Category: Uncategorized

By Owen Kingsley

With his announcement to retire in the spring 2018, Quinnipiac has been searching for a new president to replace long standing President John Lahey. 

In light of that search I asked four Quinnipiac students three simple questions to find out what they would like to see in their new president.

 

Lauren McGrath, Junior

What are your thoughts on President Lahey and his leaving?

“I am not a fan of President Lahey, he has made himself completely inaccessible to the students. I think he cares more about money than his students. I am very mad with the way he went about converting the Blackbox Theatre into the Catholic Center without telling all of the faculty of CAS (College of Arts and Science), or without telling anyone really. We are supposed to be non-denominational, he clearly doesn’t care about the arts.”

What qualities are important to you for a new president?

“Honestly just someone who is more accessible. I want to feel like I’m able to talk directly to him or her if I have a concern or issue that I think they can fix. I’m not asking for much when I just want to feel like my president is someone who can be reached.” 

Who do you think should be Quinnipiac’s next president?

“Mark Thompson is a way better candidate, way more qualified and way more caring. And I think he would be an excellent choice for president.”

 

Chris Brachlow, Senior

What are your thoughts on President Lahey and his leaving?

“I think too many people don’t recognize the fact that he brought this school from a college to a university. He gave us a reputation. He put us on the map. We went from 2,000 students to 10,000 students under his reign. When people hear Quinnipiac now, I hear people think Quinnipiac is a pretty good school. Now I think he is plateauing and it’s time for him to leave, but what I think what he has done for Quinnipiac, well, we should all be grateful.”

What qualities are important to you for a new president?

“Really simply, I think the new president just needs to care about this school and want to see it continue to grow because that’s something we’ve seen a lot in the past few years.”

Who do you think should be Quinnipiac’s next president?

“I think Mark Thompson would make a great president, but I trust the school to make the right decision.”

 

Emma Spagnuolo, Junior

What are your thoughts on President Lahey and his leaving?

“To me he doesn’t really represent our school. I think you could compliment him on the growth of our school, but even when you look at it, we are growing way too quickly to the point where it feels we are scrambling every school year to make sure we can house every student and fit them in classrooms.”

What qualities are important to you for a new president?

“Someone who is caring and more concerned about the students than the endowment.”

Who do you think should be Quinnipiac’s next president?

“Mark Thompson for sure, I think he represents this school better than John Lahey does already.”

 

Tom Conley-Wilson, Junior

What are your thoughts on President Lahey and his leaving?

“He has kind of been a non-factor overall. I don’t care that he is leaving, I am not upset about it. He seems to be more in tune with making us look good rather than being good. The change in leadership should make us a better school overall. I understand he has done some good things for this school, but what has he done recently? I don’t think you can coast off the same achievements forever if you aren’t consistently proving that you should have this job.”

What qualities are important to you for a new president?

“I just hope they show their face more around campus. I want to feel like he is a member of the school in which he is president of. I don’t want to think of them as a figure head but rather getting involved hands on at this school.”

Who do you think should be Quinnipiac’s next president?

“Mark Thompson, baby.”

 

As Quinnipiac continues to search for a new president they have yet to tell us the names of the candidates but have said that there are five remaining, three men and two women. 

The one consistency in my conversations with students was that vice president Mark Thompson is a popular guy.

By Ariana Spinogatti 

As a part of International Education Week at Quinnipiac, large groups of student and faculty members gathered into the Carl Hansen Student Center for the Culture Night dinner. Known as the most popular event of the week, lines formed wrapping around the piazza as students filled their plates with foods prepared by our international students.

The event is put together by Quinnipiac’s Department of Cultural and Global Engagement and the International Students Association. Culture Night gives students a chance to showcase the diversity on campus and educate others on the various cultures apart of the Quinnipiac community.

There were ten tables set up with different traditional foods from various countries. Formed in a U shape, students sat behind their assigned table and created their own displays. Some of the table displays were from China, Poland, Nicaragua, Poland, Muslim Student Association and Saudi Arabia.

The Culture Night performance schedule included videos of Cape Verde, poems from the United Kingdom and performances titled Cabo Snoop preformed by Audrey Chigarira and Sun Raha preformed by Margy Shah.

Abbie E O’Neill, the Specialist for Student Engagement, said this event is great for promoting the variety of cultures we have on campus.

“I work in the department for cultural and global engagement so my role for this particular event is to organize it, reach out to students who are both international and domestic to give them a platform to display their culture and showcase the variety of different cultures that we have from around the world that is present on our campus,” O’Neill said. 

When we asked O’Neill how the event was planned, she expressed the importance of having an open mic portion at the end of night so all attendees can have the opportunity to express themselves.

“The first hour are food and table displays,” she said. “The second hour is performance where student will give presentations about their countries, tell stories, read poems, they sing, dance, and then afterwards there is an open mic so people who did not originally sign up can preform as well so it’s not closed off.” 

O’Neill said this event is a safe environment to talk openly without judgment.

“This event last year was widely successful,” O’Neill said. “We had a great turnout and we had a lot of students engaging and asking questions to their peers. This serves as an opportunity for those to talk who might be afraid to ask and learn a bit more about each other.”

O’Neill was asked what Quinnipiac should do moving forward to have students more aware of others cultures and more accepting of their peers.

“I think we need to have more events and have students be willing to educate themselves on their own,” she said. “It should not be the responsibility of the minority to educate the majority. It should be that the majority is activity trying to educate themselves and also working with students in our department to make sure their cultures are highlighted in the way they want them to be and not picked apart.”

By Beverly Wakiaga

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. People across the country will either be traveling or opening their doors to spend time with family. Some of Quinnipiac’s international students will have that same opportunity to visit family, while others will have to choose between staying on campus or accepting invitations from their friends or roommates to their house for a turkey dinner.

For those who choose not to spend their break on campus, they either spend the break with family members or with friends. Gregory Hardman, a film and English double major, was born in America and spent his early years here. Hardman also grew up and went to high school in South Africa. When he was accepted into Quinnipiac, his parents decided to move to Vermont. Hardman will be spending his Thanksgiving break in Vermont.

Similarly, Miriam Monteiro, a graduate student from Cape Verde, an island off the coast of West Africa, will be spending her Thanksgiving break with her family in New Haven.

 

“Dinner. A lot of turkey. Cousins. Just pretty much spending time with family,” Monteiro said of how she plans on spending Thanksgiving.  

Alessandro Woodbridge, a 21-year-old management major from the United Kingdom had originally planned on staying on campus to focus on his work but he will be having Thanksgiving dinner with a friend and his family.

    “(My friend) is a very sweet lad,” Woodbridge said. “He lives in New York but he has family an hour away from here. So I’ll be eating and dining with them.”

 

According to Abbie O’Neill, the specialist for student engagement, around 21 students will be staying on campus during this year’s Thanksgiving break. One of them is junior Konstantin Khvan. The finance major from Kazakhstan says the break is too short to fly more than 20 hours to go home.

“Quinnipiac provides you with housing for the whole week for free. Which is really nice, they don’t kick me out,” Khvan said. “It’s really expensive to go home for just one week plus just because of the trip you will lose three days. Two days when you go there, and one day when you come back.”

During his freshman year, Khvan stayed with a distant cousin that lived in New York, however, he didn’t want to be an imposition on them and has been staying on campus during the week off.

“Pretty empty,” said Khvan of the campus during Thanksgiving break. “It’s pretty empty, but it’s liveable.”

The Department of Cultural and Global Engagement often plans shopping trips and excursions for students who choose to stay on campus or put students in contact with a host family so that students can get to experience the Thanksgiving holiday. Members of the department are usually still in their office and offer students the chance to stop by and talk to them if they get bored.

This year, the department is not offering any programs or trips for those left on campus. Students who choose to stay on campus will also have to face the shorter hours of certain facilities and resources on campus being limited due to the holiday.

“I’m planning to buy a lot of groceries for the week and stay on campus, not really many plans, ” Khvan said. “I might be visiting New York on a day trip but that’s still under consideration.”

 

By Julius Saporito

The National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA) announced that Quinnipiac will host the tournament’s final four from Friday, Nov. 17 to Sunday, Nov. 19.

“The semifinals being at 10 a.m. on Friday is a difficult time window but we have no doubt the usual QU fan base will be on hand in addition to the the two other teams battling at 1 p.m.,” said Quinnipiac rugby head coach Rebecca Carlson.

Brown University was the host of the 2015 championship and in 2016 the championship was played at West Point at the United States Military Academy. Quinnipiac is the league’s two-time defending national champion and is looking to repeat its winning streak.

In 2015, the team got its first championship topping Army 24-19, and went in with a five-game winning streak. The team’s second championship win last season came to a 46-24 score in a win over Central Washington and was its only win in the series against Central Washington. Coming into that season, the Quinnipiac women’s rugby team was ranked No. 2 in a NIRA coaches poll.

This season the team was granted a new and improved playing surface and new scoreboard for bringing in two consecutive championship titles, a very big contribution to the school’s program exposure.

Coach Carlson talked about how having the new parts of the facility adds to the team morale going into playoff.

“Great to have the space. Honored to be at home,” Carlson said. “We still have a ways to go to be one of the top rugby facilities in the country across both genders but a will get there.”

Carlson’s team has been successful again this season as it has made it to the tournament’s semifinals for the third-straight season.

Coach Carlson also added to how tough the team’s competition would be and how the team expects to finish out the year.  

“Our schedule was the most down challenging in the entire country,” Carlson said. “We played 9 NIRA games prior to playoffs while our opponents and the other side of the bracket played less than 5. Our adversity and two losses were/are more valuable than any team with a soft schedule and undefeated status, we expect to finish strong.”

Quinnipiac will face Central Washington in one of the semifinals on Friday. Dartmouth and Harvard will play against each other in the other semifinal, which is also on Friday. The winner of each game will face each other in the national championship game, which will take place on Sunday.

Many families around the nation have their age-old holiday traditions they follow when it comes to celebrating Thanksgiving. However, for Quinnipiac University student Emma Robertson, one of her favorite traditions happens when the feast is over.

“Usually on the car ride home, it’s a really long car ride, we always play Christmas music,” Robertson said with a smile. “We don’t start it before and then we always do it on the car ride home. We play a new CD every time.”

Every Thanksgiving, since the time she was little, Robertson and her family travel from her house in Maine to her grandmother’s house in Vermont. The drive is five hours each way. However, for Robertson, the drive is worth it.

“I don’t have a lot of family close to me,” Robertson said. “Christmas is always just me, my parents and my brother, and Easter is always just me, my parents and my brother. So Thanksgiving is the only holiday I actually spend with family.”

Robertson explained that its become more difficult to see her family over the years as she has become more involved, both in school and in extracurricular activities.

Aside from her parents, brother, and grandmother, Robertson’s aunt and cousins are usually in attendance. They enjoy their Thanksgiving meal together in the early afternoon before her cousins leave to visit their father.

Robertson and her cousin are often involved in the cooking process. Robertson specifically remembers the times she would help her grandmother cook the homemade studding when she was little.

“I remember when I was younger, I used to always help my grandmother cook,” Robertson laughed. “Specifically I remember, I don’t remember what year it was, but helping her make the stuffing, and I remember they always put me on ripping the bread. I just remember ripping up bread.”

For Robertson, though every Thanksgiving is almost the exact same as the last, she finds comfort and warmth in the familiarity of the holiday’s events. Above all else, she is happy to be able to spend time with her extended family, even if it is for just one day out of the year.

“It’s nice because we all get together and it doesn’t often happen.”

Emma Robertson is a Human of Hamden.

 

 

By Karli Regalbuto 

 

HAMDEN- People are talking about whether or not stores should be open on Thanksgiving Day and on Black Friday. Chain discount stores across the country are taking different approaches to the holiday hours. The different hours will affect local chain stores such as Target, Walmart, and Kohls.

Students at Quinnipiac University shared their opinions on the Black Friday shopping tradition.

Annie Schuppe, a Quinnipiac student, didn’t see anything wrong with having stores open on Thanksgiving or Black Friday.

“I don’t see any issue because the hours are split into shifts,” she said. “The workers can still make time to see their families and shop for the holidays, too.”

Another student, Kelly Gorman, has worked Black Friday the past four years. She thinks it is fine to have stores open on Black Friday.

“They should 100 percent be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but opening at midnight is perfect, I don’t mind it at all,” Gorman said.

Peter Concilio, another student at Quinnipiac, agrees with the idea to have stores closed on Thanksgiving Day but open on Black Friday.

“For Thanksgiving Day, absolutely not! For Black Friday, absolutely yes,” Concilio said. “People need to walk off all those calories and look forward to another long day of mayhem.”

The Walmart in Hamden will be open on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. The store hours will not change due to the holiday. It will remain open on both days from 7 a.m. until midnight. There are Black Friday discounts in store, followed by Cyber Monday deals.

The Hamden location for Kohls will open later than normal on Thanksgiving Day. It will be open from 6 p.m. until 12 a.m. after Black Friday. The normal hours are 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. on Thursday’s and 8 a.m. until midnight on Friday’s. There are 66 pages full of discounts available in store on Black Friday.  Kohls will also be participating in Cyber Monday.

The Target in North Haven is also opening its doors later on the holiday. On Thanksgiving Day, it will be open from 6 p.m. until midnight. It will open again on Black Friday at 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. Shoppers can apply early for the REDcard to gain early access to deals. There are thousands of deals for Black Friday as well as Cyber Monday.

By Shauna Golden

“We’re actually doing something new this year.”

Since Ally Foltiny was little, she and her family would travel to one of her aunts’ houses for Thanksgiving. However, this year, the senior Quinnipiac University student and her family are slightly breaking tradition.

Now that Foltiny’s cousins are in their early thirties, they will be tasked with the challenge of hosting the holiday. 

“My cousins are getting to the point where they’re old enough to host, which is kind of crazy, because they’re all starting their own families,” Foltiny said. 

Another new factor? Foltiny will be bringing her 3-month-old puppy, Huck Finn, to the celebration. She has already received permission from her cousin to do so.

However, despite these new factors, traditions from the past will still remain a part of the family’s Thanksgiving celebration.

“My entire family is still going to be there,” Foltiny said. “It’s really special to see my nana, she always makes this really good cranberry sauce that’s better than the canned cranberry sauce […] and the warmth of all of my family there, I think that’s really special.”

Foltiny shared that she and her family usually start their meal around 2 p.m. and continue eating into the evening. Every year, she looks forward to sitting around the table and listening to stories from when her parents, and even her grandparents, were young.

This year, she looks forward to celebrating old traditions, as well as starting new ones.

“Our traditions are mostly food traditions, but I’m very okay with that,” said Foltiny.

Ally Foltiny is a Human of Hamden.

 

 

By Ariana Spinogatti

On Friday Nov. 10. a transformer exploded around 7:30 p.m. on Quinnipiac University’s Mount Carmel Campus leaving various power outages. The Outages affected three residence halls.

-Commons: freshman dorms

-Hill: sophomore apartments

-Village: sophomore townhouses

The biggest concern was how cold it would get at night in the residential halls. Officials set up different sleeping areas in the Carl Hansen Student Center and Burt Kahn Gym. If students had a friend’s house to stay at or lived close enough to campus they were advised to find a place to go to to those places for the remaining time.

Quinnipiac posted information on the MyQ website and social media pages to update students on where to sleep and how they were working towards getting power back.

Sophomore Rachael Pasquarose expressed disappointment in the school’s plan for students affected by the power outage.

“I would say they didn’t handle it as well as they could have,” she said. “I felt like there should have been better plans in place and more resources for students who were unable to stay in their dorms instead of having to sleep in the gym.”

Pasquarose ended up traveling to New York as she couldn’t be in her room in Village.

“On Friday Night I stayed in Bakke Hall because they had power,” she said. “My roommates drove to their friends houses who had power and who could fit people in their rooms. By Saturday we still didn’t have power so we ended up driving to New York since we couldn’t be in our room at all.” 

 

 

 

By Julius Saporito

Apple launched its new iOS 11.1 update on Tuesday, Oct. 31, the latest update since the iOS 11 update that was released on Sept. 19, 2017. Since the iOS 11.1 update, people have reported that their has been a mass glitch going around on their phones.

The glitch doesn’t let you type the letter “i” without it suggesting different characters like “A” and a question mark symbol. 

“Our own limited testing doesn’t really support this: Some phones that have updated iOS 11.1 are still affected by the bug, and other phones that are still on iOS 11.0.3 aren’t,” one of Apple’s support forums said.

Apple was relayed this message and came out with some tips to work around this or potentially fix this problem.

How to fix the lowercase ‘i’ bug in iOS 11

1. Go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Text Replacement.

2. Hit the + button to add a new text replacement shortcut.

3. Enter an uppercase “I” for the phrase.

4. Enter a lowercase “i” for the shortcut.

This is a hilarious iOS 11 bug pic.twitter.com/TXFXbvgaqO

— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) November 6, 2017

 

Apple has concluded this issue by letting the public know that if they follow these steps this will end the problem for now but are still unsure what caused this problem in the first place.

Apple stated to Loop Insight that it’s “aware of instances where the iPhone X screen will become temporarily unresponsive to touch after a rapid change to a cold environment.”

To prevent this, Apple has recommended to keep your phones in approximately 32-degree to 95-degrees fahrenheit temperature range to get the best out of the Iphone X’s capabilities.  

Apple reps also did a test to discover this problem that many people reported having and if it was all models or specific models. They took the phone through different temperatures going from 68 to 41 degrees fahrenheit and reported that “the screen remained responsive as we surfed the web and clicked on emails. Regardless, Apple is planning to fix the problem in an upcoming software update,” according to Don Reisinger of Fox News.

A look into sophomore class president Chris Montalvo’s remarks and reactions from students

By Ariana Spinogatti 

The Student Government Association and the Multicultural Student Leadership Council invited members of the community to come speak at its event, “Your Voice, Our Quinnipiac.” The event was hosted in the Carl Hansen Student Center Piazza. The event was scheduled for Monday Oct. 23 to promote the “My Culture is not a Costume” campaign before the start of Halloween weekend. At this open-mic event, students spoke about their personal experiences with diversity, racism and sexism.

Sophomore Class President Chris Montalvo took the stage that evening and said he was going to share his life story. However, Montalvo made remarks that he disagreed with the previous speakers and made statements that left viewers in shock. The overall theme of this speech was that he ignores racially biased individuals and believes students should be educated about various topics before speaking.

Joseph DeRosa, a senior who attended the event, said that after Montalvo spoke he generated a lot of resentment from the crowd. 

“I think he made any student who may feel discriminated even more fearful,” DeRosa said. “We already go to a school that severley lacks in diversity. It doesn’t bolster anyone’s confidence in being who they are if the Class President expresses borderline discriminatory views.”

DeRosa said that Montalvo left shorty after he made his comments with a look of disappointment.

“I personally feel that his role assumes much more responsibility than normal, and he should have known better than to spark controversy,” he said. “He also should have stayed to hear the remaining stories the students shared. In my honest opinion, leaving early after saying what he said is quite cowardly.”

Senior Class Representative Ian Zeitlin drafted a petition to impeach Montalvo from The Student Government Association after expressing himself that evening.

On Oct. 25, SGA held its weekly general board meeting where students and other members of the executive committee could participate in an open forum to express their concerns. Students and faculty spoke both for and against Montalvo, but no conclusion was made on whether or not he would be impeached.

10 signatures are needed from current members on the executive board in order make the petition for an impeachment. An impeachment does not always mean an immediate removal from office. There will be a further investigation of Montalvo’s actions to determine a proper evaluation and punishment.  

Junior Class President Jack Onofrio said that aside from an impeachment, SGA should censure Montalvo. This would show that student government is disapproving of his comments.

Camilo Lemos, a senior who attended the general board meeting, spoke out against Montalvo.

“I think it has brought up the issue that many students here at Quinnipiac are vastly uneducated in racial sensitivity and sociological education, and can feel free to make offensive comments simply because of their right to, rather than taking time to word things that creates discussion, while remaining inoffensive,” Lemos said.

In wake of the event, Montalvo gave out his personal phone number and email address and offered to speak one-on-one with anyone who was offended or wanted to have a deeper conversation.

Lemos said how he felt Montalvo handled the situation once he saw the impact his speech had on the student body.

“I’d like to preface this by saying I don’t know Chris Montalvo personally, so my comments are based upon what I saw and felt through the days after the speech,” he said. “I know that after I brought up to the SGA that his comments were offensive and that I believed that he should be removed from office, I was contacted by Chris Montalvo on my personal cellular phone asking if I would rather talk to him and instead work it out between him and I personally.”

Lemos said that he rejected Montalvo’s request and saw it as a way for Montalvo to avoid a public issue.

“I saw his wanting to meet with me privately as wholly based upon his reputation and position, rather than wanting to resolve the actual issue,” he said. “His comments on Wednesday during the SGA meeting, that he was sorry about the way people felt about his comments, indicate to me that he is not sorry about what he said, but rather that people wanted to remove his power because he said it. Most of what he said, that he was not a racist or a bigot and that he felt offended by my accusations of such.”

On Wednesday Nov. 15 SGA will have its weekly general board meeting where they will discuss the fate of Montalvo’s position in student government.

Montalvo spoke to us days after he gave out his personal contact information to see how he felt students have reacted to his jester and how he has changed since this event occurred.

What were your initial intentions before getting up on stage at the event?

“My initial intentions of speaking were to offer my story, and to try and show that it is unfair to rank one’s individual experiences because at the end of the day you don’t really know how that person felt.”

What do you think it was that you said in your speech that got students to react so strongly?

“I’m not quite sure exactly what it was that triggered certain students, but I do know that my words were unprepared, and often times when I go on tangents my word choice is boggled. I made the mistake of not preparing what I was going to say, and the affect that that made is evident.”

How have the responses been with members of the Quinnipiac community since giving out your contact information? 

“Unfortunately, nobody has reached out to speak with me. That however, is my fault; I shouldn’t have expected them to do that. What I should’ve said is I will be reaching out to those I offended and see if they are open to a discussion. I am currently working with a member of SGA to try and set those meetings up.”

How do you feel you have changed or evolved since this event occurred? 

“I now truly see the need to be prepared when speaking in a sensitive environment. Not being the best public speaker, this is something I need to work on, and will do in the future to avoid this from happening again.”

How did you react to the “impeachment” and “censoring” comments from SGA?

“While I believe there are no grounds to impeach me, I trust the process that is put in place to give our students a voice. I agree with the censure, as my words are my own and should not reflect the Student Government Association if they truly disagree with them.”