The Miami Student Oldest university newspaper in the United States, established 1826
VOLUME 140 NO. 09
TUESday, SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
MIAMI UNIVERSITY OXFORD, OHIO
TODAY IN MIAMI HISTORY In 1963, The Miami Student reported the Homecoming house decoration theme was “homecomics.” Houses were adorned with characters like Rocky, the flying squirrel, Mr. Magoo, Yogi the Bear and Dennis the Menace. The Redskins took on the OU Bobcats at the Homecoming football game. The headline read: “Redskins sharpen tomahawks to skin OU Bobcats.”
MU women outperform men in the classroom
BY Libby Mueller Senior Staff Writer
A new era may be dawning in schools and workplaces as women gain more footholds academically and economically. The Office for National Statistics reported that the gender pay gap fell under 10 percent for the first time at the end of 2011. The male employment rate has also fallen while the female employment rate has risen over time, narrowing the gap between the two, according to the Office for National Statistics. According to the Miami University Office of Institutional Research, women outperform men academically at Miami. The average GPA for undergraduate males at the end of fall 2011 was 2.95, while the average female GPA was 3.18. Management Professor Rocco Manzo said that last spring, the
average GPA for women was 3.24 and the men’s average GPA was 2.95. “That’s some evidence that suggests women are achieving at a higher rate than men,” Manzo said. However, Manzo said he has not seen differences in performance levels in his classes. “My personal experience in my classes is I haven’t seen any noticeable difference between male and female performance,” Manzo said. Professor of psychology Amanda Diekman said there may be possible underlying reasons for why women perform better than men in classroom settings. “We don’t know, but there may be a conscious or subconscious awareness of a double standard for men and women,” Diekman said. “Women may realize they are entering male-dominated fields and have to be especially proficient [in school].” Marti Kyger, assistant dean and director of divisional advising at
the Farmer School of Business (FSB), said that Miami University reflects the national trend of men stagnating economically and academically while women improve in some aspects. “My experience is that more women have transferred into the business school and more males have transferred out year after year,” Kyger said. But Kyger also said that men are not falling behind women as far as entrance into the business school is concerned. “The incoming freshman business class is 64 percent male, which is the highest I’ve ever known,” Kyger said. There is also a greater proportion of males in engineering at Miami, according to the Office of Institutional Research, although females outnumber males in education, arts and
ACADEMICS, SEE PAGE 8
Students flout smoke-free campus policy BY Kaler Hazen
For The Miami Student
Despite the development of educational anti-smoking programs like D.A.R.E, and a general advancement of medical knowledge regarding the dangers of the carcinogens found in cigarettes, many students still choose to smoke. According to James Eliassen, professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, novelty and the desire to experiment in the college environment contribute to a rise in student smoking rates after age 18. Additionally, Eliassen said the negative consequences of smoking seem a long way off to students, and are viewed more as a statistical probability than a realistic consequence of smoking. Eliassen also said social smoking can be attributed to the physical ease of inhaling smoky air after having a few drinks. “Alcoholics have a much higher rate of smoking than healthy people,” Eliassen said. “Since smoking involves inhaling smoky
air, that’s much easier after alcohol has been consumed.” Sophomore Terrence Donnelly said he was hooked on smoking well before his college years, and came to school with an established habit already in place. “I started smoking when I was a sophomore in high school,” Donnelly said. “It started out of curiosity. It wasn’t like I was trying to fit in.” According to Lt. Ben Spilman of the Miami University Police Department, there is a community non-smoking policy on campus, and it is up to students to encourage participation. Although the policy is not written into the Ohio Revised Code, Spilman said the policy relies on active community participation. “It’s a community policy that everyone is expected to help enforce,” Spilman said. “It’s up to students to remind others that this is a non-smoking campus.” According to Miami sophomore and Bagel & Deli employee Joop Roberts, there is a noticeable trend in cigarette sales based on factors like the time of day and
student alcohol consumption. “The amount of cigarettes we sell late night and during Beat the Clock is exponentially higher than at any other time,” Roberts said. “When people are drinking we sell a lot more cigarettes.” According to Roberts, Bagel & Deli also caters to smokers who are looking for a quick buzz while trying to avoid the cost of purchasing an entire pack of cigarettes by selling three cigarettes for a dollar. “There’s a lot of kids out there that only smoke when they’re drunk, and it caters to that,” Roberts said. “For smokers, they can scrap up some change and go buy a cigarette. It’s the ultimate convenience for both casual smokers and habitual smokers.” Miami sophomore David Paus said his reason for occasionally smoking as a social one. “It gives me a nice buzz, it’s a social experience and it amplifies the buzz you get from drinking,” Paus said. “I do it because it’s worth it, I don’t think a few cigarettes are going to hurt me.”
ARIANNE KREKELER THE MIAMI STUDENT
A student smokes outside the Shriver Center, despite Miami University’s smoke-free campus policy.
Police arrest male for rape of Miami University student Friday Sept. 14 Fransisco Jairo Naupa Rivera, 23 years old, was detained and arrested for burglary and rape. All victims were Miami University students; the suspect was not. Around 3:45 a.m., the Oxford Police Department responded to a report of a burglary on the 0 block of East Spring Street. The suspect’s vehicle, a white
Chrysler, was located by police on East Collins Street. The investigation led officers to discover another burglary on the 0 block of East Collins Street. Rivera was detained in connection to both burglaries and the rape at the second location in conjunction with the second burglary. He was charged with
burglary, aggravated burglary and rape, according to the Oxford Police Department. Students and Oxford residents are advised to lock their doors when they are not home and before they go to bed. The Oxford Police ask anyone with knowledge of this crime or other crimes to contact the Oxford Police Department.
FLYING TO THE BALL
CODY FINNEY THE ARBITER
Three RedHawk defenders swarm to the ball during Miami’s 39-12 loss to Boise State Saturday.
TEDx event unites early education, finance research By Megan Thobe Staff Writer
TEDxMiamiUniversity brought a group of early childhood education professionals and financial experts together to encourage collaboration and to spread ideas and research. TED is a nonprofit organization that aims to bring together experts in a variety of fields in order to encourage the sharing of ideas and spread global inspiration. The TEDx portion of the organization was created to allow others to put together events in the TED format and to encourage a wide spread of ideas. The TEDxMiamiUniversity event, held Friday, chose to focus on the importance of collaboration between the early education and financial world. The event was a joint project between the Farmer School of Business; the School of Education, Health and Society; the Department of Economics and the Department of Educational Psychology. According to the main organizer of the event and former economics professor, Dennis Sullivan, the TEDx event was chosen to present these ideas because of the TED organization’s ability to spread ideas. “The scholars are not getting the word out,” Sullivan said. “Answers that are pretty well understood are not making it out into the citizen and political conversation.” After some conversations with others interested in the field of finance as it relates to early education, event organizers decided TED would provide the best platform to spread their message. The speakers of the event were chosen by Sullivan and the event’s co-organizer, Doris Bergen. Speakers Doug Almond, Debora Wisenski and Doris Pronin Fromberg represented the field of early education while speakers Larry Schiwienheart, Tim Bartik and Rucker Johnson represented the world of finance. According to Sullivan, TED has a handful of rules for TEDx events that make it difficult to have a large audience. TEDx rules state that the audience can be no bigger than 100 attendees. However, Sullivan said he was happy with the audience turnout. “We had anticipated that we might have to beat the bushes a little bit to achieve our target audience of about 70 to 75, and in fact we had about 80 without needing to beat the bushes at all,” Sullivan said. “They’re actually a remarkably diverse collection of people.” The audience was made up of mostly representatives from educational institutions and graduate students from across the country. Also attending the event were two students from Xavier University: Nicholas Turon and Michael Farwell. Turon and Farwell helped put together the TEDxXavier event in
April of last year and are passionate about the TED message. “The TEDx spirit is about collaboration, working together and drawing from all different sorts of backgrounds and just experiences,” Turon said. Turon and Farwell said the online TED community greatly helped them plan and execute their event and the community aspect of TED ignited the most passion in them. “The mutual learning to promote ideas worth spreading which is the theme of TED,” Farwell said. “It’s a very community oriented organization so you can reach out to someone you’ve never met before and have a conversation with them at a TEDx event or online.” According to Turon, the goal is to make every subsequent event better than the last one. “I want this one to be better than our event and I want our event to be better than this event, and then compounding to be the best event possible,” Turon said. Both Turon and Farwell agreed the audience was the most important aspect of a TED event. “The biggest role of a TEDx event is not what the speakers are saying, it’s how the audience reacts and what they go from it,” Farwell said. According to audience member Rose Marie Ward, an associate professor in kinesiology and health, the TEDxMiamiUniversity event conveyed the importance of collaboration. “It’s not just that I can come up with a solution to a problem but I can hear your view and your perspective and your side of things and it’s great to combine everyone’s ideas to make the next step,” Ward said. Debora Wisneski, a speaker from the University of Nebraska Omaha, said the TEDx event provided a unique experience. “I came with a general idea that we needed more interdisciplinary collaboration across all fields to work for children,” Wisneski said. “But now I actually had the opportunity to listen and speak with a variety of people who I never would have gotten introduced to. Our conferences would have never crossed our research would be absolutely separated.” The future of TEDx on Miami’s campus is uncertain. Sullivan said this event was a sort of experiment for those involved. “I think it is unlikely that Miami University would do its next TEDx in this format,” Sullivan said. “The experiment ought to be an experiment in a different format. My prediction is that the next TEDx event will be very different from this one.” The license granted by TED is for a onetime event so prospective TEDx planners would essentially be starting from scratch. TED requires that a TEDx event planner has a license to use the TED brand.