The 2017 Hamden mayoral race between current mayor Curt Leng and underdog republican candidate Salman Hamid is coming to a close on November, 7, and the results could potentially impact Quinnipiac’s relationship with the town. Since being elected in 2015, Leng says that the relationship between the town and Quinnipiac University has greatly improved and that he regularly communicates with QU’s president John Lahey.
“We meet, we talk, we text,” he said. “We have a regular communication now and that’s really nine tenths of the whole game, because if you’re communicating then you can say ‘hey I have a problem with this and this’ or ‘hey can you help me out with this or this’ and (it’s) going both ways.”
Leng said he has seen this growing communication in other areas of the town as well. For example, he mentioned better communication this past yearbetween the Hamden police and Quinnipiac’s public safety.
The expansion of the student body and increasing amount of student housing, however, is still an issue between Leng and Lahey, but Leng says they have been finding the balance between the town of Hamden and QU.
“It’s a balance of trying to figure out how you can have rules that are appropriate and legal that kind of incentivize locations that make more sense for student development period,” Leng said. “So it’s a matter of trying to plan these things out and the more that you work, I think, with the neighbors, university, town (and) students together, which we haven’t perfected yet.”
Hamid says if he is elected as mayor he will improve Hamden’s relationship with Quinnipiac by discussing housing with the incoming president.
“They should never have been barred from enjoying the benefits Hamden has to offer.”
He added that he will invite QU students back into Hamden for shopping and dining.
“…By working (with) the president of the university to smooth over the issues that have caused division such as student housing. We will use QU security to help ease tensions between neighbors.”
Money
Leng says that throughout his time as mayor, town financing has always held a major role.
“…We really focus on (it) a lot and we’ve been able to strengthen the town’s finances quite a bit,” Leng said.
He says that in regards of improvements in town financing, there is a lot for everyone to be proud of.
“Our bond rating has been upheld,” Leng said. “We had the first budget without a tax increase in ten years this past year, so that took a lot of work and spent a lot of time with our delegation making sure that our our state funding is fingers crossed still coming through.”
Photo Courtesy of Dorah Labatte
As for Hamid, key issues include high taxes, energy efficiency, animal shelter construction, equality in education and resident participation in spending for local government.
“You probably heard over and over of residents complaining about Quinnipiac student housing and so on and so forth,” he said. “That situation wouldn’t have happened if taxes were sustainable in town, because people have either foreclosed on their property or they rent it out to students because there is no other option because they can’t sell their homes.”
One can clearly see the difference in numbers and that on certain issues the two candidates don’t see eye to eye. All will be decided next week on Election Day Nov. 7. Who will you vote for?
David Ives is the executive director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute, also known as the white house on the corner of Mount Carmel Avenue and New Road.
Ives is also a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and has been teaching at Quinnipiac for 15 years as well as leading students to volunteer in different countries and attend Nobel Peace Summits since Jan. 2002.
David Ives in his office
“A friend of mine named Mohammad Elahee said he thinks that I brought the world to Quinnipiac and sent Quinnipiac students into it. So it’s something I’m proud about, ” Ives said.
This mission to bring Quinnipiac students to the world began 30 years ago when Ives was a Peace Corp volunteer in Costa Rica where he was measuring the height and weight of babies. During a visit to one family, he noticed that their daughter was having trouble breathing and decided that he would take her to the hospital. The only way to get to the hospital was through a boat that left at four am.
Excerpts of Letters from David
Ives said he would take the baby and pay if there were any charges. He remembers that the family was late getting to the boat and the captain threatened to leave without them, but Ives made it clear that he would throw the captain into the lake if he even tried to do it. The family got to the boat but they told him that the baby could not breathe. Ives tried to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation but he could not get any air into her lungs and half way across the bay, Ives says he felt her soul leave her body.
“I’ve never gotten over that since then,” Ives explained, “and that motivates me to do what I do, in terms of getting Quinnipiac students overseas.”
When he came back, he found that not too many people knew or seemed to care about people from other countries. Ives believes that we are all connected in one way or another regardless of where we live. Here at Quinnipiac, Ives tries to take students on a trip outside of their lived experience, he tries to ‘shock’ them by exposing them to different ways of life through living with host families.
Excerpts of Letters from David
According to Ives he has been criticized for not being academic enough but he has countered that by designing a program where the student goes to a particular area, ‘gets shocked,’ then comes back and takes a class that explains the nitty gritty of the situation in that particular country.
“There are academic aspects to the problem of the world but first you have to give a damn about them. I wanted to create a situation where people cared about other people around the world and then do the reasoning behind the poverty,” Ives explained.
Something else that has motivated Ives to continue his work is having had four different diseases. Polio, post polio syndrome, Guillain-Barre syndrome (a disorder in which the bodies immune system attacks the nervous system), and he is currently dealing with Parkinson’s. He has found that his own struggles help those in developing countries stop stigmatizing certain conditions. His selflessness and caring nature have led many students at Quinnipiac to love not only the work he does but who he is. One could say he has his own following, something he did not know.
“I deeply care about students and I try not to be pretentious and I try to act human in classes, and I’m a storyteller,” Ives said. “I don’t lecture, and I’ve had real world experiences from having polio and recovering from that and to helping people learn to walk in other parts of the world.”
Ives describes the students as his ‘lifeblood,’ so much so that even though this is his final year at Quinnipiac, he will be back to teach courses on nobel laureates and Albert Schweitzer. To fill the time between his classes, there are endless possibilities, he may write a book, a play may be written about his life or he may win the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I was pretty excited, I don’t talk about it much but I don’t deny it either. I hope to get it one day but I am not holding my breath for it.” Ives said of his Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
Strong winds, heavy rain and flash flooding impacted many towns and cities across Connecticut Sunday night.
Trees and power lines came down as a result of the severe weather, which came on the five year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Eversource Energy is reporting that over 139,000 customers in Connecticut did not have power as of 10:41 a.m. Monday. An additional 4,900 United Illuminating customers are without power, 507 of them are Hamden residents.
A map showing the number of Eversource Energy customers in Connecticut without power as of 10:47 a.m. Monday.
A map showing the number of United Illuminating customers in Connecticut without power as of 10:38 a.m. Monday.
The storm debris created difficult driving conditions and many schools near Quinnipiac closed. Hamden, Cheshire and North Haven public schools closed Monday, according to WTNH.
Despite there being much debris on campus, Quinnipiac did not close or have a delay. Several residence halls have been leaking including Irma, Dana, Ledges, Perlroth and Larson on the Mount Carmel campus and Crescent on the York Hill Campus. The Athletic Center, School of Business and Arnold Bernhard Library are also leaking, according to the Department of Facilities.
A Facilities worker holds a bucket up to a leaking roof in the Dana Residence Hall.
The Hamden Fire Department responded to twenty-six storm related emergency calls overnight in Hamden.
Hamden Police also responded to several transformer fires overnight, one happening on Whitney Avenue near Walgreens.
For more updates on the impact of the storm, follow HQ on Twitter @hq_press
The 2017 Atlantic hurricaneseason has already proven to be extremely active and extremely dangerous. So far this year there have been 15 storms, 10 hurricanes and six major hurricanes (category 3 or stronger). These weather systems have resulted in more than 400 deaths, and more than $188 billion in damages. Connecticut has been spared the worst, but there is still a month to go in the season.
Connecticut’s coastline (photo via Google Earth)
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy tested the limits of Connecticut’s emergency preparedness programs. According to the National Weather Service, Sandy was a “worse-case scenario for storm surge for coastal regions.” By the time Sandy got to New Jersey, it was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, but the storm surge hit Connecticut right at high tide, causing massive amounts of flooding.
The Tropical Cyclone Report created by the National Hurricane Center reports that there was storm surge over nine feet in New Haven, resulting in floodwaters as high as six feet above ground level. Approximately 3,000 homes were damaged, and the state sustained more than $300 million in damages.
Five years later, is the state of Connecticut ready for another hurricane… or not?
Rick Fontana, Deputy Director of Emergency Operations – New Haven
“Our biggest fear in the city of New Haven is a hurricane,” says Rick Fontana, Deputy Director of Emergency Operations in New Haven. “It’s number one. It really is. We’re on the coast, and I think we’re pretty resilient, but when storm surge hits … that becomes a very significant issue.”
In the event of a hurricane, Fontana would work to develop strategies that will lessen the impact of a storm, plan and prepare for different types of storms, and help with the response to and recovery from a storm.
Fontana also serves as one of five regional coordinators in the state for emergency management. His job there is to communicate with the 30 towns in Connecticut’s Region 2 throughout an emergency, and relay information up to the state coordinators.
Quinnipiac’s Plan for Emergencies
Quinnipiac University, located in Hamden, Connecticut, falls under Region 2. Edgar Rodriguez is the chief of Public Safety and is also co-captain of the emergency management team at Quinnipiac. The team is made up of about a dozen members from various university departments, including public safety, facilities, health services, and academics. Rodriguez says the team has extensive plans when it comes to storms.
“We’ve come up with an emergency evacuation plan and we talk about if there’s a hurricane or a storm coming, what are we doing, how are we preparing for it,” Rodriguez says, adding that although the plans haven’t been approved by the state, they are still important to have.
When a storm comes, those plans get put into action.
The team begins a 24-hour-to-landfall. Members track the storm, gather information from the state and submit that information to Quinnipiac President John Lahey and Provost Mark Thompson, who ultimately decide whether students should stay at school or be sent home.
Once that decision is made, the emergency management team starts prepping all departments for landfall. Quinnipiac’s emergency management team only goes through the regional coordinators for assistance if it’s a minor, isolated emergency – such as power outages on one specific campus. In the case of an event as major as a hurricane, the protocol is to bypass the region and work directly with the state.
“The rule of thumb is every town or city should be able to sustain themselves for 72 hours,” Rodriguez says, explaining that Quinnipiac acts as its own sort of town for those 72 hours after landfall, with the emergency management team in charge. “Then after that, you start getting assistance from the state. But the entire time that’s happening, you’re communicating back and forth with the state.”
All the information goes up to the state emergency operations center in Hartford, is organized and then is sent out to the public.
“Every hour [the state is] sending us an update on the storm and we take that update and send it to everybody,” says Rodriguez. He feels that this system of organizing the information is a good way to keep consistency and keep everybody on the same page at a time when there could be a lot going on at once.
A building-Block Approach
Dan McElhinney, federal preparedness coordinator and national preparedness division director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), explains that everyone takes a building-block approach for providing and receiving assistance after 72 hours.
“At some point [the town] may have to bring in mutual aid from surrounding communities,” McElhinney says. “When the mutual aid has been exhausted, they’ll ask for county level assistance, then they go to the state … then the state will declare a state of emergency. The governor then gets special powers to extend additional dollars to direct other state agencies to assist the local community. When the state no longer has the capacity, the governor will ask the president for an emergency or major disaster declaration. That’s when FEMA gets involved.”
FEMA’s regions (photo via FEMA.gov)
FEMA is divided into 10 regions, and McElhinney is in charge of FEMA Region 1, which includes all New England states. He says although FEMA can respond in numbers that would outweigh the state help 100-to-1, they are there to support, not to supplant.
“Basically under the Stafford Act, we pretty much have tasking authority over all the agencies and departments to assist the state in response and recovery,” McElhinney says. “We provide a lot of technical assistance, but we are not there to take over.”
Mandatory training
Not only does FEMA provide assistance in the aftermath, but it also provides training services. According to the Quinnipiac website, those who are on the emergency management team have to complete FEMA’s National Incident Management System training. This training is similar to the statewide Emergency Preparedness and Planning Initiative training exercises.
Map of Hurricane Maria on the monitor in the New Haven EOC
“The state of Connecticut has gotten very aggressive on keeping everyone prepared,” Rodriguez says. “Every year in October or November we do a drill. It’s mandatory for every town and every city through the state of Connecticut and the last few years have been some type of a hurricane.”
During the two-day statewide drill, state officials provide updates as if there were a real hurricane approaching. The state sends out maps of the storm and asks participants to respond to ongoing situations.
“You just lost all power in your town, what are you doing? You’ve got multiple trees that are down, what are you doing? Are you opening up a shelter? How are you transporting people? How much help do you have? Is the fire department on standby? And you have to keep reporting back and forth,” Rodriguez says.
Emergency operations center – New Haven
The exercises are meant to be intense, but they’re also meant to replicate a real-life situation so that if and when a hurricane does hit, everyone is prepared. And apparently, you can never be too prepared.
“When a hurricane strikes, people kind of become complacent and never think it’s going to be as bad as it is. We’ve been fortunate, but … our departments on the preparedness level always scale one level higher than we normally would,” says Fontana. “We’re always prepared but we always prepare above and beyond because it’s easier for us to scale back than it is to scale up in the middle of a crisis.”
The training drills are mandatory for cities and towns that want to receive grant money in order to build resiliency in places along the shorelines or rebuild after a weather event occurs.
coastal resiliency and innovative thinking
Giovanni Zinn, city engineer – New Haven (photo via Yale.edu)
Giovanni Zinn, an engineer for the City of New Haven, explains why that grant money is so important.
“There’s a lot more land now and it’s low lying land,” he says. “In the large storms we face two major threats: coastal storm surge, where water is piling up in the harbor and coming up the rivers, and large rain events of six, seven, eight, nine, 10 inches in a short period of time. Where does the water go? When you get both at the same time, you have a particularly bad problem. And there’s no getting around the laws of physics. There are certain situations where you can’t drain the city.”
Zinn says that coastal protection methods — seawalls, living shorelines and storm surge barriers that are employed in some areas of the state — are “extremely expensive” and put financial pressure on local communities. He also said he thinks that those preventative measures are “not really a priority” and the long-term thinking tends to be put on the back burner.
But Guilford town planner George Kral says that hard infrastructure like a seawall is actually discouraged by the state of Connecticut.
“The view is that it doesn’t really solve the problem, it just pushes the problem from one place to another,” Kral says, adding that if anything, the goal is to implement green infrastructure instead.
Towns like Guilford have already completed major projects to raise the lowest-lying roads above flood level, as part of the town’s coastal resiliency plan. According to the plan, “coastal resilience is the ability to resist, absorb, recover from, or adapt to coastal hazards such as sea level rise, increased flooding, and more frequent and intense storm surges.” Kral says the plan has two goals: to educate the public on the the importance of coastal resilience, and to suggest actions local governments could take to make themselves more resilient.
And Guilford isn’t the only place thinking about preventative measures.
David Kooris, Director of the Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience programs (photo via CT.gov)
David Kooris, the Director of the Rebuild By Design and National Disaster Resilience programs for the state Department of Housing, says that after Hurricane Sandy, the federal government reserved about a billion dollars in relief funding to be “competitively awarded to places that demonstrated a new way of recovery that better positioned them to be more resilient for future disasters.”
In 2012, the state of Connecticut had already received $160 million in federal disaster relief money, and was looking for more from the department of housing’s two competitions.
“Teams worked over the course of a few months and put together a proposal to the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and to a jury of architects and urban planners to compete for portions of the discretionary funds,” Kooris says about the international Rebuild by Design program. “Seven out of the 10 were awarded funding – the largest being lower Manhattan at $330 million, and the smallest being Bridgeport and the State of Connecticut with $10 million.”
Based on the success of that first program, Kooris says HUD took another chunk of the Sandy money and created a new competition — this time at the national level — which became the National Disaster Resilience program. There were 68 eligible government entities (states, cities and counties) that could enter the competition, and 13 were awarded funding at the end – Connecticut coming in 9th place with $54 million.
Kooris says the purpose of competitively divvying the money up was to “move beyond the standard recovery funding through HUD and FEMA, which more than anything else is just rebuilding.” The programs forced cities and towns to work on disaster prevention, rather than disaster recovery.
“Rarely you get the type of project that is new infrastructure – not repairing what was damaged – and do so in a way that explicitly addresses social and economic vulnerabilities in addition to environmental vulnerabilities,” Kooris says.
Connecticut’s plan involved combining “grey and green approaches” as Kooris puts it, by using “traditional, hard engineered solutions combined with natural solutions that mimic the functions of the environment.” He says that the state is planning to raise roads, build berms and add other green infrastructure to mitigate flooding in Bridgeport, in addition to pinpointing other coastal locations with the greatest number of critical facilities — power plants, roads, hospitals, wastewater treatment — and putting the majority of the investments into protecting those places.
where connecticut stands now
Since Sandy, officials have had five years to revise and strengthen emergency weather response plans.
“We have developed an emergency operation plan that’s worked on on a daily basis,” Fontana says. “Our primary goals … are preparing our residents, making sure that they’re prepared for any type of a disaster and making sure our infrastructure is protected.”
If another hurricane hit tomorrow, there are mixed feelings on whether Connecticut would be ready.
“If it were some kind of extreme storm like a category 5, that is a whole ‘nother ball game. The impact would be severe,” Kral says about the town of Guilford. “Hopefully we’ve done a little better job in terms of planning, but that remains to be seen I guess. If we had 50 inches of rain, we’d have a lot of problems.”
Kooris acknowledges there are still some things that need to be worked on, but for the most part, he says he is “confident that we have implemented targeted infrastructure projects … that reduce risk from future storms.”
As far as Quinnipiac goes, Rodriguez admits “you’re never going to be 100 percent” prepared, but he is confident that the annual mandatory state training has everyone as prepared as they can be to respond.
And in New Haven, Fontana recognizes that a category 3 hurricane “would be devastation to the entire coast” but he is confident in his department, which he says “works every day” and “works hard.”
“We prepare all the time. We plan all the time. We don’t respond all the time, and we don’t recover all the time, but we’re confident that we have the necessary strategies in place to handle a hurricane,” Fontana says.
Adding to his confidence is the fact that FEMA recently awarded the city of New Haven a class 7 rating for flood preparedness and recovery – the highest rating available. Having this rating allows homes in the designated 100-year flood zone to get a 15 percent discount on flood insurance. “So I think that puts it in a nutshell.”
The most important thing through it all? Keeping the lines of communication open, Fontana says, at all times.
“Consistent, timely, good information. I always say, ‘Be first, be right.’”
Curt Leng has been the mayor of Hamden for two and a half years. He was first elected in a special election in May 2015, then ran six months later. Now, he’s running for a third term. HQ Press sat down with Mayor Leng to discuss where he stands on certain issues as well as what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected.
What made you want to become mayor in the first place and why are you deciding to go up for re-election?
I’ve been involved with the town actually for 20 years now. I got involved when I was 20 years old and I ran for council as a 20 year old just coming out of high school, in college traveling back and forth from UConn. I didn’t win my first election that I ran as an independent candidate. And then two years later ran as a Democratic candidate and fortunately I’ve been winning ever since.
I got involved to begin with because actually in high school I had to do ten hours of work on a political campaign. So I went to the local person that was about a mile from my house and found that I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed digging into the issues that people were working on, both the neighborhood and debating them and the pros and the cons and really digging into it.
I learned quickly that you can get involved and you can and people will listen to you and people will you know appreciate the work that you do and you can actually get stuff done even when you’re not in office yet as long as you take that step and kind of open your mouth and get involved. And ever since then I’ve been on that track.
I like working to help people. I find this is one of the one jobs…that you can help somebody every single day. You know a call comes in–hey here’s a problem that I have– you can’t solve everything, there’s no question about that. But usually, several times a day, you’re able to help folks and I think that here at the local level, it’s kind of where the rubber hits the road. There’s things we can actually directly do pretty quickly to help people out.
So you’ve been in Hamden your whole life, correct?
I’m 43, I’ve lived here my whole life, except for when I was at school and my family has been here for a hundred years.
What are some of the initiatives you’ve been able to accomplish in the past two years that you are proud of?
A couple that I’m most proud of have been returning our police to walking beats and bicycle patrols–really focusing on community policing. We hadn’t had walking beats in probably forty years and we have our first walking beat that started two years ago and now we have two regular walking beats and we have 10 different bicycle patrols that go out in all different neighborhoods on the canal, on the shopping area.
Town finances is not necessarily an initiative but it’s one that we really focus on a lot and we’ve been able to strengthen the town’s finances quite a bit. Our bond rating has been upheld. We had the first budget without a tax increase in ten years this past year, so that took a lot of work and spent a lot of time with our delegation making sure that our our state funding is fingers crossed still coming through.
So finances would be number two and number three probably it’s not exactly a specific initiative but I think that there’s a community pride I feel is coming back and I think it’s coming from the ability to communicate more with local government with with I think it’s partly the mayor’s office and I think it’s partly the police department I think it’s partly council members having more interaction with people. And also having a lot more events that people get to go to.
Obviously this doesn’t come easily. What are some of the challenges you faced along the way?
I think every day is like pushing a boulder up a hill. Well, it goes back to finances probably is the main challenge because if the town’s finances aren’t good then it’s kind of the foundation in which everything else is built off of so if the finances are not doing well and if you’re not making sure that the pension is doing better than it was–we have pension reform that’s like three quarters of the way through we have to see that through the end–making sure that your spending is not out of control so that you can keep balancing budgets and keeping the taxes down, you know holding the line of taxes at least. Then you can’t do things like expand bicycle patrols and invest in sidewalks and streets. We’ve done a lot of infrastructure improvement.
In fact in the two and a half years years I’ve been mayor…we’ve paved thirty five miles of road in two and a half years.Fifty-six roads happening right now in the 2017 season and we’ve done probably about a mile of sidewalk so a lot it’s a lot of of infrastructure improvement. Even though we’ve got a lot of roads, I certainly know that we have a lot more to do.
Where would you say the relationship stands now between the town of Hamden and Quinnipiac?
Much improved. You know much, much stronger. I’ve been able to have regular communications with President Lahey. We meet, we talk, we text. Sometimes we’re both busy people and sometimes that ends up being the way that we can connect on certain things. So we have a regular communication now and that’s really nine tenths of the whole game, because if you’re communicating then you can say “hey I have a problem with this and this” or “hey can you help me out with this or this” and going both ways. I think its been a much better situation for everybody because nobody really wants bickering and fighting and and Quinnipiac is a great asset for the town globally. There’s problems with off campus housing sometimes yeah and it’s going to happen with any college in any town USA. Starting last year there was much better communication between our police and the campus security.
How do you facilitate balancing the needs of Quinnipiac students versus the needs of other residents in Hamden?
It’s tough. There’s no be easy black and white you know clear cut type of an answer on this one. You know, encouraging the university to build more housing where it’s fit and where people that will live in the units makes sense and you know there’s another two hundred or so beds that are going to be built up on York Hill which is good. That’ll get a certain number of people in and the truth is that it’s not all of the people off campus at all. It’s a small fraction that make it bad.
There’s many times that I talk with residents and I have someone say actually I students next door and they’re really nice and they came over and chatted and said hey if we have a little party or something on the weekend if it gets too loud would you be able to let me know…people learn how to live in a neighborhood and have a common courtesy for each other.
So it’s a balance of trying to figure out how you can have rules that are appropriate and legal that kind of incentivize locations that make more sense for student development period. So it’s a matter of trying to plan these things out and the more that you work I think with the neighbors, university, town, students together which we haven’t perfected yet; I think you’ll get better and better each year. Because other towns there’s always problems but other towns seem to have perfected it better than we have.
And I talked with folks from Fairfield University as an example and Sacred Heart and it seems like they had very very similar problems thirty years ago or twenty five years ago and you don’t hear much about it at all now so you know trying to follow those models I think is something that we need to spend more time on.
So is there anything you think maybe Quinnipiac can or should be doing differently or students in general?
I think it’s all of us have to really make a concerted effort to do a more formalized town gown committee commission and really commit to having faculty, students, government, residents participate in a positive way so it’s not just an airing of grievances. You know probably quarterly, I would think. And we’ve got kind of a framework of it and it’s something that I’d like to try to accomplish over the next over the next term if I’m still here.
Mayor Leng speaks with Hamden residents during his event titled ‘Mayor’s Night Out’
I went to your event Monday night and you had mentioned SeeClickFix. What are the people in the town of and then concerned about?
Traffic is definitely up there without question…we’ve been doing some traffic calming work so it’s physical improvements to roads. Beyond that, we’ve kicked up enforcement a lot. The enforcement this year compared to last year is we did about 500 enforcement actions in the summer of 2016 and summer of 2017 there was 1388, so almost tripled the number of enforcements and we’re in a bunch more locations with selective enforcement stopping and watching, people go through a light, speed trap, all those type of things.
Graffiti and dumping issues occur in any municipality. If you’re fast with them, then they don’t become a problem if you’re not, they do. So SeeClickFix can be a good tool for that.
Any place that you can kind of get information flow back from residents and from the government to the residents even if it’s not completely productive you know, it’s good. Because the more information flow, the better because people seem to get most frustrated when they don’t know what’s happening.
What do you think sets you apart from Salman Hamid and why do you think people should vote for you instead of him?
Record of accomplishment that they can actually look at and say okay has this person accomplished what he said he was going to and do I think that it’s a good amount of progress that I want to see this direction continue and see what happens with another couple of years of his team together.
And then I’ll probably say that experience. I’ve been involved in in government and I understand municipal finances and I have been involved with the many local and state laws that really do bind a lot of the things that we do some good and some constricting. And without knowing these things and having a pretty fluid comfortable handle on them, it would be really really enormously difficult to accomplish things.
And keeping things positive. I think right now there’s a positive vibe about the town and I think it’s important not only for people’s opinions and you know just being happy and proud of your hometown but it also has a value to it outside of Hamden in that if word gets out more I think as it is now that Hamden is a pretty good place to be for a variety of reasons then families are gonna want to invest here, and buy a house and business are going to want to come here and set up shop and it’s good for our local economy and there’s nothing bad about it. So you know, trying to keep promoting that you know the track that we’re on. I think we’re headed in the right direction is probably the simplest way to answer that.
Have you ever gone to your local coffee shop and the barista knows your name and order by heart?
College students have this happen on a daily basis. On a chaotic schedule going from class, to internships, to extra curricular activities and staying up until 4 a.m., whether in the library or out in the bars, majority of those students rely on coffee to keep them awake.
“I drink coffee to stay awake mostly, and I also really like the taste of it,” said Catherine Healey, public relations major.
According to the American Association of Retired Persons, the average American drinks three cups of coffee per day, which translates to 83 percent of coffee drinkers not being able to imagine their life without their java.
How Many Americans Drink Coffee?
Dana White, Clinical Assistant Professor of Athletic Training and Sports Medicine, has been at Quinnipiac University for 10 years, working directly with students and athletes.
Throughout those years, she has often seen students with cups of coffee in her morning classes and informs her students and athletes to tweet about the dangers of abusing caffeine.
“I teach an 8 a.m. class and I’ll see everybody with their coffees so I’ll tweet it out ‘Coffee isn’t breakfast,’” said White.
The amount of caffeine in drinks varies, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH), but it is generally
An 8-ounce cup of coffee: 95-200 mg
A 12-ounce can of cola: 35-45 mg
An 8-ounce energy drink: 70-100 mg
An 8-ounce cup of tea: 14-60 mg
Starbucks offers six different sizes of coffee, each one with names that only regular customers know by heart
Short: 8 ounces
Tall: 12 ounces
Grande: 16 ounces
Venti Hot: 20 ounces
Venti Cold: 24 ounces
Trenta Cold: 31 ounces
White’s recommendation for coffee drinkers is that they should drink one coffee per day, however most people do not realize the different amounts of caffeine in different sizes of coffee.
“If you go get a ‘Venti,’ that is more than two cups of coffee, that is almost three cups of coffee,” she said. “So one cup might be multiple cups of coffee.”
Drinking too much caffeine, which is very common among college students, can lead to health problems, such as restlessness and shakiness, insomnia, headaches, dizziness, rapid or abnormal heart rhythm, dehydration, anxiety and dependency.
Studies have also shown that drinking more a larger amount of cups of coffee per day might have an impact on your GPA.
In a survey with more than 1,000 college students, it was shown that students who drank only one cup of coffee per day had a GPA of 3.41, compared to students who drank more than five cups a day had an average GPA of 3.28.
Although that are many risks about drinking coffee, there are also benefits to it.
According to Harvard’s School of Public Health, it may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, suicide risk, lower the chance of oral cancers and strokes.
Those statistics might be available to Millennials, however, majority of them do not care about it or choose to ignore it.
According to Bloomberg, Millennials count for 44 percent of U.S. coffee demand, an increase from 34 percent to 48 percent from 2008 to 2016.
Millennials are increasing the demand of coffee in the country and an example of that is the opening of Starbucks on Quinnipiac’s Mount Carmel campus.
White does not think that this event will affect students drastically.
“I don’t know that it’s really going to do any more caffeine damage if it wasn’t here,” she said.
Other students, like marketing major Ryan Lawson, have been drinking a larger amount of coffee since the opening of the new Starbucks on campus.
“I drink coffee every day, and sometimes more than once,” said Lawson as he got a Venti sized coffee at Starbucks.
Although Monday mornings aren’t as busy as expected, Starbucks on campus gets extremely crowded throughout the week.
“Usually in the mornings and around lunch time or early afternoon is when it is the most crowded,” said one worker.
Quinnipiac students have always been aware of the huge lines and waiting time at Au Bon Pain, in the first floor of the cafeteria. However, the workers have been seeing a difference.
“We’re definitely less busy since the Starbucks opened, but we still get a lot of students, mostly because of our sandwiches,” said a worker at Au Bon Pain.
A misconception about coffee is that it gives people the energy they could be lacking of in the moment, however, White thinks this is one of the bigger issues about caffeine abuse.
“The real energy you are going to gain is from calories, and a cup of coffee only has about five calories. You can’t just drink coffee and not eat food,” said White.
The United States spends $40 billion on coffee each year, according to the National Coffee Association, with the average price of an espresso-based drink being $2.45 and the average price of a brewed cup of coffee at $1.38.
“I probably spend around $50 on coffee each month, maybe a little less,” said Anica Lazetic, psychology major at Quinnipiac.
Although Starbucks is considered an expensive coffee shop, the fact that Quinnipiac students can use their meal plan money is very helpful.
“It’s mandatory to pay for $200 for meal plan when you’re off campus, and since I’m always cooking at home, I have been spending mostly of my meal plan with coffee at Starbucks,” said Healey.
Although majority of the students think of coffee in a positive way, White believes there are some measures they need to take.
“I think most college students need to be eating better, sleeping more and calming down, so [coffee] can work against you if you take too much of it,” said White.
On November 7 the residents of Hamden will head to the polls for the mayoral election. In the running is current mayor Curt Leng and underdog Republican candidate Salman Hamid. HQ Press sat down with Hamid, a public school teacher and Quinnipiac alum, to discuss his run for office and what motivated him to do it.
Why are you running for mayor?
I got up and I was like I’m going to run for Mayor one day, and it’s been a series of things over time. It’s not just one in particular but the focal point it got to, I was at a bank and the banker goes ‘so I heard you’re running.’ And this was someone before the word really got out so I’m like ‘okay.’ And she’s like ‘why are you doing it?’ and I was like ‘great question.’ People didn’t really ask me in the beginning what is it that you’re doing this for and I said I’m not in it for the glory or the fame, I’m a public school teacher. What I really am doing it for is my kids and future generations of Hamden so I need to leave behind. I can’t sit in the sidelines anymore. I need to leave behind a sustainable Hamden for my kids and future generations to come. So I’ve always been about the idea that life is about service…and it got to a point where I’m like the taxes are too high, there’s blight all around town, traffic congestion is out of control it’s ridiculous, and it’s all reactive now instead of being proactive. So someone’s got to come in from the outside and clean up. And if it’s going to be me, then so be it. I will be happy to do it.
What is your opinion of the town’s relationship to Quinnipiac?
This is a college town, and I get that, but there also has to be a relationship between the college entity and the town and the residents there. You probably heard over and over of residents complaining about Quinnipiac student housing and so on and so forth. And this is what I’m talking about. That situation wouldn’t have happened if taxes were sustainable in town, because people have either foreclosed on their property or they rent it out to students because there is no other option because they can’t sell their homes. Unfortunately people have gotten more and more negative interpretations because there’s always a few bad apples who are out partying on Fridays and Saturday nights, hanging out on their lawns, and people have kids and you know they don’t want any of that. It’s got to be a sustainable relationship. So with the incoming president I plan to meet with him or her and work with them to develop more of that housing moving forward. But I also plan on having events, town events, at Quinnipiac also. People have to understand it’s a two-way street and Quinnipiac is aware of that and ready to own up to their end.
What is the first thing you would do in office if you were elected mayor?
Reestablish communication. There has been a major lack of communication between the top entity in town, which is my opponent, and the residents. The communication only seems to happen when it’s an election season, but beyond that I hear constant complaints as I’m knocking on doors that the town has just stopped listening to our issues and concerns.
If you were to become mayor, what is the biggest thing you want to change over the next 4 years?
Can I say two?
Sure!
Well they go hand in hand. Refine the spending and bring commerce back into town. That will hopefully bring more people, more families back into town. I want to build a small business advisory council of existing shop owners here as well as ones that want to come in and do business as well because there are too many empty lots.
How do you deal with the racist comments directed towards you?
Being Muslim in a post-9/11 society has not been pleasant. Prior to that my race was rarely an issue, my religion was rarely an issue. Kids at my school would be like ‘fight me,’ and I was just like ‘why would I fight you, I don’t get it?’ and they would say ‘well your people blew up the twin towers,’ and it’s, oh my goodness. Yeah, there’s been a lot of stigma and that’s a lot of the reason I created American Muslims United. But at the end of the day I can’t get angry about this stuff. I love living in a country, as people don’t understand, I love living in a country where people can voice their opinions and not get killed over them. My family is from Pakistan and if you speak out against government you just go missing. I’m thankful to live in a country that people can voice their opinions. And I love it and if that’s what you have to say then say it. I appreciate your comment, thank you. But I also let people know that as an educator it is my job to inform people of what my faith is and how we act and interact in this community. And I mean, how many Muslim candidates have you seen run period? The state of Connecticut has probably had one Muslim mayor but beyond that, crickets. I’m also letting people know that Muslims are here, they’re active, and we’re part of the solution, not part of the problem. But I can’t get angry. As mayor I will represent everyone in town, even the people that write not so nice things, I will still represent them.
Why should the people of Hamden vote for you to be their Mayor?
I plan on committing and following through with the items that are spoken about on my platform, building an animal shelter, a business advisory council, getting a citizens council so we can hear their voices, reduce traffic issues and develop commerce back into town. I have never been part of the problem. I have not been in political office for 20 years. I have always been part of the solution in the background doing stuff. I’ve been given this opportunity to run and I plan on doing an effective job. I mean, I have to have morals and ethics. I’m a public school teacher, right? You know I have to teach future generations. My goal has always been to try and improve my community, and if this is the best way to do it, in this platform and this avenue by running for mayor on the republican ticket, then so be it.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and people from the Quinnipiac community, Hamden and the greater New Haven area are all doing something to help survivors.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month- 2 Hamden police cruisers will be displayed in pink patrolling the streets for the month of October. #bcampic.twitter.com/JuDnuGRXtM
Registration for the event starts at 9 a.m. and there will be an opening ceremony at noon, an hour before the walk starts.
So far, Strides has raised $50,976, with six days left to achieve their goal of $101,000.
Earlier in the semester, Quinnipiac hosted Relay For Life and raised more than $33,000 to fight cancer.
Lynn Aureli, a Quinnipiac student and cancer survivor, participated in this year’s Relay For Life. She has also been a part of other events, including Light the Night Walks for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
“I think Quinnipiac does do a good job helping the fight against cancer. We have Relay for Life, Saint Baldrick’s, and Bobcats Against Cancer. I also know there is a fraternity whose philanthropy is the American Cancer Society and the new sorority, Tri Delta’s philanthropy is Saint Judes,” said Aureli. “I think it would be a good idea for all of these organizations to come together for one big event to help the fight against cancer.”
One of Quinnipiac’s own Chartwells workers, Leyenda DaSilva, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and after being cancer free for two years, the disease returned and spread to her lymph nodes.
Quinnipiac junior, Becca Denning, created a GoFundMe page to help raise money for DaSilva, and successfully raised $2,062 in two months.
To help causes like DaSilva’s, click here and donate to Strides to make a difference in the battle to fight cancer.
PARENTS WEEKEND
One of Quinnipiac’s most active weekends, Parents and Family Weekend, is being held on Oct. 13 to 15.
The Toyota Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Conn. will be hosting an exclusive concert for Quinnipiac students and their families on Friday at 8 p.m.
The performance will be “celebrating the fusion of classical music with classic rock features the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, five world-class vocalists and five top rock musicians,” according to an announement on MyQ. Tickets are going for $25 to $100 and you can purchase them here.
If you are looking for other activities, the New Haven Register has put out a list of 50 things to do in Connecticut this upcoming weekend, including:
The Greater New Haven Columbus Day Parade
The 31st annual Washington Antiques & Design Show
Florence Griswold Museum’s annual Wee Faerie Villages and Faerieville USA
Pumpkins on the Pier in Milford
The Portland Agricultural Fair
The Quantico Marine Corps Band concerts
“Peppa Pig’s Surprise” performance at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford
Lyman Orchards’ corn maze
Artspace’s City-Wide Open Studios
The Hops Company in Derby celebration of Oktoberfest
A national day brings unity and comfort to some Americans. These individuals identify within the LGBTQ+ community.
National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11 is a recognized American day celebrating those who have come out as LGBTQ+ and supporting those who may still be struggling to do so, but some, like junior public relations student Shelby Petrie, say coming out is not something that happens overnight.
Petrie also serves as vice president of Quinnipiac’s Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA). For Petrie, coming out has been an ongoing and difficult process. In fact, four years ago she told her mother on the walk home from a friend’s house, but her 11-year-old sister just found out two months ago. Petrie says when she first told her mother, she felt like a stranger to her.
She says she didn’t know when she first came out what kind of toll it would have on her life. She is now helping to host events and create safe spaces to help others in the community through Quinnipiac’s GSA.
This organization is honoring the day with an open forum at their general board meeting Oct. 11 at 9:15 p.m. in Tator Hall room 114. Petrie says that this event is open to all students. They are also having an ice cream social to celebrate the day from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the upper cafeteria, according to the organization’s president Meaghan Rocha.
Another event on campus is a Greek Allies Tabling hosted by the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Carl Hanson Student Center. Graduate Assistant Bianca Waffenschmidt says she created the Greek Allies Initiative in 2015 promoting the inclusivity of the LGBTQ+ community in their chapters, but also within the community and education.
Photos by Katherine Koretski
“National Coming Out Day is important because it brings awareness to the LGBTQ+ community and serves as a springboard for providing information and resources not only to those who identify as LGBTQ+, but also those who are allies of this community,” she said.
This is the 29th annual celebration created by Rob Eichberg and Jean O’Leary one year after the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, according to the Human Rights Campaign’s official website.
Within the local community, however, some organizations are not taking part in the festivities. Executive Director of New Haven Pride Center Patrick Dunn says his organization is one of them. Though they are not partaking in the day with an event, Dunn still says a day like this is important.
“Coming out is still an extremely difficult process for many LGBTQ+ individuals, especially those who are in conservative environments,” Dunn said. “I think back to when I thought about coming out. Some of the worst scenarios ran through my head. Feelings like abandonment, pain and fear of physical violence are all real concerns to any LGBTQ+ individual thinking about coming out.”
While same-sex marriage became legal in 2015 under the Obama administration, Dunn says their fight isn’t over.
“Really that is just one law, which is currently being challenged in several states across the nation,” he said. “While it has helped many feel more comfortable, there are many others that feel it has little to no effect on their lives and rights. There are so many homophobic attacks, verbal and physical, that take place against our community from major political, religious and conservative figures blaming the LBGTQ+ community for natural disasters and many other problems in the USA.”
Dunn says that a day like National Coming Out Day is especially crucial to have to support younger generations.
GLSEN (pronounced “glisten”) is an LGBTQ+ program. In Connecticut, they have several chapters throughout the state focusing on helping those in that younger generation, and providing a safe environment for those who identify within the community in their schools, according to the organization’s official website. While GLSEN’s New Haven chapter is not celebrating National Coming Out Day with an event, they are celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month. Former chapter leader Rodney Wilson, the organization’s founder Kevin Jennings and others created this month-long celebration in 1994, according to GLSEN’s official website.
Co-chair and Professional Developmental & Community Outreach Coordinator Alberto Cifuentes Jr. talks about in a 2015 National Climate Survey GLSEN put out, that there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in protecting youth.
Courtesy of Alberto Cifuentes of GLSEN
“GLSEN wants to make sure that all LGBTQ youth are loved and affirmed regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity/expression,” Cinfuentes said. “This is also a reason why organizations like GLSEN still exist. My hope is that one day, coming out will be such a ‘non-issue’ for LGBTQ youth and we’ll just celebrate being alive and proud of who we are.”
Petrie is among that younger generation.
“I had no idea how completely awful the days, weeks, months and years to follow would be,” she said. “Coming out was definitely necessary, but it is something that I constantly look back on and think I made a mistake in doing. My life became a living hell and it didn’t subside until just recently. My mom is still adamantly against my sexual orientation, but she has become more civil and respectful to me about it.”
Wavy, curly, kinky, coily, straight, short and long.
There was plenty of hair at Quinnipiac’s first annual Curl Con. Women Empowered and Naturally Me clubs held the event on Bobcat Lawn. The purpose was to give women a space to appreciate and embrace their natural hair. Students were treated to games, food, art, fashion and skin-care vendors and various raffle prizes for hair care products.
