Homeless and hopeful below the Alamance County poverty line
The human face of homelessness
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The human face of homelessness
Elon University prides itself on being a leading school when it comes to religious inclusivity. But at a recent panel discussion, students and faculty were asked whether Elon could do more to support community members with no religious views. The event was put on by the Spiritual and Religious Life Committee, who posed the following question to those gathered: How can we as a campus better include and support atheists, agnostics and those who indicate “none” for religious preference? “It’s like asking, ‘What kind of a barber does a bald person need?’” said Tom Arcaro, professor of sociology at Elon, who is not religious. “That’s the nut we’re trying to crack.” Junior Jensen Roll disagreed with this assessment. “All students need to have access to similar resources, and creating communities where people feel safe is part of that,” Roll said. Senior Mary Rouse said, as someone who does not hold religious views, parts of life at Elon can be off-putting. “Every time there’s a prayer or invocation at an event, I feel excluded because a big assumption is being made about how the people there identify,” Rouse said. “Even if it was non-religious, what do they add that’s so important they need to exist?” Rouse pointed to the large number of staff other religious groups have on campus, but said she and other classmates of hers who share her views aren’t necessarily looking to join in with other faith-based Elon organizations. “We see it not so much that we want to be included, but we don’t want to be excluded,” she added. While student groups like the Student Secular Society exist at Elon to try to create a community for the non-religious — though no members of the group attended the meeting — the committee chair, Diane Ford, said faculty and staff, not students, requested this topic be examined. Lost in translation Those who attended the meeting were given sheets asking questions about Elon’s inclusivity for non-religious and secular individuals, like how is Elon already successful in this area and how can Elon improve. “We could be more purposeful in our inclusion,” said Johanna Janssen, director of clinical education for Elon’s physical therapy department. “When I think of discussing religious and secular issues, I think of the Truitt Center. But it’s all titled ‘inter-faith’ or ‘multi-faith’ and that’s exclusionary.” Multiple panel members talked about how words like “multi-faith” and “spirituality,” while meant to include atheists and others of a similar worldview at Elon, end up turning people away. “Nurturing spirit can be a can of worms, but we can do that through belonging to a community,” said Jane Welford, professor of performing arts. “It doesn’t have to have an ethereal quality.” Diana Abrahams, multi-faith and intern coordinator at the Truitt Center, said faith in particular is a word people have trouble with. “Other organizations have used terms besides faith that are school-specific, like ‘worldview,’” Abrahams said. “A lot of our issues are language issues.” Avoiding exclusion Martin Fowler, lecturer of philosophy, said the goal of promoting inclusivity for secular and non-religious members of the Elon family should be to provide the same things religion can bring — a sense of community and respect — without things like ritual, ceremony or faith. “It’s not impossible, but we need to find a way to bring it across campus,” Fowler said. And this requires a lot of thinking and ingenuity, as Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society and professor of religious studies, pointed out. “There are ways in which you can define words like spirituality in non-theistic ways, but that doesn’t mean the word doesn’t hold certain connotations,” he said. Arcaro said there are still parts of Elon’s secular community, like the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, that make him feel excluded because of their theistic messages. “It’s off-putting and alienating and to be saying something that doesn’t fit with what I know feels hypocritical,” he said. However, when discussing the elimination of parts of Elon’s community like invocations at major events, Arcaro said these could take away something from religious people on campus. “We have a wonderful community of strong believers and anything we do to make them feel uncomfortable is absolutely the wrong approach,” he said. Ultimately, some discomfort arises from these conversations over religious and secular life not happening, as many meeting members said. “I think there’s a little fear in the classroom by teachers and students and that could be opened up a little more,” Welford said. Going forward, the Spiritual and Religious Life Committee will look at the discussion at the meeting and the voice of the community to see how non-religious people want to be included and focus on finding solutions that make everyone in the situation happy.
With midterm elections slated for Tuesday in North Carolina, the latest Elon University Poll shows incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., ahead of her Republican challenger, Speaker Thom Tillis. But the lead is a slim one.
The 2014 North Carolina Senate campaign is set to be the most expensive race in U.S. history. Throughout the polling, the margin of victory between incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and her opponent, Speaker Thom Tillis, has remained small. In an election where party control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance, North Carolina is one of the most important races in the country. In the political world, the closer races tend to be the most expensive ones. “If either side wants to gain or retain control of the Senate, they need to look at North Carolina,” said Jason Husser, assistant professor of political science at Elon University and assistant director of the Elon Poll. The importance of North Carolina in the midterm election is not determined by Hagan or Tillis themselves or any kind of political influence the state carries. Husser speculated that Republicans have a “decent chance” of winning a majority, but said the number of Senate seats that could go either way is only eight. “But that means there’s not much of a margin of error,” he said. Husser also added that the North Carolina election is not being looked at closely because Hagan has held a small, consistent lead — a lead Husser said is over-estimated. North Carolina politics North Carolina is considered a toss-up state in this election in part due to its reputation as a “purple” state, less conservative than its neighbors in the South. But after electing the first Republican controlled legislature and governor for the first time since Reconstruction, this descriptor has been called into question. “It’s still a swing state if you define it as having a 10-point gap,” Husser said. “That said, North Carolina is more like a purple state with a reddish tint. But that can change over time, and it probably will.” Part of what has made North Carolina a more Republican-friendly state in recent elections is opposition to the president’s administration. In effect, as Husser put it, Pres. Obama made North Carolina a swing state. “You could speculate that if the climate toward Obama wasn’t so negative, the legislation out of the General Assembly wouldn’t be so reactionary,” he said. North Carolina’s diverse political affiliates play a part in keeping the midterm race competitive, as the left-leaning Moral Monday demonstrations brought state-wide and national attention to the actions of the Republican state legislature. “Hagan’s doing so well because of a foundation set up by Moral Monday,” Husser said. By contrast, Husser said Tillis is being hurt by his link to the General Assembly and his day job as Speaker of the House prevents him from doing more in-person campaigning. Stakes in election If Tillis wins the election, the possibility of the Republican Party controlling the U.S. Senate, and therefore both houses in the Capitol, will be more likely. But if Republicans win a majority, it’s unlikely that much conservative legislation will make it through the two chambers, since Obama still have veto power. “Anyone telling you that if Republicans win the Senate, Obamacare will be repealed is telling you misguided information,” Husser said. But, what control of the Senate would change, would be the ability for Republicans to appoint and confirm federal judges, for which there are many vacancies nationwide due to blockades by the Senate’s Republican minority. And while campaigning is continuing in North Carolina, in many ways, the election has already started, as early voting is open from Oct. 23 to Nov. 1. “In 2012, more votes were cast in early voting than on Election Day,” Husser said. Voting at Elon Voter turnout among college-aged people is particularly low, but the presidents of Elon’s two largest political organizations — College Democrats and College Republicans — urged students to vote. Julia Mueller, president of College Republicans, said everyone should vote and research the issues close to them. “If ObamaCare is a concern, consider that Senator Hagan was the deciding vote for the act and that raised healthcare costs for students in North Carolina,” Mueller said. “Speaker Tillis wants to fully repeal and defund ObamaCare. By repealing this, costs can be reduced by allowing the private sector to offer healthcare.” Bobby King, president of College Democrats, said the Senate election will be important not just because it decides who will represent North Carolina, but because it will show how North Carolinians feel about the state’s General Assembly. “Speaker Tillis’ tenure was marked with the policies that proved far from political center, passing one of the most restrictive Voter ID laws in the nation, and cutting $500 million from public education,” King said. “In my opinion as a citizen, Senator Hagan is a political leader willing to compromise for the benefit of average North Carolinians.”
The life of a North Carolinian under the age of 30 is very different from the life of a North Carolinian above the age of 30. Young people have irregular schedules because of school. Young people have less money. Young people are less likely to have a driver’s license, let alone a car. With a daily routine different from older generations, changes to that routine can result in significant delay or the cancellation of certain parts of a young person’s schedule. In 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a series of new voting laws restricting the time and place of voting, as well as adding a requirement for photo identification at the polls. Democrats and other liberal-leaning advocacy groups in North Carolina have criticized the law changes, while Republicans, who controlled the General Assembly when the law changes were passed, said the changes will increase confidence in the voting system and curb voter fraud. “I think the changes are necessary because it puts limits on voting to ensure voters are properly identified and people don’t vote twice, which is part of our electoral system,” said Thomas Friend, a junior at Elon University and a member of College Republicans. Looking at the law, there are several aspects related to young people, like voter ID requirements and changes to precinct times. But whether these changes will impact the voting routine of youths is yet to be seen. “I don’t like to call it voter ID. I like to call it voter suppression,” said John Easterling, president of the North Carolina Association for Teen Democrats. Easterling is 17 and goes to Scotland High School in Laurinburg. He said requiring specific forms of identification to be able to vote make it harder for certain segments of the population to vote. “Even though they say it’s only $13 for an ID, sometimes it’s pretty hard for people my age to scrape together $13,” he said. If someone does not have a birth certificate to present to the DMV, that price can rise even more. As of 2014, in North Carolina, the cost to obtain a birth certificate is $24, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to a study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, the percentage of young people with a driver’s license has declined since the 1980s. Sixty percent of 18 year olds had a license in 2010 as opposed to 80 percent in 1983. For people aged 20 to 24, the percentage dropped from 92 percent to 81 percent in the same time frame. In the University of Michigan study, 32 percent of respondents who didn’t have a driver’s license said “owning and maintaining a vehicle was too expensive.” Friend, who is from Charlotte, disagreed with Easterling’s concerns that voter ID law would lead to a significant drop in turnout. “Anyone who cares enough to vote will make the effort to get some sort of voter identification,” Friend said. “You have to jump through a few hoops, but it’s very easy to get an identification card.” This one of the main concerns raised by opponents of North Carolina’s voter ID law. Those least likely to have a driver’s license — low-income people, African-Americans, young people — are more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate than a Republican one. In the 2012 election, 49 percent of voters making less than $50,000 a year voted for Democrat Walter Dalton for governor instead of Republican Pat McCrory while 39 percent of voters making more than $50,000 voted the same way. Eighty-five percent of African-Americans voted for Walter Dalton as opposed to 29 percent of white voters. When looking at young people specifically, 56 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 voted for Walter Dalton, making it the most Democrat-supportive age demographic in North Carolina. When combining demographics, similarities between typical Democratic voters and those less likely to have driver’s licenses become more apparent. In a study of driver’s license ownership by the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute, not only were young people in Wisconsin less likely to have a valid license, but only 22 percent of young African-American men and 34 percent of young African-American women had a valid driver’s license, compared to 64 and 75 percent of young whites, respectively. “The General Assembly has that knowledge, and they have continued to pass laws that suppress the vote of African-Americans and the vote of high school seniors and college students as well because they’re not accepting college IDs as a form of ID at the polls,” Easterling said. “It affects us financially, and it feels like our state is going backwards and not forwards and looks as though it doesn’t want to hear our voices anymore.” The question of whether state college IDs can be accepted at the polls was one of the issues brought up in federal court this year. North Carolina’s voter ID law is already facing a legal challenge and will be in court in 2015, but the Department of Justice, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters also asked the courts to put a hold on the new voting laws for the 2014 election. Federal court Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled in August against these groups, and the new voting laws will remain in place for the upcoming election. The North Carolina DMV offers free voter ID cards for people without a license, but opponents have argued that the requirements to prove identity and location, as well as the time required to go to the DMV, still adds burdens onto people with busy schedules and smaller means. One part of the voting law that specifically affects young people is the restriction on pre-registration. Only voters who will turn 18 on Election Day can register to vote, and annual voter registration drives in high schools are no longer required. Easterling said these drives in North Carolina high schools were always “spectacular.” “There was one year when we registered over 3,000 high school students in North Carolina and, most likely, we’ll never see that again,” Easterling said. “There would be schools across rural North Carolina that could get hundreds of students registered in a week. Now you’d be lucky if you could register 25 or 30 students a week.” Friend added it’s unfortunate that pre-registration and in-school registration is no longer a part of voting law in North Carolina. He said it will limit registration and turnout at elections. “When you could register when you got your driver’s license, you killed two birds with one stone. It got people interested when they might not have thought about voting or civics,” he said. Overall, Friend thinks voter turnout will drop in the 2014 midterm election because of part of the voter reform law to eliminate voting out of district. “I think that’s going to take some getting used to,” he said. “But it won’t persist beyond that first election.” Concerns about voting law reform lowering turnout rates are backed by research. The GAO studied voter turnout in Tennessee and Kansas from 2008 to 2012, during which the states enacted similar voter ID laws to those in North Carolina. The GAO study found turnout dropped in those two states “to a greater extent than turnout decreased in the selected comparison states — Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware and Maine.” In addition, a greater number of provisional ballots were cast in Tennessee and Kansas specifically because of a lack of ID, and less than 40 percent of those ballots were counted in the 2012 election. Additionally, the drop in turnout was particularly sharp among voters aged 18 to 23, as well as African-Americans. Young people are already one of the smallest demographics as far as turnout in elections, with 55 percent of registered North Carolina voters aged 18 to 25 turning out in 2012. Friend said voting and participation in politics is not presented in a way to engage young people. “In many ways, it’s perceived as something ‘adults’ do,” Friend said. Easterling said the changes to voting law in the state will exacerbate the reasons young people tend not to vote. “It makes people say, ‘What the heck, I don’t want to go through the process anymore.’” he said. “And sometimes they feel like their vote won’t count.”
While most students may not notice them on a normal day, Elon University has hundreds of security cameras across campus. And for an Elon senior, the number of cameras has grown more than 50 percent since they first came to campus three years ago.
Cheating and plagiarism sit at the top of honor code concerns at Elon University and at most schools. But as the technology around teaching and the professional world change, the need to reassess the climate of unethical behavior arises. “It’s one of the things that’s so basic, we forget to talk about it,” said George Padgett, associate professor of communications. One of the main changes to classrooms in the past few years has been the popularization of online courses. In an environment where a professor and a student cannot see one another, professors have different takes on whether this makes cheating more or less likely. “I’m not concerned that they’re looking things up,” said Megan Isaac, associate professor of English and chair of the department. “The assignments are open-book already.” Isaac said in the online courses she’s taught, the assignments are mainly essays or other written compositions. When it comes to students buying essays or having someone else write those works, Isaac said an online course “very marginally magnifies” concerns. “The same red flags I look for in a face-to-face classroom carry over to papers in an online class,” she said. Other professors are more concerned. Art Cassill, professor of accounting and Wesley R. Elingburg Professor in the Spencer and Martha Love School of Business, said an online class “absolutely” increases his concerns when it comes to cheating. “You’re more sensitive to it. You don’t have that control that you’d have in a live classroom,” Cassill said. “You’d be naive to think it’s not a possibility.” Cassill said a student cheating in a classroom can be observed and confronted more directly than in an online environment where students are in different time zones. “My perception of cheating online is less than when I started, but I try to think the best of our students,” he said. “But the reality is, if I give an exam, I don’t know if that student is the one actually taking it or if that student has his or her book open at the computer. You do what you can do.” Isaac said the idea of someone else taking a class for a student is one thing she is cautious about because she cannot tell who the person on the other end of the computer is, but added this still wasn’t an especially large concern for her. “When it comes to idea that someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend will take an online course for a student, I don’t think that’s how our population acts,” Isaac said. Whether in a face-to-face classroom or in an online class, students have varying feelings. Sophomore Alec Horter said most of the actions violating Elon’s Honor Code that he’s seen are students working on homework together, but said the idea of classmates cheating on tests bothers him. “If I studied for three hours for a test and I saw [cheating], I’d be mad,” Horter said. Other students, like first-year Nicole Connor, have a different take. “I wouldn’t care and I wouldn’t say anything,” Connor said. “It’s not affecting me.” Another area where cheating, and plagiarism specifically, is a concern is in communications. Recently, CNN host Fareed Zakaria was spotlighted after two anonymous journalists operating a media criticism blog called “Our Bad Media” brought charges of plagiarism against him, which were later picked up by outlets like Politico and Esquire. Zakaria is still with CNN and Network President Jeff Zucker said to Politico reporters that he “continues to have complete confidence” in Zakaria. Padgett, who teaches Media Law and Ethics, said the accusations by anonymous journalists @crushingbort and @blippoblappo show clear evidence of plagiarism and CNN is “doing everyone a disservice” by not addressing it. He hopes communications classes at Elon bring it up. “It’s a teaching point,” he said. “In this digital age, it’s so easy to copy and paste. It’s easy to plagiarize.” The public accusation of a prominent journalist of unethical behavior who was allowed to keep his job can send a bad message to aspiring reporters and writers. Padgett said it’s important for teachers to bring up Zakaria as an example of what not to do. “If there were a 25-year-old kid, he’d have been gone long ago,” he said. “But this is one of CNN’s biggest guys.” While adding that Zakaria should have known better, Padgett said plagiarism, especially in the digital age, can be a gray area. Students and journalists need to follow an absolute rule of attributing quotes or sources, even in a tweet. “It’s the safest way forward,” he said. Cassill’s techniques to limit the ability of online students to cheat involves crafting assignments to make unethical action more difficult and repeatedly reminding students about Elon’s honor code. He tells students in person before the class starts, in various follow-ups, in the syllabus and before tests that they are still Elon students even if they’re not in a physical classroom. “It sounds simple, but I think it’s important to remind people of their integrity and their obligations,” he said. Cassill said he designs his tests to have time limits and tries to design questions that require more writing and may mix up the types of questions asked. “It’s a lot more work for the faculty, but you’re getting the design that you want,” he said. “All the things that are advantages of online for students present challenges for faculty. If you’re doing this the right way, it’s hard.” Isaac takes a similar approach in her writing assignments as she would in a traditional classroom, putting “scaffolding” in place to ensure that students are doing the work themselves. “I can require an outline initially one week, then a first paragraph, and so on,” she said. “If you’re buying a paper, that’s more work than someone on the other end is typically willing to put in.” Now that he’s been teaching online courses, Cassill said he is a supporter of them and thinks they’re here to stay. “We have a population of students here who do really well and excel online and have good self-discipline,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that would be the case.”
The events in Ferguson, Missouri started with police officer Darren Wilson stopping Mike Brown in the street. The legality of these stops, done by police all over the country, was the subject of the Elon University School of Law’s forum with legal experts from around the area.
Daniel Herr, nanoscience department chair at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sees potential for better technology all around him, from the feet of a fruit fly to the DNA replication of his granddaughter.
Over the summer, North Carolina’s General Assembly cut the financial incentives for production crews that film in the state. These cuts could impact the availability of film jobs in North Carolina, which is bad news for the more than 1,000 students at Elon University studying communications. North Carolina has had incentives in place since the 1980s and in 2010, increased its reimbursements for film crews to 25 percent of all their expenses. As a result, the state had one of the largest incentive packages for film crews in the country. Since the raise in 2010, North Carolina has been the backdrop to movies such as “The Hunger Games” and “Iron Man 3,” and television shows such as “Homeland” and “Under the Dome.” “There’ve been 800 productions in the last 30 years, and to think that’s all going to go away in one sweep of the political pen is daunting for future filmmakers and for the state as a whole,” said Paul Castro, assistant professor of communications at Elon and a former professional screenwriter. With North Carolina’s new budget, $10 million is set aside for incentives, with a $5 million cap per production. Elon professors with a background in the film industry like Castro and Doug Kass, an instructor in communications, said the cuts will drastically affectthe state’s production. “Hollywood is filled with businesspeople, and they’re going to go where business is best. If they can get a better tax break in Louisiana or New York or Connecticut or California or New Mexico or any of the other states with better breaks, they’re going to go there,” Kass said. While states like Wisconsin have cut film incentives in recent years, others such as New York and Louisiana have made sure to increase or at least keep them at normal levels. California is even considering quadrupling its film incentives. With so many states after film productions, Kass said North Carolina will lose out if all the state has to offer is its visuals. “If you look at “Homeland,” you wouldn’t look at that and say ‘Oh, that’s definitely North Carolina,’” he said. “Other shows will have a similar issue. There’s few landscapes in North Carolina you couldn’t find elsewhere, and there’s lot of states with better tax breaks.” The producers of “Homeland” have already announced that new seasons will be filmed in South Africa instead of Charlotte. “Under the Dome” has been shot in Wilmington, and producers have not said whether future seasons will continue to be shot in North Carolina. Legislators in the General Assembly who pushed to get rid of the incentives, like House Majority Whip Mike Hager, said the incentives were giving away too much state money that could be better spent in other parts of the state. Kass said the way a production’s financial impact in a state is calculated is not accurate. “They can count the number of hotel rooms, they can tally up the number of restaurant bills and gasoline bought for the time that production is in town,” he said. “But they don’t look at the possible long-term benefits of having films or TV shows shot in a town. How many tourists come to see those places over a period of time? There’s no mechanism to count that.” A study at North Carolina State University on the impact the incentives had on the state, commissioned by state film commissions, showed that in 2012, the incentives led to the creation of more than 4,000 jobs and had a net contribution to the state of more than $25 million. “When the Hunger Games came to North Carolina, it created 300 carpenter jobs alone, and they were all local to North Carolina,” Castro said. He also pointed out that there are now many film production companies all over the state that will be affected by the cut and will have to redefine, relocate or shut down. “If productions are not coming to North Carolina, and there are companies that support those productions exclusively, then obviously they are going to have to leave, and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs,” he said. If incentives come back, Castro said it may not suddenly bring back production. As he put it, crews and companies have families and other concerns to keep in mind. Moving back across the country is not “as simple as flipping a switch,” and companies may wait to see if the incentives in North Carolina will be stable. Kass had a somewhat different view. “Basically, Hollywood is business and they’re going to go to wherever they can make the most money,” he said. “If the [incentives] come back, production will come back.”
Just an hour or so away from Elon University, music fans from across North Carolina flocked to Raleigh for the city’s Hopscotch Music Festival Sept. 4-6. For five years, the festival has brought some of the most prominent names in music to the state’s capital — some of them for the first time.
As any student knows, Elon University prides itself on having a large and well-attended study abroad program, with 70 percent of students leaving the country at least once in their college career. But Mark Dalhouse, Elon’s new director of domestic programs for Study USA, said with the United States becoming more and more diverse, it has become its own global community. “One can have a global experience without ever leaving the country,” Dalhouse said. “It’s a mistake to think of the United States as homogenous.” Dalhouse joined Elon in June to become the new director of Study USA, which organizes programs like Elon in New York, Elon in LA and recent additions in Washington D.C. and Alaska. Prior to coming to Elon, Dalhouse was president of the Washington Internship Institute in D.C., and before that, he was dean of active citizenship and service at Vanderbilt University, where he also taught American history. “Study USA seemed like exactly the type of hybrid position I had experience in,” he said. “I’ve had a foot in the classroom and in student affairs administration over the course of my 23 years in higher education.” Dalhouse is replacing Study USA’s first director, Phil Smith, who Dalhouse said left a lot of the infrastructure for the program behind. And it’s the newness of the program that Dalhouse said attracted him to the director position. “Study USA is a relatively new program, so it’s got a lot of room to grow,” he said. Among the changes Dalhouse has planned is an expansion of both Winter Term Study USA programs and a new fall semester for Elon in New York. There are also a number of new courses planned across the United States. They include a course where students visit the various sights affected by 9/11, a course exploring the First Amendment and its meaning in the modern world, a course in New Orleans to see how the city is doing 10 years after Hurricane Katrina and a course in Iowa during the presidential caucus. “I’d like to see students go to Iowa, work with whatever organization they want and see history be made ahead of the 2016 elections,” Dalhouse said. Part of Dalhouse’s hopes with Study USA is to not only expand the program into cities other than New York City, L.A.and D.C., but also to show students that internship opportunities exist there beyond the typical communications and political science positions. For example, Dalhouse talked about the possibilities for international studies majors to intern at the United Nations in New York City, education majors in Los Angeles and students interested in non-profits and strategic communications in D.C. “Not a lot of students know this, but D.C. has some of the best internships as far as experience, and they are very eager for Elon students in the spring and fall semesters,” he said. Going further, Dalhouse talked about the possibilities for using the Study USA office to strengthen the intellectual climate of Elon with annual or biannual trips, like one Dalhouse is working on in Selma, Alabama to look at the Voting Rights Act after 50 years. What Dalhouse stressed overall with Elon’s study programs is that, both abroad and domestically, Elon is trying to provide students with opportunities to get as much out of a globalized world as possible. “The world current students are growing up in is very different from the one we knew before,” he said.
As technology improves, the world continues to change at an exponential rate. To keep up with a world forever changed by computing power, Elon University’s Love School of Business is altering the courses and curriculum for the new school year to teach students how to solve problems and analyze data. The business school is offering seven new courses, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, to instruct students in data analysis. The courses are not restricted to any particular business major. Raghu Tadepalli, dean of the Love School of Business, said employers across the board are looking for potential employees who can handle data. “We are coming up with career tracks in analytics to prepare students for any field,” Tadepalli said. The increasing importance of data has created, as Tadepalli put it, a new set of skills that have to be learned alongside traditional business training in order to stay relevant in the modern world. “Nowadays, there’s so much data, thanks to the availability of computers,” he said. “Students need to not just write and speak well.” Another change coming to the business school this year is a revision of the entrepreneurship curriculum to focus less on how to start a business and more on how to “think like an entrepreneur.” “An entrepreneur needs to be able to deal with unstructured issues,” Tadepalli said. “Let’s say you need to tackle a problem in your work. No one is going to tell you how to fix it. You need to be a problem solver.” Caralea Prentice, a sophomore Business Fellow at Elon, said she thinks the additional courses are a responsible change. “I think that it is natural for the focus of business education to evolve over time and to push students to learn skills that are of increasing importance to future employers,” Prentice said. The new emphasis on teaching data analysis to students comes from feedback Tadepalli said he has heard from employers who will give problems and assignments in interviews to see if potential hires have what it takes. “What employers now want to know is not just what you know, but for you to show what you know,” he said. Prentice said the job market she and other business students are looking at requires critical thinking skills and practical technical knowledge in things like Microsoft Excel and data analysis. “Students should be pushed to develop less easily defined skills, like strong leadership, productive teamwork and critical thinking,” she said. With this new entrepreneurship curriculum, students can take courses in any discipline and still develop problem-solving skills. Tadepalli said this is the first time entrepreneurship students have been able to take outside courses that count toward their major. This new system is working toward the goal of making students think like entrepreneurs. “There are certainly students in the business school with different priorities, and a well-rounded education should be expected at a liberal arts school,” Prentice said. He added that this new focus reiterates the teaching that entrepreneurs must figure out how to reduce, not engage in, risky behavior in business.
The question journalists, and particularly journalism students, are being asked isn’t how to write and report, but how to make writing and reporting stand out. How to make a brand stand out.
Going to College Coffee What other school lists “take the free food we give you” as a bucket list item? Take advantage of what you have now because outside these walls, free coffee and doughnuts are so rare, they’re an omen of an early death. And yes, it’s “doughnuts,” not “donuts,” you troglodytes. College Coffee is the one thing that gets students not to dread 8 a.m. classes. It is like the Poincare conjecture solution, but for university morale. Student organizations come to you instead of the other way around so you can be a front-row audience member to the passion and expression of your peers. It can make you feel productive by proxy. Make sure you go to College Coffee with your friends so you can share a laugh and some food and then awkwardly walk away when the conversation dies down. Going into fountains Considered an Elon “rite of passage,” while the uninitiated could easily dismiss this as hooliganry, there is a lot of planning that goes into finding the perfect fountain to wade around in. First you need to pick your fountain. Boney Fountain is easily accessible, but it also looks like a grave. Chandler Fountain has the impact, but it’s surrounded by lots of sharp metal teeth, both inside and out, like a goblin fortress. That leaves the heavily trafficked Fonville Fountain so you can get the attention you crave from passersby and anyone who looks at the Alamance webcam. Then you need to pick the right time to go in the fountain. Go too late in the year, and you’ll come out dripping with pollen like Swamp Thing. Go too early, and the water will cool you down to kidney-harvesting temperature. You also need to decide whether you’ll go into the fountain late at night when the Phantom is on the prowl or do what no Elon student has ever risked and wake up early. Whatever your decision, you will succeed in getting covered in dirty water. It’s worth every $1,000 fine. Stealing a brick Wow, a lot of these bucket list items involve causing problems for campus staff. This tradition says a number of things about Elon students. It could mean that students want to keep a piece of Elon with them, and instead of showing appreciation through their degree or full-size acorn back tattoo, they decided to get a dirty brick. It could also be an expression of Berlinesque rage mixed with a hatred for anyone who rides a bike around campus. Or, the most likely theory, is another step in the very popular hobby of brick collecting. There’s frogged, perforated, face, mortar and the ever-popular “solid” brick. Rumor has it campus legend “Stubbs” has his hand on an oversize modular brick from behind Maynard Hall. Running the Turkey Trot From the first day of an Elon student’s sophomore year, the goal for the rest of the college career is getting rid of the Freshman 15. A lot of people will try to take the shortcut of joining Elon’s secret brawling society, but if you go one round with Stubbs, you won’t even have the chance to get a sweat started. So running the Turkey Trot is your better bet. The easiest part of the event is getting the canned goods for charity because we all have a big sock stuffed with cans within arm’s reach of our bed. The true challenge is mentally pacing yourself during the 5K because no one really knows how far five kilometers is. Is that like five miles? Is it the distance from Koury to McEwen? How many 5Ks would I run to get from here to the moon? And when you finish the Turkey Trot, waving to the children in their extravagant playgrounds you pass by, you are rewarded with the most difficult meal to eat — an unsqueezed orange slice — and the pride that comes before realizing you now need to walk all the way back to your apartment. Studying Abroad If you work best on a deadline, this step on your Elon bucket list might be a bit tricky if you’re graduating now. But, the rest of you still have time to travel the planet with Elon’s study abroad program. In fact, the one downside is that Elon does not offer study abroad to other planets. I can’t think of an Elon student who wouldn’t want to study sociology on Mars or state government in the Betelgeuse star system. Studying abroad is like exercising the back muscle you didn’t know you have when practicing your tsuki. Seeing things from an international perspective helps inform opinions and creates a better understanding that will make you a better employee and a better person. Traveling will also blow up your Instagram account and get those likes rolling in.
With primaries for the Senate and House this week, the April 2014 Elon University Poll shows North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis maintaining his lead for the Republican Senate nomination with more than 60 percent of respondents now recognizing his name.
Students and faculty were invited April 9 to debate and discuss climate change and pick apart why it’s dividing the country.
A touch of Tibet came to Elon University April 3 when Buddhist teacher and expert-meditator Geshe Gelek visited campus to promote strategies for positive thinking.
As more and more high-profile movies and television shows are starting to be filmed in North Carolina, the General Assembly is considering making the state’s financial incentives for producers permanent.
While politicians like Gov. Pat McCrory and President Barack Obama rose in voter support over the past four months, the latest Elon University Poll shows Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Speaker of the House Thom Tillis, R-N.C., are less popular among North Carolinians.