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OLD GOLD&BLACK Sports | B1
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VOL. 95, NO. 13
Y P U C C
Ethics of onenight stands? Life | B5
U N I V E R S I T Y
T H U R S D AY, N O V E M B E R 1 7 , 2 0 1 1
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“Covers the campus like the magnolias”
DEBATE
University holds bipartisan panel on protests
By Yasmin Bendaas | Staff writer Beginning Sept 17, 2011 in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, the Occupy Wall Street movement is now global, taking place in over 1,600 locations worldwide. College Democrats at the university, recognizing t h e
importance of the issue, decided to create a space for open discussion and questioning about the Wall Street movement. “We wanted to raise awareness of what Occupy Wall Street is and reach out to other organizations on the political spectrum to help raise this awareness,” College Democrat Executive Board member Gerard Neely, said. The student group collaborated with the political science department, the Roosevelt Institute and College Republicans to put on the event. Although the Occupy Wall Street Movement has been a particularly heated issue at times,
See Quad, Page A6
See Ethics, Page A6
New quad construction to begin
Photo courtesy of Office of the President
The new quad is part of the Master Plan, published in June 2009, which outlines future additions to the university.
By Liz Stalfort | Staff writer
said. “What we would like to do is have that ready for occupancy by the fall of 2013.” The Reynolda Campus Master Plan, published in June 2009, describes how the new quad will make use of the “untapped potential” of Lot Q. The plan would maintain the existing parking through a proposed initiative involving the construction of underground lots. According to the Master Plan, the goals of the new quad are twofold: to “simplify pedestrian access” and “strengthen community between Polo Hall and Wait Chapel.” The new quad will also be bordered by new academic buildings and a campus recreation center. While additions like the new academic buildings and rec-
Graphic by Meenu Krishnan/Old Gold & Black
The State of the University Address given by President Nathan O. Hatch Nov. 7 has sparked questions about the details of building a new quad on campus. Hatch said that a new residence hall may be under construction as soon as 2012. This building, to be located in the vicinity of Polo Residence Hall, could be the impetus for the formation of a third quad on campus to the north of Wait Chapel. “We are in the planning stages for at least one residence hall, optimally two residence halls, on North Campus, which will be roughly between lot Q and Polo Road,” Hof Milam, the university’s Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration,
Conference focuses on bioethics of research This summer, the incoming freshman class was assigned several articles to read on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. On Nov. 10-11, the Wake Forest University Center for Bioethics, Health and Society hosted a two-day conference to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the James H. Jones book Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. The conference brought together speakers and participants from many different universities, including UNC-Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins and Duke, all of whom shared different information and perspectives. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, initiated in 1932, was a project sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service that conducted an experiment on 600 black males affected with syphilis in its late stages. Promising to treat them for “bad blood,” in reality, the Public Health Service had no intention of curing the men. Rather, they were interested in distinguishing between the differing effects of syphilis on black and white men. Therefore, they were waiting for syphilis to take the men’s lives in order to collect data from the autopsies. The subjects, however, believed they were receiving free medical care and were not given information regarding the magnitude of their disease. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved in the experiment said, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.” The university conference encouraged students to consider the relationship because researchers and their study participants or “subjects.” Furthermore, thinking about the significance of race, ethnicity and socio-economic status in the relationships between the researchers and the subjects was a major point. The conference highlighted how those factors affect the treatment of those subjects. Lastly, the asssignment was meant to make students think about the institutional review board and their role in promoting ethical science that can still produce meaningful results. The first session was titled: The Legacy of Tuskegee, and it summed
See Debate, Page A6
By David Inczauskis | Staff writer
oldgoldandblack.com
Video game keeps older adults on their feet
Collaborative efforts examine role of exercise in cognitive function By Kasha Patel | Contritubing writer
Mom was wrong. Video games won’t rot your brain. Well, at least not this one created at the university. A large collaborative effort from departments on the Reynolda and Bowman Gray campuses have created an interesting research project in which elderly research participants play a video game every day for 30 minutes. Members of the health and exercise science department, led by faculty members Anthony Marsh and
Jack Rejeski, are testing a specially designed video game called Brain Boot Camp with the help of senior citizens at the Homestead Hills Retirement Community to observe a correlation between physical exercise and cognitive processes. “As we age, our senses deteriorate, our muscle strength deteriorates, and we know cognitive function deteriorates,” said Marsh, who is also collaborating with psychology professors Dale Dagenbach and Janine Jennings. “So these normal tasks we take for granted can be more challenging and require more focus and concentration in older adult populations.” Brain Boot Camp, co-developed by Marsh, Rejeski, Dagenbach, Jennings and Paul Pauca, associate
professor of computer science, is intended to challenge physical function and thought processing through the various tasks in the game. “We think that [the loss in] physical function as we age [is not] necessarily a functional thing or can’t be just improved through weight lifting but there’s also kind of a cognitive component,” Julie Sorensen, a health and exercise science doctoral student who is working on the Brain Boot Camp project for her thesis, said. Senior citizens at Homestead Hills Retirement Community in Winston-Salem voluntarily participate in the study for six weeks. The group consists of both males and females, with the oldest participant
See Brain, Page A3
Photo courtesy of Sam Fiala and Kasha Patel
Homestead Hills resident Ralph Jordan gets active doing “Brain Boot Camp” while HES graduate student Julie Sorenson looks on.