With the final days of April approaching, Quinnipiac University faculty and students are preparing for another year of campus tradition — May Weekend.
“I think it’s a fantastic experience and it brings everyone together,” Andrew Zukowski, a senior finance major, said.
May Weekend, which runs April 26-29, is an unofficial campus-wide event where students engage in celebrations on Mount Carmel and York Hill campuses.
Many Quinnipiac students plan to remain on both of the campuses, but are a variety of events taking place around Hamden that many Bobcats will attend.
Many students are thrilled for the weekend to get started.
“It’s a time where everyone gets time together and it builds a student bond, which I feel like we don’t have,” Zukowski said .
However, with the weekend being so close to finals week, some students are holding themselves out.
“I’m studying all weekend,” Dan Pardo, a junior health science major, said.
Pardo expressed his disagreement with the timing of the weekend, claiming that it’s more inconvenient to students than fun.
“It’s an awesome experience, but my only problem is that it’s right before finals,” Pardo said. “I think it’d be awesome if they pushed it back a weekend.”
While the student body prepares for the weekend, so too is Quinnipiac’s Department of Public Safety.
With the imminent presence of drugs and alcohol, Public Safety plans to step up security all around both Mount Carmel — a dry campus — and York Hill.
Some of the department’s plans include placing more officers at the entrances of both campuses, car and bag checks at the main entrances and patrols around the outside and dorming areas.
The Hamden Police Department will also be on high alert for the upcoming weekend.
With the expectation of many gatherings taking place at houses around the town, police will patrol streets with Quinnipiac-owned housing to shut down any potentially large gatherings.
Quinnipiac Student Government Association (SGA) will be hosting a Senior BBQ on Quinnipiac’s York Hill Campus on Sunday, April 29, from 1-6 p.m.
Thursday from 11 a.m to 1 p.m is the last chance for seniors to purchase a five dollar drink ticket.
Former Senior Class President Austin Solimine and his fellow Student Government Association representatives said they believe there was a lack of a senior tradition at Quinnipiac.
“Once we came into the spring semester we came up with the idea of having a barbeque with alcohol for the senior class only because there is a lack of senior tradition,” Solimine said.
Solimine and SGA teamed up with the Student Programming Board (SPB) and, according to Solimine, it took about three weeks plan the event. This included going through the hurdles with facilities and submitting multiple proposals to Student Affairs before it was approved.
Lisa O’Connor will be the new dean for the School of Nursing at Quinnipiac University, according to a press release from Executive Vice President and Provost Mark Thompson.
In her 15 years at QU, O’Connor has built a large resume. After becoming an assistant professor in 2003, she then became director and chair of the undergraduate nursing programs and finally the associate dean of the School of Nursing in 2015, according to Thompson.
She has also served on multiple committees and attended several conferences both at Quinnipiac and around the state.
However, O’Conner is more than just her resume. O’Conner is a reference point for her advisees and takes an interest in her students, according to junior nursing major Nina Surabian.
“She is very organized, but most importantly she puts the students and their futures above everything. She has everyone’s best intention in mind and is truly selfless,” Surabian said.
Surabian recently found out she was accepted for a full time position in the intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston this summer. She said O’Connor helped her through the entire application process.
“She took time out of her busy schedule to meet with me multiple times throughout the year as well as following up with me through email. She also provided a reference for me for my job application,” Surabian said.
O’Connor’s position will officially switch over on July 1 following Jean Lange’s retirement, who served as dean since Quinnipiac founded the School of Nursing in 2011.
In honor of Earth Day, on April 20 Quinnipiac University’s Student Programming Board invited Mark Robbins, president of MHR Development, to speak in conjunction with other Earth Day related events.
The models at the April 20 fashion show wore eco-friendly dresses. | Photo courtesy of Hanna Hejmowski
The event opened with an Earth Day fashion show, where models wore eco-friendly garb, and finished with a speech about the role of buildings in relation to environment sustainability.
Robbins talked about his company, which works to improve buildings, and what it does for the environment.
He spoke about the importance of energy efficient buildings and shed some light on how much buildings contribute to climate change.
“Greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels – oil and gas – to create electricity.” Robbins said. “These buildings consume 40 percent of the electricity emitted.”
Robbins made an indirect connection between the electricity consumed and the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
“Buildings are responsible for 40 percent of the national carbon dioxide emissions,” Robbins said. “People say ‘why are buildings emitting carbon?’ well it’s not the buildings that are emitting carbon, but the operation of these facilities – the heating and the cooling of the buildings is coming from power plants that are directly emitting carbon, and also heating the atmosphere.”
MHR has worked on a number of significant projects in Connecticut such as Windermere on the Lake, a 80-acre site in North Stamford. It was originally supposed to be subdivided into multiple housing complexes until MHR stepped in. Robbins said, “it’s a very important site from an ecological perspective.”
MHR prevented the land from being fragmented.
“We wanted to create (a) meaningful habitat,” Robbins said.
So MHR reduced the size of each dwelling unit, expanded the wetlands and made sure the entire site was an uninterrupted habitat. In addition to the ecological measures, every building on the land was optimized to be as energy efficient as possible. The streetlights are lit by battery storage and every house is equipped with a septic tank that converts the discharge into water that, according to Robbins, “is actually cleaner than rainwater.”
The cost of energy in Connecticut is the second highest in the country because it imports most of its energy. According to Robbins, “we’re not fracking here in Connecticut, we’re not refining oil.”
This high cost, Robbins says, brings hope to clean energy industry in Connecticut.
“When people say we’re thinking about doing LED light bulbs or solar panels or investing in combined heat/power equipment and better insulation, the payback here in Connecticut is astronomically better here than it is in the rest of the country,” Robbins said.
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.
It’s been 19 years since the school shooting that shook the country and brought a newfound fear into both students and parents when heading off to school.
On this day 19 years ago, April 20, 1999, 12 students and one teacher were shot and killed at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
According to the Washington Post, there have been 197 school shootings since Columbine. This number doesn’t include universities, suicides that weren’t a threat to other students, accidental discharges of the gun or shootings at after-hours events.
In 2018, there’s already been 11 schools shootings.
Columbine was the largest school shooting up until nine weeks ago, when 17 students and teachers were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Now students are taking matters into their own hands to end gun violence.
Jake Mauff, a Columbine High School 2015 graduate, was only 2 years old when the shooting occurred, but had teachers who lived through the tragedy.
“I heard their stories and it’s intense. It’s as intense as you’d think it would be. You know the places their talking about. It’s not a fictional world,” Mauff said. “They walked through the lunchroom where we eat lunch every day. So it hits close to home.”
Columbine High School released a statement in support of using today, April 20, as a day to reflect and serve instead of protesting. Mauff said he believes people should do whatever they think will help.
“Maybe today day should be a day of service but maybe today should be about spreading this message in a walkout. It’s whatever serves their conscience,” Mauff said. “The best thing I can do is keep them in my thoughts.”
Despite the principal of Columbine High School asking for today to be a day of service, students in Connecticut and around the country are using this day to protest the violence. Joining in with the hundreds of people around the country for the fight against gun violence there were at least 26 walkouts in Connecticut, according to the Hartford Courant.
The walkouts were spearheaded by Ridgefield High School student Lane Murdock, who grew up down the road from Newtown, Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened in 2012.
“I think gun violence — even if you’re not near a specific point of it — is something that is on the mind of our generation because we’ve grown up around it,” Murdock said in an interview with Teen Vogue.
Now Murdock is working to end the normalization of this issue by starting the National School Walkout foundation, which lead more than 2,500 schools around the country to walk out on the anniversary of Columbine, according to CNN.
The Foundation had more than 250,000 people sign up to protest gun violence today. From schools in upstate New York, to Detroit, and outside the White House, the youth are protesting change.
Click each picture to learn more about the graduates.
Purchasing a small home in Wallingford, buying a brand new luxury Audi and the tuition for a private school in Connecticut. What do these all have in common? They cost upwards of $70,000.
This year Trinity College in Hartford raised its tuition and fees to this hefty price tag and it’s not the only school that is increasing tuition.
Quinnipiac Commencement 2017, Credit: Quinnipiac University
For the 2017-18 school year, the price for both tuition and room and board at Quinnipiac University was $63,770 with tuition growing by 6.5 percent from the school year before, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. While 95 percent of students receive aid and 93 percent attain scholarships, this still means most students will be in debt of more than six figures upon graduation, according to NCES.
With the price tag of a degree so high, some students say they feel pressure to major in a field where they’ll make enough money to pay back their loans and may decide to choose a job outside their path to make enough to support themselves.
But many students say they are aware of the costs and still only put some thought into their future salaries when choosing their major, according to a survey of 59 Quinnipiac students.
In 2017, 43 students graduated from Quinnipiac with a journalism degree.
The average salary for a news reporter in the market size of 151 and higher, which are the stations with the least number of viewers per area, is $26,000 according to the Radio Television Digital News Association. Usually, entry-level reporters must start in a small market in order to build their reputations and improve their on-air presence.
Victoria Saha, who graduated in 2017, is one of these people.
As a multimedia news reporter for WAOW in Wausau, Wisconsin, Saha is an hourly employee making $12 an hour. If she signs a two-year contract after her three month “trial” when she and the station decide if she should continue, she will be making $24,000 a year.
“It’s kind of sad, no?” Saha asked. “That doesn’t really cut it, you know, with taxes and everything. I mean the cost of living here is cheap, but sometimes I feel like it’s not enough.”
Saha applied to more than 300 jobs and was without work from the time she graduated in May until she was hired seven months later.
While this salary isn’t one any student would hope to start out with, Lila Carney, the director of advising and student development for the Quinnipiac School of Communications, said this is something students in this field usually know going in.
“I think students in journalism are aware of the fact that those first jobs in no-mans-land may not pay all that great,” Carney said. “But if you do a little bit of sacrificing eventually you make it to a market where you are making OK money. So that little time that you’re sacrificing is generally a short period of time.”
From the time you are a child, you’re asked who you want to be when you grow up. You’re told to “reach for the stars” and “follow your dreams.” When you apply for college you’re told to find what you love.
But you’re never told that doing what you love could mean a salary where you could qualify for food stamps.
From one end of the communications department to another, Mike Bonavita is feeling the same struggle.
Bonavita, a senior film major, said if you want to make it in film, you know you’ll probably be starting as an assistant or in the mail room.
“It’s basically where you want to be and there’s a lot of success stories that come out of the mail room,” Bonavita said. “In film as a (production assistant) you’re not making much. The film industry is tricky that if you’re really dedicated and you really want to do it you’re going to be working the crappy hours and the crappy days.”
But the job front isn’t just an issue for communications majors.
When you think of someone starting out in acting, “struggling” is probably a word that comes to mind. It’s no secret it’s tough to break into this job.
Ryan Devaney, a senior theater arts major, knows this too.
In his first year out of college he hopes to buy a computer, purchase editing software and get a microphone to start a YouTube channel to play songs.
This stepping stone for him is just one step toward his dream of opening his own theater.
“None of that can happen unless I have a stable income,” Devaney said. “I won’t be able to create my art unless I have a job. It will happen on my off time that I deal with creating art.”
But finding that job is also something he has found issue with.
“Right now I don’t have anything set currently in my mind,” Devaney said. He also knows he has a little more leeway than other people in his major to find a job since his father is a public safety officer at the university and thus he went to school tuition free.
According to NBC News, three in every four millenials, or people born between 1981 and 1996, are in some type of debt, whether this debt be through student loans or credit card debt.
Kevin Daly, an assistant professor of theater at Quinnipiac, knows that the school comes with a hefty price tag which could keep theater majors from wanting to come to an expensive school like Quinnipiac. For this reason, he said the department will be starting a theater three-plus-one program this fall so students can follow their passion in obtaining a theater degree while also graduating with a masters in business.
But working the smaller jobs is no surprise to a theater major, and with just 16 people in the department, each student is taught that in this major, you must follow three points to succeed, according to Daly. Constantly working on your art, networking with people in your chosen industry and using “survivability skills” – like finding a job outside of film to have a stable income – Daly said are imperative to finding a job as an artist.
For this reason, Daly advises his student to double major in other specialties like communications, film or even math to help them find jobs that will pay while also working on their art and networking.
It’s not just a matter of landing a job that pays a livable wage, it may also be a matter of finding a job at all in tight markets.
Liam Kenney, a senior biomedical marketing major, is as worried as Devaney.
“It’s been quite the struggle at this point,” Kenney said. “A lot of the pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, they want experience. It’s difficult to find that experience because we’re entry level people.”
Kenney said once he does nail down a job, starting salaries in his business aren’t what he hoped they would be.
“It’s hard because when you start off in marketing and sales you start off with very low pay,” Kenney said after applying for one job at $45,000. “You don’t make commission in your first year and after your first year they cut you salary by $10,000 because you can start making commission.”
Both Bonavita and Kenney expressed their struggles with finding a job that paid the bills while also making enough to pay off Quinnipiac’s large tuition and student loans.
When students come into school, they often aren’t thinking about finding a job when they graduate because it’s so far down the line. For some majors like with Devaney, Kenney and Saha, a job is tough to find, but with others a job is everything but guaranteed when they graduate.
All majors pay the same tuition, but some have better starting opportunities than others.
In a Quinnipiac survey about majors and salaries, the majority of respondents said they felt very confident they’d attain a job after graduation with only two respondents saying they felt very uncertain about getting a job.
The poll went from one being very likely to five being very unlikely.
The Quinnipiac School of Communications and Engineering might hold classes for both majors, but once the classroom doors close and the jobs start, the majors couldn’t be more different.
Nik Griswold, a mechanical engineering major, chose to major in engineering when he arrived on campus rather than his initial choice of business because there are more opportunities.
“I wanted to get a job so I picked engineering,” Griswold said. “Demand is high, where the world is going to is very (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) based. Everybody wants to be technical.”
Janine Jay, a computer software engineering major already has a job after graduation with Liberty Mutual Insurance in Boston after meeting with a representative at the Grace Hopper Celebration this year in Orlando, Florida.
She chose between three job offers. Jay said while engineering does have monetary benefits and she knew a starting salary was around $50,000 and moves up fast, she went in to engineering because for her, it was just fun.
“While everyone else was taking exams, I was building a video game,” Jay said.
Like Jay, James Studley, a computer information systems major, accepted his first job before his senior year began, accepting an offer to work as a systems engineer for Fidelity Investments in Rhode Island.
According to Studley and Payscale.com, the average salary for a CIS major coming out of Quinnipiac is about $65,000 with a $5,000 signing bonus. Studley will be starting out making $68,500 with a $5,000 signing bonus and will have $2,000 worth of his student loans paid for by Fidelity every year for five years.
“I feel like it made this year, it like took so much stress off,” Studley said. “I would be a lot more stressed right now if I was looking for a job especially with student loans starting up.”
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.”
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.
“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.
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.”
