TECHNICIAN
thursday april
9
2015
Raleigh, North Carolina
technicianonline.com
Protest interrupts Duke Energy CEO IN BRIEF
ATV catches fire on Centennial Campus
No persons were injured Wednesday morning after an ATV belonging to the NC State grounds crew caught fire and exploded on Centennial Campus. A grounds crew manager said the engine’s heat caused mulch underneath the ATV to go up in flames and spark an explosion. The mulch had piled up in one location because of gardening work being done nearby, the manager said. SOURCE: WRAL
NCCU student charged with misdemeanor death
An NC Central University student was killed March 31 after being involved in a car crash with a 19-year-old fellow student. Tariq Jacobs, the student responsible for the crash, was charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle, police announced Wednesday. Jacobs, a sophomore hospitality and tourism major and member of the NCCU football team, crashed into a 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt after he crossed the center line in his 2000 Honda Accord on N.C. 55 near Crete Street. The Cobalt slammed into the passenger side of the Accord. Jacobs’ passenger, Chekeria Renae Reid, 22, a senior who was a team manager on the football and women’s basketball teams, died at the scene. SOURCE: The News & Observer
Sasha Afanasyeva Staff Writer
Zeke Hartner Correspondent
More than 20 student protesters interrupted Duke Energy’s CEO Lynn Good’s lecture in Nelson Hall Wednesday evening to denounce the company’s blockage of the Energy Freedom Act. Halfway through the event, about 20 protesters stood up out of their seats, held up a sign that read “Duke Energy leading with dirty energy” and broke into chant, beginning by shouting “mike check.” Unaffiliated audience members stood and clapped to drown out the chanting protesters as both students and faculty members ushered them out of the building. The Energy Freedom Act would open up North Carolina energy markets to the third-party sale of electricity. The bill would also allow renewable-energy companies to build solar or wind-power systems on customer’s own property and bill customers directly for the electricity, even though they aren’t utilities. Several businesses, including Wal-Mart, Cargill, Target, Lowes
SUGANDHA SINGH/TECHNICIAN
The student representatives of organization Fossil Free NCSU led by Ishan Raval, senior in philosophy and English, protested at the lecture being given by Lynn Good at the Poole College of Management Wednesday to bring attention to Energy Freedom Act, which is being opposed by Duke Energy from being passed at the North Carolina House of Representatives.
and Family Dollar have expressed support for the legislation and wrote to the bill’s author, Rep. John Szoka (R-Cumberland), the bill’s author, asking him to introduce it. Duke Energy, a utilities company, has since opposed the bill and has set up a lobbying team to stop the bill from passing. Ishan Raval, a senior studying English and philosophy, organized the protest along with Soumya Nadabar, a senior studying management and
Hannah Frank, a sophomore studying interdisciplinary studies. “They claim to be leading in energy, but the reality is that they are blocking attempts to bring in renewable energy,” Frank said. The speech resumed when all protesters were off the premises. Good attributed the protesters’ presence to their desire to protect the environment. “I think these are students who are passionate about the environment,”
PROTEST continued page 3
McDonald’s experimenting with new menu options
In an effort to keep up with the growing popularity of fast-casual chains such as Five Guys and Chipotle Mexican Grill, McDonalds is introducing new menu options to try and entice fleeing customers. Later this month, McDonalds will unveil a new $4.99 sandwich, the Sirloin Third Pound burger. A company spokeswoman said in a statement the new burger will be “thick & juicy, beefy and high-quality topped with real and fresh ingredients.” Some of these ingredient options include bacon, cheddar cheese, grilled onions and a creamy peppercorn sauce. McDonalds has also announced it is experimenting with additional options, such as “Create Your Taste” menu that would allow diners to choose their own toppings for a personalized burger, Bundt cakes and petite pastries that would compete with coffee shop pastries, an all-day breakfast menu and healthier chickens that would be raised without the use of antibiotics. SOURCE: NPR
insidetechnician
Bill would make profs teach more, research less Ravi K. Chittilla Editor-in-Chief
See page 10.
Features SKEMA students imbrace US culture See page 5.
SPORTS NC State dominates ECU with crucial ACC games looming See page 9.
LAJVARDI continued page 3
BILL continued page 2
NICHOLAS FAULKNER/TECHNICIAN
‘Spare Parts’ inspritation kicks off Goodnights Lecture Series Staff Writer
Pack gets back in action Saturday
the problem was to fill the robotic component with tampons, which absorbed all the leaking water. Lajvardi claims that the tampons were what might have won them the Judge’s Special Award during the competition. After six months, the story received national attention from Wired magazine, and the group received $100,000 of donations to send the four students to college. “The most important thing from it all was that it broke down barriers for the kids that followed,” Lajavardi said. “Kids see what they are doing is a mission and not just a competition.” Bailey Craddock, a junior studying middle grades education with a mathematics concentration, said the good news that came from the story was refreshing. “Going to get education is very inspirational because a lot of the times you only hear negative things coming out in the news like the state of public schools and what’s becoming of them, so it was very inspiring to see somebody who took what seemed like a terrible
A Senate proposal regarding increased workloads for UNC System faculty members has been heavily criticized by system faculty since it was proposed last week, especially here at NC State. The bill calls the UNC-System Board of Governors to adopt a policy requiring all faculty members to teach a minimum of eight courses during the course of each academic year. Any faculty member who teaches fewer classes would have his or her salary deducted as appropriate. Sen. Tom McInnis, a freshman Republican from Richmond County, who sponsored the bill said he wants more professors in the classroom, rather than graduate teaching assistants. “If that professor is going to be doing research, only that research grant needs to go toward paying his or her salary and we need to take that money that they would be making otherwise if they were in a classroom and put it in the classroom with another professor,” McInnis said. The bill, “An act to improve the quality of instruction at constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina,” hasn’t found many fans among faculty members, both at NC State and across the system. Jim Martin, a professor of chemistry at NC State, said most research professors teach two courses a semester. When he isn’t teaching he spends his time working with undergraduate and graduate students conducting intensive mentoring in laboratory research. Martin said the bill would be destructive for NC State’s mission as a research university.
The Goodnight Scholars distinguished speaker Fredi Lajvardi speaks in Talley Student Center about his past high school students, who despite being undocumented immigrants, were able to build a robot which beat that of MIT. Lajvardi said that “though those four boys [his students] struggled and only one got the American dream, they opened the doors for so many more.”
Deirdre An
SPORTS
Good said. “I respect passion about the environment,” Good said. During the demonstration, protesters handed out pamphlets that appeared to be flyers for the event but when opened contained information that condemned Duke Energy’s attempts to block House Bill 245, the Energy Freedom Act. Administrators at the Poole College of Management said the protesters did not file a petition that would have allowed them to protest outside
The Goodnight Scholars kicked off their speaker series with their first presenter, “Spare Parts” inspiration Fredi Lajvardi, Wednesday night in the Talley Student Union. Lajvardi is an educator from Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix who gained international fame when his team of four undocumented high school students competed in the National Underwater Robotics Competition and won first place against schools such as MIT and Virginia Tech in 2004, and placed first again for two more consecutive years. Lajvardi has been featured in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has been documented in the book, “Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream” and the documentary “Underwater Dreams.” The January 2015 motion picture, “Spare Parts” starring George Lopez as Lajavardi, details his story. “The movie, ‘Spare Parts,’ al-
most did not get made,” Lajvardi said. “Hollywood had to put in a lot of work. I never got slapped, and I have not had eight jobs. It is more lighthearted than the documentary.” The robotics team initially started with FIRST Robotics, a robotics competition that costs $5,000 to enter and starts running in January. Lajvardi proposed the idea to implement the underwater robotics team, which would run during the fall. Initially, Lajvardi wanted to observe the first year before competing, but he found that other teams were not as keen to observation from the competitors so he ended up entering the team in the competition. Lajvardi described how, in the process of building the underwater robot, he and his team of four students had to contact various scientists and engineers. One consultant was an engineer for NASA who predicted Lajvardi’s win. During the process, the team went through a lot of trials and errors. One problem occurred when the robot sprung a leak the day before the competition. The last minute solution that the team came up with to solve