TECHNICIAN
february
17 2011
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
Students have their say at forum Undergraduate success, student retention on attendees’ minds. John Wall Staff Writer
Students, University officials, faculty and others interested in N.C. State’s future gathered in the Talley Student Center ballroom Tuesday to participate in a student success forum. Student body President Kelly Hook and Chancellor Randy Woodson hosted the event. The forum was another part of the University’s strategic planning process, which will lay out the University’s plans forN.C. State’s future. Student success is one of the nine elements of identified in the Strategic Plan for the University. The Strategic Plan is the University’s vision for the next five to 15 years, according to Hook. Undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral elements are addressed separately in the plan. Students filed into the ballroom, most with pizza in hand, before the forum began. The pizza was provided by the University at a cost of $150, according to Hook. Nidhi Gandhi, a sophomore in biological chemistry, attended the event to earn credit for the scholars program. Scholars students must attend 12 events per semester in order to remain in the program. “They are going to talk about you can do well as an undergrad,” Gandhi said of the forum presenters. After introductions by Woodson and Hook, student leader Marycobb Randall began the forum by presenting recommendations from the Undergraduate Student Success task force. Randall is the co-chair for the USS task force and a senior in business administration. Attendees were encouraged to ask questions following Randall’s presentation. Students asked a range of questions, and topics of discussion were not limited to those covered in Randall’s presentation. Dustin Nelson, a senior in chemical engineering, said he had concerns regarding student involvement. He said he felt student involvement on campus is a key to student success. “N.C. State does a good job of getting students involved initially, but there is no follow-up process,” Nelson said. “The University experiences losses [in student retention] due to students not getting involved.” Woodson agreed with Nelson’s point. “Students who get involved are more likely to be successful,” he said. Nelson, also a student in the scholars program, attended the forum with three of his fraternity brothers from Sigma Phi Epsilon. Oksana Samarskiy, a senior in biological chemistry, said she felt there is a discrepancy between support for incoming freshmen and incoming transfer students. She entered N.C. State as a junior after earning an as-
thursday
Professor points out plight of women in war Many military strategies target women to weaken enemy’s society. Sagar Sane Staff Writer
ALEX SANCHEZ/TECHNICIAN
Chancellor Randy Woodson responds to a student question at the student forum on strategic planning Feb. 16, 2011 in the Talley ballroom. The forum featured presentations on task force recommendations on how to improve retention, student performance and graduation rates.
ALEX SANCHEZ/TECHNICIAN
Dustin Nelson, a senior in chemical engineering, speaks at the student forum on strategic planning in the Talley Ballroom. During a time in which students could comment and ask questions, Nelson spoke about the importance of integrating new students into campus groups and organizations and their role in academic success. “I have friends sitting at home doing nothing and they’re the ones getting 2.2 GPAs and probably won’t get degrees,” Nelson said. Chancellor Randy Woodson said he agreed. “There is no doubt that students who are more involved in the university are more successful,” Woodson said.
ALEX SANCHEZ/TECHNICIAN
Oksana Samarskiy, a senior in biochemistry who transferred to N.C. State from Wake Tech two years ago, speaks at the student forum on strategic planning in the Talley Ballroom. Samarskiy commented on the lack of support for transfer students as opposed to freshmen. “Freshmen get that break and padding period, but transfer students don’t get that,” Samarskiy said. Samarskiy suggested that the university create more opportunities and make more information available to transfer students.
sociate’s degree in community college. Samarskiy said incoming freshmen have more opportunities to acclimate to college life than incoming transfers. Students who transfer to the University with some college credit are thrown into the college experience without as much assistance, according toSamarskiy. Faculty members, Woodson, Hook and other student leaders took questions for an hour. Woodson, who sat in the front row, stood several times
during session to answer questions. When he was not standing, he would spin around in his seat to face those who posed questions. A total of 13 students rose to ask questions during the question-andanswer session. After a presentation from the N.C. State Task Force on Graduate and Postdoctoral Program Development, graduate students attending the forum asked several questions. Jackie Smith, a junior in political
science and Student Senate member, said the Senate will definitely bring up issues discussed at the forum. “We [the Student Senate] are aware of the issues. Marycobb [Randall] with the task force has been working very hard on them,” Smith said. “It was really nice to see that students had an input.”
Though you’d have a hard time getting a military leader to admit it, some wartime strategies specifically target the enemy’s women and children. This is the premise of Laura Sjoberg’s recently published book “Kill the Women First: Gender and Civilian Victimization.” A Monday campus lecture shone a light on a little-discussed tragedy of many wars: the targeting of civilians, especially women, for victimization. Sjoberg, assistant professor at the University of Florida, gave a lecture on campus as part of Young Scholar’s Program, presented by the School of Public and International Affairs. The focus of the lecture was civilian victimization in war; it’s been suspected that women are often targeted during war to gain a strategic advantage, and not merely a coincidence. According to Sjoberg, civilian killing in war is not always accidental. “Theoretically, targeting civilians is supposed to be a bad strategy. But, practically, in actual war situations, civilian extermination is not always accidental but in fact is intentional,” she said. “This is difficult to comprehend, but we have significant historical facts that indicate this way of planning in a war,”Sjoberg said. “This intentional choice may have many reasons to it, like the regime. Such decisions may also result in the war getting over quickly or, if not taken, may prolong the war significantly,” Sjoberg said. In order to support her claim, Sjoberg gave some statistical analysis on some of the significant effects of World War I and World War II. Sjoberg said “the strategies used in the British blockade on Germany in World War I clearly indicate that women were considered to be the center of gravity of a civilization, and hence a great number of casualties were women. Similar cases were studied in World War II.” “I believe that civilians are merely proxy for women. The main idea
WOMEN continued page 3
insidetechnician
Duke professor speaks on historic non-fiction Timothy Tyson, who grew up in Oxford, North Carolina wrote the controversial book “Blood Done Sign My Name.” Chelsey Francis News Editor
ALEX SANCHEZ/TECHNICIAN
Gospel singer Mary Williams performs in the Caldwell lounge Wednesday before a speech by author Timothy Tyson. “It’s not just vocal talent,” Tyson said of Williams’ singing. “It’s a tradition that’s speaking.”
Regardless of what year it is or how far past segregation and racism the world moves, there will always be the memories and the fear that things will change for the worse instead of continuing to get better. Timothy Tyson is a senior scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and a visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture in the Duke Divinity School. Tyson was asked to come to N.C. State to talk with creative writing
students in particular about his writing of creative non-fiction. In “Blood Done Sign My Name,” Tyson writes about the murder of an African American who was murdered in Oxford, N.C, where Tyson grew up. At the time of Henry Marrow’s death Tyson was 10 years old. Those accused of Marrow’s death were acquitted of the charges, despite testimony and the confession of one of the three white men accused of the murder. Throughout the book, however, Tyson includes personal memories of his time growing up in Oxford, as well as Sanford, N.C. Although the book includes dialogue from times when Tyson was much too young to remember the dialogue, “Blood Done Sign My
BLOOD continued page 3
Palmer’s reaching expectations See page 8.a
State club flies high with ARCWULF See page 5.
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