BC TAMES GREAT DANES
ZIP ON YOUR BIKE
SPEAKING THROUGH SLAM!
SPORTS
METRO
SCENE
Men’s soccer recovered from a 2-0 deficit to take a 5-3 victory, B8
Students can now rent bikes through Zipcar in the city, A8
Members of BC’s SLAM! discuss the ways students express themselves through poetry, B3
www.bcheights.com
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The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College Vol. XCVII, No. 33
established
Thursday, September 22, 2016
D\e =fle[ Ki\jgXjj`e^ Xk F]]$:Xdglj ?flj\ Gfc`Z\ i\jgfe[\[ kf jZ\e\ Ylk ]fle[ ef \m`[\eZ\ f] Yi\Xb$`e 9P JFG?@< I<8I;FE E\nj <[`kfi Boston College students living on Foster St. called the Boston Police Department Monday night after seeing two men trespassing on their property. Collin Witt, MCAS ’18, was lying in his room on the first floor of 235 Foster when he saw a silhouette walking back and forth in the front yard. After about 10 minutes, he opened the blinds and saw a man in a black hoodie standing in front of his window. One of his roommates then yelled at the man from a second-floor window. The man ran to the side of the house, prompting another man to appear out of nowhere and follow his friend behind the house. The second man was wearing a red T-shirt. Witt called BPD. The first officer to respond to his call was already in the neighborhood responding to a call about a woman who was screaming
because someone was stalking her. A second officer arrived to respond to Witt’s call specifically. The two searched their property but, Witt presumed, found nothing. Neither BPD nor BCPD has a report of a breaking and entry in their system from 235 Foster St. Witt said one of the men at one point approached the front door presumably to see if it was unlocked, Witt said, although he couldn’t see if he had actually tried the knob. Other than that, the men did not try to get into the house, as far as Witt knows. This trespassing incident comes in a string of off-campus break-ins that has been ongoing since last December. The most recent break-in was at gunpoint on Lake St. The BPD officers advised Witt and his roommates to keep their doors locked, Witt said. “We were pretty rattled,” he said. “Everyone got out of bed and was on high alert for a bit but I think it’ll be fine. Our house locks up pretty well. It’s just a little unsettling knowing this could happen at any time to anyone.”
YOU’VE GOT MAIL?
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9P ?<@;@ ;FE> <o\Zlk`m\ 8jj`jkXek During the first week of school every semester, Boston College students are blessed with syllabus week, leaving ample free time for traversing the deep web for cheaper textbook alternatives , clicking through pages of “dorm room essentials,” and calling home to ask for everything that was forgotten. During the first month of school, “PACKAGE RECEIPT NOTIFICATION” may be the most eagerlyawaited email for many students. There has been a noticeable shift from packing up cars and driving belongings to college to hopping on the plane and leaving the rest to online orders. BC’s mailroom has been behind the scenes of it all. According to data from B C Facilities Services, the mailrooms have seen, on average, a 15 percent increase in the number of packages handled each year since 2010, while there has not been a significant population increase. The duties of the mailroom have been on the rise since 2007, when third party mailmen were prohibited from accessing dormitories in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech. “Typically, the first six weeks of
every semester, we see a deluge of packages,” said Albert Travaglini, director of Facilities Services and BC ’73. “Everyone moves in. Students are typically not loading up their cars anymore, so they need a bedspread, they call in Amazon—they’re not packing it up and bringing it with them.” This year, however, the mailroom, most notably Walsh Hall’s new mailroom, was hit especially hard—from BC’s Office of Facilities Management, from the pure volume of packages received, and from students’ slower response times to picking up packages. With the demolition of Edmond’s Hall, which housed 775 people, came the acquisition of 2000 Commonwealth Avenue and the construction of Thomas More Apartments, which house 490 and 515 people, respectively. Previously, Edmond’s contained the second mailroom on Lower Campus; now, it has been squeezed into Walsh. The square footage of the Edmonds mailroom was 1,039 square feet—Walsh’s mailroom, even after the Office of Facilities Management took custody of a nearby carpentry room, only occupies 812 square feet. Thus, workers in the Walsh mailroom are operating with about 20 percent less space.
Without the carpentry room that Walsh’s mailroom borrowed, the square footage shrinks to 624, which comes out to 40 percent less space than the mailroom in Edmond’s. The mailroom’s size limitations were heightened in the beginning of the semester, when more people get packages delivered, and the size of those packages is generally larger. “I mean, this room used to be an apartment,” Manuel Miranda, Walsh Hall’s mailroom staff worker, said. “It is not easy to navigate with so many packages.” The four mailrooms ser ving BC are stationed in Stuart Hall, which ser ves Newton Campus; McElroy Commons, which serves all of Upper Campus; Vouté Hall, which serves Vouté, Gabelli Hall, Ignacio Hall, Rubenstein Hall, 90 St. Thomas More Rd., and Vanderslice Hall; and the newest addition, Walsh, which serves Walsh, Stayer Hall, The Mods, Greycliff Hall, 2000 Comm. Ave., and Thomas More Apartments. Last year, the Edmond’s mailroom served 2,324 students and received 9,813 packages in the first month of school. This year, Walsh’s smaller mailroom serves
See Mail, A8
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KRISTIN SALESKI / HEIGHTS STAFF
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Matthew Desmond hates poverty. And he wants students to hate it, too. Desmond, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard and co-director of the Justice and Poverty Project, spoke Wednesday evening about the subject of his book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. The book, a New York Times bestseller, is about eight families fighting poverty and the troubles of eviction. Sponsored by the Lowell Humanities Series, the event was held in Gasson 100, where a packed audience waited to hear Desmond’s perspective on pervasive American poverty. Desmond shared stories and statistics from his time in a trailer park in Milwaukee, where he communicated and learned from real residents and
landlords in the 30th-most populous city in America. Desmond wanted to understand the role that housing plays in deepening poverty in America, and he decided to focus on eviction, which he thinks is a good starting point for understanding the challenges of poverty. Desmond found that there was a lack of research on the effects of eviction on the American public and the poor, so he did some of his own surveying of renters, landlords, and families in eviction court. In Milwaukee alone, there were over 100,000 eviction cases on record, not counting all the informal evictions that brought Milwaukee’s eviction rate up to 1 in 8 renters displaced every two years. But instead of drowning the crowd with statistics, Desmond focused on one family that went through heartbreak and loss several times. Desmond talked about a woman named Arlene, and her two sons, Jory and Jafaris. Arlene and her sons were evicted because Jory and Jafaris threw
See Desmond, A3
JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Le`m\ij`kp _Xck\[ Xcc$e`^_k gif^iXd kf ^Xl^\ jkl[\ek [\dXe[ 9P K8PCFI JK% ><ID8@E 8jjfZ% E\nj <[`kfi Last spring, O’Neill Library extended its weekend hours, making the first floor of the library available to students all night. This fall, however, the program has been temporarily stopped to collect more data and gauge student demand for the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week program. Now, the library closes at 10 p.m. on
Fridays and Saturdays. The pilot showed that students used the study space until around 2 a.m., and then usage dropped off, according to Scott Britton, associate University librarian for public services. The pilot program, however, was only active for three weekends at the end of the semester. The Office of Student Affairs and the University Libraries are working to collect more data to determine if the study hours should continue, and what hours the program should be active. The groups hope to bring back the extended hours in mid-October, around the time of midterm exams. They will then moni-
tor the room’s activity. If reinstituted, the University Libraries will provide study space on the first floor of O’Neill and the Office of Student Affairs will provide the funding for overnight security. Britton also said that the University Libraries might issue a survey to students during the fall extended hours to see the usefulness of starting the extended weekend hours prior to October. “We received a super positive response after the change, and a huge turnout on the weekends,” said Caroline Monnes, a Senator on the Campus Improvements Committee and MCAS ’19.