THE DAILY TARGUM
Volume 142, Number 56
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
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2010
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Today: Sunny
CRUNCH TIME
High: 50 • Low: 34
The Rutgers football team travels to Cincinnati this weekend to take on the Bearcats in a meeting of the Big East’s cellar dwellers that is vital to the Scarlet Knights’ postseason hopes.
Online courses accommodate high enrollment BY DEVIN SIKORSKI ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
belittle us, the Black Panther Party, to me, is one of the greatest organizations in American history during that time.” Jennings, who joined the party at age 17 just a week after graduating from high school, said he was inspired to get involved with the party because of its ideals and sense of camaraderie. “What really got me interested in the party was the 10-point program,” he said. “It wasn’t the guns or anything, because I was born in the South. When you’re born in the South, you grow up with guns.” After reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and hearing the messages of
As enrollment numbers increase steadily year after year, the University is turning to online courses to continue providing a quality education while dealing with a budget crisis. Philip J. Furmanski, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, said online courses provide major benefits to students — reaching out to those unable to come on campus and expanding the dimensions of a classroom. “If you only have a classroom that can hold 30 people, you can get the same class online and get 40 people,” he said. “That is one of the virtues of online courses, and allows us in effect to increase our enrollments without putting more stress on our physical facilities.” But the point of an online course is not to generate revenue for the University, Furmanski said. Rather, it provides students with an online-learning experience to enhance life-long skills. “I think what is going to be increasingly important is the ability to continue to be educated online,” he said. “I think therefore it is very valuable for all of our students to get experience with online courses.” Furmanski said there is a misconception of online courses as easier than face-to-face courses, but if an online course is well done, it can be rigorous and just as educationally valid as a course in a classroom setting. “This doesn’t just mean sitting in your pajamas and watching a video of somebody giving a lecture,” he said. “They actually learn at least as much as the students who take the conventional course with lectures and seminars.” School of Arts and Sciences senior Neepa Rana said although she never took an online course, her roommate completed an expository writing hybrid course at the same time she took the class in a conventional setting. “We both got the same grade and we both had the same writing style,” she said. “[But] she could work on it when she wanted and could submit it online and be
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JOVELLE ABBEY TAMAYO / PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Former Black Panther Billy Jennings talks to a crowded room last night at Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus about his experiences with the Black Panther Party. Jennings joined the party at age 17, a week after he graduated from high school.
Former Black Panthers share stories with U. BY COLLEEN ROACHE ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Say the word “panther” and some may think of a large cat, others may think of the Carolina football team and for others, the word may evoke the memory of Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton and a revolutionar y movement that changed America’s history in the 1960s. Hundreds of people attended “Original Black Panthers Speak,” a discussion with former Black Panthers Emory Douglas and Billy Jennings, and learned more about the latter definition last night in the crowded conference rooms of Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus.
Douglas, revolutionary artist of the Black Panther Party and later its Minister of Culture, designed many aspects of the party’s newspaper. Jennings, who worked with both co-founders, Newton and Seale, created publications for the It’s About Time Committee, which aims to preserve the party’s legacy and offer information about social justice issues. The event was sponsored by the Center for Historical Analysis and the Department of History at the University. “To become a Panther is to really work hard,” Jennings said. “Besides having to deal with the police department and different agencies of the government trying to shut us down, trying to raid our office, trying to
LGBT community remembers lives lost BY ANDREA GOYMA STAFF WRITER
Despite the rain and wind, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities gathered at the steps of Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus to light candles in remembrance of those who lost their lives due to transgender-related deaths and crimes. The vigil was held yesterday evening in observance of Nov. 20’s national Transgender Day of Remembrance. “I hope [this vigil] will enable students to think about why we have a disproportionate number of transgender or perceived-to-betransgender students killed each year, and that it will also encourage others to think of ways they can disrupt the climate of transphobia,”
said Jenny Kurtz, acting director for the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities. Because Transgender Day of Remembrance falls on a Saturday this year, the Center for Social Justice Education decided to hold it on a day more accessible to students. “Obviously, we are a couple of days early. Due to students’ schedules, we thought it was more important to have the vigil on a day students would actually be on campus,” said Paul DeStefano, a graduate assistant in the Graduate School of Education’s College Student Affairs program. The vigil is held in remembrance of lives, reported and unreported, that have been lost. “There has been a huge level of unreporting — for a variety of reasons — this year in anti-transgender
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TUNES FOR TOTS
INDEX UNIVERSITY A sex educator visits the University to encourage open sexuality.
OPINIONS The GOP filibustered the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have combated gender discrimination in the workplace.
UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . 3 OPINIONS . . . . . . . . 8 DIVERSIONS . . . . . . 10 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . 12 SCOTT TSAI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children hosts an evening of poetry and jazz at the Red Lion Cafe in the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus. Last night’s event was held to raise funding for the March of Dimes.
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