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EDITORIAL
By SARAH RUDNICK Eagle Staff Writer
ZOMBIE CULTURE
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SCENE DEFYING LABELS Artists go independent to gain more freedom page 7
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TODAY’S WEATHER
HI 40° LO 33° Chance of rain in the afternoon. FRIDAY HI 38° n LO 28°
SATURDAY HI 41° n LO 31°
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VOLUME 84 n ISSUE 29
More try for law, master’s degrees
BURIED SECRETS
How the undead can teach us to resist a thoughtless society
JANUARY 21, 2010
Courtesy of MCT CAMPUS
AID IN CRISIS — The AU community is making an effort to help the victims of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti on Tuesday, Jan. 12. As many as 200,000 people may have been killed in the earthquake and large parts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, were destroyed.
AU races to aid Haiti By JULIA RYAN Eagle Staff Writer In the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake last week, the AU community is coming out in support and organizing numerous events and fundraisers to benefit the victims of the disaster. Haiti experienced a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12, which destroyed much of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Between 50,000 and 200,000 people were killed in the quake, according to The Washington Post. The U.S. military plans to send at least 10,000 troops to the country, and President Barack Obama has pledged $100 million in initial earthquake relief funds, according to the Post President Neil Kerwin addressed AU’s response to the crisis in a memo sent to the AU community on Jan. 15. At least a dozen Haitian students and several faculty and staff members at AU have been
affected by the earthquake, according to the memo. The administration will do everything it can to help students affected by the earthquake, said Kerwin’s Chief of Staff David Taylor. “Almost every school and college at AU has helped out its own students affected by the earthquake,” Taylor said. “We’re trying to remind everyone that we have students at AU from Haiti, and we are trying to make it known to those Haitian students that AU is here to help you.” Taylor said the administration will continue to update AU’s Web site with more information about where AU students can go to get more information or to donate money to the earthquake victims. “In a time like this, people are hungry for information,” Taylor said. “We’re hoping to give people an outlet to help out and be informed on a local, national and international level.”
Sabri Ben Achour, a reporter at AU-owned public radio station WAMU 88.5, arrived in Port-auPrince this week aboard the USNS Comfort and is keeping listeners updated on the situation. According to Kay Summers, WAMU’s director of Marketing and Communications, Achour arranged the trip himself. Summers said Achour will pay particular attention to how the crisis affects D.C. “His reports will have a local angle because, in addition to reporting on the crisis, Achour will be looking for Haitians with relatives living in D.C.,” Summers said. AU students also found ways to lend a hand and spread information about the quake. Josh Linder, a junior in the School of International Service, recently established an AU chapter of the Global Haiti Initiative. According to Linder, the club was started over a year ago by his friend at Florida State University to pro-
mote awareness for Haiti’s development issues. Linder had been slowly working on establishing an AU chapter for some time, but the earthquake inspired him to get things going more quickly. Though the AU chapter of the Global Haiti Initiative has not yet been officially recognized on campus, Linder said he plans to expand the group in the near future. “I am still looking for creative and passionate individuals who would like to make difference and be a part of something great,” Linder said. Naisha Silva, a sophomore in the Kogod School of Business and the president of the AU student group Caribbean Circle, said her group is also very involved in AU’s relief efforts for the Haitian earthquake victims. Silva and her fellow members have had a vested interest in this cause from the start because of their connections to Haiti. n
see HAITI on page 4
The number of enrolled graduate students has increased, according to AU’s Academic Data Reference Book, making it part of a nationwide surge of applicants in a struggling job market. All across the country, interest in graduate programs and law schools has spiked due to the economic recession. The reference book indicates that from 2002 to spring 2009 the number of AU part- and full-time graduate students, including masters and doctorate, have increased from 3,507 to 3,789 students — about a 9 percent boost. Curiosity in a graduate degree from the School of Communication has particularly increased among recent college graduates, according to the Director of Graduate Admissions for SOC Sharmeen Ahsan-Bracciale. While the journalism program is “not at the same level of popularity as it was a few years ago,” there has been a lot of interest in the public communications degree, Ahsan-Bracciale said. Regarding the School of Public Affairs, the recent election of President Obama has ignited a fresh interest in government work, Ahsan-Bracciale said. However, from fall 2006 to spring 2009, the Washington College of Law’s number of enrolled students dropped almost 10 percent — from 1,529 to 1,455, according to the reference book. Although the WCL enrollment numbers have not grown, the number of Americans taking the Law School Admissions Test rose 20 percent this October from October 2008, according to a report in the New York Times. The recession did have an n
see GRAD SCHOOLon page 4
AUTO program H&D reconsiders lottery stalls, revamps By ETHAN KLAPPER Eagle Staff Writer
By CHARLIE SZOLD Eagle Staff Writer In his freshman year Seth Cutter, then-future president of the Student Government, took a trip with the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program. Two AUTO vans, filled with students, were driving to a campsite in Maryland when one of the vans broke down, stranding half of the group. “In retrospect, it highlighted the issues with AUTO,” Cutter said. “The users didn’t know who to call if it broke down, and there was confusion at the university about who was liable to go get the van.” Eventually, the second van doubled back and picked up the stranded students. Someone from the university retrieved the van for repairs the next day. After years of similar stories — of students being left stranded in dangerous areas, of vans breaking down mid-trip, of inconsistent service from SG officials — the program was suspended at the end of last semester in an attempt to allow SG officials and administrators to fix the AUTO program. The suspension is temporary and vans will hopefully be available as soon as the end of January, but AU bureaucracy could hold up the reintroduction of AUTO, according to
MacCracken. “I know that the drafts of the policies will be ready on our end,” he said. “When you’re at AU, you seem to sprint a 100 meters so you can wait for a few days to run again. That’s kind of what we’re dealing with right now, and it’s unfortunate.” Ultimately, the decision to suspend the program rested with AUTO Commissioner Nicholas Russotto, although he was in close consultation with other SG officials, including MacCracken, Student Activities Adviser Jarrod MacNeil and Director of Risk Management Tony Newman. “We all agreed that the program needed serious rehabilitation to continue functioning,” Russotto said in an e-mail. “I had their full support in my decision.” When Russotto was first appointed AUTO commissioner, he was struck by the amount of work needed. “New policies needed to be drafted, vans needed to be sent to maintenance, the [online reservation system] AgileFleet was clotted with reservations from years past that had never been appropriately cleared out,” he said. “Shutting down the program seemed to be the only option.” MacCracken, Russotto and other administration officials are hoping to mitigate future problems by writing n
see AUTO on page 2
Housing and Dining Programs may drop an experimental plan to give students who sign an 11 1/2 month lease priority for Nebraska Hall in next month’s housing lottery, the department’s executive director, Chris Moody, said Tuesday. Students seeking an 11 1/2 month lease for AU’s block of apartments in the Berkshire apartments will still receive priority in the lottery. Additionally, Housing and Dining will still offer the 11 1/2 month leases for Nebraska, but with no priority in the lottery, Moody said. “The goal of the 11 1/2 month lease is to see if we can rent more units at the Berks,” he said. This potential change in plans comes after Housing and Dining announced major changes to on-campus housing that will begin with the fall 2010 semester. The spots in the Berks and Nebraska are among 400 that are reserved for upperclassmen, who will now have to participate in a lottery to receive space. A final decision about the plan will be made by Feb. 1, according to Moody. “We’re having conversations within our staff,” he said. Student Government President Andy MacCracken said he is glad Moody is considering the change. “I think in general, this 11 1/2 month lease — and having priority
in the lottery — is just not favorable to students,” he said. “People who can afford to have that lease have a distinct advantage in the lottery.” More students should have been consulted by Housing and Dining Programs to help decide where to move housing for certain student groups, MacCracken said Sunday. Speaking at a joint meeting of the Undergraduate Senate’s Campus Life and Programming and Students Rights Committees, he said he did not expect all of the changes to the housing plan to happen at once. “I’m surprised by the fact that they went ahead and made those decisions at the same time, in terms of changing where people could live, making Letts all freshman housing and moving Hughes to being all honors [by the fall of 2011],” he said. “… I think that could have had more of a campus dialogue involved.” At the meeting, MacCracken offered more direct criticism of the plan than he had in the past. Shortly after the new plan was announced to resident students via e-mail on Jan. 4, MacCracken responded to questions on the “Loyal Opposition to American University’s New Stance on Student Housing” Facebook group. “I don’t defend or represent [Housing and Dining’s] decision, but only wish to help more people understand the effort that went behind [the recent changes],” he wrote. “I will do all I can to make this process as inclusive and helpful for any upperclassmen wish-
ing to return to AU housing or who want to go find off-campus housing.” But in an interview Tuesday, MacCracken said that his attitude about the plan really had not changed. “Even in my discussions with Chris [Moody] and [Vice President of Campus Life] Dr. [Gail] Hanson when all this was going down, I raised concern about the issues of moving people around on campus,” he said. Kent Hiebel, a member of the Student Honors Board and the SG’s director of communications, said that the board was creating a survey to distribute to the honors community about the changes. He said there were concerns that the honors community would become “too isolated.” The goal of the meeting was to discuss ideas for legislation that Seth Rosenstein, class of 2012 senator and chair of the Campus Life and Programming Committee, hopes to bring to the full Senate within a few weeks. But, Rosenstein said, Housing and Dining is going forward with the plan, and the SG is limited in scope with what they can do. “I realize we can’t change things,” he said. “But perhaps we can propose things in addition to what’s already been planned such as incentives, or something along those lines, something that can make the transition easier for those students who are affected.” Absent from the lightly attended meeting were Moody, who said he n
see HOUSING on page 2