THE HILL NEWS e s t a b l i s h e d i n 1 9 1 1 at s a i n t l aw r e n c e u n i v e r s i t y
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2013
SLU NEWS Fall Concert 2013: Grouplove and The Rubens on the intramural fields tonight, 6PM. Tickets are $10 at the door with cash or CWA. Re-entry permitted!
This day in history: Literary great and Minnesota native F. Scott Fitzgerald gets his face on official U. S. Postage. Stamp prices rise every year - that’s one way to boost your self-worth.
Get your Java on: After Fall Concert, Aqueous gets funky at the Java Barn. Free admission, 10PM. Learn more: The Sustainability House is hosting an open house today from 4-6PM at 1894 State Hwy 68, Canton. Explore 33.5 acres of land and meet the ten SLU students living there this semester.
Volunteer your time: Help get Taylor Park Community Beach prepared for winter while enjoying Saturday’s expected sunshine. Contact Anne Townsend at atownsend@ stlawu.edu for more info.
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Out with the old, in with the new: Registration rebooted By ELLE LUCAS & NICOLE LEINDERS CO-NEWS EDITOR STAFF WRITER As a liberal arts school, St. Lawrence is known for its wide array of small-sized classes with cool professors - what they don’t tell you is how challenging getting into those classes can be. The current registration system, Academic Planning and Registration (APR), is being replaced by a more commonly used “real-time” system. Justin Sipher, Vice President of Libraries and Information Technology, has been working on reestablishing the process for nearly a year. This “modern student system” is part of a much larger overhaul that is also affecting Admissions, Financial Aid, and student enrollment programming, to name a few. Currently, these administrative functions are run on a legacy system, meaning they’ve been part of the school for over ten years. Though it has been tweaked to keep working, SLU is one of the few schools that has yet to switch over to real-time.
Photo by Christina Rukki
After evaluating several different vendors, school administrators settled on a commercial licensing software that is also used by our sister schools, Hamilton and Union. The rumors that this real-time system will run classes on a firstcome, first-serve basis have been quelled by Sipher. Though details on student registration prioritization are still unclear, it is ensured
that upperclassmen and majors will be able to get into the necessary classes for their graduation. “We have lots of feedback on what has frustrated students in the past,” said Lorie MacKenzie, registrar. “We want you to leave registration feeling good.” MacKenzie explained that the new system won’t magically
remove all the challenges of the old system. Although students will be certain which classes they are enrolled in for the following semester, or if they’ve been placed on a waiting list. The overall architecture of the system makes identification of academic progress much easier through the use of its many
SEE APR ON PAGE 4
Tragedy in Kenya hits home for many at SLU By ALLY FRIEDMAN CO-NEWS EDITOR The shots fired at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall rang far and near last weekend, as St. Lawrence students and faculty began to grapple with the tragedy unfolding in Kenya. Of course, SLU has a special interest in the violent attack that took place in Nairobi this past week. The University was the first college to establish an off-campus program in Kenya, and ever since its inaugural semester in 1974, the St. Lawrence Kenya Semester Program (KSP) has established enduring ties to countless individuals living in and around Nairobi. On the day of the attack, the seven students participating in the Kenya Semester Program this fall set off to
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VOLUME CXXVII, ISSUE 3
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explore some sites and shops around Karen, the suburb of Nairobi where the St. Lawrence compound is located. Meanwhile, approximately
“I was going about my daily routine while there were hostages and children trapped inside of a mall less than a mile away.” - Claire Silberg ‘15 10 miles away from Karen, armed attackers stormed into the Westgate Mall amid gunshots and grenades. At last count, 62 people have been confirmed dead and many more were injured in this attack. Says Wairimu Ndirangu, Kenya Semester Program Director: “Any one of us could have decided to
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walk to the mall that morning…it is one that students explore during the urban home stays and indeed it becomes a favorite spot for many.”
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Around noon on Saturday, Ndirangu received a call from her son, a student at the Rift Valley Academy 55 kilometers away from Nairobi, who asked whether she was at the Westgate Mall. According to Ndirangu, her son “had received information about the attack because some parents from his school were at the
mall and had witnessed and reported the early shooting.” Immediately after receiving the call, Ndirangu took the necessary steps to ensure that all KSP students had stuck to their plan and were still safe and close to home. “I was relieved to know they were all within Karen and I advised them about the incident and the need to remain in Karen,” says Ndirangu. As Ndirangu noted, it is not so far-fetched to imagine that KSP students could have been at Westgate the day of the attack. Says Megan McGregor ’15, who studied abroad in Kenya last spring semester, “the fact that I can picture the scene so vividly is almost scary.”
There is evidence to suggest that the Westgate Mall siege was targeting SEE KENYA ON PAGE 6
In This Issue: Bill Knoble remembered, page 5 Peak Weekend a windy but wonderful success, page 5 New a capella groups on campus, page 7 New York Times columnist Pico Iyer comes to SLU, page 7 Turn up our fall playlist, page 8