Exercise examines ‘regional response’

Local and state emergency personnel aid in on-campus test

By Katie Bresnahan

While most of the campus community was off campus and on spring break last Thursday, UMass Dartmouth hosted an emergency exercise that involved police, fire fighters and other emergency personnel from around Southeastern Massachusetts.

This test, which took place mainly on the first floor of the Dion building, included “about 100 police officers, fire fighters and emergency medical [personnel],” said University Spokesperson John Hoey. Campus, local and state police all took part in the exercise.

Hoey said that the purpose of the exercise was to “help us train for a major emergency.” It also demonstrated the ability of a variety of agencies to work together to stop an emergency and the communication between the different groups.

“The premise of the exercise was an active shooter on campus,” explained Colonel Emil Fioravanti, UMass Dartmouth’s Director of Public Safety. He mentioned that similar exercises were held in three other places around Massachusetts, but this was the only one to take place on a college campus.

When asked if UMass Dartmouth’s role in this program was a response to the massacre at Virginia Tech last April, Fioravanti said that it was, in part. He added that this kind of testing is a “practical response” to disasters such as the shootings at Virginia Tech. vAccording to Fioravanti, the purpose of this exercise was “to test regional response, should an incident like this ever happen on campus” or anywhere else in Southeastern Massachusetts. vHoey said, “Everyone was very pleased with how the agencies [worked together].” He described the experience as a learning opportunity that required responses across Southeastern Massachusetts.

Over the next couple weeks, Hoey says that the agencies involved will go back and examine all the responses in detail. The communication between the agencies will be looked at as well.

After the exercise, Fioravanti said, “We were very pleased with the results.” He added, “[There was] nothing that we can’t fix or that we haven’t fixed already.”

UMass Dartmouth will also be implementing two new safety measures in the next few months. First, Hoey said, the university will establish an “instant messaging system” that will allow UMD to contact students in times of emergency by sending text messages to their cell phones.

Hoey also said that by next fall the university will develop a campus-wide signaling system. This system will be comprised of a siren that the school will sound off when there is an on-campus emergency. It will notify everyone on campus to check their UMD e-mail or the university website to see what is happening.

Students can expect tuition raise in ‘08-‘09

On Wednesday, March 19, the UMass Board of Trustees met in UMass Dartmouth’s own Woodland Commons building for an exciting and somewhat controversial meeting. Aside from our own Student Senate enjoying the passing of a new and revised constitution, there was the annually disputable issue of a fee increase for the UMass system, this year, a 3.1 percent hike.

The Board of Trustees approved this fee increase. This is the fifth year in a row that the tuition and fee increases have been under the rate of inflation and well under the increases that are expected from other public colleges and universities. For the past five years, the average fee increase in other colleges and universities has been 7 percent; however, at UMass it has only been 3.4 percent. What this means to us: A UMass education is still the best deal around, offering remarkable educational opportunities at a relatively modest cost.

The actual increase in fees will add between $266 and $311 to a UMass Student bill. The total cost for tuition and fees for an in state UMass Dartmouth student will be $8,858; with room and board the cost will be $18,286.

Twenty percent of this increase will go directly into financial aid and UMass Dartmouth will continue to meet 91 percent of its need based financial aid. The system, overall, has increased financial aid from $35 million in the 2003 fiscal year to $85 million in the 2008 fiscal year.

Without this increase, UMass would have been faced with the prospect of cutting classes, programs and services. Approving this increase was a difficult, but necessary decision in order to maintain the high quality of education for the UMass system. It is still an exceptional educational value!

Tamara Endich
Student Trustee

Resident students have new options with ‘thematic housing’

By Stephanie Luz

UMass Dartmouth students will have more options in the room selection process for the 2008-2009 academic year with new themed housing and the elimination of “twenty-one plus apartments.”

“I am happy that housing is offering more advantages for students to live on campus.  Thematic housing allows you to live based on your specific preferences, which is great for students. With this style of housing, we can accomodate more students pertaining to their needs,” said Nick Prizio, president of the UMass Dartmouth Residence Hall Council.

Thematic housing will be located in sections of four different residential areas: one first-year hall, Roberts; one sophomore hall, Pine Dale; one Woodland apartment, Evergreen and townhouse living, Cedar Dell West. Roberts, Pine Dale, and Evergreen will provide sections within the building for quiet and substance awareness themes while Cedar Dell West will have sections of graduate living space and 12-month housing.

There are some students who are skeptical of the new plans. Student Trustee, Tamara Endich says, “There are already current situations within housing such as security and RA accountability that need to be dealt with. Adding a new kind of housing structure could just make the conditions we’re dealing with more problematic.”

For students interested in quiet housing, quiet hours will be in place from Sunday to Thursday for twenty-four hours a day and this theme will prioritize quiet pursuits. Friday and Saturday will observe some “non-quiet” hours according to the Office of Housing and Residential Life (OHRL) website. Shelly Scott, Associate Director of Residential Life, explained, “[Quiet housing] will be more quiet than your average residential experience.”

Scott reports that the decisions of the Room Selection Committee (RSC), comprised of students and housing officials made these new changes.

Substance awareness housing will also be offered in quiet housing buildings. This is a housing option where residents of all ages choose not to consume alcohol and of course, not to use illicit drugs.

“It’s not substance free living, it’s substance awareness because many in recovery are smokers, and while smoking is not allowed in any University building, this may still be a choice of some residents of this area when outside,” Scott said.

She continued, “The important thing to note about people choosing this type of thematic housing is the different reasons that this is important to them.”

“Some students are coming from families where substance abuse is a problem, some students individually are recovering from substance abuse,” Scott notes, “and some students have been adversely affected by substance abuse and are substance free themselves. “

“There are a lot of different people that could be interested,” said Scott.

“Substance Awareness housing will most likely be located near quiet housing. The theory is that although substance awareness people are not necessarily quiet, they’re selecting their housing with a purpose and a specific theme in mind, [so they] will be more respectful of the other themes,” said Scott.

Cedar Dell West has been chosen to accommodate graduate and 12-month housing. After undergoing major renovations during the summer, graduate students will finally have a place to call “home.” Scott mentioned, “[Graduate students] want independent living. The Cedar Dell is the closest thing to living off campus.”

Scott said that graduate students can still move into the apartments, however many students want a separate graduate experience. RSC feels that Cedar Dell West will be conducive to reaching this goal.

Twelve-month housing, also located at Cedar Dell West, will house students who wish to live on campus during all academic breaks at a discount. As explained on the OHRL website, the cost for living on campus for a full twelve month period is currently $10,050. Students living in twelve-month housing will receive a forty percent discount off all breaks, bringing the fee down to $8,707.

In order to get themed housing, students must fill out a thematic housing application and submit it before Friday, March 28. These forms are available from OHRL staff or can be printed off the OHRL website. Students who have submitted their thematic housing applications before the deadline will be given the opportunity to take part in a special online room selection for just those areas from Monday, April 14 to Wednesday, April 16.

General online room selection will take place Tuesday, April 22 through Friday, May 2. There will be an online podcast available to show resident students how to participate in online room selection.

Finally, twenty-one plus housing will be history next semester. Students will be eligible to choose the room or apartment of their liking regardless of their age. RSC felt that twenty-one plus housing was very limiting because it made the room selection process more difficult for students to choose the right place.

Scott said, “We never had the exact right number of offerings available. So, at the last minute some of the designations had to be changed.”

Scott questioned, “Is it worth having hallways or a building all twenty-one plus for the convenience of knowing the age of an entire apartment?” She added, “[Room selection] should be more convenient for the students, not the RA staff or Public Safety.”

Depending on the success of thematic housing, the new themes will either be expanded or removed. For more information about thematic housing, refer to the OHRL website at http://www.umassd.edu/housing/.

New collaborative helps with campus sustainability

By Katie Bresnahan

A new student collaborative was recently developed on campus to allow students in different groups, including MassPIRG and Social Change Society, to get together and work on different sustainability projects.

“There is essentially a lot of activity around sustainability on campus,” said Susan Jennings, Interim Director of the UMass Dartmouth Center for Campus and Community Sustainability. She added, “What our office is trying to provide is some sort of structure to enable people to work together on various projects.”

Different projects that the collaborative are working on currently are creating a campus bike path, developing a campus farm (which they hope to begin next spring), implementing a campus compost area and one student is working on his own project, a film for which he is interviewing students about their interest in sustainability. They are also working on getting a wind turbine on campus.

The Center has a grant in to put up a MET (meteorological) tower, which is the first step to getting a wind turbine. The MET tower needs to have one year of wind measurements before a turbine can be put up. Jennings said, “It’s definitely going to happen. We don’t know if it’s going to come out of our own funds or university funds, but that’s definitely going up.” She expects that the MET tower will go up sometime this year.

The collaborative is also working on getting green roofs on some campus buildings. They plan to put green roofs on part of Group I, Dion and two of the older campus dorms. Jennings says that if this plan works, the panels will be put up in the summer of 2009.

Also, the farmers markets which were held once a week last fall will be back in the fall of ’08. They will be held every Friday, beginning the first week of the semester and they will run through almost the end of October. Kettle Pond Farm will return along with several others.

Jennings also brought up the subject of a campus bike path. The path will go the circumference of Ring Road but will also branch off to areas off-campus (It would have a leg toward the Dell Pond to connect to Old Westport Road and another leg out to Chase Road). She hopes to get at least a portion of the path done this summer. It will be made from sustainable materials, such as concrete made from recycled products such as tires.

As a part of the campus recycling program, there is talk of an on-campus redemption center. Jennings said that the redemption center would probably be located in the campus center.

The Center for Campus and Community Sustainability came up with the idea for the student collaborative because “sustainability is so long-term…we felt that if we started to coordinate students they would get a sense of working for larger projects that we’re actually going to come to fruition,” said Jennings.

The collaborative was started at the beginning of this semester and has already held several meetings.

Jennings says that she hopes the collaborative will help students feel like they have meaningful experiences. Other long-term hopes for the group include working on climate change and energy conservation.

Students may also get a minor in sustainability studies. These students work on all kinds of projects. Jennings says that one business student is working on an analysis of whether too much paper is used on campus. She spoke of some engineering students who are working on creating a bio-fuel from waste from Sodexho to run a vehicle for Facilities. She also mentioned several other projects that students are currently pursuing.

Business students debate over getting MBAs after graduation

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. —The bad news is that you may have missed out on some great advice from successful businesspeople who have been in your shoes. The good news is that by reading this article you’re taking steps in the right direction.

This past Monday, the UMass Dartmouth SIFE team called on all students, especially women, to learn about the MBA degree and its advantages as well as disadvantages in the business world.

A current SIFE Advisory Board Member, Sarah Roberts, also a Financial Manager at UPS, discussed her experience with and without her MBA. She strongly suggested the need for relevant work experience during and after earning an undergraduate degree. Roberts elaborated on her experience working full time at a demanding job while earning graduate credits. “It is possible but it’s all about time management. Classes are set around the students; you work in groups and you present in groups, it is important that you’re in a group with other highly motivated students,” said Roberts.

She also shared useful knowledge about the Massachusetts State School System, stating that certain required credits can be waived if you have a UMass undergraduate degree and are earning your MBA at any UMass location. All in all the night was a success and hopefully eliminated a lot of the confusion surrounding this decision for those who attended.

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 groups. For additional information, please contact the UMass Dartmouth SIFE project coordinator, Kara Basque at u_kbasque@umassd.edu or the advisor, Dr. Godwin Ariguzo at gariguzo@umassd.edu.

UMD SIFE team helps New Bedford High School student

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. — In an effort to support young entrepreneurs in the community, the UMass Dartmouth SIFE team is giving one High School student the resources he needs to get his business up and running.

Robert Martin, a senior at New Bedford High School, developed a business plan earlier this year as a class project. Martin, who is deaf himself, wrote up a plan for his business, Deaf Academy, where teaching and tutoring would be available for anyone interested in learning American Sign Language.

On February 15, Martin presented his final business plan to several members of the UMD SIFE team, teachers, and fellow classmates. Following his remarkable presentation, Robert and his mother, who were both unaware of the monetary gift he would receive, were both shocked and obliged when the SIFE students presented him with a check.

Martin will now have the opportunity to get his business off the ground thanks to the UMass Dartmouth SIFE team who will contribute $300 as well as guidance to Martin and his business, over the next three years. The SIFE team continues to visit New Bedford High School several times a month to share ideas and provide business mentoring to the students in this entrepreneurship class.

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 groups. For additional information, please contact the UMass Dartmouth SIFE project coordinator, Erin Fincher at u_efincher@umassd.edu or the advisor, Dr. Godwin Ariguzo at gariguzo@umassd.edu.

On-campus labs attempt to reduce paper waste

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. — Student printer areas in the Claire T. Carney Library and the CITS computer labs generate an average of 800 sheets of wasted paper every day — items printed by students that are never picked up. Multiply that amount of waste by a week: 5,600 sheets. Multiply it by an academic year of 32 weeks: 179,200 sheets. This is more than 35 cases of wasted paper each academic year.

This is a shocking amount of waste, at a time when colleges and universities across the country, including UMass Dartmouth, are promoting environmental consciousness.

“We wanted to do something to reduce this amount of waste,” said Donna Massano, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology.

Representatives from LSIRT, the division that administers from both the Carney Library and CITS, formed a committee to solve the paper waste problem.

“Although we have voluntary limits on the number of pages that can be printed in the Carney Library and the labs, we see multiple copies of the same document when we dispose of printed documents that were not picked up,” said Sharon Weiner, Dean of Library Services. “The new print management system will help students be more conscious of what they print,” said Weiner.

Students printing from the computers on the Carney Library’s second floor, those in the CITS labs in the lower level, and LARTS 216 will now use a nearby print station to release a document for printing. Staff and information are available to help students with the new process.

“Most colleges and universities are using this type of system to control printed paper waste,” explained Massano. “Committee members visited Brown, Roger Williams and Bridgewater State to study how they managed student printing. UMass Dartmouth is the last UMass campus to implement such a solution for printed paper waste.”

Public Safety assures students of safety after recent assault

By Chaunte M. Hines

Earlier this month a female student who was walking back to her dorm alone around 3 a.m. was apporached and robbed by three males. They managed to steal $25 from her purse.

In spite of this attack, Colonel Emil Fioravanti, Director of the UMass Dartmouth Department of Public Safety said, “UMass is a very safe campus.”

The student walked back to her dorm alone, but prior to this she was with a group of friends.

The victim told Public Safety that she was having difficulty opening her residence hall’s main door. Public Safety later checked the lock, but claimed that the lock was operating fine.

Fioravanti advises students to walk in groups at all times in the night. Students in situations where they cannont walk with others should not hesitate to call Public Safety for a police or DartVan escort.

“I walk alone less now...especially since the girl that was assaulted was one of my best friends,” said UMass Dartmouth student, Kim Lindgren.

Mychelle Tran follows this advice as well. She said, “I try never to walk alone anywhere at night. I take the DArtVan if I have no other option.”

The victim in this assault waited nearly an hour before she reported the incident. “Residents need to immediately call Public Safety when these situations happen. There are [emergency] phones all over campus,” said Fioravanti.

The incident is still an ongoing investigation, and if anyone has any information he or she should notify Public Safety.

To prevent this kind of situation from happening again, Public Safety has extra UMass Dartmouth officers working over-time as well as more officers patrolling on the weekends.

TOPICS IN MENTAL HEALTH

Incorporating humor into your day-to-day life improves health

We were in Salino, Utah when we were arrested for not going through a green light. We pleaded “maybe.” I asked the judge if he knew what time it was, he did, and I said, “No further questions.”

I went to court for a parking ticket. I pleaded insanity. I said, “Your honor, why would anyone in their right mind park in the passing lane?”

When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I’m leaving.

Yesterday I parked my car in a tow-away zone... When I came back the entire area was missing. – Steven Wright

Maybe these one-liners from Steven Wright make you laugh or at least smile a little. If so, how does it feel? Most of us have had the experience of being around someone who lightens our mood by saying something funny. Now there is increasing research on humor that suggests that incorporation of humor and laughter into your daily life promotes mental and even physical health. And it’s fun! In this article I will outline some of the health benefits of humor and will discuss ways to incorporate more humor into your life.

A study done at the University of Maryland Medical Center suggests that having a sense of humor and an ability to laugh at oneself or stressful situations can relax your body and increase your capacity to fight disease. Regular incorporation of laughter and humor can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, elevate mood, reduce the risk of heart disease, boost the immune system, improve brain functioning, promote relaxation and foster closer relationships.

In terms of mental and emotional health, humor helps reduce the frequency and duration of painful or uncomfortable emotions. It is impossible to feel angry, depressed, and anxious and to feel humor at the same time. If you can bring a light-hearted humor to everyday experiences, these “negative” emotions are less likely to crop up at all.

Having a sense of humor can also help you to meet new people and can bring you closer to those with whom you have existing relationships. It is fun to laugh and when you’re funny or laughing, other people want to be around you. Experiencing humor leads us to talk more, make more eye contact with other people and touch people in a compassionate way. If you can laugh with someone else, especially about a problem or stressful situation, it connects you with that person in a more intimate way and makes the situation more tolerable for both of you.

The benefits are clear! So how can we learn to laugh, have a sense of humor, and just generally lighten up? The first thing is to smile more often. Smiling, like laughter, is contagious. If you smile, those around you are more likely to smile at you. Plus, smiling releases endorphins in our brains that actually, chemically, make us feel better!

Second, learn to be grateful for the things and people in your life. Noticing the things you’re grateful for shifts your thoughts from negative (or neutral) to positive. Having positive thoughts is the first step towards humor and laughter. Chances are there is something positive you can take away from even the most negative or upsetting situation. You may have to look really hard, but there is likely to be something good — if only the bad event is over.

Incorporate happy people who laugh a lot into your life. If you hear people laughing, try to get in on it. Ask them what’s so funny. Usually people want to share their jokes or funny stories because humor and laugher feel so good that they want to experience it all over again by telling others. Seeking out people who routinely incorporate humor into their lives will influence you in a similar way. If you feel that most people around you are serious and lacking in the humor department, try watching funny movies, going to comedy shows, or even signing up for a “joke of the day” on a humor website.

You can also increase the humor in your life by finding ways to be silly or childlike (while still attending to daily responsibilities). Wearing ridiculous clothes, keeping toys around you (personally, I enjoy bobble head dolls and slinkys), telling stupid jokes or using temporary hair color are all possible ways to lighten up your mood and probably the moods of those around you. Those of us who spend time around little kids might have an easier time with this — since kids are naturally curious and funny. Spending time with kids can remind us of this side of ourselves.

Learn to laugh at yourself! We all make mistakes, have insecurities, have foibles, and do embarrassing things. If you can talk or joke about how embarrassed or uncomfortable you’ve been in these kinds of situations, you’ve learned to laugh at yourself. Other people will laugh too and chances are they will be laughing because they’ve done or felt the same thing.

Finally, one of the most important things you can do to increase the humor and lightness in your life is to learn to manage stress and any overwhelming personal problems going on in your life. This might mean that you need some professional help to cope with the painful stuff before you can feel humor again. It is very hard to feel stressed and humorous at the same time, so get some help getting that stress under control.

It seems only appropriate to end this article with a mental health joke—this one’s from the website www.gcfl.net: (Good Clean Funnies List): During a phone conversation, my nephew mentioned that he was taking a psychology course at the university. “Oh, great,” I said. “Now you’ll be analyzing everyone in the family.”

“No, no,” he replied. “I don’t take abnormal psychology until next semester.”

If you have questions or comments about the information presented in this article, please direct email correspondence to rachel.lively@umassd.edu.

Rachel Lively, Psy.D.
Counseling Center

STATE OF THE QUEER NATION

Canada bans gays from donating blood

The state of the queer nation this week is looking to Canada. Canada, as of 2005 was the fourth country to legalize gay marriage nationwide and can be looked at as more progressive on this topic. This week however, Killiam Melloy of EDGEBoston wrote an article entitled “Canada keeps gay blood donor ban in place.”

The issue of gay men being allowed to donate blood has been coming up a lot recently. Around the beginning of February, State of the Queer Nation covered another story coming from the good old U S of A on this same topic. San Jose State University in California suspended “all campus blood drives because of a long-standing government policy that bars gay men from donating blood, putting renewed attention on an issue that has been a sore spot at many liberal colleges” (see http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_8141825 for further information).

The president of San Jose State University, Don Kassing said, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s position conflicts with the school’s policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

So what is Canada doing? Not banning the ban. According to the article, “Two Montreal HIV/AIDS experts say that allowing gay men to donate blood would increase blood supply with an ‘infinitesimally low’ risk of viral transmission.” Their proposition to the Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec was that they follow the new Australian method.

Australia recently lifted the lifetime ban on gay men donating blood. “Gay men in that country can give blood as long as they have abstained from ‘male-to-male’ sex for at least 12 months. Once blood is donated, all samples are screened in the lab for HIV, syphilis and other viruses. The rationale for the change in policy by the Australian Red Cross is that if a gay man had sex within 12 months, an HIV infection could be missed in the post-donation screening. After that period, the tests would conclusively pick it up. Gay men who make false declarations to the Australian Red Cross risk criminal prosecution” (see http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=78aad2b6-af46-464c-bbca-85430be3968c&k=3464&p=1 for more information).

Wainberg, one of the two specialists from the McGill University AIDS Centre said, “The tests have moved forward, but the policies of Héma-Québec and the Canadian Blood Services are in a time warp circa 1983,” referring to the progress of science in screening and testing for viruses and other diseases in blood transfusions. “Gilmore estimated that a lift on the lifetime ban would result in a gain of 136,000 blood donations per year…while Wainberg referred to a study that estimated that the risk of contaminated blood entering the mainstream blood supply is so low that one unit of HIV-positive blood might escape detection in all of Canada once every 18 years.”

In 2006, the FDA was also approached by the Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banks to allow gay blood donors but both were refused. The FDA website says the “FDA’s deferral policy is based on the documented increased risk of certain transfusion transmissible infections, such as HIV, associated with male-to-male sex and is not based on any judgment concerning the donor’s sexual orientation.” But it is policys like this that allow judgments to be kept in the rest of society.

Source: “Canada Keeps Gay Blood Donor Ban in Place,” Kilian Melloy, www.edgeboston.com.

Melanie Correia
Secretary
Pride Alliance

CAREER CORNER

CRC’s annual Career Expo approaches

By Colleen Foley

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the job market may not be as dismal as the media suggests.

Although there has been an ongoing economic slowdown in the job market, employers told NACE that they planned to hire 16 percent more new college graduates in 2007 – 2008 than they did last year. Signing bonuses have also increased by approximately 25 percent, and college graduate salaries are expected to rise. The average increase was 4.6 percent. Average starting salaries for winter, 2008 were 4 percent greater at $49,300 than they were last winter.

Jobs in high demand for this year’s graduates include accounting, finance, engineering and computer science. NACE says that it will be a strong year for college recruiting and plans to keep tracking the college market.

Reminder: The UMass Dartmouth Career Resource Center will be hosting the 30th Annual Career Expo on April 9, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Woodland Commons. For more information, please visit www.umassd.edu/crc.