3-26-18

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Monday

/NorthernIowan

March 26, 2018

@NorthernIowan

Volume 114, Issue 45

northerniowan.com

Opinion 3 Campus Life 4 Sports 6 Games 7 Classifieds 8

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

MSA interfaith lecture 2

Conservative gun debate 3

Meals from the Heartland 4

Women’s golf places first 6

Robots take over McLeod Center SARAH HOFMEYER Staff Writer

Robots briefly took over the McLeod Center this weekend. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition brought high schoolers from around the world to compete regionally with robots they have been building since January. This year’s competition had a video game theme, complete with a Minecraftthemed scale in the center of the playing field. The objective was to gather “power cubes” — large yellow boxes kept in a certain area — with their robots and place them onto their team’s control switches, which were placed on either end of the scale. Doing so earned them points. According to the event program, they are an international organization that hopes to build teamwork, gracious professionalism, Science,

Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) literacy, and creativity and collaboration within players that attend. FIRST also sponsors over $50 million in scholarships for students in the FIRST program. They are sponsored by brands like 3M, Google and Rockwell Collins, to name a few, according to the event program. This regional competition is the only one in Iowa; consequently, the competition brought in 58 teams, including global competitors from Turkey and Brazil. Regionally, there were five teams from the Cedar Valley, including teams from Waterloo and Cedar Falls. The competition ran from Thursday until Saturday, with over 1,500 students filling the McLeod Center and parts of the UNI-Dome. Team Under Control, from Novo Hamburgo, Brazil won the competition. The team previously won the Industrial

SARAH HOFMEYER/Northern Iowan

On Saturday, March 24, the McLeod Center hosted the FIRST Robotics Competition. The event brought high schoolers from all over the world to UNI’s campus.

Design Award sponsored by General Motors in FIRST’s 2016 competition. Paula Miiller, a student on the team, has enjoyed her experience competing with robots.

“It is a really fun way to learn, and I have made a lot of friends,” she said. Miiller has been designing and building these sophisticated machines for three

years. She said her favorite part of robotics competition is getting to meet other students and make friends.

between submission and coercion?” “What’s the power dynamic… and how is that shaping how they act in that situation?” Kogl said. The idea of the power dynamic came up many times throughout the event. As a part of this question, Helgevold brought up the Aziz Ansari case. The Ansari case involved the concept of submission and coercion, but is also tied to the #MeToo movement that has took root late last year. This incident brought up another point related to the idea of feminine versus masculine scripts. “Despite the ways in which we might want to say that in heterosexul situations like this, men should be able to pick up on nonverbal cues. We also have to think about whether or not they’re fully trained to do that,” Helgevold said. From there, the event transitioned into the question of sex being a taboo topic in our society, especially in the U.S. This question brought up the topic of sex education

and the lack of it that goes on in U.S. schools and families. “Given the rural context of Iowa, there is a lot of resistance. It is very, very difficult to do anything but abstinence only education,” Helgevold said. Abstinence-only education was brought up several times during the discussion. Helgevold and Kogl wanted to convey that it is better to teach safe sex rather than abstinence only. One person in the audience said, “It seems like the schools expect the parents to teach and the parents expect the schools to teach, and neither one does it.” After the topic of sex education, the event transitioned back into the idea of the power dynamic and consent. “People say yes, they go along with it. It’s easier than saying no to say yes,” Kogl said. “And there could be some instances where they sign a contract. I think contracts are important, but they don’t get us far enough.”

Profs talk sexual ethics & consent

ADRIAN MITCHELL/Northern Iowan

On Friday, March 23, the UNI Philosophy Club held Pints, Profs and Philosophy at the Octopus on College Hill. Professors Abbylyn Helgevold and Ana Kogl led discussion on sexual ethics.

PEYTON HUSEMAN Staff Writer

The Octopus was the site of the Pints and Profs event held by the UNI Philosophy Club. The event’s discussion topic was sexual ethics,

including good sex and the ethics of consent. The professors at the event were Associate Professor of political science Ana Kogl and Philosophy and World Religions instructor Abbylyn Helgevold. At

the event, they spoke about topics like submission and coercion, power dynamics and masculinity versus femininity. The first question that was brought up at the event was, “Where is the line

See ROBOTICS, page 2

See PHILOSOPHY, page 5


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