6:23 p.m. Fixing technical difficulties.

6:28 p.m. Matt Danna believes that the Parking and Transportation office needs to get more creative with their efforts. He mentions the upcoming change in RIT bus schedules.

6:28 p.m. Paul Solt, write-in candidate, is worried that the candidates aren’t going to be able to fulfill the goals they have set because a lot of them are unfulfilled goals from this year.

6:31 p.m. Asked about ways of raising additional funds to address those pet projects.

6:32 p.m. Matt Danna doesn’t believe that it is SG’s direct responsibility to come up with funding. Kari Hazzard states that a specific project that would reduce cost is reducing fire alarms (RIT pays $200 dollars for each unneccessary fire alarm.)

6:34 p.m. How would you reduce cost of books? Hazzard would like to help students find ISBN data for books and allowing the use of International Editions. Matt Danna would also like to move for the release of book’s ISBN information.

6:36 p.m. Why are we keeping a great number of reserved spots when there doesn’t seem to be a demand for them? Both parties agree that the balance of the reserve versus regular spots. However, Matt Danna believes that people who pay for reserved spots should always have spots readily available.

6:40 p.m. Matt Danna doesn’t agree that having the Orange party is the best idea. He would like the senators to be more diverse.

6:42 p.m. Five minute break.

6:49 p.m. Would you get rid of the “Dry Campus” Rule? If so how? Jackie Robinson wants to look into bringing D-Day (like at the University of Rochester) to promote safe and responsible drinking. Too many RIT students have been hospitalized because of binge drinking.

6:51 p.m. How will you get people to care about SG? Matt Danna thinks that SG can better by being more transparent, promoting what they do and keeping the website up-to-date. Kari Hazzard would like to see more blog updates and the creation of a SG Newsletter.

6:54 p.m. What was your role in the recent censorship of Distorter and, if elected, how would you approach this situation in the future? Kari Hazzard had no role in removing Distorter and doesn’t understand why it was also removed from Reporter’s website. Hazzard believes that Distorter needs to be humorous but also needs to be sensitive to the issues that students or employees might have. Matt Danna also said that he had no role in removing the Distorter from the stands but was part of those in SG who recommended its redistribution from within the Reporter Office. He believes that without this recommendation, Distorter would probably not have been allowed to be redistributed. Danna would like to see the Distorter be more funny rather than shocking.

6:57 p.m. Do you think that having Matt Danna elected as President would cause SG to be less diverse? Hazzard believes that most of Danna’s campaign is an exact replica of the Wolf-Danna campaign last year.

6:59 p.m. Who the heck is orange? “We are Orange,” states Ben Isserlis. Orange is a political party including Kari Hazzard for SG President, Ben Isserlis for SG vice president, Alaina Somers for GCCIS Senator, Zac Bittner for KGCOE Senator, Lee Anna Fitzgerald for CIAS Senator, Diano Forero for COS Senator, Everret Brown for COLA Senator, Kat Reisdorf for Women’s Senator. Matt Danna restates his belief that having political parties causes diversity issues.

7:04 p.m. Why did you bring up the issue of fire alarms first? Kari Hazzard believes that this is an issue that hasn’t been tackled by any candidate before but doesn’t believe it is the most important point in their campaign. It just happened to be the first issue discussed.

7:05 p.m. How can we expect you to be more transparent when you haven’t posted the SG minutes online in three months? (According to the bylaws, they must be updated within 72 hours, which hasn’t been the case.) Matt Danna states that it was a problem with an assigned staff member.

7:09 p.m. “Going green” is a phrase overused on campus. How would you determine its success in quantifiable goals? Kari Hazzard would like to reduce paper waste. Hazzard cites that there should be a greater initiative for composting and shorten power timeout periods. Matt Danna would like to address the issue of keeping every computer in every lab on 24/7. He doesn’t believe that waiting another two minutes for a computer to start up is such a big deal.

7:12 p.m. Locking in tuition is something that SG is currently looking in to. Do you plan on continuing that effort? Matt Danna would like to address it again but believes that the recession is going to impact that decision. However, other schools currently have a program in place and it should definitely be looked at.

7:15 p.m. Five minute break.

7:19 p.m. Jackie Robinson leaves for a midterm.

7:19 p.m. How do you feel about building a relationship with Rochester General Hospital? Matt Danna is excited with the partnership and believes that it will impact the student health center greatly. In addition, he believes that it will bring many opportunities for even those in engineering and computing backgrounds. Kari Hazzard is also excited because it would be beneficial to those who are in Pre-med programs.

7:21 p.m. Kari Hazzard would like to increase the variety of mock meats and increase the vegetarian/vegan selection. Matt Danna would like to extend dining services hours. In relation, Kari Hazzard would like to look into have a 24-hour dining option. (Maybe extending the hours of the Grind)

7:25 p.m. What do you see SG’s role in RIT’s governance in the future? Matt Danna believes that it will remain the same. Kari Hazzard would like to increase SG influence in making changes. At the moment, the three bodies (including both Academic Senate and SG) all get an equal vote.

7:30 p.m. The sound of drums is drowning out the candidate’s responses.

7:31 p.m. Kari Hazzard stated that her campaigns flyers were printed on recycled paper. In fact, the flyers request that the student body recycle them. This is directed towards FMS. Ben Isserlis states that he will take down Orange’s flyers. Matt Danna states that his flyers were also printed on 100% recycled paper from Staples.

7:35 p.m. What is your weakest characteristic? Matt Danna believes that he has a problem when people are not happy and that he knows he cannot please everyone. From his past experience, Danna he has learned that there is no one solution for one problem. Kari Hazzard says she’s a pragmatist and tries to look at everything from a realistic perspective.

7:38 p.m. Matt Danna would rather have more television screens on campus than flyers. It would be more eco-friendly.

7:39 p.m. How would you try to include students housed at the RIT Inn more? Kari Hazzard would like to extend bus schedules for students at the Inn but does not know how to address scheduling more events there.

7:42 p.m. Has there been any initiative in the past to regulate the cost of health products on campus? How would tackle that in the future? Matt Danna believes that prices should be re-evaluated especially since there will be more convenience stores on campus next year. Kari Hazzard would like to restore bus services to Wegman’s.

7:45 p.m. The candidates discuss the controversy of posting, responding, and deleting posts on each other’s Facebook campaign groups. Matt Danna states that he doesn’t have the time to bicker online. Kari Hazzard doesn’t believe that she was making destructive comments.

7:48 p.m. Kari Hazzard believes that leadership is an action. Matt Danna believes it is both a quality and an action. Ben Isserlis would like to see the dictionary definition of the word.

7:49 p.m. Matt Danna thinks that it is embarrassing that there is a lack of wireless connection on campus and would like to improve that next year.

7:51 p.m. Closing remarks.

Remember, voting begins next week: http://sg.rit.edu/vote

Jamie Douglas

I’d like to share a revelation that I have had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern, do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure.

Those were the words of Agent Smith as he tried to hack into Morpheus’ mind in The Matrix .

I have always wondered if the earth was a part of a larger organism the way an organ is part of us. It is interesting to think of our growth as cancerous. A group of renegade cells growing out of control. If you look close enough, that is what we have become.

I recently took a sustainability/carbon footprint test for an Introduction to Ethics class to see how many Earth-like planets we would need if everyone should live as I did. I was shocked when the results came back as 4.9 planets to sustain my lifestyle. I was more shocked when they said it takes six planets to sustain an average American lifestyle. It was interesting to watch some of my classmates turn up results like eight and nine planets. You begin to wonder how people live. The population of the planet is growing exponentially with low child mortality rates and high birth rates. It is becoming apparent that we are in danger of quickly running out of planet.

We are running out of resources and we are running out fast. This has become a major issue in our society; it has transition beyond the argument of whether we are destroying the planet by our activities to what measures we should take to mitigate the problem. RIT has wasted no time on this issue and has pioneered a Sustainability major as well as encouraged more green activity on campus. There are more bicycles on campus and more people take the bus as supposed to driving. Even the freshman book this year (Deep Economy by Bill McKibben) was environmentally conscious.

In many scientific and philosophical circles, the deterioration of our planet is seen as an ethical issue, a moral dilemma to be precise, and it is our duty to help save the planet. So how many planets does it take to sustain your lifestyle? How much do you pay attention to environmentally friendly products? Well, if you have been in the dark all of this time it is not too late. As we transition into a new year, add “going green” to your resolution list since sustaining the earth has become a moral issue into which you have to put some effort into. That is, if you want anything from Santa next year.

Keynote speaker Mark Glaser addresses the Kansas City National College Media Convention on October 31.

This past weekend, nine members of the Reporter staff attended the National College Media Convention in Kansas City, a gathering of collegiate journalists from across the country. The major theme of the convention: technology is changing journalism.

Though the quality of the discourse throughout the convention varied widely, Mark Glaser, executive editor of MediaShift and a keynote speaker at the convention*, did a pretty good job of outlining the major points (taken directly from his opening speech):

1. The audience knows more than the journalist. News is a conversation and not a lecture.

2. People are in control of their media experience.

3. Anyone can be a media creator or remixer.

4. Traditional media must evolve or die.

5. Despite censorship, the story will get out.

6. Amateur and professional journalists need to work together.

7. Journalists need to be multi-platform (and entrepreneurial).

As RIT students, I’m sure this news comes as no surprise to you. We generally take it for granted that we will be able to personalize our media experiences.

For example, if we happen to be busy on any given Saturday night, we’re certainly not going to wait around for a rerun before we see Tina Fey’s latest performance — whether we’re interested in watching it or not, we’ve come to expect availability in other locations. If we want to see that episode, we’ll TiVo it, or torrent it, or find a streaming video online.

For us, this is second nature; we do it almost without thinking. For traditional media outlets, however, it’s not quite as easy as that. It’s mind-blowing, game-changing stuff. It’s exciting, sure, but it has also made them quite anxious.

In the sessions that followed the keynote speaker, there were a lot of good tips given on how to take advantage of the changes that are going on, but as the weekend wore on, one thing became very clear: nobody has really got it figured out yet.

This new media landscape is uncharted territory, and there is no definitive set of directions to get us to where we want to go. Stumbling around in the dark is pretty much the only option at this point. For the most part, professional media organizations are just as lost as student media organizations.

According to Beckman, it is our generation that needs to lead the way. Our understandings of social media are on totally different levels, and there is a lot that our generation can teach the older generations about it. This, supposedly, is going to be the key to figuring this all out. I don’t know about all that, but you’ve got to figure it’s worth a shot.

Thoughts?

Laura Mandanas
Editor in Chief

Corrected 1/01/2009: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Rich Beckman was the keynote speaker who gave the seven major points. Mark Glaser did. Return to corrected text.

Voting for change? Or are you putting country first? Either way, here are three RIT events that you can partake of.

Vote Shuttle

RIT is sponsoring a special shuttle to the polls. This shuttle will make a continuous loop from the SAU, Gracies, and Crossroads to the polling location for campus. It’s supposed to run until polls close at 8 p.m.

Free Ice Cream

To reward voting Ben & Jerry’s is giving away free ice cream. You don’t actually have to vote to get some, but wouldn’t you feel dirty if you didn’t?

Results Watch

Both the RITz and the RIT Library’s Idea Factory have multiple screens set up to watch the election results come in. The Library’s event starts at 6 p.m. and will include free pizza.

The brainstorming process for Reporter articles is all over the map. Much of the work, in terms of defining content for each issue, is done by the individual section editors (News, Features, Leisure, and Sports/Views) prior to our weekly editorial board meetings. I’d say about 80% of the magazine originates in their brains. The other 20% is pitched by other editors or by writers.

I’m never quite sure where my own article ideas come from. A professor could say something engaging in class or I could read something in the New York Times and then days or weeks later, I’m sure it will have turned over enough times in my head to produce some original strain of thought that somehow morphs into an article. It’s an ill-defined process. Most of the time, it feels like magic.

Except for the article I wrote this week. I know exactly where the androgyny article came from. The moment that Laura announced that we’d be doing a Gender Issue, my skin started crawling. The article ideas that people had made me more uncomfortable than I have ever felt while sitting in the newsroom, which by now has become my second home. Their ideas were solid, though, and initially I had trouble identifying the source of my discontent. And then it hit me: The magazine pitted men against women, strict masculinity against strict femininity. And I didn’t fit into this issue. I’d been with the magazine for over three years and yet I was about to be written out of it.

I was stressed. My heart pounded louder and louder in my chest as the brainstorming went on. Then I realized that most of the editorial board hasn’t had my life experience, and they probably never think about gender norms. My life, by contrast, is engulfed in them. There was a gaping hole in their knowledge of gender and I was the one to fill it.

So, I told them what I thought the magazine was missing: What we needed was an article about the gray area between genders. The board seemed to like the idea; it was approved with little to no discussion.

Alright, I’ll admit it. I lied to the board when I made my article pitch. I said we needed the androgyny article to bridge the magazine’s two parts, and to make sure we weren’t alienating readers who held alternative gender identities. I didn’t care about tying the issue together, and I didn’t give a damn about alienating readers. I cared about Reporter alienating me.

The point I’m trying to underscore here is that Reporter isn’t created by some vast pool of informants or by some weird telepathic network that blankets this campus. 100% of this magazine is defined by a small number of overworked and underpaid students who each bring their unique perspectives and motives to the table. That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s media bias within stories, but it certainly does mean that the magazine has a focus that may not reflect the campus at large. If you think that’s the case, great! Drop a line to one of those four section editors with a story idea you’d rather see. 80% of the magazine comes from their brains, after all. Someone should be keeping them from writing you out of your own college magazine.

I’m in the home stretch. With 24 days left until I graduate from this Institute of Technology, I find myself suddenly afflicted with the dreaded Senioritis. (A note to my professors, parents, and future employers: I am still getting my work done, just… more slowly than usual.) I blame a variety of sources for my inability to focus on my studies. Today, more than ever, the culprit is Snooker videos on YouTube.

Snooker is a game that looks a lot like pool, and plays sort of like pool with some key differences. There are ten red balls on the table, and then a variety of colored balls. You must sink a red ball before you sink a colored ball. The black one is worth the most (seven points). Whenever you pocket a colored ball, it is placed back on the table. Like in pool, if you miss a shot, your opponent gets a crack at the table. When all the red balls are sunk, the colored ones may be pocketed for good and the game ends.

To score 147 points, you have to sink a red, then the black, then a red, then the black again until all reds are off the table. Then, you gotta sink all the rest of the colored balls. This is called a maximum break, and it looks like this:

(Look especially to the shot at 2:26)

The guy in that video, Ronnie O’Sullivan, is the world record holder for maximum breaks. He’s done that nine times in professional play, including in this tournament earlier this year:

This last one is a compilation of Snooker Flukes — shots that the players messed up but somehow managed to sink anyway. These are all good, but 1:55 is pure gold.

Expect my posts in the upcoming days and weeks to be in a similar vein, less thoughtful and more distracting.

The New York Times has a piece on RTS’ recent fare decrease. It’s an interesting read in its own right, but it also contains this nugget:

“In Rochester, the transit system has also formed agreements with private businesses and colleges. It runs shuttle buses on the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology and provides special weekend service to the campus, for which it receives about $1 million a year.”

I was always curious about the RIT-RTS shuttle arrangement. I still can’t help wondering if a more comprehensive shuttle service couldn’t be provided for less, or not much more.

This morning, as I was washing my hair with cheap bar soap and using what is now a 6-month-old disposable razor, it occurred to me: I am poor. Between rent payments, electric bills, and other (usually unforeseen) expenses, I barely have enough left over to buy proper shampoo; I’m left dousing myself in household cleaning products and constantly scavenging the campus for free food.

When Bill Nye the Science Guy visited the RIT campus yesterday, this is precisely why his arguments made much more sense to my soap-smothered head; they really struck a nerve. He showed pictures of his house, the roof of which is lined with solar panels, and discussed various ways that he is actively conserving both energy and money. At the end of the day, his gas and electric bill is $7.00, while mine is a whopping $70.00 (as I’m embarrassed to admit). This “do it your own damn self” attitude which I so admire is seemingly cost-effective.

Nye posited that climate change and global warming have become a battle between theory and myth, left and right, in this country. Quite sadly, this is all too true. As the first American born into my family, I hear constant complaints from British, German, and Irish relatives who poke fun at the fact that “Most Americans don’t even know what a fortnight is,” and, more seriously, “They seem to take offense at climate change research.” All it takes is a television documentary with a point shimmying the blame off of humans for someone to be convinced.

Nye extended his point to include a place where we are all a bit wounded: our wallets. He stressed the fact that, through developing alternative energy sources, we could all “get rich.” It’s a little-known fact that massive tax incentives — as well as lower energy bills — are provided to those who have solar panels installed on their homes.

According to my father, who is currently installing solar panels on his 1000 square foot business warehouse, the initial cost is around $25,000. As we’ve seen throughout the past decade — with USB flash drives, MP3 players, and even the iPhone — that price is likely to drop over 50% as more research and improvements are made to the products themselves. This is the part where richness steps in; someone is capable of increasing the panels’ efficiency, after all.

In light of Nye’s visit yesterday, I have decided to conduct a small experiment of my own kind. $25,000 is a bit too much for my budget, so I am instead going to craft my way through a modified solar-powered electronics charger (found here) for under $160. I’ve come a long way since the days of guinea pig wheel-powered generators, and so will we, one day.

This is RIT, so I have to assume that I’m the last person on campus to have caught this clip of the Colbert Report. His number one ThreatDown last night was Zombies v. Humans. Considering it’s all the rage on this campus, I figure this could be a quasi-shoutout for our lovely Brick City. Queue it up to 3:16 to get to the good stuff.

Alright, Ilsa, you make a good point. However, I think that if you’re hankering for a good read, the New York Times Bestseller list is a fine place to start the search. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was a top-selling novel, after all, and damn can that woman write. Then again, Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye make frequent appearances as well.

So, where’s a voracious reader to turn? My bookshelf. Here’s three of my all-time faves. They may not be the newest books to hit shelves, but they’re certainly not ancient, either. All of them are available for purchase at the Park Point bookstore as well. Bonus!

1. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathon Safran Foer) – I’m always hesitant to tell people what this book is about, because the one sentence-description is a real turn-off. Experimental at points, it tells the story of Oskar Schell, an eccentric 9 year-old who roams New York City on a super secret mission to find the lock that fits a strange key left to him by his father, who died in the attack on the Twin Towers. Yes, this is a piece of post-9/11 literature, but it’s not depressing; Foer has an exceptional ability to weave humor into drama, making this book, at times, into a side-splitter.

2. Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri) – In this collection of short stories, Lahiri tells a series of tales of Indians and Indian Americans as they struggle to make their lives in America. The stories can carry themselves, no doubt; each one is laden with its own emotional voyage and well-constructed characters. What sets this collection apart, however, is Lahiri’s writing style. Her prose glides gently across the page in ways I find difficult to describe. Reading one of her novels is like drinking a cold glass on water on a hot summer day.

3. Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) - Rounding out my trio is a non-fiction work by Malcolm Gladwell, a famous writer for The New Yorker. Blink is about the “power of thinking without thinking,” about a force that Gladwell labels as “rapid cognition.” Using examples ranging from racism in police shootings to the unbelievable unpopularity of Kenna, this book dissects the power and the danger of our snap judgments.

Anyone else have any good reads?