[The Stute] October 25, 2019 (Issue 7, CXXII)

The official newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology, and creator of Attila the Duck.

hi

New Stute every Friday | thestute.com StevenstheStute

Volume CXVII Issue 8

October 25, 2019

Established 1904

Stevens Live series makes campus more lively

College of Arts and Letters gains Pi Gamma Mu as first honor society

BY E.J. HANNAH Picture yourself sword fighting your friend in a duel, surrounded by a Renaissance Faire. Now relaxing on a beach with tropical drinks. Or even sitting in on a Lo-Fi Alice in Wonderland tea party. Having trouble? Cue Stevens Live.

Last year Stevens welcomed its new Director of Student Life, Leo Pedraza. He joined the Stevens community with the vision of filling gaps that our university faces in the way of programming. Through collaboration with Nina Ioanis, a Student Coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Student Life, a series of pop-up events called Stevens Live was born.

The Stevens Live events create unique atmospheres in various locations across campus. Their storytelling aims to distract students from whatever source of stress they may be facing in that instant. Instead, students focus on relaxing and enjoying the creative environment around them.

The first event was “Lo-Fi Wonderland,” transforming Pierce Cafe with roses and other decorations to put students inside of the Alice and Wonderland story. A caricature artist drew portraits of students while a playlist comprised of Lo-Fi beats partially made by students played in the background. All the while, tea and pastries were laid out for students to enjoy.

SEE LIVE PAGE 2

Student Government will consider an update to budget policy

BY DIVYA UNNAM Updates to the current Student Government budgeting policy are being proposed to the SGA. Mark Krupinski, the SGA Senator who created the proposal, explained that much of the changes being made to the budgeting policy can be summarized as “moving a lot of subjective amounts from the guideline sections to the rules section of the budgeting policy,” and that this shift “limits the discretion that the budget committee has and makes budgeting more uniform for all student organizations.” Movement of policies to the rules section makes them implemented more firmly in comparison to when they were just considered guidelines. This proposal comes several weeks before the Semesterly Budget Meeting, where student organizations will propose their budget for the following semester.

According to the moved policies, organizations must follow several rules for requesting budget at the Semesterly Budget Meeting.

This includes: budgeting for at most four events at this meeting, being limited to $100 worth of food for GBMs for the semester, cost of food being limited to $12 per person at events, budgeting for prizes for at most two events, budgeting for at most $100 worth of promotional

SEE BUDGET PAGE 2

Inside This Issue

TheStute

BY LEIGHA TIERNEY

In general, both forums remained civil. At the first forum, Crowell even stated about his opponents, Cohen and Maganuco, “We’ve all committed to cooking [at the homeless shelter] together, the three of us, after the election season is over.”

When asked about Hoboken’s finances, many candidates were concerned about the recent tax increases from Hudson County. According to Russo, “We [need to] keep more money in the city of Hoboken, rather than sending it to the county.” Many candidates also expressed a desire to obtain more out of Hudson County. At the second forum, Rosner stated that “Wherever the mon-

In September, the Stevens College of Arts and Letters (CAL) established the New Jersey Theta chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, a social science honor society. Pi Gamma Mu is dedicated to the promotion of scholarship and academic excellence within social science fields of study. There are currently seven Pi Gamma Mu chapters in the state of New Jersey.

The effort to bring a social sciences-based honor society to CAL was a faculty-driven effort. According to the faculty sponsor of the Stevens chapter, Dr. Lindsey Cormack, it provides “a more robust sense of community within CAL.” Having an honor society specifically within CAL will form an organization and provide community for humanities students, whose numbers are fewer than other schools. Pi Gamma Mu will also promote the significance of the CAL fields of study to the broader Stevens community. Additionally, Pi Gamma Mu will allow CAL students a better opportunity to get to know the their professors as well as other students in CAL. Fifteen students have been inducted into Pi Gamma Mu this year.

The majors of these students primarily include humanities majors: mainly Science Communications; Social Sciences; and Science, Technology,

SEE CITY PAGE 2

SEE CAL PAGE 2

Photo courtesy of Andrew Kinney

Hoboken city council forums

BY ALEKSANDAR DIMOSKI This previous Tuesday and Thursday, Hoboken City Council candidates had a public forum organized by the Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition.

Members of the public were able to ask questions to the candidates by passing index cards to the moderators, who relayed this information to those present.

Hoboken is divided into 6 wards, with the council including one representative from each ward. On October 22, the candidates for the odd numbered wards presented their opinions on issues in Hoboken. These included Michael DeFusco and Migdalia Pagan-Milano for the 1st Ward, Michael Russo and Ronald Bautista for the 3rd Ward,

and candidates Nicola Maganuco, Timothy Crowell, and Phil Cohen running for the 5th Ward.

On October 24, the candidates for the even numbered wards presented their thoughts and opinions. These included Tiffanie Fischer and Nora Martinez DeBenedetto for the 2nd Ward, Ruben Ramos Jr. and Lisa Sprengle for the 4th Ward, and the candidates for the 6th Ward, Jennifer Giattino, Cristin Cricco-Powell, and Frank Rosner.

The questions posed by the crowd included a wide variety of issues, ranging from development in Hoboken to Lime scooters and alternative forms of transportation. Each candidate had 90 seconds to respond and 60 seconds for rebuttals if desired.

A year with the SGA cabinet

BY AUDREY DSOUZA As we transition from the start of the school year into fall, another transition is nearing the Stevens community: the election of a new Student Government Association (SGA) President and Vice-President of Operations (VPO). Currently, three tickets have announced their intent to run via campaign Instagram accounts: Brandon Seidman and Simon Pepa, E.J. Hannah and Jason Buckman, and Samantha Molla and Adrian Castellanos. The Stute will be featuring an in-depth conversation with each ticket in next week’s issue on November 1.

But before covering the new, we figured it would be in good spirit to celebrate the accomplishments of the old.

Jason Chlus and Ryan Tom were inaugurated this past January, after winning a run-off election. Sworn in with them was their Cabinet: Vice President of Finance (VFP) Elena Malova, Vice President of Student Interests (VPSI) Nina Ioanis, Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPA A) Alex Reina, and Secretary Madison Gemma.

In early interviews with The Stute, both before and after getting elected, Chlus stated several goals he had for his term, including pushing the administration to be “more transparent with its finances,” reworking aspects of the SGA to enable senators to focus more on initiatives that enhance the Stevens experience, increasing productivity while fostering positivity and excitement within the SGA, reinstating the Wednesday academic break from 1 to 5 p.m., and making the SGA a role model for efficiency and clarity for other clubs. The overall goal: involving the student body more in the core decision-making processes that affect the future of Stevens.

Speaking on the progress of their initial campaign goals, VPO

Ryan Tom said, the Cabinet has “been working on re-evaluating all SGA line items, and in particular working with club sports to establish a better system.” By the end of their cabinet term, they plan to share all the information they have with the student body, but “further transparency is an ongoing issue that will require more work for future cabinets.” In regard to academic break, Tom said, “Alex and Jason have already made progress with

News - page 2 Hoboken City Council (cont.)

Science page - 5 Rain garden

News - page 3 Audio Engineering

Pulse - page 6 Stute playlist

News - page 4 Lip sync battle

Opinion - page 7 Spoon University

SGA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS NOMINATIONS: FRI OCT 18 Fri Oct 25 DEBATE: Wed NOV 6 9 p.m.

EAS 222 Photo courtesy of Elina Tuder the Provost for a partial restoration for the Spring, but a full restoration probably won’t be possible until next Fall at the earliest.”

As for SGA efficiency, Tom said, “we have massively reduced the time of reports at Senate meetings by cleaning up the slides used. The time spent on reports is now a third of what it used to be, and this has enabled us to accomplish more at

SEE CABINET PAGE 4 Opinion - page 9 Off The Press Sports - page 10 Volleyball

October 25, 2019

2

News THE STUTE VOLUME CXVII - ISSUE 8 STAFF BOX EXECUTIVE BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF............................................AUDREY D’SOUZA BUSINESS MANAGER......................................MARK KRUPINSKI MANAGING EDITOR.......................MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM LAYOUT EDITOR...............................................NATALIE TODARO OUTREACH CHAIR...........................................ANDREW KINNEY EDITORIAL BOARD COPY EDITOR............................................ANGELINA ZACCARIA HEAD PHOTOGRAPHER..............................COLE YARBROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR..........................ELINA TUDER SCIENCE EDITOR......................................DYLAN JAMES MOON SPORTS EDITOR..............................................TREVOR DAMEIKA WEBMASTER........................................................JOANA FARDAD SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR.........................SERIK CZARNECKI STAFF AND CONTRIBUTORS ALEKSANDAR DIMOSKI ALEX MURTAGH ALONZO KONSTANTINIDIS BRANDON SEIDMAN CHRISTIAN BONAVITA CAMILLE SIMON-AL-ARAJI DAKOTA VAN DEURSEN DIVYA UNNAM E.J. HANNAH ETHAN CHE ERIC S. LONDRES ELENA MALOVA LEIGHA TIERNEY GREGORY KANE JULIA WIERZBICKI

JULIAN HERNANDEZ

JOHN HORGAN MATHEW GREEN MELISSA KOSAR NICK VELARDO OLIVIA SHANAHAN PETER WHITE SAMANTHA WINTER SIMON PEPA SOPHIE CHO

CONTACT US EMAIL.................................................EBOARD@THESTUTE.COM OFFICE..............................................................7TH FLOOR HOWE GBM TIME..................................................... TUESDAY @9:15 PM ADVERTISING...............................BUSINESS@THESTUTE.COM

THE STUTE POLICIES LETTER TO THE EDITOR

LETTERS MAY NOT EXCEED 500 WORDS IN LENGTH AND MUST BE FULLY ATTTRIBUTED WITH NAME AND TITLE (NON-ATTRIBUTED LETTERS WILL BE ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS, BUT THE AUTHOR’S IDENTITY MUST BE MADE KNOWN TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF). ALL LETTERS MUST BE EMAILED TO EBOARD@THESTUTE.COM. THE STUTE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO NOT PUBLISH ANY LETTER SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION.

THE OPINIONS IN LETTERS SENT TO THE STUTE WITH THE REQUEST TO BE PUBLISHED ARE THE SOLE OPINIONS OF THEIR AUTHOR(S) AND DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF ANY MEMBER OR PERSON INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF THE STUTE. THESE OPINIONS ARE NOT ENDORSED BY THE STUTE AND THE CONTENT OF THE LETTERS ARE PRINTED IN THEIR ORIGINAL, UNEDITED FORM. A DISCLAIMER WILL ACOMPANY ANY LETTER THAT IS PUBLISHED IN THE STUTE STATING THIS INFORMATION. CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

FOR CORRECTIONS OR CLARIFICATIONS FOR ANY ARTICLES IN OUR NEWSPAPER, PLEASE EMAIL THE EBOARD. DISCLAIMER

ALL OPINIONS, STORIES, AND EDITORIALS REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTHOR(S). THE STUTE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO EDIT ALL LETTERS AND ARTICLES SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION FOR CLARITY AND FACTUAL ACCURACY, OR NOT PUBLISH THEM.

NO PART OF THE STUTE MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF. CITED REFERENCES OF THE STUTE ARE PERMITTED.

THE STUTE WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN IMPROVE SKILLS

AT A SCHOOL LIKE STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, YOU NEED MORE THAN CAL 103 AND 105 TO BOOST YOUR WRITING. THE STUTE PROVIDES TRAINING IN NEWS WRITING AND FOLLOWS AP FOR GRAMMAR AND STYLE, THE STUTE IS A SAFE, NON-JUDGEMENTAL ENVIRONMENT WHERE YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR WRITING SKILLS AND BECOME MORE CONFIDENT AS A WRITER OVER TIME. PURSUE A PASSION

IF YOU LOVE FASHION, MOVIES, STEVENS DRAMA, OR POLITICS, WRITING A COLUMN FOR THE STUTE IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO PURSUE YOUR PASSION. OUR COLUMNISTS GET UP TO A FEW HUNDRED TO THOUSANDS OF CLICKS ON THEIR ARTICLES. SHARE YOUR TAKE WITH THE STEVENS COMMUNITY AND BECOME A COLUMNIST TODAY! RESUME/LEADERSHIP

THE STUTE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT. FOR THE EBOARD, WORKING FOR THE STUTE IS LIKE A PART TIME JOB; WEEKLY MEETINGS AND DEADLINES, PLANNING CONTENT, WORKING COLLABORATIVELY WITHOUT KILLING EACH OTHER, ETC. THERES SO MANY SKILLS TO ADD TO YOUR RESUME ONCE YOU JOIN THE STUTE!

LIVE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 From there, Stevens Live hosted “Babbio Beach,” a wellness event with CAPS and the Office of Wellness Education, in Babbio Atrium. Alongside depression screenings, there were activities teaching about safety from the summer sun.

Students could also enjoy tropical drinks while unwinding with a masseuse or kicking back in massage chairs.

Education about physical and mental health was ultimately grouped in one place for students to appreciate.

Last spring, a full-on “Renaissance Faire” was hosted in collaboration with Stevens Dining. Pierce Dining Hall was closed, and instead, students could enjoy medieval foods on Palmer Lawn. Colored fabric was draped over tents while strolling minstrels, wizards, jesters, and sword-swallowers provided entertainment. Students could even enter an arena to sword fight their friends.

BUDGET

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 items, and including preliminary quotes for speakers, guests, and vendors. This rule also details that GBMs or previously held off-campus events that have no attendance record on Ducklink will not receive funding.

Sections 24 to 27 of the updated budget policy proposal details various funding rules that apply to student organizations during each semester.

This includes: the total number of events that may receive funding per organization is five, the total number of funded off-campus events per organization is two, an organization can only have two events that can be funded over $2000, Step Three starting RSOs have a budget limit of $200 per semester, and Step Four starting RSOs have a budget limit of $1000 per semester. Stipulations on budgeting for prizes were also moved to rules. As per the resolution update, “total prize allotments are limited to $175 per event,”

CITY

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 ey comes from we should investigate any avenue and any source to obtain funding.”

Among the candidates, many were dedicated to keeping a friendly relationship with Stevens. DeFusco stated that “The growth of Stevens is the growth of Hoboken.” The forum being held in DeBaun was a testament to the continued cooperation between the school and the government, something which has not changed despite the ongoing lawsuit between the organizations. The words of the candidates echoed this sentiment, and indicated a desire for Hoboken and Stevens to work together for the future.

In recent council meetings, a prevalent topic has been the Hoboken rail yard redevelopment plan. The redevelopment plan is one that has been discussed for a long time, but has only been brought up again recently. Most candidates agree that the project needs to move forward, but opinions are still split on how to proceed. In general, candidates agreed that the project needs to be more available to public interaction, with Bautista stating, “I believe that there has to be more transparency on the project.” According to Fisher, the project was rushed and the effects on traffic and the community need to be investigated further, saying, “This was a development that was shepherded through City Hall with

When The Stute reached out to her, Ioanis explained that the events originate from brainstorm sessions between her and Leo. They take into consideration “what’s generally going on at Stevens,” as well as “the experiences we’ve both had with event planning in previous positions.” From there, they reach out to other organizations about collaboration and incorporate their ideas and resources.

This semester, Stevens Live is looking to reach out to students and coordinate a mini talent series, highlighting the talented students that comprise the Stevens community. Whether that takes the form of individual featured acts, larger showcases for consecutive performances, or receptions for artwork is still up for discussion.

Going forward, Ioanis detailed, “The nature of the events will definitely change to fit the vision of whoever takes over” once she leaves her role. “The beauty of Stevens Live is that it’s so fluid in where it can grow!”

and Society. Students who met the admissions requirements of the honor society were formally invited by CAL to be inducted. Students who wish to join Pi Gamma Mu must have completed 20 credits of social science courses, completed 37.5% of their degree credits, and must rank in the top third of their class. Due to these requirements, freshmen are not eligible to join.

One significant standard is that one does not have to be a social science major or a CAL major to join Pi Gamma Mu; as long as one meets the requirements, they are eligible to be inducted. The benefits of being a member of Pi Gamma Mu are similar to the benefits of participating in other honor societies at Stevens. Students will be able to add the experience to their resumes, wear related regalia at graduation, and have a sense of community with students of similar majors. Notably, members of Pi Gamma Mu who be-

come employed by the government may receive an increase in service rating, which in turn may result in a salary increase.

Overall, Pi Gamma Mu benefits the Stevens community by fostering a sense of community within CAL and spreading the values of liberal arts education to the Stevens community. As Pi Gamma Mu continues to gain recognition and influence on campus, CAL students and faculty will attain more representation and appreciation from the university as a whole. As explained by Dr. Kristyn Karl, “Our students are doing interesting work and independent research using a wide range of methodological approaches and they are excelling in the classroom and in the community. An active Pi Gamma Mu chapter will contribute to a broader understanding at Stevens of all the ways in which our students excel.” Overall, Pi Gamma Mu will present an opportunity for students within CAL and other colleges at Stevens to more actively pursue scholarship in the social sciences.

and “co-sponsored events may be considered for extra funding not to exceed $175 per organization co-hosting.” A student organization can budget prizes for at most five events.

One of the new additions to the policies is the cap put on budgeting for off campus events.

Previously there was no cap placed on off-campus events, allowing student organizations to request funding more freely for them. This new cap details that “a maximum of $80 per person can be requested by the SO per non-conference off-campus event.” Other policies related to off campus events such as conferences still stand and were moved to the rules section.

For conferences specifically, “a maximum of $100 per person for up to 20 students may be requested for the purposes of attending a conference (or multiple conferences) per semester.”

Also, students “attending a conference must contribute at least $20” of out of pocket money, not part of the Student Activity Fee. There were a few other additions made to the budgeting

policy. RSOs and Non-RSOs need to send a representative to a budgeting meeting for any sort of funding request else they will not receive funding.

Additionally, if an SGA senator holds a leadership position in a club with a budgeting request, that senator must abstain from voting on that request. A Subcommittee Head has no vote at the Semesterly Budget meeting if they hold a leadership position in the student organization that has submitted the request in question. The policy regarding the rollover of leftover funds into the next semester was also updated and now stresses that “funds may only be rolled over if the funds are used for the same allocation.” Quorum for weekly budget meetings was also redefined to constitute the Vice President of Finance and half of the members of the Senate Budget Committee instead of one chair and three members of the Senate Budget Committee.

On the subject of what prompted these changes to be made for the budgeting policy, Krupinski commented that “it

began last semester when Amnesty International and Society of Physics Students ended up with over $100 per person” for a conference and an off-campus event respectively. For Amnesty International, he explained, “they got $100 per person initially and some people dropped out, so it ended up with more than $100 per person. They said because it was a guideline they weren’t at fault.” Due to this incident, firmer stipulations on budgeting for off-campus events and conferences and the movement of several policies from rules to guidelines were proposed to the budget policy.

This past month, Krupinkski began formally writing up all the changes and sent it to the Senate for feedback. These changes will be presented officially at upcoming SGA Senate meeting this Sunday and will be voted on the following week, the 3rd of November. The Budget Committee hopes to get the updated policy passed in time for the Semesterly Budget Meeting, which will be held on November 17th.

no interest in having any public input.”

Questions were also posed about the use of scooters, bike lanes, and parking. Residents are concerned about the use of Lime scooters and bikes on the sidewalk endangering pedestrians.

Candidates were generally in favor of bike lanes, but how these lanes should be implemented was a point of contention. Some members advocated bike lanes in general, while others proposed more reserved solutions, such as

a limited number of lanes on a street-by-street basis. However, transportation in Hoboken is a nebulous issue, including Lime scooters, biking and bike lanes, parking, public transit, and more.

As Sprengle says, “There needs to be resident involvement […] and we have to get it right, we need to study everything at once.”

Citizens also raised questions about rent controls. All the candidates at the second forum were supporters of rent control.

Ramos stated that “One of the

things we have to do ourselves is educate our residents on what their rights are.”

Overall, the forums helped to provide a deeper insight into the opinions of the candidates, giving the voting body helpful information for the upcoming election.

Interested readers can find video of the full forum on the Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition facebook page at www.facebook.com/QLCHoboken/. Voting takes place on November 5.

CAL

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Photo courtesy of Hoboken City Council

Join The Stute! All experience levels and interests welcome. We meet every Tuesday at 9 p.m. on the 7th floor of Howe :)

October 25, 2019

3

News Audio engineering beyond the classroom

BY JULIAN HERNANDEZ The Audio Engineering Society (AES), an “international organization that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students” (Aes.org), held their 147th annual Convention in New York City from October 16 to 19 at the Javitz Center. The convention had an exhibit floor of over 200 companies, workshop stages, and a ‘Technical Program’ of additional expert-led sessions. While the ‘Technical Program’ is reserved for those who splurge on an all access ticket, many of the students who attended were able to enter for free by registering ahead of time with codes for students distributed by the Music & Technology (M&T) faculty and the Audio Engineering Club (AEC).

Along with the free student passes, AES provided quite a few opportunities for students throughout the convention.

Aside from the expected seminars and workshops tailored for students, there are student competitions in design and recording that are run throughout the week, resume reviews with industry professionals, and an Education and Career Fair held on Friday.

The Student Delegate Assembly, the student arm of AES that represents over 95 chapters and 4,000 students, also hosted an after-hours networking session at a nearby restaurant

on Wednesday.

Stephen Dranto, an M&T freshman, attended AES for the first time this year with his friend and classmate Zach Berkowitz.

Dranto offered some reflections of his experience, saying, “I attended because it was free, and I was curious as to what it had to offer […] A big takeaway from the convention was that there is much more to music than I thought. Of course, there’s the practical things like all the synths, plugins, etc…, but the community is what I was most surprised about.

The community is much bigger and more friendly than I originally thought.”

Hunter Kino, a graduating senior, attended the convention on Friday for the third time.

Kino explained, “The AES Convention is a great opportunity for students to meet top-tier industry professionals and build their network for their future careers […] I attended to learn more about newly-released products and sit in on workshops to learn more about the industry and individuals involved. I attended two of the ‘Mix With the Masters’ workshops featuring Tchad Blake and David Kahne, both of which, who are highly skilled and respected producers/mixing engineers in the music industry. The workshops included their workflow, production/mixing tips, and their philosophy on making music. I enjoyed

listening to their presentations, and I learned a lot from the experience.” Kino said he plans on continuing to attend AES Conventions in the future to continue learning about the music industry.

AES provides students and industry professionals with multiple opportunities to network and develop their skill sets at its annual convention. Individuals attending the convention also have the opportunity to network at the numerous after-hours events that are held by music studios and independent organizations in the city.

PERSONAL AD VPF 2019, Class of 2020.

It’s officially cuffin’ season as the young kids call it. I’m just looking to mingle and get to know you.

I like dogs, coffee, and buffalo wings.

Slide into my DMs @el_malova

Photos courtesy of Julian Hernandez

October 25, 2019

4

News CABINET

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 meetings by dedicating time to discussing ideas while everyone is still feeling fresh.” He also mentioned that senators were being put on committees not just based on interest, but also those where they can have the greatest impact.

Tom explained, “One of the issues we had in the past was too many senators wanting to be on the same committee (specifically the Campus Life Committee) and this left the committees somewhat lopsided in terms of manpower.

Those same senators also tended to become removed and uninvolved in such large committees, while smaller committees struggled to accomplish much. A major goal I had was to evenly distribute manpower among committees, and this is why I asked senators to rank committees. By acknowledging everyone’s interests but also providing an even distribution to each committee, I feel that we have empowered the committees to be the most successful that they have ever been in my three years in the SGA.” However, not all has been smooth sailing. Earlier this year, the Senate had 15 senators resign. According to Secretary Maddie Gemma, vacancy elections are “extremely common as students may resign due to shifting priorities, interests, and opportunities.” She also stated, “I do not think there was a loss of interest in the position, but rather a peaking of new interests and goals for students in other areas of campus. We are grateful for all those that have served the student body, and respect the decision of those that choose to leave.” Tom also added that many of the senators who resigned or chose not to re-run “had already been disconnected” from the SGA and were “not attending Senate meetings or following through on initiatives.” He stated, “While we did have a decline in physical manpower, we are very proud of those senators who chose to stay involved, as they have all put in significant amounts of work and made serious accomplishments.”

In general, multiple rounds of vacancy elections are done each semester, typically for junior and senior seats until the seats are filled, and running them several times allows those that might not have heard about the general elections the opportunity to get involved.

She added, “currently we have 25 Senators and by running vacancies we are

able gain new students excited and optimistic about the future of Stevens. I have already had students reach out to me about the third round of vacancies.”

Nonetheless, the cabinet has implemented several changes since the beginning of the year.

Increased resources for student orgs One of the primary responsibilities of the SGA is delegating the Student Activity Fee (SAF) to campus organizations. In order to assist student organizations with using DuckLink’s Finances portal, SGA VPF Elena Malova created videos for club treasurers. “I’m a visual learner, so I thought people would appreciate a visual way of explaining how to go through DuckLink to fill things out,” explained Malova. “Each video’s only a minute and a half, and you can pause it and watch how I do it for visual instruction,” she added. Currently, there are four videos: how to submit AFRs and reallocations, how to submit a catalog purchase, how to submit a catering order, and how to submit receipts.

Besides the videos, substantial changes to the structure of Leadership Connect were also implemented this Fall. The structure of the day was changed to model a traditional conference structure, and allowed attendees to choose workshops to attend, rather than a series of lectures held in the same room. Additionally, a randomized lunch and learn networking session was added to help student leaders meet with other student leaders, ideally people they hadn’t met previously. According to VPSI Nina Ioanis, these changes were implemented “in an attempt to better cater to the varying experience levels of the attendees […] for returners who have attended the Connect conferences for multiple years in a row, leadership development workshops can seem redundant.” The requirement for treasurers was also reduced to one hour financial breakouts that were rolling throughout the day, rather than the whole conference, based on subcommittee. “A lot of the treasurers also expressed appreciation for the way Lily and Elena were able to tailor the sessions to the more specific perspectives of the smaller groupings of organizations that were present at each session,” explained Ioanis.

Although it was her first Connect, Ioanis believes the changes went smoothly. “I personally thought the contents of each of the breakouts were also very helpful, but I credit that entirely to the presenters who so graciously

Photo courtesy of Elina Tuder accepted the invitations to speak,” she said. When asked what she would do differently next time, she cited returning attendees as an issue again. “A few suggestions had been to potentially only make mandatory the 2 hour update portion from the Office of Student Life, for anyone who had been to a Leadership Connect in the past,” she said. Another idea was to have meetings with Student Life Liaisons, a new resource available for student leaders, during the event, but “finding such a large portion of any day that could fit into so many people’s schedules, let alone getting all of the M-F administration to come to work on a Saturday might be asking a lot.”

Increased advocacy for students Accomplishments from the academic side included the creation of student advisory boards for the School of Business and School of Systems and Enterprises (SSE). Both were created last spring, thanks to partners in both schools as well as VPAA Alex Reina. The process included meeting with the Dean of the School of Business to go over the purpose of creating a board and to gauge interest. Next, he had to coordinate with folks from the school (Brandon Griffin, Michelle Crilly, and Ann Murphy) to figure out the specifics of the board, including how many students would be on it and how representation would work. After creating and sending an application to students, interest was collected, and eight students, two from each year, were chosen to be on the board. So far, the board has met three times and its recent

accomplishments include an increased number of research opportunities available to freshmen and sophomores and improved course contents of a sophomore-level course, BT 290.

The advisory board for SSE was started prior to Reina’s term; former VPAA Marianna Fleming handled the selection of students, but Reina “worked with Dean Massoud, Dean Fogarty, and Greg Kennelty to work out the logistics of the board and to schedule the first meeting.”

In terms of the future of the SGA, Gemma sees involvement increasing as the scope and presence of the SGA continues to grow. “Currently there are 12 committees that are engaging with students in ways previously not done before, and I believe this will increase the desire for involvement over the years,” she said. When asked about student-centricity, Malova stated it was both the SGA and administration’s job to tackle because they “work together to make the inside and outside of the classroom experience the best we can.

It’s not 100% perfect but nothing in the world is, except for my mommy, so what we are left with is just to make the experience better and better each year. And that’s what we aim to do.” On the biggest lesson learned during their term, Reina said he was surprised “how interconnected everything is,” and that “making a change in one area could have drastic effects somewhere you wouldn’t expect.”

The current cabinet had some wisdom to impart on the future cabinet.

Gemma said, “My biggest piece of advice

to the cabinet, and anyone in a leadership role, is to have the speech or ideas you ran on written done to have to reference when motivation, enthusiasm, or confidence might be lagging. Reviewing the speech or goals will help in those times of doubt and get you back on track! Remembering your passion will help you create your path!” Reina said, “Don’t blink, because your term will go by faster than you think,” Finally, Malova advised, “Don’t be afraid to ask for help from us old folk, we like staying in the loop even after we leave. Also Google Calendar is key to success and tracking everything you have to do.”

Finally, Tom wanted to add, “the last point I want to make is that our term is still far from over. We still have big goals for our term and lots of plans that we are strongly pushing to accomplish.

Every time we start to feel a bit burnt out, I think we find a whole new set of ideas we are passionate about that light a new fire underneath us. We all strongly care about our positions because of all of the amazing students of Stevens, and want to accomplish as much as we possibly can before our term is up.” He also added that as usual, they implore any and all undergraduate students to reach out with any ideas, suggestions, and feedback. He added, “Senate meetings are every Sunday at 7 p.m., except for the first week of the month, when we are now having meetings during academic break! All students should feel welcome to come and have their voice heard at Senate meetings, or to email the cabinet at sga@stevens.edu!”

Lip Sync Battle of the Boy Bands

BY ALEKsandar dimoski This previous Sunday, October 20, Phi Sigma Sigma sorority held their annual Lip Sync event. The event was on behalf of the Phi Sigma Sigma Foundation and raised close to $2,250, a large improvement from previous years. The Foundation supports school and college readiness for children around the world by supplying scholarships, disaster relief through their Twin Ideals Fund, and by funding leadership development programs.

The event included around 200 attendees, not including the sorority and fraternity members who participated in the contest. The Greek organizations included Phi Sigma Sigma, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Theta Xi, Phi Sigma Kappa, Beta

Theta Pi, and Sigma Nu. The event has each fraternity engage in Lip Sync battles against one another. This year, the theme was boy bands, so each fraternity chose a boy band and made a 5 to 10 minute lip sync/dance to that band’s music. In between the fraternities, members of Phi Sigma Sigma sorority dance to a band of their choosing, with this year’s selection being the Jonas Brothers.

The judges were the presidents of Delta Phi Epsilon, Theta Phi Alpha, and Alphi Phi, who picked a winner after the fraternities had all performed.

The winners of the event were Sigma Phi Epsilon and Theta Xi, who performed Big Time Rush and Maroon 5, respectively. Other contenders were Phi Sigma Kappa as Queen, Beta Theta Pi as Backstreet Boys, and Sigma Nu as NSYNC.

Photos courtesy of Ethan Che

What if it’s more than a bench?

BY MATthew cunningham Look at the bench, and see if you can figure it out. It’s on the west side of Babbio Patio, tucked in the corner, out of the way of major foot traffic.

What you’ll notice immediately is that about one-fifth of the wooden seating area is obstructed by a large solar panel. A pair of USB ports on a console on the front side of the bench provides juice for devices that can connect with it.

Other than that, it’s a regular looking bench — a good place to sit between classes! But what is less obvious is that this bench might be watching you. Underneath the solar panel is a small Wi-Fi enabled sensor that sends data to an office building in East Cambridge, Massachusetts.

When enabled, anyone who passes within 150 feet of the bench with a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device in their pocket is picked up by the sensor and registered as a unique visitor. The sensors can’t access personal information from your phone — they’re designed to pick up the unique ID associated with any Wi-Fi enabled device — but still, if you come back the next day, it knows it’s you again, not a new visitor.

The bench on the west side of Babbio Patio is manufactured by Soofa, a company founded in 2014 by three graduates of the MIT Media Lab. The bench’s name is not a riff of “sofa” but a variant of the acronym for “smart urban furniture appliance.” Urban planning tools, including this bench, are enjoyed largely by city planners that can use new forms of mass data to make smarter decisions on projects. This data helps cities decide, say, whether they want to build a new park in an underdeveloped area with high foot traffic.

Sandra Richter, the co-founder and CEO of Soofa, wrote in a blog post that increasing the amount of available data on foot traffic can empower cities. “City leaders would be able to plan capital improvement projects more effectively and measure their success post implementation, analyze the attendance of events to learn which ones to repeat and which ones to enhance or change, and reduce staffing costs by optimizing maintenance schedules based on how much use different locations actually get,” she wrote.

So then what is Stevens doing with these benches? Are students and faculty getting tracked? According to a staff member from the Office

of Planning and Design, “No,” definitely not. This bench was donated by an alumnus, the staff member said, and what was liked about it was not the tracking capabilities but the solar-powered charging station.

Though tracking capabilities are available, the staff member assured they aren’t used by the university.

Should Stevens decide to enable tracking technologies, Soofa’s privacy policy promises that all data is anonymized. “Soofa observes the information being sent by mobile devices, including the device’s MAC address, manufacturer, and signal strength,” the policy reads. “After receiving the non-identifiable data sent by mobile devices, Soofa applies a cryptographic function to the MAC addresses to further anonymize them. Soofa analyzes the data it observes and provides aggregate anonymous information to our customers, such as cities.”

But even with anonymization, privacy advocates worry that data-driven urban planning tools corrode digital privacy rights. Timothy Yim, the Director of Data & Privacy at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Startup Policy Lab, told Landscape Architecture Magazine that “de-identification,” the process of stripping “personally identifiable information”

from a data set, does not necessarily prevent “reidentification” at a later date.

“It is very hard to guarantee that any de-identification process is 100 percent foolproof,” he told the magazine. “And the more data that we have sitting in private repositories, like data aggregators and data brokers, the greater the likelihood that reidentification is possible.”

Digital rights advocates also question the ethical responsibilities of cities or organizations that have these benches. For example, there

are no signs marking a 150-foot perimeter around Soofa benches warning pedestrians to turn back if they don’t want their devices registered.

Soofa’s privacy policy mentions that aggregated, anonymized data is shared with customers, but it is unclear how data given to those customers will be restricted, if at all.

But until Stevens says that they have enabled the tracking technology, these questions shouldn’t be too concerning. For now, pull out your charger, sit back, relax, and enjoy the bench.

Photo courtesy of Matthew Cunningham

October 25, 2019

5

Science You didn’t notice the rain garden?

BY Samantha winter STAFF WRITER

Light-harvesting crystals grown from nanopores. Photo by Kai Zong.

Stevens professor reinvents solar cells

BY CAMILLE SIMON-AL-ARAJI STAFF WRITER Solar panels: commonly seen as cumbersome, unappealing, and expensive. Stevens Assistant Professor Stephanie Lee’s solar panels: thin, flexible, unassuming, and cheap to manufacture.

Growing up in Randolph, New Jersey, Lee majored in chemical engineering for her undergraduate degree at MIT, followed by Princeton for her Ph.D., and NYU for her postdoc.

During her time at MIT, one of her professors, Dr. Jefferson Tester, now a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell, inspired her to pursue sustainable energy. “He lives what he researches. He drove one of the first hybrid cars, and his home was heated and cooled by geothermal energy.

That was really inspiring to me. With the climate change crisis and the issue of peak oil, society as a whole needs to be looking at other energy sources. So that is what motivated me to pursue solar energy in my research,” Lee said.

In her time at Princeton, Lee began her research in sustainable energy with a focus on emerging photovoltaics (devices that generate electricity directly from sunlight) and continued her research at Stevens as a professor.

Today’s traditional photovoltaics, or solar panels, are made out of silicon, with around a 15% efficiency rate (15% of the sunlight can be converted into electricity). These stable systems, commonly seen on rooftops and in solar panel fields, can last for 15 years or longer. However, traditional solar panels are extremely heavy, brittle, and expensive, preventing their widespread adoption—in 2018, less than 2% of the total energy produced in the US was generated from solar panels.

Lee wants to develop photovoltaic systems that are the opposite: light, flexible, and reasonably priced. To do so, her team is replacing inorganic silicon with organic materials: carbon-based polymers and molecules that can dissolve into a solution to make a photoactive ink. “You can take these inks and load them into an inkjet printer, for example. You can print out your solar panels instead of having to process materials at extremely high temperatures in sterile environments that are required for producing traditional panels,” Lee explained. “If we move to these organic-based systems, we can make our solar panels flexible.

We can also produce them over large areas at high throughputs, which will increase our production capacity of solar panels and drive down the manufacturing costs.”

Lee’s research group during Summer 2019, which included 4 Ph.D. students, 5 undergraduate researchers, and 2 high school students.

One of the most promising materials for these emerging solar panels is metal halide perovskites. These materials can be dissolved into organic solvents, absorb wavelengths across a broad range of the solar spectrum, and can conduct electrons efficiently.

Lee noted that the “perovskite solar cells have gotten to over 23% efficient, which is very high for these types of materials.”

Ph.D. student Xiaoqing Kong fabricating a solar cell device in the laboratory.

A main issue with perovskites is that they can only be tested in nitrogen environments. When exposed to oxygen and moisture, they can breakdown within hours or days. “This is just one of several challenges facing their commercialization,” Lee noted.

When explaining the process of dissolving the molecules into a solution to make photoactive inks, Lee notes the difficulty of “drying time.”

“When you write with a pen, the ink dries within seconds—during the time that the ink is drying is the amount of time that we have to control molecular assembly,” Lee said. While these thinfilm solar cells are flexible and more lightweight, the ways in which the molecules are assembled in the films is extremely important. The molecules in the films typically crystallize, or solidify, into ordered structures.

Because the size and orientation of crystals are critical to efficiently converting photons into electrons, the details of the crystallization process largely determine the overall efficiency of the solar cells. Lee’s team is trying to engineer strategies to control crystallization as the ink dries.

“My group is examining how to

improve the processing of emerging solar panels. In the few seconds that we have to assemble the molecules, what strategies can we use to get them to crystallize the way that we want in the direction that we want and the size that we want?” Lee said.

Light-harvesting crystals grown from nanopores. The nanopores were made by Prof. Chang-Hwan Choi’s group through a photolithography process. Using nanoporous scaffolds to control the size and orientation of crystals is one of Lee’s strategies to improve the efficiency of emerging solar panels. Photo by Kai Zong.

When asked about her team’s goals, Lee replied that their target is always moving since they can always do better. “I think that’s the fascinating thing about being in academia.

Projects morph and change and your interests change, and there are so many unanswered questions in the world. I never see projects as having a finite goal that needs to be completed. I’m always thinking about the next interesting questions that our current research raises and where these paths are going to lead us,” Lee said. “I really love the freedom academia provides to explore uncharted territories and pursue our scientific passions.”

Lee began as an assistant professor at Stevens in 2014, teaching undergraduate chemical engineering thermodynamics and graduate soft matter physics. “When I was looking for faculty positions, I was drawn to Stevens because I went to a tech institute for undergrad and I just loved the environment. In high school, I was part of a small group of students interested in math and science and technology. And I was pretty much the only girl who was interested in any of these areas. At MIT, I was surrounded by students who are just as geeky and nerdy as me, and I loved it,” Lee said. “I was really attracted to Stevens because of its mission as a technology-centric university and the types of students it attracts.”

Lee’s journey to becoming a professor in academia was not a direct path. “Coming to the point where I thought I could be a professor was actually a very long route. I went to grad school because I didn’t want to go to industry, and then I went to my postdoc because I still wasn’t ready to go to industry. But during that entire time I never seriously considered becoming a professor. I didn’t have a lot of examples of women professors. Most of my professors were men, older, and extremely smart. So it took me a while to get there,” Lee said.

She thanked her postdoc advisor at NYU, Michael Ward, for encouraging her and giving her the space to explore academia. “I taught my first course at NYU: thermodynamics. I hated thermodynamics as a student.

I was terrified of teaching the course.

But when I sat down to teach it, I fell in love with it. It was a defining moment in my life where I realized that I love teaching. I love interacting with students and helping them to understand difficult concepts,” Lee said.

Lee also thanked her supportive family. “My parents never put limits on me because of my gender. I was interested in science from an early age, and they always nurtured that interest. My dad’s an engineer, so I was inspired to go into engineering because of him,” Lee said.

Lee noted that for her, “having a supportive spouse is also really critical to success. My husband has always been my biggest cheerleader and is always encouraging me to take opportunities.” When talking about her two young children, Lee noted how supportive Stevens has been in terms of her being a working parent. “I always knew I wanted to have a family, and I think that desire was one of the things holding me back from becoming a professor at first because the two didn’t look compatible to me. But Stevens has been really amazing. I have a crib in my office. When they were infants, I would take them to my office all the time. It was really special to have that time with them, and I could come back to work much earlier after giving birth than I would have if I took a traditional maternity leave.”

“In terms of family, I think a lot of people would have told me not to have kids as an assistant professor.

Continued online at thestute.com

It can be easy to miss what you’re not looking for.

Professor Dr. Fassman-Beck of the Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering department has been running the Living Laboratory for Stormwater Green Infrastructure (GI) at Stevens for years. You’ve never visited the on-campus lab? Well, it’s not necessarily a place.

It’s a whole system.

Located around the North Building on upper campus are three rain gardens, a green roof, and four bioretention planters. There are also two rain gardens on Hudson Street, one at the corner of 8th and Hudson, and one between the two doors entering ABS from Hudson Street. If you’re baffled as to how you’ve missed seeing this major part of your everyday surroundings, just be on the lookout next time you’re walking on campus. It’s worth it.

The purpose of the Living Laboratory project? To engineer green infrastructure to solve urban stormwater problems. Ultimately, Fassman-Beck and her students want to measure real-world-applicable results by creating quantitative water quality data. This will help to progress and encourage green design and policy, potentially worldwide.

As quoted in a NASA article, green engineering expert and Virginia Tech professor Sean McGinnis, “the ability of human societies to sustain our health, our quality of life and our environment is increasingly at risk due to resource depletion and emissions into the air, water, land and space. There are no simple solutions to this complex problem, and progress requires efforts by citizens, businesses, and governments at local, regional, national and global scales.”

The living lab is working to provide such imperative solutions.

Two of the lab’s key undertakings include rain gardens and bioretention planters.

Rain gardens are created to manage stormwater runoff. Their engineered systems are used to imitate the natural hydrologic cycle, or the Earth’s atmospheric water pattern. They usually have a layer of engineered media (soil

designed with specific measurable characteristics in mind) and then a variety of other layers and components in the area around it.

A well-structured rain garden can provide municipal benefits. It also can create a lush habitat for birds, butterflies, and other organisms, reduce runoff and flooding, and filter contaminants carried in runoff.

Yang Cheng, a Stevens second year PhD student studying Environmental Engineering, works on the on-campus rain garden. She says her biggest initial research challenge was that “our runoff collection system had its limit. It was unable to capture big storms, “rain greater than 22 mm.” Yet, during this past summer, the team replaced it with a bigger collecting container that increased the system’s capability of capturing bigger storms.

According to a Groundwater Foundation article, “rain gardens are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from the rainwater runoff.” This can prove especially useful because the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that pollutants carried by rainwater runoff account for 70% of all water pollution. The research conducted at Stevens on rain gardens could be imperative in the future. Also, they just look nice.

The lab’s other main focus is on bioretention planters. These structures work much like rain gardens but are instead located in a concrete box. Since there is no disruptive exfiltration to the natural soils in the foundation, the box’s concrete bottom can be placed under virtually any downspout. Some benefits include the reduction of runoff, toxin removal, and overall aesthetic enjoyment.

Sensors are incorporated into the planters to help researchers assess the overall effectiveness of the garden and answer research-related questions.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials website assesses that “planters are highly adaptable to most urban contexts and can be sized and modified easily to optimize infiltration rate in constrained spaces,” especially in areas on the street. Implementation seems fairly effective and practical. Right?

Not so fast. There is little knowledge on how bioretention planters should be built because they are much smaller than most rain gardens, and their actual effectiveness is disputed. This is where Stevens researchers come in.

Kiera Nissen is a second year PhD student in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Water Resources. She researches the bioretention planters intently.

“Several buildings around Hoboken currently have green roofs,” she disclosed to me. There are bioretention devices installed along Hudson Street at nearly every corner. “They might just look like some nice plants,” she says, “but they do a very specific task, and I think it is cool to know what people are doing to solve problems.”

The EPA is researching bioretention, too. Although there are still testable unknowns, the research conducted at Stevens could soon be extensively implemented.

“There is a theory that if we can delay water before it reaches the sewer, we can prevent an overload of a system,” says Nissen. “For my first project I am working on how long it takes for the rain to fall and the water to leave our bioretention planters.”

So far, Nissen feels proud of the progress the researchers have made.

These green technologies implemented throughout Hoboken “weren’t in the plans when the buildings around them were developed, but there was a space and it was filled with the rain garden.”

She also feels hopeful about the Living Laboratory’s potential to be a leader in green tech research. “The more we know whether systems like this are ‘worth it’ even if it isn’t in the ideal place or conditions or size, I think is really useful. That is why I am so interested in the planters, if we can show that these can be an effective tool, it can be much easier to implement them than a rain garden or green roof which have significant size and structural constraints.”

Philadelphia and New York City are leading the way regionally with green infrastructure plans such as tunnels, green roofs, and other stormwater management systems. With the help of Dr. Fassman-Beck, Hoboken is on its way.

A living laboratory concept. Photo courtesy of monash.edu

Understanding the unpredictable with deep brain stimulation

BY OLIVIA SHANAHAN STAFF WRITER Day of Remembrance Memorial Service in November, and with student organizations It can be easy to miss what you’re not looking for.

Professor Dr. Fassman-Beck of the Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering department has been running the Living Laboratory for Stormwater Green Infrastructure (GI) at Stevens for years. You’ve never visited the on-campus lab? Well, it’s not necessarily a place. It’s a whole system.

Located around the North Building on upper campus are three rain gardens, a green roof, and four bioretention planters. There are also two rain gardens on Hudson Street, one at the corner of 8th and Hudson, and one between the two doors entering ABS from Hudson Street. If you’re baffled as to how you’ve missed seeing this major part of your everyday surroundings, just be on the lookout next time you’re walking on campus. It’s worth it.

The purpose of the Living Laboratory project? To engineer green infrastructure to solve urban stormwater problems. Ultimately, Fassman-Beck and her students want to measure real-world-applicable results by creating quantitative water quality data. This will help to progress and encourage green design and policy, potentially worldwide.

As quoted in a NASA article, green engineering expert and Virginia Tech

professor Sean McGinnis, “the ability of human societies to sustain our health, our quality of life and our environment is increasingly at risk due to resource depletion and emissions into the air, water, land and space. There are no simple solutions to this complex problem, and progress requires efforts by citizens, businesses, and governments at local, regional, national and global scales.” The living lab is working to provide such imperative solutions.

Two of the lab’s key undertakings include rain gardens and bioretention planters.

Rain gardens are created to manage stormwater runoff. Their engineered systems are used to imitate the natural hydrologic cycle, or the Earth’s atmospheric water pattern. They usually have a layer of engineered media (soil designed with specific measurable characteristics in mind) and then a variety of other layers and components in the area around it.

A well-structured rain garden can provide municipal benefits. It also can create a lush habitat for birds, butterflies, and other organisms, reduce runoff and flooding, and filter contaminants carried in runoff.

Yang Cheng, a Stevens second year PhD student studying Environmental Engineering, works on the on-campus rain garden. She says her biggest initial research challenge was that “our runoff collection system had its limit.

It was unable to capture big storms, “rain greater than 22 mm.” Yet, during

this past summer, the team replaced it with a bigger collecting container that increased the system’s capability of capturing bigger storms.

According to a Groundwater Foundation article, “rain gardens are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from the rainwater runoff.” This can prove especially useful because the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that pollutants carried by rainwater runoff account for 70% of all water pollution. The research conducted at Stevens on rain gardens could be imperative in the future. Also, they just look nice.

The lab’s other main focus is on bioretention planters. These structures work much like rain gardens but are instead located in a concrete box. Since there is no disruptive exfiltration to the natural soils in the foundation, the box’s concrete bottom can be placed under virtually any downspout. Some benefits include the reduction of runoff, toxin removal, and overall aesthetic enjoyment. Sensors are incorporated into the planters to help researchers assess the overall effectiveness of the garden and answer research-related questions.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials website assesses that “planters are highly adaptable to most urban contexts and can be

Continued online at thestute.com

October 25, 2019

6

Campus Pulse

Murad Arslaner

“Nothing really, it’s a pretty safe campus.”

John Wang

“The ghost of the Lieb building.”

Justin Westley “Skipping a professors class and seeing them outside of class”

ROVING REPORTER What scares you the most on campus?

Calvin Lyttle “Skeletons”

Ashely Muliawan

“Getting hit by construction truck.”

Anthony Caicedo

“The dead pigeon on the fourth floor in the garage.”

Soduku

Comic by Gregory Kane

October 25, 2019

7

Culture Stevens Spoon

Passion for Fashion

Bankruptcy

The noods to replace all foods

BY SOPHIE CHO STEVENS SPOON During the school year, college students can easily get stuck managing their time poorly. Classes keep students inundated with homework, projects, and exams to the point where eating is sometimes the last thing on a student’s mind. Many people resort to options such as instant ramen and fast food because they are convenient; however, they offer little nutritional value and are high in sodium, sugar, and fat.

A couple semesters ago, I made the mistake scheduling six hours of classes in a row with no breaks in between, which left me with little time to eat. I ended up trying the nutritionally-balanced, meal replacement drink, Soylent, which held me over until I could get myself some actual food after class. This usually worked out fine, but on days I felt especially hungry, I craved something savory (as all of the flavor offerings from Soylent are sweet). I began to wonder if there was something remotely similar to Soylent that could satisfy my salt cravings. In April of 2018, I stumbled across a Kickstarter for a line of healthy ramen called ViteRamen.

What is ViteRamen?

ViteRamen is the first instant ramen that is made with taste, nutrition, and convenience in mind. Each packet contains a 500-calorie meal that can be prepared in under five minutes, with one serving size including a 25% daily recommended value of all essential vitamins and minerals (compared to one bottle of Soylent, which has 400 calories and contains 20% of your daily value of micronutrients). It is emphasized that this healthy ramen does not include artificial preservatives, deep frying of the noodles, or excessive sodium. ViteRamen is made completely in the U.S. and comes in three flavors: garlic pork, soy sauce chicken, and vegan mushroom shio.

My Overview of ViteRamen When I first found ViteRamen on Kickstarter, I was so intrigued that I impulsively backed the project, choosing the pledge option of receiving four packets in each flavor.

The target month for backers to receive their ViteRamen was August, but I received mine in January of 2019. (I anticipated and was willing to accept any delays in receiving my ramen as this was a crowdfunded project and I was so excited to try it.)

In a bag of ViteRamen, there are the noodles, a seasoning sachet, a ‘noodrient’ sachet (how punny of them), an oil sachet, and a dehydrated vegetable packet. The instructions direct you to cook the noodles in boiling water for two and a half minutes, remove them from heat (to let the noodles cool down so the nutrients do not degrade when added), and then add the four packets of ingredients.

I found that the best way of making the noodles was to cook them for one and a half minutes and then transfer the noodles and water to a bowl.

Finally, I sat down to taste my healthy ramen. I noticed that the water slightly thickened up into a broth from the ingredient packets. The tastes of the broth of the three flavors were nearly indistinguishable to me; mildly salty and earthy, with a little bit of a funk that I think could be attributed to the noodtrient powder that was added. Nothing a little spoonful of soy sauce and rice vinegar couldn’t fix, in my opinion. I actually think it’s a good thing that they made ViteRamen have a neutral flavor profile because each person can always add more soy sauce or other ingredients if they so desire. The noodles were very straight and flat in shape but they had a nice texture to them because of the mix of all-purpose flour and quinoa flour. Overall, I would describe the eating experience of ViteRamen (with a few added ingredients such as a softboiled egg, chopped up onions, and soy sauce) to be pretty satisfying.

ViteRamen checks off a lot of boxes for what busy people want from a meal. Each serving offers a healthy, fast, and relatively tasty bowl of noodles that can be customized to every person’s preferences. Preparing a bowl of ViteRamen may not be as convenient as the grab-and-go-ability of Soylent, but the fact that these noodles are a savory and easy-tomake option is undeniably awesome.

Furthermore, a packet of ViteRamen has comparable calories to your average packet of instant ramen, but is a more nutritionally balanced option. I think that ViteRamen is a great food to be stocked up on for days when you’re craving something savory but are crunched for time to make a meal.

If you’re interested in trying this healthy ramen yourself, Spoon University will be offering samples at their Spooky Foods event on October 29 at 9:15 p.m. in BC 104.

Photo courtesy of viteramen.com

BY MELISSA KOSAR SOPHOMORE

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY Is retail dead? Technological advances and decreased motivation of consumers has caused a shift toward online shopping.

More often than not, most people would rather hop online and browse an app or website than drive to a mall and pick through the racks to find something they

Photo courtesy of Melissa Kosar are looking for. Is the whole idea of a mall being replaced by the growth of the internet?

Just a few weeks ago, Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection. In addition, the luxury goods retailer Barney’s has also

filed for bankruptcy. These are scary bits of information for a shopaholic like me. While online stores are convenient and booming more than ever right now, I do not wish to see shopping malls and stores disappear.

Put Your Records On

A response to Pitchfork’s “How Indie Went Pop—and Pop Went Indie—in the 2010s”

BY CHRISTIAN BONAVITA JUNIOR

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING This week, I chose to respond to an article by Pitchfork, an online music magazine that is known for its coverage and reviews of new releases of popular and independent music. Many music fans, and many I know here at Stevens, have a complicated relationship with Pitchfork — its editors over-hype some artists, are negatively biased towards others, and, by writing in a verbose style, can appear as snobs who favor difficult music over the enjoyable and easy to listen to. With this complicated view in mind, I wanted to tackle an article posted by Pitchfork recently that was interesting but missed key factors in trends that I’ve seen from a music listener’s perspective.

The article I’d like to focus on was released on Thursday, October 17, and was written by Jayson Greene as a part of a Pitchfork series of longform articles wrapping up the 2010 decade. This article, titled “How Indie Went Pop—and Pop Went Indie—in the 2010s,” describes how an “industry collapse” in the late 2000s led to collaboration between pop and independent artists. The result is the modern state of music: James Blake is collaborating with Travis Scott and popular music is a complete free-for-all (see my Charli XCX review). While this article mentions events that exemplify the re-

sults of the trend that Greene observed, it doesn’t devote enough time to correctly identifying and discussing the mechanism which caused this trend, namely, file sharing and streaming. Without a longer discussion of the impact these factors have had on the music industry, readers are missing a key piece of the formula that has changed music over the decade.

First, the title of the article begs a question that will serve as a good starting point. How is Pitchfork defining “pop” and “indie”? Does this distinction lie across genre and sound, or association with major labels? An intriguing way Pitchfork defines the difference is by mentioning “financial and ideological barriers” which separated the worlds of pop and indie at the beginning of the decade.

Pop belongs to artists like Taylor Swift, but not just because they have the financial backing to do anything conceivable by imagination. Pop artists also align with an ideology, particularly one of pandering or inoffensiveness, i.e. seeking universality over making bold social statements. Indie, on the other hand, denotes not just artists who have less disposable income, but also those with disruptive and insurgent ideologies. (The two often go hand in hand.)

When considering both the financial and ideological aspects of what separates pop and indie, the dissolution of this barrier, which is a central idea of Greene’s article, is easy to recognize, especially with the plethora of examples supplied. The barrier disappearing due to the chaos caused by decreasing album sales, which impacted the music industry greatly starting around 10 years ago, led to collaborations between artists from completely different spheres and the changing definition of who should win awards like Grammys (for instance, Arctic Monkeys, Bon Iver, and Beck). It has also allowed established pop artists, like Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli XCX, to continue their careers after a meteoric hit and be edgier, campier, or more experimental.

While these observations were brilliantly written, the causes of the changes (file sharing and streaming) were vastly

understated. The article made it seem like Jay Z and Beyoncé noticed the change in the music industry and started a trend by going to Beach House concerts — like artists were calculated and poised in expanding out of their genres, rather than influenced by trends out of their control and completely reactionary. The Internet allowed music to be distributed widely for free. As a result, Spotify and similar streaming sources became massively popular at the same time album sales began to tank. As a Billboard-obsessed middle schooler, I watched in awe as average album sales for the Billboard 200 #1 album dropped from hundreds of thousands per week to under 10,000 over just a few years. Music’s popularity is now almost entirely demonstrated through streaming, and this can account for many of the observations listed in Greene’s article.

Nowadays, musicians don’t have to be on a major label to have their albums on shelves nationwide; they can simply upload their music to streaming services and anyone, anywhere, can listen to it to their heart’s content. Pop artists no longer feel the pressure to make music that will bring in contracts and money from labels, and indie musicians can reach a wider audience. Beyoncé’s 2013 eponymous album felt like an artist being liberated, more than anything — it was experimental and shockingly different from her previous sound. Meanwhile, artists like Arctic Monkeys and Bon Iver were able to expand their audiences and win big at the Grammys as a result.

Streaming allowed pop artists to be freer ideologically, while indie artists could gain financially, reaching new audiences and being recognized by other artists.

I hope that in their series of decade-wrapping articles, Pitchfork includes one that discusses the centrality of streaming and the Internet in changing the music industry in the 2010s.

In 2019, music begins and ends at streaming on countless platforms. Although Pitchfork has been sure to reference it in the past, this element was certainly understated in this article.

Passionate about Something on campus?

Have a hobby you want to share with others?

Write an opinion column about it!

Contact us at eboard@thestute.com with your sample between 500 and 800 words.

October 25, 2019

8

Opinion The Stute Editorial

The job of the media This week has been exceptionally chaotic at the Stute. As usual, regardless of midterms, classes, and other commitments, we’re cranking out our 10-page newspaper filled with content for the Stevens community. At least we have candy and coffee at the office, because I know that I need sugar to survive my 12 hour shift at the office.

We aren’t procrastinators! Okay, maybe a little. There’s just so much work to do, and juggling it with our regular lives is huge. We have to come up with article ideas, find people who are willing to write articles out of the goodness of their hearts, corral them into writing in a 48-hour turnaround time, edit every single article for grammar, and, if we have the time, try to find a subject matter expert to fact check the article.

Only after we have articles can we design the pages for the articles in the print issue. All of this happens between Tuesday and Thursday at midnight.

I was having a conversation with an alum on Wednesday about how much the Stute has changed since his

time at Stevens. At first, I disagreed because the office is just as, if not more chaotic on a weekly basis. But he said something along the lines of how the articles we write now “would not fly” back during his time (5 to 6 years ago) and how he loved our shift to more investigative, “real” news articles. Not that all articles “fly,” because they definitely don’t, but it made me realize that we’re definitely just bolder now. Less afraid of taking risks. Willing to sacrifice our personal reputations in order to fulfill what we see as our purpose: speaking truthfully about the Stevens experience and delivering the realest content to the Stevens community. Writing things that are real and require research definitely adds a lot to our workload.

We’re trying our best, despite obvious roadblocks. Besides the fact that it’s been two months without office computers, a major problem that we are facing these days is that people are either too busy to talk to us or have been instructed not to talk to us. We’ve been working on the first one by send-

ing people questions several days in advance (whenever possible). But the second one is out of our hands and what really sets us back in the newsroom.

Last week, there were two articles where we just wanted a “feel good” kind of quote where we asked people working for Stevens to just say something nice about the events they were attending. That’s it! Just something like, “This event is great for x, y, z reasons,” and we would publish that, verbatim. In both instances, the folks wanted to provide us with a quote, but said that they were not allowed to comment without getting approval from their supervisor, which wouldn’t be possible until the next day.

It’s frustrating and borderline suffocating. Every time we try to write an article, like 10 people are copied just to keep an eye on us. Or, we get asked to hold off on writing an article long enough that it no longer becomes relevant to write about. That’s the price we have to pay for trying to be a real newspaper, I guess. I have been told

Mind of a Freshman

What we can learn from lousy public transportation

BY JULIA WIERZBICKI FRESHMAN

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Over the weekend, I took a trip to Manhattan. Not very unusual for a Stevens student, but it was on this particular trip that I took a lot of public transportation. I went from PATH to subway to another subway and then all the way back again.

Overall, I spent nearly two hours in the NYC public transportation system (I counted). The more time I spent in the cramped, smelly areas, the more I realized how just plain awful they are. I mean, they were fine for when they were built. But compared to the amazing strides that New York City has made technology-wise, it really feels like public

transportation has remained stuck in the past. They’re dirty, messy, rickety, and probably should’ve been replaced years ago. How can there be a holographic elevator in the Freedom Tower, but we’re still riding the same decrepit subways that are just barely holding on? The biggest answer is inconvenience, but I think the more interesting reason is something we can all relate to: habit.

The easy answer as to why no one has bothered to update the subway system in New York is that there are too many people who use it. People rely on it every day to get to work and school, so it’s not like you can just shut it down for a month to refurbish it. But still, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is most likely a representation of a larger picture, something much bigger than just an old subway system. I think this concept of getting stuck in a rut is a pretty good representation of the bad habits we all fall into.

Everyone has something that they do regularly that they’re not proud of. I’d hedge a bet that most people would admit to spending way too much time on Netf lix or scrolling through Instagram or procrastinating homework. We know they’re bad for us, we know they’re wrong,

but we keep doing them. They’ve become so ingrained into our lives that it seems virtually impossible to overcome them. I’ve heard that it takes 66 days for a new behavior to become a habit, and if we’ve been doing something our whole lives, then it’s been a lot longer than two months. Like the NYC public transportation system, we’ve gotten to the point where we rely on things so much that we feel there’s no chance of change. But that’s not true.

Lucky for us, although it may be virtually impossible to refurbish the city’s public transportation, it’s not impossible for us to work on ourselves. We don’t need to completely stop our lives to make small changes. The first step is identifying what bad habits we’ve gotten ourselves into and brainstorm small ways to slowly push them back out of our lives. It’s important to understand, though, that we may not need to get rid of them completely. Moderation is key, so a guilty pleasure is fine in small doses. But we have to be careful that some bad habits don’t completely overwhelm us to the point of running us off the rails (see my pun?). So while the NYC subway system is probably not going to get fixed anytime soon, that doesn’t mean the same is true about our lives.

Senioritis

Running for President: A retrospective

BY MARK KRUPINSKI SENIOR

COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE This week, nominations for the SGA President and Vice President of Operations close. Multiple tickets are vying for the “hot seat” of leader of the student body. Last year, I put my hat in the ring for an election which heavily favored Jon Darlak. After candidates dropping out and weird constitutional situations, I ended up losing in an election runoff to current SGA President Jason Chlus and his running mate Ryan Tom — and then did not end up on the SGA cabinet. Still, I learned a lot from running my campaign.

First: running mate selection. My running mate, Alex Murtagh, and I came from very similar backgrounds.

Both of our main involvements on campus were as executive board members of The Stute. While this was one of our main advantages (actually knowing what the heck IS going on around campus), it didn’t lend to knowing a lot

of different people. If you aspire to lead the SGA during a school-wide vote, have a diverse ticket which touches multiple different aspects of campus.

Second: actually campaigning. I kind of dropped the ball big time on this one. Freshman year, one of the SGA tickets knocked on my dorm room door and said, “Vote for us, here’s some candy.” Not knowing anything about the student government, I voted for them. Eventually, they won.

When elections finally opened and we began dorm storming, another ticket had already gotten there with their full-color flyers, as opposed to our “cheap” black and white flyers.

We were outdone, and didn’t even try. We just slid our flyers under the doors. No knocking or introductions.

Then, the runoff election was during Thanksgiving break. That’s a damper.

Finally (and most importantly): knowing people. I’m a bit full of myself, so I’ll plainly state that I believe that I had the strongest platform and was among the most knowledgeable of campus events out of those running. However, having the strongest policies barely does anything in securing victory. It’s all about knowing the most people — and those people having a positive perception of you.

I’m a brother of Lodge — one of the smallest fraternities on campus.

My opponents were brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon and Kappa Sigma — some of the biggest fraternities on campus.

Aside from the number of people in each fraternity, each one has more “friends of friends” to draw upon. Every one of those people has their mind

made up. It’s less people you can campaign to, and it’s a hard gap to make up. Previous winners were extremely well-known and liked on campus.

Furthermore, none of the questions asked during the debate or by The Stute aimed at actually questioning policy. Almost every question was a soft ball. Nothing about what they’ve done in the past, nothing on hard issues. Still, “What would you do differently that the current president?” was the stumper question for the leading ticket. Not anything topical, out of left field, or a just plain difficult question. If policy was actually important — and not just a contest of favorites — questions would be difficult and ask for stances on difficult topics. This year, I’ve taken charge of The Stute’s efforts to interview the presidential candidates, so I hope everyone will enjoy more policy-based, hard-hitting answers from the candidates. My platform focused on impactful changes that could be accomplished realistically within a year.

Let’s see actual impact, not lofty goals.

I don’t want to provide any comments yet on the candidates as I haven’t finished interviewing all of them and digesting their platforms. However, from my perspective, both campaigns seem to know similar amounts of people. I’m excited for a campaign where policy may actually make a difference in who is the sole representative of the student body to the administration.

Let’s see what these brighteyed sophomores can do before they learn the harsh realities of Stevens.

the reason why people don’t want to talk to us is that they’re worried about being misrepresented and that we’re going to write something bad about them. My theory is that Stevens has a specific vision and PR package, and they can’t stand kids like us trying to snoop around and dig up stories that they’d prefer we never find out about.

As students, we just want to bring attention to what’s really happening at Stevens so other students feel comforted in their experiences rather than feeling alone. But those who work for Stevens probably fear this. If more students catch wind of the things happening to each other, then they’ll realize they are not alone in their experiences and that things need to change.

That just makes more work for them, so obviously the Stute is the problem.

The Stute isn’t the SGA. I realized that in the past few years we have become a platform for students to advocate for the changes they want to see. It does make me happy to see the newspaper I work so hard on being used to

its full potential. However, it’s not our job to change the student experience or work collaboratively with anyone to make Stevens a “better place.” I’ll leave the SGA to pick itself up in due time and work for the changes they want to see.

At the end of the day, I believe the job of the media is to hold governing bodies accountable for the things they do, as well as what they don’t do, and that is exactly what we’re trying to do here at the Stute.

Audrey Dsouza Editor-in-Chief

Scientific Curmudgeon

The enduring blight of scientific racism

BY JOHN HORGAN PROFESSOR CAL

Angela Saini is one of the bravest science journalists I know. In Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story, which she spoke about at Stevens last year, she confronts sexism in science. She’s returning to Stevens on November 4 to talk about her compelling new book Superior: The Return of Race Science, which exposes scientific racism.

Sexists and racists have viciously attacked Saini online, but that hasn’t stopped her from speaking out. Racism, like sexism, is a personal topic for Saini, who is of Indian descent. Growing up in London, she endured abuse from white children, who hurled insults and stones at her and her sister. Racism is hardly unique to white Westerners, she acknowledges. Indians, after all, have long engaged in discrimination against each other, as reflected in their notorious caste system. “Every society that happens to be dominant comes to think of itself as the best, deep down,” Saini comments.

But scientific racism — an oxymoron if ever there was one — is a relatively recent, localized phenomenon. It emerged in Europe during the so-called Enlightenment and accelerated after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. “It is no accident that modern ideas of race were formed during the height of European colonialism,” Saini writes, “when those in power had already decided on their own superiority.”

White, male Europeans used race science — embodied in ideologies such as social Darwinism and eugenics — to justify their nations’ conquest, enslavement, and extermination of non-white people. The association of the Nazis with scientific racism complicated its marketing after World War II. Racist individuals and organizations have nonetheless fueled the recent resurgence of science that supposedly establishes the innate superiority of certain groups.

Those who espouse this ideology call themselves “race realists.” They insist that racial injustice and inequality “isn’t injustice or inequality at all,” Saini explains. “It’s there because the racial hierarchy is real.”

Race realists claim that “they are challenging the politically correct wider world by standing up for good science and that those who oppose them are irrational science deniers.”

But race, as Saini shows, has always been an arbitrary way to categorize people, motivated primarily

by political rather than scientific goals. She herself can be categorized as black, brown, or Caucasian. Yes, some genetic markers and heritable diseases, like sickle cell anemia, tend to be associated with certain populations, a fact exploited by 23andMe and Ancestry.com and by scientists tracing human evolution.

But numerous studies have revealed far more genetic variation within than between races, however they are defined. Given this enormous variability, it is absurd to make gross generalizations, as racists do, about the character and capabilities of certain groups. The concept of race “is useless, pernicious nonsense,” geneticist Mark Thomas tells Saini.

Many scientists doing race-related research claim they want to help victims of racism. For example, researchers have long sought a biological basis for African-Americans’ relatively high rates of hypertension, which is associated with higher rates of heart disease, stroke, and death. I had assumed this to be a case in which race science could be beneficial, because it could lead to improved medical treatments for blacks.

But Saini presents evidence that environmental factors — including stress and poverty resulting from discrimination — are the primary causes of African-Americans’ elevated hypertension. The claim that black Americans’ hypertension stems from their genes “lays the blame for inequality at the feet of biology,” Saini writes. “If poor health today is intrinsic to black bodies and has nothing to do with racism, it’s not anyone’s fault.”

Saini envisions a world in which race really does not matter, in which individuals are judged, as Martin Luther King put it, by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Saini thus worries about the insidious effects of identity politics and of ancestry testing, which has “helped reinforce the idea that race is real.” “Have pride in where you live or where your ancestors come from if you like,” she says, but “don’t be sucked into believing that you are so different from others that your rights have more value.”

But race poses a paradox. Race should not matter, and yet it does, profoundly, as long as racism endures. As the case of black hypertension shows, race might not be a legitimate biological category, but in a racist society, it has measurable biological as well as social consequences.

Superior left me pondering hard questions: Can scientists study race in a way that doesn’t exacerbate racism? Or does all such research, no matter how well-intentioned, subtly reinforce the idea that an individual’s race matters? If scientists do research with the explicit goal of countering racism, are they really scientists, or are they social activists? Finally, can we take pride in our ethnic heritage without being racist? If you are interested in these urgent issues, please come to Saini’s talk on Monday, November 4, 3-4 p.m., in Babbio Auditorium.

John Horgan directs the Stevens Center for Science Writings.

This column is adapted from one originally published on his Scientific American blog, “Cross-check.”

October 25, 2019

9

Opinion Campus Conservative

Campus Liberal

College for all

BY PETER WHITE FRESHMAN

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING According to the U.S. Department of Education, American student loan debt in 2019 has surpassed $1.5 trillion distributed across 45 million individual borrowers. For the class of 2017, the average debt $28,560.

Student loan debt is now the second largest type of debt in the nation, only behind mortgage debt. These numbers are clearly staggering, but it is difficult to truly understand the impact of this issue without exploring the effect that this massive debt has on millennials and those now graduating, as more than half of that debt is owed by individuals under the age of 50.

Arguably, the main point of going to college is to make more money.

You are more likely to get hired into a high-paying job if you possess a degree. So, many people take the calculated risk of accumulating debt now, to make money in four years. However, this risk vs. reward calculation has been backfiring on college graduates.

Oftentimes, these graduates will be forced to take low-skill, low-wage jobs so that they may begin to pay back their debt as quickly as possible. This means they cannot focus on getting the job that their schooling trained

them for. This situation would be analogous to training your whole life to be an NBA star, and then, as soon as you become eligible, going to work at McDonald’s because you couldn’t afford to go without pay through the preseason. According to ProgressNow, this situation is so bad that college graduates are 36% less likely to buy a house than the generations that came before them. They are more likely to live at home with their parents, and more likely to become “severely delinquent,” missing multiple payments.

It is clear that student loan debt is a dangerous risk that leaves the student with less economic freedom.

These problems, however, apply almost exclusively to the American middle class. Families at the top of the economic system either don’t have to take out loans in the first place or can pay off what little they owe very quickly. Below the middle class has the opposite result, where they can’t even take the risk to go to college in the first place. Their families are already in debt or are making so little that the children must contribute as soon as they are able, thus forgoing higher education. The demographic in between these two situations, the middle class, feels that they can greatly benefit from college, but do not have the wealth to escape debt-free.

From the statistics above, the potential problems are clear. I am sure most college students have heard of Senator Bernie Sanders’ plan to relieve Americans of this problem: College For All. Sanders’ plan would result in the cancellation of all student loan debt in America. Immediately, those millennials who are unable to move out of their parents’ house gain the economic freedom required to seek the job that they spent at least four years training for. The $1.5 trillion that was only owed to the government could be put into the economy in a more productive manner, while 45 million Americans have a massive weight lifted from their shoulders.

Still, the most amazing part of the plan is often left out of mainstream discussions. It is true that erasing debt will boost the economy and create a more productive group of college graduates — which is especially important given that the U.S. is experiencing a shortage of highly-educated workers in many fields — but it will also allow a massive amount of first generation students to consider college as a viable option. Lower-class families will be more able to invest in their futures by seeking degrees. It will give Americans the tools they need to escape poverty, and, by drastically increasing the number of Americans with degrees, it will satisfy the job market’s need for expertise.

A common critique of College For All is that it will cost too much to be viable. The Sanders campaign clearly explains that this cost can be almost entirely erased when the wealthiest Americans are taxed fairly. This column is only regarding student loan debt and College For All, so I will not delve too deeply into this. However, even if the massive amount of revenue created through marginal taxes and taxes on capital gains is not enough, it could be argued that the cost would be offset by the amount of productivity added to the private sector. More available workers means that work can be done faster and value can be added to society at a higher rate.

In order for a society to provide economic freedom, as America claims to, individuals must have the opportunity to seek education. Liberty is not fully attained unless one is able to seek higher education as a means for social and economic advancement.

Therefore, if you believe that liberty is a human right, then education must be a human right. From this stance, even if one refuses to acknowledge the grotesque opportunity gap caused by the current college system and the economic problems that are derived from this, on a purely human rights centered argument, College For All is ethically required and must be enacted.

Off The Press

More secret societies revealed

BY OFF CENTER Panic has erupted on campus with the discovery that a secret society has been stealthily operating under our collective noses, wreaking unknown havoc on our school and pulling the strings on every major event that has taken place here. Known only as “Khoda,” the society was revealed by a recent Stute article, which ripped the veil off the secret society and revealed it to the general public. So I guess it’s not really a secret society anymore, more like just a society. But still, this once-secret society has been the bane of students and administrators alike in its long 242-year run.

Khoda started out as most secret societies do: no one knows how they started. Some historians believe the society was created during the age when Castle Stevens ruled the land, and it has served as a shadowy government/knitting club ever since. Others say that the club was more religious in nature, and has had every single U.S. president in its ranks except for William Henry Harrison, who was invited but replied, “Sorry, I’m going to die in 31 days so I can’t, sorry.”

Khoda is a self-described leadership honor society that is the sole protector of students and student organizations, despite the fact that the SGA continues to exist as of the time of writing. “The secrecy part is just for flavor,” said an anonymous source from Khoda. “We don’t really need to keep secret, but it gives the whole

thing an air of mystery that you just couldn’t get from a public society. If we weren’t secret, then we’d just be another boring service club, and I wouldn’t be able to wear my trench coat all the time! And I love wearing my trench coat!” Also, the Stute used to just publish their new members every semester, so Khoda’s pretty much been consistently dropping the ball in the secrecy department. Traditionally, Khoda privately invites influential students to their exclusive club and initiates them into the society with archaic rites of passage, such as walking on coals, eating a live eel, or reciting the entire Wikipedia article for cheese.

“Khoda definitely hazes,” said our anonymous source. “They don’t count as a real club because of the whole secret society thing, so the phrase ‘Ducks Don’t Haze’ doesn’t apply to them. Those Ducks absolutely haze.”

Even more startling is Khoda’s deep history with Stevens — as far as Off the Press is aware, Khoda has been masterminding the school’s history since its inception. In almost all known pictures of Edwin A. Stevens, there are some mysterious figures in black hoods standing ominously in the background. These figures aren’t that hidden, either — they’re just hanging around casually behind him. Now that we think about it, every time the school has given a public announcement, there were two to three hooded figures loitering ominously in the background. One hooded figure, Ralph, was available

for comment. “Wait, guys, don’t tell anyone about this, okay? This is purely off the record.” Luckily for us, Off the Record is the name of our whistleblower team, so we are legally able to print what Ralph said. “There’s an even secreter society on campus that controls Khoda. It’s called Coda, and they—” Ralph was then dragged off screaming by a team of hooded figures, all of them chanting “Traitor, traitor” in a deep baritone voice.

The revelation of Coda, an even more shadowy and secret society, has further provoked fear and confusion within campus. Some say that the members of Coda control the administration itself, and that their hooded figures are even more ominous and mysterious than Khoda’s. Others speculate that Coda is merely the name of a single individual, the ultimate shadowy figure that even other shadowy figures are afraid of. The revelation also raises a large question: If even the mighty Khoda can be controlled, who can’t be? How many levels of societies are there until we get to the true ringleaders? Could I be a member of a secret society? Me, your trustworthy news reporter/best friend? Even I can’t be sure! These are dark times, dear readers, but you must remain vigilant, and [REMAIN LOYAL TO CODA. REMEMBER, THE HOODED FIGURES ARE YOUR FRIENDS. THEIR OMINOUS SKULKING IS THEIR WAY OF SHOWING AFFECTION. PRAISE BE TO CODA.

Letter to the Editor

Inappropriate Unplanned Screening

BY ELIZABETH BOTTONI To whom it may concern, As you may or may not be aware, the Newman Catholic and College Republicans groups held a screening of the factually incorrect and politically inflammatory movie Unplanned this week in EAS. Coming on the heels of the Catholic Association’s stunt with their pro life table this past spring semester, which resulted in the members of the club there aggressively engaging and verbally attacking the women who walked past them, I hope it is obvious why this event would concern me. At

the time of the pro life table, I communicated my discomfort with the SGA and was assured that events surrounding controversial subject matter that disproportionately affect a minority on campus like this would be more carefully and respectfully handled.

I can see that instead, Stevens is fostering an atmosphere of intolerance toward members of their population that are at a distinct disadvantage. It is no secret that the Stevens Undergraduate population is still overwhelmingly male, with only about 30% of students identifying as female. It is no surprise that women are disproportionately affected by the debate around abortion

in social, political, and medical issues.

What is surprising, at least to me, is that Stevens is willing to allow this sort of aggression on campus in spite of the growing concern around such events and the misinformation they spread.

As I mentioned to the SGA the last time an aggressive and ill conceived event like this sprang up on campus, I am not opposed to the discussion and debate of such a complicated and emotionally wrought issue. However, allowing events like this to throw around misinformation unchecked is irresponsible on the part of both the club itself and the overseeing entities put in place to keep Stevens a safe and welcoming place.

Not everyone needs to go to College

BY ALEX MURTAGH SENIOR

CIVIL ENGINEERING Alright. I know it’s ironic that I’m writing this as a college student, but it’s true — not everyone needs to go to college. There are so many more options out there than just going to college for four years. You can go to vocational school, earn a two-year certificate, start your own business, join the military, or get a full-time job that doesn’t require a college degree. And most of these options give you the opportunity to do just as well as someone who has been to college!

There are more jobs than ever that only require a high school degree to be successful. Additionally, many employers will cover the cost of vocational or two-year education for their employees. When you look at the current student debt crisis, this option becomes significantly more appealing.

I think this premise also begs the question, why do people go to college?

Most people attend college with the end goal of getting a better job than they would have otherwise. In the end, hopefully, they make more money and ultimately make their lives better. This is not necessarily as true

as it once was. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, back in the 1940s, roughly 5% of the U.S. population aged 25 and over had earned a bachelor’s degree. Today, that number has jumped to roughly 35% of the U.S. population aged 25 and over. It should also be noted that the U.S. population has more than doubled since the 1940s.

This means the number of college-educated Americans has jumped from 6 million to over 110 million people.

While the U.S. economy is significantly larger than it was during the 1940s, it has not grown at the same rate as people entering the college system. Assuming my math is correct, the amount of people in college has increased 17 times versus the U.S. GDP increasing 13 times.

Colleges have also failed numerous students who don’t know what they want to do with their lives and/or have taken on so many loans that they are stuck in an endless cycle of debt.

Surprisingly, telling an 18-year-old to take out thousands of dollars in loans every semester for a degree that has no jobs associated with it had negative repercussions. Who could’ve guessed that? Many students won’t even complete their four years and be stuck with the loan debt they accumulated during their time in school. Now there are clear exceptions to this rule for people who are responsible with their money and choice of college major, but this is not the case for a large portion of students.

I think it is also important to talk about why college should not be free.

Many politicians on the left constantly promise free public college but do so without understanding its implications. First, making college free devalues the degree because the benefits of a college education become

Continued online at thestute.com

The Friday Observer

On Stevens–death

BY ERIC S. LONDRES JUNIOR

COMPUTER SCIENCE When, for years, your daily life is spent entirely in the world of Stevens, it’s very easy to forget that Stevens isn’t the only world that exists.

Everything changed for me when I first moved into Castle Point Hall — my routine, the people I talked to, etc.

Because of that, moving to Stevens almost felt like a rebirth. What my life contained and what I could do within it had radically changed quite literally overnight, so why shouldn’t it?

Well, if orientation is birth… does that make graduation death?

From the way I’ve heard some seniors talk about the end of their final year, I would almost think so. I’ve seen friends reluctant to finalize their resumes as if somehow that document was their last will and testament, or speaking about job offers as if they were choosing their final resting place.

I’ve seen recent alumni, walking ghosts, around Hoboken. I’ve heard them speak of the afterlife. Of the place where all the things I do now are not done, and all the people I see now will not be seen, and all the memories I make now will have no import. These ideas seem scary to me, and not only because of the terrifying proposition that I will be completely unprepared for whatever comes after. A far more harrowing prospect is the idea that there is some grander scheme that renders anything that happens here unimportant and fleeting. The idea that, because there is an unavoidable time limit on Stevens-life, eventually Stevens-death will arrive and render null every accomplishment and memory I could possibly achieve here.

This notion will seem very familiar to anyone who has ever so much as looked at a book on philosophy. The question of “We’re all going to die, so why even live?” is probably the most basic and fundamental philosophical question that can be asked. I think what makes Stevens-death an interesting phenomenon, though, is that it happens so quickly — you get four, five, or maybe six years, and then it’s done.

I’m immediately reminded of the film Blade Runner, which I saw for the first time somewhat recently.

In the film, human-like robots are forced to confront the idea that they only have four years to live. The film presents a counterargument to the more existentially-terrifying aspects of that concept — to directly quote a line of dialog from the movie, “The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long.” I instinctively want to agree with that sentiment. I want to believe that the reward for keeping myself far beyond busy for four years of my life is that I’ll leave Stevens with some measure of a positive impact, and carry the memories with me into the next world. But a much larger part of me believes that I only feel that instinctively because it’s the easy answer. It’s the answer that gives me the most reassurance, the one that requires me to think the least and conclude the fastest.

Resisting the urge to console my thoughts, the obvious next step is concluding that the only truly meaningful parts of life at Stevens are the parts that prepare me to leave it. I guess, in a way, the people who do nothing during their undergraduate time here except go to class, eat, study, and leave with a 4.0 are the monks of the Wesley J. Howe Monastery. Perhaps they are the ones most prepared for the next world, most ready to make the transition into ghosthood.

It strikes me as obvious, however, that being a Stevens monk and ultimately preparing for leaving it does mean that you realistically leave nothing behind. Personally, I think that if the most exciting part of Stevens for you is how much you’re going to be able to distance yourself from it, you’ve made a mistake somewhere. That’s quite the paradox, though. I mean, the whole point of college is to be able to get a job to afford college, right?

Maybe I’ll feel differently about this subject when I’m a senior myself, but for now I think I really don’t have an answer as to what the ideal Stevens experience is, or whether I’m having it. All I do know right now is that eventually I’ll be a ghost myself. I hope the after Stevens is as fun as Stevens is.

To submit a Letter to the Editor, email eboard@thestute.com or head to thestute.com -> contact us -> submit a letter

10

October 25, 2019

Sports

ON DECK IN SPORTS SAT, OCT 26 FIELD HOCKEY vs Eastern University 11 AM St Davids, PA

WOMEN’S SWIMMING Photos courtesy stevensducks.com

Women’s Volleyball clinch regular season MAC Freedom title

By TREVOR DAMEIKA The Stevens women’s volleyball team continued its beautiful first season in the MAC Freedom Tuesday, clinching the regular season title and remaining undefeated in conference play with a 3-0 (25-7, 25-20, 25-18) sweep of Eastern University inside Canavan Arena.

Stevens dominated the opening set from the start, winning the first seven points and took a commanding 15-1 lead. The Ducks kept pushing Eastern

and they took the first set 25-7.

The second set was more tightly contested as each team traded leads and took advantage of each other’s mistakes. When losing 17-16, the Ducks dug their webbed feet into the ground and took seven consecutive points. Eastern attempted to claw their way back into the match, but could not cut the deficit and dropped the set 25-20.

In the third set, Stevens had the win at their fingertips. A tie game at 17, the Ducks showed what it means to truly fly high. Eight fantastic points

out of the last nine were scored by Stevens to knock off Eastern and claim the MAC Freedom title. A huge win for all involved as the Volleyball season nears its end.

In the match, Stevens was led offensively by freshman Allie Morton and senior Shelby Stewart. The pair combined to produce 23 kills. Sophomore Elizabeth Chu led the way with 18 digs and just one receiving error.

Chu’s fellow sophomore, Kathleen Reigner, finished the day with 34 assists and nine digs. The Ducks dominated almost every statistical category

and were just unstoppable.

With the win, Stevens has now won five straight games. Also, this win guarantees them seven consecutive regular season conference titles. Additionally, the Ducks move to 14-11 overall this season and 6-0 in MAC Freedom competition.

The Ducks will now have homecourt advantage throughout the MAC Freedom Championship tournament.

They have a 9-3 record at home this season. As a result, winning this MAC Freedom title is huge for a Ducks team that has been thriving at home.

vs The College of New Jersey 12 PM Hoboken, NJ

MEN’S SWIMMING vs The College of New Jersey 12 PM Hoboken, NJ

MEN’S SOCCER vs Delaware Valley University 4 PM Doylestown, PA

WOMEN’S SOCCER vs Delaware Valley University 7 PM Doylestown, PA

Women’s and men’s cross country teams have phenomenal Suffolk Invite

By TREVOR DAMEIKA

Photos from stevensducks.com

Stevens Institute of Technology women’s and men’s cross country team took part in the 2019 Suffolk Invite, hosted by Suffolk University.

Both cross country teams finished second in the men’s and women’s cross country runs, respectively. The women had a five kilometer race, whereas the men had an eight kilometer race. All of the Ducks’ runners put everything they had out there.

Starting with the women, using a 6:26 (minute:second) mile pace, sophomore Trinity Lundemo completed the five-kilometer course in 19:59 to lead Stevens’ eight female runners. Lundemo finished 6th out of 202 runners.

The Ducks received a cowbell in recognition of their second place finish. The Stevens’ women’s team finished in second out of 21 schools because the majority of the Ducks were much faster than most runners.

Junior Kristin McAtee was the second Duck to reach the finish.

She finished in 20:11 finishing 9th.

Freshman Rachel Pinho finished 14th with a time of 20:20.4. Sophomores Erin Miceli and Caroline Corr rounded out the top five of Stevens’ runners and finished 20:42 and 21:21, respectively. The top five Ste-

vens runners were only separated by 1 minute and 43 seconds.

Transitioning to the men’s eight kilometer race, senior Dylan Peters completed the eight kilometer course in 26:48 to lead Stevens’ male runners. He used a pace of 5:23 per mile. Peters finished 8th out of 245 runners.

The male Ducks also received a cowbell in recognition of their second place finish. Similar to the women’s team, the men’s team finished second out of 24 schools and proved their toughness.

Senior Jake Catalano was the second Duck to reach the finish, crossing the line in 26:57, which put him at 10th out of 245. Junior PJ Gunther finished third for the team, placing 18th with a time of 27:12.

Sophomores Trevor LaDue and Robby Russo finished extremely close to each other as the pair rounded out Stevens’ top five, which were spread by 42.2 seconds.

In addition to this, freshman William Schulz turned in an eight kilometer personal best to finish 27th with a time of 27:38.

This race was the final cross country race of the regular season for both cross country teams. Nevertheless, it may have been the Ducks’ best race as both teams finished second and proved how strong Stevens is.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON STEVENS SPORTS VISIT STEVENSDUCKS.COM

CHECK OUT THE DUCKS ON INSTAGRAM!

@STEVENSDUCKS #ALLRISE

DUCK COUNTRY SCOREBOARD DATE SAT OCT 19 TUES OCT 22 TUES OCT 22 WED OCT 23 WED OCT 23 THURS 0CT 24 THURS 0CT 24

TEAM WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL MEN’S SOCCER WOMEN’S SOCCER FIELD HOCKEY WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL MEN’S GOLF

OPPONENT CATHOLIC NEW JERSEY CHALLENGE EASTERN UNIVERSITY DESALES UNIVERSITY DESALES UNIVERSITY DESALES UNIVERSITY HUNTER COLLEGE NEW JERSEY COLLEGIATE CUP

SCORE W (3-1) W (3-0) W (2-1) W (2-1) L (2-3) W (3-0) N/A

Love sports? The Stute is looking for Sports Writers and Photographers to attend games and write about #StevensDucks !

Contact us at eboard@thestute.com if you’re interested in joining the team.