COLLEGIATETIMES
tuesday april 22, 2008 blacksburg, va.
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Students protest with empty holsters
FLAGS HONORING APRIL 16 VICTIMS TO COME DOWN TODAY
CANDACE SIPOS
The Corps of Cadets will be take down the 32 flags in front of the Blacksburg Baptist Church on Main Street today at 9 a.m. Each of the flags will be presented to the victims’ families. The ceremony is expected to be formal and will last around half an hour.
ct news reporter Junior building construction major Ken Miller was walking in Newport News when he encountered two men. One walked behind him, the other stayed in front, and they were both swearing at him. “They were definitely acting aggressively,” Miller said, adding that he believed they were about to attack him. But the men backed off after Miller let them know that he was armed. As a concealed carry permit holder, Miller was legally allowed to carry a firearm to protect himself against such an invasion. While he was legally permitted to carry a firearm in Newport News, he could be expelled for doing so on the Virginia Tech campus. “Those of us who carry concealed — we pay tuition so that we cannot have the same rights as everyone else,” Miller said. “Because I pay tuition and am a member of this school, I have fewer rights than (visitors to the Tech campus who aren’t
SCHIFFERT GIVEN $1 MILLION A $1 million gift was given to Virginia Tech’s Division of Student Affairs by Dr. Charles W. Schiffert to be used to advance health education. It will allow for new and expanded initiatives in drug education, smoking cessation, obesity prevention, healthy relationships and good nutrition.
WOMAN CHARGED IN ROBBERY
The Commonwealth of Virginia received notices for 48 possible lawsuits last Thursday from victims of last year’s shootings. This came one day after the shootings’ oneyear anniversary. Many of the families that filed these notices have yet to agree to the $11 million settlement agreement made on April 10. The notices were also made one day after the deadline. As of April 10, 40 of the 48 notices were made. According to state law, those who wish to file a notice must file that notice within one year from the incident. It is still uncertain whether or not the families will follow through on filing the suits.
weather SCATTERED SHOWERS high 62, low 49
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index News.....................2 Features................3 0pinions................5
Classifieds..............7 Sports....................4 Sudoku..................7
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see PROTEST, page two
Departments carry on after losing faculty
Blacksburg Police have arrested a suspect in relation to an armed robbery that occurred last Thursday on the 300 block of Givens Lane. A taxi driver was transporting a black woman, who refused to pay the taxi fare. According to the driver, Ashley Mitchell, 23, of Blacksburg, then revealed a knife to the taxi driver and demanded that he give her his wallet. She then fled the scene on foot. She is now being held in the Montgomery County jail without bond.
APRIL 16 LAWSUITS FILED IN VIRGINIA
students).” To show his disagreement with this policy, Miller is participating in the Empty Holster Protest that Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is holding this week. For the week of Monday, April 21 through Friday, April 25, participants in the protest will wear empty gun holsters around campus and to all their classes. SCCC is a national organization that was created after April 16, 2007. Tech’s chapter is home to several dozen of the more than 3,600 SCCC members from over 600 campuses participating in the protest this year, according to the organization’s Web site. As of the beginning of this week, SCCC had nearly 28,500 members in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. “Participants just wear empty holsters to signify that we don’t approve of our university disarming us where we could protect ourselves lawfully,” said Ken Stanton, president of Tech’s SCCC. Stanton said that only about 2 percent of all Virginians have
DREW JACKSON ct associate features editor
SHAOZHUO CUI/SPPS
Initiatives related to April 16 were discussed yesterday by the University Council in Pamplin 1045.
Council discusses initiatives NICK GALVIN
ct staff writer The University Council met yesterday in Pamplin Hall to discuss and vote on several upcoming policy changes. Some of the issues discussed included a new merit-based pay system, establishing two new master’s degrees and revising the university’s weapons policy. Only a week after the anniversary of April 16, two of the resolutions hit close to home. The first was concerned with revising Schiffert Health Center’s current policy of patient dismissal. The Commission on Student Affairs handled this resolution,
and its aim was to provide more detailed guidelines under which a student may be dismissed from Schiffert. Some concern arose about the language chosen concerning what to do with students who might be emotionally unstable. The resolution read, “If difficulty in compliance or conduct appears rooted in emotional/ psychological factors, she/he may well refer the matter to the Cook Counseling Center for assistance before taking action.” The disagreement arose specifically over the use of the words “may well,” as some members of the council believed it should be amended to “shall.” The concern was that the current choice of words was too ambivalent and might allow an emotionally unstable
student to slip through the cracks. After over 20 minutes of discussion concerning the resolution, a motion was made to defer it until the next meeting. Another controversial resolution that was brought up concerned whether or not ammunition should be allowed on campus. Concern arose on whether this legislation would affect professors who might use ammunition in their research. During the first reading of the resolution on April 7, it was decided that it would only apply only to students. This resolution was also deferred, and will be voted on during the next meeting.
D2 goes trayless to reduce waste during Earth Week GORDON BLOCK
ct news reporter In a pilot program aimed to study and reduce waste and consumption, dining center D2 will operate this week without the use of trays. The move, to coincide with Earth Week, was done in collaboration between school administrators and student groups. Student activism was critical in bringing about the changes. “It’s something that the student advisory committee has brought up for the past couple of years. It was unanimous from all student leadership that the waste was out of control,” said Rick Johnson, director of Housing and Dining Services. A great deal of the waste is the result of the dining hall’s all-you-can-eat structure, a change from the dining hall’s roots. “For 50 years in D2 you could only get one entree at a time. When we opened up the new D2, we went in a completely new direction,” Johnson said. Johnson said that with the change in style, the dining hall’s waste skyrocketed.“What we saw is that there’s a tremendous amount of waste. It’s something that is far and above what we had seen prior to the renovation,” Johnson said. The recent attempt to go trayless is not without precedent. Dartmouth College, the University of Connecticut and the University of Kansas, along with other schools, have found success with removing trays from dining halls. Johnson noted that the other schools’ efforts influenced Tech’s efforts. “What we understand nationally is that food
waste is 30 to 50 percent reduced by removing trays,” Johnson added. Johnson speculated that a change to a trayless system could result in 25 to 30 percent reduction in waste. “We haven’t gotten a figure on water, soap and energy saving from taking away trays, but the waste would be less. The more that you run through the machines, the more you waste,” Johnson said. At the end of week, administrators, along with members from the GreenTeam will gather and weigh the amount of waste and compare it to the waste produced in a regular week. “We had a study last week with the GreenTeam where we weighed the waste so we have a baseline. After this week we’ll have a better idea on the levels of waste reduced,” Johnson said. Though the program faced widespread support from administrators and student groups, not everyone was happy with the change. “Inconvenient would be the best word to describe it,” said Katie Winand, freshman animal and poultry science major. “It just made me carry more plates.” Other D2 users added that the changes would not alter their eating choices.“It’s kind of pointless. I got the same amount of food but it took longer,” said Bryan Hauer, freshman university studies major. However, others felt the change had them eating less. “I was kind of bummed at first, but I liked the fact that I wasn’t rushing to stuff my face with food,” said Vance Taggart, junior mechanical engineering major. Administrators hope the changes will bring positive results.“Not only are we helping the environment, but we’re helping people eat better,” Johnson said.
see COUNCIL, page two
As students, family and friends rallied around lost peers and professors one year ago, colleagues from the two academic departments affected by the shootings also mourned lost friends and coworkers. Among the casualties of last April 16, five integral and celebrated faculty members were killed in Norris Hall. The five instructors were from three departments in two colleges within the university. The College of Engineering lost engineering science and materials professors Kevin Granata and Liviu Librescu and civil and environmental engineering professor G.V. Loganathan. In the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, the foreign language department lost German instructor Jamie Bishop and French instructor Jocelyne Couture-Nowak. A year later, the departments’ healing processes remain unfinished, but they have begun a return to normalcy. The first step in the recovery was moving on from the initial shock of the shootings. “Many in engineering science and mechanics not only heard about the tragedy, but were actually involved in it in the sense that we had injured students, and we lost colleagues. But equally important, many of us were in the building at that time, and we then had to deal with its
aftermath,” said Ishwar Puri, ESM department head. Of the 25 students killed in Puri Norris Hall, 15 were in foreign language classes of either Couture-Nowak or Bishop. “I think our department is doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances,” said Richard Shryock, foreign language department head. “Many of our students knew (the students who were killed), or else many of our students had had one of the instructors who were killed that day.” Shryock went on to add, “This is something we still feel very, very much. Our department continues to be very profoundly impacted by this emotionally, and that hasn’t changed at all with this last year. We still miss deeply the two colleagues we lost.” Both Puri and Shryock said that enrollment in the departments did not suffer as a result of the shootings, and actually increased. Last year, Bishop was teaching an elementary German class in Norris Hall, so Shryock said it’s hard to tell if students were deterred from continuing their German study, as most students do not pursue the upper-level
Teeing off
MIKE SHROYER/SPPS
Virginia Tech golfer, Marshall Bailey, tees off during the ACC Golf Championship, where Tech finished eighth. See page six for a full recap of the weekend’s action.
105th year • issue 1
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see DEPARTMENTS, page two
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