Tuesday, March 3, 2015 @msureporter
facebook.com/msureporter
Minnesota State University, Mankato
www.msureporter.com
MARCH
3
TUESDAY HIGH: 28 LOW: -1
MARCH
4
WEDNESDAY HIGH: 7 LOW: -9
MARCH
5
THURSDAY HIGH: 14 LOW: 9
Student group seeks to clear the fog Islamic Awareness Day event answers misconceptions about Islam. PRATAKSHYA BHANDARI Staff Writer The Muslim Student Association at Minnesota State University, Mankato is organizing an event to talk about the misconceptions regarding Islam: “Clearing the Fog: Dealing with the Misconceptions about Islam,” Tuesday, March 3 at 6 p.m. in the CSU Ballroom. Tickets for the event cost $2 and can be purchased at the door or online at goo.gl/awX98I. The Muslim Student Association is a Recognized Student Organization at MSU and has been active on campus for many years. There are currently more than 400 Muslim students on campus, and the organization aims to provide facilities and support for students. It provides students with a venue for the Friday Jummah prayer, and also seeks to educate with a lecture before the prayer. The lecture as well as prayer is open to anyone who is interested in attending.
facebook.com/msamnsu
“It is a good place to get information, instead of getting information from unreliable sources, and not knowing what is right, and what is wrong,” Faizan Rauf, president of the Muslim Student Association said. “We are hoping to organize a
weekly informational session separate from the prayer session so that people living in other religion, who don’t feel comfortable attending the prayer, can also attend.” Along with Eid celebrations twice a year and other weekly
events, the Muslim Student Association also organizes Islamic Awareness Day once a year to create awareness about Islam. This year, the association will host a keynote speaker, Yusha Evans, who will lecture on the topic of clearing misconcep-
tions. Evans is an Islamic scholar who is the founder and cofounder of two Islamic television stations in the United States. He works as a full-time lecturer, appearing on many Islamic stations and traveling throughout the world, lecturing about Islam. The psychology major extensively studied world religions, and accepted Islam after reading the Quran in 1998. During the event, he will talk about misconceptions and provide references from the Quran, as well as answer questions from students. “Most of the time people don’t actually look at references when they hear something. We will tell them where the resources are, so that if somebody speaks about something that is written in the Quran, they know the whole context,” Rauf said. “Our purpose is to educate people about Islam.” Dinner will be served after the lecture.
Mankato scam targeting international students All students warned not to give out personal information over the phone. YUSEONG JEON Staff Writer Several international students at Minnesota State University, Mankato reported Thursday, Feb. 26 that they had received calls from individuals claiming to be police officers of the Internal Revenue Service, threatening the students and asking for money. The students said they had checked the phone number of the calls on the Internet and it matched with the real phone number from police. They, however, were suspicious of the calls because the claiming police officer or representative of IRS had a very thick accent and threatened students that they will be deported or deprived of their university degrees if they don’t give money. “The first student who reported came in and was pan-
INSIDE:
icked and said that he received a call from the police and he knew that it was a police number because he looked up the phone number on the Internet,” said Donna Casula, assistant director of the Kearney International Center at MSU. Casula called the number back and she said it was the patrol supervisor’s phone number. Kearney International Center had sent an email to MSU students and called a police and 911 right after it received the IRS scam reports from several international students. It warned students that the calls are a scam so students must not fall for it or give their personal information over the phone. “I thought it was really horrible how international students would go after other international students,” said Filip Georgiou, a student worker at the Kearney International Center.
plus.google.com
Casula said this is not the first time that international students were exposed to this kind of scam and demanded money.
“It is not the first time. International students have been schemed before.” According to Casula, in the
SPRING CAR CARE ISSUE
past, international students who were on the Internet in their apartment had a website pop
SCAM • Page 3 ED/OP
6
SPORTS
13
A&E
19