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Serving the Rutgers community since 1869. Independent since 1980.
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—NEW BRUNSWICK
THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2016
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Athletic Department hosts town hall event for Rutgers community BRIAN FONSECA SPORTS EDITOR
A new drug entering clinical trials may be able to treat malaria by forcing the parasite to absorb excessive water, causing it to blow apart. GRAPHIC BY RAMYA CHITIBOMMA / STAFF DESIGNER
School develops new malaria treatment drug NICK HUBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A new malaria drug created at Rutgers will soon undergo clinical trials for the chance to one day be used in treating the disease in poverty stricken areas of the world. The drug candidate will be tested on humans, according to FDA normal procedures. The drug is currently a candidate and is qualified to be tested on humans where it will be tested for safety, said Spencer Knapp, a professor in the Department of
Chemistry and Chemical Biology, who helped prepare the drug. “Every drug in the U.S. goes through a procedure to check for safety, efficacy and side reactions,” Knapp said. Roughly 3.2 billion people throughout the world live in areas where they can be infected with malaria, according to the World Health Organization. Over the last 15 years, there were 37 percent fewer cases, and 60 percent fewer of infected patients died from the illness. SEE DRUG ON PAGE 4
Rutgers Athletic Director Patrick Hobbs and head football coach Chris Ash have been asked hard-hitting questions since the day they were chosen to succeed Julie Hermann and Kyle Flood as Rutgers’ athletic director and head football coach. But for the first time, they were questioned directly by those filling the seats at High Point Solution Stadium on Busch campus on Saturdays in the fall. Rutgers Athletics hosted a town hall meeting between Hobbs, Ash and the student body
at the Student Activities Center on the College Avenue campus on Wednesday. The town hall addressed multiple concerns among the student body, ranging from keeping top New Jersey recruits at home to what uniforms the Scarlet Knights will don on Saturdays. The questions were answered with enthusiasm as both men urged the student body to become more involved with the University’s athletic programs. “What I know (the students in the room) are going to bring, along with your fellow students, is an incredible student experience at the game. That’s what
Head football coach Chris Ash, left, and Athletic Director Pat Hobbs spoke to the University community on Wednesday night as part of a town hall. MICHELLE KLEJMONT / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
SEE COMMUNITY ON PAGE 4
Student begins bi-weekly snack delivery program
Underwater basket weaving class newly offered to school
FRANCESCA PETRUCCI CONTRIBUTING WRITER
SAMANTHA KARAS CORRESPONDENT
Weaving a basket may seem like a straightforward task, but doing so while scuba diving underwater is another story. Underwater basket making is a non-credit course under the Department of Recreation Services offered by Student Affairs at Rutgers, said scuba coordinator Debby Miller. Participants have the opportunity to get in the water and practice their basket making skills. “In order to make baskets, the reeds and the basket weaving materials have to be wet,” Miller said. “And so we figured what better way to do that, rather than sitting on a pool deck or on a lawn with a bucket of water at your feet. It gives people a chance to share a fun activity with their friends, to get into the water and work on their coordination and their creativity, give them a fun break from studying and an opportunity to try something new, she said.
we’re missing,” Hobbs said in his opening statement. “We need that to come back because whether it’s in football and you’re the 12th man, or in basketball where you’re the sixth man, you’re an incredibly important part of our success.” The event began with Rutgers University Student Assembly President Matt Panconi introducing the men. Panconi, a Rutgers Business School senior, was followed by Hobbs and Ash leading both sides of the room into an “R-U” chant. Following the chant, Hobbs addressed the crowd with his ambitions for the program. Hobbs said the errors that tarnished the Rutgers name in the national eye are a thing of the past, and from this point on, attending the University will be a source of pride for its students rather than one of embarrassment. “All the negative stories that were out there, you go home and someone says, ‘Hey, don’t you go to Rutgers University? … aren’t you embarrassed,’” Hobbs said. “We’re going to eliminate all that. You’re going to go home and you’re going to say, ‘that was incredible, I
Underwater basket weaving was offered more than a decade ago but was not widely taken. It is being offered again this semester as a non-credited course. FACEBOOK The class had initially been offered about 12 years ago, she said, but it took a break before University officials began plans last fall to offer the class this spring. More than 60 people have participated throughout the semester so far. Micah Lebowitz, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, said he learned about the class through his friend and was determined to get involved from the get-go. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I could not pass up,” Lebowitz said, “I loved the class — it was the perfect combination of underwater recreation and arts and crafts.” He did not experience any downsides or difficulties with the
class. While some students would say the same, others had difficulties managing basket making under water when first starting out, he said. “Some catch on very quickly and have more elaborate baskets, (while) others do tend to struggle a little bit, and that’s where we have our instructors and our aquatic staff both in the water and on the deck helping people,” Miller said. “It takes a little bit of hand-eye coordination to be able to work with the weaving processes.” People have made all different shapes of baskets and decorated them with different patterns, Miller SEE CLASS ON PAGE 4
If a trip to the local convenience store is not feasible, students can now have their snacks delivered. A group of first-year entrepreneurs have started a snack subscriptions service called The Plug Box. Kwaku Agyemang, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student, Haris Memon, a student at Brown University and Mubarak Olukotun, a student at Yale University, run the business at their respective universities. The ser vice is a bi-weekly snack-deliver y ser vice. Through The Plug Box website, students create a “plug” where they select three snacks out of an array of several snacks to be delivered to their dorms for a fee of $10, Agyemang said. This service differs from traditional vending, because snacks come in bulk as opposed to single packages. For example, if a student chooses fruit snacks as one of their three options, they will receive a box with 10 fruit-snack packages.
All three students attended Piscataway High School. The idea for a snack subscription service emerged after discovering a service that delivered groceries to people’s homes. We thought this type of service could be useful on a college campus and we wanted Rutgers to be the test launch for the service, Agyemang said. Agyemang receives the snacks from a wholesale food service and stores them in his dorm room. When he receives an order he puts the snacks together and delivers them personally. We are looking to expand in many ways, he said. “We are trying to have this at every college, not just at Rutgers, Brown and Yale,” he said. Looking forward, Agyemang hopes to hire a staff to deliver boxes, to move from a bi-weekly delivery to providing snacks on a weekly basis and promoting this service to athletic teams specifically. Currently, Agyemang is limited by the amount of space he can use, SEE PROGRAM ON PAGE 4
VOLUME 148, ISSUE 33 • UNIVERSITY ... 3 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ... 5 • OPINIONS ... 6 • CLASSIFIEDS ... 7 • DIVERSIONS ... 9 • SPORTS ... BACK