Student Government Hosts Debate // David Blue

The debates between candidates running for Student Government executive positions were held this past Sunday night, April 5, at 8:30 in Pugh Auditorium inside the Benson University Center.

Running nearly two hours, the debates consisted of candidates running for the offices of secretary, treasurer, speaker of the house and president. Current president Adam Hammer and Board of Trustees representative Millicent Hennessy moderated the debates.

Each debate consisted of a two minute opening statement, followed by the candidates answering questions from the moderators and then the audience. Incumbent student body secretary and sophomore Dante Lizza and freshman senator Danny Reeves kicked off the first debate for the office of secretary.

Lizza largely discussed the need for the administration to provide free transport for students to off campus counseling centers, citing that over 900 students a year seek off-campus counseling.

Reeves proposed a pre-orientation program for the executive branch of government, where everyone can come together and learn more about the political climate on campus. He explained that this would help representatives in student government feel more comfortable with each other before the start of the semester.

Next was junior Kathryn Webster, who is running unopposed for her second consecutive term as treasurer.

Webster was asked about how she would work to allocate funds to groups across campus, even as they increase in number every year.

“There is a $600,000 budget for 139 groups on campus,” Webster said. “We need to work to get more funding from campus life or financial service. It is a matter of the administration understanding that we don’t have enough funding for the organizations.”

Junior Hakeem Oufkir, who is also running unopposed as speaker of the house, explained that one of his main duties will be educating new senators on parliamentary procedure. He too supports the summer pre-orientation program so that he can educate senators before the semester starts.

Oufkir was the only executive candidate that endorsed a presidential candidate. He explained his endorsement for junior Ann Nguyen, explaining that he also was planning on running for president until he found out Nguyen was running.

“When she told me her initiatives and what she wanted to do, I found that they were so much more detail-oriented than my own, and she really has a plan for this school,” Oufkir said.

The presidential debate, at an hour long, was by far the most extensive. In addition to more questions asked by the moderators and the audience, each candidate present was able to ask each other a question. Juniors Jordan Monaghan, Nguyen and Suvra Mostafa were the debaters.

Mostafa began the debate with a five- minute opening statement, as she was unable to participate in the debate due to an Anthropology conference she was attending in Vancouver.

In her statement, Mostafa proposed a number of student reforms, including more diversity in food options, a ladies only section of the gym and more efficient shuttle routes. She also explained that she wanted to improve working conditions for Aramark employees on campus by creating a break room.

The rest of the debate, following their opening statements, consisted of Nguyen and Monaghan answering questions.

The two candidates had two very different approaches in their platforms. Nguyen proposed having a monthly town hall where the student government would explain what they have accomplished or not accomplished in the previous month. In addition, she would attempt to have administrators present who were responsible for preventing student government from reaching their goals.

“What this is trying to do is bring accountability, but also transparency, and finding a different way to put a face to our emails,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen also plans to challenge Aramark, the corporation in charge of providing facilities and food on campus. According to Nguyen, the company has too much power and influence on campus.

Monaghan proposed the idea of student groups electing ambassadors that have a seat in the senate, so that every group is represented.

He also proposed continuing Mental Health Week to raise awareness of mental illness, with the added element of peer led educational sessions, where students can ask questions about mental illnesses and talk about them.

When asked what specific actions he would take to implement these policies, Monaghan said he did not know.

“There are many students on this campus that are doing so many phenomenal things right now that address campus culture, and I don’t know what the best step is for student government.

What I want to do is work with those students, so they have an advocate on their behalf.” Audience reaction to the debates marveled at the intensity of the debates.

“First of all, these debates were really intense — more than I expected — especially the questions from the audience” said sophomore senator Suyash Keshari.

Sophomore senator and academic chair Kiya Khalil agreed with Keshari, saying that she “was surprised by a few [of the questions] that were mentioned.”

She was also impressed with the performance of the candidates, saying that “the candidates facilitated themselves very well and presented their platforms very clearly.

School Administrators Do Look at Yik Yak

According to Dr. Penny Rue, the Vice President for Student Life at Wake Forest, administrators do in fact look at the social media smartphone application Yik Yak.

“I do read it when my attention is called to it, usually for bad reasons,” Rue explained. “Because I find it so often heinous, I choose not to patronize it.”

Rue said that Provost Kersh also frequently looks at Yik Yak. The administration so strongly opposes Yik Yak that they have taken steps in the past couple of years to remove the app from our campus, albeit with very little success, according to Rue.

“Because Yik Yak is accessed on a smartphone, removing it from campus servers would not be very practical,” Rue said. “We’ve spoken out about it not being worthy of our community, certainly. We’ve also looked at putting pressure on investors to stop investing in Yik Yak, but that doesn’t seem very practical either.”

Rue also explained that the administration has contacted Yik Yak in the past couple years about helping them locate IP addresses for posts that are threatening to others, but Yik Yak has not agreed to help.

Yik Yak was founded in 2013 by Furman University graduates Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, with the purpose of allowing college-aged people (and older) to anonymously post and view discussion threads within a five mile radius. A user has the ability to upvote or downvote a post. A post with five downvotes is instantly deleted. Yik Yak is on over 2,000 college campuses worldwide, according to its websites.

Many Wake Forest students have mixed feelings about the social media app. Caroline Magee, a senior, is one of them.

“I think it’s funny, but sometimes people take it too far,” Magee said. “I think it’s useful as a source of comedy or even as a place to test ideas, but too often people use it as a platform to post vulgar or hurtful things.”

Yik Yak posts range in a variety of different of topics. Some are meant to be informative, such as the many posts referencing the campus event Shag in the Mag today. Another post included a picture of Ray-Ban sunglasses, as well as a caption explaining that the glasses had been turned over to campus shuttle driver. However, some posts are more malicious and vulgar in intent:

“Assert your dominance by telling your current fling that you hook up with other people to let her know you’re a savage,” one post said.

Yik Yak became especially controversial at Wake Forest in October of 2014 when Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity on campus, was accused by an African-American RA of having a racist-themed party. Many threatening posts were made toward the RA, some of which were racially charged. Some posts even threatened his life.

“Yeah, that was a really messy situation,” said junior Mark Bernstein on the matter. “That was a perfect example of when Yik Yak was taken way too far.”

In instances when Yik Yak posts are seen as threatening, campus police can get involved, according to Sergeant Lesia Finney of the Wake Forest Police Department.

“Incidences of troubling or threatening behavior on Yik Yak or other social media have been escalated when necessary. Yik Yak has procedures in place for handling such instances with law enforcement agencies.”

Rue noted that Yik Yak grabbed her attention because of another similar social media outlet that was prevalent on campus from 2007 to 2009 called JuicyCampus. Like Yik Yak, JuicyCampus was a forum where people could anonymously post, but with even less safeguards against cyberybullying and vulgarity than Yik Yak.

In 2009, JuicyCampus “died a natural death,” as Rue puts it. However, she is unsure if Yik Yak will suffer the same fate because it is so easily accessible as a smartphone application. JuicyCampus existed in the pre-app age, when a mainframe computer was needed to access it.

Food Hardship Lede

Winston-Salem has the highest rate of households who do not have enough money to feed their families of any city in the country, at 34.8%, according to a study by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

SC Primary Analysis

The first Post and Courier article, by Schuyler Kropf, “Trump wins SC primary in a run away”, focuses on Trump’s decisive victory in the South Carolinian Republican Primary, with Rubio and Truz finishing in second and third respectively. It also discusses the other candidates who had disappointing primaries, such as Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio. It provides thorough context of the elections, especially in regards to the voters. Voter turnout (725,000, a SC record), voter demographic (majority being Evangelical), and the voters’ view of mistrust toward politicians in the GOP were three main points of the article that helped to delineate why the results were what they were. The article also contains the most relevant and powerful quotes from Trump, Rubio and Cruz that all served to emphasize their respective views on the state of their campaigns. However, there is some bias in the article, especially when Kropf says “Trump’s win provides further evidence that the grassroots and working-class anger fueling his rise still simmers.”

The second article, “Black Turnout boosts Clinton in a big way”, by Robert Behre, discusses the Democratic primaries in South Carolina. However, it focuses less on the candidates than the first article and even more on the voters. It provides a myriad of facts and figures in order to give a detailed description of the voter demographic, especially the African American voters, and how they predominantly voted for. The article also describes the stark decrease in the percentage of Democrats who voted, 12%, compared to the 25% of Republicans who voted. Instead of quoting the candidates, the article quoted a Winthrop University professor, Scott Huffmon, who compared the 2016 primaries to that of 2008 when Barack Obama was running for his first term. Huffmon was able to produce a more localized perspective of the primary, giving us a better idea of the way SC voters think.

Both articles shared in common the discussion of voter demographic and turnout, although the second article provided even more insight into the voters. This is highlighted by the photograph shown at the top of each article, which are both powerful in their own right. However, the first article’s photo focuses more on Trump while the second photo emphasizes the voters, which happen to be African-American.

Wake Forest Professor a huge hit at TEDxWakeForestU

A collective gasp filled Wake Forest’s Wait Chapel at the sight of the image on the big screen. The image of millions of ants crossing a river, forming a bridge as a collective unit, jolted the crowd with a nervous energy as the speaker took the seemingly grotesque image and it applied it to cyber security.

The speaker was Wake Forest’s very own computer science professor Errin Fulp. Professor Fulp made his TEDx debut this past Saturday in front of the sold out Wait Chapel, as hundreds of his students, colleagues and peers witnessed him speak publicly for the first time about applying patterns in nature to cyber security. He emphasized how nature operates in the most efficient manner, taking the shortest paths in accomplishing its goals and continuously evolving. He believes that these principles can be applied to improving our cyber defense systems.

The idea of speaking in front of so many colleagues and students was not lost on Professor Fulp when he was invited to speak at the event in November.

“I was apprehensive at first. TEDx is a pretty big deal in my opinion, I knew a lot of people were going to be there, it’s televised, ” Fulp explained. “There was a lot of pressure to get it right. I’m just glad I had a lot of time to prepare.”

Professor Fulp was the sixth speaker in an eight person lineup, including Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, who headlined the event. The theme of this year’s TEDxWakeForestU was Haven: Fearlessness Reimagined in which each speaker gave an 18 minute speech about security that in some way was relative to their area of expertise. For instance, Fulp and Hurd spoke about cyber security. Bradley Myles, CEO of Polaris, talked about how his company combats human sex trafficking on a global scale.

The TEDxWakeForestU conference was started in 2012 by student activist and leader Lucy Lan, who wanted to to “promote technological entrepreneurship here on Wake Forest Campus,” according to the TEDxWakeForestU website. She contacted many different speakers across different disciplines, and over 1,000 people came to watch the event. The conference has been an annual event ever since.

Following Lucy Lan’s initiative, an all-student staff completely runs and operates TEDxWakeForestU.

“The staff picks the theme, sends out invitations to speakers, does all the budgeting, and gets in touch with other schools’ designers (in this case Forsyth County Technical College) in order to help build the set and design the stage,” explained TEDxWakeForestU emcee and senior Daniel Sechtin. “I was just the emcee, introducing the speakers and asking them a question or two afterwards. I just wanted to make sure I was prepared to do justice to our staff and the great speakers we had.”

The global organization TED started in 1984 in California as a non-profit dedicated to spreading ideas about Technology, Education and Design (hence the acronym TED) according to the TEDxWakeForestU website. TEDx “offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world,” the site explained. TEDx is what enables Wake Forest and other institutions to host TED conferences.

The conference was headlined by Mark Hurd, CEO of the global computer technology corporation, Oracle. Being the CEO of such well known company, as well as being a father of a current Wake Forest student, he definitely generated buzz among some of the students who attended the event.

“One of the main reasons I went this year was to see Mark Hurd,” said sophomore Austin Rubino. “Being the CEO of such a large technological corporation that is prevalent in our everyday lives, it was great to be able see what he had to say about cyber security, which is an extremely relevant issue in our society today.”

One of Mark Hurd’s principle messages was that it is within our own power to protect our data and internet information.

“Data is getting more secure, not less…. But there is no technological trick we have to protect you, like personal decision making, personal responsibility,” Hurd said.

He emphasized how important is is to make sure that we’re not revealing too much data on the open internet, and to make sure that whomever we trust our data with will do everything in their power to protect it.

To many, it was Errin Fulp who stole the show, however.

“All of the speakers were great, but Errin Fulp was my favorite,” Austin Rubino reflected. “It was great to see one of our own being able to share his ideas with such a big audience.”

Daniel Sechtin echoed this sentiment, reveling at the impact that Professor Fulp has made on him as a student at Wake Forest.

“Every speaker was amazing, but it was especially great to have Wake Forest’s own Errin Fulp in the mix. To see one of our professors mentioned in these great group of speakers doing great things, it makes me proud to be a student here.”

Multimedia Article // David Blue

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/14826436/documents-reveal-peyton-manning-accuser-called-sexual-assault-crisis-center-report-1996-incident

An interesting article reporting that former University of Tennessee athletic trainer Jamie Naughright called the Sexual Assault Crisis Center the night that Peyton Manning allegedly sexually assaulted her in 1996, when he was a student-athlete there. The video is a segment from Outside the Lines, an ESPN program that investigates, reports and analyzes scandals in the sports world. The video and article provide in depth analysis and a transcript of her call to the Center from that night.

Wake Forest Higher Education Beat /// David Blue

People to know:

1. Adam Goldstein, Dean of Students
2. Nathan O. Hatch, President
3. Betsy Adams, Director of Greek Life
4. Ron Wellman, Director of Athletics
5. Dean Shore, Campus barber/photographer

Sources:

1. http://events.wfu.edu
2. Winston Salem Journal
3. Old Gold and Black
4. www.wfu.edu/athletics
5. http://www.wakeforestsports.com/

Story Ideas:

1. Evaluate Greek Life on campus… What do students involved think about it? What do students not involved think about it? Is the administration for or against it?
2. How does the current political landscape affect our view on politics in general?
3. What is the overall consensus about athletics on campus? Does being at a smaller private school and not being known as an athletic “powerhouse” affect our opinion toward sports?

Wake Forest Rugby Team Continues to Grow as it Moves in New Direction // David Blue

One of Wake Forest’s oldest club sports, rugby has been a presence on campus since 1973. Rugby is not associated with the NCAA, so it only exists as a club sport at the collegiate level as a part of USA Rugby. However, while it may be a club sport, there is no lack of competitiveness, according to junior player Tim Petersen.

“Most of the guys have played rugby for multiple years before coming to college,” Petersen explained. “Many of us played for competitive Catholic high schools, and that competitive nature still exists here.”

First year assistant coach Doug Porter, fresh off of a 20 year stint at the University of Georgia, emphasized that his experience at Wake is different from that of other schools because of how the Wake program is mostly run by the students.

“This is a student run team, and I think they learn more that way,” Porter said. “They do all of the setup for practices and games, and organize optional workouts. All us coaches do is run the drills at practice, as a sanity check.”

Coach Porter then went on to explain that the student run nature of the team does lead to a widespread variety of seriousness, but in the end he sees that the commitment is still there. According to him, this level of commitment is necessary for an average week that consists of two practices and two games.

Since 2011, Wake Forest had been in the Division I Atlantic Coast Rugby League (ACLR), featuring teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), according to the Wake Forest University Men’s Rugby website. However, this past, the ACLR disbanded, according to the website. Former ACLR commissioner and Wake rugby coach Pat Kane had the following to say about the dissolution of the conference, via the website:

“One of the bedrock principles upon which the ACRL was founded in 2011 was that teams should do what is best for them. We reached a point this year where a number of teams felt that the conference was no longer what was best for them and our member teams are therefore moving onto different existing or new conferences.”

Instead of moving to another Division I conference, Wake Forest decided to move to the Division II Southern Rugby Conference. Junior player Mark Bernstein felt that this was a much needed move for the program, giving them a better chance to compete.

“Being a smaller program, this move should help us out a lot,” explained Bernstein. “We’re feeling confident. We could be one of the best teams in Division II.”

Head coach and Wake Forest grad student Chris Alderman echoed this sentiment, adding “We’re in a conference where we feel like we can do some damage now, playing in the Southern Conference.”

This past Saturday, Wake Forest played their first exhibition matches of the spring in a round-robin style 7v7 tournament against fellow Southern Rugby Conference foes UNC-Greensboro and Guilford. Score was not recorded, but that didn’t mean the games were devoid of excitement, according to Daniel Sechtin, a Wake Forest senior who decided to spend his Saturday watching the games.

“This is my first rugby game ever, and I don’t really know what is going on, but you can feel the energy from the sidelines,” Sechtin said. “I always knew it was a physical sport, but seeing it in person takes it to a whole new level. I definitely want to return to another game before I graduate.”

There were about thirty spectators at the matches on Saturday, which is more than usual, according to Mark Bernstein. “As the program continues to grow, so will the fan base,” Bernstein said.

Profile: Todd Gilbert // David Blue

Todd Gilbert doesn’t see himself pursuing a Journalism career, but in the last year he has developed a budding interest in the practice. The Wake Forest University senior explained that this interest stemmed from a documentary he watched.

“I never got much English or writing experience in college,” Gilbert said. “However,” Gilbert continued, “this past fall, I did watch a documentary (Trader, 1987), featuring businessman Paul Tudor Jones in which he recommended that all college students take a journalism class regardless of their major.”

Gilbert, an economics major with a minor in global trading commerce, is pursuing a career in the financial and business sector. He has already accepted a job for next fall with the New York City firm Chilton Investment Company, where he will be doing equity research. He explained that his job entails him researching and providing insight into companies and stocks in order to benefit his firm and its investors.

While Gilbert sees no future for himself in journalism specifically, he believes that taking a class in the subject could vastly improve the the skills needed to succeed in his career.

“Part of my job will be going to conferences or meetings and listen to people speak about their company, and then reporting the information back to my bosses” explained Gilbert. He also expressed the importance of research, and that he may even have to interview company executives in order to get information on their companies.

Gilbert never anticipated taking a journalism class during his time at Wake Forest, but after watching Trader, he felt that he had the requisite skills to succeed in journalism and thus his career in finance.

“I’m a very good analytical writer” said Gilbert, “which hopefully will serve me very well in my business career.”

Robbery at Hanes Mall

Early this morning, two Hanes Mall employees were robbed at gunpoint, according to a report from the Winston-Salem police department.

Amanda Eversole and Deidra Power, employees of the business BUCKLES, were leaving for the day and heading down a mall corridor when they were approached by a man leaving the men’s bathroom, the report said. The man, armed with a handgun, demanded that the employees hand him the bank deposit bag from BUCKLES. The man then fled the area on foot.

According to the victims, the suspect is about 6 feet tall and weighs between 150 and 170 pounds. He was wearing a black hoodie with the hood pulled over his head, but his face was uncovered. He was wearing sweatpants and was armed with a handgun, possibly a revolver, the victims said.

Questions:

Did he leave with the bag?

What is a K-9 extensive track?