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College Basketball’s Free Agency: The Transfer Portal

By Bryan Schwartz

Imagine a LinkedIn-style site for college athletes who want to attend a new school. Aaron Falzon experienced the real thing.

“I put my name in,” said Falzon, who now attends Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. “I went to go write my 20-page paper. 30 minutes later I had four emails, two texts and five missed calls, and I was like, what is going on?”

Aaron Falzon warms up for his first home game at Quinnipiac against Albany. (Photo by Liz Flynn)

Welcome to the NCAA Transfer Portal, where the students can enter their name into a system that serves as a gateway to the vast reservoir of colleges seeking top athletic talent.

The NCAA opened the portal Oct. 15, 2018, to give students the opportunity to change schools without the hassle of sitting out a year per long-standing transfer rules.

The portal gives athletes a chance to seek opportunities – the role of college in general. But it has turned into something much, much more, even for mid-major Division I schools such as Quinnipiac.

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Quinnipiac men’s basketball head coach Baker Dunleavy has recruited five transfer students, including one through the portal in Falzon. The portal is a profound development for the school.

“The wave of transfers isn’t going anywhere,” Dunleavy said. “It’ll only get bigger. It’ll only get more popular. I think player movement and freedom is something that continues to grow.”

The Good

The Bobcats took advantage of the portal to land Falzon, who previously attended Northwestern, a Big Ten school. Dunleavy found him on the portal and sent one of those emails that overwhelmed the Massachusetts-born player.

Why did Falzon leave a major school outside of Chicago to attend Quinnipiac in suburban Hamden, and play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with its one-bid status for the NCAA Tournament?

“I wanted to go to a place where I have an opportunity to play and have the chance to win a conference championship,” said Falzon of Newton, Mass. “Also, the bonus when I come here is being close to home. Mom and Dad can drive to every game.”

Dunleavy, in turn, saw Falzon as a player who fit the team’s culture.

“For us, we can be really opportunistic with transfers when they fit our culture and our identity and really being disciplined in knowing when that’s the case,” Dunleavy said. “With an Aaron Falzon, that was the case. We were really aggressive to recruit Aaron.”

The Bad

Jaden Daly, a sports writer for A Daly Dose of Hoops, has been covering New York-metro area men’s college basketball for 10 years. Daly has seen both sides of the story: the high-major schools bringing in players that out-matched their competition on the mid-major front and the mid-major schools taking advantage of this chance to recruit the nation’s top talents.

Between grad transfers ,players in the transfer portal and players that have entered their names in the draft teams will look very different come end of the summer. Roster management has become as important as any aspect of coaching for high major programs. @CollegeGameDay

— Seth Greenberg (@SethOnHoops) April 12, 2019

“The lower level schools are losing out because now it’s created a marketplace where if you are a higher major and you’re losing out in recruiting, it’s a ripple effect with the one-and-done’s. You have to go to the next best option,” Daly said.

That next option? Well, it’s plucking the best of the best from conferences like the MAAC. In the portal era so far, Quinnipiac has not been a team that has had to see players leave to other schools. However just three years ago the Bobcats were forced to wave goodbye to their two top scorers in Mikey Dixon and Peter Kiss. Dixon joined St. John’s in the Big East and Kiss is now playing at Rutgers in the Big 10.

Mikey Dixon (left) and Peter Kiss (right) pose together during their freshman year at Quinnipiac. (Photo by QBSN)

This has been the issue for mid-major teams in the last calendar year with the portal.

“If you’re a high major coach, you see a 15, 20 point per game scorer that goes into the portal,” Daly said, “why not take a shot at him? If you’re not able to get a one-and-done like a Kentucky or Carolina or Duke is going to get, you have to find some way to keep up with the Joneses.”

The Jury’s Still Out

On the other hand, mid-major schools need to compete with each other, and Quinnipiac’s program is no different: it needs to find talent flying just below the major-school radar. The transfer portal facilitates that effort.

Jessica Hegmann-Grasso, the MAAC’s associate commissioner said, the transfer portal gives these types of schools, especially in her conference, ways to get a hold of the players they would not be able to typically recruit out of high school.

“The transfer option does benefit the mid-major conferences, like ourselves. Being able to get access to those players that may go elsewhere and then come back to us,” Hegmann-Grasso said, “we do benefit from that.”

MAAC men’s basketball has gained 20 transfer student-athletes for the 2019-20 season, while losing 11 in the portal.

Hegmann-Grasso did point out that we are only in year two of the portal process. There is so much still to come.

“It has only been two years. It’s still new. Like anything else it takes that adjustment period to see how the full reaction will be from it. Right now it’s waiting and seeing.”

One thing that it has already accomplished is it has made it easier for the student-athletes to explore all of their options.

“The process to dealing with the transfers prior to the portal was a lot more restrictive, a lot more interaction and conversation,” Hegmann-Grasso said, “where the portal is now making it a little bit more free.”

Is it free enough? Not for ESPN’s Jay Bilas.

Now, Quinnerly will play as a 24-year old, redshirt senior. For what purpose? The NCAA’s transfer policy is an unholy, unjustifiable mess. If Quinnerly played softball or all but five other sports, he could transfer at semester and be immediately eligible. https://t.co/tju0iA1kGJ

— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) November 12, 2019

The transfer portal has continued to progress this freedom that the student-athletes desire. Phillip Lamar Cunningham, a professor of media studies who formerly served as co-director of the sports studies program at Quinnipiac University said that the portal, itself, has legitimized the power that the student-athletes can have. Though, he does not believe it has had an outstanding impact on the landscape of college athletics.

Falzon stands with his teammates before his first home game with Quinnipiac.

“The transfer portal, like most NCAA initiatives, is a little late and doesn’t necessarily change much as much as it capitulates to the forces that they already had to give way to.”

Knowing that you have options is an important part of a young athlete’s mindset, and those are really on full display all the time now.

“For a small school like Quinnipiac, the benefits are if you’re an elite college athlete, you are coming home,” Cunningham said. “If you are someone that’s on the cusp of a major conference team but you can’t really break through, you can possibly come here [Quinnipiac] and be a star. We see this in every sport. If you are a star in a mid-major you are suddenly more attracted to more established teams.”

The new rules have led to confusion over the transfer portal’s role. For Hegmann-Grasso and her colleagues in the MAAC’s league offices, they just would like to see it play out a bit more.

“I think it’s just too early to start changing anything because it took a while to get to this point, and to just change it right away?” Hegmann-Grasso said. “I don’t think we do our due diligence of really setting up a system, even though some were in favor for it and some were not.”

It’s just the start of more and more changes in college basketball, and so far, Quinnipiac can call itself a beneficiary. So far.

The Time to Quit Vaping Is Now

By Dante Turo

Quinnipiac senior Dylan Lewis started to vape during his senior year of high school because he wanted to join in on what his friends were doing. Without knowing the consequences, he continued to vape because he enjoyed the act of smoking itself.

After sharing vaping devices with his friends for some time, Lewis would eventually go on to buy his own vape. He purchased a Juul, which is one of the most popular e-cigarettes on the market. It’s known for its various flavors and high nicotine percentages.

Lewis became addicted to the nicotine.

“When I first started, I did it just because I weirdly liked the act of smoking in general and would join in with my friends when they were smoking,” Lewis said. “The past year or so, however, is essentially just because I’ve become addicted to nicotine.”

Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical that can increase a person’s heart rate and blood pressure. It can also increase the flow of blood to the heart and can lead to the hardening of the arterial walls. In some e-cigarettes, you can buy pods that have a higher nicotine percentage than most e-cigarettes.

Photo by Vaping360 ( https://vaping360.com/best-vape-starter-kits/pod-mini-vapes/ ) — Photo by Vaping360 (https://vaping360.com/best-vape-starter-kits/pod-mini-vapes/)

Lewis didn’t know of the long-term effects of smoking e-cigarettes when he started to vape, but now there are reports of people suffering from mysterious lung illnesses that have been linked to vaping.

There have been over 1,400 lung illnesses that have been reported from 49 states and one U.S. territory. So far, there have been 33 confirmed deaths from this illness.

The most concerning part about these reports are how it’s affecting the younger generation, including college students. There are students at Quinnipiac who admit to vaping even with all the news coming out about these illnesses and deaths. Over 65 students were surveyed, and thirty say that they still continue to vape.

Some college students started to vape because of its easy accessibility and seeing others doing it in a social setting. Emily Taft, a health science major at Quinnipiac, has admitted to vaping in the past before she knew the long-term effects it can have on your health.

“I started doing so in the first place due to vaping becoming very popular in a social setting, so I believe that the social influence surrounding vaping is why I had decided to try it,” she said. “I do think that vaping is addicting. The behavior or constantly holding a vape in your hand, or having it in your mouth, makes the behavior easy access and creates addictive tendencies.”

Out of the 66 students that were asked if they believe vaping is addicting, a staggering 61 students said that vaping is addicting.

A new survey for Health Capsule showed an alarming increase in adolescents who have tried vaping in 2018. More than 44,000 students took part in the survey, which found that about 37 percent of 12th graders reported vaping in 2018, which is a 9 percent increase from 2017. They saw an increase in substances that were being vaped, which included nicotine, marijuana, and flavored liquids.

Monitoring the Future held a nationwide survey on drug use for college students. The results found that 11 percent of college students had vaped marijuana within a month of taking the survey. They also found that more than 15 percent of college students vaped nicotine within a month of taking the survey.

With all the deaths and illnesses that have been reported thus far, why do people, and students in general, continue to vape? The numbers keep rising, with a new death being reported not too long after the one before.

Christy Chase, director of Student Health Services at Quinnipiac, says the epidemic is awful, and students need to be more aware of what they’re putting in their lungs.

“I think young people have been misled and thought that it was a safe thing,” Chase said. “I think we’re starting to see that that was not true, and I think there’s a lot more that’s going to be uncovered.”

As a nurse practitioner, Chase would ask students if they smoked or were active smokers. They would say no, but when asking if they vape, she gets a different response because students don’t link the two together. She’s worried about the long-term effects this will have on students.

“Those (15 deaths) are even immediate,” she said. “I’m thinking long-term.”

Kevin Parker, prevention and wellness educator at Quinnipiac, agrees this is a problem in the long run.

“I think the sneaky specter of all of this is the long thing down the road when students who are 18 now are 35, what’re we going to see?” Parker said. “We don’t know, and I don’t think anybody knows.”

The chemicals in these vapes, more specifically the Juul, is what’s most concerning to Chase.

“Who knows what these chemicals are going to do. Are they just going to change the surface in the lung? Are they going to change the exchange of gasses?” she said. “Nicotine is so bad for your body. That alone, it narrows the cardiovascular pathways, so it affects the heart, the lung, and the brain.”

Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes contain harmful ingredients that can be harmful to a person’s lungs. These ingredients include ultrafine particles, diacetyl, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. The New York State Department of Health found high levels of vitamin E acetate in almost all of the vaping products that contained cannabis. A pesticide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when burned was linked to bootleg marijuana vapes, as well.

These ingredients and chemicals may play a role in why people are coming down with these vaping-related illnesses.

Reese Mentiply, a junior at Quinnipiac, still vapes from time to time, but not as often as he used to. He says he stopped vaping as often because of how it made him feel.

“Mostly I stopped because it made me feel awful,” he said.

Even though vaping made Mentiply feel “awful,” he believes that vaping is better than smoking cigarettes. He started vaping in the first place to cut back on smoking other products.

“I started vaping at first to cut down on smoking,” he said. “I vaped for nicotine.”

Parker added how bad nicotine is for your body. People try to justify nicotine and what it does and play it off as something that isn’t as bad as it truly is.

“One of the interesting things I’ve seen people make a counter-argument for is ‘nicotine isn’t actually all that bad.’ Actually, there’s significant research as well on what nicotine alone does in your body,” he said. “I think people just don’t see that research pushed out all that often because the public don’t want to think of it.”

The state of Connecticut is taking note of the younger generation getting their hands on these products. The state raised the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21, which became effective on October 1. The state is also enforcing restrictions on where people can smoke or vape. The use of a vaping device will be prohibited in any state or school buildings, food and liquor stores, restaurants, college dorms and race tracks.

Senator Richard Blumenthal is calling for the FDA to stop the sale of vapes that are disguised as smartwatches, sweatshirts, backpacks and phone cases.

Sean Patten, a senior at Quinnipiac, says he tends to vape, especially when there’s alcohol in his system, and finds the reports “scary.”

“I have no reason why. When I am drinking alcohol, my body seems to always want it. That is the only time,” Patten said. “The reports scare me, but I feel as if I am far too gone.”

Patten said he began vaping in the first place because of the various flavors these vapes have to offer. Because of how addictive it is, he has a hard time turning down the need to vape when he goes out.

“I started vaping because it tasted good and made me feel good. There are so many flavors, and the taste is all different,” he said. “I have cut down a lot from my previous years, but it is addicting. There are so many pressures. They are all around on a night out, so it’s hard not to.”

Both Chase and Parker believe flavorings and peer pressure plays a huge part in why adolescents began to vape.

Parker worked at a high school before working at colleges and said that social media and influence from older siblings played a role in why students started to get hooked on these devices.

“It was all around the social media piece. It was ‘well I saw people doing this that I know from home, or that I know who aren’t even in my school.’ So, it trickled in through that way,” he said.

“When they did research around that, 80 percent of students who were in high school or younger were getting it from an older source.”

Joseph Guido, a senior business major at Quinnipiac, admitted to vaping in the past because of peer pressure and wanting to be cool. He can count on both of his hands how many times he’s vaped in his life, so the reports don’t really scare him.

“Since I have hardly vaped in my life, these reports don’t scare me, but they make me worry about my friends,” Guido said. “I still have friends that vape heavily. I worry about them more than myself.”

The idea of vaping was to give people an alternative to smoking cigarettes. Out of 65 students questioned in an in-house survey, 40 believe vaping is better than smoking cigarettes.

Even if vaping may be deemed safer in their eyes, it can lead to bad habits, like smoking cigarettes in the future. At a recent conference, Parker learned that students who started smoking e-cigarettes were more likely to begin smoking combustible cigarettes later on.

“We would not be recommending e-cigarettes as a smoking sensation tool based on that research,” he said. “If it’s your primary thing, it’s something you start with; it’s definitely likely that you’re going to be going to combustible cigarettes.”

Quinnipiac has been finding ways to urge students to quit vaping.

The Health and Wellness department held an event where students could throw away their vaping devices in return for school gear. Parker said they collected around 40 different vaping devices.

“For us, that event’s intent was to hit the population who are ready to quit. We know that people hear the media and hear the messages around ‘Juul is bad,’ and some of them don’t believe it, and some of them do,” he said.

“That event’s intent was not to convince people one way or the other around what was going on of risks but was to be an option for people who were ready to quit.”

The department is looking to offer more events like this in the future, especially with more news and reports coming out as time goes on. Parker said he had around 10 students who told him that they vaped within the past hour and many more who said they’ve tried to quit before but couldn’t. He’s hoping future events will allow more students to hand in their devices and quit vaping.

Some students have tried to quit vaping but are having a hard time doing so.

More than 65 college students were asked multiple questions about their vaping habits. One question that was asked was if they had tried to quit vaping, if they even do vape. Thirty-five students say they have successfully or at least tried to stop, but some have not been able to fully quit. One student said he has tried to quit six to seven times but has been unsuccessful in doing so.

Smoking is one of the hardest addictions to kick, and college students are now starting to learn that.

Chase and Parker strongly urged students to stop vaping now. When asked if they could give a message to students who do vape, their message is simple: stop now.

“Don’t be tricked by the fancy devices,” Parker said. “Don’t get tricked, but if you’re addicted, get help for it.”

(Juul Photo by Vaping360 (https://vaping360.com/best-vape-starter-kits/pod-mini-vapes/)

CARE: A look at Quinnipiac’s behavioral intervention team

By Jeremy Troetti

Anxiety, depression, stress.

The words seem especially prevalent on college campuses – including that of Quinnipiac University.

According to a 2017 report from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, 48.2 percent of college students struggle with anxiety, 39.1 report dealing with stress and 34.5 suffer from depression.

While these mental health disorders play a major role in the lives of college students, Quinnipiac University handles cases such as these and others through the university’s CARE (Community, Assessment, Response and Evaluation) team.

The university’s CARE team, along with many similar teams at other colleges, began as a result of the 2007 shooting on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (commonly known as Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, according to the Chair of the CARE team, Courtney McKenna.

“The CARE team is our name for our dual model behavioral intervention and threat assessment team,” McKenna said. “Different schools call them different things. Some schools call them a BIT – behavioral intervention team. Some call them an SOS team – support of students team. Our CARE team and teams like them are teams that began being formed after the Virginia Tech shooting back in 2007.”

During the shooting incident at Virginia Tech, 23-year-old senior Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people on campus, before taking his own life, according to CNN. Prior to the shooting, Cho was ordered by a judge in 2005 to seek out mental health care after making suicidal threats around his roommates, according to CNN.

McKenna explained the purpose behind the university’s CARE team.

“What a CARE team, behavioral intervention team, threat assessment team, exists to do is to provide a centralized place on campus for people to refer behaviors, observations, students of concern (or) disclosures students make to them about a variety of different concerns,” McKenna explained.

The behaviors that are reported to the CARE team vary, according to McKenna.

“As a CARE team specifically, we will get referrals about students who have missed significant amounts of classes… they get referred to us by the Learning Commons,” McKenna said. “All the way up to students who have very concerning writing pieces. Writing pieces or class assignments that have some elements of violence or potential threats.”

McKenna describes the function of Quinnipiac’s CARE team

McKenna explained that a CARE referral could come from any number of sources that are connected to the student of concern in some way.

“Our referrals come from a variety of people – faculty, fellow students… anyone inside or outside the (Quinnipiac) community,” McKenna said. “It can be parents and family members as well.”

McKenna described how the CARE team categorizes various warning signs in students.

“We encourage folks to look for three buckets of behaviors: health and wellness behaviors, situational concerns and also behavioral concerns,” McKenna said.

McKenna went on to explain what symptoms from each of the three categories look like.

“Health and wellness concerns can be excessive substance use, it could be a student who disclosed that they have been experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety, injuries, chronic illness, etc.,” McKenna said. “Behavioral concerns can be anything from a student who is really disruptive in class, a student who is engaging in threatening behavior with others, that type of thing. The last is situational – the loss of a loved one or family member, students who may be experiencing homelessness or food insecurity, interpersonal conflict with another person on campus or somewhere.”

Lynn Hendricks, associate dean of student affairs and core member of the CARE team, explained the various behaviors that get reported, and how the CARE team handles the referrals.

“We have an entire range (of behaviors)… there are students who we are afraid might hurt themselves to students just not going to class at all,” Hendricks said. “I think what’s really nice about our team is that we treat every situation as if it’s the most urgent situation.”

Hendricks explained that her role on the CARE team is very comprehensive, as she supervises the leaders of the different departments students can be referred to.

“I’m listening if a student’s not feeling well,” Hendricks explained. “I’m also trying to look at what was the student’s behavior, because I supervise conduct… Do they live in housing, because I supervise housing. For each case, I try to think about resources… How can we best help the student? What’s the issue, and then also, what are the resources?”

Similarly to Hendricks, Christy Chase, director of student health services at Quinnipiac, explained that the various departments of CARE work together to evaluate how to best help the student in need.

“You can go from having someone with a very serious illness or injury that we’ve seen here (at the university health center) and then I’ll let other departments know, whether it be academics… How do we support this student? What can we do?” Chase said. “If it was something they went through that was traumatic, are they hooked up with counseling? Do we have things in place? I think the CARE team is wonderful at that – looking at it from a holistic perspective of all the different disciplines.”

*Statistics from CARE (2017) Graphic by Jeremy Troetti

Beyond members of the CARE team, student organization leaders receive training from the CARE team to learn how to identify potential issues in the students they work with.

Quinnipiac senior Rosie Persiani, who is both the editor-in-chief of Montage, the university’s art and literary magazine, and is a peer catalyst for the university’s First Year Seminar class, explained the training she received from CARE.

“We are told what to look out for with some of our members, what to do in case one of our members is going through something (and) how to report it,” Persiani said.

Persiani believes that the training student leaders receive from CARE is helpful, and has especially made an impact on her role as editor-in-chief of Montage.

“We can use our discretion if we need to report (a student) or not,” Persiani said. “If we feel that we need to, we say something. Especially with Montage, because so many people share so many things at the open mic (events), it was helpful to have that training from CARE so I can distinguish if something is actually a call for help or if it’s just someone’s creativity.”

Persiani explained what exactly her training for the peer catalyst role taught her to look for in the students she assists.

“With students, you not only have to pay attention to their performance in the classroom and their grades, but what is their norm,” Persiani explained. “If a student regularly doesn’t come to class and then starts coming to class every day and participating, that’s not their norm. And even though that’s a good thing that they’re coming to class and participating, we have to check in with them.”

Persiani navigates the CARE form, accessible via Quinnipiac’s MyQ webpage. Photo by Jeremy Troetti.

Much like Persiani, Quinnipiac senior Lauren Heery, a student orientation leader for two years, explained that she went through training to identify potential warning signs in students’ behavior.

“(CARE) mostly discussed how to identify warning signs in the new students, such as if they’re struggling with adjusting to college and getting homesick, or are struggling to keep up with school work, things like that,” Heery said. “And they also explained to us the resources we had available to help the students.”

While Heery explained that she has never had to refer a student to CARE, she has had students reach out to her seeking various resources on Quinnipiac’s campus.

Leah Lavin, who is a peer mentor at Quinnipiac, described the training that CARE provides to peer mentors.

“For (the) peer mentor (position), we had a representative from both the health center and learning Commons come in again and talk to us about the resources the CARE team can provide,” Lavin said. “This training wasn’t as structured due to the smaller group size and that many of us had already been trained on the CARE team resources through previous experiences since we were all upperclassmen.”

Persiani explained that she has experienced having to refer a student to the CARE team due to a concerning piece the student performed at one of Montage’s open mic events.

“I’ve had to say something to the CARE team about an incident at an open mic,” Persiani said. “It was told to the (residence hall directors), who then took it forward.”

Hendricks, who began working in higher education in 1990, and has worked on similar behavioral intervention teams at the University of North Florida and Florida International University (FIU), described a specific concerning case that she and other members of the CARE team had to address.

“One of the situations that I think everyone on the team found particularly challenging is we had a student who was consistently getting arrested. But it was all happening off campus, so our public safety wasn’t responding to it,” Hendricks explained.

Hendricks said that the CARE team did find particular difficulty in addressing this case, due to the arrests not occurring on campus.

“We were doing some checking and finding out that he was in different counties, doing different things and getting in trouble,” Hendricks said. “So we talked about as a team how we should approach it. Because as a team, we are equipped to talk about if you’re not going to class, we have the tools, or if you’re telling us you’re sad, we can talk about it with counseling. But when someone is involved in serious situations away from the campus, how do we approach it?

Following confirmation of the student’s arrest, members of the CARE team determined that the university’s “community” extends to every member of it, and the student was suspended.

“There was a lot of dialogue, because people felt really strongly ‘Well if it’s not happening on campus, it’s not a problem for us’… but I was really pleased that we were able to agree that our community extends and that we do have to worry about people’s behavior on campus, but also away from campus,” Hendricks said. “The student actually was suspended from the university and then that prompted parent involvement, so the student could get help.”

Hendricks highlighted the importance of having a team to make decisions such as these, rather than just one individual.

“I’m one of those individuals who believes that you need a group to assess situations,” Hendricks said. “You need to hear different perspectives and different opinions. It shouldn’t be one person decides (an appropriate course of action).”

As for how the CARE team can increase its impact on Quinnipiac’s campus, Hendricks explained that she believes the university should seek to hire additional members of the team to address both legal and academic advising issues.

McKenna explained that she is working on putting together documentation to further increase the impact of the team at Quinnipiac.

“I am working on a document folder that looks like a manila folder printed with campus resources on it, [including] general behaviors that we want people to refer to us and what that looks like in real life,” McKenna said. “What are some of the signs and symptoms that might let someone know that maybe a student might have a substance abuse issue or a student might be experiencing depression or someone might be moving toward a potential act of violence on campus.”

Hendricks believes that the goal of the CARE team is to not simply discipline students, but rather do what is best for their well-being.

“For me, it’s always the same goal to get the individual the help they need, while keeping in mind the safety of the entire community,” she said.

Making way for Quinnipiac’s new strategic plan

Vice president of admissions and financial aid to leave the university

By Rachael Durand

Judy Olian is putting her strategic plan into action by making room for a new senior cabinet.

Olian announced in a recent email to faculty and staff that three vice presidents will leave Quinnipiac University at the beginning of the 2019-20 academic year.

Greg Eichhorn, who oversees admissions and financial aid, is gone at the end of June.

Joining him in an administrative exodus — but via retirements after years of service — are Lynn Bushnell, vice president for public affairs, and Don Weinbach, who has been at the helm of the development and alumni affairs office since 1996. Executive Vice President and Provost Mark Thompson announced earlier this semester that he has taken the job of president at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. His last day at Quinnipiac, after a 21-year tenure, is May 31.

Greg Eichhorn

Lynn Bushnell

Don Weinbach

Mark Thompson

Unlike the retirements and Thompson’s departure for a higher position, Eichhorn is leaving under different circumstances — he no longer fits into Olian’s plans.

The strategic plan is designed to develop Quinnipiac into a university of the future. That future did not have room for Eichhorn.

“There is a strategic shift in this position and I accept that,” Eichhorn said. “The conversations I have had with the president and provost are about the future and the strategic plan for it.”

Eichhorn, who was accompanied during the interview by John Morgan, associate vice president for public affairs, denied he was being forced out, saying his departure was a mutual decision.

“After discussions with the president and the provost, we’ve agreed that the position is going in a different direction and this is the best thing for the institution,” Eichhorn said. “And that’s what I care about.”

Eichhorn’s tenure was short. He came to the university only three years ago after serving a 24-year tenure at Albright University in Pennsylvania.

“Candidly, I was in a great place at Albright and loved it,” Eichhorn said. “Quinnipiac recruited me for a while and it finally got to the point where we said as a family, this is a great opportunity and I’ve got to take it, and I did.”

As the vice president for admissions and financial aid, Eichhorn has been in charge of overseeing graduate and undergraduate admissions and all aspects of financial aid.

An e-mail from Olian sent to faculty, staff and students on Jan. 29 regarding the strategic plan.

The strategic plan, which Thompson first introduced to the Faculty Senate in late January, has four main points to be carried out over the next few years.

The purpose of this plan is to build an institution-wide mindset to prepare graduates for citizenship and 21st-century careers; create an inclusive, excellence-driven community; nurture and positively impact internal, local and global communities; and foster lifelong connections and success, according to the first draft of the Quinnipiac Strategic Plan.

Called “A blueprint for the future,” the plan took shape after faculty and staff worked in task forces to create original drafts. Olian then collated these drafts and is weighing feedback from town hall-style meetings.

The fourth of the four prongs addressed in the plan is “to foster lifelong success and communities,” which directly involves the office Eichhorn oversees.

“This position will move a little more from a recruiting (and the) financial aid program to what’s called enrollment management,” Eichhorn said. “So, it will be involved with those aspects as well as some retention aspects with the position, that’s the biggest change — and be more involved with the provost.”

With Eichhorn leaving and the position reshaped, the search for his successor is underway.

Eichhorn said he thinks that the right person can lead the university to greater things.

“A talented person that is supported can help raise the institution to the next level,” Eichhorn said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for the person that will come into this seat after me.”

As for Eichhorn, he will seek employment in higher education, but, he hopes, with more responsibilities.

“I want to do something similar to what I am doing now,” Eichhorn said. “Maybe for a smaller institution where I have more than just admissions and financial aid. That’s what I had at Albright — I had athletics, I had camps and conferences, so I am looking potentially for more things under the umbrella.”

Eichhorn says what’s next for him will always be a family decision.

“We are fortunate I have some options,” Eichhorn said. “We are literally weighing those and doing some travel to those locations to see what is right for my wife, my son and I.”

According to a letter to the editor published in the New Haven Register, the strategic plan has the full support of the Quinnipiac board of trustees said chairman William Weldon on behalf of the the board.

The final draft of the strategic plan will be released to faculty on May 3.

Quinnipiac to be a tobacco-free school in 2019, according to President Olian

On November 15, 2018, President Judy Olian announced that Quinnipiac will become a tobacco-free university starting on Jan. 1, 2019. In an email sent to students, Olian said that tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, will be banned.

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Both the Mount Carmel and York Hill campuses are following suit after the North Haven campus, which became tobacco free in 2012. The Quinnipiac North Haven campus received the CEO Cancer Gold Standard accreditation from the CEO Roundtable on Cancer.

“It’s important for students to take into consideration what they are putting in their bodies (so) Quinnipiac deciding to push this to other campuses besides North Haven is great,” said Cassandra Reyes, an Occupational Therapy student. “Why not really take care of the students by making a huge health decision like this?”

This new policy prohibits the use of all tobacco products on campuses from regular cigarettes, to hookah-smoking products. Students on campus use a variety of smoke products that, according to experts, have negative effects on the body.

These negative effects can have deadly repercussions. Tobacco use is the “single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States,” according to the CDC. Nearly a half-million people die a year from smoking cigarettes and 41,000 die from secondhand smoke.

“Honestly, I hate the smell of cigarettes or any kind of smoking. I grew up watching my uncle gradually get very sick because of his smoking addiction and he lost his life to it,” said Andres Baez, sophomore. “When I see people my age walking around campus smoking so much it disgusts me and saddens me at the same time.”

According to the American Cancer Society, “Cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) in tobacco smoke damage important genes that control the growth of cells, which causes them to grow abnormally or to reproduce too rapidly. More than 70 such cancer-causing chemicals have been identified in cigarette smoke to date.

“The research is unequivocal on the deleterious health consequences of smoking and nicotine products,” Olian said in the email. “We have an obligation to all members of our community to support a healthy learning, working and social environment for our students, faculty, staff and visitors.”

The U.S Department of Health & Human Services conducted research approximating that 2.6 million high school and college students were currently tobacco users in 2017. This figure, however, is much smaller in proportion to adolescent tobacco use forty years ago. Only one in 25 teens smoked tobacco products in 2017.

But considering the smaller, yet still-living presence of college students smoking in the 21st century, not everyone is on-board with the new policy.

“President Olian made a strong decision. I vape all the time, that’s a way for me to destress myself. I know the harm it has to my body, but that’s the thing, it’s my body. I understand the betterment as a whole, but this is just a bit annoying,” said Quinnipiac freshman, Leo Thomas.

Although the decision to become a tobacco free university stirred-up different opinions from students and faculty, the main goal of implementing this new policy is to assist students, faculty and staff while quitting smoking. Ultimately, this will assist in creating a healthier community at Quinnipiac University.

Quinnipiac students hold ‘Bridge The Gap’ event on campus

By Aaron Robinson

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

This quote was one of the focal points of the “Bridge the Gap” discussion that took place on the evening of Thursday, Oct 26 in the Mount Carmel Auditorium at Quinnipiac University.

The discussion was sponsored by the latin sorority Chi Upsilon Sigma and co-sponsored by the latin fraternity Lambda Theta Phi as well as Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity inc.

It was the second annual “Bridge the Gap” discussion. The inaugural event last year was heavily attended, but not this year. This time, there were just over 20 people in attendance.

“I think people fear the unknown. I think people might hear bridge the gap and think it is going to be an attack on them when in fact it is the opposite,” said Destiny Dejesus, who sponsored the event as a member of of Chi Upsilon Sigma. Sophomore psychology major Darian Duah agreed.

“It seems like not many people on this campus want to learn different things about how to bring the community closer,” he said.

This sentiment is one that is felt by many minority students on campus. Many feel as though they are the only ones who care about issues such as inclusion and multiculturalism, and those values aren’t shared by many of their peers on campus.

“Not many people feel like they want to be more informed on other cultures and have the conversation at all,” said Stanley Jean Bart Jr., a sophomore health science major. “Whether it is time or just general preference of not wanting to seek out knowledge, I guess that’s why they didn’t come.”

Even though the event was not heavily attended, there is still a motivation to continue to have these events at Quinnipiac.

“I think events like this are always important on campuses like this one. Especially where us minority students are in the vast minority, so I think that the more we can talk about these challenging topics the better,” said Andrew Robinson, another event co-sponsor.

As far as solutions go, many students feel that there is only one way to improve race relations and interactions on campus.

“You got to be different,” said Duchaine Augusta, a junior marketing major. “You got to get out of your comfort zone and talk to somebody that you have never seen before and just start a conversation.”

This idea of getting out of your comfort zone was a recurring theme at the event. The hope is that students from all races will be able to reach out to each other and interact within the same social space without a fear of how they will be perceived.

“Bridge the Gap” organizers, sponsors and attendees again look to Dr. King’s words and implore their peers to “get out of the narrow confines of individualistic concerns” to broaden social circles and create dialogue between students of color and white students.

Interactive map: View the lack of sidewalks surrounding Quinnipiac’s main campus

By Amanda Perelli

The roads leading up to and surrounding Quinnipiac University’s main campus are lacking sidewalks. On Sept. 18 a Quinnipiac student was injured in a hit-and-run on Whitney Ave., which prompted HQ Press to investigate the safety of walking along these roads.

With a variety of bars and places for students to go, like Andale Mexican Restaurant, Odie’s Place, and Side Street Bar & Grill, there is an inconsistency of safe walking paths around them.

Click the interactive map below to watch GOPRO clips taken along the streets surrounding main campus.