MAKING
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THE MASSACHUSETTS
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DAILY COLLEGIAN DailyCollegian.com
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Serving the UMass community since 1890
News@DailyCollegian.com
Gun violence incidents increase on college campuses By Brendan Deady and Stuart Foster Editor’s note: In the wake of numerous reported instances of gun violence on college campuses across the nation, the Daily Collegian is running a three-part series focusing on both national incidents and how the University of Massachusetts is prepared to handle an active shooter situation on campus. This is part one. With 144 shooting incidents recorded at American schools since the beginning of 2013, many of them colleges and universities, some observers are beginning to view gun violence in educational environments as a growing epidemic. Many of these incidents are considered mass shootings, events
in which a shooter randomly targets as many people as possible. The greater frequency with which these mass shootings are occurring has created serious and constant discussion in the United States about American gun culture, the influence of masculinity in these events and the presence of mental illness in the perpetrators of violence. Recently, the discussion reached the University of Massachusetts campus, as a 22-year-old man was placed under house arrest for threatening to “shoot up” UMass. The man, Zachary Simeone, pleaded not guilty in Eastern Hampshire District Court on Oct. 2 to charges of making a threat against a public university (mass shooting), assault with a dangerous weapon
and two counts of threatening to commit a crime (murder). Mass shootings have also resulted in the passing of new laws, at both federal and state levels, and policy changes by institutions that feel vulnerable to mass shootings, including many universities. Virginia Tech enacted multiple policy changes after it suffered the deadliest attack by a lone gunman in American history. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, killed two students in a residential building on April 16, 2007, hours before he murdered 30 students in Norris Hall, an academic building, and then took his own life. Virginia Tech was heavily criticized for ignoring Cho’s two stalking incidents and violent poetry
and plays he submitted for a class, which were retroactively seen by many as warning signs. The university also faced criticism for sending a warning about the shooting in the residential building two hours after it happened and only 14 minutes before the shooting at Norris Hall began. In response to the shooting, Virginia Tech updated its alarm system, gaining the ability “to disseminate emergency information via phone call, email, text message, website, Twitter, hotline and loudspeaker,” according to its director of emergency management. The school also established a centralized website with emergency plans to prevent students from clogging emergency lines with queries of what to do.
Good food and good friends
Because Cho had chained the doors of Norris Hall shut before the shooting, delaying emergency responders from entering the building, Virginia Tech replaced the doors of its academic buildings to prevent them from being chained shut easily. Virginia Tech also hired more case managers, psychiatrists and counselors in reaction to the shooting, and received a $960,685 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help iden-
By Patrick Hoff Collegian Staff
AMANDA CREEGAN/COLLEGIAN
UMass to host Hult Prize competition Event to encourage entrepreneurship By Stefan Geller Collegian Correspondent The University of Massachusetts is scheduled to host the largest student competition event in the world, the Hult Prize, on Dec. 8 for the first time in campus history. The prize aims to develop business plans to solve a prevalent issue plaguing the modern world for a grand prize of $1 million in start-up funding. “It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity to really make an actual difference in the world,” said Gina Semensi, a senior double majoring in business management and nutrition. Semensi is responsible for bringing the Hult Prize to UMass this year and is leading the initiative on campus. “I took that upon myself.
I’m always looking for new opportunities to bring entrepreneurship to UMass,” she said. For the purposes of the competition, any and all students are encouraged to group together into teams of three or four, develop a sustainable business plan to solve the designated issue and present it before a panel of judges. “It’s similar to Shark Tank, but the difference is with Hult Prize there’s an actual challenge each year,” Semensi said, referencing ABC’s reality TV show about competing entrepreneurs. This year’s challenge is centered around improving the lives of those living in crowded urban spaces. According to the Hult Prize’s website, “Participants will look for ways to leverage connectivity to make life for the dwellers of these spaces better. Focus will be placed on
doubling income through specifically better connecting the residents of these spaces to products, people, services and capital.” The winners at the UMass competition will travel to the regional finals, held in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. From there, winners will advance to the global finals in New York where the finalist group will be awarded the $1 million prize by Hult Prize key partner and former President Bill Clinton. As the date of the competition approaches, Semensi is searching for necessary funding support from school faculty. Funds are needed to cover the event expenses as well as go towards a smaller monetary prize specifically for the winners on the UMass campus. Information session, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 29 and Nov. 5, as well as a
“Million Dollar Workshop” on Nov. 19 for teams to perfect their pitches, will precede the actual competition, held on Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. The Hult Prize was founded in 2009 by Ahmad Ashkar, a Hult International Business School alumnus. In 2012 the Clinton Global Initiative joined with the competition, and Clinton is now personally responsible for selecting the challenge subject each year. Semensi applied for the competition to be held at UMass in mid-September, saying, “I just looked it up and saw that … you could bring (Hult Prize) to your school if you wanted to. I applied for it, I interviewed with someone who was in London through a Skype call, and two weeks later I found out it was able to come to UMass.” Stefan Geller can be reached at stefangeller@umass.edu.
see
GUN VIOLENCE on page 2
UMass fails to pay an estimated 400 graduate students Employees not paid on first payday
Students enjoy food, music and good weather at the Central Residential Area block party Thursday in front of the New Africa House.
tify troubled staff and students. Following the incident at Virginia Tech, other universities began to address security shortfalls highlighted throughout the attack carried out by Cho. Around the same time, UMass erected its campus-wide alarm system. The complexities of the driving factors behind a mass shooter’s actions result in a reflective set of
Every other Friday during the academic year, the University of Massachusetts pays its employees. This year, the first payday was Sept. 25. For some employees, however, Sept. 25 came and went without a deposit in their account. “I had no idea at all (I wasn’t going to be paid),” said Candice Travis, a graduate student-worker in the political science department. “I woke up on Friday, and I was prepping for class and stuff, and I checked my bank account, and was like, ‘Why is this still so low?’” According to Anais Surkin, union organizer and representative for the Graduate Employee Organization, approximately 400 graduate studentworkers did not get paid on the first payday of the year, and not just first-year students. However, the union isn’t sure of the exact number because the University is not releasing the information, despite filing an information request. Surkin said UMass told her she would receive the data on Nov. 20, correlating with an agreement signed between the University and the union last year about late salary payments. Surkin asserts that graduate students “have a legal right to request information related to our contracts.” Though some graduate students got paid on Oct. 9, the second payday of the semester, Adam Garfield, a graduate student in the labor studies department, said he knows of some students who still haven’t been paid after two pay cycles. Garfield was paid in full on the second payday, but not the first.
In a statement to the Daily Collegian, UMass spokesperson Patrick Callahan said there are a variety of reasons why graduate student-workers may not be paid on time, including departments not submitting paperwork on time, complications of grant funding or teaching assistant assignments, or graduate students not submitting their required documentation “in a timely and accurate fashion.” Surkin said while there are students who didn’t submit their paperwork on time, and it is the fault of those students in that situation, the majority of graduate students and departments submitted their paperwork on time and people are still not getting paid. “It’s a university and HR processing issue,” Surkin said, and the GEO plans to take action.
Getting better, but still not there Two years ago, Surkin said about 530 graduate student-workers were paid over a month late, which sparked the University and GEO to sit down and come to an agreement in the hope of avoiding an issue in the future. The agreement, signed in September 2014, set up a process for emergency salary payments in the event that graduate students aren’t paid. Graduate student-workers can receive up to 80 percent of their paycheck if they aren’t paid on time, which leaves room for any deductions the government or UMass has to make. Surkin, who was a key proponent for the agreement, said signing the agreement last year has helped in a number of ways, but obviously hasn’t solved the problem. For example, see
PAYDAY on page 2