New entryway planned, students get to vote for new chairs

O’Neill Library recently announced it would renovate its first floor to add a new entryway along with a seating area, five look-up stations, scanners and printers for students. Construction will take place over winter break and the entryway should be open for students in January as the spring semester begins.

The current doorway, an emergency exit, will be enlarged and replaced with a set of glass double doors (which mirror the ones currently in use on the third floor). The first floor, which has traditionally been the location of the university’s microfilm storage and viewing center along with several bookshelves, will be relocated to another area of the library.

In the place of all the microfilm computers and storage more student seating will be added to make the library “a new destination for students” stated Mr. Thomas Wall, the University Librarian. He further added “We want to reform the image of the library to be not just an academic setting but one where students can meet with their peers and professors.”

The construction is part of O’Neill Library’s attempts to expand the role of the library” to better serve student interests, stated Mr. Wall. He added that the purpose of creating another entrance and exit in O’Neill Library was “for the convenience of the student body” and “important in rationalizing student flow” through the library, which at times becomes congested during exam week.

The issue of expansion in O’Neill Library was first addressed by Kathleen Carney, the Associate University Librarian, in 2004. However, little progress was made until March 2009, when the University hired Thomas Wall. Mr. Wall had previously worked at Duke University and the University of Pittsburgh and had worked extensively on renovating libraries to fit student needs.

He began meeting with student groups such as the Quality of Student Life and UGBC to determine what changes needed to be made to the library. Mr. Wall claims he did a significant amount of “listening to the needs” of students and “collaborating with the CTRC.”

Since then, small changes have been made to the third floor (currently the only entrance to O’Neill library) to make it more “recreational:” over the summer, the study rooms on the fifth floor were technologically enhanced with screens, in September, Macintosh computers were added to the third floor and in November, an exhibit of photographer Bobbie Hanvey decorated the windows and front entryway of the library.

The first floor renovations were designed and approved in less than six months. Ms. Carney called the move a “quick win” for the library and for the student body and hopes that many more will follow in its place. She stated that the renovation carried out over the break is by no means definite but “an evolving process” which will be driven by students.

In fact, the library is asking for student input in the types of armchairs it intends to add in the seating area. Currently, the library has five chairs on loan from its furnishing provider on display (please see photo) and asks for students to vote on their favorite before Winter Break begins. The winning chair will be purchased and placed throughout the space.

Another touch will be the addition of student artwork, which will be displayed along the walls and rotated several times a semester to enhance the idea of a student setting.

The library plans to keep this second entrance open Monday through Thursday until 9PM and Friday until 5PM. However, if the space becomes immensely popular, Mr. Wall said the university would consider expanding its hours to fit student needs.

Mr. Wall also hinted that additional renovations are in the works for O’Neill Library in the future.

Apparently the Boston  College administration has  complete faith in its student  body to adequate prepare for  final exams without any study  days because… everyone else  is doing it? Think again! Until last year, Harvard gave its  undergraduate nearly two  weeks to prepare for final exams – TWO WEEKS! This year,  Harvard changed its policy –  students are taking exams be-  fore Christmas and are only  given one week of preparation.  

Even MIT, whose students  have been known to throw a  couple pianos off roofs, un-  derstands its students needs  for study days – students are  given one study day. Ditto  with Wellesley College, who  “awards” (since it has be-  come a privilege for those of  us on the B line to have study  days) a one day Reading Pe-  riod for its undergraduates.  

And do I dare to push the  knife deeper? Well, even the  old hockey arch-rival, Bos-  ton University has two days  set aside for its students. And  in case you have not taken the  hint, BC’s study days: zero (un-  less you are counting the “study  weekend” as I am calling it).  

What caused this change  in the exam schedule? It is  unknown but most likely, the  Boston College administration  decided to rebel against tradi-  tion or thought no one would  notice the lack of study days  and that the simple weekend  (Saturday and Sunday) would  suffice – giving students ample  time to prepare for five exams.

 However, this is a gross  understatement – students  should be expressing their  outrage over this injustice! Is  it our fault the university did  not plan accordingly on the  academic calendar? And why  should we have to suffer for it?  

My solution: why not just  shorten the number of exam  days from seven to five and give  students those two days in the  future? That would benefit both  sides – students and professors would not be left on cam-  pus until December 21, a mere  four days before Christmas  and the university could close  down the university earlier.  

And has the administration even pondered the following: What happens to students  who need to meet with profes-  sors? Does the university seri-  ously believe that professors  will come in on a Saturday or  Sunday – days when classes  are not considered “in session” to meet with students or  hold review sessions? What  about students that have exams lined up one after another  or exams before classes end?  How does this benefit them?  

As undergraduates, we  need to stand together on this  issue, because much more is  at stake if we do not speak up!  Who knows, perhaps Spring  Break is next on the chop-  ping block or Thanksgiving.  

Why am I making such a  big deal about this? Am I angry  about not having my two study  days? YES, I AM. But that is not  the main source of my anger. I  am more angered that we are al-  lowing the university to do this.  

We need to make the university understand they cannot  pull these stunts on the student body – we should be given  more of a dialogue in issues we  feel we are being stripped of!

Editor-in-chief, Michael Reer and Managing Editor, Mary Brinkopf, pose with the plaque for Runner-Up Newspaper of the Year.

The Observer at Boston College won Runner-Up for Paper of the Year at the Annual Editor’s Conference sponsored by the Collegiate Network (CN) in San Antonio, Texas. The award was the second CN award that The Observer has in addition to the 2006 award for Paper of the Year.

The two day Editor’s Conference brought together 113 independent college campus newspapers across the continental United States. The conference was sponsored by the CN which was founded in 1979. The CN strives to provide support through grants, internships and jobs to independent college newspapers.

The organization’s goal is to make newspapers less reliant on university funding to preserve the voices of their editorial boards. The conference aimed to promote networking among the plethora of newspapers and magazines and interaction with professional journalists.

Editors attended a welcome dinner at the Hyatt Regency, centered across the street from the historic Alamo and the infamous Riverwalk. The Riverwalk, a popular tourist destination, has multiple shops and bars along the San Antonio River.

At the dinner, the director of the Collegiate Network, Amanda Yasenchak, and Executive Director Douglas Minson, made opening remarks about the future of independent journalism and encouraged editors to continue pursuing journalism. Yasenchak presented individual awards to students for investigative journalism.

On the second day of the conference, a series of workshops were held throughout the day. Workshops focused on a variety of topics ranging from investigative journalism to website maintenance. Students heard from guest speakers at these workshops including investigative journalist James O’Keefe, who gained popularity this past year for his role as a pimp in an undercover video while investigating the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

O’Keefe, a former Editor-in-chief of The Centurion from Rutgers University, urged students to police their universities to make sure the university pursues the best course for students.

O’Keefe shared excerpts from his college days and his crusades, including his campaign to get the cereal Lucky Charms banned from the dining halls because he viewed the Irish American “Lucky” on the front as offensive. O’Keefe was successful in his battle. He proceeded to write an article in his paper claiming the university was too sensitive towards minority relations.

A series of panels were held throughout the day which included topics: the pros and cons of an independent newspaper or magazine receiving funding from its university and printing controversial stories and appropriate actions to take.

Students also had the opportunity for their papers to be critiqued by the production director from The Weekly Standard, Philip Chalk. Chalk gave editors tips for design and layout for publications.

At the concluding dinner, speakers such as Victorino Matus from The Weekly Standard spoke on the highlights of a career in journalism. Another set of awards were given out: Best New Publication, New Media Award, Best Newspaper Layout, Best Magazine Layout, and Paper of the Year.

This year, the CN decided to award a Runner-Up for Paper of the Year because it felt that one award would not be adequate. The Observer at Boston College received Runner-Up for Paper of the Year for its coverage of crucifixes placed in BC classrooms, a story which was picked up by The Boston Herald, The Boston Globe and other news affiliates and its exposing the Theology Department’s sponsoring of The Vagina Monologues.

Academic Advising Center

There is no system in greater need of reform than the academic advising system here at Boston College. Twice a year, students are plagued to visit their “advisors” to discuss their future classes and receive their access code to register for classes. Although academic advising was most likely a revolutionary idea at its conception, throughout the years, it has become archaic in that it no longer serves its purpose of assisting the student. Instead, academic advising is a failure for the following reasons:

1. Orientation advisors often lack information about the “Credit/No-Credit” rule for Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs or science/ non-science math classes.

As incoming freshmen, some students wish to receive credit for the AP or IB classes they took in high school either to get a jumpstart on their major or satisfy their core requirements. Nevertheless, advisors never seem to have a good grasp of the University’s policy over where credit can be awarded and where it cannot.

The problem is amplified because the university does not have a standard score for these programs across departments. Thus, students may only need to earn a three or four (out of five) on an AP foreign language to satisfy their requirement, whereas a five on the AP would be needed to place out of statistics.

Thus, I propose that the university seriously reconsider its allotment of credit for these programs. If it chooses to keep them, it should disperse a copy of its AP and IB policies to advisors at the beginning of Orientation and to newly arrived freshmen. That way, both sides will be knowledgeable. The university also should apply these changes to its science and math students who are forced to become conscious of the “math classes for science and math majors” and the “math classes for non-science and non-math majors.”

These classes should be more explicitly marked on the course guide. There is nothing worse than discovering halfway through the semester you have taken the wrong math class!

2. Students will go through at least two advisors during their undergraduate years.

By some ridiculous university policy, students are assigned new advisors at Orientation, their fall semester of freshman year and second semester of their sophomore year. If the student’s advisor decides to go on sabbatical, the student is handed off to another advisor. This continuous shuffle of students prevents them from developing a personal relationship with their advisor.

Thus, when a student finally meets with their advisor, they have to spend five to ten minutes of their pre-scheduled thirty minutes of consultation providing background on their course history, major and minor, leaving little time to discuss graduation requirements and smart planning for their junior and senior years.

Therefore, I encourage the university to take steps to ensure that students do not change advisors so frequently, perhaps by adopting a group model. I understand the university cannot dictate professors not to take sabbaticals but there have to be a better way to cultivate the advisor and student relationship.

3. Advisors oftentimes lack information regarding students’ minors or students who double (or triple) major.

Even when you find an advisor that you like, advisors tend to be pigeon-holed into only focusing on one major. This presents a problem for students when it comes to picking classes for minors or double (or triple) majors.

Students are often told to contact the minor or major director and forced to make another appointment with them. This places a burden on the student who has to seek outside appointments.

This seems absurd when you think that the Lynch School can coordinate and adequately advise its students who are required to double major. The other three colleges on campus should certainly take note. This may be more difficult to implement for the College of Arts and Sciences since its students can pursue many different avenues of study but it is not impossible.

The biggest problem with academic advising is that it has forced a reversal of roles – the student must become the advisor while the advisor assumes the role of the student. Students have to become obsessively proactive in their advising to ensure that no mistakes are made which could hinder their application to a program (such as International Studies) or ability to graduate on time. I understand that an aspect of college is growing up and taking responsibility but if this applied to advising, why would advisors be a required component of university policy? Some balance needs to be struck between students, advisors and the university because the teeter totter has been weighed down on students for far too long.

Students and faculty gather for the dedication

As the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, commemoration has already begun at Boston College with the establishment of a life size replica of the wall and a month of activities planned. Boston College is one of twenty-five universities selected by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the wall’s fall.

Boston College was the only Boston-area university to be selected to participate in the commemoration titled “Freedom Without Walls.”

BC’s selection most likely can be attributed to its outstanding rank in Fulbright Scholarships: it is ranked tenth in the nation. In particular, its German department has annually sent, since 2004, at least fi ve Fulbrighters to Germany (in 2007, thirteen students were selected).

The German Embassy specified that each university chosen was to include activities such as film screenings and to build and display a replica of the Berlin Wall on campus from late October until November 9, the offi cial date of the collapse of the wall.

Preparation for the commemoration, which began in January 2009, required a great amount of inter-department collaboration and included: the Institute of Liberal Arts, Offi ce of the Dean (Arts and Sciences), German Studies Department, Jesuit Institute, History Department, Music Department, Fine Arts Department (Studio Art, Film Studies Program, Calderwood Chair) and the University Librarians Office.

Mark Cooper, a professor in the Fine Arts Department, was given the task of creating BC’s Berlin Wall. Cooper and students Joon Park, Luke Kelly and Cathy Sun spent the entire summer, which amounted to about 1,500 hours, designing the wall. The finished product includes cutouts of Iranian protestors from the June elections and designs related to the power struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Cooper stated that the designs chosen for the wall were meant to make students question “what do walls mean.” He also incorporated symbols from other pieces he had worked on before the wall came down. He placed two large, narrow windows in the wall to represent the freedom to move back and forth and also included a seesaw to recognize the teeter-totter balance between the United States and the Soviet Union in Germany.

The mural, stationed in the Dust Bowl, is built to scale of the original one – twelve feet high and forty feet across. Just as the original wall became covered with graffiti to demonstrate opposition, students are being given the same chance. Spray paint cans are scattered around the wall. Students are encouraged to draw images or write words that resonate with them. The wall will remain in the Dust Bowl until after November 9. It is not known if the wall will go on tour after its time at Boston College.

The mural was dedicated on Wednesday, October 21. Presentations were given by Michael Resler from German Studies, Dean Quigley from the College of Arts and Sciences, John Michalczyk from the Film Studies Department, Mark Cooper from the Fine Arts Department and a representative of the German Embassy. At the end of the ceremony, the German Embassy gifted Boston College a small piece from the original Berlin Wall.

A host of events are scheduled for the end of October and early November (please see below for a full list of events). Highlights include a lecture from Edwina Sandys, the granddaughter of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the sculptor who created the infamous “Breakthrough” sculpture from eight panels of the Berlin Wall, which is displayed in Fulton, Missouri where Churchill made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech.

Other events include a series of films to be screened on BC’s campus. In particular, Professor John Michalczyk and Ronald A. Marsh from the Film Studies Department will show their new documentary, “Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall.” Th e documentary, written by Susan Michalczyk, premiered earlier this month at the Museum of Fine Arts. Professor Michalczyk stated in the film that he wanted to “trace the history of the Cold War and highlight the movement that caused the wall to fall.”

Professor Michalczyk, assisted by Professor Resler of the German department and several other faculty members, traveled to Germany over the summer to interview Klaus Schutz, the former mayor of West Berlin, Alexandra Hildebrandt, the Director of the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, and Thomas Flanagan, who was involved in the Berlin Airlift, to name just a few. Edwina Sandys and Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev, were also interviewed for the film.

The team filmed over twenty hours of interviews and footage for the documentary, which was cut down to one hour. Michalczyk stated that he hoped students and the general public would take away from the documentary “the idea that a government should be respective and tolerate the different voices and not see them as destructive but constructive.”

Michael Resler, from the German Studies department, echoed Michalczyk’s sentiments, stating, “We want to show [the undergraduate community of BC] a rare and great event in history.”

The rise in the number of students in the Pre-Med program is good news for the babyboomers, who will be in dire need of their services in the next two decades. Although perhaps that number will steadily begin dropping if President Obama and the Democrats get the one thousand page controversial healthcare bill passed.

The sudden increase of twenty million people to a healthcare program would send me running from that profession, either that or the lack of a glass ceiling for malpractice suits. Nonetheless, I wish you, happy seventeen hundred undergraduates, the best of luck!

It is gratifying to see the Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literature Department continue to grow by leaps and bounds in under a decade from just seven majors to forty-eight. Hopefully, the administration will allow more majors and minors to develop out of this expansion.

Perhaps by the time I graduate in 2011, BC will feel compelled that it has enough majors and minors in this department to finally getting around to naming the Asian American Scholarship after twenty-five years. It would be a shame to wait another decade for this scholarship to be named.

Next, to the Carroll School of Management: Despite the rough waters the economy has faced in the past two years, CSOM students seem to have faith that finance is still the wave of the future.

Add on that the Finance Department is ranked in the top twenty-five of the country and it is no wonder why it remains year in and out one of the most popular majors in the business school.

Accounting wrestled out marketing as the second most popular major in CSOM, a feat not accomplished since 1994. Perhaps this change can be accounted for all the changes currently underway in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after all the debacles last year with bonuses.

Economics, shared between A&S and CSOM, also continued its upward march. The major, a popular one for drop-out pre-med students, has been undergoing changes in the past year. For new freshmen, the number of electives has been cut from five to four, and a new class has been added under its required intermediate courses. However, I have often heard economics majors complain that there are too few electives to choose from and not enough professors in the economics department.

We have often heard the quote that “your undergraduate major” does not matter in the long run. And perhaps this is true. However, that does not give leeway to begin budget cutting.

Let me be clear, this is not an indictment against the administration but rather, in my opinion, a helpful set of guidelines. I realize BC has fallen on hard times from the economic crisis, however, now is the time to take a hard look at what can be done to make students enjoy their time here at BC.