Vol. 61 NO. 78
ubspectrum.com
Monday, April 23, 2012
Inside The Spectrum
News
Professors Honored For Teaching Excellence On Wednesday afternoon students, faculty, and family members gathered in Baird Recital Hall to honor professors who have gone above the typical expectations of their students.
STORY ON PAGE 9
Life
REIMON BHUYAN /// THE SPECTRUM
Student Association Treasurer Sikander Khan moved $300,000 to a new line in the SA budget on March 22 after he had signed a contract with Virtual Academix on March 13.
SA Treasurer Resigns
Khan steps down following $300,000 Virtual Academix scandal
Fighting for a World Without Cancer The National Cancer Institute estimates in this year alone over 1.6 million people will hear the words: “you have cancer.” It is estimated that 577,190 will lose the battle.
STORY ON PAGE 5
Sports
AARON MANSFIELD Editor in Chief
Valdez. “The job, as I consider it, has been done. He has resigned; he is removed from office as of now.”
As of 1:50 p.m. on Friday afternoon, Sikander M. Khan has resigned from his position as SA Treasurer, effective immediately, following the $300,000 Virtual Academix scandal and police investigation.
“A week less of him working is money saved from the mandatory student activity fee – $250 is about two and half students’ mandatory activity fees that we just saved from somebody who wasn’t doing ethical work for the students and for the Senate that trusts in the treasurer’s words to make its decisions,” Valdez said.
Khan declined comment for the time being. The decision comes five days after the Senate began a petition to initiate Khan’s recall. At Sunday’s Senate meeting, the voting members chose to suspend Khan’s pay until the end of the school year.
“I feel that whether he resigned because he felt guilty or because he saw the petition – [either] is good enough for me,” said Senate Chair Darwinson
The SA Assembly backed the petition during its last meeting on Wednesday. Assembly Speaker Steven Jackson said he understands Khan’s reasons for quitting, as Jackson said Khan must’ve known the petition was going around and things were not in his favor. The Spectrum asked incoming SA President Travis Nemmer if he was surprised by the resignation.
“Yes and no,” Nemmer said. “There’s been so little communication on the topic that we didn’t know what to expect. It’s crossed my mind that he might resign; it’s crossed my mind that he might be holding out for a [StudentWide Judiciary] hearing. But at the end of the day, we didn’t really expect it.” Nemmer was in a meeting in the SA office when Khan entered, put his resignation on a table in front of Nemmer, and said: “Here you go, guys.”
Nemmer’s reply? He simply said: “All right.” “It was a shockingly unremarkable event,” Nemmer said. Current President JoAnna Datz sent out an email within an hour of the resignation. She appointed Treasurer-elect Justin Neuwirt to begin immediately. The Senate approved Datz’s appointment
unanimously during Sunday’s meeting; he will take office 8 days early. Engineering Coordinator Dan Pastuf, who wrote a new tentative budget when Khan failed to provide one to the Senate by the April 14 deadline, said he didn’t expect the resignation whatsoever, but he thinks the move is imperative for SA to move forward. He expected Khan to fight for his position. “I think [the resignation] was more on his own terms,” Pastuf said. “That he either got sick of dealing with it or decided: ‘the time has come, I’ve had enough.’” Email: news@ubspectrum.com Additional reporting by Managing Editor Rebecca Bratek
Equality Starts With ‘Her’ UB English professor fights racial discrimination LYZI WHITE Life Editor
Pollock Leads Off With Sense of Humor
There was one thing on 7-year-old Hershini Young’s mind: Paddleboats. She imagined herself and her father, Surendra Bhana, gliding across the waters in a small boat. She, of course, would do the paddling.
The baseball team always takes batting practice together before a game. But one spring day last year, junior outfielder Matt Pollock decided to spice up the ritual.
STORY ON PAGE 12 SATSUKI AOI /// THE SPECTRUM
Paul Stephan holds a side of “queso” from Moe’s Southwest Grill to represent every student’s expense to Environmental Affairs.
Check out The Spectrum’s end of the year N64 NBA Showtime tournament on page 10.
Inside OPINION
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LIFE
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ARTS | 7 | CLASSIFIEDS & DAILY DELIGHTS |11| SPORTS
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No Small ‘Environmental’ Affair LISA KHOURY and SARA DINATALE Senior News Editors
On Monday, April 16, Environmental Affairs Director Paul Stephan posted a YouTube video entitled: “60 Seconds to Save SA Environmental Affairs.” The video received hundreds of views, and a mass amount of students commented on the SA’s Facebook page. Student Association President-elect Travis Nemmer, along with his e-board, decided to consolidate the Environmental Affairs Department with Student Affairs for the 2012-13 academic year. The decision has been met with controversy within the SA. Nemmer said the facts have been misrepresented. CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
Bhana, a history professor, knew the boats were off limits to them, an Indian father and his multi-racial daughter. He could read the sign – White Persons Only. But his headstrong daughter, who believed she could be anything, wouldn’t listen. She snatched the money from her father’s hand and ran up to the dock with excitement. She remembers the worker glaring down at her. “Whites only,” she said. Young turned and walked away slowly. How could her father have let her humiliate herself like that? How could he have subjected her to such disappointment? How often would the disappointment continue for her?
REIMON BHUYAN /// THE SPECTRUM Hershini Young, an Associate Professor of English, educates her students about discrimination and racial awareness through her first person experiences as a child growing up in Durban, South Africa during the apartheid. But her early years shaped her – transforming her from that idealistic 7-yearold into a professor of English, passionate about race, discrimination, and awareness.
“There’s no point in learning all of this. If you don’t change the world we live in, then it’s just an exercise,” Young said. “The point is to learn about how we live and to make some changes.”
Young, now a confident, independent, and mystifying woman, walks through campus with her head held high while maintaining an ever-approachable demeanor. She teaches classes such as Contemporary African American Literature, Queer Studies, and Gender, Sexuality, and Race. Her research focuses on racial awareness.
Racial integration
Often. Young, now an associate professor of English at UB, spent her childhood in Durban, South Africa under apartheid. As a child, she lived in a different neighborhood from white children, went to different schools, and drank from different water fountains. Her parents, both academics, moved the family to the U.S. in 1987 when Young was 19.
Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, but for Young, issues of race persisted. When she moved to the U.S. she found that it wasn’t unlike her home country. It was also a tortured place where skin color, connections, and cash matter more than many admit. Young makes sure to teach that to her students.
When Durban started to experiment with integration in schools, Young was the first black child in an all-girl, all-white boarding school. To enter the school, Young first took an entry exam. They chose her because she scored the highest. Bhana chose the school because he thought it would benefit his daughter. He was not scared of how the new learning environment might affect Young – the goal was to provide a better education. That’s not to say the experience was painless. Many parents did not want their children to share a school, let alone a classroom, with a black child so they took their kids out of school before Young enrolled in classes. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2