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Volume 51, Issue 76 | tuesday, january 31, 2017 | ndsmcobserver.com
Reality star evaluates student proposals ‘Shark Tank’ judge Kevin O’Leary returns to campus to critique Mendoza students’ business ideas
University student entrepreneurs pitched their best business ventures to “Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary, following a presentation on his life and tips for success in entrepreneurship in the Mendoza College of Business on Monday. The talk, sponsored by the Mendoza College of Business and the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship, filled the 350-seat Jordan Auditorium, as students and faculty came to hear O’Leary’s insights on entrepreneurship. “After nine years and thousands of pitches, there’s a lot to be learned about what goes right and what goes wrong, and how you present your ideas to investors,” O’Leary said. “I don’t care
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EDDIE GRIESEDIECK | The Observer
Kevin O’Leary discusses the components of a successful pitch in Jordan Auditorium on Monday night. This is O’Leary’s second time critiquing Mendoza student business proposals.
Pirate, slave mutinies anchored in freedom By AIDAN LEWIS News Writer
John Donoghue, associate professor of histor y at Loyola Universit y Chicago, spoke on Monday evening about the Buccaneers and their role in the slave trade during “Slave Revolts and Piratical Capitalism in the Age of Captain Morgan.” Donoghue said in the 17th centur y the Buccaneers started out as poor French, Dutch and British citizens who had been “delivered into bondage across the Atlantic” w ithout their consent, often tricked or manipulated into signing contracts. “These Buccaneers who become pirates and make their liv ing ultimately by stealing, are themselves stolen,” Donoghue said. He said these indentured ser vants ultimately escaped from their brutal work, and formed communities of
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their ow n, where they lived off looting. “W hatever loot that they got, whatever prov isions they were traded, the spoils would be div ided equally among the brethren,” Donoghue said. “They organized themselves along decidedly anti-Capitalist lines.” Nevertheless, Donoghue said soon the Buccaneers teamed up w ith the British colonial settlement on Jamaica in order to stif le Spain’s thriv ing trade. “The Buccaneers saw an opportunit y to increase their wealth, and the English saw an opportunit y to acquire the labor they needed to begin robbing the Spanish,” Donoghue said. “This produces an innovation in the colonial economy called privateering. This is essentially state-sponsored piracy.” Donoghue said the Buccaneers, led by Captain
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Henr y Morgan of Wales, pillaged many Spanish settlements, most famously Porto Bello and Panama. “These were massive forces attacking cities, destroying them and reliev ing them of their wealth,” Donoghue said. “So the Buccaneers prov ided the key militar y labor for extracting capital from the Spanish empire that w ill be brought back to Jamaica, and invested for the purposes of sugar planting.” Through these attacks, Donoghue said the Buccaneers brought back thousands of African slaves from Spanish settlements to Jamaica. “By turning mercenar y for the colonial regime in Jamaica, we see people f leeing from unfree labor becoming instruments of enslavement themselves,” Donoghue said. “I call this see PIRATES PAGE 3
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Self-published first year explores writing world By KATHRYN MARSHALL News Writer
When she was younger, first-year Saint Mary’s student Dalanie Beach wanted to do everything and be everything when she grew up. As she grew older, she said she found she could be anything and do everything by becoming a writer. “You can step into the shoes of anyone you want to be and just go with it,” she said. “And I think that’s my favorite thing about it. I can be anything when I write”. This mentality led her to self-publish three novels between the ages of 13 and 16 through an online publication site. As Beach gained more writing experience, she said she chose to remove the novels from publication, and followed the advice of a teacher who told her to take her
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writing to the Midwest Writers Conference. While there, she pitched her contemporary young adult novel “Reckless Intention” to three agents and later signed with Bradford Literary Agency. She then embarked
Dalanie Beach
Associate News Editor
whether you are an entrepreneur, a leader, a politician — these lessons matter in terms of your ability to communicate with people.” In his experience judging pitches on “Shark Tank,” O’Leary said all of the successful pitches had three aspects in common: They articulated the opportunity in 90 seconds or less, they convinced their potential investors they’re the right person for the business and they knew their numbers, or found someone who did. “The whole deal with a small business is to find out what makes your story compelling to your customer and stay in touch,” O’Leary said. “ … That actually is the secret to ‘Shark Tank.’ If you ever get there and you get to pitch
first-year student, author
By MEGAN VALLEY
on a lengthy revision process with her agent and is currently working on finding a publisher for the novel. “You can publish without an agent, but it is hard to do in today’s world when there see WRITER PAGE 3
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