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By Sam Prevot

Movie posters, hollywood themed decorations and a makeshift red carpet adorned Quinnipiac’s Echlin theater as students and faculty came together to celebrate the 2018 Quinnies, an annual film festival and award show run by the Quinnipiac Film Society. Students submit any film they’ve created, though within the 10 minute maximum limit, and the short is then screened at the event and entered for a prize.

This year’s Quinnies featured 24 films across all genres. Comedies, dramas and documentaries were all represented in the submissions. Two submissions were from this year’s South Africa trip run by professor Liam O’Brien. Another two were from Q30 Television’s comedy show “Quinnipiac Tonight.”

The event also featured catering by Moe’s Southwest Mexican Grill and raffles for Beats headphones, a TV, various gift cards and a year subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud.

QFS President Connor Carey said the Quinnies is the club’s biggest event of the year and that it takes months to plan. Carey, a senior along with rest of the QFS Executive Board, was pleased with the turnout at the event and sees a bright future for the club.

“It shows a good emphasis on our film program and a lot of interest in the film society,” Carey said. “We had some underclassmen win and seniors win Quinnies, so as long as freshmen keep staying involved like they are I think we’ll definitely be good for the future.”

Professors Becky Abbott, Philip Cunningham and Fritz Staudmyer were the official judges for the event and decided who won awards such as: Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture.

The Best Picture of the day went to Matt Kravitsky for his film “The Better Man.” This is the third year in a row that Kravitsky has won the award. He filmed “The Better Man” while in Los Angeles for the QU in LA program. He said he faced many obstacles while filming his short.

“We only had one day to shoot it,” Kravitsky said. “We were shooting at Joshua Tree National Park, which is illegal … and we didn’t get a permit … We got in trouble by a park ranger who said if we didn’t get out in 15 minutes he’d see us in court. But I’m really happy with how it came out, and it was definitely worth it.”

The two films that stole the show nearly tied for the Fan Favorite award at the end of the afternoon. “On Time,” submitted by Bret Schneider, is a comedy about a man running late for an appointment set to well-known songs. While “Tenacity,” submitted by Zack Carlascio, is a dramatic film about a man who lost his wife in a car accident and has trouble coping with the loss. Tenacity won Fan Favorite by a single vote.

Kravitsky, who has spent four years in QFS, got emotional talking about his experience with the club.

“I don’t want to talk about it I’m going to cry,” he said. “I’ve met all of my best friends and connections at QFS. Now that I’m graduating I’ll probably go to LA and try to make stuff with the people I met in QFS that now live there.”

QFS meets on Wednesdays at 9:15 p.m. in Echlin 101.

By Sam Prevot

More and more Quinnipiac students are turning down the opportunity to travel across the ocean for study abroad. Instead, they are choosing to travel across the country to Los Angeles, California for the Quinnipiac in Los Angeles program.

The QU in LA program launched in 2014. The goal of the program was to send communications students, especially film students, to LA for a semester or summer to do an internship and take classes.

Since the program’s launch, enrollment has increased by 150 percent. 26 students will participate in the program this summer, and about the same will go for the Fall 2018 semester.  

The program website boasts many well-known companies where students completed their internships. Some of those companies include ABC News, Disney, Marvel Studios, Miramax, Universal Music Group and Warner Bros.

Senior film major Remy Sullivan spent the Spring 2017 semester in Los Angeles as an intern for a company called More Media. She says the program is important for communications majors to get a taste of what it is like to be in the film or television industry and that influenced her decision to go there.

“LA is one of the top places to be right now I’m the film and television industry,” she said. “Plus I love the city and wanted to get a feel of what it would be like to live there long term.”

Mark Contreras, the new dean of the School of Communications, agrees that going to LA will benefit students in their professional lives.

“The environment (in LA) is just filled with people who do this for a living,” he said. “To me if you’re going to get out of school with a complete understanding of both coasts, it’s a really important part of your life … Our QU in LA program puts a student right in the middle of this maelstrom.”

Contreras credits program director Jameson Cherilus for much of the program’s success. Cherilus is a Quinnipiac alumnus and is the only QU in LA faculty member that is physically in Los Angeles with the students.

Cherilus comes to Quinnipiac twice a year to provide information sessions for students and spends much of his time finding companies that will work with the university to expand internship opportunities for students in Los Angeles. He does all of this without a physical office in California or Connecticut.

“He lives in West Hollywood and his office is his cell phone. He’s very hard working.” Contreras said.

Contreras says expansion of the program is due to a combination of word of mouth from previous participants in the program and the university’s efforts to improve the program and make students more aware of the opportunity.

“I do think there is a buzz occurring largely because of Jameson’s leadership that it’s a really good experience and he’s making it that way,” he said.

There are three students majoring outside of the School of Communications that are going to Los Angeles in the summer. Contreras says this is also a growing trend with the program.

“I think as the buzz continues, more and more students will want to be out there,” he said. “One of the things I want to add as dean is you’ll be prepared but you’ll also have choice and optionality for where you go to work. To me, that’s important.”

Sullivan’s advice to other students that may want to do the program is simple: just go for it.

“Clear the fence and run,” she said. “You will not regret the experience as a whole if you want to be a part of the industry in the future.”

When it comes to future plans for QU in LA, there housing options have already been improved and Contreras is working to get more faculty members out to Los Angeles. But will there ever be a Quinnipiac campus in Los Angeles?

“No, not yet,” he said. “A person can dream … it would take a lot of planning and a lot of fundraising for us to be able to afford a permanent place.”

By Rob McGreevy

Thrillist.com recently published a list of every state’s most underrated city. The list ranges from cities mostly everyone would recognize – like Sacramento, California and Tulsa, Oklahoma – to more obscure cities such as Alliance, Nebraska and Sisters, Oregon.

While there are plenty of cities outside of the sphere of common knowledge, one city on the list should stand out to Quinnipiac students. Connecticut’s most underrated city, according to Thrillist, is Hamden.

The travel blog pegged Hamden as an underdog primarily because of its juxtaposition to New Haven and Yale.

“Hamden is one town away from New Haven, and somehow worlds different,” the writer notes.

According to the author, New Haven’s influence on Hamden can be seen in the brick oven pizza, the classic New England architecture, and even the similarly collegiate atmosphere. The writer goes on to differentiate the towns by bringing attention to Hamden’s “rural charm.” This rural charm includes the nature, the various trails, and of course, Sleeping Giant State Park. However, the writers at Thrillist aren’t the only ones to notice the natural aura of the town.

Quinnipiac graduate student (and one-time Massachusetts resident) Shannon Ryder loves Hamden.

“I’m never, ever leaving so I’m a little biased,” Ryder admitted.

Ryder expanded upon Thrillist’s decision and cited many of the same reasons of the same reasons that they did.

“I think there are plenty of other bigger, better cities in Connecticut but I feel like Hamden is homier than those places. It has the Sleeping Giant and the bike trail which makes it stand out from other cities,” Ryder said.

Not everybody agrees with Thrillist’s assessment, however.

“Honestly, I have to disagree with that. I’ve always said that Hamden is one of the worst places I have ever lived,” Quinnipiac senior and New York native Luke Brenner said. “The traffic between 2-6 p.m. makes it impossible to get anywhere without wanting to pull my hair out. In addition, absolutely nothing is open late besides fast food and rent is absurdly overpriced.”

The scathing review however, did not come without at least a few compliments.

“The only nice thing I can say about Hamden is the locals and staff of the restaurants and bars happen to be pretty nice people,” Brennan said.

Even the most passionately disgruntled Hamden resident can find a bright spot in Connecticut’s new underdog city, it turns out.

By Grace Manthey

As a freshman in Quinnipiac University’s Student Government Association, Camilla Abreu noticed one of the biggest complaints from students was the food on campus.

Then a professor told her about a food truck festival he went to every year and Abreu formed an idea: Get food trucks on campus.

But it wasn’t easy at first.

“It was a lot harder than you think because they need a permit to get on campus and they need to sign all these documents and they need to go through so many people on campus to make sure that they have all the right documents and stuff like that,” Abreu said.

And it wasn’t just the paperwork that was a pain. Abreu said sometimes if the weather wasn’t nice the trucks wouldn’t show up.

“It’s not just like, a thing you can just drop by and do, because at some schools it is like that … But here, like it’s more regulated with public safety and everything,” she said.  

Once the food truck owner knew the effort Abreu and her fellow students were putting in to get the food trucks on campus, they became a lot more reliable.

“(The food truck owners) realized that we went out of our way to let people know that they’re coming on campus and that they’re here for the students, and students are expecting them at a certain time. They realized that it was like a bigger, more serious thing,” Abreu said.

Senior Mikaela Canning and junior Tyler Culp were in charge of booking the food trucks for the Wake The Giant concert. They said sometimes getting in contact with the owners is hard, but if they don’t hear from them after a time, they look for another truck.

And luckily for students, at some events they don’t even have to pay the trucks for the food. It’s called a “buyout.” SPB gives the food truck owners an estimate of how many people will be at the event, then the food truck owners tell SPB members how much to pay.

According to Culp, for Wake The Giant, “we bought out 150 (potatoes from the Spuds truck) for this previous concert and were given a set amount that we had pay for it.” Once the truck ran out of the 150 potatoes, they stopped selling.

And while the logistics can be kind of complicated, Canning said one of her favorite food trucks is, in fact, the Spuds truck.

“He’s always so happy to work for us if he’s available and if he’s busy he’ll do his best to fit us in, he’s also very personable. He also works with his dad who is also just as great,” Canning said.

Even though Abreu she’s not in SGA anymore, as a senior she sees the growth of her hard work.

“It was such a struggle, like calling 50 food truck places and only having like, three actually wanting to come on campus. It’s really cool that now it’s a thing that happens all the time.”

By Tatyana Youssef

As mental health awareness expands in concurrence with millions of college students newly diagnosed each year, coping methods are reaching new heights.

Furry friends are welcome on campus-owned housing for student support. Known as emotional support animals, students and administration seem to be encouraging this experience for countless benefits of the everyday routine.

Quinnipiac senior Ally Foltiny runs around her yard behind Whitney Village with her puppy inspired by the adventurous character, Huck. The energetic golden retriever and Australian cattle dog mix is known for having a goofy, happy personality. Foltiny recalls the loss of her family dog led to the realization that, “an emotional support animal was the best way to decrease [her] anxiety at school.”

“I cannot talk enough about the benefits of having a support animal with me at school,” Foltiny said.

She first heard about this opportunity through on campus resources when she turned to them for guidance through a rough time. Her routine remains consistent, now taking on a new responsibility of raising a puppy.

“My dog, Huck, forces me to get up early every day, go on walks, and makes so much happier,” she said. “I have also become more social. We go to the dog park and interact with other dogs and owners.” Huck is her motivator to maintain an active, social lifestyle, simultaneously taking care of her and her puppy.

She admitted the first few months were hard, requiring a lot of maintenance when raising Huck. “I had to housebreak him, train him not to nip, bark, etc. It is a lot of work, if you are looking for a young animal, you have to dedicate a lot of time.”

The dedication seems worth it as the young pup continues to grow with Ally, keeping busy with completing her entrepreneurship degree.

Kerry Patton, the director of health and wellness at Quinnipiac, emphasizes the need for more improvement regarding mental health resources for students. Due to the severity, urgency, and commonality of mental health today, the field seems to be lacking in the quantity of resources.

According to Patton, the health center currently has 5.5 counselors, one part-time counselor who started in November, and a part-time psychiatrist. However, she adds that the International Association Counseling Standards recommends one full-time equivalent professional staff member to every 1,000 to 1,500 students. Patton revealed that the school needs one more full time counselor to meet this recommendation.

“This ratio is aspirational by nature, encouraging counseling centers to approximate the range in order to ensure an adequate number of staff members to meet the clinical needs of students,” Patton said.

In the meantime, opportunities like approval of emotional support animals aids in the process of fighting mental health disorders while the campus is in the process of meeting national demands.

Director of Residential Life Mark DeVilbiss explained the process of approval and protocol before officially enjoying the animals on campus. First, the student provides documentation that is reviewed by Matthew Cooper, Director of Student Accessibility. After the student meets with him, the emotional support animal may or may not be approved.

The next step runs through residential life, as Associate Director of Residential Life Melissa Karipidis meets with the student to go over guidelines and expectations of the Emotional Support Animal (ESA). This includes “providing documentation that the animal is healthy, has been vaccinated, and is licensed,” DeVilbiss said. After these two meetings are complete and approved, the animal may be allowed on campus.

Velvet Chestnut, a senior public relations major, lives at the Flats in North Haven, an apartment complex under Quinnipiac housing. She lives in a studio apartment with her puppy Kairo, a small white maltese yorkie mix. “Having my ESA has helped me get through hard academic periods, such as midterms and finals. It’s been great having him with me senior year,” she said.

She recalls seeing ESA ads on the internet before looking into Quinnipiac’s policy. “I wanted to know more about Quinnipiac’s exact process so I asked one of my friends who is an RA (Residential Assistant),” she said. “They were able to put me in contact with the person who oversees the process, Matt Cooper.”

Matt Cooper approves the qualification for having an animal on campus before the student meets with residential life. “Students have reported that they are calmer, more social, and feel a sense of responsibility for their ESA,” Cooper said.

This semester alone has brought in more than 20 new animals on campus. Cooper said,“since February 16, the office of student accessibility has approved 26 emotional support animals.” Although most get approved, some students do a trial run with their pups on campus to see if it will be a “great fit,” according to Cooper.

DeVilbiss agreed with the benefits of having an emotional support animal, especially in the college atmosphere where stress is heightened and evident.

“I think ESAs are a tremendous benefit to students who need them,” he said. “They can help students manage anxiety, depression, and other conditions. ESAs are wonderful if they can help a student who is otherwise struggling have a successful experience at QU.”

Junior psychology major Emma Alaimo recalls a dark time where she knew she needed help, but did not realize a support animal was the answer.

“A few years back I had a traumatic experience in which led me to have many panic attacks and high anxiety,” she said. Often finding herself in bed, keeping to herself and lacking the motivation for a social life, Emma began seeking counseling. The counseling helped, but she needed more.

She remembered hearing about the opportunity by seeing a campus pup the semester beforehand. After getting her mini australian shepherd Koda approved, she said she kept her smiling and gave her motivation. “Not only did she put me into a routine and made me more responsible, she made me more active and want to be outside more.”

Emma recommends taking advantage of this opportunity and following the regulations respectfully when it comes to training and keeping up with the maintenance of the animal. Through her experience, she said, “last semester was the best semester I had at Quinnipiac grade-wise and it was honestly all because of her.”

Cooper encourages more students to look into the opportunity of having an emotional support animal.

“They feel that they have better control of their daily life because their animals rely on the human to take care of them,” Cooper said.

The sense of responsibility seems to be the staple element that pushes the opportunity for emotional support animals on campus. Student experiences show a recurring theme of responsibility over the animal leading to motivation, eventually leading to a routinely lifestyle with structure.

By Grace Manthey

Film professor Liam O’Brien has an opportunity for students who don’t want to stay in the cold New England weather over winter break.

It’s a documentary production class that features a trip to South Africa. The trip will take place Dec. 29 to Jan. 18.

The class can count as FTM 355 for film students or COM 340, students can use as a UC credit.

Interested students should attend an information session on April 18 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in CCE 250 or they can schedule appointment.

A $1,500 deposit is due to the Quinnipiac Office of International Education by Sept. 7.

For more information contact O’Brien at lobrien@quinnipiac.edu.  

Updated Sunday, April 15 to clarify Michael Ruta’s position.

By Grace Manthey

The 2018 Wake The Giant concert series was a success, despite some confusion with the ticketing process.

According to Michael Ruta, the director of publicity for the Student Programming Board, the original rule was if a student’s ticket didn’t match the name on their Q Card then they would have to to go the ticket office to get it changed.

After a while, those taking the tickets nixed that rule, but according to Ruta it wasn’t communicated very well to the long line outside.

However, once everyone got inside the concert was relatively smooth. Daya performed first, her more popular songs including “Hide Away” and “Sit Still, Look Pretty.” Then at around 9:30 p.m. Khalid arrived on stage wearing a Quinnipiac jersey with “Khalid” printed on the back. His backup dancers followed suit in bobcat t-shirts later in the show.

By Grace Manthey

It’s spring, and graduation ceremonies are fast approaching. At Quinnipiac University that means Senior Week is coming up even faster.

The Senior Week committee sent out an email Friday morning reminding students to attend a mandatory information session. The committee will remove any student who does not attend a session without a refund.

SENIORS!!! We are ready for you to attend one of our MANDATORY info sessions. You will be removed from the list if you do not attend ONE of these. See you there!

A post shared by QU SENIOR WEEK 2018 (@quseniorweek) on Mar 28, 2018 at 2:14pm PDT

The email also provided a link for the housing form. Seniors will be staying one night at Mohegan Sun Casino and one night in the freshman suite residence halls.

Only one person from each group is required to submit the form and must select a group of either two, four or eight people to stay with. Since the suites house a total of eight people the Senior Week committee will put any remaining groups of two or four together randomly.  

Housing requests are due by 11:45 p.m. on April 24, 2018. For more information email SeniorWeek@qu.edu.