Monday, May 8, 2017
Volume LX, Issue 28
sbstatesman.com
Incoming USG President Ayyan Zubair sets sights high
By Joseph Konig Staff Writer
LUIS RUIZ DOMINGUEZ / THE STATESMAN
Students gather during Campus Life Time on May 3 in protest of recently-proposed theatre arts and humanities cuts. The unfinalized cuts are sparking outrage across campus.
In November, 52.5 percent of Suffolk County voters went to the polls and pulled the lever next to Donald J. Trump’s name in the U.S. presidential election, according to Politico. In March, 53 percent of Stony Brook students logged onto SOLAR and clicked the option next to Ayyan Zubair’s name for the Undergraduate Student Government presidential election. The two share one other notable trait — neither of them drink or smoke — but after that, the similarities end and the differences begin. Zubair is the son of Pakistani im-
migrants who raised three sons in East Meadow – a Nassau County hamlet within 15 miles of the Queens border. “My parents are doctors and they came to America. The whole dollar and a dream kind of thing, right?” Zubair said. “They worked their butts off – Burger King, cleaning toilets, passing their exams and now they’re doctors…But yet there’s still this air of suspicion around them or around Muslims in general.” The incoming USG president views himself as one of many who can help change the American perception of Muslims. While his faith is important to him – “I don’t hide the fact that I’m Muslim. I’m proud to be Muslim,” he Continued on page 3
University cuts Adapted Aquatics program
By Rebecca Liebson Assistant News Editor
For 19-year-old swim instructor Bridget Kennedy, learning that one of her students, a 15-yearold boy with cerebral palsy, had walked for the first time helped to reaffirm that she had chosen the right career path. Kennedy, a health science major and prospective adapted aquatics minor, who hopes to become an aquatic therapist one day, described her experience working with disabled kids as, “the most rewarding thing” she has ever done. That is why she was so upset by Stony Brook’s recent decision to cut the adapted aquatics minor, which helps provide local disabled people with free swimming lessons. As the school prepares to reopen the pool after five years, the program, which had been put on hold during that time, will not resume despite former promises from the university. The announcement has come as a shock to students and community members who believe in the rehabilitative powers of aquatic exercise. For the nearly one in five Americans living with disabilities, getting the proper amount of exercise may prove a great challenge. For these people, “water is a game changer,” Andrea Salzman, founder of the Aquatic Resources Network, an organization that seeks to inform clinicians about aquatic therapy, said. “When you take away the water, you take away the capacity for people to experience freedom.”
A study published in the Disability and Health Journal in 2010 examined the benefits of aquatic therapy in disabled children ages from the ages six to 12. Out of the 16 children — whose wide range of disabilities included autism spectrum disorder, severe spinal injuries, down syndrome and cerebral palsy — 81.3 percent reported an increase in strength and endurance and 87.5 percent reported an increase in self-confidence. Stephanie Volpe, a Holbrook, New York resident and mother of two, saw firsthand the impact aquatic exercise can have after she enrolled her then nine-year-old son Christopher in Stony Brook’s adapted aquatics class back in 2009. “It definitely helped him with pool safety,” said Volpe, something she never thought would be possible for her son, who has au-
tism and muscle weakness due to complications during pregnancy. Since the program was put on hold, Volpe said the progress her son made has diminished to the point where she no longer feels comfortable letting him go in water over his head. “When you take away skilled handlers… then you make it impossible [for disabled people] to be in the water because their family doesn’t know how to be safe oftentimes,” Salzman said. “Now you’ve removed one of the things that potentially affects quality of life.” In the eyes of Stony Brook graduate Chris Lu, who took the last section of the adaptive aquatics class back in 2012, the program epitomized the university’s mission in that it went “Far Beyond.” Continued on page 3
COURTESY OF STONY BROOK ATHLETICS
The renovated Stony Brook University Pool is set to open May 8. Renovations started in January 2015.
COURTESY OF AYYAN ZUBAIR
Zubair, above, is the incoming USG president. He plans to push for free feminine hygiene products on campus.
Medical school Vice Dean appointed to the National Board of Medical Examiners By Michaela Kilgallen News Editor
The National Board of Medical Examiners has chosen Stony Brook Medicine’s Vice Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs Latha Chandran, Ph.D., to serve on the organization’s executive board. “There are only 12 people on the board, so that came as a total surprise for me when I got a call from the new CEO and President to serve on the board,” Chandran said. The National Board of Medical Examiners, or NBME, creates and administers the four rounds of testing medical students must complete to become physicians. Chandran’s four-year appointment to the NBME’s highest board comes after 15 years of volunteer
work for the organization. With NBME, she worked on the Standard Setting Panel and the Item Writing Panel, which creates the questions used on exams. She later joined the Finance and Audit Committee. “Dr. Chandran brings a breadth and depth of skills and experiences to the Executive Board as a national leader in medical education,” Dr. Lewis R. First, a member of the NBME Nominating Committee, said. “Her work as vice dean for Undergraduate Education at Stony Brook, her national leadership roles she has had in pediatric faculty development, combined with 15 years of service on multiple test and administrative committees at the National Board of Medical Examiners will Continued on page 3