Tuesday, November 30, 2010
www.msureporter.com
Minnesota State University, Mankato
The grey area Shaded or shady Alcohol use can complicate sexual grading? assault cases, leaving survivors Use of two grading scales afraid and lacking justice leaves students with
ELENA SHUFELT
news editor
In the United States, one out of six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, women in college are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted. This has been brought to light recently at Minnesota State Mankato with the Oct. 10 and Nov. 7 reported sexual assaults in campus dormitories. NBC’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit recently aired its first episode focusing on sexual assault on college campuses. The episode, “Grey,” centers on how the circumstances under which an assault took
place can become unclear, especially if alcohol is involved. “I hope that it really brings the issue to the forefront that we need to talk about alcohol abuse on college campuses and its relationship to date rape,” said executive producer Neal Baer. Though sexual assaults are fairly common on college campuses, he said often times they have been kept quiet by using disciplinary committees instead of getting outside police forces involved. Baer said when alcohol is involved, people are sometimes less likely to report an assault. He said because the survivor may not remember the exact
circumstances or if he or she consented or not, he or she often decides not to report it. Peer pressure can also be a factor, he said, because if a friend is somehow involved the survivor might not want to affect other relationships in his or her life because of the report. “They’re afraid they’ll lose their friends. They’re afraid of what their friends will think of them, and we have to change that norm,” Baer said. Women’s Center Violence Awareness and Response Coordinator Som Mongtin said people under 21 might not report a sexual assault if they were under the influence of alcohol because they fear the
Assault / page 5
mixed feelings GRACE WEBB
staff writer
Shaded grading is the reason that a 91 percent will get students an A in one class and an A- in another. Some professors use shaded grades, which include B+’s and C-’s, while others stick with the firm A-B-C-D-F scale. According to the Minnesota State Mankato Registrar’s Office, roughly 470 professors use some sort of shading grading scale in their courses. There are benefits and detriments to both systems. Professors who use shaded grades make the argument that shaded grades
better reflect the quality of students’ work. If a class has no shaded grades and a 90-100 percent is an A, a student who earns only a 92 percent will have the same grade on a transcript as a student who earned a 99 percent. Some professors say breaking the grades up more helps to show which students turned in better work. “I shade grades because it gives a better indication of how well the student did in the course,” Gregory Taylor, who teaches Spanish courses at MSU, said. “There’s a big difference between 80 and 89.” There are advantages
Grading / page 6
World AIDS Day Cutting waste
Sodexo helps MSU become more environmentally conscious
YOONKI KIM
staff writer
wale agboola• msu reporter
index
See page 2 to learn more about how MSU is remembering those who have died and honoring those who are surviving. Voices......................................5 World & Nation........................7 Study Break.............................8 Arts & Entertainment............11 Sports....................................15
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WIKILEAKS DOCS SHOW URGING TO ATTACK IRAN (9) COMMERCIALISM CLOUDS BLACK FRIDAY (11) “MAKING WAVES”: A ZINE FOR ANTI-OPPRESSION (12)
Minnesota State Mankato Dining Services, run by Sodexo, is finding various ways to reduce food waste. Dining services started Trayless Tuesday last semester as a pilot program at Carkoski and Gage dining halls to prevent students from carrying too much food at a time and creating more waste. The idea behind the program was to identify how much food waste there was when students use trays versus when student did not use trays. “What we found was, on average, we went through about 11 more cans of garbage on days we had trays,” said
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University Dining Services Marketing Manager Phil Novak. Novak added that the size of a garbage can is 60 gallons and they usually weigh 55 pounds when they’re filled in. For all of the 2010 spring semester, dining services had Trayless Tuesdays. In the end, the Resident Hall Association found most students decided to support the sustainable effort, so Trayless Tuesdays were made permanent. In addition to reducing the food waste, Dining Services also discovered a drastic reduction in water waste because it didn’t have to use the dishwasher as much to wash the
Sodexo / page 5
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OPEN STUDIES LETS STUDENTS CHOOSE FOCUS (13) MAVERICK WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PREVIEW (15) RATKE: AN OPEN LETTER TO DEREK JETER (18)