Viral catcalling video draws attention of UB students, faculty
“Art=Text=Art” exhibit open until Jan. 11 THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
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Volume 64 No. 34
UB downsizes construction plans for campuses AMANDA LOW
SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS TOOL LIBRARY
Alana Barricks painted her “Queen City” piece on the side of Slice of Italy, a pizza shop near South Campus.
UB College Republicans president doubles as a graffiti artist GABRIELA JULIA STAFF WRITER Alana Barricks isn’t afraid to admit she is the person on Facebook “everyone hates.” The poised, conservative girl would carry a gun in one hand and spray-paint can in the other. She’s also quick to share her political opinions on Facebook. “I’m not your average Republican,” said Barricks, a senior political science major and president of UB College Republicans. “I have a ton of tattoos.” Barricks joined UB College Republicans during her freshman year and is currently in her second term as president. She’s also the secretary of the New York State Federation of College Republicans and was the committee chair of the Black Student Union. Friends and family agree, Barricks isn’t the norm – but she doesn’t want to be. The graffiti artist and card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association
COURTESY OF MUSTAFA HUSSAIN
Alana Barricks, a senior political science major, is the president of UB College Republicans and a graffiti artist. She isn’t afraid to speak, or paint, her mind, even if it offends some people.
(NRA) said her biggest challenge as president is that many people regard her as one stereotype. She said politics are often seen as black and white, but there is a lot of room for gray areas. “The Republican Party has been made out to be the party of ‘old white men’ but that’s simply not true,” Barricks said. “We
are always continuing to fight for equality but media rhetoric is always bias.” In high school, Barricks was part of the speech and debate team, the cheerleading team and sang in a death metal band. Her father said that everyone from jocks to goths loved her. SEE GRAFFITI, PAGE 2
'Cross-dressing mayor' gets cross-examined by UB mock trial team UB hosts national mock trail competition SAMAYA ABDUS-SALAAM ASST. NEWS EDITOR
In a mock court case, the “mythical mayor” of Buffalo-Niagara enjoyed slipping into “something more comfortable” as part of his cross-dressing fetish. But when his mayoral opponent discovered this, she hired her drug addict halfbrother to acquire photographic evidence to force the mayor out of the election. This fabricated situation was heightened when the opponent did not pay her halfbrother for the job, so he conspired with the mayor to get the photos back – only if the mayor agreed to pay twice as much as the original job. Somehow the two half-siblings ended up unconscious, and the mayor was charged with conspiracy and attempted murder. Law students from 36 law schools across the country took on this case of mayoral conspiracy and attempted murder in the 11th annual Buffalo-Niagara Mock Trial Competition. UB hosted the event on Nov. 8-11. After the preliminary rounds Saturday and Sunday, 20 teams were left for the semifinals and finals. Each school’s team has four students. Last year, Northwestern University won the competition. This year, UB’s law school had two teams, but neither advanced to the semifinals. One team consisted of Amanda Cannavo, Ryan Poplawski, Gina Gramaglia and Kevin Cannizzaro. The second team included Sean Carberry, Sidney Mosher,
On Nov. 8-11, law students from across the country traveled to Buffalo to compete in the 11th annual Buffalo-Niagara Mock Trial Competition, which is hosted by UB. COURTESY OF AMY ATKINSON
Christopher Berloth and Alison Camp. The semifinal and final teams were from Creighton University, Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, Fordham University, St. John’s University, Nova Southeastern University, DePaul University and Faulkner University. The competition pits two members against two of the same team. Each pair will switch between being on the prosecution and defense. Judge Thomas Franczyk, a judge for the Erie County Court, creates the cases for the Buffalo-Niagara Mock Trial Competition each year and helps coach the UB teams. “I want them to have an in-depth fact pattern with a lot of layers in it and a lot of legal issues,” he said. The convoluted storyline requires the
members of mock trial to sort through the information, pulling out the relevant facts and setting aside ones that are just filler. At the same time, teams have to identify “the legal issues and the evidentiary issues so they can argue the case and present it in court,” Franczyk said. Students prepare for the case during the semester before the competition. Based on their performance and a trial technique course offered through the law school, a team of four students is formed. Cannavo, a third-year law student, said the group prepared for more than eight weeks, including meeting formally four times per week and many additional hours expanding their case and developing their skills. SEE MOCK TRIAL, PAGE 2
UB is more than $500 million short of what it needs to finish its original construction and renovation plans across all three campuses. The university has hit its spending cap for capital projects and recently presented a new plan with revised expenditures. The original Five-Year Capital Plan allocated $404 million for projects on North Campus, $136 million for South Campus and $24 million for the downtown campus. It also had already allocated $375 million for the new School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “There’s a queue actually that’s much larger than [UB] can pay,” said President Satish Tripathi of the university’s pending projects during Monday’s UB Council meeting. Now the university is approaching the construction costs “year to year,” rather than on a five-year plan. The Debt Reform Act of 2000 restricts the amount of money SUNY schools can spend per year. Because of this, UB is now planning on spending less money to accommodate the spending cap. In the 2014 fiscal year, for example, UB received $49 million from SUNY, but was only allowed to spend $23.5 million of that given amount. UB received no funding in 2013, but the unused money from each year is rolled over to the next. “We’ve taken small amounts of our critical maintenance money and put it toward small projects that are part of those larger capital projects to keep us moving forward toward our longerterm plan,” Laura Hubbard, vice president for finance and administration, said in an email. Hubbard presented the revised plan to the UB Council Monday in its second meeting of the year. The adjusted amounts now include $26.4 million for North Campus and $14.6 million for South Campus. There are no funds for the downtown campus in the adjusted budget, but the medical school is still expected finish by late 2016 or early 2017. UB didn’t adjust the more than $300 million allocated to the medical campus. Hubbard said the adjusted plan does not include the demolition of the Cary-Farber-Sherman complex, the current medical school. Demolition of certain buildings is the “ultimate goal” because it is more cost-effective than renovation, she said. “Unfortunately, often one has to renovate those spaces to make them more usable,” Hubbard said. “We’re looking at ways we can do that with smaller amounts of money.” UB is still planning on moving the Graduate School of Education and the School of Social Work to South Campus once the medical schools have moved downtown. About $13 million out of the $26.4 million for North Campus is going toward the Heart of the Campus project. This project plans to renovate Norton Hall, Talbert Hall and Capen Hall as well as to create spaces “designed as a continuous environment in support of the discovery process,” according to UB’s website. Other current construction projects include the $25 million renovation of Haynes Hall and the demolition of the Buffalo Materials Research Center, which was used to house nuclear reactors from 1960-94. All radioactive waste was removed in 2005. Hubbard told the council the university will try to reestablish the five-year plan, as well as update plans for North and South Campus projects. email: news@ubspectrum.com