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Thursday, October 13, 2011
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‘Occupy’ protests heading to CSUN Angela Braza Daily Sundial
T
he Occupy movement that has moved across the country will set up camp at
CSUN Thursday. Student activists plan to occupy the Oviatt lawn from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. during a national student protest.
Known as Occupy Colleges, this branch of the Occupy movement is encouraging walkouts on college campuses throughout the country. Over 90 college campuses are set to participate in this movement, according to the Occupy Colleges’ website. “Around the country, more and more high school students are foregoing a college education because their
families can no longer afford it,” according to the Occupy Colleges’ Facebook page. “So many more are graduating with inconceivable amounts of debt and stepping into the worst job market in decades.” In a mass email, Edy Alvarez, president of CSUN Greens, said he has sent in the field reservation space form and is awaiting approval.
Members of the group have made a list of plans for students to follow in this lastminute effort. Protesters are advised to set up tents and sleeping bags on the Oviatt lawn in an effort to organize a mock tent city, Alvarez’s email read. CSUN Greens will provide vegetarian food and accept donations for Occupy Los Angeles, which is on its
10th day downtown. Since Occupy Wall Street’s beginning on Sept. 17, the movement has grown, spreading across the country to cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C. Participants in the Occupy movement refer to themselves as the “99 percent,” the group outside of America’s top 1 percent of wealthy
and powerful. Protesters have called for the end of corporate greed, high costs of education and war funding. “Our nation, our species and our world are in crisis,” according to the Occupy Wall Street webpage. “The US has an important role to play in the solution, but we can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies of our nation.”
Unpaid internships’ worth challenged
This week
in Culture Shock
Angela Braza daily sundial
U
npaid internships are common, but a recent lawsuit targeting unpaid labor has some college students questioning the worth of these opportunities. Because many students are already burdened with rising tuition costs and other educational expenses, the appeal of unpaid internships is not very high, said communications major Ally Jones, 24. “I’ve had unpaid internships in the past, and I hated them,” she said. “I worked so hard for so little in return.” Two former interns, who worked for free, filed a lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures, alleging their work on the film “Black Swan” violated federal labor laws. For an unpaid internship to be legal, it must: provide training similar to what would be given in an education environment; benefit the intern; not use an intern to displace regular
music Pepper’s Hawaiian sound pumps up the crowd at Club Nokia in Los Angeles
food Try out some simple, tasty recipes perfect for the fall season Ken Scarboro / Editor in Chief
Bret Bollinger, bassist and vocalist for Pepper, performs at Club Nokia Oct. 9 to a packed venue. Rock reggae act Pepper headlined the show alongside the Expendables and Ballyhoo!
employees; not immediately benefit the employer; the intern is not entitled to a job at the end of their work; and it is understood by all parties that the intern will not be paid, according to the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. Alex Footman and Eric Glatt, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, claim they did not receive the educational experience required in order to exempt employers from paying interns. In an interview with Southern California Public Radio, Glatt said he believed all internships should be paid, and that he was speaking out on behalf of all interns who have similarly suffered. But most students’ internship experiences are different, said Shannon Johnson, associate director for the College of Business and Economics Internship Program. “Every intern has to receive some sort of compensation, and many companies offer academic credit,” she
See unpaid, page 5
Bumpy grounds stall completion of the mind-controlled wheelchair Katherine O’Neill daily sundial
A Katherine O’Neill / Daily Sundial
Mechanical engineering graduate student, Craig Euler, tests the movement and mechanical functions of a wheelchair using a brainwave helmet detector.
in today’s
issue
Volume 53 Issue 28 • A financially Independent student newspaper
wheelchair operated by human brain waves is in its second phase of experiments at CSUN, where a team of engineers is trying to figure out a way to operate the chair outdoors. The chair, estimated to cost $10,000, is built with intelligent sensors that are placed at the bottom of the chair to recognize oncoming objects, said Dr. C.T.
Lin, director of the project and CSUN mechanical engineering professor. But this technology is not enough to make the wheelchair safe for use. At the highest point of the chair is a camera, which can recognize tabletop objects, yet the camera would not be able to recognize a wide landscape. “Outdoor is a much more challenging dynamic-environment situation,” Lin said. “You have a variety of terrain that may not be user-friendly to the chair itself.”
Another difficulty the team is facing is a lag time between motion commands from the brain-wave helmet, which can create confusion, said computer science graduate Lee Hern. These challenges cannot be fixed so the team will have to become used to the limitations of the system, and learn to work around these restrictions, Hern said. “What we are trying to focus on is the base command, which will protect the user and the wheelchair,” Hern said.
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Improving command recognition will help avoid running into walls and other approaching objects. In order to enhance the performance of the wheelchair, the team needs a computer that can rapidly process incoming data from the sensors, said mechanical engineer graduate student Ara Mekhtarian. Once the wheelchair is ready to be tested, approved by the U.S. Department of Rehabilita-
See chair, page 4
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