ALL THAT JAZZ Bearcats clinch three seed into America East Tournament see page 10
Wondering who’s been playing that beautiful saxophone music in Dickinson on the weekends? Release talks to the Sax Man, see page 5
LUCKY NUMBER THREE
PIPE DREAM Friday, November 7, 2014 | Binghamton University | www.bupipedream.com | Vol. LXXXVI, Issue 17
Midterms draw hundreds to polls NYS funds Campus sees highest turnout for non-presidential race in a decade Emilie Leroy
Governor's Race:
Pipe Dream News For months, community organizers campaigned on campus, not for students to vote for any candidate in particular, but for students to vote for any candidate at all. And on election day, hundreds of students turned out to vote in the University Union. From 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., staff members of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and volunteers from the area signed in over 330 students to vote on Tuesday for statewide and local candidates. According to Nicholas Doran, the Vote Everywhere ambassador for the CCE and a sophomore majoring in economics, only 148 students voted in the last midterm elections in 2010, but the CCE aimed to have between 300 and 500 students vote this year. Typically, students do not vote in high numbers during midterm elections, said Jessica Arends, the faculty engagement associate for the CCE. To get students interested in the election, members of the CCE handed out flyers around campus and posted on Twitter and Facebook encouraging students to vote. They also held voter information sessions and a campus-wide voter registration drive in October. “Non-presidential years are very tricky,” Arends said. “There’s not as much excitement or interest but we’ve done a lot of social media and a lot of preparation to get students in the door.” She explained that on election day,
State-wide
53%
$600K in changes planned for 2016
40%
Cuomo (D)
Zachary Wingate Contributing Writer
Astorino (R)
Binghamton University isn’t the only thing getting revamped in the Binghamton area. One area that is near and dear to students’ hearts is set for a makeover. The city of Binghamton was awarded $480,000 on Oct. 27 to renovate State Street. The funds were made available by the Federal Highway Administration as a part of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $70 million initiative to support projects across New York state. The State Street project was selected by the State Department of Transportation based on public benefit, community support and improvements to promote walking and biking, according to a press release from the governor. The renovation of State Street will include new street paving and striping, bike lanes, pedestrian crossings and landscaping. Totaling to roughly $600,000 altogether, the additional $120,000 will be provided by local funds. State Street was chosen because of its location at the heart of Downtown
Broome County
49%
42%
Cuomo (D)
Astorino (R)
State Senator's Race: 52nd District
Broome County
36%
39% Libous (R) Starzak (D) 60%
State St. upgrades
57% Emma Siegel/Design Manager and Neil Seejoor/Contributing Photographer
See VOTE Page 4
Renata Ontman, a freshman majoring in biochemistry, votes in the Old Union Hall. From 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., staff members of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and volunteers from the area signed in over 330 students to vote on Tuesday for state-wide and local candidates.
Lawyer recalls post 9/11 work William Groner discusses dust litigation settlement Gabriella Weick
Awareness goes viral
Prof. highlights power of social media Michelle Kraidman
Contributing Writer
Contributing Writer
The crowd hushed to a silence as iconic images flashed across the screen — photos and videos of the World Trade Center towers falling on Sept. 11, 2001, dust engulfing the streets of New York City and tearful New Yorkers standing in a city covered in ash. On Thursday evening, William Groner spoke to attendees in the Casadesus Recital Hall and presented “Ground Zero Dust: Its mysterious medical consequences and the resulting epic first-responders litigation,” a talk discussing his involvement in the compensation of those who fell ill
See 9/11 Page 2
Klara Rusinko/Contributing Photographer
William Groner, a BU alumnus and managing partner Worby Groner Edelman, LLP, speaks about compensation for 9/11 first-responders in Casadesus Recital Hall on Thursday evening. Groner’s law firm represented the nearly 10,000 victims injured by working in airborne dust particles after 9/11.
BU engineers plan Formula Hybrid car Michelle DiGiacomo and team design racecar from scratch Chloe Rehfield Staff Writer
Michelle DiGiacomo developed a passion for auto racing, specifically autocross, as soon as she got her driver’s license. Since then, she has been racing regularly as part of the Sports Car Club of America. Flipping through a stack of drawings of circuits and motors scribbled with numbers of voltage and currency, she stood in front of a room of 10 engineers to discuss this week’s
goal for their project: improving the design for a hybrid car they plan to build completely from scratch. DiGiacomo, a senior majoring in management, transferred to Binghamton University after obtaining an associate degree at SUNY Broome. She started the Formula Hybrid project at BU through the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), an organization that hosts automotive competitions in colleges worldwide. Formula Hybrid focuses on skill and sustainability rather than just
speed. The main event is autocross, a timed competition in which drivers race against the clock as they race through a course full of tight turns and orange cones. It is also the only branch of SAE that uses a hybrid car. The team’s goal is to make it around the course in the least amount of time possible, constantly trying to beat their previous times. “There are a lot of things left up to you to design,” DiGiacomo said. “Do we
See CAR Page 2
See STATE Page 4
From the Ice Bucket Challenge to mass protests in the Middle East, people around the world have used online social media to popularize their own projects and campaigns. Binghamton University organizers are encouraging students to take advantage of the technology too. The Hillel-Jewish Student Union held the interactive workshop, #Activism, on Wednesday in the Old University Union. The goal of the event was to teach students how to use social media effectively in promoting businesses and raising awareness about world issues. Associate professor Ali Yayla, a professor in the School of Management, presented different ways to make a message go viral. He highlighted strategies for using social media, as well as specific websites and apps that could further a campaign. He said websites like WordPress, which provides a template to create a user’s own website, and MailChimp, which sends out newsletters to a large group of people and then helps the creator analyze how the newsletter was received, could make larger projects more feasible. “Creating the email and checking the email links, that’s almost impossible for one person to do,” Yayla said. “It pays off.” He also stressed the necessity of having a community or a network to help messages spread across the Internet. “Even if you have a very good
message, if you have a very small network of people … it’s gonna take a while for it to go viral,” Yayla said. Scott Wisotsky, a senior majoring in political science, said social media helped expand his app, Campus Pursuit, which gives students clues to find hidden prizes around campus. He explained that students would tweet pictures of themselves with their winnings, which promoted the businesses that those prizes came from. He said that he and his partner used it for practical purposes as well. “We get to see glitches that people are having because they’re posting them on social media and we’re able to address these glitches in a more timely
See MEDIA Page 2
Michael Sugarman/Contributing Photographer
Ali Yayla, an associate professor in the School of Management, presents on the dynamics of viral marketing at #Activism on Wednesday.