Prejudice in Binghamton
Spring 2013 a capella schedule Love a capella except for Koinonia? Release has a schedule of every show this semester. Except for Koinonia.
Binghamton University professors measure prejudice against same-sex parents.
PIPE DREAM Friday, April 12, 2013 | Binghamton University | www.bupipedream.com | Vol. LXXXIII, Issue 19
Hazing charges hit Delta Chi frat
Delta Chi had its charter suspended this week, renewing the talks of hazing that had nearly slipped to the back burner during a relatively controversy-free spring semester. Earlier this week, the Binghamton University chapter of Delta Chi was suspended indefinitely by the fraternity’s national organization after parents reported that the chapter was hazing its new members. L.C. Coghill, the director of Greek Life at Binghamton University, said the parent of an new member called to alert the school of possible hazing, spurring further inquiry into the chapter’s pledging process. “The Office of Student Conduct investigated the allegations and found them to be accurate,” he said. “While in the middle of our conduct process, we received a second report from a parent
After two failed attempts and thousands of dollars, Off Campus College Transport is taking another stab at implementing ID scanners on its blue buses. The OCCT’s third generation of ID scanners use radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, allowing students to tap their ID cards rather than swipe them, as the secondgeneration scanners required. Using scanners allows the Student Association to collect data such as the number of passengers and their status as either an undergraduate or graduate student, which Mark Soriano, the CEO of OCCT and SA president, said helps improve bus efficiency. “The scanners provide data that can make the scheduled bus routes better represent commuting patterns, and will make the entire system more efficient for students and riders,” said Soriano, a senior majoring in history. But the scanners are currently offline because of complications with the transition, according to Jesse Vogl, interim director of OCCT. Vogl said OCCT plan to finish with transition by the fall 2013 semester. OCCT purchased 13 new RFID scanners, one for each bus, as well as one spare. Each RFID scanner cost about $300, totaling $3,900. The iPods used to collect ridership information are the same ones used by the secondgeneration swipe card readers, which
File Photo
Students wait to board a bus outside of the Old University Union. OCCT recently installed a new set of ID scanners, ones that use RFID technology, its third attempt in three years.
cost about $1,600 total. According to Eric Larson, CFO of OCCT and SA vice president for finance, the University paid for the original scanners, which cost $1,500 each, but the Student Association purchased the iPods, card readers and the new RFID scanners.
The first-generation scanners also used RFID technology, but Larson said technical issues forced OCCT to make the upgrade. “The way the original RFID worked, it would read students’ cards and then the scanner’s software would dump the information into the central database,”
Larson said. “But the scanners had issues where they would fail to dump the information.” Henry Shapiro, a blue bus driver and senior majoring in economics, said that the second-generation
Lights, camera, pizza: Vaughan joins BTV-6
Attention all computer coders: Binghamton professor Scott Craver challenges you to do your worst. After a five-year hiatus, Craver, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is restoring the Underhanded C contest. The goal of the contest is to write code that is readable, clear and innocent on the surface, but deeper down, the program is secretly malicious. Past years had students write programs to miscount votes, shave money from financial transactions and leak information. This year, Craver challenged contestants to subvert a Facebook-like social network by gaining access to every user’s profile. But there’s a catch: the
program must appear as though it only determines how much access one user has to another user’s profile. Submissions are written in C, one of the most widely used programming languages in existence. “The C function figures out how far apart two people are,” he said. “It must misbehave in a way such that the programmer is always right next to everyone, essentially giving the programmer full control over the network.” However, Craver added that your program must do more than gain access; it must be sneaky, too. “There are two goals to meet in order to win this contest,” he said. “The first is to hide the bug so well that people don’t notice it’s there. The second is if someone finally realizes there is a bug, and they spend a lot of
Tyler Constance/Staff Photographer
Scott Craver, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, recently reintroduced the “Underhanded C” contest, a hacking contest last held in 2008. Craver started Underhanded C to challenge coders at around the world after he himself participated in Stanford’s iteration.
— Scott Craver BU Professor
time tracking down exactly what Craver started the the problem is and finally find it, Underhanded C Contest after it should look like an innocent mistake.”
Although TheNewBTV’s first bigname star may not be real famous, he certainly meets the definition Binghamton famous. Ryan Vaughan, the popular English professor, is hosting a new talk show on the student-run television channel that will feature guests, monologues, sketches and a pizza theme. “You’ll be able to tell how interesting the guest is by how much pizza I eat,” he insisted. He hopes to make his show stand out from others by inviting guests that may not come directly to mind, giving preference to students rather than administrators. “I would love to interview some engineering student on something crazy,” Vaughan said. “There are so
many people here in the sciences doing insane dissertations. I would love to talk to them, mostly to highlight how primitive and stupid I am.” Michael Zagreda, a producer for the show, hopes to structure