Basketball opener
Miss Asia 2012
The Bearcats fall short in home kickoff versus Brown University
The Vietnamese Student Association throws its first annual Asian beauty pageant.
PIPE DREAM Tuesday, November 13, 2012 | Binghamton University | www.bupipedream.com | Vol. LXXXII, Issue 18
A weekend of tribute ends with final honor
Five uniformed members of Binghamton University’s ROTC lowered the American flag outside the Couper Administration Building on Monday in the symbolic close to a weekend of Veterans Day tributes held by the University. At an open discussion held two hours earlier in the Mandela Room, however, veterans from the Greater Binghamton Area — representing conflicts spanning from World War II to Iraq — passionately told the office of Veterans Services that the veterans must be recognized on campus more than once per year. “It’d be nice to have events on campus more than just one weekend,” said George Catalano, a former combat
As part of Binghamton University’s Veterans Day celebration, students made “Hero Packs” with dolls, journals and personal letters to give to the children of service members on active duty. Victor Yang, veterans project liaison for AmeriCorps VISTA, worked with BU’s Veterans Services Office to
engineer and BU professor of bioengineering. “Maybe monthly, maybe.” Catalano was one of several staff and faculty member veterans who attended the discussion, which was led by Victor Yang, a veterans project liaison for AmeriCorps VISTA who works in the Veterans Services Office. Five wheelchaired veterans from Willow Point Nursing Home in Vestal and graduate student John Burchill also participated. The meeting touched on the positive aspects that veterans bring to a college campus and several attendees suggested veterans ought to receive class credit for the skills they learned in the service. “There’s no reason a medic trained for combat should come to school and have to take
plan the event. According to Yang, AmeriCorps VISTA brought this event to campus to provide students with the opportunity to put together specifically designed backpacks with support material for the children of deployed servicemen and women. Yang said this was a way to get students more involved in the community and make a difference in the lives of children throughout the state. “Remembering and
Jonathan Heisler/Photo Editor
Members of Binghamton University’s ROTC lower and then fold the American flag in honor of Veterans Day as veterans, students and BU President Harvey Stenger watch.
honoring veterans is important, and having students get engaged and working with local communities is a big part of being a conscious citizen,” Yang said. “This was a great and easy opportunity to get student volunteers to make a real difference in the local community.” Kitty White, New York state director of Operation Military Kids, said the Hero Packs include items to help comfort the children and give them
communication tools. “The backpacks are filled with a variety of things, a letter to child from a community member, a kit where kids make dolls that they can tell their worries too, a picture frame, a letter writing kit, a pen, a journal, and resources for parents to use, etc.,” White wrote in an email. “It goes to kids who do not live on installations and army bases, and so are able to get more comfort out of them.”
Students wrote letters to include in the backpacks, thanking the children for their bravery, sacrifice and commitment while their parents served overseas. Chris Li, a sophomore majoring in sociology, said he hoped the Hero Packs raised the morale of the children and helped offer them a support system. “I understand how it feels
At the end of a lecture by an “ex-gay” couple about the irreconcilability of God and gays, the executive board of SHADES walked out frustrated, offended and wondering: why were we invited? The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship sent an email to SHADES, a student group that caters to people of color in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) community, last week inviting them to a discussion to “engage and explore different perspectives and questions” about what Christianity says about sexuality, “specifically homosexuality.” The discussion, however, exclusively featured Melissa and Gary Ingraham, a married couple that said they both used to be homosexual after suffering from sexual abuse, but suppressed their homosexual desires. The members of the SHADES executive board said that the meeting was one-sided and that they did not get a chance to contribute to the conversation. “It wasn’t even a discussion, it was just a lecture with a onesided perspective,” said the vice president of SHADES, who requested that his name be left out of print to protect his privacy. “Then the ‘discussion part’ was just a Q and A where they gave out pieces of paper, everyone wrote down their questions, and then they passed it to the speakers.” SHADES Treasurer Anthony Parris said the members of the group expected multiple perspectives about Christianity and homosexuality to be discussed at the meeting. “They said two people [were speaking], so we assumed that it was going to be two people with opposing views on the topic, but no — it was a complete lecture,” Parris said. “They didn’t give the audience any room to talk at all.” Members of the SHADES executive board said they felt misinformed about how the meeting would be run. “To be invited under these kind of false pretenses, thinking that this was going to be a safe environment for LGBT issues, was what really upset us and really hurt us,” the vice president of