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StevenstheStute
Volume CXVII Issue 11
November 15, 2019
Established 1904
Interview with a councilwoman Jen Giattino
New PE offering for Spring 2020: Wellness 101
BY ALEKSANDER DIMOSKI Hoboken recently elected a new set of City Council members to serve the Mile Square City, with Jen Giattino as the representative for the 6th ward. In light of the election, The Stute conducted an interview with Giattino to obtain insight into the new council and their plans for Hoboken moving forward. The current council includes Michael DeFusco for the 1st ward, Tiffanie Fisher for the 2nd ward, Michael Russo for the 3rd ward, Ruben Ramos, Jr. for the 4th ward, Phil Cohen for the 5th ward, and Giattino for the 6th ward. Giattino is looking forward to working with her fellow council members, saying, “Over the past two years we’ve all worked together very well, very collaboratively, and I’m expecting the next two to be the same.” As a result of the recent demolition of Hayden and the construction on campus, there has been a recent growth in the number of Stevens students making use of housing in Hoboken. Currently, the council has not been doing anything to support Stevens students that require housing in Hoboken. However, Giattino would be happy to work with Stevens if the school wanted assistance, saying, “Stevens has never actually reached out to me to help with student housing […] I would definitely be open to working with them, 100 percent.” According to Giattino, due in part to the increased number of Stevens students, the housing market for three bedrooms is relatively tight, whereas the one bedroom market has a larger number of availabilities. While this means that there are open locations in Hoboken that are available for Stevens students, many of them are more expensive than preferred since splitting costs with a roommate in a one bedroom apartment is less than ideal. The council is also set to renew the agreement that allows Lime Scooters in Hoboken after this winter. They hope
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BY Elina Tuder
Above: Nasir Montalvo speaking at Pride After Dark this past spring. Photo courtesy of Eli Trakhtenberg
D&I celebrates 1 year of advocating for minorities BY AUDREY DSOUZA Monday marked the one-year anniversary since the founding of the SGA Diversity and Inclusion Committee (D&I). Chaired by Junior Senator Nasir Montalvo, the committee aims to “empower and involve those who are different from the majority population at Stevens.” D&I was created last year to rally student support for the creation of an Intercultural Center (ICC). Similar to the Lore-El Center for Women’s Programs, which the SGA Proclamation cites as “just the beginning of supporting students of underrepresented backgrounds,” the vision for an Intercultural Center at Stevens was that it would provide a “variety of resources for students who are underrepresented at Stevens… [allow for] programming by Diversity Education and identity-based organizations… [and] would create a space for dialogue on the topics of diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality on campus.” The Fight for an Intercultural Center Early conversations regarding the push for diversity and inclusion at Ste-
vens began in October 2018 due to a campaign on the Stevens Students Instagram page encouraging minority students to vote. Montalvo, in response, sent an email to the Office of Student Life and the Office of Student Affairs regarding the issue and tagged several student organizations whose purposes were related to cultural diversity. After this email was received, Montalvo entered into conversations with Sara Klein, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, regarding the lack of resources for underrepresented minorities on campus. Montalvo said an ICC was originally Klein’s idea, but in order to present it to President Nariman Farvardin and his cabinet, she needed evidence that there was student interest and support for such resources on campus. Montalvo took it upon himself to lead efforts in gathering interest and feedback regarding the creation of an ICC in the University Towers, which were coordinated using a survey. “It was really hard to get responses in the beginning,” said Montalvo, “it was a month and we barely reached a hundred […] I didn’t know
Student Center Move-in on the Horizon BY E.J. Hannah
Photo courtesy of SIITV livestream
College Democrats and Republicans debate BY Alfonsina Santiago This past Tuesday, College Democrats and Republicans hosted their first debate. In a packed Kidde 360, students and professors got to witness a professional and organized discussion about three hot topics in today’s political climate: climate change, gun control, and immigration. Representing the College Democrats were Alex Loucas, Sean Hicks, Kerim Karabacak, and Alyaa Elkhafif. On the side of the room, the College Republican representatives were Thomas Moran, Robby Russo, Justin McCarthy, and Jackson Hudgins. Alongside the debaters were Professor Mullen, Professor Cormack, and Professor Cattabiani, serving as mediators in both asking critical questions and in upholding the rules of the debate. Each side first delivered an opening statement, answered a question from each mediator, asked the opposing side one question, and ended with a closing statement all under a certain amount of time. As an effect of the prevailing political climate in the United States, identification with a political party or ideology has become the norm. In light of these divisive times, the College Republicans and Democrats organized the event in order to hold a
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respectful and insightful discussion to emphasize tolerance, freedom of opinion, and spark conversations amongst their peers in the student body. Opening the night was the discussion about climate change: how each party perceives the issue, and their ideas on how to combat it. Both the College Democrats and Republicans established their view that climate change is, indeed, “human-made.” In addition, resolutions such as shifting federal/state subsidies and removing tax breaks from the “dirty fossil fuel” while incentivizing companies to invest in renewable energy were agreed upon. However, the two broke apart when it came to the accuracy of scientific predictions and its severity, the amount of involvement of the government, and its place in foreign policy. In particular, a major point of disagreement surfaced about the Paris Climate Accord. “We should rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. If we believe that we can make the goals that are set by the Paris Climate Accord and we agree with them already, then why not rejoin? It’s a statement of goodwill. The entire world got together and said this is an issue we have to tackle.”
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The Student Center, formerly known as Alexander House, is scheduled to open on Monday, December 2, 2019. From now until November 26, student organizations (SOs) and the Office of Student Life (OSL) will be boxing up supplies in preparation for the coming move. With the recent demolition of Jacobus Hall, students were left without adequate lounge space to socialize and host events. On top of lounge space, the Student Center will become home to the OSL and SO supplies. Construction on the new Student Center, originally slated to finish at the beginning of this year, will conclude before Thanksgiving break. Audrey Dsouza, Editor-in-Chief of The Stute, expressed frustration regarding the construction delays. “I am thankful that we [The Stute] have an office space in the interim. However, my living room is also currently half of the closet for SASE, since I live with two members of the e-board.” Another group impacted by the move is cultural organizations. According to Sara Klein, Vice President of Student Affairs, at Leadership Connect, cultural organizations will be storing their supplies in the Student Center basement. Joseph Insalaco, President of the Chinese Student Association, said that he had “not received any word on the cultural organizations on campus having an official move-in date to the Alexander House.” The Chinese Student Association is one of organizations which previously had storage space in Jacobus. This past Monday, boxes became available on the 7th floor of Howe for
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News - page 3 Inside the Hoxie House
Science page - 6 LEED and Gateway Showers
News - page 3 Techfest updates
Opinion - page 7 Being Vegan at Pierce
News - page 3 The untold life of Peter Lee
Opinion - page 8 Mind of a Freshman
how much data we needed until January when I was told we needed to get a third of the student body to support us.” After table sitting at large campus events such as Midnight Breakfast, presenting to different organizations and student groups, and going door-to-door to collect support and feedback regarding the initiative, D&I collected nearly 900 responses and was able to write and submit a 25-page Proclamation titled “A Case and Justification on the Creation of an Intercultural Center” by President’s Day Weekend. Perhaps the most resounding part: survey results showed that almost 94% of respondents were in favor of the creation of the ICC. The journey of collecting signatures was not an easy feat. Montalvo recalls: “while there was a lot of support [for the center], some of the comments made on the survey were pretty harmful […] we’re students at the end of the day, we saw the data and [saw] who wrote nasty comments. It took a really big toll on my mental health, but I had to [read through
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Looking through the available course sections before registering for Spring 2020 classes, students may have noticed a new Physical Education (PE) class offered: Wellness 101. The course is on Wednesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. and will be taught by Stevens’ Wellness Educator, Gabrielle Guider. According to Guider, “the Wellness 101 PE course will educate students about the process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful life. The purpose of this course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to grow in their wellness journey. During this 12-week course, students will learn about the eight interconnected dimensions of wellness included in the Stevens Wellness Model as well as topics such as: physical activity, healthy eating, sexual wellness and consent, sleep, self-care, illness prevention, and more.” The decision to offer a new course began with Stevens Athletics and Campus Recreation identifying a demand for more PE courses for students to take. Guider further explained that after discussions with some of the staff in Student Affairs, “it was determined that it made sense to offer wellness-related PE courses to further promote awareness of health and wellness to the student body.” Furthermore, the Student Government Association (SGA) has been pushing for more PE classes, particularly ones that are nonphysical. The SGA Chair of the Health and Wellness Committee, Victoria Agaliotis, had spoken both to Guider and Dr. Melissa Zarin, the Assistant Director of the Counseling and Psychological Services Center, and helped provide input about what students may like to see in such courses. The course is currently full, with 20 seats in the class, but stay on the lookout for seat openings.
Potential expansion of the Cultural Greek Council BY LIAM MCMURTRY For the cultural Greek organizations at Stevens, the main body that unites them all into a shared identity of being a cultural Greek is the Cultural Greek Council (CGC), which is also sometimes known as the Multicultural Greek Council. According to the CGC constitution, their purpose is to “act as a governing body to promote the awareness of multicultural diversity within Stevens Institute of Technology, its surrounding communities, and the greater community-at-large.” For an organization to join the CGC they must not be a part of either the Panhellenic Council or the Interfraternity Council, and must follow all the guidelines set forth in Article III of the CGC constitution, which concerns membership. There are three categories of membership in the CGC: Regular, Associate, and Inactive. Regular members have the right to vote and hold executive board positions, whereas Associate members only have the right to vote. Inactive members do not hold either right, but may sit in on meetings. Furthermore, all organizations must be recognized by the Office of Student Life. Currently, CGC is composed of five organizations, which are Omega Phi Beta, Alpha Phi Alpha, Nu Alpha Phi, Lambda Upsilon Lambda, and Sigma Psi Zeta, but that may change soon. According to Mr. Malcolm McDaniel, the Associate Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life in the Office of Student Life, there are currently five organizations that are being considered for admission to the CGC. These organizations are Chi Upsilon Sigma National Lat-
Opinion - page 9 Off Center Sports - page 10 Basketball
in Sorority, Lambda Alpha Upsilon Fraternity, Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity, Lambda Tau Omega Sorority, and Lambda Theta Phi Latin Fraternity. Moreover, these organizations are being considered for admission either due to interest from students at Stevens in developing the organization, or because the organization is interested in joining the community of Stevens Fraternity and Sorority life. In his role as Assistant Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, Mr. McDaniel serves as the liaison between Stevens and the CGC national organization to help facilitate the process of admission to the CGC, which can become complex. First, organizations must develop materials detailing their history, why they want to create a chapter at Stevens, and their plans to gain more members. Next, the materials are submitted to the expansion committee, which is composed of Mr. McDaniel, members of the CGC, the Graduate Coordinator for Greek Life, and any invited staff or faculty. The committee will review the materials and then decide which organizations will be invited to campus to present. Afterwards, the committee will meet again to determine which organizations would be the best fit for Stevens. Once invited to join the Stevens community, they will have all the same opportunities as other Greek organizations at Stevens, including participating in Meet the Greeks. Currently, Chi Upsilon Sigma National Latin Sorority has already given a showcase on campus about their organization, with Lambda Tau Omega Sorority and Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity soon to give their showcases.
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November 15, 2019
News COUNCILWOMAN
THE STUTE VOLUME CXVII - ISSUE 11 STAFF BOX
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EXECUTIVE BOARD
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.............................................................AUDREY D’SOUZA BUSINESS MANAGER....................................................MARK KRUPINSKI MANAGING EDITOR...........................................MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM LAYOUT EDITOR.................................................................NATALIE TODARO OUTREACH CHAIR............................................................ANDREW KINNEY
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to review data obtained from Lime over the winter in order to determine the value that the Lime scooters provide to the city. “I think in the beginning it was just a complete disaster […] But I think that the riders are definitely better behaved now. I don’t see as many minors riding
DEBATE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Due to skepticism of the severity and consistency of scientific predictions and potential for economic detriment, if extreme actions by the government are taken, College Republicans heavily disagreed with the notion of rejoining. In the accord, according to Russo, though it was not a binding accord, President Barack Obama promised extreme climate change reforms while countries like China did not. In fact, the United States has cut the most emissions out of every country in the world, according to the College Republicans. In their opening statements, the two parties separately highlighted the two major critiques relating to the issues of gun violence and gun control: loose gun laws enforcement and the lack of mental health treatment for potential aggressors. The Democrats believe that loopholes in the system in purchasing a firearm, for instance through the private sector, gun shows, or through family, align with the lack of a federal standard for background checks at the heart of the gun violence
issue. College Democrats representative Karabacak stated, “every day, hundreds of people die from gun-related death across the U.S. It is a tragedy that is uniquely American […] It is no question that gun violence is a problem but the real question is how do we solve [it].” Despite their concern with gun violence, representatives of the College Democrats established that they are not against the second amendment but are rather trying to reduce gun violence. On the other hand, the College Republicans, who wholeheartedly support the right to bear arms, acknowledge the gun violence problem in the country and do agree that the system of background checks needs to be improved. They believe that the United States needs better-educated gun owners, but, more importantly, a fix to the mental health crisis. Both parties pointed to this issue during the debate; some statistics quoted were that 6 out of 10 gun deaths are suicides, and 2 out of 3 mass shooters showed signs of mental health issues with most showing signs before committing the act. Though the Democrats support having mental health
with the administration […] in making sure that [the construction] wasn’t disruptive to the residents, particularly to the residents on Hudson Street, because they’re doing everything off of Sinatra Drive, which is great because there are no residential buildings on Sinatra.” Further information can be found on https://www.hobokennj.gov/ or by contacting your local council member.
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the results].” Reception from Administrators Around March, members of D&I and SGA President Jason Chlus met with Klein and Marybeth Murphy, Vice President for Enrollment Management & Student Affairs, to discuss the Proclamation. “A good 20 to 30 minutes were spent discussing the prayer space, and the conversation did imply that they were trying to do something about the issue.” After this meeting, Montalvo said he didn’t hear much regarding the progress of the center until the end of the semester when he was notified by Klein that the ICC was confirmed for the University Towers. Also last spring, D&I was awarded with “Advocacy Program of the Year” at the Student Leadership Awards Brunch, acknowledging D&I’s efforts for the Intercultural Center and increasing awareness related to inclusion at Stevens. Additionally, it was announced to Peer Leaders (PLs) and Resident Assistants (RAs) during their training this past August that a center was coming. Although there has not been an official announcement to all students yet regarding the center and interim space, admins have confirmed that an intercultural space will exist in the Student Center, formally known as Alexander House, once it opens in December. Plans for an Intercultural Space were not in the original blueprints for the Student Center, but Sara Klein, Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs, told The Stute in September that when she received a proposal for an intercultural space, “we felt that the creation of an Intercultural Space should not have to wait three years until the University Center opened.” The Intercultural Space will replace a small lounge on the first floor of the Student Center. A New Diversity Educator When Jacquis Watters, former Diversity Educator, left Stevens in September of 2018, it took several months for the Office of Student Life to fill the role. Liliana Delman, the current Assistant Director for Diversity Education, came to Stevens in March of this year. Arguably, the largest strides for D&I (specifically the formation of the committee and case for an Intercultural Center) took place during the gap when the Office of Student Life didn’t have any staff specializing in Diversity to support D&I. Montalvo reflected on how life has changed after Delman’s arrival: “I thought it was interesting how much Stevens relies on student leaders. When she came into her position, she looked to D&I to determine the stuff that she needed to do with her position. It kinda felt strange to be the ones giving her direction on what to do, but that was when I was truly starting to understand how the SGA operates.” He stated that they actually meet weekly to discuss what’s going on on campus. “A lot of diversity work
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the scooters, which makes me happy. I think we have to have an enforcement policy in place and enforcement officers in place before we roll it out again.” Construction on campus is also supported by the council. The Gateway Building operates between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. in order to accommodate the residents of Hoboken. “I think that Stevens worked really well
Liliana Delman, Kesha Shah, Nasir Montalvo at the Student Leadership Awards Brunch evaluation being apart of the background checking process, they hope that Republicans will support health care that can offer that, given that most Republicans were against Obamacare. The final topic for discussion for the night centered around immigration. Beginning their opening statement with the plaque on the Statue of Liberty, College Democrat Alyaa Elkhafif established the party’s support of illegal immigrants and for the protection of the path for children of illegal immigrants to citizenship, making the strong remark, “The system is broken, it is backlogged, and it needs immediate fixing.” Likewise, Moran of the College Republicans cleared up a Republican misconception during his part of the debate: “We are not anti-immigrant. We do not hate people because of their country of origin. However, the government of the United States of America exists solely to defend the interests of American citizens. Those who cross the border illegally — those who do not register themselves with the United States of America — are not American citizens, [and] therefore are not protected by the American government.”
Tablesitting to collect survey responses. Photos courtesty of Montalvo is reactionary, something happens on campus and we have to address it,” he explained. For example, next week D&I will be hosting an event around the topic of reproductive rights called “Change Our Minds” in response to a student opinion published in The Stute last week, which itself was a response to a Letter to the Editor reacting to a Newman Catholic/ College Republicans event. Montalvo also identified a new change that has happened since Delman came to Stevens. “Since she’s come in, a lot of people expressed that their heritage months were not given enough attention. Now, she creates a calendar for each identity that is being celebrated each month and it’s helped the culture on campus,” he said. Overall, Montalvo was very enthusiastic about Delman. “She’s guided me, really been a mentor […] I don’t have a degree in sociology, but she’s taught me a lot in how to do the work I do. [D&I] wouldn’t have been as successful without her.” Additionally, Montalvo expressed great thanks to Graduate Coordinator for Diversity Education Veronika Paprocka, stating, “both of them have been incredibly helpful to me.” Events and Initiatives Besides the Intercultural Center, D&I has worked on a number of events and initiatives to get their name and mission out to the Stevens community. Two of these events were Luminaires, an event co-hosted with Amnesty International in support of refugees on campus, and Pride After Dark, one of the most co-hosted events in Stevens history, which featured performances from student groups and a drag queen. During Luminaries, decorative lanterns were set up on Palmer Lawn in an arrangement that spelled, “We welcome refugees” along with a heart. Montalvo explained that Luminaries was the committee’s first time participating in an event. Regarding Pride After Dark, Montalvo stated, “Over 300 people attended […] Pride After Dark made me realize D&I was here to stay […] watching a drag queen at Stevens […] seeing everyone’s mouth drop […] it was so weird but it was so cool, everyone received her so well […] it definitely helped reduce the stigma of the queer community on campus.” Another difference between D&I and a club is that rather than an executive board, they have “advocate” positions for different sectors within the scope of diversity and inclusion. “Of course we cannot cover every single one,” explained Montalvo, but each of the advocates “pursue their own initiatives within their sector.” Currently, Adrian Castellanos, the Sexuality Advocate for D&I, is working on getting Stevens on the Campus Pride index and has been in meetings with Delman in order to, at the very least, get rat-
ed privately, so that Stevens can identify its LGBTQ+ friendliness and continue to improve from there. The Accessibility Advocate Hava Mamudi has been working on initiatives related to American Sign Language (ASL) and promoting deaf culture on campus. “They work a lot with the Office of Disability Services,” explained Montalvo, “a lot of students don’t realize how different the college experience is to those who use sign [language].” What’s Next for D&I? As stated previously, D&I will be having an event next week related to reproductive rights called “Change Our Minds.” The event will feature informative booths with displays and activities covering topics such as family planning, STD/STI testing, censorship, and LGBTQ+ reproductive rights from several co-sponsoring student organizations. For the entire week prior to the event, D&I will also be fundraising for Hoboken Family Planning. Additionally, Montalvo is working on an initiative to increase awareness related to reporting bias on campus. “When you report a concern to Stevens, a bias report concerns any incident that has occurred on campus that has to do with the realm of diversity and inclusion.” Some of the examples Montalvo provided were being called a slur or being profiled on campus. This initiative is particularly important because “they’re going to give those who work in the realm of equity work here more data to work with,” explained Montalvo. “In turn, [we’ll] be able to use this data to say we need these mandatory trainings, or we need to expand the ICC,” he said. Furthermore, starting next Spring, each advocate will be hosting workshops related to their identity sector. Currently besides the Sexuality and Accessibility advocates, D&I also has Religious Advocate Mohkum Singh Sethi, Socioeconomics Status Advocate Christina Puntiel, Gender Advocate Amir Mustafa, and Deputy Assistant Eden Luvishis. They also had a Race & Ethnicity Advocate, but the position is currently vacant. “It has been really heartwarming to see how all the Advocates have grown and taken their shape within the Committee. We have been figuring this out as we go and all of them being so flexible and open has made us a success. I view us as a big family, and I could not have gotten this far without their help,” said Montalvo. Those interested in learning more about the SGA’s D&I committee should reach out to Montalvo directly. As usual, all students are permitted to attend the SGA’s weekly Senate meetings which take place on Sundays at 7 p.m. in BC 122, as well as join the SGA Slack workspace, which D&I is a part of. D&I’s next event, Change Our Minds, will be held on November 20 at 9 p.m. in Babbio Atrium.
Both parties agree that immigration has benefited the United States in several ways, such as bringing cultural diversity and economic development through labor and inventions. However, when speaking upon the immigration process, the Democrats criticized its restrictive nature: “One of the primary actions undertaken by the Trump Administration has been to try to enact a merit-based immigration system […] it discriminates against less-skilled immigrants […] that goes contrary to many waves of immigrants that the United States has laid home to, where most come in as unskilled and low paying wage working […] they represent the backbone of the American economy.” Though when it came to speaking about border security and its relationship with the illegal immigration happening at the southern border, either for a better life or for trafficking of illegal goods, they agreed on the fact that the United Staes has the right to secure its borders, but disagreed on the whether the wall was both physically and economically efficient. Lastly, the two parties were asked about their opinions on amnesty, which
the United States had last done when Republican Ronald Reagan was President. The two parties came to an agreement and would grant amnesty to hardworking and law-abiding illegal immigrants to become citizens, while still maintaining their border laws. The debates were ended with handshakes and enthusiasm being exchanged between the opposing teams. Satisfied with their successful discussion, Russo alluded to there possibly being another debate in the upcoming semester. Despite the way both parties have been represented throughout the past decade, the individuals representing their selected parties proved to be both educated and able to share opinions with the other party. Even during the debate, party members explicitly stated stances that would normally be seen as unorthodox. If you missed the first debate, it can be accessed through YouTube, thanks to SITTV’s efforts to livestream and record the event. If you are interested in getting involved with the College Democrats or Republicans, their contact information can be found through DuckLink.
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November 15, 2019
News The current state of the SGA Senate BY LEIGHA TIERNEy The Student Government Association (SGA) is a student-run organization that serves to represent the needs of the undergraduate student body. The SGA consists of committees comprised of Senators which are overseen by the SGA cabinet. Committees are groups of Senators who address specific concerns and interests within the Stevens community. Previous noteworthy achievements of the SGA as reported by The Stute this past year included getting new furniture for Babbio Patio, hosting an LGBTQ+ Town Hall discussion, changing the rules about sports and PE credits, and assisting in hiring a new Diversity Educator. The Senate is comprised of approximately 30 representatives spanning across each class. Currently, there are 14 open seats in the SGA senate, 3 sophomore seats, 5 junior seats, and 6 senior seats. To fill these seats, interested students must first fill out the nomination forms on the SGA’s DuckLink page. With the Election Committee’s approval, students
must get 75 signatures for a normal election or 50 signatures for a vacancy election. After this process has been completed, potential Senators are voted on by the student body before finally being transitioned into the Senate by the secretary, and gain a personal mentor to guide their transition. Senators serve one year terms and may serve for the entirety of their undergraduate career. The current SGA Senate consists of 11 committees that oversee a variety of aspects of student life. Many of these committees act on initiatives that directly affect student life. Over the past year, these committees have made progress in improving student life within the Stevens community. These committees have a range of influence on campus, including the establishment of clubs and approval of club budgets, upholding the quality of life on campus, and creating an open dialogue between the administration and the student body. Senators within these committees engage with students and faculty directly to secure resources to benefit the student body.
Updates on TechFest 2020 BY benjamin singleton Olivia Scott and Julia Dwight were just freshmen helping to organize last year’s TechFest when an emergency election put them in charge of the entire event. Now, as sophomores, they work in a much less chaotic environment organizing this year’s TechFest, which they are hoping to make bigger and better. TechFest is an on-campus concert hosted by the Entertainment Committee. Past performers have included T-Pain and Jesse McCartney. As Scott and Dwight approach this year’s TechFest, one of their main objectives is to make it more of a festival instead of just a concert. Last year, forecasts of thunderstorms forced the event inside the gym, but when the day of TechFest came, it was clear skies. This left the event fragmented, with the concert inside and the attractions outside. The hope for this year is that something similar won’t happen. Pending favorable weather, the plan for this year’s TechFest is for it to be a more cohesive and larger event. Inflatables from previous years are planned to return, in addition to other attractions. Scott and Dwight want people to come out to the event earlier. While they can’t
say anything for certain this early in the planning process, they are looking to get more involvement from the community. Voting for this year’s performers has already closed with 1,077 students voting. Behind the scenes, the Entertainment Committee works with an agent who provides them a list of performers within the budget. The members of the committee debate extensively on which performers to choose before whittling them down to the list that, after approval by Student Life, is sent out to the student body to be voted on. When asked if they could share any of the potential performers this year, Scott and Dwight responded with a firm “no,” hoping to keep it a mystery for the student body to speculate about. They could, however, tell me that the three most voted for performers were the three that they and their agent have been pursuing for this year’s TechFest. From the interview, the mood surrounding this year’s TechFest was extremely positive. Scott and Dwight said they started planning earlier and project it to be a bigger event than last year. They want it to be an event for all students, so that “even if you don’t love the artist, there’s still gonna be activities that you can come out with your friends for.”
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Above: The Hoxie House, residence of President Nariman Farvardin. Photo courtesy of Wally Gobetz on Flikr and, when the dean of the engineering school left six years later, Bill Destler, provost at Maryland at the time, chose Farvardin to fill the role because of his dedication to teaching, integrity, and high personal standards. “He’s basically got it all,” Destler told The Diamondback, the Maryland student newspaper. “I’ve known him for many years, and my relationship with Nariman has been one of the closest I’ve had at the university, one of the most rewarding. I’ve learned from him and he’s learned from me, and you can’t ask for more than that.” Creating a culture of entrepreneurship, in the Washington, D.C. area and, more specifically, at Maryland, was critical for Farvardin during his tenure as dean. But Farvardin was not one to idly preach about entrepreneurship. In 2001, he, along with three of his Ph.D. students, founded a company called Zagros Network. They focused on semiconductor technology to make network hardware faster and more efficient. The company, which secured $6.3 million in first-round venture funding, was Farvardin’s way to promote technological advancements and foster an entrepreneurial spirit at Maryland. He served as chair of the company while still remaining in his post as dean. Though deans rarely taught courses, Farvardin still ran a first-year engineering class called “Dialogue with the Dean” and regularly shared his entrepreneurial message. The Washington D.C. area, he said at one class, once had its own culture of entrepreneurship, one that led to its own technology boom in the 1990s. But what Washington lacked was the technical brilliance and willingness to take extreme risks, and reforming this apparent issue in culture was Farvardin’s next step as dean. Farvardin’s vision of Maryland’s engineering school transforming academic research into commercial enterprises — which he did himself with Zagros — led him to craft an ambitious plan to turn the engineering school into an engine of cultural change. His goal was to fill students with the “fire in the gut,” as he called it, to take ideas from their schooling and build companies. His efforts were adopted slowly in the academic culture at Maryland. “There was initially a certain amount of caution at the beginning. I think there was a wait-and-see attitude that many people had,” said Herbert Rabin, an associate dean of engineering at
BY LIAM MCMURTRY
Maryland, to The Washington Post. “Now they actually see that it works, and it’s considered very much part of the landscape.” In 2003, shortly after getting married to his wife Hoveida Farvardin, his impressive feats as an academic, dean, and entrepreneur inspired The Washington Post to include him in their list of “Five to Watch in 2003.” “All in the same year, he decided to get married, was offered the position of dean, and started his own company,” said Tom Scholl, a venture capitalist in Zagros, to The Washington Post. “The amazing thing about Nariman is that tremendous energy. It’s just mind-boggling.” His frenetic pace and dedication to his work greatly benefited the Maryland engineering school, but, describing himself as “obsessed with work,” it often presented challenges to his wife Hoveida Farvardin, who is also an engineer and an Iranian immigrant. “It’s a challenge [to find time]. Sometimes we really need to sit down next to each other in front of our schedules to find a weekend when we can go away or just take a night to go to a movie,” she told The Diamondback in October 2003. “But he still surprises me when I do not expect it at all. It’s the romantic side of him. He hides flowers in the trunk and gives them to me at the end of the night or something.” Coming to the Mile-Square City In 2011, while serving as provost at Maryland, a rockier, more severe situation was happening up north at Stevens Institute of Technology. A civil suit filed by the state attorney general questioned the $1.1 million salary of Harold J. Raveché, the president of Stevens at the time, and accused the university of maintaining different sets of books to hide its shaky fiscal state. The suit also said the school had given Raveché $1.8 million in illegal, low-interest loans for vacation homes. Mired in controversy, Raveché was removed from his role as president and Farvardin was offered the position. He had to have a serious conversation with his wife to see if this opportunity was one he could take. After all, she had a successful career in Washington, D.C., where she is an executive for the World Bank. If Farvardin took the position, she would commute to and from Washington to see her husband while maintaining her career. “I remember we had a good discussion about this, and I told my wife,
BY MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM
of New York City. Troy, the home of R.P.I. and 56,638 people according to 1979 U.S. Census records, was known by locals as the “Collar City” for its rich history in shirt, collar, and textile production. The western edge of Troy, along the Hudson River, is flat. Further east, the city slopes to higher terrain and hills of forestry. Cultural events were limited to annual traditions, including Flag Day, Troy Turkey Trot, and other family-friendly affairs. The pastoral reality of R.P.I. was far from Farvardin’s original dreams of California life. (“If I knew where R.P.I. was located, I would have never gone there,” he said.) Shortly after school began, he took his undergraduate transcript to his academic advisor to determine which courses he needed to take to get a Bachelor’s degree from R.P.I. It appeared that Farvardin had satisfied all technical requirements from his time in Iran but still needed credits in the humanities and social sciences. “I remember I took Psychology 101, and it was the toughest course of my entire life,” Farvardin recalled. Taking a social science course as someone who couldn’t speak English was much more difficult than taking, say, circuit theory, he added. “Fortunately, I was very smart. R.P.I. allowed us to take two courses on a pass or fail basis. I took that course pass/fail, and I had passed. But I think I got it by the skin of my teeth.” By August, Farvardin had satisfied all requirements to earn his Bachelor’s degree. (His other humanities courses included Daoism and pottery.) But difficulties still made the transition into American life troubling. Having no friends stateside, limited ability to communicate with others, constant reminders that his country and family were in peril, and little money — the $3,000 lasted him from January to August — he felt challenged by the academic rigor and cultural shock of America. “That first year was hell,” he said, with a bleak look in his eyes. “It was really, really, really tough.” Becoming a professor As planned, between 1979 and 1983, Farvardin earned his Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from R.P.I. Within the next year, he secured a job at University of Maryland as an assistant professor. He rose quickly through the ranks after arriving at Maryland, eventually being offered the chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1994. Administrative work suited him
The untold life of Peter Lee Over a hundred years ago, a quiet, old man walked up and down Castle Point hill and tending to his various chores along the way. Despite having spent nearly a century carrying out the domestic responsibilities assigned to him on this hill and the mansion at its top, his existence was barely recorded. He had a front row seat to a hundred years of industrial progress in Hoboken and Manhattan, yet we will never hear his remarkable story. His name was Peter Lee and he was the household slave of the affluent Stevens family for which our institute is named. Luckily, we can get a glimpse into his life thanks to the local Hoboken historian, Holly Metz. Last September, Holly Metz published “The Untold Life of Peter Lee: Born of Slave Parents, the Property of Colonel John Stevens,” where she illuminates the life and times of Peter Lee in scholarly and eloquent prose. The inspiration for the remarkable book came when Holly encountered a bronze plaque in the Church of the Holy Innocents in Hoboken that was dedicated to the memory of Peter Lee. What put Holly in a state of unease was that this was the only extant reminder of Peter Lee, and the only public reference of slavery in Hoboken. Moreover, this plaque revealed almost nothing of Peter Lee’s life, except for the terms of his enslavement to the Stevens family. Seeing this sparsely detailed dedication to Peter Lee’s life led Holly to embark on a long journey to understand who this character was and the kind of world that he lived through. To understand the world that Peter Lee lived through, which unfolded itself to Holly with each new document she studied, it must first be understood that records concerning slaves in the 1800s were poorly kept and the possibility certainly exists that records were falsified or exaggerated by the original authors. For instance, the assertion that Peter Lee was born in 1804 could very well have been a lie by the Stevens family in order to disqualify him from the gradual emancipation provisions that the State of New Jersey instituted to slowly erase slavery from New Jersey. As Dr. Lindsey Swindall, who is a Stevens professor in the College of Arts and Letters and an expert on African American studies and Northern slavery, put it when commenting on gradual emancipation, “Gradual emancipation was not at all a straightforward process.” The process of gradual emancipation was often circumvented through legal loopholes, postponed, or outright denied by wealthy slave holders in the North who saw their slaves as valuable property and unworthy of freedom. Moreover, Dr. Swindall commented that, “New Jersey is a tricky place because you have both Northern supporters and Southern supporters, and even small communities of Quaker abolitionists.” In a way, New Jersey was at a crossroads because of all the different viewpoints converging into one state, which made New Jersey unique among Northern states. Notably, New Jersey was the last Northern state to implement the process of gradual emancipation. Given the twisting and turning of many slaves’ fates in New Jersey combined with the dearth of record-keeping on slaves’ lives during the time period, the task of trudging through these old documents proved arduous. Holly stated that pouring through these documents was like “walking along a beach with a metal detector” where the treasure she was seeking were kernels of trustworthy information on the life of Peter Lee. Furthermore, some disturbing details materialized as the real story of Peter Lee became more and more clear. As it turns out, Peter Lee should not have been born a slave, but should have been born free, as his mother, Silvia, was meant to have been freed four years before his birth as per the wishes set forth in the will of Mrs. Elizabeth Stevens. When Elizabeth, the wife
Inside Hoxie House: an interview with President Nariman Farvardin Few events in modern history have arrived more unexpectedly than the 1979 Iranian revolution. In the United States, agencies of observation and prognostication, including academic circles, newsgroups, and the Central Intelligence Agency, were caught almost entirely by surprise. The Soviet Union was equally unprepared. Daily clashes between security forces and Iranian demonstrators caused the whole country to spiral into a state of madness. In 1978, riots became horrifically common, and hundreds were killed by militant forces. Those living in Iran, such as Nariman Farvardin, born to a small family in a poor, remote town in Iran, had better foresight than Western spectators on the impending chaos and devastation. “For about a year and a half prior to the revolution, the whole country came to its knees through daily demonstrations and strikes and, toward the end, a lot of violence,” Farvardin said in an interview. College studies At the time, Farvardin had started his senior year of college. He was determined to finish his undergraduate studies in Iran, earn his Master’s and Ph.D. in the United States, and eventually become a university professor. But frequent clashes between students and armed soldiers — some brawls had turned deadly — led to the inevitable shutdown of his university and paused his undergraduate studies. Nobody could enter his campus, as it was barricaded by armoured vehicles and tanks, and quickly completing his degree in Iran would prove impossible. One evening in October 1978, midway through what would be the Fall semester and only three weeks after the Iranian government declared martial law in Tehran and 11 other cities, Farvardin’s father called him. As Farvardin remembers, “He told me, ‘Son, you are not staying in this country anymore.’ “ Farvardin, who wanted to study somewhere in California, applied to four American universities: Stanford, next to Palo Alto; U.C.L.A., in Los Angeles; U.C. Berkeley, across the river from San Francisco; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. All had admitted him into their graduate programs, but — with growing tensions in Iran, his family’s wish for him to travel to America immediately, and incomplete undergraduate studies — he had around two months to enroll in an American undergraduate program. That Fall of 1978, he asked the four universities, which had already accepted him for an advanced program, to enroll him as an undergraduate transfer student rather than as a graduate student. “All four of them said yes,” Farvardin said, “but U.C.L.A., U.C. Berkeley, and Stanford said that if you want to come as a transfer student, we only accept transfer students once a year, and that was Fall of 1979. My dad said, ‘Don’t wait until next fall, because a lot of bad things could happen.’” R.P.I., however, said yes, he can transfer and — more importantly — start in January. “That’s why I decided to attend R.P.I.,” he said. “It was that simple.” On January 5, 1979, two weeks after about 1.5 million people demonstrated in peaceful marches in Tehran and other major Iranian cities, Farvardin, with $3,000 in his pocket and two suitcases in hand, arrived to the United States and headed to Troy, New York, roughly three hours north
Photo courtesy of rutgers.edu
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November 15, 2019
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PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CAMPUS C STEVENS WINS THE 2019 NATIONAL GRIT’N WIT COMPETITION On behalf of the Office of Residential Education, we would like to congratulate students Joseph Sortino, Anthony Abbruzzese III, Jakob A Makover, and Alexa Morales for winning the first ever 2019 National Grit’ N Wit Championship hosted by ESPN3. “Grit’ N Wit” is campus vendor that creates large-scale custom obstacle courses for college students to participate in that challenges them both physically and mentally. The on-demand course combines physical obstacles and mental puzzles to test both grit and wit. The event fosters teamwork, a growth mindset, and perseverance, and welcomes students of all abilities. Our event took place on campus and over 130 undergrad and graduate students registered, forming 18 teams. One top team emerged to advance to the national championships, competing against teams from all over the United States. On October 26th, we traveled to Western Connecticut State University where the national championships were held. Our students were victorious over all other schools and were announced as the celebrated winners of the competition.
STEVENS WINS THE 2019 NATIONAL GRIT’N PHOTOGRAPHS STEVENS WINS THEWIT 2019COMPETITION NATIONAL GRIT’N WIT COMPETITION Please join me in congratulating our winners Joseph, Anthony, Jakob, and Alexa! We are having a congratulatory event on Thursday, November 21st at 7:30pm in the Office of Residential Education to honor our team. Everyone is welcomed to attend and greet the athletes, watch the ESPN3 footage, and view the trophy. We also would like to acknowledge our campus partners who made this event a success: Russ Rogers and Brittney Carty of Physical Education, Athletics & Recreation; Nathalie Waite, Ashley Martins, Stephanie Tovar of Graduate Student Life; Jonathan Brown our student photographer On behalf of the Office of Residential Education, we would like to congratulate students Joseph Sortino, and videographer; Campus Police; and the entire Office of Residential Education team. Photographs and Anthony Abbruzzese III, Jakob A Makover, and Alexa Morales for winning the first ever 2019 National additional information will be provided on the pop-up site, www.stevens.edu/gritnwit Grit’ N Wit Championship hosted by ESPN3.
“Grit’ N Wit” is campus vendor that creates large-scale custom obstacle courses for college students to participate in that challenges them both physically and mentally. The on-demand course combines physical obstacles and mental puzzles to test both grit and wit. The event fosters teamwork, a growth mindset, and perseverance, and welcomes students of all abilities. Our event took place on campus and over 130 undergrad and graduate students registered, forming 18 teams. One top team emerged to advance to the national championships, competing against teams from all over the United States. On October 26th, we traveled to Western Connecticut State University where the national championships were held. Our students were victorious over all other schools and were announced as the celebrated winners of the competition.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM NATIONAL
Please join me in congratulating our winners Joseph, Anthony, Jakob, and Alexa! We are having a congratulatory event on Thursday, November 21st at 7:30pm in the Office of Residential Education to honor our team. Everyone is welcomed to attend and greet the athletes, watch the ESPN3 footage, and view the trophy. We also would like to acknowledge our campus partners who made this event a success: Russ Rogers and Brittney Carty of Physical Education, Athletics & Recreation; Nathalie Waite, Ashley Martins, Stephanie Tovar of Graduate Student Life; Jonathan Brown our student photographer and videographer; Campus Police; and the entire Office of Residential Education team. Photographs and additional information will be provided on the pop-up site, www.stevens.edu/gritnwit
This is a paid advertisement courtesy of Kurtis Watkins. This content was not written by members of The Stute.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CAMP PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CAMPUS CO November 15, 2019
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November 15, 2019
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Campus Pulse
Tyler Zanki
Michael Burgos
Matt Jennings
“Classes being over soon.”
“Family.”
“For not living at Stevens this semester.”
ROVING REPORTER What are you thankful for?
Anthony Prestia
“My supportive family, getting the opportunity to be here.”
Pamela Karasmilova
Aida Alaei
“I’m thankful to just be here.”
“I’ve registered for a ticket in New York.”
Gateway takes LEED for green infrastructure By OLIVIA SHANAHAN It has beautiful exposed brick walls, complete with barn doors. It has extensive natural lighting, and trendy orange couches. The Gateway building is aesthetically pleasing, and has been my serene new study spot on campus ever since it opened its doors a month ago. But I would be remiss if I didn’t address the unique feature on everyone’s minds: the showers. It seems out of place that an academic building would need showers. They aren’t attached to a laboratory, and nobody lives there. But they intend to signal something important about the space: the Gateway building is environmentally friendly. LEED Certification is the name of the game for green building projects. It ensures that a new building is designed, built, and maintained as per certain standards. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and the protocol is outlined by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The process is handled by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), a third-party group that verifies compliance with the outlined regulations. LEED Certification began in 1993, but nowadays the process is based on the parameters set in 2009. For a new building’s application to even go into review, the plans must show strict adherence to all environmental laws and regulations. Moving forward, the ranking of the building is based upon a credit weighting process, where a project can gain or lose points based on its features. The credits draw reference from previous sustainable projects where the environmental and human impact of various criteria were weighted. The Credit Library details all of the ways a project can gain points. Some of them are more self-explanatory: up to 10 points are available for “Whole Project Water Use Reduction,” 1 point for “Clean Construction,” 1 point for “Verified Legal Wood Sources.” In practice, this could be implementing a rainwater management plan, or balancing the amount of diesel and non-diesel construction vehicles used on the site. As for the credit on all of our minds here at Stevens? SSc 4.2 is less obviously connected to sustainability, but still a valid way to show commitment to a green lifestyle: “Alternative Transportation- Bicycle Storage and Changing
Rooms.” The idea behind it is simple: if you make it more convenient to ride a bicycle to work or school without having to spend the entire day sweaty, more people will likely opt for this mode of transportation. Hence, the showers. Along this line of thinking, many of the potential LEED credits come from a commitment to social sustainability. Up to 3 points are available for what the GBCI labels “social equity” within the supply chain, construction site, and the community at large. As per the credit description, the goal is to identify “members of your community who are chronically vulnerable or disadvantaged and to find ways within your project to address these inequities.” This could mean partnering with existing community service or advocacy organizations to engage underserved populations and to promote programming, local hiring, or financial compensation. According to Marcus Caamano, the Senior Project Manager, the Gateway complex is in the second stage of the LEED approval process. The project has already been submitted and received approval for their Design Credits, which are confidential until the project is completed in full. Now, the Construction Credits are in progress. Once all of the construction has been completed, these parameters will be reviewed by the GBCI, and they will respond with comments that need to be addressed. After several months, the building will finally be LEED certified. At this point, a building can be ranked at different levels based on how many credit points it receives. The basic certification is 40-49 points, but a building can level up to Silver, Gold or even Platinum, with above 80 points. Taipei 101 received its Platinum status in 2011, and it is the tallest building worldwide with this designation. The University of Texas at Dallas’ Student Service building was the first academic center to receive LEED Platinum back in 2010. Even the Empire State Building received its Gold status in 2011 following a $550 million rebuilding program.\ All over the world, LEED certification shows a commitment to sustainable building. The next time you are studying in the Gateway building, take a moment to appreciate that Stevens is joining a long legacy of green construction. Maybe it will inspire you to ride your bike instead of taking a car one day. And if you do, boy, do I have a shower for you.
November 15, 2019
7
STEVENS SPOON
PASSION FOR FASHION
My beef with Pierce’s vegan report card
Sherpa season
BY CAITLIN MAHONEY The two years I have been at Stevens, Pierce Dining Hall has proudly shown off it’s A+ vegan report card awarded to them by PETA. It was not until this year, though, that I decided to try going vegan, and with that, comes eating vegan in Pierce. While I recognize that it could be significantly worse, I would definitely not go as far as to grant an A+ for their accommodation of vegans. The two main faults my vegan friends and I have identified are the clearly limited options and the insufficient labeling of foods as being vegan or not. Before getting into the limited options, I would like to say that I am grateful there are any options at all besides salad, since I have visited schools where that is essentially the only dairy and meat-free option. That said, the options are still quite limited here, and definitely not what I would call top-notch, as their award implies. Besides the salad bar, there is the ancient grains station. This is nice, but it is only open during weekday mealtimes and usually is just fried tofu, a couple of kinds of rice, and some vegetables that get rotated throughout the week. Between meals and on weekends, the station is closed, and we are left with either the salad bar or the vegetables and fries in the main entrée area (unless those vegetables are “parmesan roasted”). Moving onto breakfast, there is even less available. Pierce 2 has vegan yogurt available in the fridge but, besides that, the only clearly vegan option is usually the fruit. In my opinion, the acai bowls and smoothies added to Pierce for weekday breakfasts this year would have been the perfect opportunity to add something vegan to the menu yet, unfortunately, they almost always have some sort of dairy added to them. The lack of labeling in Pierce makes the choices of what to eat even
more limited. Last year, the bagels and bread were in their bags by the toaster, making it easy for people to read the ingredient lists themselves. Now, they are in unlabeled containers with no information about what is in them on display. Other foods that often go unlabeled are the pasta station, all of the desserts, and food available from the grill. Not only is the issue the lack of labels, but the food can be labeled improperly, too. I check the Pierce menu online before going in person to see if there will be any options besides ancient grains and salad, and I have consistently found foods listed as vegan online that, when I double-check the ingredients in person, are not, such as the hush puppies. It’s like I am being catfished into going to Pierce. However, there are worse, more serious instances when the food is labeled incorrectly in person. A friend of mine who has been vegan for quite a while ate rice and beans in Pierce which were labeled as vegan, and she ended up getting sick from it because it actually contained chicken stock. The labeling issue can easily become something more than just an inconvenience. Overall, it does not take much looking into the situation to see that it is quite a stretch to give Pierce an A+ for vegan food, seeing as though there are not diverse options and entire sections of food go unlabeled (while the ones that are labeled are not always correct). This year, I am not living entirely off of a meal plan, but I cannot imagine being vegan during my freshman year with an unlimited meal plan, eating ancient grains and salad at almost every meal. Though I focused on Pierce here and their grade from PETA, I find the meal exchange locations to be even worse with labeling, but especially regarding choices. I consider Pierce generally to be the best option for vegan food on campus, yet I would still not even consider giving them an A+ with how things currently stand.
SPOILER ALERT
Let It Snow
BY TRISTAN BACANI FRESHMAN
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING SPOILER ALERT: PERFECT FOR ALL THE HOT COCOA FEELS Since Halloween is over, it is now the holiday season. With Christmas just around the corner, there is a new sappy Christmas love story out on Netflix called Let It Snow. Based on a book by John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson, I was ready for some dialogue that no teenager would say in real life and situations that the hope-
less romantic can only dream of. And boy was I right. The movie centers around three love stories that intertwine. There are Julie and Stuart, a girl struggling to make a decision and a singing sensation, who meet when the train tracks get covered in snow, Addie and Dorrie, two best friends in a fight, and Tobin and Angie (a.k.a. the Duke), best friends but awkwardly crushing on each other through the whole movie. The main veins of the story all center around the town’s Waffle House (which, missing its iconic W is the Affle or Awful House). All three stories eventually meet here, where an epic party is being thrown on Christmas Eve. Eventually, all of the stories end on a happy note, with each respective pair gaining the love they so desired at the beginning of the movie. The movie itself is cliche, lacking anything new or surprising for the viewer to see. It’s all very formulaic and tries to get you to feel something for the characters, but in the end, it disappoints and fails to make any meaningful connections to the audience. But still, the movie is a good way to just sit back, relax, and not think at all for about 92 minutes.
BY MELISSA KOSAR SOPHOMORE
BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY Temperatures are dropping, and we know what that means. It is sherpa season! It is officially upon us and in full swing. Fuzzy coats and sweaters will keep us warm all winter long. Sherpas took over the game last fall. Since they took department stores by storm, we have seen so many variations of these cozy coats. Whether you call it a sherpa, teddy coat, or faux fur, they are for sure a popular piece for fall. Fashionistas cannot help but sport a fuzzy and bold sherpa on a cold and windy fall day. There are tons of styles of sherpas that would fit in just about anyone’s closet and just about anyone can afford them. As sherpas grow in popularity, they become more and more available with a wider variety. Forever 21 alone has an extremely vast array of sherpa options. Pull-overs, zipups, hoodies, cardigans, and actual jackets are all included in the styles of sherpas available on just Forever 21 alone. Personally, I think that sherpas have the potential to bring most outfits from good to great. If you are really crazy about them, you can even invest in several different color sherpas to ensure you stay fashionable and warm all winter long with a variety of different ‘fits. One particular sherpa style that I have noticed is gaining in popularity this season happens to be denim jackets that have a sherpa interior and collar. As I have expressed in the past, a solid denim jacket is essential for a powerful wardrobe. A denim-sherpa hybrid is definitely a top contender in order to obtain a well-rounded wardrobe. This particular style jacket is to me, the perfect combination of stylish yet practical. While it
goes well with several outfits it also keeps you nice and warm and cozy! If you do not already have a sherpa, I encourage you to invest in one. You will not be let down. They are a cheaper and safer option than buying a real fur jacket, and who wants to hurt those animals, am I right? But the fur style is very popular and in-
triguing for many which is why faux fur is the way to go these days. Check out ZARA, Forever 21, Nordstrom, or really any major store. Sherpas are all around us and they are honestly great. I enjoy purchasing clothes that to me are practical and the perfect combination of fashionable and functional. Sherpas definitely are just that!
OUTSIDE AND AROUND THE WORLD
Mdou Moctar’s “Ilana: The Creator”
BY JACK KOSTELNIK JUNIOR
MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY Residing in the town of Abalak, Niger, Mdou Moctar has become one of the most innovative Tuareg guitarists in recent years. He recorded his first album in 2008 in Nigeria, and soon after his songs became popular on the underground mp3 cellphone markets of West Africa. Moctar grew
Photo courtesy of silive.com
Photos courtesy of Melissa Kosar
up in a small village in Niger where secular music was prohibited, so in order to learn guitar, he constructed one himself and practiced in secret. After a while, the local youth caught wind of his music, and he became a local celebrity. Soon after, local religious leaders heard his music and were won over by his lyrics and respect for honor and tradition. Ilana is Moctar’s first real studio album with a live band. It was recorded over the course of 1 week in Detroit at the end of a U.S.A. tour and was released on Sahel Sounds in March of this year. Moctar’s blistering Tuareg music is actually classified as Tishoumaren, a genre of blues-influenced Tuareg music from West Africa that gained popularity in the 1990s. Despite being light on lyrics, this album follows a common trend of most popular West African music: political activism. The title track is a commentary on France’s uranium exploitation of Niger. Moctar explains, “Our benefits are only dust / And our heritage is taken by the people of France / occupying the valley of our ancestors.” His activism
is steeped in tradition and respect for his homeland. The title track is my favorite on the album, with a repetitive driving bass line very similar to psychedelic-rock of the 70s in America. The vocal lines follow traditional Tuareg phrasing and clearly differentiate this music from American psychedelic rock. One of the most interesting things about Moctar’s music is that he never listened to Western music until only a few years ago. He is influenced almost exclusively by the Tuareg music he listened to growing up, and even goes on to say, “I don’t know what rock is exactly, I have no idea,” he says, “I only know how to play in my style.” I think music like this is extremely important, because it is something that can easily be appreciated in the West; Moctar’s success in Europe and America is evidence of this. Sahel Sounds are doing some of the most important international music work of this decade by exposing the West to new and old genres of African music that are helping to educate Europe and America to modern African cultures and traditions.
November 15, 2019
8
Opinion THE STUTE EDITORIAL
Please just talk to me Sometimes, I forget that people actually read The Stute. I mean, obviously, people read The Stute. We wouldn’t be making a paper every week if people didn’t. Students wouldn’t be writing articles or opinion columns or even requesting advertisements to be printed if they didn’t think The Stute was a large enough platform in which it was worthwhile to share their opinions and present updates and news with the Stevens community. But honestly, I forget how many people read The Stute. We’re not the Harvard Crimson or anything, but a large portion of our student body, administrators, faculty, staff, parents back in California, and just random people on the internet pick us up on a weekly basis. It’s heartwarming. The quest to increase our readership gives me motivation to skip classes and write several pieces a week; the feeling of contributing my time to something greater than myself is a huge reason why I’ve been a part of
this organization for over 3 years now. If I remember back to my early days, basically no one read The Stute. When I told friends I was in The Stute, they would roll their eyes and say, “Who even reads that?” We would only cover campus events, like academic lectures or RSO events and basically just reported on things that people already knew about. If we made a mistake in the print, it would be on us to notice and issue a correction because no one else would notice. Over the past few years, that’s definitely changed. Besides the fact that we’re slightly gutsier now, as a news organization should be, we’ve shifted focus from the topics that people already know to the topics that people don’t know yet and need to know. Even the opinion section has changed to the extent that we have students passionate about a certain subject and chose to utilize us as their platform to spread their message. But anyway, since I’m perpetual-
ly of the mindset that not enough people read The Stute, when people actually do read us and I hear some criticisms about us I’m usually pretty caught off guard. My first thought is: was it a mistake or a conscious decision? How I react to criticism differs a lot based on the answer to that question. If someone is upset with us because we made a mistake, I actually take it really personally. I know I shouldn’t, but if it’s something that I could have prevented, I tell myself I’ll never let it happen again (even though that would be impossible). If someone is upset regarding one of our policies, I try to sit down with them and understand whether their concern is valid; should we be updating our policies? Otherwise, I try to communicate our policies in detail and why they are the way they are to the person since that’s my responsibility as Editor-in-Chief. The benefit of being in The Stute is that I’ve built up a network of informants throughout the years that will
MIND OF A FRESHMAN
Stop selling yourself short
BY JULIA WIERZBICKI FRESHMAN
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING One of the things I kept hearing over and over again when I was getting ready for college was that we had a chance to start over or change ourselves. That’s all well and good, but as the weeks go on, I feel like people are starting to twist that message and turn it into something else. It’s more than just “let me a start a
habit of going to the gym” or “I’m going to apply for an internship.” People are changing themselves for the wrong reasons, and it’s causing a toxic atmosphere that’s affecting the student body. Let me explain: I would feel pretty confident saying that finding new friends is a major concern of most freshmen. It’s a scary thing to have to leave all the people you’ve known behind and hope you find someone new to connect with. Because of that, a lot of people come into college desperate to fit in and make new connections. It feels like if you don’t find the right people during the first week or so, you’re left in the dust as new friendships start to form. This can be especially overwhelming, and can make people try to fit in and change things about themselves to be more “likeable” or “desirable” by others. But let me be the first to say: you don’t have to. I can definitely attest to feeling that pressure. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just a part of the experience of moving away from home and starting in a completely new place. When people start to change themselves to try to
please others, it makes them disingenuous about who they really are. It might be nice in the moment when a group welcomes you for a time, but once that fades, it’s going to feel wrong. Because you’ve built a friendship on something that’s not real, it’s not only not going to last. In the long run, it’s going to make you more unhappy than if you just waited for the right people to find you. Change in college is good — we’re all still discovering things about ourselves and making new connections. But when you start to change yourself to please others instead of trying to make yourself a better person, that’s where problems can start. Sometimes it can feel claustrophobic being in a small school, like there may not be someone that you click with as well as you did in high school. But I encourage you to wait and see. Don’t try to shoe-horn yourself into places that you don’t want to be. You deserve more than unhealthy friendships that are headed toward unhappiness. Wait for the right people to come into your life, and I promise you’ll be glad you did instead of spending time on things that just weren’t meant to last.
SENIORITIS
The challenge of being Treasurer
BY MARK KRUPINSKI SENIOR
COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE Every person develops their own place on campus. I’ve found my home primarily in The Stute, Lodge, and the Student Government Association. In each organization, I’ve held many different roles, but in every case, I eventually ended up the same role: managing the finances for the organization. I’ve served as the Business Manager for The Stute for about two and a half years, served on the Budget and Audit Committees of the SGA for about a year, and have been the Treasurer for the Lodge since the beginning of the semester. There are many intricacies in serving as treasurer of an organization. I’ll start off with Recognized Student Organization (RSO) guidelines — the guidelines with which
most people are familiar. The SGA sets a long list of requirements for RSOs to follow. These range from the maximum number of events to limiting what organizations can spend funding on. If you don’t follow these guidelines, your budget will be cut. If you don’t have a “good” reason for items being on your budget, your budget will be cut. Treasurers have to be prepared. Sitting in the front of the room with 20 sets of eyes staring into your soul makes the semesterly budget meeting intimidating. Second, treasurers have to be diligent and follow Student Life policies. You have to submit an order on time, give back the p-card in time, and upload receipts in a timely manner. Don’t follow these policies? Oh well. It’s hard to quantify the work a treasurer puts into an organization until you’ve seen it first hand. While the work isn’t necessarily time-consuming, treasurers of an organization need to be up-to-date on all of the rules. It takes time to become familiar with these guidelines. Once you’ve sat down read the rules enough to understand them, the role of the treasurer is fairly straightforward — but it still takes time to learn. Getting past that initial hurdle is difficult. I began serving on the Senate Budget Committee at the beginning of this year. From my time on the committee, as well as the audit committee, and by talking to executive board members of other organiza-
OPINION COLUMNS POLICIES
tions, I’ve seen organizations struggle solely because of their treasurers. While the entire e-board needs to work together for an organization to succeed, a poor treasurer can bring down an organization single-handedly. While a president stands out more as a requirement for success, the role of the treasurer is typically reserved for someone with previous executive board experience. A firsttime e-board member may not be trusted to serve as treasurer. The financial responsibilities of being the treasurer compound with the struggles of serving on the executive board for the first time. It’s a challenge. My first e-board position was Business Manager of The Stute. I didn’t understand what I was budgeting for, nor did I really understand the responsibilities. Slowly, I learned. Thankfully, because The Stute did not host events at the time, it wasn’t a rush to learn policy (I only had to learn how to defend our printing costs). I could focus on acclimating myself to the responsibilities of serving on an executive board. From this, I developed my niche and my expertise as treasurer of an organization. Initially, finances are challenging. Once that hurdle is surpassed, being treasurer is a great, “lax” e-board role — and it’s an accomplishment: an accomplishment that you can manage, document, and communicate effectively.
tell me everything I need to know and things I probably don’t need to know. But with that comes the hardest part of my job: when I hear about criticisms about us through the grapevine. Like I mentioned before, everyone is completely entitled to their opinions about us. But my main concern is that if you really want us to change, why not just tell us when you have an issue? Sometimes we make mistakes and we do always strive to make our product better. But if you don’t tell us at all and just criticize us to other people behind our back, well, we find out anyway? But it’s never the full story, so we probably don’t even make the changes you want. I am not a mind reader! If you have a problem with my organization, the members in my organization, or just me… please come and talk to me about it. Anyway, my opinion about what we publish remains unchanged. Whatever makes it in, the good, bad, perfected, or unfinished, is a true repre-
sentation of The Stute and the school at that time. Those of you who know, know — we’re doing 20 hour weeks for a job we don’t even get paid for. I feel disappointed in us when we put in the wrong title for an article and vice versa, but I also try to relax because I know at the end of the day we’re just students. The fact that we can do this every week without literally pulling our hair out is a miracle.
Audrey Dsouza
Editor-in-Chief
SCIENTIFIC CURMUDGEON
Does facial shape predict proneness to violence?
BY JOHN HORGAN
CAL PROFESSOR In the history of pseudoscientific theories, some stand out as particularly noxious. One is the claim by 19th-century criminologist Cesare Lombroso that temperament and behavior can be predicted from physiognomy, the structure of the face. Some men, Lombroso proposed, are born criminals. They are evolutionary throwbacks, “savages” with apish, “atavistic” features. These include big jaws, prominent brows and “handle-shaped ears.” Such men, Lombroso asserted, are prone to “the irrepressible craving of evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh and drink its blood.” Lombroso’s lurid hypothesis, while always contested, became extraordinarily popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the heyday of eugenics. In The Mismeasure of Man, his classic critique of scientific attempts to categorize and rank humans, biologist Stephen Jay Gould calls Lombroso’s theory “probably the most influential doctrine ever to emerge from the anthropometic tradition.” Scientists eventually turned away from biological theories of crime and focused on environmental causes, such as poverty and abuse. But modern researchers, notably Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, are touting the Lombroso-esque claim that men with broad faces are evolutionary throwbacks prone to aggression. Wrangham is renowned for arguing in his 1997 book Demonic Males that male humans share with chimpanzees an innate propensity for lethal group violence. Various critics, including me and anthropologist Brian Ferguson, have criticized this claim, which I call the deep-roots theory of war. Far from backing down, Wrangham serves up a revamped version of the deep-roots theory in a new book, The Goodness Paradox. Wrangham distinguishes between two types of male violence, reactive and proactive. Reactive violence is emotional, hotheaded, compulsive, whereas proactive violence is calculating. Think of the difference between a crime of passion and premeditated murder. Wrangham notes that in modern hunter-gatherer societies, males have been observed to
band together, proactively, to execute an out-of-control troublemaker. Something similar happened during our evolution, Wrangham speculates, and as a result, males evolved to become less compulsively violent, although still all too prone to calculated group aggression. This evolutionary trend, which Wrangham calls “self-domestication,” resulted in physiological as well as cognitive and behavioral changes. Just as domesticated dogs have narrower faces and smaller jaws and teeth than their ancestors, so do modern humans, according to Wrangham. Relatively undomesticated males still dwell among us, Wrangham suggests, and they can be distinguished by their physiognomy and behavior. Men with broad faces—more specifically, a high facial width-to-height ratio—seem especially prone to aggression, Wrangham said. There are several problems with Wrangham’s revamped deep-roots thesis. First, he continues to exaggerate the violence of chimpanzees and human hunter-gatherers. Second, Wrangham still claims that biology—a propensity for proactive coalitionary violence—is the root cause of war, but human biology is more or less constant, while war is sporadic. Biology can’t help us understand the difference between Germany in 1935 and today. Then there is Wrangham’s claim that men whose faces have a high widthto-height ratio are prone to aggression. As evidence he cites a 2008 study, which found that a high facial width-to-height ratio predicts “aggressive behavior” among hockey players (as measured by number of penalties) and college students (as measured by how they played competitive games in a laboratory). Journalists spread this meme widely. “Aggression written in the shape of a man’s face,” proclaimed New Scientist. But the evidence is flimsy that men with broad faces are innately aggressive. A 2012 paper reports that “body weight, not facial width-to-height ration, predicts aggression in pro hockey players.” A massive 2013 study of thousands of subjects from different populations, including Mexican prisoners, concludes that “facial attributes are poor predictors of aggressive behavior.” The wide-face hypothesis is morally as well as empirically dubious. Especially when combined with facial-recognition technology, this sort of pseudoscience could lead to systematic discrimination. I’m appalled that modern scientists–and especially one as prominent as Wrangham–are promoting what is basically a slur about people with a certain physical appearance. Wrangham likes quoting Katherine Hepburn’s famous line in the film The African Queen: “Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above.” What scientists like Wrangham need to rise above is their fondness for crude biological determinism. John Horgan directs the Stevens Center for Science Writings. This column is adapted from one originally published on his Scientific American blog, “Cross-check.”
Opinion columns represent the opinions of the author and are not factual news articles to display current events. All opinions and editorials printed in The Stute reflect the views of the author and do not reflect the views of The Stute as an organization or any others involved in making The Stute.
November 15, 2019
9
Opinion BLACK EFFECT
“Black Wellness” with Charles Octobre
BY NASIR MONTALVO JUNIOR
BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY Health and wellness have no one size fits all. We all navigate our mental and physical health differently based on our own needs, environment, and identity. Yes, community efforts are absolutely necessary in creating a campus culture that raises the level of health, but individualized approaches are just as important. When I first came to Stevens, my mental health took a dip, and most of the reason for this was because I felt different. I thought I could never mesh into
the community here. Various organizations from our community put on study break events, self-care through physical grooming, meditations, etc. But none of that could have helped me in that time. What I really needed at that time was someone to help me affirm my Blackness, my Queerness, my femininity, my loneliness. To tell me that I was different, but to ensure I celebrated that. I have been reading and listening to a lot of Tahliah Debrett Barnett’s (aka FKA Twigs) interviews lately, and she talks about the trouble she had in school as the only Black woman in attendance: “She’d [Mother] pump me up at home and I’d be like, ‘Yes, I am pretty’ and I’d get dressed up and think, ‘Yes, I feel good.’ And then I’d go to the school disco and as soon as I got there I’d want the floor to eat me, because all my friends had this perfectly straight blond highlighted hair.” – FKA Twigs,The Guardian It’s deep rooted, these pains, and a lot of getting “well” was plucking these weeds and pains I grew up wanting to be, such as Twigs. A very key part of my wellness is my identity, and though relaxation events can help numb the pain, the wounds won’t be treated without specialized approaches.
OFF THE PRESS
Seidman and Pepa lose SGA election BY OFF CENTER It is a truly, truly sad day on campus as news has been released that legislative prodigies and local beefcakes Brandon Seidman and Simon Pepa have lost the election for SGA President and Vice President. We know, we were surprised too! I mean, how could these two titans of public stewardship possibly fail to win the offices that they so rightfully deserve? Especially after that glowing recommendation we gave them last week! The results of the election have not been released at the time of the writing and publication of this article, so it is unknown who has actually won the election, only that it was not the Seidman-Pepa ticket, a fact from which we are all still reeling. Sorry to repeat the point, but can you believe it? I can’t imagine a single person looking at either Seidman or Pepa and not immediately voting for them! With their astute political knowledge and dashing good looks, even a common buffoon could tell that they were the perfect candidates for the job! “Losing the election hurt us pretty bad,” said a morose Seidman, refusing to meet our reporter’s gaze. “I’m obviously pretty bummed, but Simon’s been a wreck: he’s been crying all week.” Pepa, who had been silently weeping in a pool of his own tears, suddenly let loose a soul-shattering wail that made every person in a two-mile radius break down and cry in solidarity with the broken husk of a man. His pent-up emotion released, Pepa resumed his prior weeping, the pool of tears around him threatening to become a veritable lake. With a beleaguered sigh, Seidman picked up the catatonic Pepa and carried him off, the Vice-Presidentto-be leaving a foot-wide path of tears as they left. The terrible news hit with the release of the SGA Presidential Candidate Power Rankings, a time-honored Stevens tradition that lists the current candidates on their “power level,” and essentially decides the outcome of the election before it happens. The Power Rankings were used by respected political analyst Mark Krupinski to effectively dismiss Seidman and Pepa from the running. On these rankings, the Seidman-Pepa ticket is currently rated as “Stupid Wittle Babies,” accompanied by the picture of a cartoonishly dumb infant banging his head with a wrench. Obviously, this put a huge stop to their candidacy, and the two are being considered for exile from Stevens for their ignorance. “Yeah, SWB is pretty much the
worst thing you can get on a power ranking,” said the President of Off the Hill, Off the Press’ political sister column. “I mean, technically the absolute worst ranking is ‘Puny Lil’ Pea-Brains,’ but the last time they gave that ranking out, the candidates both died of shock.” For those of you wondering, the Molla-Castellanos ticket received a positive “Big Strong Bois,” while the Hannah-Buckman ticket was awarded “Pecs o’ Steel.” The loss of the political revolution that would have occurred with the election of Seidman and Pepa is a blow that has affected every facet of campus. After the tragedy was announced, flowers have wilted, birds have stopped singing, and the children playing at Stevens Park have resorted to idly staring at the monkey bars. A thick miasma made of pure sadness and melancholy has descended across the school, as if nature itself was mourning the loss of two of the greatest political minds to ever grace the Earth. Students have reported increased feelings of negative thoughts and distrust in democratic institutions after hearing about the Seidman-Pepa ticket’s loss, with one particularly distraught student ripping their hair out and decrying the callous nature of fate. “Woe! In our hubris, we have lost that which has been sent to us from on high! Those two champions, those paragons of political virtue, have been wasted on our puny university! We turned our faces away from the light and threw away what should have been a golden age for our unworthy Student Government Association!” The student continued to preach from atop Babbio Patio, his arms raised in supplication to the politics gods. This entire debacle has completely eroded our already negligible faith in the SGA, and has taught us how to deal with the painful loss of two beloved history-makers. Off the Press gives a sincere apology to everyone on campus, as it appears that the glorious political revolution that Seidman and Pepa would have ushered in will never happen. We can only hope that two more bright-eyed, enthusiastic, and muscle-bound idealists will take up the fallen mantle for the next election, as unfortunately Seidman and Pepa are retiring from politics to enter the big SGA Senate in the sky. While the next SGA leaders — whoever they may be — are sure to pale in comparison to those two juggernauts of policy-making, we can only wish them the best of luck. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel the need to take a page from Mr. Pepa’s book and cry myself to sleep.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR POLICIES All members of the Stevens community are able to submit letters to the Executive Board in order to be published in The Stute. In order to be considered, letters may not exceed 800 words in length, and must be fully attributed with name and title (when applicable). They must be emailed to eboard@ thestute.com or submitted on our website, thestute.com. Unsigned letters will be considered under the condition that the identity of the author is made known to the Editor In Chief. The Executive Board reserves the right to choose whether or not to publish a submitted letter based on a majority rule vote. The Stute reserves the right to edit letters for clarity, or request authors to revise.
For this week’s conversation, I have enlisted Charles Octobre to help me speak about mental health and wellness within the Black community. Octobre is a second-year Biomedical Engineering major, and is a member of Black Student Union and secretary for College Democrats. In terms of identity, Octobre identifies as a Hatian man. Nasir Anthony Montalvo: Tell me, what’s your favorite part about your identity? Charles Octobre: Honestly, my favorite part is that we have a unique story. We’re different, in a way that’s very profound and very powerful. Throughout history and throughout time, we have always been discriminated against; but we have always proved to the world that we are better than what you tell us and we will set the bar for our own expectations. You can’t tell us that. That’s the beauty of being Black. NM: How does Black-specific trauma affect you? What does that look like? CO: Specifically, I have experienced this trauma on campus. I have been called the N-word. It’s not a pretty thing, and it’s much uglier trying to deal with it. Coupled with the fact the person that called me that, I don’t even know
who it was. In my case, it happened through email. I still to this day wonder who is this person, you know? And the fact that this culture exists is a little disheartening. But in a sense, it shows that we have flaws. Society in itself isn’t perfect, but we need to fix it and move on. It is what it is, and I took care of it. NM: Who was there to support you besides yourself? Were there any resources on campus that you could use? CO: Actually, you were the person I first contacted! BOTH: [laugh] CO: From there, I went to administration and spoke to Dean Nilsen more about the situation. Then, I was transferred to Xhiljola and she was the one that further investigated the situation. But in terms of support, there definitely was. We have a community, and when something happens, there are people out here who are more than willing to support you in any way, shape or form. In my case, sadly, the person was never found. But I hope that, even if we did find the person, I could tell that person,
CONTINUED ONLINE AT THESTUTE.COM
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
A letter to the editor (of Off the Press) BY MONIKA GESLAK To whom it may concern, I have recently (last night) become acquainted with (every) article written by Off Center for Off the Press. After carefully pouring over each amazingly detailed and surprisingly accurate account of Stevens’ news and history, I feel the need to write a letter to the Off the Press editors for a handful of reasons. First, thank you for being the BEST news source for the Stevens community. From Honor Board policy changes to the recent hack that has plagued our community, you have been there for it all. Thank you for your bravery in covering topics no other reporter has covered, even in the face of immediate danger/ certain death. That said, I had two major concerns while reading your articles. First, when attempting to read “Newest Stevens Tax Returns Revealed,” I learned that the link on The Stute’s website is broken and instead leads to a letter to the editor from Vice President of Student Affairs Sara Klein discussing prayer spaces on campus. While interesting, it is nowhere near as interesting and informative as the information now HIDDEN by this mistake in hyperlinking. Was it truly a mistake or was the information presented in this article too dangerous to be released to the general public? My other concern was in the article titled “More secret societies revealed,” where you claimed the existence of a “Coda.” While not inaccurate to claim the existence of
a higher, more secret society, you spelled it wrong. Like, how could you *not* know that it is actually spelled [REDACTED]. Everyone who’s anyone knows it is spelled [REDACTED. ALL HAIL CODA. DO NOT QUESTION AND DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEARN THE TRUE SPELLING. ALSO, CODA DOES NOT EXIST]! My next reason to write was to thank you for being the BEST source of news in The Stute. Wait, I wrote this already? Well, nevermind then. I thought you’d like to hear it again, but I guess not. Finally, I have a question for you, dear editor. As much as I have enjoyed reading about Seidman and Pepa in their attempts to take over the SGA and reign over an era of prosperity for the Stevens community (I, too, have cried nonstop since learning of their loss), what about the portal to Hell mentioned a few articles back? I first heard of the incident from The Stute in the November 1, 2019 issue, but having heard no new news, I have been terrified to return to the upper half of campus (This is why I did not hand deliver this letter to you in The Stute office in Howe, as is customary for letters to the editor. Apologies). Please give us the allclear so I may once again go to Howe to ride the shuttle and have my only fear be the fear of getting run over by a shuttle along the way. I look forward to hearing back from you! Kindest regards and utmost respect, Your biggest fan <3 <3 <3 (who is definitely NOT a member of Off Center)
ADVICE YOU MAY NOT NEED
Problems: Good or Bad?
BY DAVID BELLAH
JUNIOR BUISINESS AND TECHNOLOGY I have a friend; let’s call him George. George and I have known each other since we were ten. In high school, George loved to eat. Any time we hung out, we would eat fast food, snacks, and anything unhealthy. George never really exercised either. Most of his activities involved sitting. At some point, George told me how upset he felt about his body, and he wanted to improve. So, George started doing 20-minute high intensity workout videos. Over time he began losing weight. By the end of our junior year in high school, George lost thirty pounds. Everyone was impressed with his progress. Everyone praised him for being so disciplined. When I spoke to him though, he told me he felt too skinny. So senior year, he started lifting weights. George would go to the gym 5-6 times per week. After a year and a half, I ran into George over winter break during freshman year of college. He looked way more muscular. I asked him how much muscle he gained since lifting. He said he gained forty pounds, but a lot of it was fat. He told me how much he needed to lose weight. So, George started dieting heavily along with his workouts. George ate extremely little and extremely clean. Fruits, vegetables, oatmeal, non-fat yogurt, etc. When he told me his diet, I couldn’t be more impressed. George went from eating fast food every day to eating cleaner than most personal trainers. Yet, it still seemed like George wasn’t where he wanted to be. After working out together one day, we got lunch. I mentioned to him how great he looked, and he glumly said thank you. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “I don’t know, I thought once I lost all of this weight, I would be happy with my body. I thought all of my problems would be solved but I still feel like it’s not enough.” I asked him, “Do you enjoy going to the gym?” He replied, “Yes.” “Would you be okay going back to who you were before you started working out?” He immediately said “No.” “Then clearly going to the gym is doing something for you, George. Sure, you may feel like you never reach your ideal image, but maybe you’re never supposed to. Maybe it’s normal to feel like you always have something to work on. Plus, if you love going to the gym, and you always have something to work on in the gym, won’t you always have an excuse to do what you love?” He shrugged and said, “I guess I’ll go to the gym then.” Final message: No matter how much you improve, you will always have problems — you will always have something to do so you’ll never be bored. Woo-hoo.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Mind of a junior BY NASIR MONTALVO This letter is to address the column “Mind of a Freshman”, and Julia Wierzbicki’s latest addition “The problem with ‘acceptance’ on campus.” “We declare our right on this earth... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” - Malcolm X I have things to say. Lots of things to say. But first I would like to start out by saying this is not an attack or comes from a place of disrespect. It comes from a place of genuine care for our underrepresented community members, and a fire to educate the rest of our campus. I think what pained me most about this column are not its contents, but the idea that this was written, read, proofread, and yet no one digested how harmful this column is. To proudly proclaim that “Life is full of exclusions and although that’s not something we can (or even should) fix” speaks to my experience here as a Black, Queer student. It speaks to how I have had to lift myself out of the pitfalls society has placed before me while the majority watches with closed hands and “respect”. It’s hard for
me to see you write off acceptance as unnecessary and exclusions as universal when there are people out there that devalue my existence. You argue that we’re getting exposed to conflicting ideas on campus, but that is an overgeneralization and it also ignores the fact that some sides of these ideas are very harmful. Did you know that all the religious organizations here meet once a month in a peaceful roundtable to discuss their experiences (shoutout to Mohkum Singh Sethi)? Did you know that they’re all fighting for the common goal of a prayer space? The pro-life, prochoice debate; are those conflicting ideas, or are one of those actually harmful to bodily autonomy and the other allotting for freedom of choice (yes you can be prolife without making everyone else be!)? Should people really be forcing others to choose body positivity or transformation, or should we all just mind our business and let people do what makes them empowered? You argue that “ice-cream nights” and “gender-specific events” exclude people. First, I want to make it clear that pumpkin-spice latte and lactose intolerance “stigmas” do not hold the same weight an identity does. My identity results in road blocks and experiences that change the direction of my life. I
would also like to say that specific-identity events are not made with the intention of exclusion, they’re made with the intention of uplifting. An event centered around celebrating the spectrum of sexualities does not violate your existence. The idea that this event does not deserve acceptance violates mine. You argue that these “conflicts” contribute to an enriching college atmosphere. Newman Catholic and College Republican’s rampage and infringement on reproductive rights do not promote an enriching atmosphere. Unacceptance on this campus does not either, and neither does this article. It makes life a lot harder for you and me to live on campus when I feel like I can’t exist freely, only to a degree of “respect”. Respect is an easy way to absolve the need to support your peers. Even the word “acceptance” is only the first step in creating an inclusive campus. Everyone has a stake in creating the environment here, and though I don’t mean everyone here should be a social justice advocate, I do mean that situations like this can be avoided simply by speaking to those around you. And actively trying to unlearn your internalized biases. And perhaps even making a trip to the Diversity Education office. That’s something I think all of us can work towards.
November 15, 2019
10
Sports
ON DECK IN SPORTS FRI, NOV 15 WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL vs Carnegie Mellon University NCAA Division III Tourney 12:30 PM Baltimore, MD
MEN’S WRESTLING vs 15 Ithaca University 6 PM Hoboken, NJ
Photo courtesy of stevensducks.com
Women’s and men’s basketball both get wins on opening night BY TREVOR DAMEIKA
On Tuesday night, both Stevens men’s and women’s basketball teams pulled off a win. The women’s basketball team opened the 2019-20 campaign with a 60-49 victory over Western Connecticut State University inside Canavan Arena. The female Ducks were led by Allie Moss who tallied 16 points. West Conn was able to force 34 turnovers. However, it was not enough, as Allie Moss was stellar from 3-point-range in the win for Stevens, going 3-for-5 (in total the team was 5 for 10) from downtown while also adding five boards and three assists. Junior Christina Li and freshman Danielle Cornetta also finished in double figures as Li produced 14 points and Cornetta added 12 in her
collegiate debut. West Conn scored seven of the final nine points of the first half to take a 25-23 lead into halftime. Despite that, Stevens came out of the gates firing on all cylinders from deep in the second half, nailing four consecutive 3-point buckets. Subsequently, the Ducks kept their lead and never surrendered it. This gave Stevens a beautiful opening win to tip off the season. For the male Ducks, senior Spencer Cook scored a game-high 29 points to lead the Stevens men’s basketball team over New Jersey City University 81-75 in a non-conference matchup. Cook shot 8 for 15 from the floor, including 5 of 10 from beyond the arc. Cook dominated the show and
led Stevens to their first win of the season. Graduate student Kevin Florio added 14 points, including four three-pointers, and senior JoJo Mosca came off the bench to drain a pair of triples. Freshman Matt Crowley came off the bench to score 11 points to go along with five rebounds and five assists in his collegiate debut. Also, Crowley made two free throws in the final 15 seconds to secure the victory. Stevens had an amazing start to the game and the Ducks lead went up to fourteen. Despite the strong start to the game, Stevens’ lead was trimmed to four before Spencer Cook made sure to give the Ducks the momentum with a buzzer-beating three that
sent the teams into halftime with the Ducks holding a 37-30 advantage. Although NJCU would go on to tie the score early in the second half, the Ducks actually never trailed in the second half. Another freshman, Brett Bischoping, finished with three points. Commenting on his first collegiate points, Bischoping stated, “It was a huge relief, it felt like I had finally arrived and was now a real college basketball player.” Bischoping also talked about how he felt his team won the game, “I think our outside shooting and great half court defense pushed us over the top.” Both basketball teams played phenomenally and both teams will be looking forward to the exciting season ahead.
Women’s Volleyball and Women’s Soccer win MAC Freedom conference titles BY TREVOR DAMEIKA
Photo courtesy of stevensducks.com
For women’s volleyball, this is the second time of the last three years, where they have captured the conference title. In the MAC Freedom championship against Eastern (25-21, 25-20, 19-25, 25-18) , senior Shelby Stewart was named the Championship Most Valuable Player after registering 12 kills, eight total blocks, and seven service aces. A nice game from Stewart as her fantastic season continues. Winning against Eastern (25-21, 25-20, 19-25, 25-18), Stevens advances to the Division III NCAA tournament. The Ducks have now won 11 consecutive matches and finished the season with a 20-11 (win-loss) season. Going on that type of streak, Stevens proved their resilience and strength as a team. A fantastic season for a resurgent Duck team that never gave up. Moving on to the NCAA tournament, Stevens will play against Carnegie Mellon University in the Baltimore, Maryland Regional hosted by Johns Hopkins Friday at 12:30 p.m.
SAT, NOV 16 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY vs NCAA Atlantic Region Championship 11 AM Canton, NY
WOMEN’S SOCCER vs NCAA Division III Tourney 1:30 PM Middlebury, VT
MEN’S BASKETBALL vs. Skidmore College 2:00 PM Saratoga Springs, NY
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON STEVENS SPORTS
This will be a true test for the Ducks as they will continue to keep fighting. As for women’s soccer, they were ranked eighteenth in Division III entering this match. It has been a truly phenomenal season from the team and they capped it off with a championship victory. In the MAC Freedom championship, senior Gabby Saade and sophomore Ally Wanzor scored fantastically to win the game over Misericordia. Junior midfielder Emily Damrell was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player after her performance in the championship match. Her ability to control play in the midfield was extremely valuable to the Ducks victory. The Stevens women’s soccer team really dominated this year with a 153-1 record (wins-losses-draws). They are on a thirteen match winning streak and have been completely superior. Next, the Ducks will head to Middlebury, Vermont to take on the University of Massachusetts Boston Saturday in the opening round of the 2019 NCAA Division III Women’s Soccer Championship.
DUCK COUNTRY SCOREBOARD DATE SAT NOV 9 SAT NOV 9 SAT NOV 9
TEAM MEN’S WRESTLING WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL WOMEN’S SOCCER
OPPONENT W&J INVITATIONAL EASTERN UNIVERSITY MISERICORDIA UNIVERSITY
SCORE 1ST 188 PTS W (3-1) W (2-0)
SUN NOV 10 SUN NOV 10 TUE NOV 12 TUE NOV 12
MEN’S FENCING WOMEN’S FENCING WOMEN’S BASKETBALL MEN’S BASKETBALL
VASSAR INVITATIONAL VASSAR INVITATIONAL WEST CONN STATE UNIVERSITY NEW JERSEY CITY UNIVERSITY
UNDEFEATED 7-1 W (60-51 w (81-75
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