medical amnesty Decision to allow medical amnesty for students overdosing is welcome addition
have a rave Drown out midterm blues: pump to The Wiggles
SEE opinions, page 7
volleyball Rutgers drops 17th straight game in loss to Michigan State
SEE Arts & Entertainment, page 8
SEE sports, back
WEATHER Cloudy with some showers High: 70 Low: 60
Serving the Rutgers community since 1869. Independent since 1980.
rutgers university—new brunswick
thursday, october 20, 2016
ONLINE AT DAILYTARGUM.COM
‘The Daily Show’ correspondent Jessica Williams visits Rutgers Sophie Nieto-Munoz associate news editor
Jessica Williams took the stage Tuesday night in the College Avenue Student Center to talk about a little bit of everything, ranging from her commitment to her Sims game to her struggles growing up as a black girl in a predominately white community. The Rutgers University Programming Association (RUPA) invited Williams, who is best known for her former role on The Daily Show as a senior correspondent. She left the show in June 2016 to pursue her own show on Comedy Central, as well as focus more on movies and her podcast, “2 Dope Queens.” Williams said comedians such as Maya Rudolph, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey and Whoopie Goldberg inspired her, but ultimately she chose to pursue comedy because her grandmother appreciated dark humor comedy. Since her grandma had a “Ursula type body shape” and “couldn’t walk longer than seven seconds at a time” due to her obesity and diabetes, they spent a lot of time watching television together, including Adult Swim and South Park. “I got to spend a lot of time with her as a kid,” she said. “I know that stuff made her laugh a lot,
and I was 6 or 7 and I was like ‘If this makes her laugh and it keeps her company, I want to do that on some level.’” Growing up, Williams said she felt disconnected from her blackness because of her afro-texture hair. “The black women in my family would present to me this idea of peak, black woman femininity,” she said. “I would have to have my hair pressed, relaxed, have a weave.” She said she hated getting her hair pressed since she could not understand the point of pain to fit in, but was ultimately shamed by her cousins and the black people in her life. “I feel like a lot of times, hair is so important to black people, and as a kid I felt so disconnected from my hair because I hated getting it done. I felt like I wasn’t black enough on some level,” Williams said. When Williams was in elementary school, her mom gave her a wake up call about being average after getting C’s in school. Her mom told her she could never be average because of her skin tone. She explained slacking was never an option because there are people who do not look like her who will get more than her for doing mediocre work. See correspondent on Page 4
Jessica Williams, a former senior correspondent on The Daily Show, discussed her upbringing and shared life lessons with Rutgers students Tuesday night in the College Avenue Student Center multipurpose room. SOPHIE NIETO-MUNOZ / ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Alumna travels abroad to combat Zika virus
Dining services explains where surplus food goes
Kira Herzog correspondent
Sharbel Skaff contributing writer
Rutgers Dining Services is responsible for feeding more than 40,000 students on the New Brunswick campus, distributing more than 6.7 million meals annually. That often leads to left-over food, which may then be donated to a facility in Middlesex County, University Sanitarian John Nason said. These foods must first be inspected and “deemed appropriate for re-utilization (or) distribution.” “The leftover items are collected in disposable pans, accumulated, frozen and transported to a facility that has the ability to store and reheat foods per the requirements of the NJ State Sanitar y Code,” he said. The donations are sent out with the assurance that safety and sanitary standards have been met with the product and facilities. The recipient must be able to demonstrate they have the facility to store, reheat and serve the product in a safe manner, Nason said.
Rutgers Dining Services donates uneaten food to local charities after inspecting it to ensure it is safe to eat after being reheated. EDWIN GANO / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The donations help keep local food pantries stocked and able to provide meals to their visitors. The New Life Food Pantry in Helmetta, New Jersey, is currently accepting
Rutgers Dining Services’ donations, Nason said. Food pantries depend solely on See food on Page 4
Just one month after completing her senior year at Rutgers University, Amber Gourdine flew to Nicaragua to intern with the non-profit AMOS Health and Hope. Gourdine graduated in 2016 with a degree in public health. During her final semester, she applied to the AMOS Global Health Practicum and Internship program, an intensive nine-week curriculum that spreads awareness of the Zika virus and water safety practices to rural areas of Nicaragua. AMOS’s overall goal is to expand local resources for health care, education, nutrition and water safety in impoverished areas. Their clean water program is responsible for installing more than 1,100 water filters in local Nicaraguan communities, according to their website. The application and interview process for the internship was intensive, Gourdine said, but with the mentoring and resources she received from Rutgers University Career Services, it was ultimately successful.
“Rutgers helped me immensely from the application process to the end of the trip,” she said. “I was able to utilize skills I’d learned like arriving promptly, being confident and researching the company prior.” In Nicaragua, as a member of AMOS’s clean water team, Gourdine said her tasks were varied. In rural areas she spread written and oral information about the Zika virus, surveyed the conditions of water filtration systems and trained community members on safer water practices. The majority of the work involved interacting with local communities and helping them implement sustainable practices that countered public health issues they faced, she said. “Most locals lived in wooden homes with a latrine or a bucket shower room. The homes were all dispersed so we hiked between four and five hours each day between them,” she said. “It was generally hot and humid by morning and rainy in the afternoon.”
VOLUME 148, ISSUE 91 • University ... 3 • opiNIons ... 6 • classifieds ... 7 • arts & entertainment ... 8 • Diversions ... 9 • SPORTS ... BACK
See virus on Page 5