Faculty member trains guide dogs on campus Club promotes hope, reminds students they’re not alone
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
ubspectrum.com
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Wednesday, October 16, 2013
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Volume 63 No. 22
UB BREAKS GROUND IN DOWNTOWN MEDICAL CAMPUS SAM FERNANDO
Senior News Editor
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo believes it is “irrefutable” that Buffalo has changed over the past five years. But he likes what he sees. “You can see it on people’s faces – [Buffalo] is not what it was; it is what it could be,” he said. “With this leadership and with this energy, there is no stopping what Buffalo can do.” On Tuesday, Cuomo joined about 500 members of the UB, Buffalo and New York State communities at the corner of Main and High Streets in downtown Buffalo to celebrate the university breaking ground on its new downtown medical campus. The project costs $375 million and is funded primarily by an NYSUNY Challenge Grant, which Cuomo provided when he signed the NYSUNY 2020 legislation in 2011. New York State Senators George Maziarz, Mark Grisanti and Tim Kennedy said the effort to pass NYSUNY 2020 legislation was bipartisan. The medical campus, which is scheduled to open in the 2016 fall semester, is part of President Satish Tripathi’s UB 2020 plan “to pursue research addressing critical societal needs, provide students with transformative educational experiences and further engage with local and global communities,” according to a UB news release. “This puts the medical school in the heart of our expanding downtown campus, the center of the region’s bioscience corridor and just a short walk away from the hospitals and life science research partners,” Tripathi said. “Moving the school downtown connects us more closely to all our surrounding communities. It
Chad Cooper, The Spectrum
“When we put the shovel into the ground today, that was a shovel toward the new future of Buffalo,” said New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “With this leadership and with this energy, there is no stopping what Buffalo can do.”
also connects our distinguished past with our bright future.” Architecture firm Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (HOK) designed the building on Main and High Streets. The facility is projected to be eight stories tall and encompass approximately 540,000 square feet. The project is also the largest individual construction plan in UB’s history. The new building is strategically located in the heart of the downtown Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, which will give students easy access to hospitals and many other health care facilities. In his State of the University Address on Friday, Tripathi said increasing UB’s recognition on
a global stage and strengthening the school’s research prowess are crucial goals of UB 2020. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz believes the medical campus is a positive movement in this direction, calling the project “the next big step in one of Western New York’s greatest success stories.” “[UB], through its partnership with the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, is setting the standard for leading medical research in transforming the region into a hub for not only biomedical and scientific fields but an international center for excellence,” said Poloncarz, a UB alumnus.
UB will hire 100 new medical faculty members for the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the average graduating class will increase from 140 students to 180. Apart from bettering UB’s future, the medical campus will have a number of effects on the area. Mayor Byron Brown said the addition of the new campus is expected to have a positive impact on the local economy. He said the campus will attract people from all across the country and educate people from all across the globe. “It is certainly now no secret that the governor has placed incredible focus on Buffalo and
Western New York,” said Brown, who compared the new medical campus to others that have revitalized cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. “We have an incredible asset in the form of a worldclass research university and a world-class medical school. UB and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus are the foundation of Buffalo’s growing life sciences economy.” Thirty-one years ago Tuesday, Lackawanna Steel Company closed, causing 6,000 people in Western New York to lose their jobs. Cuomo said this was the moment “that crystallized a point of decline for Buffalo and Western New York.” SEE MEDICAL CAMPUS, PAGE 2
BREAKING BARRIERS
UB’s LGBTQ community strives for stronger campus presence ERIC CORTELLESSA
Opinion Editor
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hen Jay Duarah returned home to Michigan for spring vacation his freshman year, his mother asked him a direct question: “Are you seeing someone?” Duarah, an Indian immigrant, is the son of a diplomat. He never lies to his parents. Remaining honest while deliberately vague and knowingly evasive, Duarah told his mother plainly, “Yes, I’m seeing someone.” His mother asked him for her name but he wanted no part of that discussion. The subject then shifted and the conversation carried on. But later in the evening, his mother asked another question: “Do you have a picture?” “Yes, I do,” he told her. She insisted that she see the face of the “lucky girl.” She was persistent, and after much hesitancy, Duarah finally gave in; he showed his parents the picture. “It’s a he!” his mother bellowed. The room went silent and descended into a terrifying awkwardness, Duarah said. It took a moment for the family to compute the information their son presented to them. His moth-
er began to cry and his father remained silent. The dinner then ended abruptly. They had each recognized in their own way that their lives had suddenly changed. Today, Duarah’s mother will ask him about his personal life occasionally, but his father never broaches the subject. “I will have to be the one to break that barrier,” Duarah said. Breaking barriers was the main focus of UB’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Alliance (UB’s LGBTQA) last week as they celebrated National Coming Out Week. Duarah, who is now a firstyear electrical engineering graduate student, credits having an LGBTQ community at UB to surmount the strain he experienced in coming out to his parents. Last week’s events were designed to provide an outlet to more students on campus with experiences similar to Duarah’s. Members held an amateur drag show in the Student Union on Tuesday and a color run on the field next to the Center For the Arts on Friday, where they threw cups of colored cornstarch on each other to highlight their identities and raise awareness for both their club and the cause. Allie Balmer, a senior anthropology major and member of
Aline Kobayashi, The Spectrum
On Friday, members of UB’s LGBTQA celebrated National Coming Out Day by participating in a color run.
the club, noted the symbolic significance of the color run. “The event is basically about getting people to come together, and obviously the gay pride flag is the rainbow colors,” she said. “That was the whole idea. That’s the main association.” Jham Valenzuela, president of UB LGBTQA, organized the event. Since he has taken the top leadership position, he has changed the club – making the meetings more discussion-based, aimed at establishing a stronger sense of community. Some have taken issue with his method, however, claiming he has made the club too much an extension of Wellness Services.
“The problem with this is, one we already have that organization on campus and two the purpose of this club is to be a social organization,” said a member, who asked to remain anonymous, in an email. But Valenzuela cites these alterations in the club’s structure as vital to the expansion and growth it has experienced this semester. In the 2012-13 academic year, the weekly meetings averaged around 15 people. Now, they average over 40. Every Monday, the group holds a meeting centered on dialogue. The discussions are led and moderated by Valenzu-
ela and Vice President Laura Borschel, a senior English major. Some meetings have erupted in vehement disagreement – like when they discussed whether Straight Allies should be considered a part of the LGBTQ community. Even when tensions flare, however, the club has maintained a level of camaraderie and cohesiveness that many members say is critical to their ability to live as LGBTQ in Buffalo. Club members are encouraged to share their experiences in the group setting, and each meeting becomes a portal into an underlying question of what it means to be LGBTQ here, at UB, now. *** efore the meeting starts, the room is a hubbub of overlapping dialogue with discordant voices wandering the air. When Valenzuela begins the meeting, a sense of seriousness overtakes the atmosphere. The club sits in an open circle. Valenzuela and Borschel introduce the week’s topic before the students introduce themselves; they list their name, major, PGP (preferred gender pronoun) and anything additional pertaining to how they identify themselves.
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SEE LGBTQA, PAGE 2