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Car crashes after basketball game

By Lauren Buckley

Contributing Writer

Six cars were damaged on Seventh Street Saturday evening when an out-of-control driver plowed through the Smith Lot after the men’s basketball game. The driver was a 30-year-old female resident of Lewisburg. Her car, as well as one other student vehicle, was severely damaged. Luckily, no individuals were hurt in the incident.
The driver ran over the curb of Smith Lot, collided with a parking sign and continued to hit a car parked on the street. The driver did not slow down and side-swiped five additional cars, badly impacting the final vehicle. The driver remained unresponsive with the engine running as student witnesses attempted to break her window with a window-scraper. Students immediately notified the East Buffalo Township Police Department through the 911 dispatch. Public Safety was extremely helpful on the scene as well.
The local police are still investigating the cause of the driver’s wild swerve.
“We can say with certainty that there was no alcohol involved. However, it is possible that the driver may have had a medical condition based on her actions and loss of memory,” Sergeant Hetrock of the East Buffalo Valley Township Police Department said.
“I was stunned. I had never seen, in person, such damage caused all at once. Once I realized the severity of the situation, I realized someone had to be notified,” Kelsey Sauer ’13 said. “The driver’s eyes seemed glazed over and they were not  paying attention to the road. Something was not right.”
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News

Academic West construction picks up pace

By Jason Pepe

Contributing Writer

The ongoing construction around campus is poised to take a significant step within the coming weeks. Construction of Academic West, a new academic building behind the Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library, is set to begin around the end of March. For the initial phases of the construction, Fraternity Road will be blocked off at Coleman Drive. Academic West is planned to be ready for the start of classes in August 2013.

The three-story, 70,000 square foot building will help to reinvigorate the University’s academic approach. Academic West will include large and medium-sized classrooms, laboratories and 59 faculty offices to be used mainly by the social sciences. Hearth spaces will be a focal point of the building, providing students and faculty with extra space to interact and work together.

“Academic West will have a number of attractive spaces where people will be able to put their heads together on group projects, plug in their laptops to a flat-screen TV to work on presentations, and study between classes,” associate vice president for facilities Dennis Hawley said.

The new building will be constructed with environmental sustainability in mind, as it will be built according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification standards. LEED is a rating system for green buildings that was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in 2000. Academic West’s silver certification means that the building will earn between 50-59 points on a 100 point scale. The most notable green feature of Academic West will be a vegetated, green roof.

Academic West will also open up space elsewhere on campus and allow for greater cohesion among various academic departments. To make space for the construction, the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity house will have to be demolished. Students living in the current Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity house will move into the new housing built by the corn fields after spring break. The Kappa Delta Rho Fraternity house, which had been uninhabited for several years, was also demolished last fall.

“Honestly, it was so much nicer than I expected. You can tell the school put a lot of effort into the house, and we’re extremely appreciative,” Eddie Guers ’13, president of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, said.

Guers noted there were some downsides to the mid-semester move. He said that it was difficult to leave a house with so many memories in it and the chapter was moving to a much less convenient location. Additionally, the fraternity’s new house only has singles, so it will be smaller than the  existing one. A few students are going to have to find a new place to live in the middle of the semester.

Beyond Academic West, more plans are in place to expand academic space and student housing on campus. Another building, dubbed Academic East, will be raised across from Academic West to form a new academic quad. A new art building is also in the early planning stage, and additional student housing is tentatively set to open by Aug. 2015. Parking lots are also in development.

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News

L&IT adds Google+ to Gmail accounts

By Siobhan Murray

Writer

Google+ is now available to campus as a service of Bmail accounts. The service, brought about by Library and Information Technology, is part of the Google Apps for Education software, which includes Google Docs. The addition was completed with the hope that the program will “be useful” to the campus community. The addition may serve as an alternate means of communication between University students beyond Bmail, myBucknell, Message Center, Facebook and Twitter.
Google+ is a social media tool used for communication where users can create a profile, video chat with one another and share content, among other things. Faculty, staff and students can now easily utilize the program through their current Bmail accounts to connect with one another in addition to anyone else with Google+.
“The service will establish a community online and be applicable to everyone on campus. We think Google+ is going to get huge, so we’re glad that we’re jumping on the bandwagon now,” said Kamran Khan ’13, a Library and Information Technology Desk employee. “Last semester, Google+ had come out but we were hesitant about introducing it to the campus. But this semester, with the various updates that Google made, it will be more customized for Bucknell, and hopefully more useful.”
Library and Information Technology, directed by Chris Weber, approved the change after Google made several improvements to the service. Although Google+ has been available under the Bmail umbrella for many months, Library and Information Technology made the decision to introduce the service to the campus when Google removed its 18-year minimum age requirement to a more reasonable 13 years. This age requirement had been an issue for the University, as well as for other universities.
Google+ introduced the social networking world to its original “hangouts” feature, a live video chat service that can be accessed from the website or from a mobile device. This feature alone lead several faculty members to push for the addition of Google+ to the University’s online network.
“All of this led to my decision to enable the service following discussions with an informed and knowledgeable L & IT staff,” Weber said.
The decision wasn’t a difficult one for the team.
“Unless there is a clear reason why we shouldn’t activate a service, L & IT will typically enable it,” Weber said.
An important factor of their decision-making process, the Library and Information Technology staff knows that Google services tend to be popular with University users. As most services are also appropriate in the educational setting, the decision regarding an addition of new software is rarely challenging.
Those behind this decision don’t have a specific vision for how Google+ will be used by the campus community. They assert that there are no attendant expectations surrounding the new service and they only hope that the change will be useful.
“Any attempt to stipulate only specific uses for a service will undoubtedly be shown to have underestimated the imaginations and creativity of Bucknell’s students, faculty and staff,” Weber said.
Students are more optimistic about the addition of the program to the University’s network.
“Google+ will continue with you throughout [your] life, even after graduation, if you want it to,” Charles Cole ’14 said. 
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News

Study shows drinking is not all bad

By Nicki Briggs

Writer

Chandler Hoopes ’12 and Morgan Beeson ’12, interested and agitated by the University’s  Campus Climate Report, chose to research the question of what really determines future salary expectations for their Econ 341 project. After considering multiple factors, the two determinants found to be most influential were social life and GPA.
Their results suggest that students who drink more often do better in the job market after graduation than those who stay in and study on a more regular basis.

“Those results are somewhat consistent with what other studies have found, that heavy drinking reduces a person’s income but that people who drink moderate amounts on average often have higher incomes than people who never drink,” associate professor of economics Christopher Magee said.

They put together a survey that was sent out to 1,500 alumni from the classes of 2001, 2006 and 2010 and received a promising sample of 251 responses. The survey contained questions about college major, employment, salary, how often they stayed in at night to go to the library and how often they went out to drink.

“The people who are really successful in the outside world were not the kind of people who would have stayed in Saturday night,” Hoopes said.
The data showed that as GPA increases by one point, salary moves up half an income bracket. Data analysis also found that one unit increase in the nights one goes out and participates in “binge drinking” (consuming five or more drinks for men, four or more drinks for women) raises his or her income bracket by one quarter. In other words, two more nights of binge drinking each week has the capability to raise income bracket by the same amount as raising GPA by 1 point.

Hoopes and Beeson’s study by no means encourages students to spend all of their time drinking instead of studying. Instead, it supports the importance of making time for both socializing and studying.

“Balance is important. It’s not just about getting good grades,” Hoopes said.
“I think everybody subconsciously believes this, that people who are more sociable will excel. We defined what sociable was in our minds,” Beeson said.
Although GPA was still the most important factor in determining future salary, it becomes less important the farther away from college one gets. The social skills you develop will stick with you and help you to continue to be successful in your life. Hoopes and Beeson’s study is sound evidence that perhaps taking the time to build balance in life is something that all University students should consider doing.
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News

Brad and Nancy Neu Paulis

By Jenni Whalen

Staff Writer

“Rumor has it that if you take your sweetheart to the benches above Freas and kiss while the sun is setting, you are bound to get married in the future,” Kalila Beehler ’12 said.Whether the rumor is true or not, University students definitely have a reputation of marrying other University students. And if you’ve been purusing the University’s Facebook page recently, you’ve seen examples of this high rate of marriage in the newly popular photo album “Bucknell in Love,” an album featuring married couples who have graduated from the University in the past 50 years.
Couples are invited to submit photos along with a description of how they met. Eighty-six stories have been submitted so far. Nate ’09 and Steph Danilack Contrella ’09 met during their first year on campus. “We were alphabetically assigned lab partners in organic chemistry lab. We began dating in January and have been together since!” they said.
Brad ’89 and Nancy Neu Paulis ’88 met in the summer of 1985. “We met at Bucknell during marching band camp. Brad (a math major) played the tuba and I (a music major) played the piccolo,” they said.
Countless other couples met in typical circumstances, including the basement of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, as a soccer player and student trainer, on a first-year hall, at House Party, as staff members for “The Bucknellian,” on study abroad programs, at a date party and in Calculus III.

This past summer, two seniors, Drew Stonesifer and Theresa Narus joined the ranks of “Bucknell in Love” when Stonesifer proposed to Narus at a nearby lake.

“We lived right around the corner from each other on  Lari 2 freshman year but didn’t actually notice each other until we went to the same InterVarsity small group in late October that year,” Narus said.

The couple dated for more than two-and-a-half years before Stonesifer proposed. On the day of the proposal, Narus was working at a summer camp and had no idea Stonesifer  was planning to ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.
“A mutual friend played chauffeur and escorted me down the road to a nearby lake where Drew was all sorts of dolled up and waiting with a bouquet of flowers for me,” Narus said. “After we walked to Drew’s planned destination, I saw he had brought his keyboard, that sap. He had written me a song to make sure I would say yes. Then he got down on one knee and proposed! I responded with an enthusiastic yes!”
Narus and Stonesifer will be married on July 21, 2012 in Idaho. They plan to move to a new part of the country together after the wedding to start their life together.

 

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News

Kappa Kisses

By Christina Oddo

Writer

Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity sold Kappa Kisses in the ELC Mall Feb. 8th – 10th from 11-1 p.m. and 5-7 p.m. Kappa sold one bunch of chocolate kisses for two dollars or three bunches of kisses for five dollars. It was a fun, easy way for students to send their love to a friend or significant other.
“Kappa Kisses was a huge success and is a philanthropic event that is done annually by Kappa chapters all across the country,” Liz Fennell ’13, president of Kappa Kappa Gamma said. “We are donating to ‘Bike the US for MS’ who organizes cross country bike trips that raise awareness for Multiple Sclerosis research while volunteering for patients along the way. We chose this philanthropy because one of our Kappa sisters, Kaitlyn Smith and her boyfriend Mike Anderson (also from Bucknell) are participating in it this summer in honor of Mike’s father who was diagnosed with MS in 1996. We wish them the best of luck on their journey and look forward to more successful philanthropy events in the future!”
The event raised nearly $500 for the charity.
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News

PL scholarship announcement

By Chris McCree

Sports Editor

After more than a year of discussion and debate, the Patriot League Council of Presidents formally announced its decision on Monday to alter the league’s existing athletic scholarship policy, allowing all league members to award athletic merit aid for football starting in the fall of 2013.

The move, which will apply to all current Patriot League members as well as football associate members (Fordham and Georgetown), grants each program the ability to award 15 scholarships each year, limiting the total amount of active scholarship players on the roster to 60 at any given time.

“The council has chosen to set this limit even though NCAA policies allow Football Championship Subdivision schools, such as those in the Patriot League, to award the equivalent of 63 full scholarships,” President John Bravman said in his latest press release.

By setting a lowered limit, the Council of Presidents hopes to maintain a balance between strong academics and athletics that many feared would be lost with the change.

“The League’s commitment to high academic standards will continue to be a hallmark of the League and we expect that our graduation rates for football and other sports will remain among the top in the country,” the Council said in response to questions about how the change will affect admission standards. “Patriot League institutions believe as strongly as ever that the academic and athletic values can be, and must be compatible.”

Although the league currently allows for use of athletic aid in each of its other 22 sponsored sports, a strict need-based aid program established in 1986 has prevented football programs from enjoying the same recruiting advantages. With the expanded aid policy, Patriot League programs will possess greater resources to attract and bring in more highly-touted recruits.

“The introduction of the Patriot League’s new financial aid model for football will strengthen Bucknell’s ability to compete for outstanding student-athletes while continuing to uphold the high academic standards of the League and our campus, said Athletic Director John Hardt. “In addition, the ability to offer merit aid should substantially increase the number of high quality prospective student-athletes that our football program can recruit.”

On top of to the recruiting benefits the programs will receive, the Patriot League will use the new policy to boost its image to outsiders in hopes of attracting other like-minded institutions.

“The League will now be able to direct its attention to potential membership growth,” Femovich said. “We anticipate that this change in policy will make the Patriot League a more attractive destination for potential expansion candidates for both football-only and all-sport members.”

With the policy not setting in place until 2013, it is unlikely that we will see many noticeable differences any time soon. That being said, the decision certainly has the potential to bring about some exciting changes to Patriot League football.

“As the policy is implemented and evolves, there may be increased flexibility with our scheduling of non-league opponents,” said Hardt. “Bucknell might see an old rival like Delaware or Villanova reappear on our schedule or a Richmond or a William & Mary.  As it evolves further, there could be the occasion where we play an FBS (Division-1 bowl subdivision) opponent like an Army, a Navy, or an even a team like Rutgers or Penn State.”

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Headline News

Patriot League introduces merit-aid football scholarships

Amanda Ayers

News Editor

 

After 18 months of deliberation and extensive study, the Patriot League Presidents’ Council decided in a meeting today to permit league members and associate members to offer athletic merit-aid scholarships in football. This policy change will take effect in the Fall 2013 semester.

This decision will apply to founding members (Bucknell University, Colgate University, College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, and Lehigh University), associate members (Fordham University and Georgetown University), and other full members (American University, U.S. Military Academy, and U.S. Naval Academy) of the Patriot League.

Each will be permitted to award no more than the equivalent of 15 athletic financial aid awards each year to incoming football student-athletes, including transfer student-athletes. The institutions that choose to accept this decision will be given four years after this point to build up to the full scholarship allowance.

“This approach for awarding athletic merit aid to football student-athletes will allow our member schools flexibility to determine the most effective use of their financial aid resources to attract highly-qualified Division I scholar-athletes in a very competitive academic and athletic marketplace,” Carolyn Schlie Femovich, Patriot League Executive Director, said. “The introduction of this financial aid model for football will strengthen the Patriot League’s ability to compete for outstanding student-athletes while continuing to uphold the high academic standards of the League and its member institutions.”

While athletic and academic merit aid is available to student-athletes in the League’s other 22 sports, the University and Patriot League are currently under a need-based model of financial aid in football. This has been in effect since the founding of the League in 1986. With today’s decision to begin a permissive aid approach, there is now greater autonomy to award financial aid in football in a way that is most effective for each respective institution.

Although many have expressed concern about the effect that such a policy could have on lowering academic standards at the University, President Bravman assured faculty and staff otherwise in an e-mail today.

“As with student-athletes in all Patriot League programs, all scholarship recipients in football will only be admitted if they meet the Patriot League Academic Index, the most stringent admissions standards in Division I athletics,” Bravman said.

While President Bravman only revealed the basic logistics of the recent decision in this e-mail, it appears as though more information and reflection will be shared in the coming days.

“The decision reflects the Presidents’ shared vision and shared commitment to the stability and long-term positioning of the League and to its strength, competitiveness and quality,” Daniel H. Weiss, Chair of the Patriot League Council of Presidents and President of Lafayette College, said.

 

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News

University debates PL football scholarships

By Sara Blair Matthews

Writer

The impending decision to permit athletic merit scholarships for Patriot League football programs is expected to be made over the next few weeks. If the Patriot League President’s Council decides to go through with these scholarships, the University would potentially add roughly three to five additional scholarships for football student-athletes per year.

The proposition has received mixed reviews on campus. Currently, the University awards some form of merit aid to student athletes in 10 of its 27 Division I sports. 
“Clearly we will have to remain sensitive to the many implications of any decision to permit merit aid in football,” President John Bravman said in an email to University faculty. If the new policy is implemented, head football coach Joe Susan expects the biggest change to be the demographic of the team.
“It has been difficult to recruit the middle-class kid. It is difficult to attract that kind of athlete when we can only offer him half [off his tuition],” Susan said.
He thinks this new policy could give the University a better chance against Ivy League schools, who utilize their large endowments in the recruiting process.
“The more success you have in sports, the better feel a university has for itself. A winning season can really start off the year in the right way,” Susan said. Alternatively, Andre Shields ’12 offensive line player, does not think that this policy will change much if it is passed.
“[Realistically] we’re not going to let great football players come who [aren’t smart enough] to handle the academics,” Shields said.
Shields believes scholarships will allow students to come who couldn’t ordinarily given their financial circumstances.
“It will level the playing field,” Shields said.
Last year, the University was ranked fourth nationally for its student-athlete graduation rate. John Enyeart, associate professor of history, along with many other faculty, believes the University uses this ranking as a crutch to justify its increasing focus on sports. “I am concerned that we are getting farther and farther away from our academic mission [as a school],” Enyeart said. “For many, studying is no longer a top priority.”
For Enyeart, it is hard to see how the scholarships will make the University more competitive in the Patriot League. He believes the money could be better spent on academic departments and facilities.
“The Patriot League was put on the map not for offering scholarships to basketball, football and other athletes,” Enyeart said.
As this issue continues to be debated, more controversy will likely ensue in the coming weeks.
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News

Breaking the Bubble

By Amanda Ayers

News Editor

National:

– A voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, also known as Proposition 8, was repealed by a federal appeals court in California on Tuesday. It concluded that the ban violated the constitutional rights of gay men and lesbians in the state.

– Rick Santorum won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a nonbinding primary in Missouri on Tuesday. Santorum, now with four victories, including Iowa, is looking like the chief alternative to Romney, the present front runner, as opposed to Gingrich who only claimed a victory in South Carolina.

– The Pennsylvania Senate passed legislation to authorize a tax on the shale gas industry. Many have been critical of this since it was passed on Tuesday, claiming that municipalities will have little control over the use of their land if the government sets uniform standards of development.

– The vice president for policy for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation resigned Tuesday after the foundation decided to end financial support for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood affiliates.

International:

– After spending 10 years drilling through solid ice, Russian scientists reached a freshwater lake the size of Lake Ontario at the Vostock Research Camp in Antarctica, the coldest spot on earth.

– The State Department is planning on slashing the Iraq Embassy Staff by as much as 50 percent. This comes less than two months after American troops left the country, demonstrating the administration’s goal to have less and less U.S. presence there.

– Efforts toward passing an austerity package in Greece were stalled again by political leaders there. In order to pay back billions in loans and prevent default in March, the government must come to an agreement on cuts in base pay for workers in private companies as well as loosen public sector job protections.