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The future of oral history projects hang in the balance, B10
The ‘Glee’ star shines in “How to Succeed,” his first Broadway role to date, A10
On Saturday, men’s basketball could not muscle its way by Wake Forest, B1
Wake drops eagles
Monday, January 23, 2012
Vol. XCIII, No. 2
UGBC hopes to gather more student input By David Cote News Editor
finished at 3 p.m.” Throughout the day, student volunteers helped guide prospective students and their families around the campus and provided a welcoming environment for visitors. “The Admitted Eagle team welcomed
This spring, UGBC has plans to continue numerous initiatives that were begun in the fall and hopes to receive more student input on future projects. Michael Kitlas, UGBC President and A&S ’12, spoke recently about the UGBC’s plans for the coming semester. “We’ve completed our new website over break,” Kitlas said. “We’re working to publicize that, and we’re hoping to utilize some of the new features to get more in touch with students. We’ll have the ability to do more with surveys and get a lot of student input. That’s one thing you’re going to see a lot more of this semester is us being physically out there, getting people’s opinions on different issues and finding out what the students really want to know.” Kitlas said the new website, combined with the upcoming elections and more effort on the part of UGBC, will help foster conversation between students and create more trust in the organization. “We really want to reconnect UGBC with the students,” Kitlas said, “because one of the things I’ve heard is that UGBC is out of touch, and in some ways, we are,
See SAP, A4
See UGBC, A4
Daniel Lee / heights editor
Student Admissions Program volunteers (above left) helped staff the first Admitted Eagle Day on Sunday. More than 500 prospective students and their families visited Chestnut Hill for tours.
Admitted Eagle Day brings 2,000, new program a success Student volunteers help show prospective students BC through tours and info panels By David Cote News Editor
More than 2,000 prospective Eagles flocked to Chestnut Hill on Sunday for the first of five Admitted Eagle Days that will occur throughout the coming months. Visitors toured the campus, attended information sessions, and learned about
student life from a variety of student and faculty volunteers. For the first time, the Student Admissions Program (SAP) assembled a team of student volunteers to staff the event and help visitors around campus for the duration of the day. Previous Admitted Eagle Days worked slightly differently, according to Christo-
pher O’Brien, associate director of undergraduate admissions. “In the past, we had nothing set up like this,” O’Brien said. “We had volunteers, of course, but they would serve an hour at a time and really didn’t have a knowledge of the entire program. They had one role and they left. These volunteers were much different. They were here at 7:30 a.m. and
Senior starts company to help alleviate world water shortages Maji donates proceeds to fund wells in Africa By David Cote News Editor
photo courtesy of joe falkson
Students who participated in the Let’s Get Ready tutor program, such as those shown above, averaged 185 points better on their SATs as a result.
Tutoring service preps high schoolers for SAT By Cathryn Woodruff Heights Editor
The magnanimous spirit at Boston College is contagious. “Let’s Get Ready,” especially, stands out as an extremely farreaching organization. Let’s Get Ready is a nonprofit organization that provides free SAT preparation and college application assistance to underprivileged high school students. Let’s Get Ready was initiated by a Harvard undergraduate, Jeannie Lang Rosenthal. She believed that the knowledge and experience she had gained while applying to college could be of substantial value to high school students who lacked access to critical support resources. In 1998, she jumpstarted the program in a church basement with 10 students from her high school, to whom she offered free
tutoring. Since then, over 10,000 students have been aided by people who adopted her same zealous attitude and continued her endeavor with underprivileged students. College student volunteers, called coaches, help students prepare for the verbal and math sections, as well as the college application process. Nick Gawlick and Joe Falkson, both A&S ’12, former site directors for the BC chapter, stepped down last semester to ensure the continuity of the program and allow the new directors to become acclimated. The BC program consists of 10 math coaches and 10 verbal coaches. The programs run eight weeks (two days a week, one day math and one day verbal) and yet, many coaches meet with students outside of class to give them more personalized attention. “We call our volunteers coaches rather
than tutors because we think that it’s a coaching process rather than a hierarchy, and we want to stress the importance of very individualized care—something that these students have never gotten before,” Gawlick said. “We strive to be more of a life coach.” “I started tutoring first semester freshman year and I still keep in touch with my students,” Falkson said. “One of them attends Northeastern University, and she’s doing very well.” Gawlick noted with pride that he still keeps in touch with a lot of his students, also. “It’s great to see that this program really works,” he said. “We have the numbers to back it up.”
See Let’s Get Ready, A4
As a whole, the Boston College student body spends thousands of hours each year helping local communities through programs like 4Boston and PULSE. Max Ade, A&S ’12, hopes to take things one step further. Ade recently founded Maji, a for-profit company dedicated to solving the world’s water crisis and cutting down on waste produced by bottled water. Maji, a word meaning water in Swahili, sells steel, matte black water bottles for $20. For every 1,000 water bottles sold, Maji donates $5,000 to charity: water, enough money to drill a well for a village without access to clean water. According to Ade, the average American drinks 215 bottles of water per year, resulting in 50 billion plastic water bottles in landfills annually. On the other hand, one billion people on the planet cannot access clean drinking water, and in Africa, a child dies every 20 seconds due to a waterborne illness. Based on businesses like Toms and Simply SEA that donate proceeds from each sale to charity, Maji hopes to do the same in support of the world’s water crisis. “The problem is people care about a lot of causes, but how many causes do you care about that you don’t donate to?” Ade said. “I can think of a lot of things that I care about, but I’m not going to go out of my way to do-
nate money. The only time you give is when you have a lot of extra, like celebrities who have no problem donating a ton of money. But the average person throughout their
See Maji, A4
alex trautwig / heights senior staff
For every five Maji bottles (above) sold, one person gets clean drinking water for life.
Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics looks to the future Generous and involved benefactors help BC students interact with global business leaders By Taylour Kumpf Editor-in-Chief
Officially launched May 4, 2006, the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics has seen great success in its nearly five-and-a-half years of existence. Having already impacted around 10,000 Boston College students and faculty, the Center looks to expand its
efforts as it moves forward. According to Brooks Barhydt, assistant director of the Winston Center, the goal of the Center has been to bring together distinguished business leaders, faculty, and students to discuss and expound upon leadership formation and ethics. As the Center has progressed, those individuals shaping its programs have tailored events to meet the ever-
changing interests of students. “We’ve done a lot in a short time, and our goal as we move forward is to continue to respond to students’ requests and needs,” Barhydt said. Through its Clough Colloquia and Chambers Lecture Series, as well as the Jenks Leadership Program, the Winston Center is able to work with students and faculty on two levels. “To use a Dean Boynton (dean of the Carroll School of Management) expression, ‘We want to put our students in touch with greatness,’” Barhydt said. “We’ve been able to do that with world caliber speakers
who inform on a macro level, and then we boil it down on a personal level with Jenks.” The Jenks Leadership Program, which is in its 45th year of existence on campus, was reestablished under the Winston Center after the program disappeared in the mid-2000s. Resurfacing as a premier leadership program at BC, Jenks works closely with its alumni advisory board. “We really draw from them,” Barhydt said. “It connects them back to a program that was so formative to them and connects our students to leaders in the professional world.”
“Jenks is not just for CSOM students,” Barhydt said. “In fact, this year, the program has more A&S students than CSOM for the first time in recent history. We want to make sure people know we’re available to any school.” The Winston Center was officially created when three key couples put forth funds to launch the initiative. Robert L. Winston, BC ’60 and his wife, Judith T. Winston, along with the center’s other benefactors-Charles I. Clough, Jr., BC ’64; Gloria L. Clough, M.S. ’96;
See Winston Center, A4