The Lumberjack -- March 30, 2017

T H E L U MBE R JAC K

MARCH 30, 2017 - APRIL 5, 2017

TECHNOLOGY S URGES A SPECIAL EDITION OF THE LUMBERJACK

From the Editor

Online at JackCentral.org

P

ublishing takes time. It takes hard work, long nights and edits, upon edits, upon edits. It’s all part of the job, and yet so few truly understand the amount of effort that goes into their newspapers.

Last semester, I was a writer for the Opinion-Editorial section of The Lumberjack. I pumped out stories based on things I cared about or had a strong opinion on and sent them to my editors.

Done, just like that.

Now, I hope this is clear: Writing is difficult. It, too, takes time and effort to create a story readers can get invested in. I can’t tell you how many times I had writers block and submitted an article I wasn’t quite happy with.

That being said, publishing the work of others and aiding in that process is a whole other ballgame. I have gained nothing but respect for the folks working here at The Lumberjack or any other news publication. Editors read and reread multiple articles in a short period of time. The editors here fact-check and design pages each week and every week. As I have come to learn, it is no easy feat.

The point of this is not merely to praise my peers, but to draw attention to the lack of understanding people have about what goes on behind the scenes. This can apply to almost any situation, career, job or perspective. Because we only see things from our own point of view — which is usually a clean, finished product — we are unable to see the intricacies that go into things we take for granted.

ELIZABETH WENDLER From our Starbucks coffee to the classes we fight advisers to get into, we are OPINION-EDITORAL limited by what we can see and what we fail to consider. It is so easy to dismiss the ASSISTANT EDITOR work of others as not good enough or lazy — and now fake — when all you can see is the finished product. I believe it is time we learn that there is more to someone’s job or life than what we see at first glance.

While it’s the job of journalism to tell the stories of those ready and willing to speak, take some time to talk to a journalist or an editor and see what stories they tell. It should not come as a surprise to me that being an editor, manager, photographer or illustrator is far more complicated than it may sound. It should not take me becoming an assistant editor to be able to empathize with my peers.

This lack of perspective and empathy for others is not a generational issue, it is a human one.

We must remind ourselves to strive to be mindful, kind and compassionate.

And remember: It is all a matter of perspective.

Phone: (928) 523-4921 Fax: (928) 523-9313

T H E LU MBE R JACK

Editor-in-Chief Scott Buffon Faculty Advisor Mary Tolan

lumberjack@nau.edu P.O. Box 6000 Flagstaff, AZ 86011

VOL 104 ISSUE 10

Managing Editor Rachel Dexter Faculty Advisor, Visuals Jennifer Swanson

Director of Visuals Jacqueline Castillo Sales Manager Marsha Simon

Student Media Center Editorial Board Director of Illustration Alanna Secrest

Asst. News Editor Conor Sweetman Sports Editor Peter Kersting

Asst. Features Editor Makenna Lepowsky Culture Editor Kari Scott

Copy Chief Hannah Noelle Cook

Asst. Sports Editor Lance Hartzler

Asst. Culture Editor Darrion Edwards

Director of Multimedia Gabriel Granillo

News Editor Sunday Miller

Features Editor Ariel Cianfarano

Opinion-Editorial Editor Emma Helfrich

Print Chief Matthew Strissel

Director of Photography Halie Chavez

— Giovanni Castillo, director of the Immersion + Interactive Virtual Reality Lab, 2017 The Mayan ruins have been virtually rebuilt in the Immersion + Interactive Virtual Reality Lab at NAU. The graphic rendering was based on research done by an archaeologist.

Image courtesy of Giovanni Castillo

Thank you for reading.

LJ

“When you put it in [Virtual Reality], then all of a sudden they can understand the context, the artistry, the culture — everything.”

Asst. Opinion-Editorial Editor Elizabeth Wendler Director of Social Media Allysia Lara

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On the cover Christopher Coffey, research HPC administrator, seen through the High Performance Computer located in the Information Technology building March 22. Coffey helped build and will upgrade the supercomputer this year.

Andrew Holt Frazier | The Lumberjack

Corrections & Clarifications In the sports section, in our March 23 issue, Gershom Huwer was misidentified.

The Lumberjack is committed to factual correctness and accuracy. If you find an error in our publication, please email Scott Buffon at swb53@nau.edu.

PoliceBeat March 20 At 11:13 p.m., staff near the Knoles Parking Garage reported students were damaging cars. NAUPD responded to the call. The students were arrested for a minor in consumption of alcohol and criminal damage.

The investigation is ongoing.

At 11:47 p.m., students and staff in Mountain View Hall reported hearing a gunshot. NAUPD responded but found no criminal activity.

Everything was fine.

March 21 At 9:30 a.m., a subject at the San Francisco Parking Garage reported a vehicle was leaking gas. FFD and an NAUPD officer responded.

The owner of the vehicle had it towed for repairs.

At 5:48 p.m., a student at the University Bookstore reported an accident involving a cyclist and a skateboarder.

An NAUPD officer responded and attempted to contact the subjects. The officer left a voicemail.

At 7:54 p.m., a student near parking lot 31 reported their hat was stolen while they were off-campus. One NAUPD officer responded.

Everything was fine.

March 22 At 3:27 p.m., a staff member in lot 64 reported damage to their vehicle. One NAUPD officer responded to the call. The investigation is ongoing.

At 3:58 p.m., a driver was stopped at Target by an NAUPD officer. The driver had failed to yield while exiting the parking lot. The officer gave the driver a verbal warning.

At 5:26 p.m., a fire alarm was set off in Sechrist Hall by a candle. An NAUPD officer

COMPILED BY KAYLA RUTLEDGE

responded and found that although it was lit, there was At 2:41 a.m., NAUPD no fire. Everything was fine. stopped a car that was driving in the bike lane. The driver was At 10:49 p.m., NAUPD cited and released for a DUI responded to call from staff above .08. A citation was also in Sechrist Hall regarding issued for driving in the bike the odor of marijuana. One lane. subject was deferred for possession of marijuana and At 9:11 a.m., an NAUPD drug paraphernalia. officer assisted a lost driver in lot 43. Directions were March 23 provided, and everything was At 12:05 p.m., a staff fine. member at the Field House reported theft of equipment at At 10:17 a.m., staff in an earlier unknown date. One Tinsley Hall reported a broken NAUPD officer responded. window. An NAUPD officer The investigation is ongoing. responded and took a report.

All leads were exhausted and At 2:38 p.m., staff in the the case was closed.

University Union reported two students fighting. NAUPD At 7:46 p.m., staff in responded and one student McConnell Hall reported a was cited and released for bulletin board having been misdemeanor assault and ripped off of the wall. An criminal damage.

NAUPD officer responded.

The case was closed.

At 6:10 p.m., a subject in lot 3 reported damage to their March 26 vehicle. An NAUPD officer At 12:13 a.m., staff in responded to the call. The McConnell Hall reported a damage was caused by snow. highly intoxicated student.

FFD, NAUPD and a GMT March 24 ambulance responded to the At 12:23 a.m., one call. The student was taken to NAUPD officer checked on a FMC for treatment and cited bicyclist who had fallen near for a minor in consumption of Milton Road. The subject was alcohol.

OK and did not want any assistance.

At 5:58 a.m., staff in the Field House reported a At 6:27 a.m., Wells Fargo student laying on the ground. reported an alarm triggered An NAUPD officer responded at their ATM near the Field to investigate. Everything was House. An NAUPD officer fine. responded but witnessed no criminal activity.

At 12:45 p.m., a subject in Reilly Hall reported being At 8:52 p.m., NAUPD harassed via social media. reported being with a screaming NAUPD responded and an subject near the Ponderosa investigation has been opened. building. The subject was given a ride off campus. Everything At 8:45 p.m., a student was fine. in the Social and Behavioral Sciences West building March 25 reported falling through At 1:40 a.m., NAUPD an open grate. NAUPD initiated a traffic stop in lot responded and the student 3. A student was cited for refused any medical treatment. possession of marijuana and The grate was replaced. drug paraphernalia.

NEWS

Political update: The press takes a hit with new administration Chandler Coiner

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he media, one of the pillars of the dissemination of information to the public, is under fire for the prevalence of “fake news” and reduced access.

President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to show his disapproval of the media’s handling of political coverage since he launched his campaign in 2015. In a Feb. 24 tweet, the president said, “FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn’t tell the truth. A great danger to our country.”

Trump has attacked The New York Times repeatedly by both accusing the newspaper of dishonesty in its reporting and referring to the organization as “the failing New York Times.”

During the broadcast of the Academy Awards, the newspaper ran an ad called “The Truth is Hard,” its first television ad in nearly a decade.

On the billboard outside religious studies professor Björn Krondorfer’s office is a summation of that ad, a slip of paper reading “the truth is hard,” “the truth is objective” and “the truth is complicated,” among other similar phrases.

“I think what are the most worrisome parts of last year’s presidential campaigns are the confusion about what is news and what is not news,” said Krondorfer. “The difference between what is fake news and what is real news, how is it researched, and basically, different media outlets competing on these truth claims.

Everyone is accusing everyone of presenting fake news.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded to criticism of the platform’s lack of curtailment of “fake news” since the 2016 election ended last year.

Nov. 16 Zuckerberg said the company is looking into stronger detection, third-party verification and “disrupting fake

news economies” as ways to curb misinformation.

“The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information. We’ve been working on this problem for a long time, and we take this responsibility seriously.”

NBC contributor and NAU professor Stephen Nuño said he is concerned with the way media has limited access to the current president.

“When you have Barack Obama who is president, he has power, and he’s trying to also control the news, but he fundamentally saw the media as important,” said Nuño. “Even George Bush at the worst moments of the war sent the people making the decisions about the war and had them answer questions in front of the media, because even George Bush felt that it’s important that the people know what’s going on. Even if it’s ugly, even if it’s bad.” “[Bush] never questioned their role, and neither did Obama,” he said.

Nuño also had an atypical idea for covering Trump by the media.

“I’ve always said I think they need to call in their foreign correspondents to cover Donald Trump,” Nuño said. “Because if you’re an NBC correspondent in Cairo, this is going to be more familiar to you. And getting news is going to be how you get it and how you relay it is different when you have an admin that believes that the media is a fundamental part of democracy. Trump believes that it’s an impediment to Democracy today. And this relationship requires a different approach from the media. They’re learning it, they’re doing it, and hopefully they’ll do more.”

Krondorfer said he thinks it’s important to keep a good-

standing relationship with the media, regardless of what is going on in the political sphere. That includes faculty at NAU talking to newspapers and broadcast about programs, politics and problems.

“Most of us try to use media outlets that we trust rather than limit ourselves to social media outlets like Facebook where everyone can claim whatever they want to,” Krondorfer said. “But I think people are thinking ‘But what credible sources?’”

Krondorfer said years of experience and dedication to investigative journalism for a news organization are some of the main factors in deciding whether or not the organization is trustworthy enough to read and be open to communicating with for him as a faculty member.

Gillian Ferris, news director and managing director at KNAU, had a different take on the post-Trump media.

“I have not noticed a difference since the election as far as how the public talks to us or how accessible NAU officials are,” said Ferris. “If anything, I think some people are even more willing to talk to reputable media outlets to ensure a free and accurate press.”

Krondorfer said NAU faculty members are listening to students about what they are reading, listening to and watching.

Students are paying attention to immigration issues, such as Trump’s second go at a travel ban, which was rejected by the courts, and faculty are doing their best to consider these problems when reaching out to media.

“In education, we know truth is complex, but there’s still a sense that truths, certain evidence and arguments are really important,” Krondorfer said.

Additional reporting by Hannah Cook

Eight-month project aims to improve roads and infrastructure along Zuni Drive Chandler Coiner

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multi-million dollar project that aims to fix water and road services along Zuni Drive will not impact services for its duration.

The Zuni Drive Improvements Project, initiated by the City of Flagstaff, is a $4 million project that plans to construct a 12inch diameter water main, a storm water drainage system, replace fire hydrants and add new road pavement.

According to the project overview, the project is estimated to be ongoing until Thanksgiving 2017 from its starting point in March.

Senior Project Manager Randy Groth said a lot goes into projects like these that reach across water, sewage, pavement and stormwater systems. The city, along with consulting engineers, have to create a detailed hydraulic analysis that will be able to accommodate the underground pipe system for decades. In addition to the analysis, the city must work with the Coconino National Forest Service to make sure there are no harmful effects on the environment, both in terms of biology and archaeology.

“The project will address all of these concerns and upon completion the updates should last for decades, ensuring uninterrupted service to the residents,” said Groth.

The city received approval from the Forest Service to start the project in January. The project officially began March 6.

Construction work will be covering approximately 3,500 feet along Zuni Drive.

The project began when voters approved the passage of Road Repair and Street Safety Proposition 406 in 2014 that gave funds to assess roads in Flagstaff for poor conditions that warrant upgrades. Zuni Drive was one of those roads with sewer and water mains over 50 years old and a lack of a drainage facility.

“We are confident in our ability to successfully deliver this project,” Groth said.

A remarkable aspect of the project is that services, including mail delivery, trash and recycling pickup, and access to homes and emergency services will remain up and running throughout the duration of the project, according to its overview.

Andy Shannon, a Zuni Drive resident, said “whenever construction starts around you, you always want to throw your hands up and complain, but of course, in the long run, you need it.”

Construction management professor Thomas Rogers highlights a lot of inconveniences are inevitable when it comes to construction.

“The planning that goes into the construction work is

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significant,” said Rogers. “Keeping everyone’s driveway open while you dig a trench down the middle of a street is difficult, but not impossible. Some inconveniences to the homeowner are inevitable. No one likes construction around them but they usually love what comes after.”

Groth also said residents will be notified in advance to any shutdown of services or access, and, if feasible, work will be done at times with minimal impacts to residents.

Rogers also explained that one of the biggest unknowns in construction projects like these are the subsurface conditions like clay or solid rock. Weather can also slow down construction, such as the late winter storms Flagstaff experienced recently.

According to Groth, the project is a part of the city’s five-year capital plan, which is scrutinized by the Flagstaff City Council each year to best serve the city.

“The associated design work is vetted multiple times, and bidders perform due diligence in preparing their cost proposals,” Groth said. “These efforts help insure that the project’s design successfully addresses identified needs.”

The project in part received its funding from Proposition 406, which increased Flagstaff sales tax to fund more road projects like Zuni Drive.

NEWS

Prospects wither, salaries stagnate for non-tenure faculty Chandler Coiner and Adrian Skabelund

M

ore opportunity for research, higher pay and a lifetime contract to work with students — that’s what some NAU faculty members are finding harder and harder to obtain.

Academic tenure status allows teachers to reap the full benefits of working for a university.

Faculty with tenure get full benefits, higher pay, a yearly contract presumed to last until retirement and more dedicated research time.

At NAU, instructors and lecturers are on a non-tenure track, assistant professors are tenure eligible, associate professors and professors are tenured faculty members.

According to the annual NAU Factbook, the percentage of non-tenure track employees has risen dramatically. In fall 2015, 51 percent of all full-time faculty were non-tenure compared to 23 percent in fall 2005. Additionally, in those 10 years the average pay of an instructor has risen by about 14 percent; a lecturer, 18.9 percent; an assistant professor, 26.2 percent; an associate professor, 30.5 percent; a professor, 34.8 percent and a regent’s professor, 49.5 percent.

“Should part-time and non-tenure track faculty get paid more? Yes! Should there be more tenure track professors? Yes,” said Marcus Ford, former professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies.

During the 2016 fiscal year, a non-tenured philosophy lecturer made $50,215 while a tenured professor in the same department made $97,957, according to the University Budget Office’s State and Local Operating Budget.

During the same time frame, an anthropology lecturer made $48,008, while a tenured professor in the same department made $96,887 in 2016.

All of these positions are listed under the same full-time equivalent in the document, meaning they have generally similar workloads and class schedules.

Tenured and tenure-track professors have a research requirement, while lectures and instructors teach more classes. A full professor may teach two or three classes per semester in addition to research, while a lecturer often teaches four classes.

Faculty in some departments, such as business administration, tend to be paid higher, yet discrepancies between non-tenured and tenured faculty still exist. A business administration lecturer made $68,414, while a tenured professor in the same department, made $147,608 in 2016.

In October 2016, NAU President Rita

Cheng announced in an email to faculty and staff the implementation of a merit-based pay raise, with “top performers” receiving the highest salaries. While this means tenured faculty salaries were most likely to see an increased salary, lecturers also have the same opportunity for a pay raise based on their performance.

A general lack of tenure positions affects the university far beyond just salary.

Michael Rulon, a lecturer (non-tenuretrack) in the Department of Global Languages and Cultures, said he is worried the lack of tenure positions is driving instructors and lecturers away from NAU. “Even when the working conditions are good, it’s still not ideal,” said Rulon. “There is a fair amount of turnover. We have lost quite a few lecturers in this department to higher paying jobs.”

Rulon said the department’s last tenuretrack hire was nearly 10 years ago.

Assistant professor Elena SV-Flys, in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, said many co-workers are applying for 10 to 12 jobs at any given time.

“I know there are a lot of non-tenure track that are wildly [invested] in the job market,” said SV-Flys. “You’re always searching for that stability that we’ve all dreamed of. I think that there is no teacher that has done a Ph.D that is a faculty member that doesn’t want to have a tenure. We all have that dream.”

With a larger portion of the university faculty more likely to be in flux, programs, especially those headed up by a small number of people, tend to destabilize, SV-Flys said.

SV-Flys is the sole operator of the arts and cultural management program in her department. If she left position, a temporary replacement would most likely be brought in for a year while the university searches for a more permanent replacement, she said. This process would cost the university additional money if, over a period of only two to three semesters, an entire program were to shift leadership twice.

SV-Flys also said the number of students in her program has grown from 13 to 54 in two years, but this was possible only through the stability of her position.

“NAU has been wonderful to me. It has given me a lot of opportunities to grow,” SVFlys said. “And at the same time, you have that loyalty issue. There’s a part of you that doesn’t want to leave your institution that has helped you out. And I wouldn’t say the institution, I would say the people that you work for: your chair, your department, your students.”

Illustration by Alanna Sechrest Faculty members wonder what the cause of this shift in tenure initiatives might be.

According to NAU’s annual financial report, in 2006 NAU received approximately $124 million in state appropriations. Ten years later, despite growing from 20,562 students to 29,031 enrolled statewide, state appropriations have dropped to approximately $33 million.

“Around the time I was hired, they were moving away from part-time and trying to consolidate into full-time positions,” Rulon said. “But as the state budget gets cut more and more and enrollment increases more and more rapidly, I’m worried that we’re going to be moving back toward a lot more part timers just to get someone in front of the classroom. And I don’t think this is a good situation for the faculty or the students.”

Part-time at NAU is defined as being any faculty member who performs less than half of the typical workload of a full-time employee, and that is another issue NAU has struggled with. Part-time faculty are paid between $2,000 and $4,000 per class and do not receive benefits.

Part-time faculty are paid on a tiered system depending on the amount of university teaching experience they have as well as their level of education. For example, a part-time faculty member with a master’s degree and less than two years of experience is paid $2,730 per three-credit class. A part-time faculty member with two additional years of experience is paid $3,150 per class.

Philippa Winkler, chair of the part-time faculty council, said the university recently

began counting the number of part-time faculty members. For the 2016-2017 school year, NAU employs 942 part-time faculty teaching.

In July 2016, part-time faculty who were teaching more than 7.5 credits and who didn’t already receive any job security, contracts or benefits had their pay reduced by approximately 25 percent Winkler said.

“This pay cut was not communicated properly and completely to all part-time faculty prior to its implementation,” said Winkler.

Faculty without tenure at a university have a greater reason to keep quiet on issues because there’s no guarantee the college will not let the faculty go if they say something controversial against the university. Rulon said many faculty have already decided to self censor. For Rulon, however, the issue of tenure, like so many issues today, is too important to stay quiet.

“The question of academic freedom is a big one when it comes to lower tenure density,” Rulon said. “I’ve decided I can’t afford to be frightened.”

Nonetheless, SV-Flys said it’s not entirely uncommon for some faculty to be relatively content as non-tenure-track faculty.

“There are people who think that we just need to get adjusted,” SV-Flys said. “There are a lot of non-tenured [faculty] who just say ‘This is how it’s going to be; this is what life is. We have to stop dreaming about this stable job because it just doesn’t exist.’ I am not one of those. I am still in the dream, and I still want to fight for that.”

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NEWS

Freedom of speech: The right to learn and the right to teach Sunday Miller and Conor Sweetman

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ampus wide, some students and faculty are asking themselves where to draw the line on politics in the classroom. A video of political science professor’s lecture posted online ignited this debate.

In the January video, professor Paul Lenze’s voice trickles in and out of as he walks back and forth in his world politics class. “[People in midwestern states] voted for [Trump] because he represents this conservative viewpoint of the world about globalization that is a bad thing,” said Lenze during the lecture.

“And they know that the loss of American jobs is what’s wrong with America, that people of color are what’s wrong with America.”

His shoes are the most visible part of him as he stops near the unknown person who recorded his lecture. Like Lenze, the only hint of this person’s identity is their shoes — loosely laced, brown Converse.

This seven-minute video was taken from a nearly hour-long lecture and uploaded to Campus Reform Jan. 27, a conservative-leaning website known for cataloging liberal professors.

The site is a project of the Leadership Institute, a national group that calls itself nonpartisan.

According to the Leadership Institute’s website, the group “teaches conservatives of all ages how to succeed in politics, government and the media.”

Lenze said the video on Campus Reform was his lecture in an introductory political science class. He was discussing how the current U.S. political climate has developed into what it is today.

After the video was posted, Melissa Miller, former president and current campus coordinator for the club Turning Point USA at NAU (TPUSA), was accused of calling out liberal professors for their political bias. This characterization led to a series of unforeseeable harassment allegations and free-speech violations.

TPUSA is a non-profit organization with chapters at more than a thousand colleges and high schools across the U.S., including all three major Arizona universities. TPUSA was founded in 2012 and their mission is “to identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government,” according to their website.

“Our chapter, at least, is really trying to push for more acceptance of conservative students on campus, to educate with one-on-

one conversations in the nicest way possible just to open up dialogue,” said Miller. “We want it to be OK, no matter what your opinion is, it should be OK to speak how you feel.”

While there is no evidence to confirm who recorded the video, Lenze claims it was Miller, who is a freshman political science major.

This claim would match a later allegation by criminology professor Luis Fernandez at the “The Specter of Fascism?” event, who claimed Miller had a history of recording and uploading professors lectures online.

Some faculty claim that NAU’s Turning Point USA, a small club that has been on campus for almost a year, is responsible for recording and uploading professors’ lectures out of context with the intent to delegitimize their professional reputations. However, TPUSA claims professors who voice their political biases in the classroom affect students’ learning and ability to participate in discussions for fear of academic penalty.

According to Arizona state law, anyone attending an event on public property can legally record the event in its entirety. Additionally, Arizona is known as a one-party consent state, meaning that only one person needs to know a recording is occurring, according to A.R.S. § 13-3005, -3012(9). So it’s legal for a person to record a conversation or phone call they are a party to without the knowledge or consent of the other party. While legal, this could raise ethical questions regarding recording without the subject’s knowledge.

Beneath these allegations rests the ideological differences between involved faculty and students about the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn.

Doxxing and “The Specter of Fascism?”

“The Specter of Fascism?” was hosted by NAU faculty Feb. 9 in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Castro building. The event was to discuss Donald Trump’s presidency and “the implications of the right wing populism on local and global politics and on activism and social movements,” according to the Facebook page.

Fernandez was a presenter at a facultyhosted event called “The Specter of Fascism?” and explained a technique called “doxxing.”

Doxxing is defined as the search for and publishing of private or identifying information about a particular individual online, typically with negative intent. This was relevant to the event as Fernandez alleged that doxxing is a weapon of political groups in the modern era.

Fernandez described doxxing as trying to

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“grab information, pull it out, inflame it [and] throw it through the networks.” He said that sometimes these events can make it to national news networks like CNN and Fox News.

“Our chapter ... is really trying to push for more acceptance of conservative students.”

-Melissa Miller.

TPUSA Campus Coordinator Two of the faculty presenters, Fernandez and political science department chair Lori Poloni-Staudinger, said that it was important to note the title of the event on Facebook had a question mark — referring to “The Specter of Fascism?” event title was not an accusation, rather a topic of discussion.

While Miller was recording the event, she was not the only student recording. Miller said that, as a student, she often records lectures and events for note-taking purposes. Fernandez’s talk was toward the end of the event and was not recorded by Miller.

“My particular talk was about the alt-right and the function of the alt-right, both how it’s composed, ideologically and their strategies,” said Fernandez. “And my talk was about how to describe, empirically, where it comes from, how it develops, the ideological aspect of it.”

Fernandez said he did identify Miller by name and as a Turning Point member because he was discussing doxxing and it was “academically relevant.” He wanted her perspective as a TPUSA member on the alt-right and doxxing.

Despite Fernandez’s claim that Miller was present when he identified her, Miller said she was only discussed after she had left the lecture hall because her phone died. Fernandez said Miller was there the whole time and Lenze corroborated this. However, Poloni-Staudinger and three other sources said Miller had left the room when Fernandez brought her up.

While there is disagreement about whether Miller was in the room when she was identified

by Fernandez, there is no disagreement about whether she was identified.

Fernandez justified his actions and said he was exercising his freedom of speech, as was Miller by recording him and the other professors at the event.

“It wasn’t random … it was laying out what’s occurring and you people should be aware and

it’s happening in this room,” Fernandez said.

“I don’t have a relationship with the student [Miller] and the student is engaged in a public setting.”

Freshman computer science major Jordan Tatum is a member of NAU’s chapter of TPUSA. He joined the club to discuss the “hypersensitivity” to race and gender in politics.

Tatum was at “The Specter of Fascism?” event.

“As soon as [Miller] left, the teacher stands up and says ... ‘there was a young lady videotaping us today,’” said Tatum. “He said ‘this is Melissa Miller, she works for Turning Point USA, she posts video of [faculty] to the Professor Watchlist.’ He definitely called her out, first and last name, in front of an audience of people.”

Fernandez said he saw Miller recording the event and had the intention, during his talk, to ask her about doxxing, TPUSA and the website Professor Watchlist.

The Professor Watchlist is a project of the national Turning Point USA company. The aim of the list, according to their About page, is “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The Professor Watchlist does this by collecting videos, previously published news articles from various media outlets and other information that relate to university professors.

While some NAU faculty believe that Miller and TPUSA contribute to the Professor Watchlist, as of March 28, no content on NAU faculty have been posted on the website.

“I have very strong positions, but I don’t put those out in class,” Fernandez said. “As an educator, the one thing we all know … is that you cannot teach from a partisan position. If you did that, I think you very quickly would become one of the worst teachers around.”

Locally, NAU’s Turning Point USA club, which consists of less than 10 members, alleges that they do not affiliate with the Professor Watchlist or the national Turning Point USA company. That being said, Miller does refer to the company’s Pacific West regional director Emily Parry as her boss.

Parry traveled from Phoenix to attend the March 6 TPUSA club meeting at NAU to address the controversy surrounding the group and the Professor Watchlist. The club was told NAU faculty would be attending to discuss these issues, but no faculty members attended the one-hour meeting.

“I just felt so bad for [Miller], she’s a new student here, to feel so victimized, it concerns

NEWS me that all the professors are throwing out her name,” Parry said. “Yes, maybe she was there and she was recording and she had her opinion on it, but as a student, as an event that was open to the public, she had every right to be there and to be doing that.”

And while Campus Reform and the national TPUSA company do not directly affiliate with each other, a separate institution — the Leadership Institute — owns both Campus Reform and the national TPUSA company.

Through TPUSA, the Leadership Institute also owns the Professor Watchlist.

“Freedom of speech is for everyone,” Parry said. “I think it’s really important ideas that we talk about, it’s really fun to be able to share them and change students lives and get them to think outside the box.”

In Miller’s “The Specter of Fascism?” recording, which was posted to Campus Reform, NAU political science professor Ray Michalowski referred to Trump as the “rapist-inchief.” As of March 28, the video has reached 3,047 views on YouTube. Michalowski was referencing the audio of President Trump boasting about grabbing women “by the p---y.”

“Donald Trump himself acknowledged that he engaged in actions that would be considered sexual assault under law,” said Michalowski. “He has engaged in sexual assault, he admits it, he’s proud of it. That was my usage of that particular term.”

The only other video of NAU professors on Campus Reform are of professor Lenze.

However, March 28, a third article was published. It is about a student who is contesting the loss of one point on a 50-point English assignment for using the term “mankind” instead of “humankind.” According to MLA style, “humankind” is preferred over “mankind.”

English professor Anne Scott gave the student an opportunity to rewrite the assignment.

While no one has accepted responsibility for posting the video of Lenze to Campus Reform, Miller accepts that Campus Reform approached her about her video of “The Specter of Fascism?” Miller was contacted by Campus Reform reporter Shanna Nelson about her reaction video to the event.

“Hey Melissa, I’m sorry about what happened to you tonight. I write for Campus Reform and would love to pitch your story as an article if you are okay with that,” wrote Nelson in a Facebook message to Miller.

Miller said she was not paid for the videos but did give the rights to both her reaction video and the “The Specter of Fascism?” video over to Campus Reform.

“I was not paid for “The Specter of Fascism?” video whatsoever and I did ask, I did not get paid for that video,” Miller said.

Miller realizes there are ramifications for posting videos like this to conservative watchdog websites.

“I’m not going out to purposely harm anybody. I’m a paying student at a publicly funded university,” Miller said. “There are some things that professors cannot say, and if I have it on tape then I did send it in. I take full responsibility for giving the rights to that video over.”

Miller’s goal is to push the public to be more inclusive of opposing viewpoints.

“I just want it to be OK, for whatever your political belief is, I don’t care if you’re the furthest left on the planet, or the furthest right on the planet, it should still be OK for you to talk and to learn,” Miller said. “This is a place of learning, it’s not a place to be bullied for what you believe.”

While to some, her goals may justify her actions, but the push back from many faculty members shows that some do not share her perspective.

Respecting the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn During a Faculty Senate Meeting on Feb. 20, Senate Vice-President Gioia Woods brought “alt-right” harassment and doxxing allegations to the attention of her peer educators — from disciplines across campus.

“There’s a very, very serious issue on our campus that I encourage all of you to be aware of,” said Woods. “I’d like to publicly communicate this to as many administrators as possible, that relative to the integrity of our teaching and learning, there are many faculty right now on this campus that are feeling harassed, threatened and frankly very frightened. Particularly queer faculty and faculty of color on this campus.”

The Faculty Senate is a group of faculty members from each of the 10 colleges on NAU campus who regularly meet to discuss issues that affect all faculty members across the university.

Woods’ Faculty Senate announcement was a few days after the Campus Reform posted Miller’s video of “The Specter of Fascism?” was published. After a corresponding article was published, Miller and the professors involved with the event were harassed or received threats.

While threats include action and intent to punish someone, harassment is an attack or criticism that causes worry and distress.

“Many of my constituents in the College of Arts and Letters have come to me and said they’re afraid, they’re being harassed by students in the classroom in very strange, untoward ways,” Woods said at the Faculty Senate meeting.

“We’ve done a little bit of investigation, and there are some alt-right groups on campus that

are targeting subject matters and professors.”

One of the presenters at the Feb. 9 event, Michalowski, said he received threats, including a phone call from someone making the sound of a gunshot and hanging up. However, he isn’t worried about the threats.

“I’m 70 years old,” said Michalowski. “I’ve been a political activist all my life. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

But for those who aren’t as politically experienced, daily life has been more stressful.

Poloni-Staudinger said, as chair of the department, she received the brunt of the threats among the professors. She said she had more than 100 threats and harassments via several mediums.

“I wouldn’t let my kids walk to school alone, I shut down all my social media, I don’t interact on Twitter under my own name anymore,” Poloni-Staudinger said.

Some who threatened Poloni-Staudinger said that the federal government should bring back the Un-American Activities Committee from the McCarthy era. Joseph McCarthy was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who in the 1950s led a crusade without evidence against alleged Communists in Hollywood, blacklisting actors, directors and others in the industry and ruining the reputations and lives of many along the way.

Poloni-Staudinger said several threats called for violence against her and the professors who

“this isn’t my first rodeo.”

-Ray Michalowski, Criminology and Criminal justice Professor spoke at the event. One online comment read, “We’re armed, and they’re not.”

The tension between liberal and conservative viewpoints on campus contribute to some students feeling like they cannot safely learn at NAU. After the backlash from her video being published on Campus Reform, Miller now shares this perspective. Although she has not been directly threatened, she has been verbally harassed and called a racist. With the harassment as well as tensions on campus, she plans to leave NAU. “There’s just so many colleges in the news for violence with people of opposing viewpoints, it has kept me on edge,” Miller said.

Additionally, conservative students in TPUSA have voiced their concerns about how this tension affects their ability to learn in the classroom because of their political viewpoint.

“I don’t speak [in classes], and I don’t write

truly what I believe or feel because I’ve actually been downgraded for writing a dissenting opinion to the professor,” said current TPUSA president Courtney Colby. “I just keep my head down because it’s easier.”

Colby said she joined the club because she supports free speech and the U.S. military.

“Say Hillary Clinton had won, the conservatives would have been just as unhappy but there wouldn’t have been any protests, no campuses would have shut down for the day,” Colby said. “It affects my education.”

Parry gave an example of a liberal professor being devastated by the election results, and how that impacted their class.

“What we see a problem with is when you go into a biology class and your teacher is sobbing because Trump won the election and is telling their students they don’t have to come that day to cope, that’s not what students are paying for,” said Parry. “At the end of the day, students are paying for their education and our website, the Professor Watchlist, is what many professors are worried about … We don’t think professors should have anything to worry about unless they are incredibly biased in the classroom.”

In a documentary studies class on March 1, Janna Jones, creative media and film professor, played a YouTube music video titled “F--- Donald Trump” by YG & Nipsey Hussle. Her lecture focused on the music of resistance, including hip-hop, and examined how documentaries tend to go against the status quo.

“The reasoning was not about politics at all.

It’s a documentary class, and we were looking at the 1960s rockumentaries,” said Jones.

“We used [videos] to talk about resistance.

And the question was, ‘What is the music of the resistance today?’ I felt really comfortable [showing it], we didn’t even talk about politics or [Trump].”

Miller tweeted about Jones’ lecture during a two-week period.

“Teachers can say ‘F--- Trump!’ in class lectures but a kid wears a hat that says ‘Make America Great again’ gets suspended,” read the March 19 tweet.

Jones said she showed this video, not as an affront to the administration or conservative students, but to show how music finds a way to represent the counterculture and resist the status quo.

Fernandez said that in his classes, students of color, queer students and young women are the ones who typically do not voice their political opinions in class.

“They are the least likely to express their concern,” Fernandez said. “Perhaps the feeling that is happening with conservative students is actually something that they might have in common with other students.”

M ARCH 30, 2017 - APR IL 5, 2017 | T HE LUMBER JACK 7

Pre-session (PS): 5/15/17 - 6/2/17

NAU School Of Communication

SSI: 6/5/17 - 7/3/17

GET AHEAD IN YOUR STUDIES!

SSII: 7/10/17 - 8/8/17

Advertising SI SI

ADV 207 ADV 310

SI

CMF 122

Introduction To Media Studies

1008

Torn, J

PS SI SII PS SI SII

CMF 251 CMF 251 CMF 251 CMF 252 CMF 252 CMF 252

Creative Media Workshop I Creative Media Workshop I Creative Media Workshop I Creative Media Workshop II Creative Media Workshop II Creative Media Workshop II

1013 1014 1015 1018 1019 1020

Medoff, N Medoff, N Medoff, N Medoff, N Medoff, N Medoff, N

Introduction To Advertising Advertising Media Selection

1006 1007

Hitt, A Lei, R

Creative Media And Film

SII CMF 328W Media Development Writing SII CMF 382 The Art Of Cinema SI CMF 482 Topics In Media Studies: The Films Of George Lucas

1024 1022 1023

Torn, J Helford, P Lancaster, K

COM 100 COM 101 COM 131 COM 150 COM 200

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Survey Of Communication Communication Analysis Writing For Comm Channels Environmental Communication Basic Communication Theory

CST 111 CST 151 CST 315 CST 321 CST 424 CST 524

1025 1026 1039 1040 1044

Race, Gender, And Media 1048 Mass Comm Regulatn/Responsib 1050

Fdmtls Of Public Speaking Interpersonal Communication Bus & Professional Speaking Nonverbal Communication Gender And Communication Gender And Communication

Journalism PS JLS 104 SI JLS 131 SII JLS 250

Grammar & Style Basic Reporting Intro To Video Journalism

SI MER 135 Merchandise Buying

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nau.edu/summer 1061 1063

DuMity, A Rackham, B Rabe, N

1064

Nelson, D

Merchandising

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summer classes 2017

1106 1052 1054 1056 1058 1060

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Public Relations SI PR 272 Intro To Public Relations SII PR 372W Public Relations Writing SI PR 373 New Media Engagement

Garcia Rodriguez, M Deterding, A Umphrey, L Mahaffey, J PS VC 101 Baker-Ohler, M SI VC 102 Hardy-Short, D SI VC 161

1068 1070 1069

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Visual Communication Communication Design Intro To Computer Graphics History Of Visual Comm

1071 1072 1073

Mitchell, K Mitchell, L Mitchell, K

OPINION-EDI TOR IAL

Parenting isn’t sitting toddlers in front of an iPad at dinner KAITLYN MUNSIL

T

oday more than ever, children and young adults seem to be afflicted with attention issues, causing parents to become troubled in terms of parenting. With the influx of accessible technology, parents have chosen this as a method of distraction rather than finding other methods to help their children overcome these obstacles. Parents need to realize how toxic this is for their children and why this needs to end.

“New data released by the Centers for Disease Control show that the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has more than doubled over the past 10 years,” said Eileen Bailey, author of an article on Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) published by healthcentral. com. ADHD and Attention Deficit Disorder, which are serious disorders that should not be taken lightly, seem to be common diagnoses for children. However, the use of technology should not be parents’ main go-to for these children, or even children without these disorders.

The many advancements of technology are things people all over the world pride themselves on. These advancements have led to developments in science, technology, engineering and math. But they have also been a main ingredient in the problem with modernday addiction to technology. People seem to be spending more time on their phones than interacting with the people in front of them.

A common sight to see when going to a restaurant is children on phones or other electronic devices playing games. Parents realize that, without these devices, their children could be difficult to distract. This is something many parents do not want to deal with. So at a young age, technology is instilled in everyday lives to redirect children’s attention.

Parents who use these devices for their children deem them suitable due to their educational abilities. However, children don’t need to learn from technology. Parents can teach

them everything those devices are supposedly teaching them.

Children should have monitored and limited time on technology. By doing this, it will benefit children as far as behavior issues go in the home as well as in school.

By getting children off of technology, they could learn far more than anything on the screen. They could develop social skills through interacting more with peers, friends and family members. They could also begin to develop a method for conquering their attention issues

illustration by michael mix

without the desire to be on these devices all the time.

“Children who overuse technology report persistent body sensations of overall ‘shaking’, increased breathing and heart rate, and a general state of ‘unease,’” said Cris Rowan of The Huffington Post. These are symptoms most people are unaware of.

The obsession with technology begins at an early age when parents use technology as a parenting tool. Starting children off at a young age with a screen in front of their faces can only do damage. Children begin to grow accustomed to it and become anxious when they are not on it.

As the child gets older, this dependency for technology only becomes more evident. Middle school and high school students are far more concerned with their likes and retweets on social media than anything going on in the world.

All of this could have been prevented if parents realized how damaging technology can be for these children.

As college students, it’s easy to see these children on their screens and quickly badmouth the parents. While it is a completely personal preference on how people parent their children, realizing the negative consequences of overusing technology to raise their children could be largely advantageous. By informing parents as well as yourself of the negative consequences technology has on a young child, it can benefit the entire world.

When did the right to own a gun trump a person’s well being?

CASSIE MILLER

I

have lost good friends because their mentally-ill partner snapped one day. Who do we blame in these types of crimes? Do we blame the gun for their deaths, or the gun shop where it was purchased? Mostly everyone will immediately say the person who shot the gun is at fault. But if they had a mental illness, can they really be blamed?

The House of Representatives recently removed a rule set in place by the Obama administration which restricted mentally ill persons and veterans from owning a firearm.

The House argued this rule separated the citizens and went against the Second Amendment.

Republicans really seem to want everyone to have guns, even those deemed unstable. They seem to forget that this law was in place to protect, not to hinder.

I understand some mentally ill people don’t have suicidal or homicidal tendencies, but there is a reason there was a ban in place for the ones who do. When I first heard about this rule being removed, my mind instantly went to the veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or severe anxiety and depression. I was angry and scared, thinking the government had just put a loaded gun in someone’s hand and helped them aim it at their heads.

Do they not understand that this rule was put in place for the population of those with mental illness who would use the gun on themselves or those around them? That sometimes mental illness makes it difficult to decipher between right and wrong? If someone who is diagnosed with severe PTSD has an episode and snaps with a gun in reach, the opportunity to use it with malicious intentions opens. They could pull that trigger, as it has

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happened in the past.

In the state of Arizona, it’s fairly easy to obtain a gun. You just have to be 18 to own a long range and 21 to purchase a handgun (with a photo ID, of course). It wouldn’t be challenging for a young person to purchase a firearm, even if they were in therapy for anger issues, and by law it’s that person’s right to own a firearm. However, it’s not their right to, say, use it against their partner in a fight, or use it against their kids when they misbehave.

Although it’s true that not all terrorists or shooters in the United States are mentally ill, but who in their sane mind would do such a thing?

And, yes, I said terrorists because someone who goes into a public space, such as a elementary school or place of worship, with the intent to kill is a terrorist. They are doing this because they want to strike fear and cause terror.

They want to set an example, much like in

the case of Dylann Roof who attacked a place of worship because he hated black people.

The lifting of this ban would only make it easier for another Roof to have access to deadly weapons. Now don’t get me wrong, guns are not to blame. It’s the wielder we need to worry about ,and the rule the Obama administration had on having the Social Security Administration send records to the firearm background check system prevented this.

Granted, if someone really wants a gun, they will find a way to get it. But at least this made it harder for them. Obama tried to help limit the mass shootings and suicides, whereas Trump’s administration just wants more guns out on the streets. We need to keep the safety of someone’s life a priority over their right to own a gun. If not, we are doomed to more mass shootings.

OPINION-EDI TOR IAL

iMissmyPod: Can the iPod be revived, or is it already too late?

ZACH MARTIN

R

ewind back to the 2000s: Sept. 11, the war in Iraq, terrorism and natural disasters. There was so much negativity in the world, and people were looking for a way to distract themselves.

On Oct. 28, 2001, the distraction that helped us move forward and numb the pain arrived.

When Apple first released the iPod, there were many other MP3 players on the market.

I was the proud owner of one (sadly I don’t remember the brand name), but when the iPod came out, it changed the game.

The biggest flaw in my MP3 experience was interfacing with a computer and having very limited storage space. Along with other issues I’m sure non-iPod owners faced, Apple’s solution did not come cheap, and was, therefore, unobtainable for me.

I’m sure you remember, if you didn’t have an iPod, the people who had them and the instant God-like stature they possessed in social circles everywhere. They were legends, rolling their thumbs and grooving their way to top of the audio-consuming food chain. All the while,

the others were clawing at a chance to hear the little “click” as your thumb glided over the wheel.

Apple didn’t stop there. They kept reinventing the wheel for different uses by changing its shape, size and color, thereby tailoring it to any lifestyle. I finally jumped on the bandwagon once the first iPod Mini came out in 2004.

I liked its smaller size, which was a choice I stayed with once the Nano was revealed. I finally sold my final iPod Nano on Craigslist for around $30 a few years ago, and for the past couple of years, I find myself wanting to buy another one.

I specifically want another iPod, particularly the Classic for its size and storage capacity, but mainly because it’s simple.

The user-friendly, so-easy-a-baby-can-useit interface of the software and streamlined synchronization with iTunes on a computer to the device is seldom present in technology.

The cloud has removed the need for wired connections and, in my experience, garners incredible frustration with keeping track of where data is located. With the flawless partnering of the iPod and iTunes, I always know what music I have and where.

Knowing that once it is fully charged, I can The progression of technology will never bring my music with me anywhere stop and it’s not something that in the world and need not be can be stopped. The fingertip concerned with WiFi signals access to thousands of or data usage is enough to hours of media via tablets sell me. Granted, many of the and smartphones has iTunes functions of creating rendered the iPod obsolete. playlists and rating songs are But that doesn’t keep me present on other music from wishing they were services as well. Again, still the desirable going back to the way to listen to interface, it’s simple music. and because I spent I would countless hours absolutely love it making playlists and if Apple continued organizing my music, I making iPods, but at am familiar with it. this point there’s no In a world full longer a use for them. of increasingly complex So, at the very least, I technology, having something would settle for them being a bit more dated is a stress able to still function with reliever. The software has newer software. There will be been full-patched and is, a day when the last generation therefore, not glitchy, there of iPods will be unable to work are replacement parts aplenty because the software is too illustration by hattie delaney (at least for a little while) and outdated. I just hope it isn’t for accessories are cheap. a very, very long time.

Capitalism and the downfall of contemporary society PETER WRIGHT

T

here’s no reason to beat around the bush with a subject like this: Capitalism is one of, if not the, most terrible things that has ever existed in this country. The end goal of it all is to force people into a system in which everything in life is valued based on monetary gain, and competition for these monetary gains make people rabid, heartless beings.

Sixty-seven billionaires are the sole owners of half of the world’s assets. Meanwhile, the middle class is slowly dying away, leaving in its place ever-growing numbers of people living in poverty. In capitalism, it’s clear to see that, without intervention, the rich will continue to get richer, and the poor will continue to get poorer. The true concern is where it will end. At what point do people finally begin to say enough is enough, and how do we stop this beast?

Michael Sandel, author of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets and dedicated academic, discussed in The Atlantic the ways in which a capitalist mindset has seeped into every fiber of the average United States citizen’s being.

“Almost everything can be bought and sold. Markets and market values have come to govern our lives as never before,” said Sandel.

“We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us. [Over time] market values were coming to play a greater and greater role in social life.

Economics was becoming an imperial domain.

Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.”

A free-market mindset truly begins to create dangerous moral codes and ideals of living. This can be clearly seen through the prison industrial complex in which privatized prisons have begun profiting from the mass incarceration of U.S. citizens, mostly due to petty drug arrests beginning in the Reagan-era “War on Drugs.”

The combination between fascist government officials, especially rich and privileged fascists like Donald Trump, and a constant societal push toward profit devalues human life at its core.

There is no silver lining. These people who are being used to feed the prison industrial complex are having their lives destroyed. The truly sad part is that most found themselves

in this position of being born into poverty as a result of a capitalist economy, which necessitated them to commit crimes of survival.

A study done at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2011 found that lack of employment can cause mental illness in society due to the extremely detrimental effects of not being able to participate in the capitalist systems in place. However, only 50 percent of citizens are able to afford mental health care as medicine, too, has been commodified, and made only available to those with adequate monetary resources.

This ultimately leads to high levels of stress, depression and other mental issues, ending in shorter and much more tumultuous lives for these lowincome, marginalized

U.S. citizens.

These effects can be clearly seen in Flagstaff, especially within the population of college students. If you are a student, you most likely understand the severity of what taking out student loans will do to your finances in the long run. NAU, as well as every other university in the country, has lost their morals. These institutions value profit and commodification of students over the acquisition of knowledge and learning.

Just like anything else in the U.S., universities have lost their morals and act as nothing more than greedy, dirty machines that feed on those who are hopeful for a bright and successful future.

illustration by alanna secrest

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FE ATUR E S

FROM THE FOREST FLOOR TO THE MEDICINE CABINET MAKENNA LEPOWSKY

R

ising from the southeastern edge of the Colorado Plateau are the San Francisco Peaks. As foragers begin their hunt, vibrant plants such as red and white oregano are found painting the mountainside.

Among the landscape is mullein, a gold-colored Native American tobacco plant that grows in tall stalks. As one travels to the eastern rim of the Grand Canyon, 43 species of sage can be found. The pungent aroma lets one know the plant is near.

The biological diversity of northern Arizona has made it a prime location for ethnobotany, a methodology focused on understanding the culinary and medicinal properties of wild and domesticated plants.

Spring encourages outdoor activities such as foraging, also known as wildcrafting. Wildcrafting is the hunting and gathering of wild plant sources for culinary and medicinal purposes.

Homeopathy and herbalism are two institutional practices that adopt fundamental principles of ethnobotany and foraging.

Plants are valued for their medicinal and therapeutic purposes in homeopathy and herbalism. However, there are nuances among the two methodologies.

The Forager’s Path School of Botanical Studies is one institution in Flagstaff that teaches people the differences of these methodologies and about health education through herbs, diet and proper lifestyle.

“Herbal medicine is just using plants fairly unprocessed to promote health, so you are going to maybe make a plant into a tea, a syrup or a powder, and then you eat it or you put it on your skin and make a salve out of it. Homeopathy is a lot more processed and a lot more involved. It’s definitely a very different approach. Even though it’s based on plants, it’s very different than herbal medicine,” said Mike Masek, founder and director of the Forager’s Path School of Botanical Studies.

Homeopathy is a practice that embraces a natural and holistic approach to illness. It aims to treat acute and chronic pains through natural resources such as minerals, herbs and flora.

Masek said there are many sought-after plant species in northern Arizona that are found in a 50-mile radius of one’s home.

“We have a wide range of life zones [in Arizona] and we are the fourth highest state in the country in plant diversity,” Masek said. “There is a lot of medicinal and edible foods out in nature.

There is a lot of the evergreen trees or douglas fir, the juniper tree — those have a lot of essential oils.”

A surplus of medicinal plants can be found growing wild throughout the northern Arizona or at plant sanctuaries like the Arboretum at Flagstaff, home to 750 native and nonnative species of plants, many which are medicinal. One medicinal tree in particular is juniper.

According to Herb Wisdom website, juniper treats a variety of internal and external conditions because of its natural antibacterial and antiviral properties. The antiseptic and diuretic properties of juniper increases production of urine, which can help treat urinary tract infections and kidney stones. When ingested, it also promotes appetite, aids inflammation and helps treat conditions like stomach aches, heartburn and gastrointestinal infections.

Some other medicinal plants grown at the Arboretum

Marina Vasquez, NAU applied indigenous studies resident elder, stores herbs in mason jars after foraging and picking from her garden March 24. Wyatt Rutt | The Lumberjack

and throughout northern Arizona include valerian, pinemat manzanita, buckwheat, yarrow and agave.

Foraging is not for the average person. Masek said foraging and plant medicine are hands-on methodologies.

“If you want to know about plants, you need to be out in the field with someone who is knowledgeable, and you need to actually see the plant. You need to touch it, you need to smell it, you need to taste it,” Masek said. “It’s not theoretical, it’s not something you can learn from a book, you have to be outside.”

Plant medicine is infused into a variety of practices and studies. It’s also a part of many cultures around the world.

“My grandmother was a medicine woman, and she knew all about plants — which ones were the ones that have the protein, which ones were good to heal people, what plants were used to use as salves, tinctures, creams for skin rashes or for open wounds. She knew all of this stuff,” said Marina Vasquez, applied indigenous studies (AIS) resident elder at NAU. Originally from the highlands of Guatemala, Vasquez’s cultural background includes ethnobotany and plant medicine.

Plant medicines remain prevalent in Vasquez’s life.

“There are 43 different kinds of sages just in northern Arizona. The white sage, we Guatemalans — and I found out some Native Americans — use it to clean their teeth and use it for bad breath. We also drink some sages to calm the nervous system and to help with stomach aches,” Vasquez said.

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Methodologies like ethnobotany and herbalism embrace scientific and spiritual approaches. Masek infuses a Hindu methodology known as Ayurveda into his herbalist practices.

Ayurveda is based on achieving balance in the body through diet, herbal treatment and yogic breathing. Balance is constituted upon two principles: the mind and body being interconnected and that the power to heal and transform the body lies with the mind.

Masek’s practice is also fashioned around “energetic herbalism.” This theme of healing is linked with human-nature experiences, the five elements and their relevance with taste.

“An example would be our breath, which would be air, something solid like our bones would be earth, fire would be the heat that we digest our food with,” Masek said.

When a hunted plant is found, cultivating it can be rewarding. Some herbalists like to keep their foraging locations private. Masek said these locations are like favorite fishing holes — they aren’t exclusive if they are shared.

While foraging locations or herbal recipes may be private, approaches to creating plant medicines can generally be the same.

Tinctures can be easy to make and the process requires that plants be soaked in a mixture of alcohol and water. It should sit for two weeks, letting the alcohol and water extract the plant’s chemical constituents. After three weeks, the plant should be removed and tinctures will form.

FE ATUR E S Tinctures have worked wonders for Vasquez and her family, specifically ones made from blue vervain. Vasquez’s brother was diagnosed with type one diabetes 27 years ago.

“The medicine man gave him a tea to drink, and that was made out of the leaves of blue vervain,” Vasquez said. “Boiled with cinnamon and honey together, apparently the three chemicals of the three different plants — and the enzymes — work together very well. He has been living 27 years with diabetes one without any medication. He is almost 60 years old.”

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the medical benefits of blue vervain include its ability to stimulate liver functionality, calm the nervous system, cleanse the body and reduce depression and stress.

Mullein and wild oregano are two other plants that grow in Flagstaff. Vasquez makes these plants into tinctures and chest rubs.

“We [in Flagstaff] have wild oregano, Italian oregano, red oregano and white oregano. We have five oreganos. I make something similar to a codeine, and I add willow tree for aspirin, and I mix it up together. I have used that when I have pain in my body,” Vasquez said. “I also use mullein, which for Native Americans is nitro tobacco. I use the flowers to make a tincture to clear wax and ear infections. The leaves, I put it in oils with eucalyptus that I get fresh from San Francisco, California. I cut it, then I put it together in oils and add juniper. And then, after three or four weeks, I just make the chest rub, which is very good to cure asthma, allergies and coughs.”

Beginner forager’s may find it challenging to find medicinal plants in Flagstaff.

“It requires an attention to detail and specific knowledge.

You need to be able to identify the plants you are searching for which requires a knowledge of their specific properties, including their physical appearance, habitat and growing season,” said Meredith Prentice, senior environmental studies major.

Prentice has been foraging for two years. She encourages anyone interested in the practice to start learning by explore the unique vegetation in northern Arizona.

“Going for walks is also another good way to identity certain plants and their preferred locals,” Prentice said. “In this area you don’t need to travel far to come into contact with medicinal plants. I have done a significant amount of collecting in the White Mountains in east Arizona and up on the San Francisco Peaks.”

Vasquez said she forages at Buffalo Park for one of her favorite plants, the yucca plant, which can be made into soaps and shampoo. Vasquez also said people shouldn’t overuse the land’s resources and to take only small amounts of one species at a time.

Masek and Vasquez said people adopt a set of foraging ethics and precautions before going out into the wild.

“A lot of people have the mistaken idea that you can just go out and grab what you want … I only [forage] on private land with permission,” Masek said. “You don’t go down to Oak Creek Canyon and start cutting off tree branches. There are people who think that they can just go out and do what they want and start digging up plants. And you can’t do that.”

Plant-based medicines should also not discourage one from seeking out medical attention when necessary.

“If you are going to the emergency room, you don’t need herbal medicine. When we teach herbal medicine, it isn’t just herbs. It’s also talking about the importance of getting enough sleep, eating the proper diet and reducing stress,” Masek said.

Top: Native and non-native medicinal plants, such as yarrow, agave and valerian, can be found in the greenhouse at the Arboretum at Flagstaff. Bottom: Agave utahensis is a cold-resistant plant that commonly grows in western and northern Arizona.

Wyatt Rutt | The Lumberjack

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Illustration by Alanna Secrest

HYPERLOOPIN’ FROM PHOENIX TO L.A. MONTGOMERY GLASER

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lasting through the Arizona desert, a pod travels around 198.84 miles per hour toward L.A., reaching the speeds of a Japanese bullet train. However while this technology does exsist, this means of transportation is not available ... yet.

In 2012, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reintroduced the idea of the Hyperloop, a form of “tubebased travel.” While the technology for this innovation does exists, it is currently unavailable as a means of transportation.

Musk’s interest in this technology has influenced the idea for the Hyperloop competition sponsored by SpaceX. Multiple colleges will compete to create the fastest, safest and most costeffective Hyperloop design. The winning design will be determined by Musk.

Musk is the CEO of SpaceX and is a part of numerous companies such as Hyperloop One and the Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. These companies have commercialized and privatized the Hyperloop project.

The goal of the project is to create a Hyperloop pod that can commute from Phoenix to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. The Hyperloop could significantly reduce a car trip that can take 6 hours. A one-way ticket is estimated to cost $20.

According to the SpaceX website, “compared to the alternatives, [the Hyperloop] should ideally be: safer, faster, lower cost, more convenient, immune to weather, sustainably self-powering, resistant to earthquakes, not disruptive to those along the route.”

NAU and ASU are two universities on a team that will compete in the second competition.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Thunderbird School of Global Management are also a part of the team.

The team has two project co-leads, Lynne Nethken and Josh Kosar. Nethken, ASU graduate mechanical engineering major, is also the team captain. Nethken said that 104 students are collaborating on the project and the number of participants continues to grow.

“We’re always looking for more students, from NAU and otherwise,” said Nethken.

The team is split into two different sections, which is required to meet the goal. One half of the team is dedicated to designing, testing and calculating the physics of the pod to determine whether or not it will run. This team also works to ensure the pod will pass brake and friction tests so the pod will have an efficient time and a means to slow down.

The other half of the team is set to focus on business endeavors, like creating a logo for the pod, marketing the idea to the public and recruit potential investors.

“We just try to come off as professional as possible, because we do have people funding us that we want to try and impress,” said Aryes Avalos, who is an NAU senior visual communication major and a graphic designer and part of the marketing group for the Hyperloop team. “The logo was a

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very long process because we had to encompass having all of the schools incorporated into the logo without having too much of one school represented.”

The group’s progress on the Hyperloop project relies on equal contribution to produce results.

The marketing progress of the pod is one aspect that involves mapping out the various uses of the pods, from human to cargo transit.

“We’re also working on the website and advertisement, recruitment, posters, etcetera,” Avalos said.

As a precaution and failsafe, the development of the transit would rely on beta testing, which requires experiment cargo trips. These trips help to find and examine any faults in the pods and determine a pods maximum capacity to ensure safe travel. Hyperloop funding and income can also rely on extensive advertising and the price for the fast ride, which has been projected to reap profits.

In preparation for the project, the team examined all possibilities and made predictions for 10 years in advance. The team calculated inflation into the solution for the cost-effective product and made predictions in regard to a decrease in car repair costs. This decrease in repair cost could come from a shift in transit options from cars to the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop may also have a positive impact on infrastructure.

The design of the Hyperloop is intended to be functional and will be powered by compressed air. For the propulsion, or thrust system, the team will use compressed air thrusts with a custom made supersonic nozzle.

“If you have a balloon filled up with air and you release the balloon, it would propel the balloon forward. It’s the same type of idea, but we’ll be doing it in a much more controlled fashion,” Nethken said.

The pod will also include the standard friction-based brakes that are used in cars and the magnetic eddy current brakes that are commonly used in modern roller coaster designs. The team’s priority includes safety, and many additions to achieving a controlled environment are underway, such as fire suppression systems and other practicalities.

“This is going to be the fifth mode of transportation. It’s definitely going to make a dent,” Nethken said.

Hyperloop One is expected to perform a public trial in the first half of 2017. In preparations for the contest, new pod designs are almost underway by competitors. Each team must meet multiple requirements and receive verification from SpaceX before pods are built.

“The team that won last year got their pod built, and it’s actually being manufactured in Dubai right now. So if we win, we’ll have the possibility of ours being built as well,” Avalos said.

By participating in this competition, NAU will have played a part in technological innovations.

Combining technology, graphic design and marketing, students developing the Hyperloop pod are exercising real-life skills in the competition.

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CULTUR E

A look at NAU’s own supercomputer Matthew Kruelle

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ather than play war games or try to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time, NAU’s supercomputer, the HPC Monsoon, is being utilized by students and scientists alike to conduct complex research that would be impossible on a desktop computer.

The HPC Monsoon, or High Performance Computing Monsoon, lies behind a heavy metal door adjacent to the NAU server room in the Information Technology Services building and is contained in three tall, metal racks filled with lights, wires and computers. Fans cool the room to keep the supercomputer from overheating while also creating deafening white noise.

“I like to say that each PC for high performance computing is a look at what will be in your hand in 10 years or possibly on the desktop in 10 years,” said research HPC administrator

Christopher Coffey.

A supercomputer is any computer with a high level of computational power compared to a regular computer. Some can fill the space of half a football field, and the world’s largest is located in China.

While NAU’s Monsoon does not rank in the top 500 supercomputers in the world, it is still incredibly powerful.

The machine never sleeps. It is always running, computing and researching.

Naming the machine was put to an in-house vote by early users of the supercomputer, which was released to on-campus researchers in 2014.

“We have monsoons in Arizona so a lot of folks thought that would be appropriate,” said Coffey.

The Monsoon, which Coffey initially set up and now runs, is composed of 884 Intel Xeon cores, 12 terabytes of random access

Christopher Coffey, High Performance Computer administrator, sits in front of the HPC Monsoon, located in the Information Technology Services building March 22. Andrew Holt Frazier | The Lumberjack

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memory (RAM) and 12 Nvidia Tesla K80 of graphics processing units (GPU). For comparison, a typical desktop has one or two cores, only a few gigabytes of RAM and typically only one GPU. “More memory and lots more cores all combined with a super high-speed network and super high-speed storage allows researchers to get a lot more complicated work done, and a lot larger work done in a short amount of time,” Coffey said.

A weather forecast takes tremendous resources, one could take upward of 500 cores and six terabytes of RAM, resources that are simply unobtainable on a desktop or laptop computer.

The capabilities of the Monsoon are endless. It can help forecast weather, render complex animations, learn about the human genome, run mathematical and scientific calculations, solve complex chemistry problems and learn about the endless void known as outer space.

Michael Mommert is a German astronomer teaching and conducting research at NAU, though his doctorate is in geoscience. He has utilized the Monsoon’s capabilities to conduct research about asteroids.

“We use a space telescope, which is an infrared telescope, which looks at an asteroid and measures how hot is that asteroid,” said Mommert.

Jumping off of previous models that describe the heat of an asteroid based on its size or shape among others details, millions of parameters are drawn up of what the observed asteroid could look like. This is where the Monsoon becomes essential.

“People expected that small asteroids are just chunks of rock, solid rock,” Mommert said.

The research was spurred because of NASA’s interest in small asteroids.

The United Space Space Program was curious about a mission to use a large bag towed by a spaceship to drag a small asteroid into orbit around the moon. The plan was for astronauts to land on the asteroid to collect samples and data.

Mommert’s results put a stop to the Wile E. Coyote-style plot to bag an asteroid and drag it home.

“If they were to fly there and land on that asteroid it would probably just fall apart under the weight,” Mommert said.

NAU is a world leader in asteroid observation and research.

Mommert’s research, which focused on two of the smallest asteroids ever discovered, found that the asteroids were composed of very tiny rocks held together by minuscule forces. One of the two observed asteroids was composed of one-third empty space.

“That [asteroid] might actually fit into your garage because it’s so small but it could also swim on water,” Mommert said.

Mommert’s research calculations would have taken weeks or months on a desktop computer. The HPC Monsoon ran the calculations in two days.

“Monsoon’s capabilities are absolutely necessary for our research now,” Mommert said. “There is stuff we couldn’t do without Monsoon.”

The supercomputer is also being applied to help researchers find the mysterious ninth planet.

A ninth planet, Pluto, was already discovered at Lowell Observatory in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. However, since being

CULTUR E demoted to dwarf planet, the race to find the new ninth planet is on.

Asteroids and other assorted objects in the far rim of the solar system have been observed orbiting in a strange but constant pattern.

“That points to the possibility there is a planet or big mass, Earth sized or so, that shepherds all those objects into the orbits we observe today,” Mommert said.

The HPC Monsoon is being run to determine some of the characteristics of the planet, such as its size and where it may be located.

The Monsoon is a cluster computer. This means that it is composed of many individual computers all connected to act as one system. It does not run on Windows or Mac, rather it uses the Linux operating system.

While the operating system is initially unfamiliar to many students at NAU, understanding the system is important as nearly all of the world’s supercomputers run Linux.

“A lot of folks at least, at our school, are new with Linux so, at first, when they go about getting set up on Linux it’s a little bit new because they’re used to Windows,” Coffey said.

Linux is open source and runs a majority of the web servers around the world. All of Google, Facebook, and Twitter’s technology are run on Linux.

Scientific libraries utilized for everything from linear algebra to molecular biology are already on Linux and available free of charge.

“Everybody creates software and shares it with other people, I do the same thing,” Mommert said.

Coffey helps run workshops that teach researchers how to utilize the Monsoon and work the Linux operating system. “[Coffey] is basically an unlimited resource for students looking to do research on that scale,” said graduate mechanical engineering student Seth Lawrence.

Two workshops regarding the technology are offered. The first is an intro to Monsoon and its scheduler, SLURM, or Simple Linux Utility Resource Management.

“It’s kind of just a crash course in getting the research up and running,” Coffey said.

The second workshop is focused on Linux training.

Unlike Mommert, Lawrence’s research on the Monsoon is grounded to Earth. He is researching predicting water flow and velocity.

Lawrence’s research, along with other research from the Engineering Department, will be employed to help develop cooling systems for future nuclear reactor designs.

After graduating in May, Lawrence plans to continue working in the field of cluster computing.

While the Monsoon is certainly a supercomputer today, computing technology becomes obsolete in about five years. To keep up with technology trends, Coffey is planning on almost doubling the strength of the machine.

“As the research continues to flourish on campus we’ll be putting more resources into [the Monsoon],” Coffey said. “We’re trying to stay ahead of the curve of what researchers need on campus.”

Between 1,400 and 1,600 new cores will be added to the computer cluster, the high speed storage will be upgraded, and some of the older technology inside Monsoon will be retired toward the end of this year into the start of next year.

The heroic side of hacking Maria Angulo

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s technology progresses, people’s lives in the modern age depend more on gadgets than anything else. Such a lifestyle can come with a price, though. Private information can be discovered by others through email, mobile apps and many other technologies that are saved in phones and computers.

Hacking has become a vital subject in politics lately and has increased tensions around the world. Incidents like: Edward Snowden, the Hillary Clinton email leaks, Yahoo saying billions of users email being compromised and Russia’s influence in the presidential election have made it appear there is a constant cyber war raging on.

Bloomberg Technologies reported that 2016 was the year with the most hacking, with a 40 percent increase from 2015.

Even though $73.7 billion was spent in cyber security, $90 billion dollars are expected to be spent in 2018 to promote software and service security.

Bilal Habib has worked at NAU for eight months in the Computer Cyber system group. Habib’s work focuses on cyber security, which can be viewed as the complete opposite of hacking. His work is related to the fingerprinting of chips for

security use and identification purposes.

“Technology can be used in positive and negative ways,” said Habib.

There are other examples of hacking outside of the government. Businesses often look for ways to strengthen their own cyber systems, and this can involve hiring hackers to look for weaknesses in the system so they can be fixed.

“It is a step forward. Because if you are not doing this analysis, the external hackers are going to infiltrate your system, and they might copy your intelligence property, your designs,” Habib said.

Kenneth Sager has been working in the NAU Information Technology Services (ITS) department for more than a year as an Information Security Analyst. He is responsible for the Computer Incident Response team, and their job is to detect attacks and deploy mitigation strategies to reduce security risks.

Sager also provides technical experience at many levels with students, staff and faculty.

“I’ve developed lectures, which I present in classrooms as part guest lecturing all the way to training aimed at university software developers to improve the security system we build,” said Sager. continued on page 18

Illustration by Alanna Secrest

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CULTUR E continued from page 17

Sager also acts as a “penetration tester.” In this test, he attempts to breach the system in order to help inform system administrators of areas they should improve security.

For Sager, hacking is a tool of knowledge and skills, it does not have a property.

“What you do with it is what might make it good or bad,” Sager said.

Another type of attack that has become prevalent is phishing. This is known as social engineering in which an attacker attempts to rob a victim of personal information. There are also other types of phishing schemes in which hackers target more serious information like credit card numbers, taxes and health information.

“The technology industry as a whole continues to combat phishing on a constant basis,” Sager said. “It’s no surprise that these types of attacks are also often observed here at the university.”

This is the problem students encounter most, and it comes down to statistics for Sager.

“If phishing works 1 percent of the time, then an attacker can expect to have one in 100 successes,” Sager said. ”Often, people share with me why they won’t get caught, but all that means is they are one of the 99, and that phishing still works.”

One thing that can be done to avoid getting hacked is to create stronger passwords with uppercase and lowercase letters along with numbers and special characters.

One other element that has changed hacking has been apps. As apps are downloaded, people sometimes continue without actually reading and understanding the terms and conditions.

This can lead to the person not knowing who runs the app or what the apps capability includes.

“The more apps you install the more privacy you are compromising,” Habib said.

As technology continues to expand, the lives of people engaged in social media and advanced cyber security, caution will have to be taken to understand how devices and social media can make them vulnerable to external and internal individuals with bad or good intentions.

A new way of looking at reality Chloe Greeley

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lthough the idea for virtual reality (VR) was first introduced in 1994, and created in 1997, it has only recently become a technology that is on track to becoming a household technology.

The Oculus Rift was first introduced in 2012 through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that offered the first independently developed VR headset. Cameras that are 360-degree capable are also now being utilized in media promotion by offering a 360-view of the world.

In the fall of 2016, Giovanni Castillo created the Immersive + Interactive Virtual Reality Lab at NAU. Before coming to NAU, Castillo worked for NASA where he collaborated with researchers to create mission visualizations and real-time VR simulators. His work in VR shows how this medium can transform education and research.

The lab has been working on a couple different programs with different departments and majors throughout the university. One of those programs involved is Chemistry.

“The ChemVR is an ongoing thing that can be used now, but we are always adding onto it,” said Alannah Don, strategic communication and public relations major, who is currently a public relations intern for the lab. “The goal for it is to implement it into actual course curriculum, but right now it’s just being used as a resource for students.”

Right now, the program allows students in the chemistry department to create molecules in a virtual world. It allows students to experiment with the molecules and make sure that they are created correctly by allowing them to attach the bonds in the right areas. If it’s correct it will show a green light and if it is wrong it will show a red one. The program is going to be eventually incorporated into the curriculum for Dr. Clifford Coss’ organic chemistry class. Implementing this technology will help students more easily understand the complex topics discussed in class.

Another one of the programs is called Quiet Ego. “Quiet Ego uses virtual reality to reduce stress and anxiety in users,” Don said. “It’s being used in clinical trials right now with the NAU psychology department.”

The goal of this program is to see how virtual reality can alter individuals thoughts and outlooks on the world. Don did not expand on this topic because the program is in trials and constantly changing and developing as the department

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discovers what works and what does not.

“The hope is to one day expand the program to non-students at some point,” Don said.

Currently, the VR lab is located on the second floor of the Communication building in a small room that has been redesigned to support the software and program.

Before moving to the current location, the lab was in an old storage closet. With the recent success of the VR lab, including a presentation and demonstration to university President Rita Cheng, the lab will likely be expanding to the open computer lab downstairs on the first floor of the Communication building.

“We are just waiting for the approval of funding before we can move forward,” Don said.

“Giovanni anticipates that if we get the funding the new lab will be complete before next semester.”

Castillo is passionate about the program and the virtual reality lab.

“It will take me a month or two to design the new lab the way I want it, but it’s going to look amazing,” Castillo said. “This time I don’t have to build it.”

There is currently a three-to-five-year plan to expand the lab and research what more can be done with the technology and medium.

Sophomore construction management major Coleman Lindsay has heard of the program through friends.

“The program sounds awesome. It would be cool one day if they worked with the [construction management] professors to develop a program for the [construction management] majors,” said Lindsay.

The VR lab includes many programs such as the Mayan simulation and the Star Wars interactive mode where you can help the Rebels with a secret mission against the Empire.

A look inside the virtual Mayan ruins in the School of Communication March 24. NAU’s virtual reality lab is currently utilized by multiple academic departments. Shannon Cowan | The Lumberjack

CULTUR E

Technology tracking mother nature MaryAnn Witt

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n the past year, NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems has begun work on a project to use drone technology to track small mammal and insect species through funding by a National Science Foundation award (number 1556417). The goal is to eventually construct an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, that will replace the current technology being used to track certain species.

UAV is a word that many may be unfamiliar with, but most are familiar with the same technology simply called “drones.” The use of drones has taken the technological world by storm because of the many purposes it can serve.

Wildlife ecologists have been using radio tracking devices to monitor the movement of small mammals, but this has been no easy task. The tags with tracking devices implanted in them that are being used are what is known as very high frequency transmitters. These small devices are radio systems that ring out a signal when a receiving antenna is near, but the power of the system is very low and hard to manage.

The process being used now to track these animals takes lots of time. After the animal has been tagged with a tracking device and is released back into the wild, scientists are required to take long antennas that act as a receiver for the signal in the device and walk around to find the animals. This strategy poses many obstacles due to the terrain of the land as well as the unpredictable nature of animals.

“We can’t pick up the signals from a satellite, it has to be humans going out walking with antennas and listening, getting close enough to find the animal,” said Carol Chambers, wildlife ecologist and professor in the School of Forestry.

Chambers has been involved with the UAV-tracking project from the time it was simply an idea Michael Shafer had. Schafer is the head of the project.

“He was a new professor a couple years ago, and he just contacted me wanting to talk,” Chambers said.

In that first conversation between a mechanical engineering professor and a wildlife ecologist, Shafer realized there was need for a shift in the technology used in Chamber’s line of work. From there came the idea of using drones.

The tracking and monitoring of small wildlife is very important in the current time. With many of today’s environmental issues like deforestation and climate change, understanding how animals such as bats, birds and small mammals survive in their habitats is becoming increasingly crucial.

“Bats, for example, are pollinators, and they produce guano, which humans use in many different things that boost economics,” Chambers said. “Bats also pollinate agave, which is used in the making of tequila. To protect these animals by learning about them is beneficial to people in all walks of life, whether they know it or not.”

Shafer and his team are innovating the way this is done.

“What we are trying to do is integrate this radio system onto a UAV to get the antenna and receiver system up off of the ground,” said Shafer. “This gets you away from ground clutter such as the trees and topography. Additionally, we are looking to

Drones, such as the Phantom drone located at the School of Communication, are used across departments at NAU for many types of field work. They are provided as a content-creation tool for students. Michael Patacsil | The Lumberjack

use the three-dimensional flight capacity of a UAV to do some interesting flight maneuvers which will combat known radio propagation issues.”

“If you are a bat, and I release you with a transmitter on, you might fly five or six miles away,” Chambers said. “I don’t know what direction you went, so I could go out and start driving around and try and listen for you, or better still is to go up to high points and try and hear a signal.”

Once the prototype of a UAV-capable antenna is completed, built and tested in Flagstaff, the blueprint will go online and become accessible to researchers all over the world. However, before this can happen, there are many people and types of work that will be involved.

“This project is highly interdisciplinary. We have radio systems being developed by electrical engineers and mechanical engineers working on the vehicle design and flight planning methods,” Shafer said. “We are also working with the biologists and ecologists that will use the system to make sure that it is useful for their work.”

On the engineering side, the team hopes their efforts will

make a difference.

“For us, it’s primarily developing the technology biologists and ecologists can use to further their data collection,” said Michael Finley, sophomore electrical engineering and mathematics double major, who is working on the radio software used for tracking.

“They use it to their best abilities to find out interesting things.

We just develop the software for them; that hopefully makes their job easier.”

Beyond the use of wildlife tracking, there has been talk of the technology being developed being put to use in other lines of work.

“There is the opportunity to use this technology for other purposes such as search and rescue,” Shafer said. “You could be looking for a cell phone signal to locate humans rather than a radio signal to locate small mammal. The technology behind it would be very similar.”

The repercussions that would come from the success of this project have the potential to innovate the way the world looks at technology in respect to nature.

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SPORT S

Fans prepare for the opening festivities of the Kansas City Royals and the Milwaukee Brewers spring training at Surprise Stadium March 25. Michael Patacsil | The Lumberjack

Major League Baseball and the dawn of the Statcast era PETER KERSTING

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old, calculated and precise, the numbers tell all. Efficiency is the bottom line, and governs decisions. It’s nothing personal.

It’s part of the business, and it has its place in the game.

But the players aren’t robots, and that’s a good thing, too.

Major League Baseball is a sport that continues to evolve as it expands. A unique aspect of that evolution has always been the analytical side of the game. Stats have played a major role in baseball from the beginning, but the more traditional stats like batting average, slugging percentages and Earned Run Average have been overshadowed by the emergence of advanced sabermetrics and Statcast.

Sabermetrics is a type of advanced stat system created specifically for baseball analysis and the measurement of in-game activity.

A state-of-the-art tracking technology, Statcast has found its way into all 30 Major League ballparks, and has been measuring nearly every aspect of players’ games since its debut in 2015.

Although its original debut may have seemed underwhelming, Statcast gained traction as a tool for broadcasters to illustrate elements of the game in a way never before possible. That aspect of the system viewers already know, but as Statcast continues to grow and compile player data, many teams are beginning to employ entire analytics departments to find new ways to exploit the advanced sabermetrics.

Art Stewart, senior adviser to Royals general manager Dayton Moore, knows all about metrics.

A legendary scout, Stewart has been been involved in professional baseball for 65 years and is responsible for the drafting of more than 70 Major League athletes, including Bo Jackson

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and Carlos Beltran. Stewart has been with the Kansas City Royals from the beginning in 1969.

“Every club has them,” said Stewart as he watched the players take batting practice on a side field at Surprise Stadium. “We have a large department that deals with the analytics and sabermetrics and everything. We place high value on it when we are talking trades and things like that. That input is part of the equation on whether you make the deal or not.”

“What’s happened in the last number of years with the high tech, so to speak, part of baseball that has come about, it’s become very important,” Stewart said. “And every club is into it [sabermetrics] and using it. Some go a little further than others. It’s an age that we are in now. We had the money-ball age, and now we are into the analytic and sabermetric, the hightech age. We’ve gotten a lot of good value out of the people we have, and we have some good people.”

Stewart, the longest-tenured associate in the Royals organization, became the 23rd member of the Royals Hall of Fame as well as the Professional Scouts Hall of Fame in 2008 in recognition of his contributions to the game.

Stewart understands the game at a fundamental level and offers a unique perspective of America’s pastime.

“I’ve been with the Royals since the beginning,” said Stewart. “We have things available; [with sabermetrics] it’s for the betterment of the game. We have information now that we never had before — so many things that have helped the game. It plays an important role in the game as we know it today ... In baseball they can tell you Joe DiMaggio holds the record for 56 games, Ted Williams is the last guy to hit .400, .406. Baseball is and always has been a game of statistics, going way back. It’s just to the point now that you gather so much continued on page 22

SPORT S continued from page 20 information.”

The overwhelming amount of new data that Stewart refers to is a goldmine for Major League front offices. It has been pointed to as an integral part of the development of championship caliber teams like the Red Sox and Cubs under Theo Epstein.

On top of the free-agency and scouting value Statcast and sabermetrics have provided, organizations are searching for new ways to use the data to enhance player development and injury prevention. But while the value of advanced metrics and Statcast date has become

“I could see how it would work if we were robots, but we’re not. Everybody is different. Everybody throws the ball different, different irks here and there.”

- Royals Starting Pitcher Jason Hammel undeniable to the business of baseball. The players don’t appear as thrilled.

The general consensus gathered in the Royals spring training clubhouse in Surprise, Ariz., was one of indifference to the stats phenomenon. Several players in the clubhouse declined to even comment on the subject.

“I don’t really know,” said Royals centerfielder Billy Burns. “I don’t really get all into it, but I guess it could be beneficial in certain areas. I just don’t know enough about it to comment.”

Those who had more to say expressed skepticism on the value it had for the players.

“I don’t pay any attention to them,” said Royals starting pitcher Jason Hammel. “I’m sure there is a math equation for everything, but math was one of my strong suits in school, and I don’t feel like it really parlays anything into throwing a baseball, or hitting one.”

Hammel, 34, signed a two-year contract worth a guaranteed $16 million with the Royals this offseason that included a mutual option for a third year. Hammel is coming off a 2016 World Series campaign with the Cubs where he pitched himself to a 3.83 ERA in the regular season.

Hammel wasn’t sold on the idea that Statcast could help with development or injury prevention.

“Everybody is different,” Hammel said. “...

I could see how it would work if we were robots,

but we’re not. Everybody is different. Everybody throws the ball different, different irks here and there. We’re not all the same thing doing it always in the same exact motion or frame or whatever you want to say it as. But I know that each guy has his goods and his bads in the way he throws a baseball or hits a baseball. So it’s tough. I don’t really pay too much attention.”

Hammel acknowledged the likelihood that sabermetrics may have had a role in his signing.

“I’m sure, yeah. All I know is what I bring to the table and what’s on paper and me as a guy,” Hammel said. “That’s basically how I sell myself. I’m not at home doing math problems to figure out how to get the next guy out. I am sure that something was done in the offseason to say, but the majority of it was ‘Was I healthy or not?’ That was kind of the biggest factor in how this offseason went for me.”

First baseman Eric Hosmer echoed Hammel’s sentiments on advanced metrics.

Hosmer is coming off a successful run in the World Baseball Classic (WBC) where he helped team USA win it all against team Puerto Rico.

He batted .375 with three doubles, one homer and five RBIs in seven WBC games and was featured by Statcast on MLB.com where they showcased his speed from first to home.

Hosmer is entering his free-agency year with the Royals but isn’t concerned with how stats may affect his value.

“I don’t really pay too much attention to that stuff,” said Hosmer. “As players, you just go out and focus on what you can control, and that’s how you prepare for a game and what type of effort you give out in every game. I think that’s something for a lot of people that do a lot of research in the game and work outside the game that focus on that a lot.”

There is a definite discrepancy in how the Royals players value statistics compared to their front office, but that’s normal. Sure it adds value to the game, but for the players the game is too fast to worry about metrics.

“That’s above my paygrade,” said Brandon Moss, Royals left fielder and first baseman.

Moss is an athlete caught in the middle of the sabermetrics dilemma. A player with amazing raw power coupled with a high strikeout rate, Moss is an all-or-nothing hitter who receives as much flack, or more, from a fan base when he enters a slump as he does fanfare when he’s mashing.

“I think sabermetrics — I played in Oakland for a while — so you learn a lot about that there because it’s used to make everyday decisions. So I think it definitely has a place,” Moss said. “You can use it to tell part of a story of a player. I think that there is information that can be used, but I also think that just like any

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new stat that comes along, ala WAR, people lean too heavily on stupid stats.”

Wins Above Replacement is a sabermetric stat.

“I think if you want to get a general idea of a player, take his tendencies like you would get from sabermetrics. Take what you see on an everyday basis, and put them together, and you’ll get an idea of the player,” Moss said. “But baseball is a game where you can go to a fourgame series and watch Miguel Cabrera play against, even myself, and you can comaway thinking that I am a way better player than Miguel Cabrera, which is just simply not true.

But in four games anything can happen in baseball.”

The value of Statcast is documented and real. Major league front offices and fan bases have embraced the new era, and for good reason. It plays a major role in the game. But it is imperfect and it is cold, calculated and cruel.

Players aren’t robots, and they shouldn’t have to be. Baseball is frustrating enough as it is — a game filled with failure, adjustments and counter-adjustments. Athletes at the highest level don’t have time for math.

For the full photo gallery, visit jackcentral.org.

Top: Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer steps to the plate during a spring training game against the Brewers at Surprise Stadium March 25. Bottom: Second baseman Whit Merrifield signs autographs before the game in Surprise, Ariz. Michael Patacsil | The Lumberjack

SPORT S

Football is in the air KADE GILLIS

S

pring football has begun, and NAU is looking to get a team with new faces acclimated and ready for the 2017-2018 season just around the corner.

The NAU football team straps up for another round of spring practice after finishing 5-6 in the 2016 season and missing out on playoff contention. A team with expectations exceeding the 7,000-foot elevation they play on was thwarted after star sophomore quarterback Case Cookus went down with a shoulder injury in an offensive shootout against Eastern Washington Sept.

24 just four weeks into the 2016-2017 season.

Many questioned the timeline of recovery and worried about long-term implications for Lumberjack football. Cookus shut down any worry for anxiety after the team’s first practice March 24.

Preparing for one-on-one drills might as well have been warmups for the former Jerry Rice award winner. Cookus wasn’t just throwing the ball, he was gunning it to his receivers.

With every quick route came a quicker pass. A snap at the end of every release that left a sound only obtainable by highvelocity spirals.

Five-yard out. Fwhip.

Ten-yard in route. Fwhip.

Twelve-yard comeback route while rolling out, throwing off his right foot and finding an opening on the sideline. Fwhip.

Just a little tease for the main event, back-to-back 1,000-yard receiver senior Emmanuel Butler trots over to wide left and sinks his front foot to the ground. A simultaneous stare down between Cookus and his favorite target occurs with nothing but a nod in agreement of what the play was and the result.

Manned up with a single defender playing slightly inside with courage to make up for the drastic height disadvantage, Butler stepped for outside leverage upon the snap of the ball, making his move. Not a hesitation, not a cut, no deception, he just went. The field general took a slight step back, jumped forward and heaved the ball 40 yards down the field. The snap heard on every throw was diluted to a faint snip as it battled against the windy elements.

With Butler being tracked down with a hand on his hip, it would take a miraculous grab to fight against the solid coverage.

Something fans of NAU have grown accustomed to with the 6-foot 4-inch, 220-pound machine.

With just a slight bend of the knees, Butler pounced over the defender like a highlight poster, coming down with the ball.

Fellow defenders were left shaking their heads, not so much in disbelief but rather annoyance.

“Everything’s feeling good,” said Cookus on his recovery.

“It’s all back to normal.”

Normal as in throwing darts from any distance with consistent precision, then, yeah, normal.

As far as the passing game is concerned, it’s safe to say that should be the least of the Jacks’ worries.

Gaining weight during the offseason is still a top priority for Cookus after recovering from two surgeries, including getting his

tonsils removed during Christmas break that put him “behind the eight-ball in a lot of ways,” said head coach Jerome Souers.

The offense also looks to pick up a new playbook that is orchestrated by new offensive coordinator Brian Sheppard after coach Tim Plough’s return to UC Davis. After successfully holding one of the top offenses in the Big Sky Conference over the past two seasons, it’s safe to say nothing drastic will come out of the play calling with the exception of some variation to their approach.

“I’m trying to empower our guys by giving them an offense that’s very player friendly,” said Sheppard. “We’re going to be able to move incredibly efficient, and [we’re] going to move at the pace that we want to move.”

Sheppard hopes to create a diverse offense that forces opponents to utilize all dimensions of the field by creating touches for the talented backfield and opening up downfield with Butler on the outside.

Defensive coordinators will have their hands full with this nightmarish lineup, and Butler is fully aware.

“I honestly don’t know what their [defense is] going to do to stop this offense,” said Butler with a slight grin. “If they try to stop the run, then our receivers are going to go crazy. If they try to stop the pass, then our run game is going to be vicious. Honestly there’s really no answer.”

Controlling clock would certainly be a change for the offense that was mobilized with a high-powered, fast attack in past seasons. This could potentially open doors to an improved and rested defense that has occupied games for long periods of time in the thin-air environment of Flagstaff, something that new recruits will have to get used to in the harsh domains of Northern Arizona.

Most recruits won’t be able to adapt until the upcoming fall when they arrive. Few recruits were present in the first week of practice with most nursing injuries or still in school, Souers said.

Included in the addition of innovative faces is new defensive secondary’s coach Vernon Smith Jr. who looks to bring a blueprint of success to the team’s defensive backfield.

Prior to NAU, Smith coached for fellow conference competitor Portland State as the cornerback coach, contributing All-Big Sky honors to his two starting cornerbacks, including Associated Press All-American Xavier Coleman in 2016.

“I try to instill and create a very competitive environment,” said Smith. “Trying to promote that killer-instinct in them and they are a very competitive group. They are hungry, and after the [first] practice, there are some things we have to work on. But it seems like the players are up for it, and I’m certainly up for it.”

Smith will be reuniting with former college teammate Andy Thompson who holds the reigns as defensive coordinator for the Lumberjacks. The two played together at University of Montana and led their team to a championship title in 2001. Smith is excited to be back with the former Grizzly.

“I’m at a loss for words,” Smith said. “I always thought that it would be a special thing to work with someone that you played with, and it’s nothing like I’ve ever had [before]. I don’t look at

NAU sophomore quarterback Case Cookus takes aim during passing drills at practice March 21.

Victoria Kaschl | The Lumberjack

him as my boss, I still look at him as Andy.”

The reunited duo leading the attack on defense seems to have already made an impact on the team, including the secondary.

In the first day of practice, junior safety Wes Sutton forced two takeaways, including one against Cookus on the opening drive that would set the tone defensively for the rest of the night. The offense struggled all afternoon to put together a drive on an unwavering defensive stand.

With every white jersey scratching their heads was a blue jersey bouncing on the sideline. Thanks to the Jacks’ explosive offense, it’s easy to forget about the other side of the ball, but they definitely plan to change that narrative if the first practice has any say about it.

“We got a new coach that’s been talking intensity and attention to details,” said Sutton. “Once [defense] puts everything together, we’ll be special — very special.”

NAU will continue to build on early into camp and recuperate after missing Thursday’s practice Mar. 23 thanks to Mother Nature’s lack of acknowledgement to the spring season and common decency.

With the return of star players and solid contributions to coaching staff, a recipe for success looks to be in the works for the Lumberjacks going forward.

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