THE DAILY TARGUM
Volume 141, Number 40
S E R V I N G
T H E
R U T G E R S
C O M M U N I T Y
S I N C E
TUESDAY OCTOBER 27, 2009
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Today: Showers
TRENCH WARFARE
High: 60 • Low: 52
Amid ongoing turmoil against the elements, the Rutgers defensive and offensive lines pushed around the Army front lines Friday in the Scarlet Knights’ 27-10 victory.
Brower meeting rooms reopen five years after blaze BY MARY DIDUCH ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
On Oct. 27, 2004, flames broke out in Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus during the dinner rush, ruining much of the second floor. Five years later, renovations of the destroyed areas were finally
completed and opened for use. The fire occurred in a conference room on the second floor, the President’s Dining Room, said Florence Borsody, general manager of University Dining Services. That day there was an event in the room, she said. A buffet table with decorations had been set beneath the windows.
ANDREW HOWARD/ PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
University President Richard L. McCormick made his first visit last night to the renovated Brower Commons dining room since the fire on Oct. 27, 2004.
INDEX UNIVERSITY In 2005, the University implemented cleaning products that were environmentally friendly. Since then the products have been used at a number of different schools.
OPINIONS A high school in Chicago has 115 girls pregnant or already mothers. Something has to be done about the type of sex education being taught to teens today. UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . 3 OPINIONS . . . . . . . 10 DIVERSIONS . . . . . . 12 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . 12 SPORTS . . . . . . BACK
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“The best guess we have is that some of the decorations on the table caught fire from the Sterno and the fire went up the curtain, and when the server noticed it, the curtain was starting to go on fire and that’s the last thing we saw,” Borsody said. The room has been completely redone and updated, she said. There are convertible tables, the balconies facing Stonier Hall can now be opened and the room has been rearranged. The other conferences rooms on the floor, which can connect to hold up to 80 people, were also damaged, and now all have capabilities for presentations, wireless Internet, and new furniture and carpeting, Borsody said. The dining hall also was brought up to new safety codes not in place when it was built in the 1960s, she said. It now has standpipes and an improved alarm system. The old alarm system was too quiet with the background music and talking, Borsody said. Now loud horns and automated voices talk diners through an emergency. Renovations of the second floor started last spring, and construction began once the students left for the summer, she said. The delay stemmed mainly from clarifying the safety code and waiting for insurance and funding, Borsody said. While the fire was largely contained to the one room, an adjacent stairwell was burned, she said. The sight of the staircase is something she will never forget.
THE DAILY TARGUM
Curtains caught fire in the Brower Commons President’s Dining Room five years ago today, which took fire officials more than 30 minutes to extinguish.
“I remember coming up here later that night. It was just total blackness. … You couldn’t see where you were walking because the soot on the wall just absorbed everything,” she said.
The student dining area, faculty and staff dining room, and Knight Room in the basement only saw
SEE BLAZE ON PAGE 6
City groups benefit from mail-in ballot option BY ARIEL NAGI AND MARY DIDUCH STAFF WRITERS
With the ability to encourage more people to vote, two local grassroots organizations are hoping the new voteby-mail legislation will help advance their goals in November. Empower Our Neighborhoods thinks the New Brunswick City Council members should be represented by wards and Unite New Brunswick thinks the five-member, at-large council should be increased to seven at-
large, but both have been using the new system to reach more voters. “It actually opens up the process to so many more people,” said EON Spokesman Charlie Kratovil. “[Some people] don’t have the transportation to get to the polling place, so they don’t vote.” With the mail-in voting system — which replaced absentee ballots last summer — any voter can vote via mail, in person before the election at the county clerk’s office, or by official messenger by filling out an application with their county clerk. No excuse is needed.
Many find voting from home more convenient, Kratovil said. The law helps voters avoid waiting in long lines at the polls and allows disabled and/or sick people or those with no time to rush to their assigned polling places, such as students, to vote, he said. EON President Martha Guarnieri said allowing people to vote before Election Day is one of the best ways to vote. “I think one of the most important things about vote-by-mail is that students have the opportunity to go to the county clerk’s office during office
hours to vote before Election Day,” said Guarnieri, a Rutgers College senior. “So if you wanted to vote right now you can apply for a vote-by-mail application, complete it right in the county clerk’s office and then your vote is done. I think that’s the easiest way.” UNB member Kyle Kirkpatrick said vote-by-mail will help the organization to not only get people to vote on their side, but it will encourage more people to vote in general.
SEE OPTION
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U. lacks ‘handicap friendly’ campus despite disability services BY ARIEL NAGI ACTING ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Laura Watson recalls a time when she was invited to her friend’s coffeehouse event in the basement of Demarest Hall on the College Avenue campus, but the elevator was broken. She turned around to head back to her residence hall when she realized it would be impossible to get into the coffeehouse in her 350-pound motorpowered wheelchair — until a few University students gathered around her chair and carried her down, so she could enjoy music and java with her friends. “I felt sort of like a princess with all those guys carrying me,” said Watson, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore.
Watson, along with a handful of others students on campus, is mobility impaired. She was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a neuromuscular disease that causes progressive muscle degeneration and weakness, when she was younger than 1 year old. As a disabled student on campus, Watson said she has no complaints about the Of fice of Disability Ser vices for Students, because the staff helps to accommodate her with ever ything she needs. “I haven’t really been disappointed at all,” she said. “I’ve met some really nice people who really help me.” But Watson is limited socially at the University, barely attending football games because the student section of
Today is the last day to drop a class with a W.
the Rutgers Stadium is not wheelchair accessible. “That’s not really fair for students,” she said. While Watson said she is also tr ying to get involved in a sorority but cannot because most are not handicap accessible. She still continues to work hard to get involved and many students on campus are willing to help her. Office of Disability Services for Students Director Gregor y Moorehead said Watson is one among thousands of students his office provides services for. “In addition to serving students with physical disabilities, we also serve students with learning disabilities, attention disorders, traumatic brain
injuries, psychological disorders … and students who have a temporary disability,” Moorehead said. Coordinators at disability services work hand-in-hand with disabled students around campus to help register them for their classes and make sure they are provided with anything they need to help them excel at the University, such as transportation to their classes and tables in classrooms for mobility-impaired students, he said. But even with all the ser vices of fered by the University, there is a lack of accessibility for disabled students. Moorehead said this has a lot to do with the fact that the University
SEE SERVICES ON PAGE 7
The Spring 2010 schedule is now available online.