Issue 2

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FEATURES Student perspectives of living in Featherton Apartments | PAGE 5 CAMPUS LIFE Business Profile: The Black Gryphon | PAGE 10

The Etownian

www.etownian.com

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Vol. 115. Issue 02

Campus-wide College announces tuition transparency plan outages bring long blackouts W by Melissa Spencer News Editor

by Melissa Spencer News Editor

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lizabethtown College suffered two major, campus-wide power outages Tuesday, Aug. 28 and Wednesday, Aug. 29. The first of the two power outages lasted from approximately 7 p.m. until 8:35 p.m. The second power outage occurred around the same time. In a statement sent out to the campus community Aug. 28, Facilities Management and PPL, the local utility company, were notified of the power outage but could not pinpoint the exact source of the problem. “PPL responded to campus and worked with the College’s Facilities Management team to restore power at approximately 8:35 p.m.,” the Campus News email stated. “There was no known cause for the power outage.” The power outage Wednesday, Aug. 29 shared similar characteristics to the outage that happened the night before. Senior Rebecca Easton was one of many students affected by the campuswide loss of electricity. “I was living in Founders during both power outages, since they took place the same week as the mold issues in Hackman,” Easton said. “During the first power outage, I was just about to have a tutoring session at Learning Services. We ended up moving to an area in the BSC that still had emergency lights on, but it definitely affected our ability to stay focused and work efficiently. The second night, I was doing homework in my room, but still had enough daylight to finish it by the window.” Although the power outages happened within a short time span, blackouts are a rare occurrence throughout the campus community. According to the Facilities Management page of the College’s website, Facilities Management ad heres to an energ y c ons e r v at i on an d w a s t e re du c t i on policy that reduces the College’s risk of reoccurring blackouts and energy waste. “The College's goal is to implement conservation and sustainability measures to allow us to use only the utilities needed to support the College's educational mission,” the website states. “Through this policy, the Department of Facilities Management strives to achieve work and study conditions within the temperature standards throughout the campus.” The website then lists the tips that Facilities Management follows when trying to save energy. Some of these tips include maintaining reasonable temperature standards, using higher efficiency lighting, implementing HVAC and lighting control technologies and reducing air infiltration in areas that us e mechanical co oling or air conditioning systems. PPL offers similar tips on ways to save energy and money that can be found on their website: www.pplelectric.com/waysto-save. As for the cause of the freak power outages on campus, the answer remains unknown. Neither Facilities Management nor PPL could pinpoint the source of the subsequent blackouts. No more campuswide power outages or power shortages have occurred since the blackout Wednesday, Aug. 29. For more information on Facilities Management’s energy conservation and waste reduction policy, please visit www. etown.edu/offices/facilities-management. For more information on the College’s local utilities provider, PPL, please visit www.pplelectric.com. SEE OUTAGES PAGE 2

ednesday, Sept. 12, the Office of the President announced Elizabethtown College's new tuition transparency plan, set to begin during the 2019-2020 academic year.

Under this new financial program, the College announced in a campuswide event plans to reduce incoming first-year students' tuition by 32 percent, making the "sticker price" of the College drop to $32,000. According to an email sent to the campus community Wednesday afternoon, this new plan will additionally affect the current financial aid and scholarship structure awarded annually to students.

However, since the tuition transparency plan will not be implemented until the next academic school year, current students' financial aid packages and awards will not be affected by the decrease for the 2018-2019 school year. More information and details about the College's tuition transparency plan can be found in next week's issue of The Etownian.

Individualized degrees create "major" opportunities

Photo courtesy of the Elizabethtown College Flickr

Individualized majors, like the new criminal justice and marketing majors, are becoming more popular as students seek individual degree paths tailored to their interests and strengths.

by Meghan Kenney Staff Writer

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n t h e 2 0 1 8 - 2 0 1 9 s c h o o l y e a r, Elizabethtown College introduced nine new majors on campus. These majors include business data science, chemistry laboratory science, criminal justice, data science, engineering: biomedical and civil, financial economics, graphic design and marketing. These majors include classes that have been available through the College for an extended period of time. For

example, the criminal justice major includes classes from the sociologyanthropology, psychology and political science departments, as well as some forensics classes. Students with this major take classes such as criminology, juvenile law and justice and forensic anthropology. For the data science major, students take computer science, data science and mathematics classes. Some of these majors, such as marketing and criminal justice, have existed as concentrations but have now been made into independent majors as well.

"As a department, we were driven by the recognition that students were interested in majoring in criminal justice," professor of sociology and Department Chair Dr. Conrad Kanagy said. Stu d e nt i nte re st is a ve r y l arge component in why these concentrations have become independent majors. The concentrations were not necessarily replaced by the majors, but for the moment, the two coexist. "People did not understand the term 'concentrations,' and it was not drawing p eople in, so it impacted p eople's decisions of what school they wanted to go to," Kanagy said. Specifically, criminal justice was a major until the 2013-2014 academic year, which marked the switch to the criminology concentration from the full major. According to professor of anthropology Dr. Robert Wheelersburg, the sociology department hosted the criminal justice major for 10 years, producing 110 graduates. One of the students who was previously involved in the criminology concentration of the sociolog yanthropology department but has since switched to the criminal justice major is junior Hunter Klena. Klena says that he chose the major over the concentration because he believes that having the major will result in a better repertoire with future employers after college. He began his time at Etown as an art major but after his freshman year, “it occurred to [him] that [he] might be better suited to impact the world more in the criminal justice field.” SEE MAJORS PAGE 3

First-year wins Anatomy of a Blue Jay contest

Photo courtesy of Director of Student Transitions Programs and Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships Jean-Paul Benowitz

Student Senate, the Alumni Association and Orientation Programs teamed up to award one first-year student with Blue Jay swag. Madeline Mace, the winner of the Anatomy of a Blue Jay contest, hung a poster showing the importance of the Blue Jay identity, which was distributed during summer orientation, within her dorm room in Myer Residence Hall.

SEE CONTEST PAGE 2


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