THE DAILY ATHENAEUM
“Little good is accomplished without controversy, and no civic evil is ever defeated without publicity.”
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Tuesday April 5, 2016
Volume 128, Issue 123
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WVU appreciates grad students by rachel mcbride staff writer @Rachelgmb
West Virginia University’s Office of Graduate Education & Life is taking this week to give back to graduate students. The Office hosted an evening with Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist and ethnographic researcher, for the kick-off of the annual Graduate Student Appreciation Week with a special campus presentation in the Mountainlair ballrooms.
In Bell’s lecture, “Context is Everything: The Degrees of Your Degree,” she shared her life experiences and education, as well as giving advice on how to follow one’s passion through graduate school, with the attendees. Bell said she originally came from a broken home in a poor Australian neighborhood, but she forced herself to become known on the global scale despite her and her family’s emotional and monetary struggles. “You have to pick some-
thing to work on that drives you,” Bell said. “Pick something that will help envision the better world you see possible.” Bell is an Intel Fellow and vice president of the Corporate Strategy Office at Intel Corporation. She leads a team of social scientists, interaction designers, human factors engineers and computer scientists focused on studying people’s needs and desires to help shape new Intel products and technologies. An accomplished an-
thropologist and researcher, Bell joined Intel in 1998. She has received a number of patents for consumer electronics innovations, with additional patents in the user experience space pending, and she is the author of numerous journal papers and articles. She was named an Intel Fellow in 2008. In addition to her position at Intel, Bell is a highly regarded industry expert and frequent commentator on the intersection of culture and technology. She has been featured
in publications such as Wired, Forbes, The Atlantic, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She is also a sought-after public speaker and panelist at technology conferences worldwide for the insights she has gained from extensive international field work and research. “My job is to think about how you can build technology into a world that already exists,” Bell said. “Most of my time is spent with people and thinking about the future, the many
possible futures.” Bell’s industry recognition includes being listed among the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company in 2010, induction in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2012 and being honored as the 2013 Woman of Vision for Leadership by the Anita Borg Institute. Bell’s book, “Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing,” written in collaboration
see grads on PAGE 2
Conscious College Road Tour promotes Award-winning author Tim Wise discusses racism, white privilege in America today campus sustainability
WORDS OF WISDOM
by amy pratt
staff writer @dailyathenaeum
West Virginia University was Monday evening’s stop for the Conscious College Road Tour, an initiative to increase sustainability on college campuses. The Conscious College Road Tour is part of Turning Green, a student-powered, non-profit organization aiming to engage youths in sustainability. It was started in 2005 by Judi Shils and her daughter. It contains four main parts: Project Green, a 30day challenge to engage students in conscientious living, internships, Conscious Kitchen—a program to improve the quality and health of food in schools— and the Conscious College Road Tour. Turning Green brought information to students about sustainable living at the Mountainlair Monday morning. Then, students met in the evening for a town hall-style meeting to discuss what they could do to begin making the University more sustainable. “It gives our students a chance to see how they can incorporate sustainable living into their daily lives, so they can become aware and make more conscious decisions about the products they consume, how they see sustainability on campus,” said Traci Knabenshue, WVU director of sustainability. “A lot of students I find are very into sustainability, but it’s sometimes just a lack of awareness.” Shils asked students to consider what they would like to change from “conventional to conscious” on campus. The resulting discussion produced three goals for WVU sustainability at the town meeting. The first is to eliminate Styrofoam and other plastic foam products use on campus. Styrofoam has many adverse health effects and is not a safe container for food, Shils said. The second goal is to create a campus community garden at WVU, which could improve the quality of food available to students. “Freshman year (students) are required to have a meal plan, so we don’t think twice about what we’re eating and they’re providing for us. It wasn’t until I left the dorms I realized eating there was not a good option. And you start to think, why wouldn’t we have a better option?” said Haily Flowers, a junior landscape architecture
see tour on PAGE 2
Tim Wise gives a public lecture titled “A Powerful Inside-out Look at Race and Racism in America” on Monday evening.
by james pleasant correspondent @dailyathenaeum
Award-winning author, speaker and activist Tim Wise visited West Virginia University yesterday to speak to students and faculty about racism in America and the concept of white privilege. The lecture, hosted by the WVU Center of Black Culture & Research and the WVU Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, was part of the Critical Conversations lecture series. Wise introduced the importance of understanding history and its relation to the present in a racial context. “If you want to sum up the history of America in one sentence when it comes to race and class it would be this: The history of the United States is the history of rich white men telling working class white people their enemies are brown and black,” Wise said. Wise said white Americans have the privilege of forgetting about the history of racism in America—or only temporarily visit it in classes—while institutional racism still remains a reality in the everyday lives of people of color. He also pointed out the irony of skeptics who expect people of color to let go of the history of slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism, but remain fixated on the United States politically regressing back to a time where these same injustices were practiced and accepted. “I just ask for humility
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VOCAL MUSIC
INSIDE
Straight No Chaser coming to CAC A&E PAGE 4
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News: 1, 2 Opinion: 3 A&E: 4, 5, 6 Sports: 9, 10, 11, 12 Campus Calendar: 8 Puzzles: 8 Classifieds: 7
and a willingness to understand the experiences of others people who may have encountered things you have not,” said Krystal D. Frazier, an assistant professor of history and the coordinator of Africana studies at WVU. “(People who deny the existence of white privilege) should really learn their history and think about how the United States was founded. It’s impossible to disconnect the history of white privilege from the history of the nation.” Wise stressed that history repeats itself, and much of the discrimination and injustice is still experienced by people of color today. He mentions how issues such as police brutality, hate crimes and voting rights still exist, and disproportionately affect poor blacks. “Sometimes respect for authority isn’t legitimate, and when authority is illegitimate it deserves to be disrespected,” Wise said. “That’s what every social justice movement in every country has said.” During the lecture, Wise also criticized the white, upper-class elite for spreading misinformation to the white working-class, convincing them people of color are the source of their problems. “An awful lot of people don’t want to understand the past, or don’t want to talk about the past and its relationship to the present,” Wise said. Wise has written seven books about race relations including “Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White”, “Rac-
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Students and faculty members listen to Tim Wise give a public lecture on race and racism in America in Ming Hsieh Hall on Monday evening.
Askar Salikhov/THE DAILY ATHENAEUM
Lainie Farence, an interpreter for the deaf, helps translate Tom Wise’s speech Monday evening. ism and White Denial in leged Son.” Privilege”, and regularly apthe Age of Obama” and his Wise co-wrote and co- pears on CNN and MSNBC critically-acclaimed mem- produced the 2013 docu- to discuss race relations. oir “White Like Me: Reflec- mentary “White like Me: danewsroom@mail.wvu.edu tions on Race from a Privi- Race, Racism and White
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CLICKBAIT Annoying websites mislead Internet users OPINION PAGE 3
PRO DAY WVU players work out for pro scouts SPORTS PAGE 10