Pitt’s second annual Day of Giving proved it’s the gift that keeps on giving — raising $9,029,828 in the span of 24 hours, nearly twice as much as last year. The 3,358 donations poured in from six continents and all fifty states.

Individual alumni and students alike pitch in on the Day of Giving to help support different schools, programs and student organizations within the University community. Participating groups are separated into three categories — School Participation, Pitt Programs and Experiences and Student Organizations. Bonus cash prizes are awarded to those in each challenge who received the greatest number of donations.

The first annual Pitt Day of Giving was held Feb. 28, 2017, in honor of the University’s 230th birthday. It raised $5,772,518.

According to University spokesperson Kevin Zwick, Pitt raised $1.66 million for scholarship funds last year through the Day of Giving. Individual groups, such as the School of Pharmacy, chose to put donations towards scholarships as well.

The Pitt Fund was the second most-donated to the program this year, earning an additional $20,000 in prize money. The Pitt Fund provides scholarships to students who, for financial reasons, would otherwise be unable to attend college.

Tuition at Pitt has increased by almost $2,000 since the 2013-2014 academic year.

While the different schools of the University of Pittsburgh had donation numbers based on single-name donations, the programs and student organizations had numbers that were based solely on the number of gifts received.

The School of Pharmacy took first place in the School Participation Category for the second year in a row, acquiring the most single-name donations and taking the $30,000 prize. The Human Engineering Research Laboratories — which received 176 donations —  narrowly beat out the Pitt Fund — which received 157 donations — to take the $30,000 prize in the Pitt Programs and Experiences Category. The Men’s Glee Club, which accumulated a record 1,053 donations, beat out Pitt Club Tennis by 630 donations to claim the first-place prize of $10,000 for the Student Organizations Category.

Groups used many different methods to reach out to other donors. The Men’s Glee Club stressed on its Facebook page that people should donate multiple times in small increments to try and increase its total number of donations.

Rishi Gupta, a senior at Pitt and the President of the Men’s Glee Club said the group was persistent in contacting alumni donors.

“We tried to be more organized this year. We reached out to a list of alumni about a week or two before and then followed up again on the day,” Gupta said.

Young alumni donated from to various groups from locations all over the world this year, but some donations came from close to home, with 808 donations coming from University faculty and staff. These donations accounted for almost 40 percent of the total number received.

Other groups, such as the School of Pharmacy, also took to social media to recruit alumni donors. Meghan Osborne, the Alumni Coordinator at the School of Pharmacy, said the group utilized Facebook to spread their message and gain support.

“Our two most popular Facebook posts from yesterday were both video clips from a gala earlier in the year,” Osborne said. “One was of our students singing the alma mater, which I think definitely pulled on the heartstrings. The other was a very emotional speech given by an alumnus about how special the School of Pharmacy is and how this place has really made his dreams come true.”

According to Gupta, the prize money the Men’s Glee Club received can drastically reduce the cost of participation for its members. The club plans to use their prize money to fund their upcoming domestic and international world tours.

“What this money will goes towards will be every year we go on a tour. Any fundraising we do subsidizes the amount members have to pay in order to go,” Gupta said.

For the Club Tennis Team, extra funding can make all the difference. Kynadi Mauney, a junior and co-president, stressed that funding from the school isn’t always enough.

“For a team like ours, where we have to go off campus to practice, the money is very helpful,” Mauney said.

Osborne said donations allow organizations to accomplish projects that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

“We are getting ready to renovate Salk Hall so some of the funds will go into the building renovations which are desperately needed … this is a really big win for us,” Osborne said.

Osborne stressed the importance of the day and its implications for the School of Pharmacy.

“I think getting that message across of the importance of scholarship, the importance of education, the importance of giving back really resonated with our alumni and helped win the number one spot which was really great to see,” Osborne said.

Brian Cuban, Pitt Law alumnus of ‘86, felt compelled to donate because of an issue close to his heart. As an advocate of addiction and eating disorder recovery, Cuban wants to see increased funding for mental health resources.

“I speak at a lot of law schools about student wellness. I know how tight budgets can be and how student mental health related initiatives may be something that the school wants to do but there is simply no funding for it,” Cuban said.

Lynn Shea, the director of communications of the Office of Institutional Advancement, said the Day of Giving isn’t just about increasing funding. Equally important is fostering engagement of Pitt students and faculty, past and present.

“At the end of the day, we are all proud to be a part of such a large and enthusiastic community,” Shea said.

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Andrea Mauro was physically restrained, force-fed horseradish and shocked with play buzzers as a child when they had tantrums or failed speech therapy exercises.

All of this was done to them by the people their parents had sought out to “help” them. Mauro, an autistic activist and student studying clinical psychology at CCAC, is a survivor of early intervention and Applied Behavior Analysis — a scientific discipline that employs techniques meant to change a person’s socially significant behavior. Far from being helpful, Mauro said the experience was “traumatic.”

“The reason why a lot of people didn’t think this was abhorrent in the long term was that I started acting ‘normal,’” they said. “It paid off.”

Mauro was one of several speakers present at the Pittsburgh Center for Autistic Advocacy and Pitt’s Students for Disability Advocacy group’s Disability Day of Mourning event. The event, which 30 people attended in the William Pitt Union Thursday evening, was part of a nationwide vigil.

The vigil, which has been held every year on March 1 since 2012, brings disability communities in cities across the world together to honor victims of filicide. “Filicide” is the legal term for a parent murdering their child. In the disability community, “filicide” is used when talking about a parent or other relative killing a child or adult relative with a disability. According to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, an organization that seeks to advance goals of equal access, rights and opportunities for autistic people, filicide is commonly portrayed as perpetrated out of the relative or caretaker’s frustration or pity.

Different speakers at the Pitt event shared their experiences as disabled individuals during the event and called for an end to these actions.

According to the ASAN, more than 550 people with disabilities have been victims of filicide in the past five years. Research from the Ruderman Family Foundation has found at least one disabled person is killed by a relative or caregiver per week.

Cori Frazer, a director of the Pittsburgh Center for Autistic Advocacy, began the vigil. They said the event, besides being a day to remember those who have passed, is also an opportunity to bring awareness to these tragedies and demand justice for all disabled people.

“Tonight, we mourn for the dead,” Frazer said. “Tomorrow, and in the coming days, we continue to fight like hell for the living.”

Lauren Stuparitz, a prison abolitionist with Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration, echoed Frazer’s statement. She said the vigil was a “somber occasion, a significant one and a radical one.” According to Stuparitz, violence toward disabled people is pervasive through many realms of their lives, taking place in their homes, school and places of work. She said this violence is “dehumanizing” and “hurts us all.”

“Not only are we, our disability community, criminalized, abused, targets of ableist oppressions, aggressions and barriers … but some of us are killed,” Stuparitz said. “Disability is still being considered a real reason to hurt and kill us.”

Mauro said because of their autistic behavior, they were perceived as a tragedy to their family until their behaviors were “normalized” by the therapy.

“My autistic behavior is actually a fundamental lens of who I am. The therapy didn’t really do much for me other than really damage me,” Mauro said.

Mauro said the idea that something about them needed to be fixed is what causes the abuse and deaths of many disabled people.

“This narrative, that the ends justify the means, the value of a person can only be judged by what they mean to normal people and how palatable they are, is deeply damaging and deeply dangerous and leads to the murder of so many people,” they said.

Bethany Ziss is a disabled person and a pediatrician who spoke at the vigil. She said she is often met with questions as to why disability is considered a risk factor in the abuse and neglect of children. As a pediatrician, she often asks herself what doctors do to contribute to the stigma of disability. She presented a poem explaining how medical education has perpetuated disability stigma.

“In medical school, they didn’t teach us that it was OK to kill people with disabilities. They just rounded all the hospital floors and shook their heads, and clicked their tongues, and said, ‘He has no quality of life. She should be DNR … the best thing for him would be if he should earn his angel wings,’” she recited.

Michelle Walker, a speaker, consultant and founder of Lend An Ear Consulting, an organization that holds classes, seminars and individual consultations to teach people American Sign Language, found the idea that another person having the right and authority to end a disabled individual’s live “repulsive.”

“We deserve to be fought for. And I refuse to let anyone tell me or you any different,” she said.

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Independent candidate Erika Strassburger will succeed Dan Gilman on Pittsburgh City Council after District 8 voters handed her a decisive victory Tuesday.

Strassburger finished with 64 percent of the vote, more than double her closest opponent, Democratic nominee and East Liberty restaurant owner Sonja Finn, who finished with 28 percent.

Poll workers Tuesday said it was a slow day for the election following Gilman’s Jan. 3 resignation to serve as Mayor Bill Peduto’s chief of staff. Turnout when polls closed at 8 p.m. was at 14.48 percent, with Strassburger winning the election by 1,696 votes overall.

In her victory speech, Strassburger thanked her volunteers and supporters and reaffirmed her belief that working within communities is the way to success.

“Let’s continue that spirit of working together [and] working in our neighborhoods.” she said. “We’re going to do some great things over the next four years.”

Strassburger greets the excited crowd at her victory party. (Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

Strassburger’s victory marks the first time a woman will represent District 8 in Pittsburgh’s City Council, which encompasses parts of Oakland, Shadyside, Point Breeze and Squirrel Hill, and represents 31,982 registered voters, according to the Allegheny County Elections Division. Most projections had Strassburger or Finn beating Marty Healy and Rennick Remley, independent and GOP candidates, respectively. Strassburger and Healy both ran for the Democratic nomination, but filed as independents after the party picked Finn.

As the first woman serving District 8, she hopes she can encourage other women and young women to pursue political careers.

“All I can do is pay it forward,” she said. “[And] continue to pull other women and young women up to feel as if they have someone they can look to who is in [politics] and that they can do the same.”

Despite Finn’s endorsement from the Democratic party, she couldn’t pull ahead of independent Strassburger, who served as Gilman’s chief of staff before he resigned and who has since been fulfilling the duties of office. She’ll continue those duties with vigor, she said.

“I don’t want to lose sight of the big-picture messages and big-picture ideas that I have,” Strassburger said, mentioning managing growth effectively in District 8 and implementing solutions for Pittsburgh Water and Sewage Authority’s lead problem.

For Strassburger, “managing growth effectively” deals with the question of how the city should respond to gentrification and growing inequity.

“It’s challenging. It ranges from everything from traffic and parking, to property values and rising rents and rising costs,” she said. “I want to ensure our neighborhoods remain vibrant and diverse, and that long-time residents can afford to live here, and that also new people moving here can afford to move here, and that it’s a diverse set of people living in District 8.”

Strassburger raised more than $140,000 since January for her campaign, compared to Finn’s roughly $30,000 – a difference that did not go unnoticed.

Strassburger told KDKA in February that she was proud of her fundraising, saying it demonstrated a diverse range of supporters. But Finn questioned it, saying the disparity undermined the democratic intentions of elections. She noted major contributions to Strassburger’s campaign including property developer Walnut Capital, which owns the Bakery Square development and recently requested city permission to expand Bakery Square three stories higher than current city ordinances permit.

One of Strassburger’s most high-profile supporters was Mayor Bill Peduto, who broke with the Pennsylvania Democratic party and officially endorsed her against Finn. Peduto said he has known Strassburger for more than 10 years, and is confident that her background as an environmental activist and community organizer will aid her as a council member.

“She’s been somebody that’s challenged our administration, somebody that has worked on all the amendments,” he said. “I’m sure we’re going to find ways to disagree over the course of the next 4 years, but you won’t see the disagreements in the papers or on Twitter. They’ll be handled in a way that I think Pittsburghers deserve, which is working together and creating mutual compromise.”

Strassburger won nearly 65 percent of the vote, with a 14.5 percent turnout. She will be District 8’s first female representative. (Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

Strassburger doesn’t plan on slowing down, saying her upcoming responsibilities are just as urgent as Election Day’s were.

“I think it’s important to run an office like you’re running for office,” she said. “Making sure that not just the people who came out for this election are [heard] … there is always something that matters to someone on a local level, whether it’s just the sign in front of your street or the big issues like gentrification or inequity.”

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Half of the cobalt blue seats in student section of the Petersen Event Center remained empty as the Pitt men’s basketball team battled UC Santa Barbara on the court Nov. 15. On the first shot, only a sparse showering of ripped-up newsprint filled the air.

But even during the out-of-conference game following a couple of hard losses, section leaders of the Oakland Zoo ran back and forth across the student section, leading in rowdy chants and overall revelry.

The Oakland Zoo — a usually raucous section of devoted student basketball fans — may have been quieter this season, but passionate students still show up at the Pete, regardless of a lack of attendance.

For Ben Linsey, a junior industrial engineering major, this was his first year as a section leader for the Zoo. He said despite the rough season — one where Pitt went 0-19 in the ACC — there is still a major amount of pride that comes from leading the Zoo.

“Being a Zoo leader means carrying on the great Zoos before us,” Linsey said. “Being a Zoo leader means trying to carry that on — one of the best environments in basketball.”

On average, 4,117 people attended Pitt men’s basketball games for the 2017-2018 season, about a 50 percent drop from the 2016-17 season’s average of 8,327. But even when the student section was thin, the section leaders — a group of students who lead the Zoo chants — and loyal fans continued to go to games and show their support for the men’s basketball team.

Two Pitt students decided to create the Zoo during the 2000-01 basketball season because they were displeased with the unlively student section at the time. Support for the Zoo grew from there, also aided by the opening of the Petersen Events Center for the 2002-03 season.

The Oakland Zoo minutes before Pitt’s women’s basketball team plays Syracuse. (Photo by Thomas Yang | Visual Editor)

The Zoo historically made the Petersen Events Center a tough environment for other teams to play in. Players, analysts and publications consistently rated the venue as one the nation’s most difficult venues because of the raucous crowd.

During particularly hot seasons — like in 2016, when the Panthers last made the NCAA tournament and former head coach Jamie Dixon was leading the charge — students wielding air mattresses and fleece throws would sleep over in the lobby of the Pete to snag the best seats in the section the night before big games.

This year, the same enthusiasm was seen at some of the Panther’s biggest games, such as those against Duke and the Backyard Brawl against West Virginia, but nothing compared to the days of yore when games were a 24-hour event.

On the season, the team stumbled to an overall 8-25 record, finishing 0-19 in the ACC. Fans felt the effects of the team’s struggle, with the Petersen Events Center seeing record lows in attendance.

Even through a bleak bout, Pitt fans can look forward to the young team’s chance for improvement next year. Despite the team’s many losses, they had a few tight games, losing to Notre Dame team 67-64 and hanging in against a ranked West Virginia team, although ultimately falling 69-60.

“It’s just a really good group of guys,” Linsey said about the team. “We’re excited to watch them grow. Obviously, when a group of young guys comes together with that many freshmen, there will be growing pains.”

Shane Powers, a first-year finance major, attended all but one of the Panthers’ home games this season. He said being a fan in the Zoo allowed him to experience other students’ school spirit.

“My favorite one was definitely the West Virginia one,” Powers said. “There were a lot of West Virginia fans at the game, but we kept it pretty close.”

This year’s game against Duke was especially memorable for the Zoo. Mike Limbacher, a junior mechanical engineering major, also in his first season as a section leader, recalled it as one of the team’s best moments.

“The Duke game this year was the second highest attendance in history, and we got JuJu to be there, which was really cool,” Limbacher said, referring to Pittsburgh Steelers star JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Even though the game was a blowout, with Pitt falling to the Blue Devils 87-52, Limbacher said he could feel the enthusiasm and support the crowd had for the team.

“We still had fun cheering on our team and school,” he said.

Fans in The Zoo wear paper bags over their head as they watch Pitt lose its 17th straight game to Virginia. (Photo by John Hamilton / Managing Editor)

After a first round loss to Notre Dame in the ACC tournament, Heather Lyke, Pitt’s director of athletics, announced the firing of head coach Kevin Stallings. His tenure at Pitt was stained by a 4-33 record within conference play over the course of two seasons. In the wake of the firing of head coach, Limbacher talked about the Oakland Zoo’s support.

“We want to support our team as much as we can, no matter who is the coach,” Limbacher said.

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Akasha L Van-Cartier had a message for the 130 children and parents that attended the Carnegie Library’s Drag Queen Story Hour Saturday.

“You can be anything that you want to be, at any time you want to be it, and if you want to change what you want to be halfway through being it — do that,” Van-Cartier said.

Van-Cartier, a local drag queen, has performed at a variety of locations in Pittsburgh over the last 16 years. This past year, public libraries, ice cream parlors and children’s birthday parties were added to that list.

All over the country, Drag Queen Story Hour has been increasing in popularity since it started in San Francisco in 2015. Children liken to the colorful attire and performative personalities of drag queens at story hour, which often has an underlying theme of acceptance, identity and self-expression.

Van-Cartier said Drag Queen Story Hour is “all about love.” She said she hopes that it can teach children kindness and positive values.

“There’s no one that you turn away, there’s no one that you don’t befriend because they look different or they act different,” she said. “It’s all about loving each other, loving yourself and being yourself.”

In response to community requests and national popularity, the library reached out to Van-Cartier to do a one-time Drag Queen Story Hour last August. According to Shannon Barron, manager of the children’s department, the response was extremely positive and the library decided to make it a monthly event.

Story Hour involves singing and dancing with noisemakers and two stories read aloud by Van-Cartier while a sign language interpreter translates the program. After the program, there was a photobooth with props and activities centering on identity and self-love.

Ginny Beck, volunteer service coordinator at the library, said Drag Queen Story Hour encourages positive messages about acceptance and kindness.

“It’s important to respect people from all different backgrounds and have lots of different types of friends, so we thought this was one cool way to celebrate that,” Beck said.

Van-Cartier described the program as educational and a teaching moment, both things she has in mind when performing.

“It’s a different aspect of drag that people don’t expect,” Van-Cartier said. “It’s about letting people experience the differences that are out there in life.”

Van-Cartier also thinks the program is useful for parents. She believes it demonstrates to parents that an experience is easy to create by dressing up as a character and holds children’s attention better. To Van-Cartier, performance is an integral part in children’s learning.

Van-Cartier comes back each month because of the response from the children. She’s been given drawings of her that she proudly hangs on her fridge and some of the children call her Aunt Akasha.

Lindalee Sanchez, an 11-year-old from Bloomfield, said she came because “drag queens are inspiring.” She liked the books, the outfits, the jokes and the dancing that are part of the story time. But she especially liked that what Van-Cartier said sounded a lot like what her mom says — “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

“You never know what someone’s like if you don’t meet them,” Sanchez said.

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Pitt Program Council announced Bigelow Bash, Pitt’s annual spring concert, will feature MisterWives as the headliner band April 14.

PPC tweeted the news Monday afternoon, about a month after it sealed the contract with the help of an outside agency.

Zach Linn, special events director, said PPC began the process of finding a band for the spring concert following the Fall Fest back in October. The special events committee, a group of 30 students, considered logistics such as the budget the University provided them with and available dates that worked with Pitt’s calendar when evaluating options for acts.

“We always start off with some bands that aren’t available and then we just keep working through our list until we find one that works, and MisterWives was very close to the top of our list on that,” Linn said.

While there were contract negotiations and price limitations, Linn said the committee still prioritized the student body’s interests in narrowing down its choices.

“By having a committee of students with an interest in music and an interest in concerts, we get that wise taste of music and hopefully have a good ear to the ground of what students like these days,” Linn said.

The American indie-pop band will perform alongside a European DJ, Saint Wknd and a support act from WPTS. The winner of PPC’s Pitt Factor event April 2 will open for the concert, similar to the way the way the winner of Battle of the Bands in September opened for Fall Fest.

The performances will be accompanied by various food trucks. PPC is collaborating with the Student Office of Sustainability to get compostable utensils for the trucks and will encourage recycling throughout the day to make this year’s concert a “green” event.

Linn said he is hopeful about student turnout because of past successes, such as pop musician Mike Posner’s performance last year.

“We never have an expectation — part of not selling tickets is that question mark,” Linn said. “Regardless of the act, it’s a great time because we have the food trucks, and we have a large portion of the student body out together.”

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Marc Tobias has been picking locks since he was 15. One of his first experiences in the trade came when he went into a local locksmith in Denver and asked to pick the store’s toughest lock as a challenge. After initially being dismissed, the store gave him the lock and said he would never be able to pick it.

“Well, about 30 seconds later I said, ‘Excuse me, I asked for a difficult lock to open, because this one I just opened,’” he said.

Now, with his expanded understanding of security — having written seven books on crime and lock picking and being a security columnist for Forbes Magazine — he’s looking to teach Pitt students what he knows.

Tobias, his partner Tobias Bluzmanis and Security Labs — their company, which works with lockmakers to test their locks on anything from safes to gun locks — are joining up with the Swanson School of Engineering to open the new Pitt Security Engineering Lab. The lab offers students a space to work with locks provided by Security Lab’s clients — including major corporations such as Kwikset — to figure out how to both break the locks and change them to make it more difficult to do so.

Tobias Bluzmanis, a security consultant at Security Labs, will be one of three professors teaching a new lab that will allow students to directly interact with and learn about various security mechanisms. (Photo courtesy of Marc Tobias)

Security Labs’ website states the goal of the new lab is to collaborate with a digital security lab in Paris to analyze devices that transmit data wirelessly, searching for security vulnerabilities. These devices can lead to serious breaches as well as significant legal liability for manufacturers. The lab will act as a space to teach students the basics of offensive hacking to analyze hardware, a key field as locks become increasingly digitized.

The lab will be located in Benedum Hall on the third floor and be used in conjunction with the course Product Realization, taught by Pitt professor Eric Winter. The course is designed to take students from an initial idea or concept to some form of a prototype, according to Winter.

“This class, in all the time that I’ve taught it anyway, and even stretching back before that, has always been about trying to solve a problem and come up with something that would work in the real world,” Winter said.

The class is structured so students can work in groups of three or four to solve real-world issues. Some of their tasks involve troubleshooting system sensors and communication equipment and designing systems that allow businesses to monitor major sources of energy and resource consumption. The course, which is only available to seniors and graduate students, has anywhere between six and 10 projects going at a time and involves minimal lecturing, which Tobias and Winter say can help Pitt students adapt to the work environment.

Winter has taught the course for four years, saying student interest has never been higher, even if some are still unclear on what the course does.

“I’ve had lots of inquiries from people saying, ‘What’s your course about? I thought you were a product development course?’ And I tell them, ‘Yup, it is, but it just has a strong security component to it now, and you come work on that, you get to do a little bit of everything,’” he said.

The skills acquired in Winter’s class offer both immediate and long-term benefits, according to Tobias. Already, Security Lab’s clients have discussed potential summer internships for students in lock factories, which could segue into a job upon graduation.

“We have a situation where the engineering community in the security industry is aging out. And as they age out, they’re kind of concerned that the ones that are coming in behind them don’t have the benefit of all the experience and all of the tricks and talents,” Winter said.

Tobias said he and his partner knew this was a largely untapped field in the academic community and that there were many employment opportunities within it. After speaking with multiple universities, they chose Pitt because the University was willing to waive intellectual property rights over the student’s work on the locks. This was a must for Security Lab’s clients to work on projects with students, as they won’t give students an inside look at the products’ problems if they don’t have the rights to the solutions.

“We finally figured out the best way to do this is to work with [Winter] and teaching his course and have the students work real-world projects,” Tobias said. “We don’t do theoretical stuff. These are all projects — or for the most part projects — for our clients.”

The lab — funded entirely by Security Labs — will have test equipment, fabrication equipment, analysis, magnification equipment, key machines and will offer high-tech video conferencing to speak with Tobias and Bluzmanis.

According to Winter and Tobias, interest in the class is high, which could affect the future of the lab and the course. Right now, there is only one class per semester, and it has a maximum of 30 students. If demand rises enough, though, Winter said Pitt could potentially do a second seating or open it to undergraduates.

The program will continue to expand and develop, and Tobias said while speaking to deans at the University, one of the ultimate goals is to have a degree in security engineering, as well as specific certifications. Many students, such as Vishal Jagannathan, a senior majoring in bioengineering, expressed cautious interest in the course.

“I’d definitely take it if it’s a few credits. I wouldn’t choose it over any course required to graduate or anything, but if I could fit it into my schedule, I’d definitely take something like this,” Jagannathan said.

Tobias Bluzmanis teaches a course on security engineering for the Dubai Police in 2010. (Photo courtesy of Marc Tobias)

Tobias and Bluzmanis held an event Feb. 21 to teach students about Winter’s course and allow students to try their hand at lock picking. Geoff Wells, a junior majoring in civil engineering, said he enjoyed the demonstration and came because of the allure of breaking locks.

“I like mechanical things and gizmos and stuff like that, so I’m still interested in that. So I wanted to come here and kind of learn about locks,” he said. “I’ve always thought lock picking and safe cracking were cool. I see it in the movies a lot but never actually get to do it.”

Others, such as Anna Tomani, a fifth-year student majoring in chemical engineering, were attracted to the program because of its implications in their real lives.

“I got locked out of my apartment a few weeks ago and tried to pick my lock and then jammed the door,” Tomani said. “Then I saw this and thought it was kind of fitting.”

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Voters are going to the polls today in Pennsylvania’s 18th District to decide between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone in a uncharacteristically close race in the deeply Republican district.

The 18th District favored President Donald Trump by 20 points in 2016, but polls show a very close contest in the special election for the U.S. House seat, with Lamb leading in Monday’s Monmouth poll by as much as seven points. Election tracking outlet FiveThirtyEight gives Lamb a two point edge in the polling average, though the race is within the margin of error.

Saccone, a 60-year old from Elizabeth Township, is a long-serving state representative who has embraced President Trump and his agenda. The 33-year-old Lamb, from Mt. Lebanon, is running as a conservative Democrat — his first campaign ad featured him shooting an AR-15 assault rifle — and has gained support from historically powerful labor unions.

Here are some scenes from the district on election day:

Voters head into a polling station at Lincoln Elementary in Mt Lebanon. A election worker here said their district just passed 50 percent turnout. #PA18 pic.twitter.com/Wci60rkibQ

— John Hamilton (@jham1496) March 13, 2018

Note that this is one district in one ward, not the whole town. But Allegheny county turnout is expected to exceed 30 percent, according to @timelywriter.

— John Hamilton (@jham1496) March 13, 2018

Carol Ferguson and Dale Cable, both lifelong Mt Lebanon residents, have volunteered for campaigns for much of their life — Ferguson for Republicans and Cable for Democrats. pic.twitter.com/4xHt9ROFIp

— John Hamilton (@jham1496) March 13, 2018

"We probably annoyed the hell out of you," Tom O'Brien said as he handed voters one final campaign flyer in #PA18. "But if we lose it isn't because we didn't knock on enough doors." pic.twitter.com/sdaHEmBWIT

— John Hamilton (@jham1496) March 13, 2018

Plenty of supporters and press at the Youghiogheny Country Club for #PA18 results supporting @RickSaccone4Sen – no results yet. pic.twitter.com/7XxKwa91YA

— Christian Snyder (@csnyderj) March 14, 2018

(From left) Congressman Mike Doyle, Allegheny County Controller Rich Fitzgerald and Conor Lamb's uncle, Jim, talk prior to @ConorLambPA's election night party.

"I just want to see the first returns," Doyle said. pic.twitter.com/OANLzgow29

— John Hamilton (@jham1496) March 14, 2018

The seat was vacated in October when Tim Murphy resigned after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the pro-life Republican urged a woman he had an affair with to have an abortion.

Since the election was scheduled, voters in the 18th have been inundated with campaign ads, with many outside Republican groups pouring in money for anti-Lamb TV ads, mailings and campaign workers. Lamb’s $3.3 million in fundraising dwarfs Saccone’s $700,000, one factor in some Republicans, including Trump, reportedly calling their candidate “weak.”

Some voters in Sewickley and Monroeville called Allegheny County election officials to complain about closed polling places. Those two towns, however, are not located in the 18th District, county spokesperson Amie Downs said.

The winner of the election will have a short stint in Washington before the midterm elections in November. Additionally, neither candidate will live in the 18th district after the state Supreme Court redrew Pennsylvania’s congressional maps. Even so, the race has garnered substantial attention, with national media and political parties closely watching the “Trump Country” election as a referendum on the president.

Though much of the 18th is rural, some wealthy Pittsburgh suburbs also make up the district. This gives the district a diverse mix of political ideologies, from rural conservatives to Pittsburgh-area liberals.

Follow @ThePittNews on Twitter today for live coverage from polling places and both candidates election parties. Polls close at 8 p.m.

The post Lamb vs. Saccone: National attention on Pa’s 18th District appeared first on The Pitt News.

Update as of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday: Lamb’s lead expanded after Washington County absentee ballots results came. But county election officials could take weeks to review the results and make them official.

Voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th District cast their ballots Tuesday for Conor Lamb or Rick Saccone, but election workers couldn’t count absentee ballots fast enough to declare a winner before dawn.

But at Lamb’s election party, the Democrat — who held a lead, though no major outlet called the election — gave a victory speech to a crowd of supporters at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, after being introduced as “Congressman-elect Conor Lamb.”

“It took a little longer than we thought, but we did it,” he said, confident in his lead, despite hundreds of absentee ballots being uncounted.

NBC News projected a Lamb Wednesday morning, but the Associated Press says the race is still too close to call. Saccone, the Republican, has not conceded.

Lamb held a 579-vote lead Wednesday at 1 a.m., but absentee ballots remained uncounted in Washington and Greene counties.  Saccone was waiting for the absentee votes to come in from the county which favored him in live voting. Experts said it seemed unlikely — but possible — that he could overcome Lamb’s lead. Out of more than 224,000 votes, Lamb’s 49.8 percent gives him just a .2 percent lead.

Democrat Conor Lamb gives a victory speech at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday in Canonsburg, though no outlet had called the race yet. (Photo by John Hamilton / Managing Editor)

The district — which includes parts of Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland and Greene counties — is a heavy Republican district that favored President Donald Trump in 2016 by 20 points. The winner of the race will represent the district for less than one year as both candidates live outside the newly drawn 18th District.

Lamb, a 33-year-old running as a conservative Democrat, and Saccone, a 60-year-old Republican who ran a campaign embracing the president’s agenda, are fighting for a U.S. House seat vacated after Tim Murphy resigned in October.

In his speech, Lamb thanked labor unions, a group that gave major support to the candidate.

“Side by side with us, each step of the way, we’re the men and women of organized labor,” he said to the loudest cheer of his speech. “Organized labor built Pennsylvania.”

That Lamb even ran a competitive race was an achievement according to many of his supporters, who haven’t been represented by a Democrat since 2003. But the election party in Canonsburg was tense around midnight, with supporters hoping Lamb could hang onto his narrow lead.

“I’m biting my nails,” said Emilio Abate, 67, who drove to the party from Washington, D.C. A Washington County native and former union organizer, Abate supported Lamb for his strong labor stance.

Saccone’s supporters were just as anxious — and although some said they were ready to get some sleep, Mike McMullen, a political organizer and former Trump delegate for the 2016 election, wasn’t.

“I’ll definitely be up all night,” he said.

Rick Saccone tells his supporters at his Tuesday night election party that,
“We’re going to keep fighting.” (Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

Unlike Lamb, Saccone addressed the crowd at his election party late Tuesday, telling supporters to head home and get some rest to prepare for the big days ahead.

“We’re gonna be working late into the night,” Saccone said. “We’re gonna keep fighting.”

Back at Lamb’s camp, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald had the opposite message for the crowd, urging them to stick around for the absentee ballots to come in.

“Still a little bit more fun to have,” Fitzgerald said.

Before the late-night drama, Lamb supporter Giulio Magrini watched the early results come in with his wife, Barbara. They came to the party because they “love and support Conor” and wanted to see the district flip to a Democrat.

“[Lamb would] finally bring righteous representation to this district,” the 69-year-old from Scott Township said. “The district deserves it.”

The race was widely billed as a referendum on Trump and a race that would predict the results of the midterm elections in November. But many supporters, like Saccone voter Steve Barclay, cited the candidates’ ability to represent their interests as the deciding factor.

“I personally think he has what it takes to lead this part of the country,” Barclay, 60, said.

A Saccone supporter checks his phone at the candidate’s election night party. (Photo by Christian Snyder / Multimedia Editor)

Douglas Peer, a 22-year-old Pitt alum, also picked his candidate based on his ability to represent the district. Peer canvassed for Lamb for the past month, urging his fellow voters to turn out for the Democrat who opposed gun control and party leader Nancy Pelosi.

“He’s the perfect kind of Democrat we need to run this district,” he said. “He’s willing to be an independent voice.”

As it got late and the results were close, Peer said he was nervous, but noted that Lamb’s performance is still impressive in the Conservative district.

“We probably annoyed the hell out of you,” Tom O’Brien said as he handed voters one final campaign flyer Tuesday afternoon. “But if we lose it isn’t because we didn’t knock on enough doors.” (Photo by John Hamilton | Managing Editor)

Though some voters focused on local issues, Trump was hard to avoid for many others. After voting in Mt. Lebanon, Joel Sansone, 60, said a Lamb victory would “send a message” to the rest of the country and the president.

Also voting in Mt. Lebanon, Mary Roman, 48, said it’d be “nice to see Trump not get what he wants.” The Lamb supporter liked Lamb’s moderate stance, calling him a “reasonable fellow.”

“I like the fact that he is personally pro-life,” she said. “But I wish he was stronger on gun control.”

Allegheny County election officials received some reports of citizens showing up to their polling places to vote, only to be told they didn’t live in the 18th District. Michelle Abbott, 30, lives in downtown Pittsburgh, outside the district, but she wasn’t one of those unaware voters. She still supported Lamb, citing his willingness to compromise and moderate stance, even though her beliefs are further left.

At midnight, she was debating whether to stick around to watch CNN announce the final absentee results.

“I should try to do the math on pencil and paper before I go to bed,” she said.

The post Lamb declares victory, election still too close to call appeared first on The Pitt News.

Student Government Board returned from spring break and unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday night urging the Pennsylvania state government to extend medical amnesty — a pardon on criminal charges for medical reasons — in the case of alcohol incidents to the underage person experiencing the crisis.

“We want to reduce barriers that students may see in getting help in an alcohol emergency, and I think being afraid of some sort of legal charge is definitely a large barrier for calling for help. So anything we can do that makes it easier for people to call for help and stay safe we fully support,” SGB President Max Kneis said.

Medical amnesty, as of right now, covers an individual calling emergency resources for an underage consumer of alcohol who is at risk for death. Stated in the resolution, New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware have extended their medical amnesty to the underage individual who is having the crisis.

Kneis said a PDF copy of the resolution would be sent to every representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly. According to the resolution, Cornell University saw an increase in on-campus calls for alcohol emergencies after enacting a full medical amnesty policy.

Lehigh University reached out to SGB in November about the idea and a letter in support to change the law was sent out and signed in January. Penn State and Temple University also signed. SGB will lobby for the change during Pitt Day in Harrisburg March 20.

“I think I would bring up the issue, talk about why it’s important to us and ask for their perspective to see where they stand on the issue, if they’ve ever considered the issue,” Kneis said. “And just make it clear to them why this is such an important bill for them to consider.”

SGB also looked ahead to the upcoming Women’s Empowerment Week, which will take place from March 26-30. Former board member Sydney Harper founded the program last year and passed it on to current board member Ciara Barry, who expressed interest in promoting female empowerment.

The week will feature 10 events, but not all event names, descriptions, times and locations have been finalized. The information will be available Wednesday on SGB’s website.

One event happening March 26 will highlight women from different countries who will talk about what other women experience internationally regarding what it’s like to be a woman in another country. Another event will feature Justin Baldoni, a 2017 TEDWomen speaker who wants to end toxic masculinity.

“Women are important because they contribute to society and have incredible contributions that, I feel like are often overlooked or sometimes prohibited, for different reasons,” Barry said.

After WE week ends, board member Ian Callahan’s TEDx Conference — a localized version of TED Talks — will take place March 31. Speakers will give approximately two-hour long talks twice — once at 10 a.m. and at 1 p.m. — with the event expected to conclude at 3 p.m.

“It will be a great opportunity for people to expand their knowledge and understanding of things that are going on within the community. Whether it is research or activism, it will be a great platform for people to get a better understanding,” Callahan said.

Former SGB Vice President and Chief of Cabinet Rohit Anand oversaw last year’s event, which followed the theme of “Reach.” This year’s event is centered on the theme of “Rethink.”

“The more informed you are about anything the better off you are going to be in life. And especially when it’s something local, I find that things that are more local have more personal meaning to an individual,” Callahan said.

Once the TEDx Conference concludes, Executive Vice President Zuri Kent-Smith’s Human Rights Conference will begin April 5 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Kurtzman Room in the William Pitt Union. This year’s conference is immigration themed and is a signature event for SGB’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

“There are probably a lot of students out there that want to find a way to get involved and want to know the best way to get involved,” Kent-Smith said. “I think that this is gonna be a great way for them to figure out the basics, like the next steps, and to get informed.”

Community and Governmental Relations Chair Jessa Chong and Elections Chair Anastasia Bodea Crisan were absent, unexcused.

Allocations:

American Institute of Chemical Engineers requested $187.56 for general travel. The board approved in full.

Pitt Ping Pong Club requested $2,135 for a competition expense. The board approved $1,977 and denied $158.

Best Buddies requested $1,694.40 for their Spread the Word to End the R-Word Event for purchases and honorarium. The board approved $200 and denied $1,494.40.

Panther Hurling Club requested $2,000 for their 2018 NCGAA National Hurling Championship for lodging for 16 people. The board approved in full.

Panther Relations Student PR Firm requested $140 for a program request. The board denied in full.

Panthers for Animal Welfare requested $399.72 for a program request. The board approved in full.

Reformed University Fellowship requested $1,733.20 for their 2018 Summer Conference for registration and ground transportation for four people. The board approved in full.

Information Security Club requested $541.65 for a competition request. The board approved in full.

Club Cross Country requested $506.04 for a competition request. The board approved in full.

The Pittiful News requested $1,022 for a purchase, rental and service. The board approved $511 and denied $511.

The Pitt Pulse requested $683.18 for a purchase, rental and service. The board approved in full.

Pitt Club Field Hockey requested $719.12 for a competition request. The board approved $693.52 and denied $25.60.

Pittsburgh Fencing Association requested $1,395.96 for their USACFC Nationals for ground transportation and lodging for 20 people. The board approved $1,385.96 and denied $10.

Pitt Ballroom Club requested $985 for a competition expense. The board approved in full.

American Sign Language Club requested $3,085 for general travel. The board approved in full.

The post SGB calls for medical amnesty extension appeared first on The Pitt News.

Voters in Pennsylvania’s 18th District cast their ballots Tuesday for Conor Lamb or Rick
Saccone, but election workers couldn’t count absentee ballots fast enough to declare a winner
by midnight.

(Photo by John Hamilton / Managing Editor)

(Photo by John Hamilton / Managing Editor)

(Photo by John Hamilton / Managing Editor)

(Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

(Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

(Photo by Christian Snyder | Multimedia Editor)

The post Gallery: Lamb vs Saccone appeared first on The Pitt News.

Pitt’s Student Government Board announced last summer that the University’s winter break would be extended by a full week. The extension was applauded by most students — but for Pitt’s international student population that doesn’t go home, this may have meant a longer time away from family and friends both at home and abroad.

According to Pitt’s Office of Institutional Research, there are 3,129 international students from 103 countries at Pitt’s main campus, who make up 10.9 percent of the total student population. For many of these students, traveling home could take more than a day, and airfare could cost hundreds of dollars. This combination of so little time off at such a high cost often discourages international students from traveling home.

For students like Qin Xiao , the trip home is more than 20 hours. Qin, a junior biological science major, said he only goes home to Beijing during summer breaks, since spring and winter breaks are “too short” for him to travel.

“I go to Chicago, or somewhere that way to transfer, but the total journey is going to be like 20 [hours],” Qin said.

Finding a flight can also impede a student’s travels. For 20-year-old literature major Nicole Boden, finding a direct flight from Pittsburgh to Birmingham, England, is unlikely, but when she does find one, a round-trip flight can cost upwards of $700. She doesn’t go home much since traveling is often expensive and draining.

“It’s like eight hours if you do it in one go. But it’s so exhausting for me,” Boden said. “Once I get to the U.K., I then have to travel home for a few hours and, by that point, I’m exhausted.”

Some international students are willing to overlook these challenges for the sake of a quality higher education. According to the 2016-2017 Open Doors Report by the Institute of International Education, STEM majors are the most popular fields of study with international students. Looking to go into health care, Qin was attracted to Pitt’s prestigious medical school.

“It [was] really my parent’s decision,” Qin said. “Before, I was thinking about going to medical school, and medical school here at Pitt is really, really good.”

Other international students may come to Pitt as part of international exchange programs. Boden attended University of Exeter in Exeter, England, for two years and is spending her last year abroad at Pitt. In choosing where to study abroad, she said Pittsburgh seemed like “quite a diverse city.”

“There are probably eight choices, and this is the one that appealed to me the most,” Boden said. “Exeter is small. It’s got everything you need, but it’s tiny. And here, I just feel like there’s more going on.”

Marion Hastings, 20, is a French international major studying international policy. Like Boden, she is spending her third and final year abroad. Originally from Lyon, France, she attended the Paris Institute of Political Studies for two years.

Hastings, who went home for four days over winter break, said going home for such a short period of time is the “worst thing you can do” because it takes three to four days to recover from jet lag — the same amount of time she was home.

“When I came back in the U.S., I had to adapt to the American hour again,” Hastings said. “If I had been in France for two or three days, I would have not even tried to go back on the French hour. But for four or five days, I tried. So I finally got over it, then I had to adapt again to the jet lag of the U.S.”

If they do go home, many international students are unable to see their friends and family because of conflicting vacation schedules. Eleanor Mackintosh, 20, is also a literature major from University of Exeter. Originally from London, Mackintosh said Pitt’s break schedules conflict with her friends’ and family’s vacations.

“It doesn’t map onto any of our holidays back home, so nobody else would be on break,” Mackintosh said. “My family would still either be at work or school, and so would all my friends.”

In China, breaks at universities are planned according to the Chinese New Year, which can be offset from Western calendars by one to two months. Qin said this is the case with many of his friends in China.

“My friends in China, they don’t really have winter break, or their winter break is delayed because we have Chinese New Year,” Qin said. “The break times are different. So if I go back to China, I only see my parents, not really my friends, because they’re still in university.”

Technology makes it easier for students to stay in touch with their relatives when they’re unable to travel home. For Qin, video-chat apps like FaceTime make it easy for him to connect with his loved ones.

“I do have strong connection with my parents, but I don’t really get homesick … because of FaceTime … and you have messages,” Qin said.

Mackintosh is used to being away from her family since Exeter is still far from her home. She said homesickness in America isn’t much different from homesickness at Exeter, especially since she regularly video-chats her family.

“Usually I kind of don’t notice [homesickness]. Just in everyday life, you kind of don’t think about it,” Mackintosh said. “I Skype my family and friends all the time, so I don’t really feel like I’m away from them.”

Hastings said technology allows her to contact her family every few days. She tends to feel homesick when she experiences more difficult times. However, she tries to focus on her studies and traveling to distract her from homesickness.

“There have been some times where it was harder, like at the very beginning of the year it was … hard being far away. But then it was fine,” Hastings said. “I don’t want to be homesick and missing my family when I should just be enjoying myself.”

Boden, Mackintosh and Hastings all decided to explore the United States over spring break because a week wasn’t enough time to go home. Boden and Mackintosh traveled to New Orleans. Hastings traveled to cities along the western United States, including Denver, Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Qin decided to stay on campus, like he did over winter break.

“Two to three weeks is too short, so I just stay here,” Qin said. “Just hung out with my friends who [were] staying … it’s not really a big deal.”

The post International students stay stateside for spring break appeared first on The Pitt News.

The Qdoba restaurant on Forbes Avenue has drizzled its last queso and handed out its final free student drink.

“This Qdoba location has closed permanently,” a sign posted Wednesday at the restaurant reads. “Thank you for 16 great years!!”

The owner, Chad Brooks, said the closure was a corporate decision. He said a new restaurant called Crave-A-Bowl will open a test location at the storefront on Forbes between Oakland Avenue and Atwood Street.

Brooks added that he is just as sad to see it close as students are.

“This was not our plan. We had 16 great years,” Brooks said. “We have been a good piece of the fabric of Oakland for all that time.”

(Photo by Janine Faust / Contributing Editor)

Olivia Phillips, an undeclared first year, was furious when she saw the sign Wednesday night.

“What the hell, this is not OK. What’s wrong with them?” she said.

Colin Woodruff, a first-year chemical engineering major, pointed out there was a Chipotle across the street.

“Yeah, but it’s not the same,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

Other students had reactions similar to Philips and Woodruff upon seeing the closing sign in Qdoba’s window.

Friends Julia Hartigan, a junior math major, and Erica Fan, a junior philosophy major, both stopped and gasped upon seeing the sign. Fan said she was shocked since she had heard the venue was closing but thought “it was just a rumor.” Hartigan was speechless.

“I’m trying to think of some words,” she said. “I’m deeply saddened.”

Andrew Klang, a junior applied math major, stopped in his tracks and stared, mouth agape, when he saw the closing sign. He said he went to Qdoba five to six times a month last year and was surprised that a place that had hundreds of customers every day would close.

“I need to process this,” he said. “It’s completely abrupt … It felt like a staple on campus.”

Some students found out about the news the hard way. Etienne Ayoub, a junior computer science major, had come to Qdoba intending to cash in on the Wednesday student discount when he saw the sign.

“I hope they bring it back somehow,” he said. “I’m used to coming here once a week.”

Calvin Pegg, a senior finance major, said he was upset Qdoba was closing because it had good student discount deals and “better queso than Chipotle.”

“This is crazy, it’s so sudden,” he said. “This was a staple of my education. I am shooketh.”

Mohit Jain, a junior computer science major, said he was used to coming to eat at Qdoba about four times a week and likewise considered it better than Chipotle.

“I just found out about this place last semester,” he said. “I’m surprised it’s closing permanently. That sucks.”

Even students who were not regulars at the restaurant were shocked and upset. Kellan Kolar said he has only been on Pitt’s campus for a year, but Qdoba closing “felt like another piece of home, gone.”

“It seemed like a steady fixture, like 7/11,” the first-year English literature major said.

Halee Peloso, a senior rehab science major, had only been to Qdoba a few times. But she was surprised it was closing so soon after the remodeling following the incident less than two years ago, when emergency workers drilled a hole in the wall to rescue a student who fell between two buildings trying to impress a woman.

“They came back with the new design, I liked it,” she said. “If I knew it was closing I would’ve gone more.”

Facebook user Eric Goldhorn started an event page for a “candlelight vigil” to be held in front of the restaurant Sunday at 8:30 p.m.

Please join us … as we mourn this tough loss in the Oakland community,” the description says. “Gone but not forgotten.”

The post Forbes Qdoba permanently closing appeared first on The Pitt News.

Pitt is giving professors the chance to change their courses — but they’ll have to compete and collaborate for the limited funding.

The University will accept the final proposals for the 2018 Course Incubator Grants March 30. This is the first year the grant — which is intended to allow faculty to radically redesign classes with enrollment sizes of more than 100 people — is being offered. Two to four of the four finalists will receive grants, with the winners to be announced in April.

The finalists for the grant include professors from the Slavic languages, chemistry, biology and economics departments. Each of these professors works with a team of other faculty, the University Center for Teaching and Learning staff and, in some cases, students to craft their proposals of changes to their courses.

Chemistry professors Sean Garrett-Roe and Tara Meyer submitted proposals for General Chemistry I, and biological sciences professor Suzanna Lesko Gribble submitted for Foundations of Biology 1. Other professors who submitted proposals include Slavic languages and literature professor Olga Klimova-Magnotta — who is seeking a grant for Russian Fairy Tales — and economics professors Jane Wallace and Katherine Wolfe for Principles of Microeconomic Theory and Principles of Macroeconomic Theory.

Lorna Kearns, the director of Next Generation Learning at the Center for Teaching and Learning, said the idea came from Provost Patricia Beeson — who plans to step down later this year — but the desire for revitalization came from students and professors as well. Kearns said the grant is intended to help professors with large class sizes who often face constraints due to the size.

“If you have a class of 300 students, it’s very difficult in a 50- or 75-minute class to include everybody,” she said. “Active learning techniques seek to address that. And we think that we will be able to implement some of those with the projects we hope to see being transformed over the summer.”

According to the competition description, for a proposal to be eligible, it must be approved by the “appropriate chair, dean, or campus president” and should be for courses with enrollment of more than 100 students.

While only four proposals passed through the preproposal phase of the grant process and are now finalists, Kearns said the University Center for Teaching and Learning could work with professors whose proposals did not advance and help implement some of the changes desired for those courses as well.

Klimova-Magnotta said the University Center for Teaching and Learning is very active in the grant proposal process and frequently meets with each finalist to discuss different ideas and structural changes.

The four finalist courses each received a preliminary planning grant for the faculty to purchase materials such as literature or to travel to other universities to either attend a conference, go on a retreat or observe large lecture courses taking a similar approach to their proposals.

Klimova-Magnotta said the Slavic department wants the material in Russian Fairy Tales to better relate to students outside of the class. She also said there is a desire to move away from a typical hour-long lecture and incorporate more active learning, such as answering through clickers or whiteboards.

“We saw examples at this conference where people managed to make these classes interactive even when they have 400 or 600 students in a classroom,” Klimova-Magnotta said. “This is something we want to do to make sure the students do a lot of fun but very effective learning activities during this lecture time.”

Wallace said the economics department has been conducting research on how to better teach larger classes. Members of the department are attending conferences and observing classes where technology is incorporated in large classrooms. Additionally, they’re meeting with former students and teaching assistants, and are reading research on pedagogy, economics and teaching large classes.

Improving the classroom setting means incorporating learning tools from whiteboards to clicker systems such as Top Hat or Macmillan. Professors also desire better and paid summer training to prepare staff for the upcoming school year.

Gribble said the large lecture styles can be difficult for professors to work with, and that there is a need to change the approach to active learning across the introductory course as a whole.

“We don’t want the students to feel like they are just anonymous in this course. We want them to know that we want them here,” Gribble said. “We want to provide them a good experience and that they belong in the sciences and that there is a place for them.”

The amount of money each grant recipient receives depends on the budget included in the proposals, which includes the costs of summer staff, new technology and any other materials the courses may need.

“We are looking to them to tell us what they need to do the transformation that they propose,” Kearns said.

Meyers said all of the courses are deserving of the grant based on what she has seen in their proposals.

“There is a big push from the upper levels of the administration to make the larger classes be as helpful as possible to people,” she said. “From my perspective, all of the proposals and groups that I saw all have great ideas that probably should be funded.”

Kearns remains open to the idea that all four projects may be funded. Kearns also stressed that these implementations are not new for universities in general.

“The notion of transforming large classes to make them more engaging, more active and have a better impact on students is something that is happening at a lot of universities around the country,” Kearns said.

The post Pitt professors compete for course grants appeared first on The Pitt News.

Deepa Iyer was working in the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center September 11, 2001.

She immediately thought about two different groups of people — those killed in the attacks and those in the South Asian community she belonged to.

“I remember … grieving for what I knew would be the inevitability that people who looked like the communities that I’m from would immediately be seen as the scapegoats for what had happened on that day,” Iyer said.

Iyer recounted her experiences to about 45 people in attendance at the Asian Studies Center’s event “A Conversation with Deepa Iyer” Wednesday night in the William Pitt Union. Iyer, an author, professor and activist, discussed her recent book, “We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, and Sikh Immigrants Shape our Multiracial Future,” which is about solidarity of communities of color and the future of race relations in the United States.

Affected by the rising paranoia caused by 9/11, Iyer left the Justice Department to work for South Asian Americans Leading Together — a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights of South Asians in the United States. Through serving as executive director for 10 years, she learned about how the post-9/11 climate impacted South Asian communities, especially young people. Her experience led her to ask how the future of racial relations could be shaped.

“I think the collective inquiry for us here, but also for so many people around the country, is, ‘How do we create equitable, inclusive and welcoming communities and campuses that also acknowledge and address racial realities?’” Iyer said.

She argued that the United States has faced racial anxiety as a result of changing demographics, xenophobia and Islamophobia, resulting in an overall climate of fear and hate. Iyer said these feelings have always been present, but have become more visible with vandalization of Islamic or other religious spaces.

“We see it in the form of hate violence,” Iyer said. “We see it when mosques are not allowed to be constructed in lots of areas around the country, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to Sterling Heights, Michigan.”

Iyer offered several ways to improve attitudes, saying people shouldn’t shy away from conversation about race and should recognize the effects of historic inequity such as colonialism and slavery. There are other minorities experiencing racism, she noted, and pressed the importance of addressing anti-African-American racism.

“You might have heard that statement, ‘When black people are free, all people are free,’” she said. “That’s a really important way to analyze liberation or think about it.”

Following the discussion, the event featured a Q&A session with Iyer answering questions and responding to stories told by the audience. One student talked about coming from a Christian background and feeling ostracized by other Indians, which led to the question of stepping away from intercommunity dialogue.

“We have so much work to do within our own community, it’s ridiculous,” Iyer said. “It’s really important to actually work internally to do some of the hard work. It’s harder to do that than it is to go out to a rally with a sign.”

Lakshmi Subramanian, who graduated from Pitt with a master’s degree in physical therapy, attended the event even though she had never heard of Iyer’s work before. She told Iyer about how her very traditional parents were accepting of her being both gay and having a Muslim girlfriend. Iyer said she thought that was a very positive outcome.

“I think it’s about having the conversations but realizing it can be messy and that it’s a long-term thing … I think it’s great that your parents reacted in the way that they did,” Iyer said.

Bhavini Patel, a graduate student studying International Relations at the University of Oxford and a founding member of the Alliance for South Asians in Pittsburgh, attended the event because she was familiar with Iyer’s work. She said Iyer was particularly influential to her.

“Her work reflects the importance of socially conscious leadership, and the importance of building a movement founded on shared narratives,” Patel said.

Iyer closed the event by asking those in attendance to act as activists in their own communities.

“As I close, I ask you to be bridge builders and disruptors … to build across difference, to understand history, to inform ourselves, to move beyond quote ‘fake news’, to lead with our own examples and to disrupt the status quo and to organize others as well to do it,” Iyer said.

The post Activist, students discuss U.S. race relations appeared first on The Pitt News.

Pitt administrators have told the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board they plan challenge the graduate student petition to hold a union election, organizers said Wednesday.

Pitt will look to convince the board that graduate students aren’t employees. The labor board in February ruled that graduate students at Penn State were considered employees and could unionize.

In a post on Facebook, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee called the move an “attempt to drag out the process in hopes of busting our union.” 

Beth Shaaban, a union organizer and Ph.D. student in the department of epidemiology, said the organizers learned about the news in a conference call with Pitt administrators Wednesday. She said the University’s challenge has “made [organizers] more determined than ever to fight for our rights.”

The Facebook post also says Pitt hired a law firm the organizers say is known for “union busting.”

Pitt spokesperson Kevin Zwick would not confirm that Pitt hired the law firm or respond to questions asking if tuition or taxpayer funds are going toward paying the lawyers. Zwick said Pitt is going through the process set by the labor board to establish their view that graduate students aren’t workers.

“The University of Pittsburgh remains committed to the success of all students, and we will continue doing what we do best: partnering with graduate students—individually and collectively—to support their growth and success,” he said.

Graduate students in October filed a petition with the labor board to hold a union election, indicating that organizers collected union cards from 30 percent of students. But Pitt maintains that graduate students are only students, not employees, a position strongly opposed by the organizers.

“Grad students researchers and teachers are considered employees in various places,” Shaaban said “It says so when we log into our pay stubs … we get a W2 IRS form from the University.”

Shaaban said GSOC and University legal representatives talked during a conference call Wednesday. The call was held so that the University could either agree with GSOC’s ability to hold an election or challenge it, she said.

“The administration could have reported at that call that they were agreeable to the election but they chose not to,” she said. “Instead, they decided to contest our ability to hold an election.”

Shaaban said the administration and GSOC will argue their cases in an upcoming labor board hearing. If the Board determines that Pitt graduate students are employees, the administration will be required to present an Excelsior list — a list filed by the employer stating the names and addresses of all eligible bargaining unit employees. The Pennsylvania Labor Board will then be able to check the filed union cards and certify if 30 percent of graduate students have signed union cards.

Shaaban said a date for the hearing is currently being arranged by both parties’ legal representatives.

“Both the Pennsylvania state law and the recent board determination are on our side, so we feel confident we will make our case and it will be very clear that grad student employees are employees,” she said.

The post Pitt to challenge grad student union election petition appeared first on The Pitt News.

The Forbes Avenue Qdoba closed after the Qdoba Restaurant Corp. sued the franchise’s owners for breach of contract because of numerous code violations.

Qdoba filed a lawsuit in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Feb. 28 against Brooks Hospitality, Chad Brooks and Sally Brooks. The suit alleged the Forbes location owners breached their contract with the franchiser for “failing to maintain the highest health standards and ratings applicable to the operation of the restaurant.”

Court filings from March 6 show that the Brooks consented to Qdoba’s injunction request and the court ordered the owners to close the restaurant. The court also ordered the Brooks to hire a pest-control company and said that, at Qdoba’s discretion, they could reopen the restaurant for up to six months in order to find a buyer.

But a sign put in the restaurant Tuesday said the location was permanently closed, leading to strong reactions from students who frequented the Oakland staple. Owner Chad Brooks said Tuesday that the closure was a corporate decision. He made no mention of the lawsuit and didn’t answer phone calls Wednesday evening.

““Franchises have enormous power, and they can squash you if they want to,” Brooks said Tuesday. “They did things that would gut you.”

An Allegheny County Health Department inspection in November cited the location with seven food safety violations and three general sanitary violations. Two were “high risk,” including finding seven dead mice and numerous droppings throughout the restaurant.

All four reinspections found further pest management violations. Though the most recent inspection Jan. 17 downgraded the violation to low risk, it noted droppings near taco shells in the service line area.

The post Forbes Qdoba closed after lawsuit, health violations appeared first on The Pitt News.

Marie Young left her home in Galway, Ireland, in 2001, intending to visit her brother in Pittsburgh for only three months. But what was meant to be a chance to see a little more of the world turned into a permanent change after she fell in love with the City — and a local Irishman.

Young ended up turning down a permanent teaching job in Dublin and accepting a position at Pitt. She has no regrets — she’s been teaching Irish at Pitt for 12 years now and considers instructing students about culture and native language a dream opportunity.

“I never in a million years thought I’d come over to Pittsburgh to teach Irish at a university. It’s very much in my culture at home and it’s hugely my connection to my home,” Young said.

Young teaches Irish Culture and Traditions along with levels one, three and five of Gaeilge — the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their history — in the fall. During the spring semester she teaches the culture course along with Gaeilge two, four and six. She is currently the only instructor at Pitt teaching courses on Irish language and culture. Pitt has been offering Irish courses since 1991. Currently, the Irish curriculum includes the six levels of language, Irish literature and history courses and 11 study abroad programs, serving a total of 140 students.

Young said Irish Culture and Traditions is her pet course. Unlike the language courses, her culture class is free-form –– she is constantly updating the curriculum and doesn’t follow a rigid structure. She says this allows her to keep in contact with her home country and stay on top of current events and pop culture.

“With the culture class, the world’s your oyster, and Ireland has so much going on that you want to cover,” Young said.

Young describes the 1916 Irish Easter Rising to her Irish Culture and Tradition class Tuesday afternoon. (Photo by Thomas Yang | Visual Editor)

Young spends the first 10 minutes of each of her classes chatting with her students about everything from vacation plans to local elections. In her Culture and Traditions course, she integrates mini Irish history lessons and geography quizzes with personal anecdotes and jokes about Irish memes.

During a Culture and Traditions class Tuesday, the entire class broke into a catchy Irish folk song. Following along with a viral video of a drunk wedding party, they sang 12 verses of “The Rattlin’ Bog.”  Andrea Kleckner, a sophomore English writing major, said one of the best aspects of the course is having fun together as a class.

Kleckner grew to love Irish culture and recently spent spring break in Ireland. When in Dublin, she was sure to visit a local ice cream shop, bars and tourist attractions that Young discussed in class. One of the highlights of her trip was eating the famous Dublin 99 ice cream, an ice cream cone with a Cadbury Flake bar in it. Young said she was pleased that a student of hers had indulged in the treat she often cited as the hallmark of the Irish experience.

“It’s full circle for me that one of my students was able to eat a 99 and believe me,” Young said.

Students cited Young’s warm personality and casual demeanor as reasons for sticking with a lesser-known language. Ethan Moser, a junior English literature and writing major, sees Young as almost more of an encouraging friend who nurtures a love of learning than a traditional professor.

“Marie is one of the coolest professors at Pitt because she engages with students on a level that isn’t like the hierarchical systems that other professors have,” Moser said.

Although Gaeilge is a required subject in Irish schools, only 41 percent of Ireland can speak the language. Galway, the region Young is from, is one of the few surviving areas of Ireland where Gaeilge is the primary language, though these areas have been facing a steady decline in the number of Gaeilge speakers.

While not all of Young’s students have the personal tie to the language she does, Young said they have developed great respect and appreciation for it.

“It’s a full circle in the idea of bringing my students home to Ireland and showing them the appreciation that I have and watching their appreciation grow,” Young said. “Watching them have that impact with the Irish language would truly make my grandparents proud.”

While Young says her language classes have the appropriate workload for a four credit course, they have a more relaxed atmosphere and smaller class sizes. She describes them as a “breath of fresh air” to students bogged down by formulas and research papers.

For many students, Gaeilge is different and exciting. Caitlin Rieger, a junior communication major, said she was “sick of Spanish and French” and didn’t even know Irish was a language until she came to Pitt. Now that she’s in the class, she discovered she has a passion for Irish. Although she’s undecided about completing the Irish minor, Rieger is glad she’s taken Irish courses.

“I’m super interested in the Irish culture in general. [Gaeilge] can be a little challenging, but it’s a lot of fun,” Rieger said.

Young’s classes may soon be incorporated into an Irish minor, which would include four semesters of language and one related elective, totaling 17 credits. The Less Commonly Taught Language Center has been drafting a proposal for the minor since 2016. The process involved researching existing programs, creating a list of related courses throughout the University and ensuring that the minor would be achievable for students within a variety of disciplines.

Young describes the cohesion between the Irish language, history and culture classes as necessary. She believes language is shaped by culture and that a key component of culture is language. It’s this necessary relationship that will be represented with the minor.

“You can’t do a language class without introducing the culture and vice versa,” Young said.

The minor has already been approved by the Dietrich School Undergraduate Council and the Dietrich School Council and now just requires approval by the Vice Provost for Undergraduate studies.

Gretchen Aiyangar, the Less Commonly Taught Language program coordinator, said the center submitted the proposal in November along with proposals for Hindi, Modern Greek, Persian, Quechua, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.

Moser is planning on completing the Irish minor if it becomes available. He loves Ireland and hopes to write novels featuring the country. Moser visited Ireland on a study abroad program and plans to return for his graduate education. In his mind, an Irish minor will give him a competitive edge when applying to Irish programs.

Most people have never been exposed to Gaeilge before, he said, which can make it initially challenging, but extremely rewarding.

“Spanish is something that a lot of people are surrounded by. Irish is very different — it’s very shocking to get into a language where you don’t know how to pronounce anything,” Moser said.

Young is grateful that her students are as enthusiastic about Ireland as she is. She says it can be hard to find a connection to Ireland in America, but that her job as an Irish teacher helps her keep in touch with her culture.

“To have this as a job, as an occupation … I’m very lucky,” Young said.

The post Get your Gaeilge on: Professor preserves Irish language appeared first on The Pitt News.

On the outside, 7800 Susquehanna Street looks like an old brick factory, with hazy entrance windows, a cracked walkway and faded paint.

But recently, more than 100 people gathered at the Homewood location to celebrate the debut of the newest branch of the Swanson School of Engineering, a place dedicated to creation.

The makerspace at the Manufacturing Assistance Center, or MAC, of the Swanson School opened Friday morning. The space is designed to serve as a center for small businesses and companies to develop their products more effectively by providing a base for private businesses. Pitt students and Homestead residents will also have access to new machine presses and software to further skills such as manufacturing and metalworking.

Bopaya Bidanda, the chair of Pitt’s department of industrial engineering and the creator and director of the makerspace, first began developing the space last May. Bidanda said he saw an opportunity to promote both academics at Pitt and production in the Homewood neighborhood.

“I wanted to help give back to the community and make it accessible, whether someone is in grade school or is a housewife,” Bidanda said.

The makerspace is filled with rearrangeable tables and metalworking machines contrasting the laboratory-looking white interior. In the front of the room, a large projection screen is set up for any presentations that may be led. It includes a laser, 3D printing, woodworking and a soft-textiles areas as well. Classes at the center will be taught by faculty from the Swanson School as well as staff from the Pitt’s Innovation Institute’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence and experts in different fields.

According to Bidanda, the makerspace is designed to help with production speed for small businesses, bringing single production to mass-production levels. The layout of the building allows for customization in the arrangement of tables, machines and other tools for developing an individual’s product. The new location is part of the 9,000-square-foot MAC, which features a full machine lab, classrooms, and other work spaces.

Currently run by Bidanda and other Pitt faculty, his goal for the new makerspace is to eventually have students running the facility by next year as instructors and advisors on projects.

“The makerspace is supposed to bring in the community and interest them in making their products,” he said.

Along with the MAC, 7800 Susquehanna houses other organizations not connected to the University. Local trade programs, small companies and studios also work out of the warehouse.

Vice Provost of Special Projects Larry Feick was in attendance at the opening, and said he sees this new makerspace as “having a very positive impact in Pitt’s image and in the community.” He is involved in helping develop programs connected to the upcoming training hub at University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, and said this space will serve as a blueprint for projects at the training hub.

“We’re committed to using this space to help lower-income families with making their own products and changing what is accessible to everyone,” Feick said.

Claire Guth, a marketing and outreach specialist for the MAC, said the makerspace aligns as well with the Plan For Pitt, an initiative aimed at furthering the University’s academic development and community outreach.

“The makerspace has an immediate impact on the underserved. A lot of our students come right from Homewood or take the nearby bus line,” Guth said.

Along with the makerspace, the MAC provides three different training programs — Precision Manufacturing, Computer Numerical Controls (CNC) Operations and Programming, and Advanced CNC and Mastercam.

Students spend eight weeks in the Precision Manufacturing program learning how to safely operate drills, mills, lathes, grinders and saws. In CNC Operations and Programming, students pick up more skills and are taught additional knowledge including the theory of G-Code machine-language programming. Students in Advanced CNC gain further skills and program verification.

Guth also said only two modules occur at a time, and each module has a capacity of 12 students, so the MAC currently serves around 24 students at a time.

One such student who has been making use of the smaller makerspace in Benedum Hall is Pitt senior mechanical engineering major Dani Broderick, who was also in attendance at the debut of the new makerspace. Broderick, who was an intern at the small space, said this new location will bring in new ideas to the MAC program.

“The high-fidelity materials offered by the University can help with improving the quality and community reach compared to in Benedum,” Broderick said.

The post Pitt engineering unveils Makerspace appeared first on The Pitt News.

Anand Mahalingam and Vineet Raghu hosted a dance competition Saturday night for two reasons — nostalgia and hunger. Literal, physical hunger.

Strutting around the stage of the Soldiers and Sailors auditorium, the two Pitt graduates hosting Dhirana — the national Indian classical dance competition held on Pitt’s campus since 2013 — begged the audience of approximately 700 people to donate money to their fake personal charity.

“We call it GUMWP — or, ‘Give Us Money, We’re Poor,’” Mahalingam said.

The two men — both former members of Pitt’s folk Indian dance team PantheRaas — joked that it was meant to keep them from starving when Mahalingam returned to the working world and Raghu to grad school. GUMWP is not an actual charity, but the Birmingham Free Clinic — a University clinic under the department of medicine offering medical services for no cost to uninsured people — does exist. It received all proceeds from ticket sales and donations from the event by the end of the night, including the money gathered from the fake charity donations.

Dhirana has served as an opportunity for Indian student dance groups across the country to showcase their skills and compete for trophies since 2013 — first place gets a cash prize of $1,000. The event has raised more than $50,000 for the Birmingham Free Clinic since its creation — this year it brought in more than $10,000.

Exhibition teams that performed in the show between the competing teams’ performances included Pitt Avaaz, a South Asian fusion a cappella team, The Songburghs, an a cappella group on campus, First Class Bhangra, an Indian folk dance team, and PantheRaas. Classical Indian dance team Pitt Nrityamala was the host team at the competition.

Multicolored lights flashed on costumes of blue, green, orange and red as eight teams of eight to 14 college women came from across the country to tell stories of modern relevance through classical dance. Teams travelled from as close as Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and as far as the University of California, Berkeley.

One of the teams, University of Maryland’s Moksha, choreographed a routine about a refugee child and his father. Garbed in bright blue and gold, they gracefully twirled about on stage and stomped their feet while telling how the father attempted to preserve his son’s innocence when their hometown was attacked. But the father dies, and there is nothing left to protect the son from the world’s disturbing reality.

The dance earned the Maryland team first place at this year’s competition. Case Western Reserve University’s Nritya received the third-place trophy and University of California, Berkeley’s Natya came in second. Boston University’s Dheem received the $1,000 Traditionality Award, given by the nonprofit Srinivasa Prasad International Foundation for the Performing Arts to the team whose dance contains the most traditional elements.

Boston University’s Dheem dance team won the Traditionality award at Saturday’s Dhirana dance competition. (Photo by Janine Faust | Contributing Editor)

Mahalingam and Raghu were involved in the creation of the event and belonged to the group that runs it — Pitt Dhirana — before Mahalingam graduated in 2015 and Raghu became a doctorate student.

“The first year that we did it we were like, ‘Uhh,’ like, we don’t know what this is going to be, a lot of people were lukewarm on it,” Mahalingam said. “We all looked at each other after that first year, we were just like, ‘Yo, that was awesome,’ and, ‘We kicked butt, why don’t we just do that again?’”

Mahalingam said the event taps into social, traditional and charitable aspects through its connection to Indian roots, the showcasing of centuries-old dances and donations to the clinic. From the time he and Raghu were here, they said the competition had grown from having only 20 to 25 people on staff to this year having 108. The number of teams applying has also grown from nine to 20.

Meera Tikku, a first-year communication major and Dhirana decorations committee member, said she found out about Pitt Dhirana through the student activities fair. She had danced before, but only in more Western styles such as tap and jazz. She said she only knew about Indian classical dance through “friends of friends” growing up, and those were more religious in nature.

“It was cool to get to see it this way, because in the collegiate style of competition they tell it through a story, whereas in, if you’re not in collegiate competition, you tell it more through the stories of God,” Tikku said.

The inspiration for the creation of Dhirana goes back to 2011, according to Guru Shrimathi Shobhitha Ravi, one of the seven judges present at this year’s competition and a former Pitt student and founder of Dhirana. Pitt Nrityamala won Laasya, a national competition for classical Indian dance that year. This meant Pitt had to host the 2012 Laasya.

Some members of Nrityamala decided to start a competition held at the University every year after the performances at Laasya were well received on campus. They decided on the name Dhirana, after a musical syllable that is universal in Indian classical dance.

This year’s codirectors were Insiya Attarwala, a senior athletic training major, and Priyanga Selvakumar, a senior neuroscience major.

“Being part of Dhirana and just being a part of this community, I already felt closer to my roots, even just like back home in California. I am far from home and sometimes getting homesick, but these people are my family now and I connect with them on a level I couldn’t say for a lot of other people,” Attarwala said.

Raghu said he decided to host because of the connection to India Dhirana gives back to those living in the United States.

“Our parents are from India, so growing up in America, it’s kind of hard to get that connection. We were lucky to have a big Indian community in Pittsburgh, but this is one of the best ways to maintain that connection back to our roots,” Raghu said.

The UMD Moksha team had been coming to Dhirana since its inception and has placed for the past five years. Mathavi Sankar, a UMD Moksha co-captain, said the team has earned gold since 2016, which is an improvement from getting bronze from 2013 to 2015.

“We just love [the] support [Dhirana] gets from the entire Pitt community and the University itself,” Sankar said. “We have a competition at our university, and we get support, of course, but the vibe is just completely different here. It’s so motivated by the entire community.”

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