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Golf Men Sports

Men’s and women’s golf teams finish 12th and 13th

Billy Tyler

Assistant Sports Editor

The men’s golf team competed this past week at Villanova’s Wildcat Invitational, which was held at the White Manor Country Club in Malvern, Pa. A solid final round performance led the Bison to ninth place in the team final standings.

The event began on April 1 with the first two rounds of the tournament. The Bison started off well with scores of 314 and 311 to put them in 10th place. In the final round, the Bison closed out the tournament with a 303, good enough for the third-best team score of the day. This strong round was led by solid performances from Pete Scialabba ’15 and Dan Bernard ’13. Scialabba shot a 1-over-par 72, which Bernard nearly matched, shooting a 73 on the day. Other team members that contributed were Schuyler Stitzer ’14 with a 78, Jon Hartman ’13 with an 80 and Thomas Walter ’14 with an 82.

The next event for the Bison will be at the Lafayette Invitational, hosted at the Northampton Country Club, on April 7-8.

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News

Finegan ’14 and Wells ’14 appear in court for Mod burglaries

Jeffrey Finegan ’14 and Carter Wells ’14 appeared at the Union County Courthouse in Lewisburg Thursday morning for a preliminary hearing, facing charges of criminal trespassing, receiving stolen property, and burglary.
The pair is accused of breaking into several student residencies in Bucknell West and removing textbooks, laptop computers, and other items in late February. They had already succeeded in selling some of the items online after they were turned in by fellow Delta Upsilon Brothers. Finegan was the president of the fraternity and the president of the junior class in the Bucknell Student Government, positions he has since resigned.
Finegan spoke directly to the judge with his attorney at his side; Wells stood quietly as his counsel spoke for him.  They both waived their right to a preliminary hearing, and will stand trial at a later date.

At the time of the break-ins, Finegan was on probation for underage drinking charges that had occurred previously. As a result of violating the probation period, he will be facing these charges again.

The stolen laptops, which Wells admitted to dumping next to a dumpster behind the Kohl’s department store in Selinsgrove, have not been found, Public Safety Chief Stephen Barilar said.
The pair have yet to conclude their formal procedures with the University, according to Dean of Students Susan Lantz.

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Arts & Life

Reptiland owner Clyde Peeling presents creatures to Lewisburg community

Andrew Arnao

Sports Editor

Several reptiles from nearby Reptiland made a fun-filled trip to the University on Tuesday evening, stopping by the Rooke Chemistry Building along with their caretaker Clyde Peeling. Peeling used his 50+ years of reptile experience to show off his pets to a diverse audience that included both students and other members of the Lewisburg community. Throughout the presentation, Peeling also answered questions, prevented near-reptile escapes, and managed to draw smatterings of applause with his skillful handling of the reptiles.

“Mr. Peeling displayed all sorts of different reptiles including multiple species of snakes, a tortoise, and even an alligator,” said Harry Rudo ’13.  “It was a great experience to be so close to all of these exotic creatures without any glass or cages in the way.”

Peeling started off the exhibition by bringing out a fairly large tortoise (the tortoise, along with the other reptiles, were kept in different-sized tubs with lockable lids). He described the origins of the tortoise shell: The shell is the turtle’s skeleton that somehow got flipped outside the body more than 200 million years ago. Many of the audience oohed and ahhed at the turtle, which looked fairly unconcerned with being handled by Peeling.

The next reptile, however, was not quite as stoic as the tortoise. As Peeling pulled out a small baby alligator, it lunged in an attempt to escape, right towards the first row of the audience. An expertly timed grab by Peeling thwarted the gator’s escape, though several people in the first few rows promptly moved further back. The gator remained well behaved afterwards, and Peeling described how gators staged a successful comeback from extinction once alligator poaching was outlawed in the 1960s.

The next reptile was a fairly large lizard, closely related to the Komodo dragon according to Peeling. The reptile was described as type venomous, but “has a poor delivery system” and thus posed little threat to humans. While Peeling talked, the lizard constantly flicked his forked tongue, which Peeling compared to that of a snake; according to Peeling, “snakes are just lizards without legs.”

Snakes were next in line for the audience, as Peeling pulled out three small snakes that were twisting together in a knot. He began to describe the complexity of the snake’s detachable jaws, which can open wide enough to swallow prey 3-4 times the snake’s size, when the three snakes started untangling from each other and began crawling up Peeling’s sleeve, tie, and even belt knots. Peeling was eventually forced to return the snakes to their tubs, leading to a humorous engagement where he would manage to get two snakes into the tub only to have the third crawl out before the lid could be shut. After a minute of struggling, Peeling successfully shut away the snakes, and was congratulated with widespread applause from the audience.

Around this time, Peeling told a story about how he was bitten on his right hand by a snake when he was a child, and still suffers some health side-effects from this bite. He explained that rather than discouraging him from a career in herpetology, it instead taught him to respect the animals and learn to handle them with care. He also told a humorous story about how he was excited to be drafted during the Vietnam War so he could investigate Vietnamese reptiles, but was instead deemed too risky to get bitten while “playing” with the snakes and was sent to Greenland instead.

Peeling also showed off other snakes, including a king snake, a cobra, and a rattlesnake The cobra was particularly startling, as it popped out of its tub as soon as the lid was opened and caused half the audience to jump in alarm. The rattlesnake also began making very loud rattling noises as his tub was opened, and continued to do so while he was handled by Peeling. Though both snakes had the potential to be deadly, Peeling emphasized that he had learned to proper way to remain out of their reach, and informed the audience that those particular snakes would rarely threaten humans unless absolutely forced to.

Peeling ended the presentation with the enormous boa constrictor, and let members of the audience come up and pet it. Some of the kids who had cowered from the other snakes ran up in anticipation, and the calm, friendly boa constrictor ended up getting a surprising amount of attention.

The presentation not only served as a great event to unite the University students and members of the town of Lewisburg, but also as a way to see some rare creatures up close. Peeling’s knowledgeable descriptions of the animals also added new perspective, and made the presentation both enjoyable and informative. It seems very likely that Reptiland will be experiencing an uptick in attendance from members of the audience who wish to see more of these wonderful, fascinating creatures.

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Uncategorized

Peterson Creek: the Platypus Place

Peterson Creek: the Platypus Place

By: Caroline Confort, Mackenzie Smith, Danielle Post

 

            Have you ever heard of mammals that lay eggs? They are called monotremes and there are only three species of these animals left in the world today. The best known of these three species is the platypus, found only in Australia. With webbed front feet, and a duck-like bill these animals have dark colored fur that is denser than a polar bear’s! Platypus are mostly nocturnal, sleeping in burrows during the day and swimming and foraging in the water at night. When they forage, they close their eyes, ears and nose relying only on their bill which has receptors to detect minute electrical signals from their prey. Typically they eat aquatic invertebrates and occasionally small fish and frogs. These characteristics make them well suited for their habitat of river banks and lake sides.

Unfortunately, natural predators are not the only threat to these monotremes. While they are considered to be common in Australia, platypus habitat is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Water pollution, river damming, and live stock grazing continue to pose serious threats to habitat. More specifically, live stock grazing causes run-off of fertilizers and animal feces into platypus habitat. The addition of these substances into the water can cause nutrient levels to rise disturbing to the natural ecosystem. However there is increasing evidence indicating that this rise in nutrient levels is not always detrimental to the platypus. This moderate increase supplies an excess of food for the invertebrates that platypus prey on, creating a steady and reliable food source. Certain fishing methods including yabbie (freshwater crayfish) traps have also affected populations in the past. Land clearing and bank erosion decrease vegetation within their habitats; a substantial amount of vegetation is necessary for the platypus to line its burrow to protect its eggs from flooding and predators. In addition, surrounding vegetation provides shade, cooler, well oxygenated water, increases prey populations, and creates burrowing opportunities within its roots.

Peterson Creek is a well known platypus habitat near the town of Yunguburra in the Atherton Tablelands of northeast Queensland, Australia. Though cleared for farming and agriculture in the early 1900’s, more recently a restoration project of the site began in 1998. Today the natural ecosystem as a whole is recovering successfully and its trails are frequented by hikers, runners, and platypus enthusiasts.

In order to assess platypus populations in Peterson Creek, we conducted a visual monitoring survey. Our group of 19 students with synchronized watches recorded any platypus sightings in a continuous portion of the creek that stretched 814 meters. The study took place over a period of 3 days for 4 hours total. 3 hours of data were collected in the early evening and 1 hour of data was collected in the early morning. For each platypus sighting we recorded the time of day, time spent above and below the waters surface, and direction the animal was traveling. This information is important because time spent under water usually means the platypus is foraging and dive times can be an indicator of ecosystem health. All data collected were also pooled and analyzed to determine the minimum number of individual animals seen.

In a study done by Milione and Harding, it was determined that relatively shallow, slow moving, water is preferred habitat for platypus. The sections of Peterson creek observed in our study consisted almost entirely of this ideal platypus habitat. By comparing data on the time of sightings and the direction each platypus was headed, we conservatively estimated the minimum number of platypus in the sample section of the creek to be 5 individuals. In a study done by Kruck it was determined that decreased dive time relates to high foraging success. A small ratio of time underwater to time on the surface indicates high prey density. In the study it was found that there was higher insect levels in the streams that experienced agricultural runoff, and these sites found platypus dive times to be the lowest. Our study found the average ratio of time spent underwater to time on the surface to be 4.49. This ratio is relatively low, indicating that platypus in Peterson Creek do not have much difficulty finding prey when foraging.

Our study demonstrates that Peterson Creek is a suitable habitat for platypus populations to thrive. As more studies are being done, more evidence is appearing that platypus are increasingly inhabiting areas that are affected by farming and urban runoff as compared to areas of natural undisturbed vegetation. This may be caused by increased sediment and nutrient runoff that increases food resources for the platypus in streams and lakes. More studies must be done to determine if there are any negative effects of high runoff levels, but for now the platypus are safe and will remain an Australian icon for years to come.

 

 

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News

Four men charged with assault near campus

 

Kyle Montgomery | The Bucknellian Four males, armed with a handgun, allegedly assaulted two people in the house at left.
Kyle Montgomery | The Bucknellian
Four males, armed with a handgun, allegedly assaulted two people in the house at left.

Jackson McCarron

Contributing Writer

According to Buffalo Valley Regional Police Chief Paul Yost, four men were arrested after being involved in an indecent of aggravated assault.

“Jabri Brown, Antonio Carpenter, Aaron Johnson and Jeremy Drummond were all arrested around noon, 12 hours after the incident,” Yost said.

The assault occurred just after midnight on March 23 at 104 S. 8th Street, Lewisburg. The arrests were made in Milton, Pa.

According to the police affidavit, a felony stop was made on Lincoln Street and all four actors were found and taken into custody. According to Standard Journal, police officers from Buffalo Valley, Milton, Watsontown, Pennsylvania State Police and the Union County Sheriff’s Office all responded to the arrests.

A report in The Daily Item revealed that two victims were assaulted as a result of an argument involving Drummond’s girlfriend. Police told The Daily Item that the four men entered the house on S. 8th, where they saw Drummond’s girlfriend socializing with the victims. An argument ensued which then culminated into an attack, during which Stephen Reid and Mark Parrilla sustained injuries after being struck with a pistol.

The same report found that police discovered .22-caliber bullets in the home where the assault occurred. Police later recovered a .22-caliber handgun from the same residence. They believe that weapon was the one used in the assault, wrote Ashely Wislock of The Daily Item.

The University community received an email from Public Safety Chief Steve Barilar on the afternoon of March 23 which stated that four men with no affiliation to the University were arrested as a result of an aggravated assault incident. The email included the race of the actors and warned that they were considered to be armed and dangerous. The email did not include that the incident occurred within walking distance of many University student residences.

The Standard Journal reported Monday that Brown, who was identified as having the alias Breezy in the criminal complaint filed against him at the Union County Magistrate, was placed in Union County on a $100,000 cash bail. Both Johnson, 19, and Carpenter, 17, were placed in Union County Jail on a detainer, and Drummond, 18, was handed over to the Williamsport police.

According to Yost, Drummond was turned over to the Williamsport police because of a pending warrant. The Standard Journal reported that Drummond was wanted on homicide-related charges after allegedly shooting his father on March 12 in Williamsport.

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Arts & Life

“Trombone Shorty” to perform at Commencement Weekend

Laura Crowley

Trombone Shorty to Perform at Commencement Weekend

Trombonist Trombone Shorty and his associated act, Orleans Avenue, will play together at the University’s 163rd Commencement Weekend. Troy Andrew, better known as Trombone Shorty, performs the trombone, trumpet and vocals. Orleans Avenue will contribute sounds from Mike Ballard on bass, Joey Peebles on drums, Pete Murano on guitar, Dan Oestreicher on baritone sax and Tim McFatter on tenor sax.

The jazz/hip-hop/funk sound of the collaboration is not unlike the sounds popular from the jazz scene in New Orleans. Trombone Shorty fell in love with the trombone at an early age in his hometown of Tremé, New Orleans. The artist, who is now 27, began playing the trombone at just age six, when his instrument was almost twice the size of him. Although he is most known for his trombone, he also plays the trumpet, drums and the keyboard.

Trombone Shorty’s interest in music was not unusual for members of his New Orleans-based family; he is the grandson of singer-songwriter Jessie Hill and the younger brother of trumpeter and bandleader James Andrews.

Since the collaboration between Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue began in 2009, the group has toured around North America, Brazil, Japan, Australia and the U.K. For the third year in a row, Trombone Shorty was awarded the Best R&B/Funk Artist and Best Trombonist in Offbeat Magazine’s Best of the Beat Awards.

Perhaps most notably, the Trombone Shorty and Ballard performed at the 2013 Inaugural Ball the night before the president’s swearing-in ceremony. Trombone Shorty also performed at six events in New Orleans that celebrated Super Bowl XLVII.

Also on Trombone Shorty’s resume are appearances on night shows such as “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Late Show with David Letterman.” He has been a guest on “Good Morning America” and is a reoccurring guest on the HBO series “Tremé.” He has also played alongside Dave Matthews Band and worked with Eric Clapton, Zac Brown Band, Lenny Kravitz and Rod Stewart.

While the artist is clearly dedicated to his music, he has also founded the Trombone Shorty Foundation. The foundation works to donate good-quality instruments to school children “to preserve and perpetuate the unique musical culture of New Orleans by passing down its traditions to future generations of musicians,” according to its webpage, tromboneshortyfoundation.org. The foundation has most recently partnered with Tulane University to create the After School Academy that mentors aspiring musicians in New Orleans high schools.

The event will be held in the Weis Center on May 17 at 7 p.m. Tickets will be $20 for adults, $16 for seniors (62+), $10 for children under 18 and $10 for all college students. University seniors can receive one free ticket for the performance if reserved in advance through the Box Office.

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News

HPW marked by thefts

Siobhan Murray & Christina Oddo

Staff Writer, News Editor

This year’s House Party Weekend has resulted in numerous alcohol related incidents, including 15 hospital transports and eight campus thefts, according to the Interfraternity Council (IFC).

“There were 15 total hospital ambulance transports, but that’s not counting the people who may have taken their friends to the hospital,” Alex Sandoval ’15, GAME Chair of IFC, said. These numbers were provided to IFC by Associate Dean of Students Amy Badal.

There are currently two University student suspects who allegedly committed minor thefts this past weekend. According to the University Department of Public Safety, out of the eight total thefts that occurred over the weekend, at least two laptops were stolen. This occurred in Roberts Hall, McDonnell Hall and the Gateways. There have been no signs of forced entry, Public Safety said.

Public Safety also reported five accounts of criminal mischief. Windows in Harris Hall were broken and there were two reports of damaged vehicles. Chief of Public Safety Steve Barilar said that this number of mischief reports is greater than last year, but that in 2011 there were six criminal mischief reports.

Barilar explained that with House Party, the University receives a large group of visitors on campus. These students may go unnoticed and may not be considered by others as potential suspects. This is Barilar’s first year as chief, but third year witnessing House Party Weekend. He reminds students to lock their doors and windows when they are not home.

According to Barilar, there were also 10 incidents of underage possession of alcohol, a similar number to last year’s, and there were also five cases of public drunkenness on campus. Public Safety conducted six transports to the hospital, compared to three transports last year.

The Union County Sheriffs Department had between two and four officers on campus from Friday morning to Sunday morning.

“Whenever there’s a major event going on in county boundaries, we try to participate in maintaining security and doing anything that will help keep people safe,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Scott Hahn said.

According to Hahn, the Union County Sheriffs Department had two transports to Evangelical Hospital, one in a police car and the other in an ambulance. There were also six participants, apart from those transports, who had alcohol violations; three were for underage drinking, one for public drunkenness and two of the six were guests.

“Everyone has their own levels of tolerance, and if we see someone unable to take care of themselves and are concerned for their safety, we will transfer them to the hospital,” Hahn said.

According to the Buffalo Valley Regional Police (BVRPD), who cover everything around the University and who are also authorized to handle anything that has been seen on campus property, there were three alcohol violations this past weekend (examples including underage drinking and container violations). There was also one disturbance reported, three noise complaints and two ordinance violations, which could involve disorderly gatherings and fire violations, according to the BVRPD.

The BVRPD transported two participants who overdosed on alcohol to the hospital.

In regards to past House Party Weekends, BVRPD Chief Paul Yost said that he “didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.” According to Yost, this weekend was similar to last year’s, but there were a lot of residents in the area who were upset about the littering and trash, especially as they left their homes Sunday morning to attend church.

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Uncategorized

University takes preventative approach to sexual assault

W. Morris Fierman

News Editor

Despite a national trend of colleges and universities struggling to meet new requirements to deal with instances of sexual misconduct, several years of changing policies have put the University ahead of the curve.

The

Universities’ policies have been forced to evolve by a series of court decisions that made schools liable for dealing with and preventing sexual assault.

A 2007 suit filed against the University of Georgia initiated a precedent which placed the responsibility for responding to and actively preventing sexual misconduct firmly in institutions’ hands. A Federal Appeals Court ruled in favor of a student after she was  raped by a fellow student who had a history of being removed from other schools for several sexual assaults.

Since the University of Georgia suit, cases at the University of North Carolina, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Washington resulted in rulings against the schools and were filed specifically under Title IX. The Department of Education officially stated in April 2011 that it would be reinterpreting Title IX to include sexual assault as a form of gender-based discrimination.

University administrations have met the new legal obligations with varying amounts of success.

In early January, Senior Writer for the Daily Tar Heel, the student-run newspaper of the University of North Carolina, Caitlin McCabe was approached by two female students claiming that they had been sexually assaulted and were treated poorly and unfairly by the university administration. One of the students told McCabe that during her hearing in the university’s ‘Honor Court’ one administrator asked her why she had not simply broken up with her long-time boyfriend that was sexually and verbally abusive. She also believed that the members of the court implied that because of her psychological distress and a past suicide attempt, her account could not be trusted.

In a telephone interview with The Bucknellian, McCabe, whose coverage later attracted national media attention, said that her university has since hired several new staff members, including a “Title IX coordinator and a sexual assault investigator,” in an attempt to fix the broken policies, though so far there have been no additions to the slideshow about sexual assault shown to first-years during orientation for several years.

Mishandled cases such as this one come along with a national trend of changing conversation about sexual assault. Many universities have struggled to update programs and policies in the face of federal pressure to do so.

According to Director of the Women’s Resource Center Tracy Russell Shaynak, the University has been both supportive and proactive in working to make cultural changes that prevent sexual assault, and more changes are yet to come.

The Women’s Resource Center will soon be hiring an Interpersonal Violence Prevention Coordinator to oversee further improvements to sexual misconduct education programs at the University. Their salary will be paid for from a grant to the University from the Justice Department for $300,000, awarded to the school in the fall of 2012. The grant, which was applied for with the help of several administrative departments, professors and students, was a good indication from the federal government that the University’s efforts were moving toward the needed changes, according to Shaynak.

Considering the administration and President John Bravman’s actions on the issue of sexual assault, “I think we are very much headed in the right direction,” Shaynak said.

Students involved in the Speak UP Bucknell program, a program designed to educate students about sexual misconduct that is now entirely student run, have tended to agree with the University’s campaign.

“I think other schools shy away from publishing things like the Campus Climate Report, but they need to acknowledge the problem before anything can be done,” Laura Even ’14, a peer educator in the Speak UP program, referring to a report on student experiences at the University that includes a study of sexual misconduct on campus.

As The Bucknellian reported earlier this month, the number of reported instances of sexual assault was around five percent higher at the University last year as compared to the national rate, according to a survey of the student body conducted by the American College Health Survey. Those numbers, however, only include students who have reported being sexually assaulted to University officials.

Associate Professor of Psychology Bill Flack has conducted extensive research along with a team of University students that has tracked the number of sexual assaults at the University since 2002. Flack reported that the previous semester’s anonymous survey of 364 female sophomores, juniors and seniors revealed that 49.1 percent of female students were sexually assaulted during their time at the University. A survey of 251 male students found that 11.6 percent of men admitted anonymously to committing a sexual assault. Those numbers, which have stayed relatively consistent since Flack and his students began the research, are “significantly higher than the national numbers.”

When asked to think of a possible reason as to why this was, Flack said that he suspects “part of the reason we have such a high rate is that, and this is speculation, there are such unequal power relationships on campus” between men and women. Fraternities have houses while sororities do not, Flack added, and sororities usually do not have control over who is placed on registers or guest lists.

“It’s also usually boys who are mixing alcohol into that punch, which is, by the way, the most common date rape drug,” Flack said.

It is also not clear that the higher numbers are endemic of a small, liberal arts school like the University. The similar research of a colleague of Flack’s at Middlebury College in Vermont has yielded much lower rates of sexual assault than on this campus.

As for the University’s new Speak UP program, only in its first year since implementation, it will be several years before any change in numbers will happen–even then it will be difficult to definitively attribute any change in the overall rate of sexual misconduct to the program, Flack said.

No conclusive scientific research has yet surfaced about what works best at reducing sexual assaults in colleges. Some of the fiercest debate involves whether or not the preventative education programs being adopted by many universities will be effective in addressing the problem.

Another criticism of a program like Speak UP is that it is heavily bystander focused; that is, it attempts to train bystanders to prevent sexual assault.

“We need to find a way of telling boys not to rape,” Flack said, though he conceded that perhaps the best solution would be instruction by parents about consent long before students arrive at colleges.

“We are taking a blunt instrument to something we don’t understand [with the Speak UP program],” Flack said. “We don’t yet know how the student intimacy culture works,” referring to the changing social habits of college students and the rise of the ‘hook-up.’

Either way, “we are doing a much better job than we used to,” Flack said.

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News

Author promotes peace to local community

Christina Oddo

News Editor

Shane Claiborne shared stories about compassion, reconciliation and faith with the University community. This Catholic Campus Ministry-hosted peace and justice lecture on March 26 and centered around the image of walls; we are fenced into communities of loneliness, affluence or poverty. For Claiborne, these walls can be torn down with the help and mercy of God. In other words, another world lies beyond the confines of isolation.

“Shane said that in order to make poverty history, it must first become personal,” David Gorman ’13 said. “We must love, befriend and struggle with the poor.”

Claiborne is a graduate from Eastern University and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. Claiborne is considered a peacemaker and has traveled to places like Calcutta, Rwanda and the West Bank. He has also been on peace delegations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“One of my favorite parts was a story he told about going to Iraq while the United States was bombing it,” Nick Pistone ’13 said. “He got into a bad car accident and Iraqis took him in and took care of him and his friends, even though their hospital had just been bombed by the US … he said that he was surprised there were so many Christians in Iraq. The response he got from an Iraqi minister was, ‘Christianity was started here.  Americans didn’t invent Christianity, they just domesticated it.’ I think that gets at a lot of the issues of American Christianity today. We want to have control and safety in everything we do, but that’s not what Jesus did. He hung out with ‘the wrong sorts of people’ and broke laws of his time. He came to tear down walls, but Americans are so concerned with putting up walls to keep ourselves safe and comfortable.”

Claiborne is the visionary leader of a community in Philadelphia called The Simple Way. This group is devoted to helping create and connect faith-based communities around the world.

Claiborne has also written books including “Jesus for President,” “Red Letter Revolution,” “Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream” and “Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers.” His books have been translated into more than 12 languages.

I was really excited to go hear Shane Claiborne’s talk because I’ve read one of his books (“The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical”) and I loved it,” Pistone said. “He’s a really inspiring guy, but also very humble.”

Claiborne has also been featured in films such as “Another World Is Possible” and “Ordinary Radicals.” Claiborne gives speeches across the globe at institutions like Harvard and Notre Dame and his work has been seen in Esquire and The Wall Street Journal. He has even appeared on Fox News and NPR.

Claiborne’s lecture at the University was titled “Tearing Down the Walls.” Claiborne explained that as we try and lock ourselves out, we are actually locking ourselves in. In turn, we end up isolating and harming ourselves instead of protecting ourselves.

“Along these lines, another quote he shared that really connected with me was, ‘Be careful when you’re climbing up the ladder of success. You might pass Jesus on his way down,’” Pistone said. “His message is that Jesus did not simply come so that people could go to Heaven when they die, but he also came to bring Heaven down to earth, to give people life before death, not only life after death.”

Claiborne emphasized that as students especially we need to take “our gifts” and what we learn at the University to fix the pain that people experience in the world.

“Let us not conform to the pattern of the world,” Claiborne said. “Let us take our deepest passions and connect to the world’s deepest pains.”

Claiborne also paralleled seeking a career to seeking vocation. In other words, it is not about whether or not you will become a doctor, but what kind doctor you want to become. It is through this dedication to life that we can obtain the eyes to see the lonely, invisible people, or the people behind the wall.

“Shane Claiborne was an engaging and entertaining speaker, who told lots of memorable stories about his experiences promoting social justice around the world and locally in Philadelphia,” Jack McLinden ’14, director of administration of CCM, said. “One of my favorite parts of the talk was his encouragement to use creativity to solve the world’s problems, especially regarding peace and justice, instead of resorting to violence. He demonstrated a true concern for people to love and be loved according to the example and teachings of Jesus Christ.”

This lecture was free and open to the public. A question and answer session followed the talk, as well as a book signing and reception.

“After hearing Shane’s talk, I can’t wait to graduate and have the freedom to orient my life around loving God and others in radical ways,” Gorman said.

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News

Downtown house catches fire

Siobhan Murray

Staff Writer

A fire that occurred in an upstairs bathroom of 43 South Sixth Street at 1 a.m. on March 23 has displaced several students and still has no known cause.

A group of senior students reside in the house and were at home with guests at the time of the incident. According to one of the residents, when the fire started in a second floor bathroom, two guests turned on the shower and extinguished a lot of the fire. The members of Lewisburg’s William Cameron Engine Company provided additional extinguishment when they arrived at the scene.

“After some dialog with the residents of the home, we still could not determine a cause of the fire,” Chief Stephen Bolinsky of the William Cameron Engine Company said.

“We believe it started in the ceiling or the wall,” one resident said. “No candles, straighteners or cigarettes were involved.”

According to a resident, the upstairs bathroom is “nearly destroyed” and the upstairs area is covered in soot and smells strongly of smoke. The residents are living elsewhere until the house is clean and suitable for living again.

“Anytime there’s a fire, we work closely with students to accommodate their living situations after the incidents,” Dean of Students Susan Lantz said. According to Lantz, there is an on-call system to aid students after incidents like fires.