12-10-2019

Page 1

CANDIDATE Q&A, 3

BLOCK-BUST, 5

FOSSIL FOES, 6

WEEKEND SWEEP, 8

We interview 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren

Documentary explores the lack of video stores in the world of streaming services.

BU should act soon to redistribute its investments in dirty energy.

Men’s and Women’s Hockey sweep ranked rivals to end the first half of the season.

2 0 1 9

TUESDAY, DEC. 10, 2019

N E W

E N G L A N D

C O L L E G E

N E W S P A P E R

O F

T H E

Y E A R

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY

SG Senate uses less than half of projected budget ELLIE YEO DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

Boston University Student Government confirmed a new Executive Vice President, heard a proposal from the Environmental St udent Orga n ization a nd received budget updates from the vice president of finance in a Senate meeting Monday. SG Student Body President Hafzat Akanni, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, announced in her President’s Address that Executive Vice President Neha Iyer has stepped down from her position for personal reasons. The Senate confirmed Nneka Oyigbo, a senior in CAS who currently serves as the SG chief of staff, to replace Iyer as executive vice president next semester. Nora Singh, a freshman senator in CAS, said she thinks Oyigbo’s experience working with the Executive Board will help her fill the role of Executive Vice President. “She definitely fits in with the group really well,” Singh said. “It will definitely be familiar territory for her.” Senate heard a proposal from Chris Park, a sophomore in CAS, on his initiative entitled “Ecosia On BU.” The initiative aims to implement Ecosia, a search engine that plants one tree for every 45 searches, as the default search engine on BU librar y computers. Park is the treasurer of the Environmental Student

BY EMANNE KHAN

LAURYN ALLEN/ DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

Vice President of Finance Lukas Flores, shown in an Oct. 21 meeting, spoke to the Undergraduate Student Government about the current budget at Monday night’s meeting.

Organization, whose members have led the “Ecosia On BU” initiative. Park said that implementing Ecosia as BU’s default search engine is an easy way to increase environmentalism on campus without noticeably changing student life. Park said that BU’s large undergraduate population could have a significant impact on the environment through the Ecosia search engine. “BU has 17,000 undergraduates, roughly,” Park said. “If everyone did one search on a BU computer per 200 days, Ecosia estimates that on average it could have 80,000 trees planted per

COURTESY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT VIA FLICKR

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the Boston Housing Authority $1.8 billion in housing vouchers for Boston’s homeless and disabled residents Saturday.

BY MIA KHATIB

Homeless and disabled Bostonians may soon see more opportunities to obtain subsidized housing in the city. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded Boston Housing Authority $1.8 million Saturday to fund 139 housing vouchers for homeless and

Tick bite may induce allergy to red meat DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

year.” So far, the Ecosia on BU group has secured a seed grant from Sustainability@BU that will allow them to continue expanding their initiatives. The group has also been able to implement a shortcut to the search engine on BU computers, and has planted over 800 trees as a result. Valeria Orellana, a freshman senator in the Questrom School of Business, said she would support transitioning to Ecosia on BU campus computers. “I think that it would be wise of BU to take on the initiative of incorporating Ecosia into their software in the libraries,”

City receives grant for housing

DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

YEAR XLIX. VOLUME XCVII. ISSUE XI

disabled Boston residents, bringing the BHA’s supply of vouchers up to 13,500. Eligible homeless households referred to BHA will receive the new housing vouchers through Massachusetts’s Leading the Way Home program as well as Boston’s Coordinated Access System, according to a city press release. The funding comes as part of the Mainstream Housing Choice

Voucher Program, which makes use of partnerships between BHA and other local agencies to offer disabled individuals affordable housing and supportive services. Mayor Marty Walsh said in a press release the vouchers will assure all Bostonians they can always find a home in the city. “These vouchers will provide a much needed housing lifeline for some of our city’s most vulnerable families and individuals with disabilities,” Walsh said, “while offering services that can help to foster a better quality of life.” According to HUD, housing choice vouchers are limited to U.S. citizens and persons of eligible immigration status. Further eligibility is determined by public housing agencies based on a household’s total annual gross income and family size. Lydia Agro, director of communications and public affairs at BHA, said the organization owns and operates 13,000 units of public housing and currently administers CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Orellana said. “It would create such a great impact on the environment and also represent BU as a sustainable institution.” Senate a lso heard budget updates from the SG Vice President of Finance Lukas Flores, a junior in QST. Flores said SG has spent less of the annual budget than expected for the end of the semester, ending the fall semester with only 20 percent of the budget spent, when ideally 40 percent would be spent. According to the data presented at the meeting, SG budgeted $50,914.23 for the year, CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

A tick species whose bite has been reported to trigger a red meat allergy may be expanding into the northeastern U.S., according to a Dec. 5 report from the New England Journal of Medicine. Lone star ticks, who received their name from the single white dot adult females have on their backs, once populated New England until deforestation and a lack of available hosts drove them south. Due in part to a warming climate and increased local deer populations, these ticks have been popping up in parts of Massachusetts this year, according to the report. Although lone star ticks have recently been discovered in the southernmost parts of Massachusetts, Paul Killinger, program administrator for the Laboratory of Medical Zoology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said they make up a small portion of the total cases logged by the lab’s TickReport program each year. “So far, we’ve only received 224 [lone star tick reports] from the state of Massachusetts,” Killinger said. “And to give you some context, we prbably get six or more thousand [tick reports] per year from Massachusetts.” The red meat allergy is induced by an allergic reaction to CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Town hall discusses fossil fuel divestment BY ELLIE YEO DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

Divest BU held a town hall in the College of Arts and Sciences Saturday to discuss the importance of divestment from fossil fuels and examine the ways BU students can change the university’s policies on fossil fuel investments. Attendees of “Combatting the Climate Crisis: A Town Hall” heard from local organization leaders, students and BU professors on divestment at BU and climate advocacy in the greater-Boston area. Two representatives from the Boston branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, Gracie Brett and Perri Meldon, spoke on the importance of removing profitability from the energy sector and refocusing the government and energy companies towards sustainable and healthy energy sources. Brett, who is also a member of Divest Ed, an organization that

supports student-led divestment advocacy groups, said divestment is a critical step to building a future of ecological justice. “Divestment is a really cool tactic because it not only is doing something to alleviate the environmental harm of fossil fuels and take down fossil fuel corporations,” Brett said, “but it also is a great way to highlight how this system is fundamentally focused on profit and not ourhealth, not our livelihoods, nor our future, not the planet.” Brett and Meldon also touched upon the financial benefits of divestment, stating that university trustees should be concerned about the current devaluation of fossil fuel stocks. “Fossil fuel investments like coal are in rapid decline,” Brett said. “It makes really poor financial sense to be invested in these things.” Alice Arena, president and executive director of Fore River Residents Against the Compression Station, spoke about her CONTINUED ON PAGE 2


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.