VOL. 70 NO. 10 | NOVEMBER 10, 2021
Q&A with the SA e-board
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
How Milla Malik went from undersized recruit to MAC standout
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UBSPECTRUM
Emerging Choreographers Showcase returns for the first time since the pandemic
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Byron Brown declares victory in Buffalo mayoral race Brown’s apparent victory as a write-in candidate follows his stunning loss to India Walton in the Democratic primary GRANT ASHLEY SENIOR NEWS/FEATURES EDITOR
Incumbent Byron Brown has claimed victory in last week’s Buffalo mayoral election, with his opponent, Democratic nominee India Walton, all but conceding Wednesday. Walton, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, defeated Brown in the Democratic primary last spring, but Brown launched a write-in campaign in an effort to keep his job and win an unprecedented fifth term as mayor of Buffalo. “Today’s election was not just a referendum on the direction of the city of Buffalo,” Brown said in an address to cheering supporters on election night. “It was a referendum on the future of our democracy and our vision for our future. At the very beginning, they said we couldn’t win, that it was impossible to win as a write-in [candidate]. But you can’t ever count a Buffalonian out.” Walton appeared to hold out some hope of a victory but acknowledged that her chances appeared slim. “Tens of thousands of write-in and absentee ballots have yet to be tabulated,
and we believe that democracy requires that every vote be counted, and that any improprieties that occurred be brought to light,” Walton said in a statement shared on her Twitter account the day after the election. “However, while we anticipate that the margins will narrow, it seems unlikely that we will end up with enough votes to inaugurate a Walton administration in January.” Walton garnered 23,986 votes, or 41.2%
of all votes cast in person, while the remainder, 34,273 votes, went to one of the three write-in candidates, according to The Buffalo News. About 3,410 mail-in ballots, about 5.5% of the total, remain uncounted. But Brown’s seeming victory hasn’t been called by the Associated Press and cannot be confirmed until later this month. Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day must be counted as long as they arrived by Nov.
GRANT ASHLEY SENIOR NEWS/FEATURES EDITOR
UB students have created 12 new clubs through the Student Association this semester, adding to the SA’s approximately 170 undergraduate clubs. But the budgets of an additional 29 SArecognized clubs — including the Nerf or Nothing Club, College Republicans, PODER Latinos Unidos and United Nations SA, among others — remain frozen due to lack of university recognition, SA Vice President Montana Desabio and SA Treasurer Austin Wolfgang told The Spectrum in emails. Of those, 28 clubs have not re-registered with the university for the 2021-22 academic year but could do so at any time to unfreeze their budget. The remaining club re-registered, but the university revoked its registration after the club violated university COVID-19 guidelines. That club will be eligible for recognition again in the 2022-23 academic year. The Spectrum doesn’t know the identity of that club. Those 28 clubs have not submitted eboard updates to the SA, “are assumed to be empty” and will be derecognized by the SA Senate in the spring semester if they remain inactive, Wolfgang said. Formal derecognition by the SA Senate would effectively dissolve the clubs and their budgets. It’s an outcome the SA e-board says it would prefer to avoid. “We want to give clubs a bit of time to see if they can naturally come back before we go through and start trying to derecognize the clubs that didn’t survive [the
Email: grant.ashley@ubspectrum.com
Kelsey Rupe / The Spectrum Byron Brown declared victory over India Walton in last week’s Buffalo mayoral election.
Twelve SA clubs created this semester, budgets for 29 others remain frozen Most frozen clubs “likely” to be derecognized next semester if they remain inactive
9. And due to state election law, the Erie County Board of Elections won’t begin examining write-in ballots until Nov. 17. Brown is expected to win the vast majority of those write-in ballots, but Benjamin Carlisle and Jaz Miles also waged write-in campaigns for mayor. No matter what happens, the state must certify the election by Nov. 27.
pandemic],” Wolfgang said in an interview with The Spectrum. The SA has been able to “resurrect” some clubs this semester, Desabio said, mostly because students interested in starting an identical club simply took over an existing club’s budget. “Frozen clubs can be up and running [again] if undergraduate students decide to take them over,” she said in an email to The Spectrum. “They can email me if they would like to get more information.” Many clubs have been operating in person this semester for the first time since the start of the pandemic, which has left some clubs without experienced e-board members — or any members at all. SA has addressed this issue by changing the format of their mandatory club training, which club e-boards have to complete every year to access their budgets. “We actually looked at what clubs needed,” SA President Nick Singh said in an interview with The Spectrum. “How do you lead an e-board? How do you lead your members? How do you conduct meetings? This stuff is what we specifically geared the meeting towards.” The full list of new clubs is as follows: 1. Animation Production Club 2. Vegan Club 3. UB English Club 4. UB Cake Club 5. UB French Club 6. Film Club 7. Pre-Vet’s 8. Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Science Student Association 9. Golf Association 10. S.M.I.L.E.S 11. Bulls Against Trafficking 12. Stand-Up & Laugh Email: grant.ashley@ubspectrum.com
‘What is 101’
UB earns a shoutout on Jeopardy… for a surprising reason JUSTIN WEISS MANAGING EDITOR
The University of Buffalo received a shoutout on Jeopardy! last week. That’s right: UB — which was named the University of Buffalo for 116 years from 1846 until 1962 — was one of the clues to a question on the beloved game show Thursday night. “The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] found the University of Buffalo was the first to use this number denotion an introductory course, in 1929.” The answer: What is 101? But it’s unclear if a 101 course actually originated at UB, and if it did, when exactly it did so. UB archivists haven’t found any proof that the university came up with the classification system, and while the OED has long credited UB with coming up with it, it initially got the year wrong and had to change its entry after UB requested a correction. “Thus far, nothing has been located in the historical records of the College of Arts and Sciences, or any other collection
Courtesy of @kfry781724 on Twitter UB appeared as a hint on a recent episode of the beloved game show Jeopardy.
available in the Archives, documenting that someone at UB conceived this method of distinguishing elementary courses from advanced ones,” John Edens, the former university archivist, wrote in 2009. “But, neither has anything been located indicating UB copied the idea from another institution.” Either way, the shoutout earned the Queen City school recognition on national television, Reddit and the local Buffalo media. “It’s fun national exposure,” UB spokesperson John DellaContrada said in a UBNow story. “[B]ut it’s also a reminder that UB continues to innovate in higher education — from the creation of 101 courses in the 1920s to the creation of courses in artificial intelligence today.” Thursday wasn’t the first time UB earned acclaim for appearing on the show. In 2007, a 25-year-old East Amherst resident named Kevin Holbert became a two-time champion. The UB linguistics graduate chatted with Alex Trebek about his work on Khoi and San languages en route to $39,823 in cash earnings. Email: justin.weiss@ubspectrum.com