OPINION • PAGE A4
PHOTO • PAGE A6
Good or Bad? Read about JUULs and how they stack up against other nicotine products.
See photos of the International Festival this weekend.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2018
WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
GIVING BACK
WKU alum forges his path to success
VOLUME 94, ISSUE 06
Hackers go phishing for WKU account information BY REBEKAH ALVEY HERALD.NEWS@WKU.EDU
his early childhood, but he said his family yearned to move to a better area even if it wasn’t the most conventional move for them to make. “We were renting an old, raggedy house, and we wanted to move to the projects because we felt that would be a step up,” Nichols said. “But because my dad worked all these jobs, we made like $50 more than the financial cut-off to be able to move into the projects. I remember how devastating that was, but my dad was able to buy a house that sort of outlined the projects through a government program.” Growing up, Nichols played basketball at Parker-Bennett Elementary School. Nichols said police officers volunteered at the facility during after-school hours so kids would stay off the streets. One of the officers who volunteered at Parker-Bennett also worked security for varsity basketball games at Bowling Green High School. Nichols said the officer told the school’s varsity coach about a “young black kid down in the projects that
An email addressed from President Timothy Caboni was sent to faculty July 18 with instructional assignments discussing an Amazon business account for WKU. The problem? Caboni never sent the email. Phishing is a form of hacking through an email scam. Someone can appear to be a trusted source to trick recipients into providing valuable information, commonly email credentials. “By using the victim’s email account to send subsequent phishing messages, the messages appear more trustworthy and hackers increase their success rate,” Greg Hackbarth, assistant vice president for Information Technology Services, said. Hackbarth said there have been several phishing messages targeting faculty and staff within the past months. In these emails, recipients are asked to enter login credentials which Hackbarth said can be used to send additional phishing messages or to hack an account. He said as people enter credentials, the scam becomes more difficult to recognize. Hackbarth said that after the initial scam, phishing can grow. Hackers start by using their own email, but once they have credentials to another system they can start sending phishing messages to accounts through a trusted email or system. Ultimately, hackers are seeking financial information. Hackbarth said by posing as a recipient’s family member, friend, employer or business, they can ask for money or reset passwords and information to have money directly sent to them. Journalism professor Mac McKerral said he got a faculty-all email a few weeks ago from someone who identified as working in Student Services, including a bio at the bottom. It included directions to click on a link in the email, and McKerral said he clicked on it. Immediately, a Firefox blocker popped up and warned him not to go further. “The people who are sending these things are getting really sophisticated,” McKerral said. “I mean, this
SEE GEORGE NICHOLS • PAGE A3
SEE EMAIL PHISHING • PAGE A3
PHOTO COURTESY OF WKU’S UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHER CLINTON LEWIS • HERALD
George Nichols is greeted by ISEC director Martha Sales and her staff during a visit in November 2017 following his philanthropic gift to the center.
BY DRAKE KIZER HERALD.NEWS@WKU.EDU
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ast fall, a group of around 10 students huddled near the television inside the lounge at the Cynthia & George Nichols III Intercultural Student Engagement Center on campus. George Nichols III, one of the center’s namesakes, was seated alongside his wife, Cynthia Jean, at the head of the gathering. Nichols and his wife went around the room and asked each ISEC scholar to answer one simple question for him: “What can we do for you?” Alexis Watkins, a sophomore music performance major, said she was worried at the time that she might not be able to return to WKU in the spring. So, when Nichols got to her, she asked him for a scholarship. “By the end of the meeting, everybody had told them what they wanted,” Watkins said. “Mr. Nichols told me, ‘I’m going to pay for your tuition next semester.’ Then he granted what everybody else had
asked for too. After that, honestly, I cried. I was shocked, and I just had to hug them. I called my sister and told her, ‘Somebody just legit offered to pay my tuition.’” Watkins, who comes from a single-parent household, said Nichols’ gift gave her the security to further her higher education career without having to worry about placing a financial burden on her mother. For Nichols, he feels fortunate that he has the opportunity to help others. He said he and his wife are always looking for ways they can help somebody have a chance to succeed. “Every time I look around, there’s someone or something that is being provided or given to me that I define [as] a blessing,” Nichols said. “The only thing I know to do is to give that blessing away. The amazing thing for CJ and I is that every time we give our blessings, we get more blessings, which means we need to give more blessings away.” Nichols, 58, was born and raised in Bowling Green. His family was poor and Nichols said his mother and father both worked extremely hard to make ends meet. Nichols lived on Main Street during
New study ranks WKU low in racial equality
BY EMILY DELETTER HERALD.NEWS@WKU.EDU
WKU’s Intercultural Student Engagement Center is taking a hard look at racial equity on campus following WKU’s “F” grade in a recent study from the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center. The study looked at 506 public, four-
year postsecondary institutions which more than 900,000 African-American undergraduate students attend. The schools are graded in four categories: representational equity, gender equity, completion equity and student-to-faculty ratios. WKU received a “B” in representation equity, which measures black student enrollment to reflect representation among 18- to 24-year-old citizens in that state. According to the report,
9.7 percent of students at WKU are black, while 10.6 percent of 18-to-24 year olds in Kentucky are black. WKU also received a “B” in gender equity, which is measured by the proportion of black women’s and black men’s enrollment in the undergraduate student population compared to the national gender enrollment distribution across all racial and ethnic groups. WKU received a “C” in black stu-
dent-to-black faculty ratio, which is 35-1, according to the report. Every other Kentucky university received either an “A” or a “B”, ranging in ratio from 30:1 to 12:1. WKU and the University of Kentucky both received an “F” in completion equity, which measures the extent to which black students’ sixyear graduation rates match overall SEE ISEC • PAGE A3