The Utah Statesman, April 25, 2016

Page 1

Monday, April 25, 2016 www.usustatesman.com (435)-797-1742 Free single copy

SPORTS | Broncos and Brooms

Walk off homer leads to softball series sweep over Boise State.

SPORTS | We are the champions

STUDENT LIFE | True Aggie Night

Men’s tennis earns first-ever MW title in record-setting season.

Thousands of students and alumni gather around Block A to celebrate the history of an Aggie tradition.

see PAGE 6

see PAGE 6

see PAGE 3

Too good to be true: Housing scammers target students

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY Johnny Morris Student Housing on 6th east with for rent sign posted in front. House pictured is not known to be a scam. By Miranda Lorenc STAFF WRITER

With summer approaching, many students

that is located close to campus or downtown

Logan that is pet friendly, spacious and cheap, and they email the people who posted the ad. “We’ll email them and they’ll send this big,

are searching for housing, and they often turn

long email back about how they’re out of the

Craigslist. Some deals are better than others,

reach you,” Allan said.

to listing websites like KSL Classifieds and

and some are just too good to be true. That’s

country or out of the states and they can’t

In the email, they’ll also mention that they’d

because often times, they are.

originally put the property up for sale, he said,

deal,” said Ashley Blad, whose husband Allan

they were looking for. The scammer asked

“(Scams) always seems like a really good

Blad is a sophomore in undeclared business.

“Like, the price of it is significantly lower than a lot of similar-looking houses would be,

but the realtor wasn’t cooperating with what

them not to call the realtor on the for-sale sign in front of the property.

Those are are red flags that indicate the

especially for pet-friendly.”

listing is probably a fraud, Ashley said.

for a new place to live through Craigslist.

communicate through email, occasionally

Ashley said she and Allan have been looking

Occasionally, they find a good-looking place

Another red flag is that scammers will only through phone, but never in person.

Ecology speaker brings Tundra and Drylands research Meredith said. “Dr. Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi By Jillian McCarthy STAFF WRITER

Dr. Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi from the

University of Texas at El Paso was this week’s guest speaker at Utah State University’s Ecology Seminar Series on Wednesday.

Darrouzet-Nardi's talk titled "Tundra to

Drylands: Cross-biome contrasts in soil biogeochemistry."

His talk on Wednesday was geared to the

public and was followed with a catered social. His talk on Thursday will be a more in-depth talk on warming effects on CO2 exchange in semiarid soils with biological soil crusts and

will be held in the Merrill-Cazier Library room 154 at 4 p.m.

“We try to represent as many interests

within ecology that we possibly can, and one of the areas is soil biogeochemistry,” said

Gwendwr Meredith, a PhD student in environment and society and member of the Ecology Center Seminar Series Student Committee. “There are soil scientists here at USU and I

don’t remember when it was the last time we had a soil scientist come and talk.”

The committee is a democratic process that

selects scientists they think students, faculty and members of the USU community will

benefit from his or her scientific concepts.

They also arrange for the speakers to meet

with faculty and have lunches with graduate students who are interested.

“We try to get a group of speakers that are

diverse in where they are in their career,”

is quite new in his career and so we figured he

“Usually in the emails, they attach this

application-type thing that have kind of

was being used as a scam.

“All indicators showed me they were

personal-type questions that they want you to

probably from Africa somewhere and just

“Sometimes they ask for credit checks as well,

into thinking that the property was their

fill out and send back to them,” Ashley said. which is very dangerous.”

The scammers will do what they can to get

making money from people by deceiving them property,” he said.

The people behind the scam had informa-

victim to feel comfortable with them and then

tion about the property owners, some middle

said.

he said. They made up the rest of the informa-

ask for the first and last month’s rent, Ashley “So they’ll be like, ‘I can’t meet you, but if

you like the place, just send me, you know,

800 bucks and then you can move in on this

date,’” Allan said, “and then they just take off

information and a few pictures of the house,

tion about the interior and used pictures from other houses to make the listing seem more legitimate.

“They simply were looking to get first and

with their money.”

last month’s rent out of people,” he said. “They

Coldwell Banker Gold Key Realty, recently

off of each person they scammed.”

Ron Johnson, an associate broker at

discovered one his properties for sale in Logan

could potentially make $1000 to $5000 dollars see “Housing Scams” PAGE 8

Presidential Search:

Finding a new Stan

would be able to relate to grad students well.” Meredith said that she felt the seminar had

a great turnout for the Wednesday talk, and

the committee was able to fill up his schedule with meetings and lunches since Darrou-

zet-Nardi will be staying in the valley for the week.

“It is really good for students to see research

outside of USU and Utah in general so that

they can receive a broader scope of what their field in ecology is moving toward,” Meredith

said. “I think in particular, Anthony brought a perspective that is quite relatable to students because he is younger.”

Forrest Schoessow, a graduate student in the

Quinney College of Natural Resources and another member of the Series Student

Committee, said he thinks one of the greatest

things a university can do is promote diversity of thought.

“I try to attend as many scientific talks as

possible to extend my growth and learning

about environment and society in all direc-

tions of the world of geo sciences,” Schoessow said. “I study special analysis and so I am very interested in how things interact over space

and how different factors change as they go

across the landscapes. So it is always interesting to see how data is presented whenever

there is a special or temporal component, and I thought I could learn from this speech.”

see “Ecology” PAGE 8

PHOTO BY Johnny Morris The new presidential search panel holds open forum for Utah State’s students and faculty in the USU auditorum on Friday. This panel will help decide Stan Albrecht’s successor as president of the university. USU’s presidential search committee is comprised of 25 members representing all of the school’s campuses and the general public.


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