Staff Writer and student studying clinical psychol- think this was abhorrent in the long term Giving. Individual groups, such as the School Andrea Mauro was physically re- ogy at CCAC, is a survivor of early in- was that I started acting ‘normal,’” they of Pharmacy, chose to put donations towards strained, force-fed horseradish and tervention and Applied Behavior Analy- said. “It paid off.” scholarships as well.

Mauro was one of several speakers shocked with play buzzers as a child sis — a scientific discipline that employs The Pitt Fund was the second most-donatpresent at the Pittsburgh Center for Autechniques meant to change a person’s when they had tantrums or failed speech ed to the program this year, earning an additistic Advocacy and Pitt’s Students for socially significant behavior.

Far from therapy exercises. tional $20,000 in prize money. The Pitt Fund being helpful, Mauro said the experience All of this was done to them by the See Mourning on page 5 See Giving on page 3 people their parents had sought out to was “traumatic.”

DISABLED ACTIVISTS TAKE PART IN NATIONWIDE DAY OF MOURNING

News

HILLMAN GOES PRO WITH NEW EQUIPMENT COLLECTION

Noah Manalo and Zane Crowell

The Pitt News Staff Students are used to checking out books on reserve at Hillman Library — now they can do the same with a vlogging kit.

The University Library System launched the Hillman Equipment Collection Monday. The Collection, which consists of an assortment of audio and visual equipment, is available for use by any Pitt student, staff or faculty member with a Pitt ID. Items in the collection include five podcasting kits, five portable projectors, a Zoom Audio Recording Kit, two Hero5 GoPros with optional selfie sticks, five vlogging kits and two Logitech Conference Call Stations, among other pieces.

The collection follows the same checkout procedure as items in reserve collections. All equipment is first come, first served and has a three-day loan period with no renewals.

Abigail Jacobsen, a library senior specialist and the equipment room coordinator, and Jessica Stewart, a library specialist, said several students have already been borrowing the new equipment.

Jacobsen said the library staff was inspired to acquire this new equipment collection when they started lending out production equipment from a separate reserve section specifically for students taking certain classes in the English Department and Film Studies program in 2015. Other students began stopping by asking if they could borrow the equipment as well, but they were not allowed access to this reserve collection.

“A couple of our colleagues started

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Students can now check out vlogging equipment at Hillman library.

Noah Manalo STAFF WRITER working with faculty and they’re like ‘I wish we had these audio recorders, these things that would really help with our classwork,’” she said. “Word of mouth and strategic auditing brought forth this collection that we have now.”

Jacobsen and Stewart said Kornelia Tancheva, the Hillman University Librarian and Director, was instrumental in supporting this vision and noticed that students needed greater access to different types of equipment.

“One of the things that she keeps hammering home is that the library she sees as like a site of creation, and for people to be able to create content and not just to come here and read a book or to look at something,” Stewart said.

Jacobsen said the library system purchased all of the new equipment that can be found in the collection but declined to say the exact cost. Funds are allocated by the library to the purchasing as well as maintenance of the equipment.

March 2, 2018

Randall Halle, the Director of the Film and Media Studies Program and a professor of German Film and Cultural Studies, said the University has had plans to update library technologies for some time.

“The Library and the Center for Teaching and Learning have really been at the forefront of really thinking about how to bring new technology to students in the classroom,” Halle said. “What you’re experiencing here at the library is exactly that. It’s the outgrowth of recognizing that we want to have teaching of impact here.”

Nathaniel Palmer, an undeclared first year who works in the Equipment collection at Hillman, said he thinks the new items will be popular with students and give them greater ability to express themselves creatively.

“You might not have the resources to do something like that, but you go to a University, so I feel like the University should be providing that kind of stuff to people,” he said.

Jacobsen said while the business has thus far been slow, she is confident that more students will be stopping by after spring break.

Jon Engel, a sophomore studying computer science who is involved with Pitt’s WPTS Radio Station, said he thinks this collection will be useful to students and possibly lead people to delve deeper into these interests, such as podcasting and other audio-visual experiences.

“I think in that way, it would help people who are already interested in that pursue that in a not super involved way like we do, and it will also help engender an interest in that kind of stuff,” he said.

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Giving, pg. 1 provides scholarships to students who, for financial reasons, would otherwise be unable to attend college.

Tuition at Pitt has increased by almost $2,000 since the 2013-2014 academic year.

While the different schools of the University of Pittsburgh had donation numbers based on single-name donations, the programs and student organizations had numbers that were based solely on the number of gifts received.

The School of Pharmacy took first place in the School Participation Category for the second year in a row, acquiring the most single-name donations and taking the $30,000 prize. The Human Engineering Research Laboratories — which received 176 donations — narrowly beat out the Pitt Fund — which received 157 donations — to take the $30,000 prize in the Pitt Programs and Experiences Category. The Men’s Glee Club, which accumulated a record 1,053 donations, beat out Pitt Club Tennis by 630 donations to claim the first-place prize of $10,000 for the Student Organizations Category.

Groups used many different methods to reach out to other donors. The Men’s Glee

Club stressed on its Facebook page that people should donate multiple times in small increments to try and increase its total number of donations.

Rishi Gupta, a senior at Pitt and the President of the Men’s Glee Club said the group was persistent in contacting alumni donors.

“We tried to be more organized this year.

We reached out to a list of alumni about a week or two before and then followed up again on the day,” Gupta said.

Young alumni donated from to various groups from locations all over the world this year, but some donations came from close to home, with 808 donations coming from University faculty and staff. These donations accounted for almost 40 percent of the total number received.

Other groups, such as the School of Pharmacy, also took to social media to recruit alumni donors. Meghan Osborne, the Alumni Coordinator at the School of Pharmacy, said the group utilized Facebook to spread their message and gain support.

“Our two most popular Facebook posts from yesterday were both video clips from a gala earlier in the year,” Osborne said. “One was of our students singing the alma mater, which I think definitely pulled on the

heartstrings. The other was a very emotional speech given by an alumnus about how special the School of Pharmacy is and how this place has really made his dreams come true.”

According to Gupta, the prize money the Men’s Glee Club received can drastically reduce the cost of participation for its members.

The club plans to use their prize money to fund their upcoming domestic and international world tours.

“What this money will goes towards will be every year we go on a tour. Any fundraising we do subsidizes the amount members have to pay in order to go,” Gupta said.

For the Club Tennis Team, extra funding can make all the difference. Kynadi Mauney, a junior and co-president, stressed that funding from the school isn’t always enough.

“For a team like ours, where we have to go off campus to practice, the money is very helpful,” Mauney said.

Osborne said donations allow organizations to accomplish projects that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

“We are getting ready to renovate Salk Hall so some of the funds will go into the building renovations which are desperately needed … this is a really big win for us,” Osborne said.

Osborne stressed the importance of the

day and its implications for the School of Pharmacy.

“I think getting that message across of the importance of scholarship, the importance of education, the importance of giving back really resonated with our alumni and helped win the number one spot which was really great to see,” Osborne said.

Brian Cuban, Pitt Law alumnus of ‘86, felt compelled to donate because of an issue close to his heart. As an advocate of addiction and eating disorder recovery, Cuban wants to see increased funding for mental health resources.

“I speak at a lot of law schools about student wellness. I know how tight budgets can be and how student mental health related initiatives may be something that the school wants to do but there is simply no funding for it,” Cuban said.

Lynn Shea, the director of communications of the Office of Institutional Advancement, said the Day of Giving isn’t just about increasing funding. Equally important is fostering engagement of Pitt students and faculty, past and present.

“At the end of the day, we are all proud to be a part of such a large and enthusiastic community,” Shea said.

The Pitt News SuDoku 3/2/18 courtesy of dailysudoku.com

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March 2, 2018

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Opinions

Poems by Maggie Koontz

THE FOURTH ESTATE IS MEDIA

Rainy Days

A

A heavy stack sits in my hands but the true burden is elsewhere.

The thin paper is curled at the edges, a fresh, virgin-white newspaper not yet yellowed by time’s cruel curse.

It speaks of the future, of achieving an age of perfection, yet I know we will never reach such a time. It is merely propaganda perpetuated by our government.

Black smudges coat my fingertips as if I had rifled through the hearth briefly before I found what I was looking for.

The aroma of ink permeates the air, a familiar smell

M E O A A G F S N K I slide my red and yellow

E S

headphones onto my head, the cushions covering my ears, and I plug myself in.

I push play to begin the game.

Music slips into my ears from both sides of my headphones, a literal earworm entering my brain.

The notes caress my inner ear before spiraling down my spine.

The feeling rests in my chest, the beat of a drum mimicking my steady heartbeat

Rain runs down the misted windowpane, slide, slick, slip liquid lengthening, water accumulating from a drop to a drip, bumping together, absorbing one into the other.

Pitter-patter against the glass.

Dangerous clouds rumble in the distance.

Lightning strikes, but only once.

It brightens the night like a lighthouse with its beacon blazing.

Rain, rain, please stay.

and vocals making their way into my lungs, eager to be sung.

that lingers in my nose like an old tabby cat on a comfy chair. Tiny print akin to an elf’s handwriting takes shape in the form of long columns that stretch their spines and fill the parchment.

Hidden inside the lies is a universal truth, encoded between lines.

We must revolt against this benevolent dictator as he calls himself.

A heavy stack sits in my heart, but the true burden is elsewhere.

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The music spreads outward to my hands as a tingle.

My hands awaken, tapping out a rhythm on my thigh, lightly, but with purpose.

The melody holds my hips like a dance partner.

I sway like the limbs of a tree caught in a breeze.

My knees bend slightly as the song shoots through them, and then settles in my feet, planted firmly on the ground.

A black boot softly stomps out a beat on the salted concrete sidewalk, and then the notes exit softly through my sock-covered toes.

March 2, 2018

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Daniel Spack STAFF CARTOONIST

comic

Mourning, pg. 1 Disability Advocacy group’s Disability Day of Mourning event. The event, which 30 people attended in the William Pitt Union Thursday evening, was part of a nationwide vigil.

The vigil, which has been held every year on March 1 since 2012, brings disability communities in cities across the world together to honor victims of filicide. “Filicide” is the legal term for a parent murdering their child. In the disability community, “filicide” is used when talking about a parent or other relative killing a child or adult relative with a disability. According to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, an organization that seeks to advance goals of equal access, rights and opportunities for autistic people, filicide is commonly portrayed as perpetrated out of the relative or caretaker’s frustration or pity.

Different speakers at the Pitt event shared their experiences as disabled individuals during the event and called for an end to these actions.

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Dr. Bethany Ziss of the Children’s Institute reads a poem criticizing the health care industry’s attitude toward people with disabilities. Thomas Yang VISUAL EDITOR

According to the ASAN, more than 550 people with disabilities have been victims of filicide in the past five years. Research from the Ruderman Family Foundation has found at least one disabled person is killed by a relative or caregiver per week.

Cori Frazer, a director of the Pittsburgh

Center for Autistic Advocacy, began the vigil. They said the event, besides being a day to remember those who have passed, is also an opportunity to bring awareness to these tragedies and demand justice for all disabled people.

“Tonight, we mourn for the dead,” Fraz-

March 2, 2018

er said. “Tomorrow, and in the coming days, we continue to fight like hell for the living.”

Lauren Stuparitz, a prison abolitionist with Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration, echoed Frazer’s statement. She said the vigil was a “somber occasion, a significant one and a radical one.” According to Stuparitz, violence toward disabled people is pervasive through many realms of their lives, taking place in their homes, school and places of work. She said this violence is “dehumanizing” and “hurts us all.”

“Not only are we, our disability community, criminalized, abused, targets of ableist oppressions, aggressions and barriers ... but some of us are killed,” Stuparitz said. “Disability is still being considered a real reason to hurt and kill us.”

Mauro said because of their autistic behavior, they were perceived as a tragedy to their family until their behaviors were “normalized” by the therapy.

“My autistic behavior is actually a fundamental lens of who I am. The therapy didn’t really do much for me other than really damage me,” Mauro said.

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Sports

Take 5: Payrolls Pacquette and Patino pittnews.com

Women ’ s club hockey

skates to success

Jordan Mondell

Assistant Sports Editor It’s 5 a.m., and while most Pitt students are still hitting snooze and sleeping off late-night study binges or a night out, one group on campus is already wide awake and on their way out of the city to start their day.

The sun rises over the passing scenery and empty roads as sticks and pads clatter in the back of a cargo van while the Pitt women’s club hockey team travels to Shady Side Academy in Fox Chapel for practice.

Since there is only one indoor ice rink within city limits — PPG Paints Arena — the team has to travel elsewhere.

“I always have my naps planned on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” senior marketing major and defender Rose Saleh said.

The young squad — now in its second season on the ice — is already making an impact on campus and nationally. In the latest polls, the team ranks eighth in the Eastern region of the American Club Hockey Association Division II standings and is preparing for playoffs this weekend.

The team — founded in 2016 by junior neuroscience major and forward Dana Julian — is also a member of College Hockey East, facing off against other club teams at schools like Buffalo, Delaware and Mercyhurst.

Julian, who played hockey for most of her young life in her home state of New Jersey, came to Pitt for the academics but couldn’t compromise her lifelong love for the sport.

“I wanted to come to Pitt for the neuroscience program, but I wasn’t cool with

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Oakland. not playing hockey,” she said.

“We take It wasn’t an easy start for the team. As a club organization beginning with little advantage of support, money was limited. Exceptional any opportu-

Members of Pitt Women’s Club Hockey team celebrate while playing against California University of Pennsylvania Feb. 3. Courtesy of Jacalyn Sharp

Pitt Women’s Club Hockey team plays against California University of Pennsylvania Feb. 3. Courtesy of Jacalyn Sharp fundraising efforts throughout the year are a requirement for the team to stay afloat.

“Because there aren’t as many girls who play hockey, we need to keep it as accessible as possible, which means keeping our tuition low to play,” senior electrical engineering major and forward Bre Doherty said.

With a fundraising goal of around $8,000 every year, the team has gotten creative — from dinner fundraisers, to letter-writing campaigns, to auctioning off signed Penguins jerseys and selling late-night snacks to passersby in Central

nity we can get,” Doherty said.

Being a new club sport is difficult to begin with, but being a women’s hockey team can also come with other unexpected disadvantages.

The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that only 26 percent of high school ice hockey players are female, and while many of Pitt’s squad participated on girls high school teams, some had to find other leagues or clubs in their local areas. In some cases, like Julian’s, a boys team was one of the only options available to get on the ice.

“My experience was a little different

March 2, 2018

than other girls’ probably, just because my brother was on the team,” Julian said.

“We stuck together.”

There was a similar sentiment at Pitt before the team was established. At an activities fair early in her college career, Saleh approached a table of girls representing Pitt club hockey, excited to see a women’s squad.

“It was for the men’s team,” she said.

“They asked me if I wanted to intern for them.”

Doherty shared a similar experience.

“One time, someone saw my hockey jacket and asked, ‘do you work for the men’s team?’” she said.

The team’s coach, Pitt alum Jim Napoli, sees value in furthering the sport of women’s hockey, especially in the Pittsburgh area. He joined the Panthers in 2017, after his youngest daughter — whom he coached throughout high school — saw that the team was seeking leadership and encouraged him to apply.

See Hockey on page 7

6

“As a student-run organization, these girls have done a terrific job organizing the team,” he said. “They set up a board, they have established duties, they are a really bright group of women.”

On a national level, women’s hockey continues to grow. The National Women’s Hockey League was started in 2015 and, though it only has four teams nationally, continues to be a voice for female players. Still, there are few professional role models for female players.

“Girls don’t really have those role

no one was having anything at their house, we didn’t have to do anything, and I was like ‘what am I supposed to do with all of this time?’” first-year biology major and forward Shannon McCafferty said.

When Pitt student Alina Sheykhet was found dead in her Oakland residence last October, the team rallied around senior center and captain Marissa Oakley, who was roommates and friends with Sheykhet.

They also put on a charity game in February to raise money for Sheykhet’s family, and though they fell 2-0 to Mercyhurst, the team raised more than $500.

Pitt Women’s Club Hockey members (from left) Dana Julian, Shannon McCafferty, Rose Saleh and Bre Doherty. Thomas Yang VISUAL EDITOR models like boys might,” Napoli said.

“There’s really no Mario Lemieuxs and Sidney Crosbys on the female side.”

The girls on the team at Pitt serve as role models themselves, though. When a junior team from Dallas came to the City for a tournament last year, members of the Pitt team went to see them play and gave the girls tours of campus.

“There’s not a lot of women’s hockey in Dallas, so for them to find out we had the team, that was the greatest for them,” Napoli said. “I try to tell our girls that they’re role models for these younger kids.”

When the team isn’t practicing in the early hours of the morning, travelling for games or selling baked goods on the street, they still consider themselves a tight-knit crew.

“One weekend, we didn’t have a game,

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As a part of the National Eating Disorders Association’s National Eating Disorders Awareness Week — which runs from Feb. 26 to Mar. 4 — the team wore purple, green and blue to a recent practice to honor a teammate who is on the path to recovery from disordered eating.

“Any time any of our teammates have an issue, have a problem, we’re there for them 100 percent,” Doherty said. “It’s really nice to know you have this community of 16 other girls.”

And though many of the team members don’t have professional hockey aspirations beyond their careers at Pitt, they do all have one goal — to see women’s hockey continue to thrive.

“We just want to see women’s hockey grow in Pittsburgh, and we’ve been reaching out and just trying to make that happen,” Doherty said.

The Pitt news crossword 3/2/18

Hockey, pg. 6

March 2, 2018

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