Massachusetts Daily Collegian: March 6, 2014

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GREAT escape PAGE 6

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THE MASSACHUSETTS

A free and responsible press

DAILY COLLEGIAN DailyCollegian.com

Thursday, March 6, 2014

A world without waste

News@DailyCollegian.com

The final stretch of senior year Completing the last year bucket list By shelBy ashline Collegian Staff

ALEX LINDSAY/COLLEGIAN

PLAN founder Alex Freid discussed the amount of trash that we accumulated daily and how we can resuse what we waste to create a better environment.

Environmental activist gives advice By Katrina BorofsKi Collegian Staff

Talks on trash, consumerism and resource depletion commenced at the “Zero-Waste Movement” event on Monday night. Hosted by the Sustainable UMass Action Coalition in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall,students welcomed guest speaker Alex Freid, who shared his experiences and insight on pressing environmental

issues. A recent graduate of the University of New Hampshire, 22-year-old Freid is the founder and director of the Post-Landfill Action Network, also known as PLAN. “Back in high school, I did some goofy activism,” Freid said of his deep-rooted interest in the environment. “I’ve been involved in environmental and social justice activism for years now. Eventually that lead me to this.” Freid presented pictures of himself in high school

alongside a plastic bottle recycling project and numerous other environmental initiatives. His work at college was inspired specifically by trash. “In an average month, we throw away 25 tons of trash at UNH,” Freid explained, while sharing images of flooding trash bins and dumpsters at the UNH campus. “We really wanted to find a way to solve this problem,” Freid said. For this reason, Freid began the “Trash 2 Treasure” project, where

he and a group of students collected things students would normally throw away at the end of the academic year, stored them over the summer and hosted a sale in the fall. The first Trash 2 Treasure event took place in 2011. “To summarize, we reused 110 tons. We saved the University $10,000 in disposable fees,” Freid said. Similarly, the University of Massachusetts is planning “New2U,” a tag sale scheduled to take place in see

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Serving the UMass community since 1890

With the end of the semester and school year approaching, graduating seniors at the University of Massachusetts are looking to make the most of their time in the next nine weeks before graduation. Some seniors have developed personal “graduation bucket lists” full of things they want to accomplish before leaving UMass. They are looking back, reflecting on their college experiences and looking forward to their futures. Emily Messing, an operations and information management major from Townsend, said that she wants to try to eat at every restaurant on North Pleasant Street, and also try every kind of pizza offered at Antonio’s Pizza. “I’ve probably tried at least 20 different (kinds of pizza) by now,” Messing said. She added that her task is particularly difficult because Antonio’s Pizza regularly debuts new topping combinations. In addition, Messing said that she has started hiking mountains on the weekends. “That’s one of the cool parts about living here, there’s a lot of cool places to go hiking,” Messing said. “I’m trying to just take everything in before I have to leave.” Messing is currently applying for jobs within her field. She explained that her ideal job would involve work-

ing for a large manufacturing company, where her position would entail ordering the parts, keeping track of transportation for the parts as well as the finished products and charting demand for that product. Some of the companies that she has applied to include the Pratt & Whitney aerospace company and the toy company Hasbro. Messing said that, if possible, she’d like to continue living in Western Massachusetts. She added that she has mixed feelings about graduating. “I’m definitely going to miss it here, but I’m also excited to see what’s next,” Messing said. She advises underclassmen to take advantage of every opportunity that comes along. “Enjoy every minute ... Go to every party you’re invited to and go to every sporting event you can. … Talk to everyone. Join a club you would never think of joining,” she said. Messing added, “Maximize your time here because when it’s over, you’re not going to have another chance.” Caroline Eng, an animal science major from Westhampton, N.Y., has similar advice for college students. “Do whatever you can on campus; involve yourself in everything,” Eng said. “It’ll be great for senior year when you have to write your resume and you’re sitting there going, ‘What did I do in the last four years?’” “UMass is great (when it comes to clubs and other see

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Speaker for Sderot discusses Revised SAT exam will impact of a city under attack drop essay requirement

Bombings causing anxiety in children

Changes to test to be enacted in 2016

By CeCilia Prado Collegian Staff

By larry Gordon

Noam Bedein, Director of the Sderot Media Center (SMC), presented a lecture at the Isenberg School of Management on Tuesday about the current state of Sderot and the media surrounding it. Sderot is a city localized in Southern Israel. Since the Gaza War in 2008 and 2009, Sderot has been the target of over 20,000 Qassan rocket attacks originating from the Gaza strip. Mainstream media coverage of this situation remains scarce. The Sderot Media Center is a non-profit organization and media advocacy center dedicated to bringing to light the conditions of the everyday life of the residents of Sderot and Southern Israel who are constant victims of Gaza rockets. Bedein founded the Sderot Media Center for the Western Negev Ltd., and serves as a photojournalist, lecturer and offers conferences to international gov-

LOS ANGELES — As part of a major overhaul of the SAT college entrance exam, test-takers starting in 2016 will no longer be required to write an essay, the College Board announced Wednesday. However, an essay-writing test still will be offered, and many colleges may demand that applicants take it and submit the score. With that change, the main SAT will be condensed to two sections from the current three, and the top score possible will be 1,600, as it was for many decades. The present 2,400-point maximum was introduced with the start of the required essay seven years ago. The new optional essay test will be graded separately on a scale that is still under consideration, said officials of the College Board, which owns the widely used exam. Those shifts, officials said, are part of wider effort to better align the exam with what students learn in high school

Los Angeles Times

CHRISTINA YACONO/COLLEGIAN

Noam Bedein disucsses his organization’s efforts to help Sderot’s citizens. ernment officials, diplomats, international press and students groups from all around the globe. During the presentation, the CEO and photojournalist for SMC addressed the success that his company has had at exposing and fighting the rocket attacks terrorizing the Israeli city. According to Bedein, his organization has been working inexhaustibly in order to restore the city’s peace. Their plan is to achieve this through the use of journalism to create empathy and awareness among the international community.

“Sderot is the only city in the entire Western World in which the entire civilian population has been targeted and affected by rocket threats,” said Bedein. The SMC has presented their collection of material and evidence to the many international organizations, such as the Goldstone Committee of the U.N., and publications such as the New York Times, CNN and Fox News. Throughout the presentation, Bedein displayed multiple videos and pictures of see

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and will need in college - and away from the advantages they may gain from expensive private tutoring. For example, the revised sections in reading will drop their most obscure vocabulary words and instead “focus on words students will use over and over again,” said College Board President David Coleman. The math problems will be less theoretical and more linked to reallife questions. “While we build on the best of the past, we commit today that the redesigned SAT will be more focused and useful, more clear and open than ever before,” Coleman said at a meeting in Austin, Texas, that was broadcast over the Internet. While the test sponsors long had argued that coaching does not help students significantly, Coleman acknowledged that many people believe students who can afford tutoring have an advantage. “It is time for the College Board to say in a clear voice that the culture and practice of costly test preparation that has arisen around admission exams drives the perception of inequality and injustice in

our country,” he said. To help address that issue, the College Board is starting a partnership with the online Khan Academy to offer a free series of practice exams and videos about good test-taking practices. The Silicon Valleybased Khan Academy has become one of the most popular online-education sites, particularly in its math offerings. Analysts said the steps arise from both the College Board’s self-interest and public interest. Two years ago, the rival ACT – which most colleges also accept – surpassed the SAT in the number of test takers across the nation. About 1.6 million students took the SAT last year and more than 1.7 million the ACT, with some taking both as insurance. In some ways, the new SAT will become more like the ACT, which has an optional writing section that many colleges require. The SAT also will switch to the ACT model of grading, in which only correct answers are counted and students are not dinged for wrong ones. see

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