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(03/21/07 12:00pm)
In an e-mail message sent late Monday evening, Senior Class President Mollie Seiferas announced "with the deepest regret and sorrow" that this year's Senior Week would be canceled due to lack of interest.
According to the e-mail, only 7 percent of the Class of 2007 - about 100 students - signed up to participate in the festivities originally scheduled for May 15 to 18.
"It would've been a floor-and-a-half of people," Gabe Alonso, senior class treasurer, said in a telephone interview Monday night.
The Senior Class Council spent a year wrangling over ticket prices, programming and policies regarding alcohol consumption in Travers and Wolfe halls. In the end, though, few seniors showed interest in Senior Week.
"It's quite simple," Alonso said. "The Class of 2007 canceled Senior Week."
In the past, Alonso added, 50 to 60 percent of senior classes - about 600 to 700 students - have attended Senior Week. "We were already anticipating it to be much lower," he said.
Plans for Senior Week were only firmed up recently after the College decided it would ban alcohol from Travers and Wolfe halls where seniors live for the three-day send-off before commencement. Matt Golden, director of Communications and Media Relations, said in a Dec. 6 Signal story that the decision to ban alcohol in the towers was due in large part to vandalism in the building and abusive behavior on the part of participants.
Alonso believes this new policy is largely to blame for the seniors' lack of interest in participating in the event.
"Our class is very stubborn," he said. "Once they heard there would be no alcohol, they said 'That's it,' and decided they wouldn't go."
Amanda Roggenberg, senior communication studies major, seemed to echo Alonso's sentiments. Roggenberg, originally unwilling to spend the money on a ticket, signed up after being encouraged to do so by a friend. She signed up last weekend, after the council extended the registration deadline after noticing a "spike" in registrations as the original deadline approached.
"I think (people didn't sign up) because of the no-drinking policy," she said. "I think people were upset that they were of legal drinking age but weren't allowed to drink. I'm not that upset about (the cancellation) because of the no-drinking policy."
The cancellation also leaves questions overfunding for The Seal, the College's yearbook. The Seal had struck a deal with the Senior Class Council wherein ticket prices for Senior Week would be reduced to $155 with the $60 cost for a yearbook appended. Seal officials hoped this would boost the yearbook's revenue and help cover printing costs, which are not being funded by the Student Finance Board this year.
Seal officials were unclear how Senior Week's cancellation would affect the yearbook's publication. "Hopefully, it won't be a problem," Audrey Levine, the Seal's editor-in-chief, said in a telephone interview Monday night. She said the yearbook would rely on a more traditional publicity campaign to cover its printing costs. "We'll just have to do other stuff to make up for it."
Meanwhile, Roggenberg seemed to sum up the sentiments of the entire senior class after a year of complaint and compromise to get the event off the ground: "I've basically stopped caring."
(02/07/07 12:00pm)
Documents provided to The Signal last week through the state attorney general's office have revealed that mold species discovered in the Metzger Student Apartments could pose a health risk to the surrounding community. The College maintains, however, that it is taking every precaution to make sure that students and Ewing residents are safe during the demolition process.
The Microbial Investigation Report, a document prepared for the College in September 2006 by Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, identifies seven distinct varieties of fungus present in the apartments that could pose a health risk.
While another company, Innovative Decon Solutions (IDS) of Tampa, Fla., was contracted to conduct remediation to kill live mold in the building, mold spores can still be released into the air during demolition.
"It doesn't make (spores) go away, but it's no longer capable of reproducing," Bill Simms, owner of IDS, said in an interview last week. "The good thing about the dead mold spores is that they're not going to drift somewhere and start growing again."
The growths found in the apartment - acremonium, aspergillus versicolor, penicillum, cladosporium, paecilomyces, stachybotrys and trichoderma - are described in an attachment to the report. The attachment was prepared by EMSL Analytical Inc., a New York-based microbiology lab charged with analyzing the results of the cultures gathered from the apartments in August.
According to EMSL's attachment, the molds have the potential to affect health, particularly the respiratory system. According to the report, aspergillus versicolor mold has the potential to produce a certain mycotoxin - a toxin produced specifically by fungi - which "is reported to be carcinogenic to the liver and kidney and it can cause such symptoms as diarrhea and upset stomach."
Stachybotrys growth, according to the report, is also "significant because of the mold's ability to produce mycotoxins which are extremely toxic."
Officials at Langan, however, were quick to downplay the threat of toxicity from mold spores from the site.
"I think you should be careful with the word 'toxic,'" Richard Steiner, professional engineer for Langan, said in a teleconference last week. "(By fogging) you're killing the living stuff. Mold spores are very resilient. They can go into a dormancy state. We want to decrease the concentration so that when we do the demolition we can make sure it's not becoming airborne. We're not dealing with a toxic substance. Someone is not going to die because they live next to this process."
Fogging is the process by which a gas biocide is sprayed within the building.
According to Frank "Shorty" Schultz, owner of Schultz Demolition, the company contracted to carry out demolition of the apartments and who subcontracted IDS, the College - rather than applying a conventional spray-on biocide to kill mold - pushed for fogging the mold.
"They wanted to do fogging, which gets into all the cracks. There are only a few companies that can do this fogging," Schultz said.
Questions over remediation methods and, more simply, how to even describe the conditions within the buildings point to the lack of regulation within the industry. According to Sen. Shirley K. Turner, there are no state or federal statutes to oversee mold remediation.
"It seems as if this is a relatively new issue," Turner said. "There are no state governmental regulations to address the issue."
The state's Department of Community Affairs (DCA) has confirmed its role in overseeing the project, but according to Chris Donnelly, a communications officer with DCA, "We make sure that any asbestos that might become . pulverized and airborne is removed and that all utilities are disconnected." Donnelly made no mention of DCA's role in monitoring airborne mold.
Bill Rudeau, director of construction in the College's office of Campus Construction, sees the lack of regulations as offering the College the freedom to take whatever precautions are necessary to protect the workers, students and neighbors around the site.
"Since it's not a regulated industry, we took the most stringent of protocols," Rudeau said. "They're taking the buildings down in an operating room environment. (The level of mold spores) are below the level that is considered acceptable within an operating room."
In addition to fogging the buildings to kill live mold, five air monitoring stations have been set up around the buildings. Russell Van Sweden, a staff engineer with Langan, is on site during all demolition activities. Each of the five monitoring stations produces three samples per day.
At the end of the day the samples are transported to a lab for analysis. According to Langan officials, the test results have so far shown nothing that could pose a health risk to the community.
"We've just started to get data, but the stuff so far has been pretty good," Steiner said.
"If we had consistent high concentrations that we felt were unusually high, the work would probably stop and we would re-evaluate the situation," George Kelley, an official at Langan, said.
In addition to monitoring air quality throughout the demolition process, Schultz workers are spraying the buildings with water as they are being torn down and also as demolished material is being removed from the site. This prevents dust and other particles such as mold spores from becoming airborne.
"This is an unregulated industry we're in. There's nothing to say this number is good and this number is bad," Steiner said, referring to mold spore counts from the air monitors. "The College has gone above and beyond what might be considered to be right, and that would be simply to tear down the buildings. They did not have to fog the buildings and kill it all. They did not have to take daily measurements. They did not have to do it in the wintertime," Steiner added.
Doing demolition in the wintertime helps make sure that mold spores, which thrive in warm, wet conditions, stay dormant.
Nonetheless, the lack of regulation has been troubling to Ewing community members.
"Unfortunately, there isn't a body of law on mold," Jack Thomson, a Ewing resident whose house sits close to the demolition site, said. "There's nothing there to back this process up."
The concern over this aspect of the project has prompted Sen. Turner to sign on to a bill, the Toxic Mold Protection Act, submitted to the state legislature by Sen. Anthony Bucco in 2004 and reintroduced on Jan. 17. The bill would create a mold task force, made up of members from the health, environmental, insurance and construction fields to help create standards for permissible exposure to mold for the departments of Health and Senior Services and Community Affairs. The task force would also create standards for remediation in projects like the one at the College.
Meanwhile, Langan officials continue to defend their practices, claiming they do not need government intervention to ensure that they are keeping people safe from mold.
"Our job is to protect the community, whether it be the College or the people who live around there," Brian Feury, a Langan engineer, said. "That's the engineering oath we take and that's the oath we live up to."
(01/31/07 12:00pm)
As the College moves to raze the infamous Metzger Student Apartments, a project abandoned nearly two years ago after it was discovered the structures were damaged by water and mold growth, concerns have been raised over air quality with the potential for mold spores being released as the buildings continue to come down.
Demolition services are being provided by Schultz Enterprises, a King of Prussia, Pa.-based firm. According to the bid for Schultz's services, approved by the College for $650,000 on Jan. 2, the company must provide mold remediation services before demolition can begin. This service of eliminating the mold was subcontracted to Innovative Decon Solutions (IDS) from Tampa, Fla.
"They were a name who was recommended that could do this fogging," Francis "Shorty" Schultz, owner of Schultz Enterprises said in a telephone interview. "Fogging" refers to the method used by IDS to kill the mold. According to the IDS Web site, the company uses a "patented technology developed for the United States Department of Energy" that neutralizes live mold and the spores that remain even after mold is dead.
According to Bill Simms, the remediation method the company uses was developed to counteract chemical and biological weapons such as anthrax and its spores.
"It doesn't make (spores) go away, but it's no longer capable of reproducing," Simms said. "The good thing about the dead mold spores is that they're not going to drift somewhere else and start growing again."
"My specs say I'm supposed to spray for mold, but (the College) wanted to do fogging, which gets into all the cracks. There are only a few companies that can do this," Schultz added, noting that IDS crews were on site from Jan. 10-15.
In addition to mold remediation services, Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, an Elmwood Park, N.J.-based company, was contracted by the College to assess the mold damage in the buildings in its "Microbial Investigation Report" and to provide air quality monitoring stations around the construction site.
"The specs call for two air monitoring stations - we're providing five," Bill Rudeau, director of construction for the College's office of Campus Construction, said.
"Langan Engineering ... is collecting air samples periodically throughout the day during demolition activities," Matt Golden, director of Communications and Media Relations for the office of Public Affairs, said. "The test samples have not indicated any mold migration problems."
Nonetheless, some Ewing residents who live near the construction site are wondering if the College's mold remediation is as thorough as claimed.
Ewing resident Bob Wittik, whose property extends from Pennington Road to Metzger Drive and is sandwiched directly between buildings one and two of the apartment complex, said that noticeable mold growth has taken place on his house since the project was abandoned in 2004.
"You can see the mold," Wittik said.
"We all live around here and the value of our property will be greatly reduced because we're going to have to tell people there was a mold problem," Jack Thomson, another Ewing resident who lives close to the construction site, said.
Despite assurances to the Wittik family from the College's office of Public Affairs, the community has been left to wonder if any authority has any jurisdiction over the project to ensure that air quality standards are being adhered to.
According to Golden, the state's Department of Community Affairs is responsible for overseeing the project.
"Community Affairs is responsible for all public buildings projects, so they are obviously in the loop on what's going on. They have been involved in the whole ordeal," Golden said. He did, however, concede: "They don't have anyone on site on a daily basis."
According to Golden, Ralph Ferguson of the Department of Community Affairs is responsible for overseeing the project, although he could not be reached.
The apparent lack of state supervision has led Wittik to contact the offices of Senator Shirley Turner (D), who has been contacting various agencies to see if there are any state or federal guidelines related to mold remediation.
"It seems as if this is a relatively new issue," Turner said, adding that "there are no remediation or testing protocols."
Turner did say that the situation at the College had inspired her to sign on and help push through the pending Toxic Mold Protection Act, submitted to the state legislature in 2004.
Wittik and Thomson have spent the last few weeks trying to gain assurance from the College that there is no threat to their health or property from airborne mold. Information, however, has been hard to come by.
"We haven't always been impressed with the forthrightness of the College," Wittik said.
In a Jan. 11 meeting with College officials and representatives from its contracted construction management firm, Turner Construction Company, as well as a representative from Langan, Wittik requested a copy of the "Microbial Investigation Report" to submit his request in writing.
After submitting a written request to the College on Jan. 16, Wittik was informed on Jan. 24 that he had to request the documents via the Attorney General's office through the state's Open Public Records Act.
The Signal has also submitted a request for the document, but it had not yet been made available at press time.
"It was bad enough for (the College) to sue the contractors," Thomson said. "It was bad enough to tear down millions of dollars worth of buildings, but it's not bad enough to tell the neighbors what they could be breathing."
A number of the College's Transfer House residence halls are adjacent to the construction. Students there are also worried about the potential health effects from airborne contaminants.
"I wasn't worried about it until I saw it today," Njideka Emenuga, senior biology major and Transfer House resident, said when a Signal reporter visited her house on Friday. "A lot of dust particles were going into the air."
In the end, Wittik said he only wanted answers. "I haven't leveled any charges," he said. "I just asked questions. It seems like this is a hurry-up-and-get-this-done thing now."
(11/15/06 12:00pm)
You probably didn't vote last Tuesday. You might've thought about it, but you probably didn't feel like driving all the way home, or maybe you didn't know how to arrange for an absentee ballot. But either way, you probably ended up speaking with the majority of Americans who stayed home last week discharging a chorus of dispassionate sighs.
But what does it mean?
To say simply that we have become apathetic is too simple, barely a half-truth. It is not our faults that we are disenchanted and polarized, that we would rather stay at home and watch TV than play our hands in choosing the direction of our government.
There is no one left to believe in.
When was the last time any politician rose up to seize the hearts and minds of the voters, to make them believe that they are being fought for tooth-and-nail on Capitol Hill.
Populism is dangerous. Fighting for the common person is a fight that political figures have too often lost: John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln.
And what has it led to?
We have been disenfranchised, forced forever to choose the lesser of two evils - Democrats, Republicans - each one pandering to the middle of the road, backwash peddlers afraid to present any new ideas for fear of being branded a radical and forced out of our thin government.
Yes, we've been disenfranchised by the political and ideological monopoly controlled by the Republican and Democratic parties. We are polarized because we have no options, apathetic because we do not seem to matter to the average politician.
My only hope is that with the Democrats holding control of the House and Senate beginning in January, they can begin to push through legislation that will benefit the middle class, the working class, that chorus of disenchanted Americans who made their political statement through silence last Tuesday.
Expect Democrats to rally around issues like reducing government spending, which has spiraled out of control under a might-makes-right obsessed Republican majority.
But also expect them to confront health care issues that will affect all of us as we move out from underneath the umbrellas of our parents' insurance.
Expect an increase in the minimum wage that does not come tied to a bill to cut the estate tax.
Expect them to actually review and work to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Expect a congressional review of climate change - the most important issue of our generation, one that will dog us to our graves if we do not address it immediately.
And through all this, perhaps we can expect some voice to rise up from the dust on Capitol Hill to grab the American people and make them believe once more in the efficacy of our public institutions. We already see potential in figures such as Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., whose charismatic ability to bridge racial, educational, economic and geographic divides has made him a firebrand of the party.
We can only hope he does not meet the same lead fate that met the Kennedys.
In the meantime, the American public stays silent. But remember the warning of Sir Thomas More who, in the age of tyrannical kings as England stood poised to separate from the Catholic Church, observed that silence is the same as consent.
The same holds true in this second age of tyrannical kings.
(10/18/06 12:00pm)
Despite the preponderance of New Jersey residents at this school, I'd like to direct this editorial to my fellow Pennsylvanians in encouraging them to get home on Election Day to cast their vote against incumbent U.S. senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.).
A dangerous hypocrite, a conservative Christian ideologue, Santorum needs to be swept out on Nov. 2 as part of the great sea change I hope is coming to Washington.
Santorum has been involved in national-scale politics since 1990 when he ran for Congress as an upstart candidate with no political experience besides serving in a handful of administrative roles in the Pennsylvania state government.
So how did this young firebrand dethrone his seven-term opponent 16 years ago? He made the main thrust of his campaign the fact that his opponent had lost touch with his district after moving to Virginia to be closer to Washington D.C.
Now 16 years later, Santorum has come under fire for doing exactly the same thing. While Santorum claims legal residency in Penn Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb, the house there is empty - no curtains, no furniture and certainly no Santorum, his wife or any of their six children.
Santorum's hypocrisy extends into his policymaking as well. For years, Santorum has supported tort reform legislation that would limit awards for plaintiffs in medical malpractice suits to $250,000. This despite his wife's attempt to sue her chiropractor in 1999 for $500,000. "The court proceedings are a personal family matter," Santorum said after a jury awarded his wife $350,000. "I am fully supportive of my wife."
This situation hardly comes as a surprise from someone like Santorum, who seems to legislate almost exclusively from his own personal beliefs - beliefs strongly rooted in a conservative Christian ideology.
A devout Roman Catholic, he and his wife were inducted as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace in the Knights of Malta, which was a military order of the Catholic Church during the Crusades and whose members now adhere simply to the doctrine: "defence of the faith."
Certainly, Santorum takes this role very seriously.
When Pope Benedict XVI stepped to the head of the church, Santorum's office released a statement reading, in part, "I pray for Pope Benedict XVI as he begins his new role as the most reverent disciple of our Lord here on earth."
In lockstep with the church's stance on homosexuality, Santorum once equated it with incest in regards to a then-pending Supreme Court case that overturned a Texas sodomy law.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to anything . Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family," he said.
He has spoken publicly about his beliefs on the role of religion in the public sphere. At a lecture at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, he said: "How is it possible, I wonder, to believe in the existence of God yet refuse to express outrage when his moral code is flouted? How is it possible that there exists so little space in the public square for expressions of faith and the standards that follow from belief in a transcendent God?"
But what Santorum seems to be forgetting is that this country was founded on the freedom of religious expression, not the constriction of it to specific conservative Christian interpretation, and that different religions represent different "moral codes" if they represent one at all.
After 12 years, two terms, serving in the U.S. Senate, the voters of Pennsylvania seem to be realizing the extent of the self-righteous delusions that plague Santorum, and the tide certainly seems to be turning against him. I encourage all Pennsylvania voters to be a part of this solitary voice saying we are tired of our government being overrun by hypocrisy, corruption and, most importantly, narrowly conceived moral and religious views.
(04/26/06 12:00pm)
It has been 33 years since Dr. Robert Clayton Cole, 68, first arrived at the College for the Fall semester of 1973. His career here, set to end with his retirement at the end of this academic year, has been a storied one.
It is also one that almost never took place.
In 1971, Cole walked away from Lehigh University with a Ph.D in American Literature and entered the work force. When August 1973 came around, Cole accepted a position as an English and journalism professor at James Madison University in Virginia. And then he got a call - and a job offer - from Alex Liddy, a professor in the English program at the College familiar with Cole's work for the Lehigh's University Magazine.
"All my family connections were up this way," Cole said on deciding to take the job at the College. "But it was still an awkward thing to do."
According to his colleagues, his presence at the College has been invaluable. It was thanks to Cole's work in the English department that the College began offering degree programs in journalism and professional writing.
"As the originator of the journalism major, Cole has certainly made his mark on the program," Kim Pearson, assistant professor of journalism and interactive multimedia, said. "That impact has been felt not just at (the College), but in the state press associations and among newspapers throughout the region."
"You go anywhere in New Jersey and talk to other journalists and they identify this as 'Bob Cole's program.' He's a legend," Donna Shaw, assistant professor of journalism, said.
According to Cole, when he started teaching at the College, the English department offered one journalism class, Introduction to Journalism, a class taught primarily "by people who had never been in a newsroom," he said.
"After I got hired, I'd add a course or two every semester," Cole said. After several years, the College started offering a journalism minor, "which was like a major in disguise."
Fueling the growth of the fledgling journalism program was the Watergate scandal, which was reaching its peak as Cole ascended at the College. "Watergate was feeding the students," Cole said. "Watergate was the peak. Through Watergate, we were heroes. Journalists were highly respected."
Even after Watergate peaked and the popularity of journalism has found itself in decline, the program has continued to attract potential journalists and put them into the work force.
According to numbers provide by Cole, Dow Jones Newspaper Fund said that 28 percent of the College's journalism graduates enter the newspaper industry as opposed to the national average of 11 percent.
Cole has also spent an inordinate amount of his professional energy trying to hook students up with positions in the journalism job market. According to Cole, he has placed over 400 students in journalism jobs since he first came to the College.
"Don't think just because I'm retiring I won't be available for help with jobs," Cole added.
According to his colleagues, Cole's retirement will be felt strongly in the program.
"First, let me say the obvious: no one will fill Dr. Cole's shoes," Shaw said. "We will hire someone wonderful and smart and talented, but no one can really take his place."
"In this state, you can retire at 50," Cole said. "I'm 68. Most people I've known in the English department have retired at 65."
With two of his four children still in College, Cole chose to delay his retirement to help finance their education.
"I would've been in the position of putting them through school on a pension," Cole said. "It's hard enough putting them through school as it is."
The School of Culture and Society, under which the English and journalism programs fall, conducted a search last year to try and find a candidate to fill Cole's position to no avail. Three finalists were chosen including staff members at The New York Times and the Washington Post.
"As for last year's search, I think it's fair to say that we were all disappointed with the outcome," Pearson said. "However, I think it's fair to say that the fact that we attracted applicants with substantial experience at some of the most respected news organizations in the U.S. and abroad speaks well for the course of study that Cole initiated here."
With the school facing a potential budget crisis at the hands of newly inaugurated governor Jon Corzine, it is unsure when the College will be able to conduct another search, but Shaw is confident about the future of the program.
"I see two things that lie ahead," she said. "One, we will continue offering a program that is rigorous and challenging - rooted in journalistic and academic excellence, with emphasis on strong ethical and moral behavior. Two, we will evolve as the journalism industry evolves, so our students can write and edit for print but also for broadcast, the Internet and beyond. In other words, it will be a program that I hope will make Dr. Cole proud."
(02/15/06 12:00pm)
At nearly five o'clock in the morning, December 4, 1969, heavily armed members of the Chicago Police Department kicked in the door to Fred Hampton's apartment and, without provocation, opened fire.
The bullets first found Mark Clark, asleep in an armchair with a shotgun in his lap. He was killed instantly, taking hits to the chest. As his muscles seized in death, he squeezed off one round. It was the only retaliatory round fired.
With Clark out of the way, the police turned their guns on Hampton's bedroom, spraying the wall with bullets, hitting the 20-year-old at least once in the shoulder. They pulled the wounded man, clad in his boxer shorts, to the floor and delivered the coup de grace: a point blank bullet to his head.
Hampton's crime? He was the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, an organization deemed by the federal government to be, in the words of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."
The apartment had been cased, their organization infiltrated by an FBI operative. It was planned political assassination - there is no other way to describe the incident.
The murder of Fred Hampton was the most flagrant of the abuses carried out under the FBI's covert Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). When it first was employed in 1956, COINTELPRO sought to monitor and infiltrate anti-establishment groups that the FBI thought were being coerced by foreign powers towards the ultimate goal of toppling the United States government.
It operated in the shadows of American society, beyond the eyes of public scrutiny. And it grew. By 1971, when the program was finally uncovered by a citizens' group, COINTELPRO was monitoring the activities of myriad individuals and organizations including Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Despite a Senate select committee investigation, many of the more than two thousand approved COINTELPRO operations remain classified.
And now, 37 years later, the Bush White House has come under fire for its own covert domestic surveillance program. The president has authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the phone calls of American citizens. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 requires court approval for such domestic spying programs. The White House never sought such approval, claiming that the broad resolution authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, gave the president the authority to act without judicial oversight.
While the White House has maintained that Congress was informed of the wiretapping program, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) stated during the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that 527 of Congress's 535 members were completely unaware of the initiative.
When the Senate's Church Committee report came out in the wake of COINTELPRO and other such abuses revealed by the Watergate scandal, it sternly reprimanded the intelligence community: "the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated . and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. (These rights) were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the 'national security,' the law did not apply."
This administration has been given extraordinary latitude from the public, the media, and the legislative and judicial branches to fight the Long War against terrorism. Somewhere, a line begs to be drawn.
We can only hope it takes no more blood from men like Fred Hampton for it to happen.
(02/01/06 12:00pm)
One semester after the christening of the College's new printer-use monitoring program PrintSense, the office of Information Technology (IT) hails it as a tentative success, citing a million-page reduction in printing from last fall.
"I think overall it went pretty well," Frank Nardozza, assistant director of Access Technology, said. According to statistics provided by Nardozza, the Fall 2005 semester saw 1.5 million pages being printed in the campus's computer labs - this in comparison to the 2.5 million pages printed in Fall 2004 and the 2.2 million in Fall 2003. This equates to a reduction of 4.75 tons of paper from last fall.
"We wanted to reduce waste, basically," Nardozza said. "We reduced printing by over one million pages; that's a 41 percent reduction."
As students are by now aware, PrintSense imposes a 600-page limit on students' printing. If students go above their limit, they are charged five cents per page - a necessary evil, according to Nardozza.
In the past, Nardozza said, IT has been notified of such abuses as two lab printers tied up printing complete copies of the Bible.
IT was cautious to call the program a full-blown success. "I want to see a full year," Jeff Kerswill, director of User Support Services, said. "We may have cut back 41 percent, but it may increase. We don't know."
Nardozza, however, didn't expect to see much fluctuation in the future. "I don't think they'll go down," he said. "This really was our goal."
"We don't want to charge," he added. "We want people to be responsible."
According to Nardozza, savings from reduced printing will go toward operations costs. He noted that PrintSense was not devised as a money-making venture, but rather as a means of deferring costs. "We have to work with a fixed budget," Nardozza said. "We were subsidizing the budget from other IT project lines (to pay for printing)."
Nardozza pointed not only to overzealous printing in campus computer labs as the compelling need for PrintSense, but also to an increase in the cost of printing supplies. According to Nardozza, the cost of paper has increased approximately 40 cents per ream in recent years, while the price of toner cartridges has jumped $35.
For the most part, students seem to have complied with the program. According to Nardozza's figures, of the 6,205 users created on the system, 93 percent of them stayed within the 600-page limit. "I think the 93 percent really says it all," Nardozza said.
As for the seven percent who went above the limit, three percent printed between 600 and 700 pages, two percent printed between 700 and 800 pages and two percent printed more than 800 pages.
Some students still have their complaints about the program. "When I would print things, the printer would print out blank pages or skip pages and not print them at all, but I would be charged for them anyway," Marianne Keane, senior psychology major, said. "I'm sure I could've brought the messed up pages to some office or something and then they could have reimbursed me, but I didn't really care that much and I didn't have the time anyway," she added.
Indeed, according to Nardozza, IT has addressed the issue of reimbursements, citing approximately 100 credit requests during the Fall semester. "We have not denied a credit request," he said.
Despite her grievance, Keane was pleased with the program's results. "I really do think that the program is good though, because it did save so much paper," she said.
Likewise, Kerswill was impressed with students' receptiveness to the change. "Students seem to have adjusted really well," he said.
(11/02/05 12:00pm)
The Oct. 18 gubernatorial debate hosted by the College was the only one aired on network television in prime time. And, with only an hour to work with, the candidates - featuring two third-party contenders, Hector Castillo of the Education Not Corruption Party, and Jeffrey Pawlowski of the Libertarian Party - jockeyed for speaking time in what seemed, at points, to be a very cramped debate.
Considering the viciousness of the claims being hurled at one another in recent weeks by the Democrat and the Republican, both men seemed uncharacteristically tame. The heaviest blow of the night was levied by Castillo, criticizing Corzine's property tax plan.
The plan calls for a 10 percent increase a year for four years on property tax rebates. Castillo said, with 10 percent on the average $800 rebate being $80, "That doesn't even buy you a good bottle of wine."
"With all due respect," Corzine retorted, "I drink much cheaper wine." He added that New Jersey's property tax codes were created 300 years ago and needed to be revised for the modern age. He also added that, under his plan, rebates for seniors would increase by about $400.
Forrester, likewise, trumpeted his own property tax relief plan - the 30 percent -in-3 Guarantee - which would require the state, by constitutional amendment, to pay 30 percent of residential property taxes within a three-year period.
"The same crowd that's saying it's 'pie-in-the-sky' have been giving a pie in the face to New Jersey," Forrester said, referring to the democratically controlled statehouse which has tried in the past, with marginal success, to fund rebate programs like the one endorsed by Corzine.
Much of the debate centered around the main contenders' trading of diplomatically-couched barbs, as Corzine defended himself from Forrester's latest attack ad - which premiered that morning - declaring the senator offered New Jersey "more taxes, more corruption, more of the same."
"If you don't respond (to attacks), people will think it's the truth," Corzine said, adding that he would like to engage in an honest and frank discussion of pertinent issues, but that his campaign has been continually diverted by charges of corruption.
The two also discussed their mutual decision to refuse public money for their campaigns, instead relying on their own amassed millions, with Forrester saying that he would have accepted public money if Corzine had as well.
During a section of the debate in which candidates were allowed to question one other candidate, Forrester and Corzine each chose to direct their questions to each other.
Forrester grilled Corzine about his remarks declaring his support for the scandal-plagued McGreevey administration during the Democratic National Convention in 2004, just weeks before the former governor resigned.
Corzine compared his allegiance to Forrester's allegiance with the Bush administration. "Just like you stand with George Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and say you don't agree with everything they do, but they're still members of your party," he said.
Corzine then asked Forrester about $3.4 million in no-bid contracts awarded to Forrester's pharmaceutical company, BeneCard Services Inc., by a Burlington County agency after it contributed over $50,000 to county Republicans.
"We provide drugs for the people who need them," Forrester said, calling the question a "distraction." "We were the only company who provided a proposal that met the specs of the county."
The partisan sniping over charges of corruption from both sides of the aisle prompted a response from Pawlowski: "It just goes to show you," he said. "Everything in New Jersey is up for sale, including the governorship. And the price tag is clear, it's between 20 and 30 million dollars."
While, the debate gave the main contenders, Corzine and Forrester, the opportunity to further hammer home their agendas to the voters of New Jersey, it was an enormous opportunity for the relatively unknown candidates Castillo and Pawlowski.
Each of these candidates is required, by state law, to have amassed a war chest of more than $300,000 to participate in the debate, which was sponsored by the League of Women Voters Education Fund along with ABC affiliates WPVI-6 from Philadelphia and WABC-7 from New York.
"The independent movement is alive in New Jersey," Castillo said after the debate. Castillo immigrated to Paterson from Peru at the age of 11 before attending Seton Hall University as a medical student.
From there, he studied at the University of Guadalajara and the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry from which he received his doctorate. He also holds degrees in Internal Medicine, Ophthalmology and has a pending degree in Administrative Science.
"We need fresh ideas - this is what makes New Jersey and America great. If you get new ideas, you will make a better state. I know there are a lot of independent thinkers (at the College)."
"My campaign is a very easy campaign," Pawlowski said, "a simple government. Don't waste your opportunity here voting for business as usual."
Pawlowski has been a member of the Libertarian Party since 2003 when he quit the Democratic Party after serving on the Sayreville town council and planning board.
Students had a chance to partake in the debate, offering two questions to the candidates. These two came from a panel of 10 students who, after participating in a workshop coordinated by Bill Ball, chair of the political science department, were given the opportunity to question the candidates.
"To obtain a spot on the panel was a process in itself," Ravi Verma, sophomore biology major, who asked a question regarding stem cell research, said. Verma said that, after participating in a three-hour discussion of issues on the minds of New Jersey voters, 10 of the approximately 35 students who participated were offered spots on the panel.
"I'm a 7-year medical student at (the College)," Verma said. "The idea of medicine and embryonic stem cell research is very important to me as a result. With the world headquarters of Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson located right here in the Garden State . we have such a great opportunity . to be a world leader in embryonic stem cell research. However, the private industry is waiting for the public sector to start up with some funding."
Corzine echoed some of Verma's sentiments. "New Jersey is the medicine chest of the world," he said, endorsing the use of state money for its research, adding that it was the "hope of mankind."
"I was able to obtain a straight answer from all the candidates except Forrester," Verma said. "He has been vehemently against embryonic stem cell research - taking a similar moral road like President George W. Bush - especially public funding for it. However, his response didn't indicate that at all. He sounded like he was for it, yet never said the words 'embryonic' or 'public funding.' He was playing the crowd, and I think the question tripped him up a little bit."
Indeed, Forrester indicated support for research, citing a brain injury suffered by his daughter, Brianna. "These are exactly the type of injuries that be helped with stem cells," he said, without explaining what type of research he would endorse.
The second student question, regarding homeland security, came from Kim Gray, junior journalism and professional writing major. In response, Corzine endorsed the creation of a homeland security czar for New Jersey. "We need to make sacrifices in order to protect people," he added.
"I thought that Corzine did the best job at answering my question," Gray said. "I felt like he was the only one that really showed me respect." She added that she thought Pawlowski's response was "pretty crazy."
"The terrorists are winning this war," Pawlowski said. "We all keep losing our freedoms one by one by one. The first role of government is not to protect its citizens, but to protect the liberties which we are granted."
"Credit should go to . (Ball) and all the students who took the time to participate in his workshop before the debate," Matt Golden, assistant director of Public Information, said. "They came across as intelligent and informed on camera."
According Golden, the College was chosen as the site for this debate after it successfully held another gubernatorial debate in 2000. "WPVI and the League of Women Voters came back to us this year because things went well last time. I know they like the Music Building venue and think it works well for television," he said.
(10/19/05 12:00pm)
Jonathan Ames ended his reading last Wednesday afternoon like he ends all of them - with the Hairy Call.
According to Ames, the author of three novels and two essay collections who read at the College as part of ink's Visiting Writers Series (VWS), the call was invented by his childhood friend Jon "Fat" Eder when they were in fourth grade.
"We used it on the playground to protect ourselves when we were being attacked by more normal children," Ames said before letting it rip - three times - for the audience: to the left, down the middle, and to the right.
He claims the sound possesses extraordinary healing powers, crediting it with curing both his back spasms and his once-elevated testicle.
"The reading was fantastic," Sarah Maloney, president of 'ink' and senior mathematics major, said. "(It) had everyone laughing, but Ames was sure to include more serious writing."
An example of this "more serious writing" was not the essay Ames closed his reading with, "I Shit My Pants in the South of France," an exercise in what Ames called "scatological participatory journalism."
It was a piece Ames penned when he was a columnist for the New York Press during the mid-'90s, which he included in his collection of essays "What's Not To Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer." It chronicles his visit to a strange doctor in SoHo for his first colonic - a water enema incurred for the purpose of cleansing the beleaguered colon - and the aftermath, noting that it was "completely autobiographical, however embarrassing that is."
As he had a lubricated tube inserted into him, which Ames said conjured images of Laurence Olivier in "Spartacus," he recounted an adventure from 1983 when he spent the summer taking classes in the South of France.
After drunkenly buying a rank tuna sandwich from a dirty gentleman outside a caf?, Ames was overtaken by wrenching stomach cramps that ended with an "(explosion of) diarrhea like a ruptured sewer main."
"I should've said beforehand," Ames added, "if talking about these things is in any way offensive, that was not my intention. There are people who can't get enough of scatological humor, and those who don't like it at all."
"I liked the scatological humor," Linda Gallant, class of 2005 alumna who returned to the College for the reading, said. "It was excellent."
But, for Jonathan Ames, this type of subject matter is nothing out of the ordinary. Ames has built a reputation for himself on the bizarre, on kink, on the scatological, on things that we would find obscene if they weren't so damned amusing.
After all, this is a man who has had his own one-man off-off Broadway show, "Oedipussy," appeared as an extra in the cinematic, pornographic piece "C-Men," and fought in one amateur boxing match as "The Herring Wonder."
"I ate a lot of herring because I figured it was a strong fish, surviving in cold water," Ames said. "And I also figured I would have herring breath, which would keep my opponent back."
Ames also read from his latest novel, "Wake Up, Sir!," a piece he said builds on the tradition of "Don Quixote" - in which the title character read so many novels about nobility that he thought he should be a knight - and P.G. Wodehouse - in whose books the main character has a valet, Jeeves, who follows him everywhere - in that Ames' main character thinks that, after reading too much Wodehouse, he deserves a valet.
"Ames used his understanding of timing and a charming British accent to bring the scenes to life," Maloney added. "I was impressed by the scope of his writing."
- Next on the docket for the VWS: Jess Row, author of "The Train to Lo Wu," will be reading Nov. 9 at 3 p.m. in the New Library Auditorium.
(09/28/05 12:00pm)
By 1966, everyone knew what was best for Bob Dylan - except, apparently, himself. To the masses, record company executives, the press, his fans, Dylan had transcended the boundaries of mortality. He had become a shaman, a guru, a political and spiritual leader - the much-heralded "voice of his generation."
And by 1966, the base time for Martin Scorsese's sweeping new documentary "No Direction Home," Dylan was pretty fucking tired of the whole thing.
By 1966, as Dylan wrapped up a tour of Europe with his new band, he was 25 years old. He had recorded six albums since his first in 1962 at the tender age of 21. He had cemented his place as one of the great songwriters of the time - his pieces were turned into hits by other artists. He was revered by his contemporaries, the heir apparent to folk legends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
Ultimately, it is this Dylan mythology that Scorsese's two-part documentary, which aired Monday and Tuesday on PBS and is also available for purchase on DVD, hopes to dispel. The first part builds Dylan as the figure we are all familiar with: the protest singer, the political activist.
It is filled with interviews of the crowd Dylan ran with in his early days in Greenwich Village, as the burgeoning bohemians and the folk musicians all collided on MacDougal Street. Although Scorsese only came on board the project in 2001, archivists have been gathering footage and conducting interviews for nearly 10 years. As such, we are treated to commentary from late-greats the likes of Dave Van Ronk and Allen Ginsberg.
Ginsberg speaks of the first time he heard Dylan's song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," a cut off his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." "I heard 'Hard Rain,' and wept, cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation from earlier bohemian, beat illumination into self-empowerment," he said.
The second half destroys this image, this myth, and we see Dylan transition, to the sometimes-violent chagrin of his fans, from firebrand of the folk scene to the frontman of a rock and roll band.
But to Dylan, being a musician was never about being a "folk" musician, or a "topical" or "political" musician. It was not about speaking to the world. Rather, it was about sharing with the world that which spoke to him. Dylan was always placed in some grand historical context, one that, he admits, he rarely understood.
It would be safe to call "No Direction Home," massive in its scope, clocking in at 207 minutes, the most comprehensive look at Dylan ever taken. It is not the gushing of a fan, it is an objective look at Dylan's rise to fame and his struggle to deal with a public, in terrifying and uncertain times, constantly trying to pigeonhole him as their voice, as their leader. But Dylan never had any answers.
The man himself, who in his sparse autobiography "Chronicles: Volume 1," describes trying to deflect fame by pouring a bottle of whiskey over his head and walking into a department store acting "pie-eyed," agreed to sit down for a 10-hour marathon interview with Scorsese.
Most exciting and most telling about the struggle Dylan faced as he turned away from the "topical" songwriting for which he was made famous, is the unearthing of footage shot by D.A. Pennebaker at a particularly infamous Dylan concert in Manchester, 1966, for his unflattering Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back." At the time, Dylan's shows were diced into two parts: one acoustic set and one electric.
As Dylan takes the stage with his band, tuning up, one irate fan screams: "Judas." Dylan takes a step back, continuing to tune his guitar, then leans forward into the microphone. "I don't believe you," he says. "You're a liar." He turns to the band, the group that later became The Band: "Play it fuckin' loud." And they tear into "Like a Rolling Stone" like a 747.
For Dylan, who resented the notion of political songwriting, this was his one true protest song.
(09/21/05 12:00pm)
Gubernatorial candidates Sen. Jon Corzine and Doug Forrestor articulated the need to work at keeping N.J. students in the state for college at a forum held Monday in the Music Building Concert Hall.
The New Jersey Presidents' Council, a body composed of representatives from 50 public, private and community colleges and universities across the state, sponsored the event, moderated by Kent Manahan, senior anchor at New Jersey Network (NJN) News.
Manahan gave the candidates, Democrat Corzine and his Republican opponent Forrester, a chance to elucidate their positions on higher education. In separate sessions, Forrester taking the stage first, the candidates made opening remarks before fielding questions written by audience members.
The views of the candidates in their two separate sessions, however, did not diverge radically from each other's. Without providing much detail, both men said the future economic health of the state rests, in large part, on the shoulders of its college students.
"We should be able to articulate the relationship between higher education and economic policy," Forrester said. "People must understand the inextricable link between intellectual community and economic growth."
Echoing Forrester, Corzine said "Higher education is the most important economic growth tool at our disposal."
Both men cited the need to increase capacity in the state's colleges and universities, since New Jersey is the nation's most densely populated state.
"We send far too many of our brightest young men and young women out of state because we don't have the choices," Corzine said.
"New Jersey has two-thirds the space it needs for higher education," Forrester said. "We will have a plan in place for an additional 50 percent." Forrester also noted that New Jersey ranks 45th out of 50 states in per-capita enrollment in public schools.
Both candidates pledged additional funding for scholarships, with Forrester pledging to revamp financial aid packages for students. Although tuition increases have been an issue of focus, Forrester rejected the idea of imposing a tuition cap.
"I understand the motive for tuition caps," Forrester said, "but as a business person, I think that would be counterproductive."
The Corzine campaign has outlined plans to provide 4,000 new Tuition Assistance Grants (TAG), as well as fully fund said grants for low-income students. Corzine has also proposed creating a program to forgive $1,000 in loans for students who work in high-need sectors of the state.
Corzine also has proposed creating a program to forgive $1,000 of loans for students who attended school out of state, but work in state in high-need industries.
Corzine said his higher education plan would cost $9 million its first year, and expand to $35 million by the fourth year.
To fund their higher education initiatives, both candidates cited the need to form partnerships between the public and private sectors.
"I believe we got them on the record with some good issues for us," College President R. Barbara Gitenstein said after the forum. "I think we heard the stances we want to hear, that both candidates want to see higher education at the top of their platforms."
(09/14/05 12:00pm)
The announcement that Senator Jon Corzine, the Democratic contender in the state's gubernatorial race, would be stumping at the College on Thursday came with only a day's notice, and I, having never met a United States senator, was quick to jump on the story.
And as our weekly Wednesday morning staff meeting wrapped up last week, the phone in the Signal office started bleating. When I answered it, I met Brendan, one of Corzine's handlers. He was calling with an offer: if I wanted, I could have ten minutes to interview the senator at the conclusion of his speech. Like any good journalist would do, I, of course, agreed.
And then Brendan asked me what I was going to ask the senator. And, again, like any good journalist would do, I did not tell him.
But to be honest, I didn't know. It seemed silly to ask Corzine any policy-related question for fear of getting nothing in return but answers from a can, talking points put together by his campaign.
So I mulled. I asked everyone I knew for their input. The answers ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous - the latter embodied by my housemate's suggestion that I ask the senator to bust a rhyme.
I wanted to make him squirm a little, I wanted to make him just a touch uncomfortable. I didn't want to waste the chance I'd been given.
Carla Katz is the president of the Communications Workers of America, Local 1034, a union that represents more than 16,000 workers in New Jersey. She was also, at one point, Jon Corzine's girlfriend. While the two were dating in 2002, the senator provided Katz with $470,000 to pay off her half of a mortgage she held on a Hunterdon County house with her ex-husband. It was a loan he forgave just a week after announcing his candidacy for governor.
Now for residents of New Jersey, doesn't this just seem like business-as-usual? I could, without really thinking about it, rattle off a list of names of elected officials across the board - municipal, state, federal - whose names have been tied to cases of corruption: Scannapieco, Torricelli, Impreveduto, McGreevey. This is, believe me, a very abbreviated list.
A Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers Poll conducted in May concluded that 58 percent of New Jersey residents would say there is "a lot" of political corruption in the state. Clearly, political cynicism has set in.
So considering our state's sordid political history, and Corzine's own questionable relationships, I figured I had my question: how does Corzine, considering the Katz situation, hope to muster the credibility to restore New Jerseyan's damaged faith in government?
The interview was convoluted at best, with Corzine either not understanding the broader context in which I wanted him to place himself, or, more believably, just refusing to do so. He politicked me around the room like a boxer, interrupting me, rattling off talking points while I tried to stay on topic.
The reality of campaign politics exists entirely removed from the reality we know. For political candidates, reality is defined exclusively in terms of how a subject relates to them, how it could reflect on their image. They do not care about the broader context, they care about looking good in the present moment.
M: There's a lot of cynicism on the part of voters in New Jersey, and I think especially the voting youth. They've gotten really sick of this kind of business-as-usual corruption that takes place in New Jersey and, regardless of whether or not you see yourself as a part of it ... for a lot of people, this is still a strike against you. And for a lot of people, it's not just that they're cynical anymore, it's more that they just don't care.
JC: I think that people also will examine and hopefully young people will examine was the totality of what an individual is all about. I'm one of 23 Senators who voted against the war in Iraq, which wasn't all that pleasant when it was going on. I have taken what many people will think are some of the most independent positions in the senate ...
M: Well, getting back to it, regardless of whether ... it will or won't affect your ability to make decisions ... people are prone to seeing it as another in a long string of suspicious looking political relationships that have taken place across the spectrum of New Jersey politics. And that's an image that is burned into people's mind by this point ... How are you going to try to prove to the people of New Jersey that you can turn this around?
But Corzine didn't seem to want to put the problem in a larger frame:
JC: I've been their Senator for five years, they've seen the decisions I've taken. They have an ability to assess whether my personal decisions have been impacting my public judgement ... And I think that when they look at the assets and the minuses, they may say (I'm) one of the few people who had the intellectual honesty to vote against the war, one of those people who fought for corporate reform ... (I'm) someone who fought for the lives of Darfur where genocide was recognized ... People have to look at it as a composite.
It was then that Brendan leaned over between us: "We're going to have to leave it there," he decided.
M: Okay, just one more thing ... You're saying that your record as a senator and a public official is weighty enough by itself to try and change the image a lot ...
JC: I think it will be a factor that people will have to balance. If that were the only factor that was in consideration. I mean, they'll look at my agenda, whether they believe I can accomplish my agenda. Okay?
I snapped off my tape recorder and without another word, he stalked out of the room.
"Did you get everything you needed?" Brendan asked after the room had cleared.
"Not really," I said, "but I guess that's to be expected."
(09/14/05 12:00pm)
The campaign of New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful Jon Corzine made a stop at the College last Thursday morning, with the senator stumping out of Forcina Hall. Corzine's remarks, which weighed in at a little under an hour, focused on primary public education in the state.
"Leaving no child behind is not good enough," Corzine said to the packed audience of students and faculty alike. "What we need to do is make sure every child can get ahead."
While Corzine recognized the achievements of New Jersey's public schools - specifically citing that the state's fourth-graders have the third best literacy marks in the country - he added: "We have great strengths, but that does not mean we do not have challenges."
Corzine's proposals include working to make full-day kindergarten available statewide by 2009, launching a "High Skills Partnership" initiative to focus on preparing students for jobs in growth sectors of the economy, and making four years of math and science mandatory at New Jersey high schools.
According to the summary proposal released by the Corzine campaign, the first-year cost of his programs is estimated at $22.5 million.
Presently, full-day kindergarten programs are offered in 350 school districts in the state, up from 264 in 2001.
If he wins come Election Day, Corzine hopes to offer full-day kindergarten in all districts. However, the program would not be mandatory. According to The Times of Trenton, a Corzine advisor said the plan - which would cost $8.5 million in its first year - would cost $34 million over four years.
"We have a requirement in our most poor, most needy districts, to provide early childhood education," Corzine said. Indeed, full-day kindergarten is mandatory in 31 districts across the state, including Trenton.
Likewise, Corzine proposed doubling the funding of the state's pre-K programs, claiming that for every dollar the state spends on early childhood education, it saves seven dollars down the road in reduced welfare, criminal justice and special education costs. His proposal would provide preschooling for an additional 14,400 children annually at a first-year cost of $6 million.
"It's unbelievable for us to be the wealthiest state in the nation and not offer (preschool)," Corzine said. "It leaves parents, particularly women, scrambling to find daycare."
The senator's "High Skills Partnership" program - to which the campaign has not attributed a cost - would work to integrate the career-specific curriculum of the state's vocational and technical schools into its secondary schools.
It would create "schools within schools" to teach career skills.
"We must work to ensure that children are prepared for the workplace," Corzine said, noting that the state's technical schools produce a quarter of the number of scientists and engineers that all of China produces.
Likewise, Corzine - himself a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a New York-based investment firm - pressed for schools to teach financial literacy. "Students must understand how a 401k investment account works, and what factors determine a credit score," Corzine's summary proposal reads.
"No schools in New Jersey, or really in the country, teach financial literacy," he said. "I believe it ought to fit right in there with reading, writing and arithmetic."
This would come alongside public school curriculums that push arithmetic, making four years of math - including a requirement to have completed algebra by the ninth grade - mandatory.
"This world is very, very mathematically oriented," Corzine said.
The senator also addressed issues of corruption in school construction, taking the state's Schools Construction Corporation (SCC) to task for depleting its $8.6 billion budget amid allegations of waste and mismanagement.
"You should expect, and I should be held accountable. Every dollar should be spent well," Corzine said, adding that fixing the school construction issue is one of the most important factors for statewide property tax relief.
In February, the Corzine campaign proposed the creation of an independent State Comptroller position to investigate corruption in the state.
"The disgraceful SCC cost overruns and mismanagement make the position even more important," the campaign's summary proposal reads, noting that, if elected, Corzine would hire independent auditors to investigate the failings of the SCC. "I said right from the start, if there's something wrong, we've got to prosecute individuals," he said.
Although the senator was awarded an honorary doctorate at last May's commencement ceremonies, and despite his warm welcome on Thursday by College President R. Barbara Gitenstein, not all of the College stands behind Corzine.
"The senator offered very noble education programs to this state, yet he has no means of paying for them," Tony DeCarlo, vice-chair of the TCNJ College Republicans and senior history and secondary education major, said in an e-mail statement.
"The bulk of these programs would be paid through public bonding. Essentially, Sen. Corzine wants to borrow the money now and let his successors worry about paying the bill later."
(09/07/05 12:00pm)
As the nation comes to terms with the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, the reality facing many students in New Orleans is that most of its schools are simply too damaged to accommodate them for the semester. The College, however, is making efforts to accept undergraduates who were to attend schools in New Orleans until their schools recover from the storm.
According to Lisa Angeloni, dean of admissions, as of Friday afternoon, the College had already admitted a number of students displaced by the hurricane. "It could be up to 15 at this point," she said. "It's going to keep fluctuating. Our phones haven't stopped ringing."
The students, which Angeloni said represent Tulane University, Louisiana State University, Loyola University New Orleans and Xavier University, have been, for the most part, New Jersey residents. However, Angeloni said the College would consider admission requests from out-of-state students as well.
"We probably will begin to get inquiries from out of state. We're all trying to help as much as we can," she said. "It's so horrific that it's hard not to help people."
Angeloni added that a hotline was set up for students who want to make inquiries over the holiday weekend. She said the number of admitted students will likelyincrease as the week progresses.
"I'm sure we're going to be picking up quite a few students next week," she added.
Both Tulane and Loyola have canceled their fall semesters in the wake of the storm. Meanwhile, the College has given admissible students until Sept. 12 to begin classes. Tuition payments and other bills will be deferred until the situation is resolved with the institution at which each student was originally enrolled.
Angeloni said an orientation event is being planned for students admitted to the College in the wake of the hurricane.
Administrators have been meeting to discuss housing options for the refugee students, according to Matt Golden, assistant director for public information for the office of College and Community Relations. "Because this is such a dire situation, we are going to push ourselves beyond what we consider capacity under normal circumstances," he said. "Depending on how many students are interested in coming, we want to turn some of the lounges within the dorms into housing facilities."
Neither Golden nor Angeloni could place a limit on how many students the College will accept. "We are going to extend ourselves as an institution as far as we can go," Golden said. "We were at what we deemed capacity before this happened, but the situation demanded some kind of response."
Golden said more than 20 faculty and staff members have offered to open their homes and take in refugees.
Community members who are willing to offer a place to stay for victims are urged to contact Pat Coleman-Boatwright, director of the office of College and Community Relations, at coleboat@tcnj.edu or 609-771-2368.
(08/31/05 12:00pm)
After Acting Gov. Richard Codey signed legislation last Monday banning smoking in all public and private colleges and universities in the state, College administrators began the process of implementing the policy on campus.
The bill, S-2332, introduced to the state legislature in February, orders "the appropriate governing body, board or individual responsible for or has control of the administration of a school ... (to) make and enforce suitable regulations controlling the smoking of tobacco on their premises."
At the College, this responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of the office of Occupational Safety and Environmental Services.
The bill also states that schools have 60 days from the time of enactment - until Oct. 21 - to draft and begin enforcing the regulations.
"That's what they're really working on right now," Matt Golden, assistant director for public information in the office of College and Community Relations, said.
"The legislation is pretty clear; it does prohibit smoking in all the residential facilities on campus. What they're looking at now is a couple of things: enforcement of the regulations and communication with the campus community about it."
According to Brian Webb, occupational safety specialist for the office of Occupational Safety and Environmental Services (OSES), the College's specific policy will be included in this year's Guide to Residence Living, which is maintained by the office of Residential and Community Development (ORCD).
The regulations will also be included in the College's Indoor Air Quality Program maintained by OSES.
Webb said those documents are currently being revised, and "enforcement of the law will be accomplished through documentation, ORCD staff and fines issued by Campus Police Services. ORCD will initiate judiciary proceedings for all residents who do not comply with the law."
Students caught violating the law face a $100 fine on top of any judiciary proceedings brought against them by the College.
The law requires that the College post signs in the entry ways of all residence halls informing students of the ban. ORCD staff will also post signs in the hallways of the residences and remind residents of the ban during floor/house meetings.
Webb also indicated that a campus-wide e-mail will be sent in the coming weeks informing students of the ban.
This is not the College's first foray with the idea of implementing a smoking ban. Last year, the Committee for Student and Campus Community (CSCC) began investigating the possibility of enforcing a smoking ban independent of state legislation.
According to Glenn Steinberg, chair of CSCC, the committee was asked at the beginning of last year to reevaluate the College's existing smoking policy, which allowed smoking in buildings in which air was not re-circulated from room to room.
A survey was distributed to students via an e-mail that, according to Steinberg, received almost 1,000 responses. The survey asked students: "If you had the choice, would you have chosen to live in a smoke free dorm?"
"The overwhelming majority said they would indeed choose a smoke-free dorm if they had the option," Steinberg said.
However, some students indicated in their comments that the reason they wouldn't choose a smoke-free dorm is that they didn't want to infringe on other students' right to smoke, Steinberg said.
(08/24/05 12:00pm)
The Class of 2009 is likely aware of the reputation the College has cultivated for itself in the last several years. The phrase used to describe the institution, thrown around informally in the echoing corridors of Green Hall, is "public ivy." And with the recent release of 2005's U.S. News & World Report college rankings, moving the College up another notch to fourth on the list of Best Masters Universities in the north - making it the highest ranked public school on the list - College officials say the Class of 2009 should be excited about the quality of the institution to which they now belong.
"(Incoming freshmen) should take a moment to soak in the time that they're spending here and everything that's occurring around them," Matt Golden, assistant director of public information for the office of College and Community Relations, said. "Great things are happening, they have access to a quality of learning that's one of the best in the country and they're among top students and faculty members."
This year marks the twelfth consecutive year the College has been ranked among the top Masters Universities in the northern region by U.S. News & World Report. Last year, however, was the first time the College was named a "Most Competitive" school by "Barron's Profile of American Colleges," ranking among the likes of Duke, Princeton and Harvard Universities on the list of 75 schools.
Likewise, the College was the subject of a feature in the New York Times on June 5, calling it "The Hot College."
"The College of New Jersey," Debra Nussbaum wrote for the Times, "having shaken off its old name, Trenton State, and its mantle as a mediocre teacher's college, has arrived."
In addition, the College has been attracting an increasingly qualified pool of applicants. According to statistics from the office of Institutional Research, the average SAT score for the incoming class has risen to an average of almost 1300 (based on the 1600-point scale), up almost a hundred points from a decade ago.
"The applicant pool that's been applying has been getting stronger from year to year, both in-state and out of state students," Kevin Fay, admissions counselor, said. "We're definitely among a small pool of schools that are able to offer what we are able to offer. Lots of other public schools are larger; we're a smaller public institution that provides a number of liberal arts degrees."
As the College tries to attract a more talented breed of student, it has recently completed an overhaul of its scholastic programs, a move that became known as the "academic transformation."
Under the transformation, all courses offered by the College were redesigned and enhanced, being revalued at four credits as opposed to the former three-credit system.
"When you go to an institution that takes undergrad education very seriously, there are certain kinds of experiences that make the learning more powerful," Steve Briggs, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, said.
"I think the idea was to provide an opportunity within the curriculum to really challenge students in a way that really allowed them to expand their learning curve," Golden said.
Not only can the College boast a new curriculum, but it likewise possesses new facilities to match. In the past year, the campus' new Spiritual Center, located between Norsworthy and Decker Halls, opened its doors. And the New Library, located between Eickhoff Hall and the Roscoe L. West Library, is scheduled to open Aug. 29.
As the College's Sesquicentennial Celebration winds down this fall, officials urge the Class of 2009 to recognize the achievements of its new alma mater.
"It's the 150th birthday of this institution, Golden said. "Great things are happening."
(04/13/05 12:00pm)
It would be too simple to call Beck a mere musician. It would be more appropriate to call him a sonic craftsman. He has proven to have a damn near inexhaustible, kaleidoscopic vision of music.
Since the 1994 release of his first earnest album, "Mellow Gold," - an album recorded with the strange intentions of laying hip-hop beats over folk songs - it has proven almost impossible to track him, to pigeonhole him, to calculate his next move.
"Guero." It's Spanish slang. It means "white boy." It's the name Beck chose for his sixth major release. And of all the incarnations Beck has assumed in the 11 years since "Mellow Gold," it is, perhaps, the only adjective that can transcend his body of work.
He's been a crooner of junkyard folk. He's been a funkmaster, a Prince disciple, an R&B smooth-talker. He's worn the leather pants of some quiet sex machine. He's danced like water flows. He's stood with the swagger of a hipster. He's sang as a pained singer/songwriter. He's rapped, but understood the irony. His albums have arced back and forth between melancholic and haunting - a la "Mutations" and "Sea Change" - and irreverent - see "Odelay" and "Midnite Vultures." He has always been a white boy wearing different hats.
While his trademark sonic playfulness remains intact on his latest work, "Guero," there is something more refined about the whole package. Something remarkably mature.
It finds Beck reunited with producers the Dust Brothers, the hands behind his 1996 release "Odelay," the epic album by whose vaunted glory all his other albums will be forever judged. And, yes, "Guero" does sound a lot like "Odelay" revisited, glossed. Which isn't meant to be read as a negative. The album is solid, but the hands behind them are steadier, more wizened.
From the opening strains of "E-Pro," the album's first track and first single, it's engaging. That's an understatement. It hits you: buzzsaw guitar and real heavy drums. It's damned catchy.
Damned catchy is probably the best means of going about describing the thing from start to finish. Where "Odelay" oozed with enough brilliance to make your head spin, "Guero" makes you nod your head, tap your feet.
It's more than just a rehashing of "Odelay," however. What we're given is a wonderful m?lange of a lot of the musical avenues down which Beck has trod over the years: from hip-hop, Brazilian rhythms, blues, samples of the Temptations, to country, pop and weeping, mellifluous string arrangements.
"Missing" recalls the sadness of "Sea Change" with a touch of "Tropicalia" as well. "Broken Drum" plods with a piano and some electronic squeals. But the somber moments do not dominate here.
A few tracks later we meet the infectious "Hell Yes," which puts Beck back in the shoes of a rapper with his tongue stuck quite firmly in his cheek. "Hell Yes," groans some computer voice over absurd beats and Beck throws out, "I'm movin' this way, I'm doin' this thing," and the un-credited voice of Christina Ricci, in an anime geisha voice, adds: "Please enjoy." And back to Beck: "I'm turnin' it on, I'm workin' my legs."
Hilarious.
For blues, we have the grooving and almost sinister track "Go It Alone," featuring White Stripes front man Jack White on bass. Studded by handclaps and growling work on the guitar overtop White's percussive bass line. We see country influences shining through on tracks like "Emergency Exit" and "Farewell Ride," each built over the twang of a slide guitar.
His childish glee at toying with sound is still clear. All the songs are overlain with sonic weirdness, hisses and pops, the dragging of chains, spacey echoing voices or, as "Rental Car" breaks down into a chorus of seriously girlish, rapid-fire "La-la-la-la's" before a funk infused drum-fill brings it back to the refrain, or the Beach Boy harmonies of "Girl."
So I guess Beck is all grown up now. In his 30s. Married. With child. Mind still buzzing with a million sonic influences. But now he possesses the perspective to bring all the elements, as starkly juxtaposed as they may be, to bear in a mature and cohesive way.
(02/23/05 12:00pm)
It seems a strange night - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - for Hunter S. Thompson, PhD, aka Dr. Gonzo, aka Raoul Duke, to have put a bullet in his head, ending his 67-year-old life. It was, after all, the night of the NBA All-Star Game and Thompson had a Page Two column to pen for espn.com. It seems off for a man who, if nothing else, always met his deadlines, if only at the final buzzer.
While most only know him as the writer behind the Johnny Depp vehicle 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' to us in the journalism world he's something of an icon. His personal habits aside - an enthusiast of recreational drugs, alcohol, firearms and other such things The Signal cannot officially condone - he was, after all, a journalist - a professional journalist, a renegade journalist, a maverick journalist, an outlaw journalist - who did more to change the rules of the game than anyone in his lifetime. "When the going gets weird," he said, "the weird turn pro." And for Hunter Stockton Thompson, the going was almost certainly always weird.
When he died, he once said, he wanted his ashes to be shot in a canister from a statue of a clenched fist, double-thumbed, into the air to explode over his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. This seems a spectacular and fitting end for the
He was our correspondent from the edge, looking in at our world with nightmare eyes and reporting what he saw. Truth is the shining jewel and centerpiece of American journalism, so we are daily told by our English department gurus, and this is what Thompson gave us - truth. As he saw it.
He espoused a brand of new journalism, what he called gonzo journalism. Thompson reported based on the principle that observed events are altered by the presence of the observer - that the observer's importance often surpasses the importance of their subject. In Hunter's stories he was at the center, reporting on the sick world he saw orbiting him.
He was not objective, he was searing and acerbic. He was unafraid to smash at the strong walls of American hypocrisy, to expose our fat depravity, our self-obsession, our ignorance, to show our political process for what it is: a gaudy carnival sideshow, all smoke and mirrors, greasy swindling and grifting. His voice was a stunning one in the great American conversation; he threw up words most journalists were frightened even to think. He spoke for someone, himself, instead of for the anonymous everyone the papers preach to every morning.
To the end, Hunter S. Thompson was a brilliant man, always in control, always at the center. He was a man unwilling to submit to forces greater than him. At 67, with his legend looming large, his place in American letters cemented, and his health beginning to fail, the only thing greater than him was death. And he controlled even that.
So it's one more in an endless series of our weekly Monday night freak-outs here at The Signal. Creeping up on 3 a.m. and the office is nearly empty. The presses are ready to roll again. Hunter's gone, but the truth is marching on.
(02/09/05 12:00pm)
Cast off your anguish, my fellow much-beleaguered Philly fans. This is not the bitter end that it seems to be. This is simply another pit stop on the proverbial "road to victory" we hear drunkenly heralded year after year after year in the Eagles fight song.
This is the fourth consecutive year we've been teased by dreams of Super Bowl glory only to be denied. This is old news to us. If Philadelphia is used to anything, it's failure - we've just learned to live with it, to accept it.
We all knew they were the underdogs going into this, but it was a fact Philadelphia fans (and their South Jersey counterparts, I salute you) seemed apt to ignore. Nothing could stop the swelling of pride and excitement over our boys in green, even as prediction after prediction swung in favor of the reigning New England Patriots. If there was a fan favorite in this game, it was easily the Eagles.
As leathered to the sting of loss as we've become, this was, nonetheless, a particularly demoralizing one.
It was a close game. The Eagles matched the Patriots touchdown for touchdown all the way into the fourth quarter - one of only a handful of such even-handed games in Super Bowl history.
From the beginning it was a defensively oriented game. Drives were shut down handily in both directions. The drama was high. The Eagles made it within the Patriots' 20-yard-line, only for Donovan McNabb to throw an interception to Rodney Harrison on the three.
This was the first of a series of truly stinging moments brought to us courtesy of McNabb. If anything was lacking from the Eagles' offense Sunday night, it was a failure of leadership from their much-spoken-of quarterback.
I can't really blame him, of course - a young quarterback playing in his first Super Bowl, trying to dethrone the champions, to halt the genesis of a dynasty. He was excited - a little too excited - and his performance suffered as a result. He was sloppy.
McNabb threw three interceptions (four, if you count one reversed by a penalty call). The New England defense squeezed in on him, left him little room to execute his trademark rushes, sacked him four times and rattled him enough for him to lose control of his arm.
As the game headed into its last three minutes, the Patriots in front by 10, McNabb's leadership failed again. He wasted time putting his plays together, getting his men up on the line. It felt as if they had simply resigned themselves to defeat, a resignation any true Philadelphia fan is used to by now.
The clock wore down. Five seconds out of the two-minute warning, McNabb threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Gary Lewis. A failed on-side kick and a Patriots punt later, the Eagles had the ball once again. But with less than a minute to play and over 90 yards of field to cover, it was too late to re-stoke the fires of the Philadelphia offense.
And so McNabb threw another interception.
But we cannot completely decry his performance - he did throw for 357 yards compared to Tom Brady's 236.
It's been damned easy lately to be a New England sports fan - the Patriots rule an empire of football; the Red Sox have shed their curse. For having known for so long and so intimately the icy sting of defeat, you'd think they'd at least have some sympathy for this city and its long legacy of sports infamy.
Hell, I wasn't even alive to see the last (and first) Eagles Super Bowl appearance in 1981 against the Oakland Raiders. Needless to say, we lost. Sure, 24 years was a long wait to see the whole heartbreaking thing happen again, but at the end of the day, this is the Philadelphia Eagles we're talking about - and so we eternally remain, struggling against the tides of mediocrity.
Fold up your jerseys and tuck them away, my brethren.
Keep hope alive.
There's always next year.
And next year.
And next year.