President Wilson and Chancellor MacCormack speak to UMass Dartmouth students

President Jack Wilson and Chancellor Jean MacCormack cut the ribbon at the Spring 2007 opening of the Research Facility.

By Katie Bresnahan

Jack Wilson, president of the UMass System and UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean MacCormack spoke with campus community members on Wednesday, November 7, about different topics that matter to them.

The Torch was lucky enough to get a chance to meet with President Wilson and Chancellor MacCormack during this time. The most interesting things learned were information on parking and about what exactly the president and the chancellor do from day to day.

On parking:

A huge issue on campus this semester has been the new parking fees. Where is the money going? What will be the results of the fees? And when will students see these results? While students have not seen as many problems with finding parking spaces this year, there has been an enormous rise in larceny to vehicles, particularly the disappearances of numerous parking passes.

“What’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen depends upon negotiations. Those negotiations are ongoing as we speak,” Wilson said. “I can’t tell you exactly what will happen.”

Chancellor MacCormack said that the university is fixing broken lights, adding additional bus service and adding security cameras to parking lots. “Students will begin to see that stuff happening,” she said.

There are also plans to build a sidewalk from the East Residence Campus around Ring Road to the Tripp Athletic Center. “Now that we charge you to have your car in residence parking and you can’t drive it up, we have a lot more walking going on.”

“I think it’s reasonable policy to encourage walking,” said Wilson. “Frankly, it’s better for their health and it’s better for the environment.”

MacCormack added, “So you’ll see those bus changes, you’ll see lighting changes, you’ll see sidewalk and safety issues, security cameras, the things we know we’ve needed to do but we have not had the resources to do.”

Wilson said that he would like to see the university’s money go to students’ financial aid and the money from the parking passes go to making improvements to the parking lots and fixing other things on campus.

“All of the revenue will offset some of the expenses we spend now for snow-plowing and we will put that money back into programs and then the other money will do the enhancements that need to be done,” MacCormack said.

When it came to why students, faculty and staff use new parking passes, rather than the parking stickers used in the past, MacCormack stated, “Because we were trying to get everybody onboard and because we didn’t get the faculty and staff onboard before the fall semester we decided not to go out and spend all the money to print stickers.” She explained that the parking passes are only a temporary measure.

Unfortunately, many students have fallen victim to parking pass thefts, something that rarely, if ever, occurred in the past. MacCormack said to Wilson, “If you look in the log that ‘The Torch’ produces, we don’t have big crime, we have larceny.”

“So yes, we’re going back to stickers,” MacCormack stated. She hopes that this change will happen in the spring.

She also noted that beginning next year parking will become part of students’ bills. As a result, it will be eligible for financial aid. She added that the university plans to build a couple new parking lots over the summer. The university might also build a satellite lot, which will be less expensive for students to park in, but they will have to take a bus to campus.

What does the President do?

“My job entails that we create a great university system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Wilson said.

He makes sure that each school has an outstanding chancellor. Wilson and the five chancellors meet regularly. “We are thrilled that Chancellor MacCormack is here,” he added, “She is now the Dean of our chancellor corps, as our longest standing [chancellor].”

Wilson’s appearance on campus last week was part of what he referred to as “Chancellor’s Day.” On Chancellor’s Days Wilson visits one of the five UMass campuses and does “anything [the respective chancellor] wants me to do, I do.”

In this case, Chancellor MacCormack asked him to hold office hours with her, during which time they met with students and other campus community members. He called this a “Grass Roots Day.” He enjoys this because “it is unfiltered. I don’t know what they’re going to talk about. They’re going to come in and talk about something they really, really care about. I really learn a lot from that.” He remarked that one group he spoke with were literacy volunteers.

Other activities typical of Chancellor’s Days include having lunch with major donors to help close major donations, talking with local political leadership and talk about what the University needs, speaking with faculty about research and what they need to continue their work and talking with the Universities’ Student Senates. He also joked, “If you want me to move furniture, I’ll move furniture.”

What does the Chancellor do?

“I tend the fire,” said MacCormack, “I want faculty lighting fires between students and themselves because they’re passionate about what they do. So that I make sure I create the right conditions for those fires to keep burning.”

Some of her duties include figuring out parking, getting people appointed to positions within the university, getting students fair bills, making sure programs are right and interactions in the classrooms are great, making sure that students can participate in faculty research and getting students involved in the community.

MacCormack says, “I represent the campus’s interests on the Chancellors Team. The president acts very much as a team member. We recognize that he’s the president, but we don’t really function in a hierarchical way. As the chancellor I try not to do that here on the campus.” She tries to get people to understand that they need to work together to get things done.

The chancellor helps the students, faculty and staff at UMass Dartmouth to do what they need to do. She also helps to create conditions for them to be successful.

UMass Dartmouth to host third annual Oxfam Hunger Banquet

By Katie Bresnahan

“[The] Oxfam Hunger Banquet is a unique, fun and memorable way to educate the UMass Dartmouth community about hunger issues around the world,” said co-coordinator of this year’s banquet, Viviana Vilacha,

This year’s Oxfam Hunger Banquet will take place tonight, at 6 p.m. in the Commuter Cafe. Vilacha expects to have over 100 attendants at this year’s event. Last year they had record participation with 116 people in attendance.

At the Oxfam Hunger Banquet people are assigned to social classes when they arrive. The three social classes included are low, middle and high. The people assigned to each class are then served as the people of that class are served. “Only some people leave with a full stomach, but hopefully this inspires students to make a difference in the world,” said Vilacha.

This year’s guest speaker will be David Biggs, Chair of the Dartmouth YMCA, involved with the Sharing the Harvest Project since its inception and a member of the New Bedford Rotary. He will explain and promote the significance of what the Share and Harvest committee is doing to serve the community. He says, “No one can do everything, yet everyone can do something.”

Vilacha said that the hunger banquet is a tradition at UMass Dartmouth. She added, “However, there’s also a much larger student body and that [many] more students who care about preserving the world harvest. Today the importance of being environmentally friendly, being green and ecological is becoming stronger and stronger.”

Many other schools around the world hold this same event, on the same day each year. Bristol Community College will hold its first annual Oxfam banquet tonight.

Rotaract Club and the Social Change Society are co-sponsoring this year’s banquet along with students Annie Willis and Rita Wang and campus community service director, Deirdre Healy. Social Change actually originated from this event in 2005.

Vilacha said that every year Oxfam America asks people to fast on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. This is why the event is held. Each year around this time, resident students are asked to donate a meal from their meal plans to Oxfam in order to help eliminate world hunger. “Last year, “ she said, “The total meal value donated was $916.50.”

Women’s studies major approved

By Shara Sarnelli

Controversial issues have risen in colleges around the world regarding women’s studies programs. Should programs attempt to incorporate themselves into the standard curriculum or should they remain as an independent program outside of the curriculum?

UMass Dartmouth has offered women’s studies (WMS) courses and a minor for a long time. Now, a women’s studies major has been approved to compliment the minor.

Dr. Juli Parker, director of the UMass Dartmouth Women’s Resource Center said that UMD’s WMS program will be 30 years old this spring. She and the rest of the department are very excited about the new major.

WMS can be a controversial issue when being considered as a major, which may be why it was not put forward in the past. Dr. Jeannette Riley, director of the Women’s Studies Program said she was “hired in 2002 to build the program into a major degree granting program.”

Many WMS minors and students who take WMS courses are glad that Riley helped build this program into what it is today. There are currently only thirty minors at UMD, but now that the program is getting more publicity, increased online learning and the offering new courses, the numbers may expand.

New courses that will be offered through the women’s studies program include, WMS 201: Introduction to Feminist Theory, WMS 306: Third Wave Feminism, WMS 309: Global Feminism and WMS 312: Feminist Research Methods. The major curriculum contains five required classes as well as other courses incorporating gender studies, politics, feminist theories and methodologies practices, cross cultural studies and more.

The WMS program “brings in a discipline that has become an established field of study over the last 40 years. Students are interested in issues of gender, race and class, which is at the core of WMS,” Riley said.

The WMS major offers more than interesting, new classes. “The new major combines a structured curriculum with student choice—thus, students gain the knowledge of the discipline and they also gain ownership over their education as they decide where to apply that knowledge in the concentration areas with the assistance of a WMS advisor,” said Riley.

The WMS department began considering the major in fall of 2005. Why has it taken two, whole years to get the major approved? According to Riley, “Developing a major is a time intensive process.” In 2005, the department met with the Dean and Provost to discuss how the WMS major would fit into the College of Arts and Sciences. They were told to move forward and write the proposal.

Riley said, “The proposal goes to the College of Arts and Sciences curriculum committee, then the University Curriculum committee, then to the Provost.” After being approved by these committees, the proposal goes to the Board of Trustees and then to the Board of Higher Education.

Online learning is a great help to many college students. Through the UMass system and UMassOnline, UMD received a Sloan Foundation grant which funds ideas to create and offer blended courses as part of the WMS program. Students can earn a portion of their required credits through courses where students communicate online most of the time, but meet with the instructor occasionally.

Riley anticipates students moving to the major or choosing to double major with WMS and another subject area. Three students are already waiting to sign up. In the past there were six self-designed WMS majors who graduated from UMD.

According to a University press release, past WMS “minor recipients have successfully entered fields including psychology, English, history, women’s studies, social work and law graduate programs. They hold jobs in education, the health sciences, social services, editing and law enforcement.

UMass Dartmouth now offers WMS as a major and students can get involved today! If WMS seems appealing or interesting, visit the department to discuss options in a minor, major or double major program.

Sodexho collects ‘Cans Across America’

By Stephanie Luz

Marketing Manager JenniferPacheco (left) and SAIL Assistant Director Chris Laib (right) numbered and recorded the weight of cans brought in by students and staff.

One of the largest nationwide can drives, “Cans across America,” took place last Wednesday, November 7.

Sodexho held its annual Cans across America can drive with the goal of collecting as much weight in cans as possible. The purpose of the can drive was to break a world record of 156,889.34 pounds worth of canned goods within a 24-hour period.

On November 7, UMass Dartmouth Sodexho representatives set up a table in the Resident Dining Room on which all cans were collected, numbered, and logged at the end of a 12-hour period. UMass Dartmouth senior Brandon Roberts and Sodexho Marketing Manager Jennifer Pacheco were seen at the table encouraging students to collect cans. Public Safety Officer Steven Mello and Assistant Director of SAIL, Chris Laib counted and recorded the weights of the cans.

Individuals and teams were offered three different prizes including a catered event with a value up to $500, a $500 snack allowance or a $100 gift certificate to the campus bookstore. In order to win any of these prizes, a minimum of 100 pounds in cans was required. All participants were also entered in a random drawing for a gourmet gift basket.

The winners of the grand prize brought in a large portion of all the cans collected. Together, Alex Moniz, Ana Branch, and Lakisha Jordan brought in 229 cans that weighed in at 171.275 pounds. Their remarkable efforts proved how just a few people can make a major difference.

At the end of the day, a total of 315 cans were collected for a total of 290.225 pounds. Pacheco will receive verification from the Boston Food Bank soon.

After the event, Pacheco said, “I’d like to thank everyone who has participated in this year’s Cans across America event. Your generosity is greatly appreciated by everyone involved.”

SNIPPETS FROM YOUR STUDENT SENATE

USA Today pilot, Senate ‘Eat and Greets’ and committee updates

There have been a number of different things going on at Student Senate, many of which are works in progress and revolve around the rising concerns of public safety, parking fees, lighting, common spaces, health services, food services and other issues.

One of Student Senate’s most current projects, the USA Today pilot program, has finally come to a close. After the program’s fourth week on campus, the free trial has ended. The Student Senate will be investigating the results of the surveys and getting feedback on how many newspapers were taken and looking at which newspapers did the best.

There has been a lot of positive feedback about newspapers on campus. The majority of this feedback was collected from surveys handed out during the second and fourth week of the pilot. There has been discussion of bringing a different pilot program on campus. However, the decision will not be made until results come back from the USA Today pilot.

While the USA Today pilot was on campus, some concerns were brought to Senate’s attention concerning recycling. Because of these concerns, Senate will be working with the newspaper program to assure that used papers are not thrown away, instead recycled. There has also been discussion about bringing the local paper, The Standard Times, on campus.

The Senate committees have been very busy. There are six different groups currently tackling constituency issues. The following committees meet either weekly or biweekly depending on the urgency of the issues being tackled.

Currently, members of the Public Relations (PR) Committee are looking at the different ways to get more feedback from constituents and make students more aware of the current issues affecting them at the university. There has been talk about video taping Student Senate meetings.

Senate meetings are open to all students, however, the PR Committee hopes that broadcasting the meetings will make it possible for more students to know what is going on. Senators are also aware that some students can not make the 6 p.m. meeting time, thus airing Senate meetings on the local channel network may aid in making meetings more accessible for students.

There has also been talk of creating a Student Senate talk show similar to that of Torch Radio.

More ideas have sprung from Senator Bryan O’Brien’s PR Committee. For the Student Senate “Eat and Greet” days, a poster of the UMass Dartmouth campus will be available for students to post notes on the areas they feel need to be changed. The Senate “Eat and Greets” are held every Wednesday in either the Commuter Café or the Residential Dining area at six p.m. By scheduling these weekly dinners, senators hope to make themselves more visible to constituents as well as more available for students to voice their concerns.

Senator Georges Barnes’s Facility and Library committee had a chance to meet with Facilities Director David Fergusen to address different issues such as lighting, call boxes, and security cameras, among other topics. Fergusen told senators the plans that he has for increasing the lighting on campus as well as working with Public Safety to put security cameras in the parking lots.

As far as the Finance Committee, Zachary O’Brien, Treasurer and chair of that committee, is preparing for the upcoming, mid-year Senate Recognized Organization (SRO) budget hearing. At these hearing, organizations will be given a second chance to request funds. If there are any questions about allocations or the budget hearings, please contact Treasurer O’Brien at zobrien@umassd.edu.

The side doors in Oak Glen, Pine Dale, Evergreen, Willow, Hickory, Birch, Aspen and Ivy are now UMass Pass accessible 24 hours a day. Only the non-main access doors to Elmwood, Chestnut, Maple Ridge and Roberts Halls, the four first-year halls, are restricted after 7 p.m.

Stephanie Luz
President
Student Senate

TOPICS IN MENTAL HEALTH

Taking control of a controlling relationship

Does your relationship consume all of your mental and emotional energy due to regular conflicts, feelings of guilt, or friends/family expressing concern about you? Do you feel like you’ve lost your self in the relationship? Are you feeling alienated from friends because your partner prefers you spend time with him or her rather than other people? Are your grades suffering since you’ve been dating? If so, you may be involved with a controlling or manipulative partner and need some help taking care of yourself. In this article I will write about ways to recognize controlling relationships and how to manage them and/or leave them safely.

How do you determine whether your relationship is controlling?

There are signs that can alert you that something isn’t right. First is feedback from friends and family. While it is normal and perhaps even expectable that someone in your life will take issue with your partner, it should be a big red flag if everyone in your life expresses concern. Similarly, if you notice that it feels easier NOT to spend time with people you’ve cared about for years because it often leads to fights with your partner, this should be a warning sign.

A second warning sign is feeling defensive of your partner. If you regularly find yourself making excuses to others (or to yourself) for why your partner behaves in upsetting ways, it is likely that you are aware on some level that what your partner is doing is wrong. This might sound something like, “She’s not always so critical of me, she just had a bad day....” or “He doesn’t usually get so mad about me spending time with friends, he just really needs me right now...” It can be hard to admit that your partner’s behavior is controlling or upsetting, because admitting that your partner is doing something unkind or manipulative usually means taking a long, hard look at what you want to do about it.

It is also important for you to recognize if your relationship has led you to stray from your goals or morals. If you are normally a very strong student but your grades and class attendance have been slipping since the relationship started, ask yourself why. If you are normally a very outgoing person who likes to spend time with friends and meet new people but have been routinely staying in your room with your partner, notice how you feel about this change. Or if you never drank much in the past but now find yourself drinking every weekend because your partner drinks and you’re always together, check in with yourself to see if this change is okay with you.

Does your partner press you to do things sexually that you have never been comfortable with before? If you find yourself giving in because it’s “easier,” you may have a controlling relationship on your hands.

A fourth cue that your relationship might be controlling is noticing that your partner is excessively jealous or possessive. Caring and concern from a partner are sweet, but jealousy and possessiveness are danger signals. If your partner doesn’t want you to go out without him or her, randomly shows up at places you planned to be, or questions you too intensely about your interactions with other people, it is appropriate to be concerned. Oftentimes controlling partners will later apologize for this behavior, label it as “love,” and even temporarily cease. But the jealousy and possessiveness may return.

It is also important to watch out for inconsistencies or subtle discrepancies in things your partner says or does. When your partner tells you one thing and later says something different, or tells someone else something slightly different, this might be evidence of your partner trying to manipulate you. This kind of manipulation can be so subtle sometimes that it can go undetected for a long time and even make you feel like you’re going crazy. Your partner may try to explain away the inconsistencies and may even be convincing in his or her explanations. It is important to remember these instances though and to recall your gut feeling when they occurred.

Finally, controlling relationships can turn violent. Physical violence is never okay. Unfortunately, it is often the case that overt signs of violence don’t emerge until the relationship is well underway, making it difficult and emotionally complicated to extricate yourself. But in order to preserve your own safety, extricating yourself is extremely important. If you need help with this, seek help from a therapist, medical professional, and/or police officer.

There are certainly other signs you might notice as well, but these six things are fairly consistently observed in controlling relationships.

So what do you do if you’re in this kind of relationship right now? There are several ways for you to decide how to handle it. First, it is important not to beat yourself up for being drawn to this person or even for continuing to love him or her despite the controlling behavior. It can also take several months or even years for it to become evident. So these folks can often look very appealing at the outset. And, like anyone, they probably have their positive qualities too. They additionally might explain or excuse their controlling behavior by appealing to your sympathy, blaming their behavior on a difficult childhood or a previous relationship in which they got hurt.

Secondly, you can talk with family and friends about their concerns. One of the things that frequently happens in controlling relationships is that you get alienated from your friends and family, leaving you with no support but your partner. Chances are they’ve seen some of the things that your instincts have told you are wrong about the relationship. They might be able to put words to feelings you’ve had for months.

If you decide it’s worth salvaging, you may need to get some professional help to sort out the issues and how you can work on them. If you decide the relationship is too painful or damaged to salvage, be decisive and don’t allow yourself to be swayed by promises of future change.

Your leaving the relationship will likely elicit a dramatically bad reaction from your controlling partner, and preparing for this can be helpful. Maybe you want to end the relationship in a public place. It is important that you be clear and concise and don’t offer long-winded explanations for your leaving, as a truly controlling partner may try to turn these around in his or her favor and convince you to stay.

Once you make the break, stay away. Accepting phone calls, emails, or IMs is just confusing to both of you and makes the break-up more painful. You may also want to avoid mutual friends for a while.

If you or someone you know is involved in a controlling relationship, please feel free to contact the Counseling Center for further information and support. If you have questions about the information presented in this article, please direct emails to rachel.lively@umassd.edu.

Rachel Lively, Psy.D.
Counseling Center

Fire alarm concern in the halls

The recurrence of triggered fire alarms in the residence halls has been a major concern of students brought to the attention of the Residence Halls Council (RHC). Over the past couple weeks RHC has been discussing possible solutions to this issue. We have carefully evaluated the problems created by the abundance of fire alarms this semester.

Resident students are not being responsible, whether the fire alarms are due to cooking or pranks. In the past, cooking classes and magnets were distributed in hopes of diminishing the amount of fire alarms. Strategies such as these have not worked, so RHC feels it is necessary to implement a fee for each occurrence. We have drafted a new policy for housing to review and possibly implement.

This fee for fire alarms would work in conjunction with the judicial process. The fee would be on an escalating level. This being said, the first fire alarm in an apartment would be free, on the basis of one free mistake. After this the second alarm setoff would result in a fine of $15 per person in the apartment. The third alarm would then increase to $25, and so on.

On the other hand, RHC also evaluated what to do about the main fire alarms on each floor. With this in mind, all students in that designated residence hall will be charged if the alarm is pulled on any floor above the first. This would minimize the liability to those students that live in other residence halls or outside of campus that pull the alarm on the first floor and run away.

By implementing these fines, RHC wants students to become more responsible in their residence halls. With this fee, RHC hopes that students will be more careful and report those individuals who they see pulling fire alarms. As a student myself, I do not like leaving my hall at 3 a.m. and waiting outside in the cold weather. This possible solution is currently being overviewed by the Office of Housing and Residential Life. As soon as we hear a response, we will let the student body know.

RHC works as a direct liaison between the resident student body and the Office of Housing and Residential Life. Along with the fire alarms, RHC works behind the scenes on many concerns of students such as online housing signups and parking fees. We always value the input of students and encourage you to email us with feedback or other concerns at umassdrhc@umassd.edu. Also feel free to send us an IM at UMDRHC or facebook us! Meetings are every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the new student conference room, located at the top of the commuter café stairs.

Nick Prizio,
President
Residence Halls Council

Ferreira’s trial is still unresolved

By Lance Gagnon

At UMass Dartmouth, campus security is expected to keep students safe from threats to their rights, not just as students but as citizens.

With problems including vandalism recurring on campus each semester, the presence of the police seems justified to many students. But at the same time, some people do not always trust the police to do their jobs correctly. Such feelings may have risen since the arrest of Temistocles Ferreira last year.

On October 29, 2006, Ferreira, also known by his stage name Tem Blessed, came to UMass Dartmouth to speak and perform for the Cape Verdean Student Association. Before he arrived, there was a shooting incident on campus. The campus and State Police looked for a suspect who was driving a vehicle. After some time, the police called off back-up. Later, Ferreira, who was unarmed and on foot, was stopped by two state troopers and a campus officer.

Ferreira claims he did as the officers asked and cooperated with them when they frisked him. After the frisk, he said, they began to reach into his pockets. Ferreira, a pre-law graduate of UMass Amherst, argued that what they were doing was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. According to Ferreira, he was then hit with a flashlight in the ear by one of the state troopers. He claims that one officer, Victor George, tackled him to the ground. “He did a lot of things that night that are very questionable, and in my opinion, criminal,” said Ferreira.

The state police report did not reflect Ferreira’s sentiments. The report says that Ferreira immediately began talking about his rights, resisted frisking, and called the police Nazis and al-Qaida. It also says that Ferreira raised his hand to strike one of the officers.

After the incident, Ferreira was arrested and sent to the Ash Street jail. He was charged with several crimes, including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, threatening to commit a crime, destruction of property and assault and battery on a police officer. Ferreira claims that these charges are false.

Though his trial was supposed to go on this November 2, the District Attorney has asked for a continuation. According to Ferreira, there have been four or five different assistant district attorneys on the case who have not been prepared to come to court. After several continuations, the case still has not gone to trial.

“It was clearly racial profiling that occurred that day,” claims Ferreira. “I’d really love to see what their training materials are like, because I question the practicality, sensitivity and safety of that training for all students, specifically students of color.” The UMass Dartmouth Department of Public Safety would not offer comment on this issue.

Ferreira does not believe that all of the officers on campus are a threat. He says that he has met officers who do care about the student population and their safety. But he still feels uncomfortable about the “thin blue line” that he believes is “protecting this criminal element in the police force which we know always exists.” He asks “Why are other police officers that know this is going on not speaking out against it?” Again, no one from Public Safety was willing to comment.

Additionally, he claims there are larger problems in our society that contributed to the incident. “When people look at me they may misjudge me, especially if they have a prejudice and all they see is the locks in my hair, the color of my skin and the clothing that I wear which reflects that of a hip-hop artist and a person in the hip-hop culture. Unfortunately the media has stereotyped people of this culture to be synonymous with criminals, when in fact we are a complex people like in all cultures,” said Ferreira.

Ferreira added that he would like to see some form of faculty and citizen review put in place to review cases and officers’ records. “If they are not protecting and they are actually bringing about injury and suffering then they should be fired.” He thinks that if more students and parents were vocal about any concerns toward public safety on campus, things might change.

“Unfortunately we live in a society where you can go on for 10 or 20 years — or even your whole life — doing something positive, and that seems to be forgotten when someone accuses you of something,” Ferreira noted. He believes this problem has affected the way the local media portrayed the incident. “The lies that were written in the paper and the lies that are being told by these police officers aren’t who I am.”

Ferreira thinks that more support is needed for victims of police brutality and for people to learn about this kind of problem. “We need to have other avenues to inform people of what’s really going on. So please do your research, do your homework, study hard and get an education, because knowledge is the key, education is the key, and if we were to get that then we would all be free.”

[Disclaimer: Lance Gagnon did not interview any witnesses to Tem Ferreira’s arrest, therefore all the information on that subject is from an interview with Ferreira and depict his side of the story.]

Free CreditSMART workshops by SIFE

DARTMOUTH, Mass. — In an effort to raise student awareness of proper credit card management, the members of the UMass Dartmouth Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) in association with the Frederick Douglass Unity House will offer two workshops for their peers to help them learn how to manage their finances.

A panel consisting of several financial industry leaders will be discussing the basics of maintaining a credit card, building credit, and how to maintain a good credit score. Those who complete the program by attending the two sessions will have a chance to receive UMass Dartmouth sweatshirts, or $20 gift certificates to BestBuy. Refreshments will also be served.

Date: Friday, November 16 and Friday, November 30

Time: 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Location: UMass Dartmouth Library Browsing Area

The UMass Dartmouth Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) founded in November, 2003, is a non-profit student organization that works with businesses and higher educational institutions to provide students the opportunity to make a difference in the world. The organization currently has 25 active members, consisting of various majors and age group.

For more information please contact the UMass Dartmouth SIFE CreditSMART Coordinator Hajarat (Kemi) Odufuye at u_hodufuye@umassd.edu or the faculty advisor Dr. Godwin Ariguzo at gariguzo@umassd.edu.

SCIENCE OF THE NOW

Tucson scientists reevaluate the path of HIV

By Nathan Yetton

In recent weeks, a paper from a group led by M. Thomas P. Gilbert from the University of Tucson has reevaluated the path of HIV as it has entered into our population since the mid 20th century.

In the past seven years, a great deal of effort has been put into identifying the origin of the HIV virus, as we know it now. One of the more popular theories places the origin of HIV and AIDS in central Africa somewhere in the 1930’s. Gilbert et al. have devised a stepping stone model of HIV’s pathway traveling between Africa and Haiti before spreading to the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

HIV-1 M is the most prevalent variety of the HIV virus outside of sub-Saharan Africa in the world today. Not only is it the most widespread, it is also the most genetically diverse. Genetic diversity of large populations is related to said population’s age. More variety usually relates to an older population. Various statistical models can fairly accurately estimate the origin of a population or the time of divergence between two species or strains. This is called a phylogenetic approach.

Phylogenetic approaches for estimating the ages of divergence and populations as a whole have been used in the past 30 years throughout biology since the discovery of genetic mutation. It has redefined evolutionary pathways and opened up a world of history previously inaccessible to mankind. There is great value in the use of these studies for various topics, not least of all the origins and paths of HIV contraction.

As organisms reproduce over time, mutations arise in each generation of the population. This mutation rate is dependent on many species-specific characteristics, but is capable of being estimated after experimentation. By calculating the mutation rate, one can evaluate the differences between related DNA sequences, determining how many years ago they diverged. This has been used to estimate the age of human populations, or to see how closely related different animals are. HIV has a distinct mutation rate, given that it is a retrovirus.

There are many mathematical approaches to determining the age of a population. Gilbert et al. used two widely accepted methods in cross-reference to estimate the accuracy of their results. By comparing the closeness of related HIV DNA sequences from all around the world at the time of the first pandemic explosion of HIV in the United States, Gilbert et al. discovered a less than 1/1000 chance that HIV originated in the United States on both accounts. In fact, testing their hypothesis that HIV came from Africa to Haiti first, the “relaxed clock” phylogenetic approach gave over 97 percent likelihood that the disease was first found in Haiti opposed to the 0.003 percent chance it originated in the U.S. Other non-American populations found in the North and South Americas exhibit the same pattern. This may be due to the high prevalence of an uneducated sex industry found in Haiti in the mid nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies.

The Tucson, Arizona group has estimated that the U.S. strains of HIV were circulating in the heterosexual population of our country up to 12 years before entering the high-risk population of gay males in 1980-1981. They are capable of supporting their stepping-stone hypothesis, denoting Haiti as the first step in crossing the Pond. The statistical tolerances of this conclusion are well within internationally accepted tolerance levels.

This means that, despite our advanced technologies in medicine and biology, HIV was likely to have spread throughout the American population unnoticed for perhaps 12 years before its pandemic explosion in New York and San Francisco, completely unknown. Due to our lack of preparation and awareness, HIV has since wrought havoc across the planet, including the high-risk gay male population in the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties. It is possible HIV is the widest pandemic of the 20th century. This also means that not only do we, as a people, need to be better educated in health and sex safety, but that we must also inform the world to the prevention of the current and future pandemics which may take place without warning. It would be wise for the medical profession to be more aware of anomalous diseases and strange medical conditions. Only then can the human race effectively take measures in fighting these new diseases, which could otherwise be entirely avoided before they become unstoppable foes.

Furthermore, by identifying older strains of HIV, we can also design better, all encompassing drugs to fight the disease. This could also lead to more effective vaccinations, which may actually prevent the disease. That would be a positive change in the fight against HIV and other pandemic afflictions.

Source:

“The Emergence of HIV/AIDS in the Americas and Beyond” M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Andrew Rambaut, Gabriela Wlasiuk, Thomas J. Spira, Arthur E. Pitchenik, and Michael Worobe

Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)