Professors in the French department discussed the humor found in Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine, at a panel discussion on Thursday night. "It is very literally adding fuel to the fire.
The Special Occasions Agency and University Student Life Committee recently partnered to pilot a new grocery delivery service on campus this week, according to Special Occasions chair Jean Wang ’16. The program is geared toward students in independent housing, allowing them to place online orders to the SOA and then receive their groceries shortly thereafter. The only grocery store currently available to order from is Wegmans, mainly because Wegmans offers a comprehensive list of products on its website, Wang explained.
Not many botanists can claim to have won two Emmy Awards, but GlennShepard’87 can. Shepard, an ethnobotanist and medical anthropologist whose research focuses on the indigenous peoples of South America, once worked with the Discovery Channel on a film that ended up winning two Emmys.
New Jersey Governor and ex officio University trustee Chris Christie and members of his administration are the targets of a new investigation by federal prosecutors, the International Business Times reported on Thursday. The Governor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment. The charges were brought after former Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Bennett Barlyn was allegedly fired shortly aftervoicing objections to the decision of his superiors to dismiss his investigations into and indictments against political allies of Christie. Barlyn filed a whistle-blower lawsuit and has told media outlets that he was given no reason for the dismissal, although he alleges that his superiors, who were appointed by Christie, fired him unjustly. Investigators are still in the "exploratory stage," according to the International Business Times, and it is unclear whether criminal charges will be filed. Meanwhile,Christie has been emphasizing bipartisanship in his public speeches not only in New Jersey but also on the national stage and many have speculated that he could be considering a run for the U.S.
Two Harvard students were expelled for sexual misconduct on Dec. 10, according to a Feb. 4 article inThe Harvard Crimson. Harvard’s Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael Smith announced the dismissal in a monthly faculty meeting on Tuesday.According to Smith, one student had been the subject of three sexual harassment complaints, and the other was the subject of one. Complaints for both students were reviewed under Harvard’s former sexual harassment policy and procedures, and the school’s Faculty Council voted to dismiss both students in December. The identities of the students remain anonymous. Harvard revised its sexual misconduct policy on Monday.
The eating clubs collectively announced the formation of the Community Service Interclub Council on Wednesday. Kate Gardner ’16 of Tower Club and Kevin Larkin ’16 of Colonial Club were appointed co-presidents. The council is the third organization in which all of the eating clubs designate representatives, beside the Interclub Council and the Graduate Interclub Council.
An Undergraduate Student Government referendum seeking an extended winter break received support from 96.2 percent of voters, or 2,015 out of 2,095 undergraduates who voted. The turnout was almost exactly 40 percent of the undergraduate student body. USG president Ella Cheng ’16 said the referendum results would certainly bolster efforts to lengthen winter break. “It basically provides us undeniable proof of student opinion in predominately one particular direction, which is always good for us,” she said, adding that USG members will discuss the results in upcoming meetings with administrators. University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said the faculty committee that controls the calendar will take the referendum into account going forward but that there will not be sufficient time to lengthen winter break for the 2015-16 academic year.
Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld ’07, the youngest city council member in Cincinnati history, recently declared his candidacy for the position of U.S.
Roughly 40 percent of students who applied to become residential college advisers for the 2015-16 year, including both returning and new applicants, were offered positions on Wednesday, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Michael Olin said.Between all the residential colleges, there were 51 positions left open by graduating seniors, Olin said.
Dartmouth recently banned hard liquor from its campus, and Brown banned alcoholic events in residential areas. Liquor with more than 15 percent alcohol will be prohibited from Dartmouth beginning on March 30.
An associate at Princeton House Behavioral Health was charged with sexually assaulting a patient, the Princeton Packet reported. The Mercer County Prosecutor's Office announced the arrest of Jonathan Hodges, 36, on Monday. Hodges faces one count of second-degree sexual assault and will appear in Princeton Municipal Court on Feb.
Three University faculty members, a former University postdoctoral fellow and a professor from the University of Maryland will be teaching “BTC-Tech:Bitcoinand Cryptocurrency Technologies,” an unofficial, free online course open to University students and the general public during the spring semester. Bitcoins are units of a digital currency which operates free from a central bank and are encrypted. According to the class Piazza page, the course starts on Feb.
More than 1,000students enrolled in over 60 courses during the 2015 Wintersession program, but participation may have been affected by the University closing on the Tuesday of the Intersession break due to inclement weather. Wintersession classes are personal enrichment classes offered by the Undergraduate Student Government at the end of January. “I think that participation rates were affected on Tuesday when there was a good amount of snow on campus," former USG president Shawon Jackson '15 said.
The town planning board is expected to review a controversial proposal on Thursdayto open a 7-Eleven convenience store at the vacant West Coast Video property.The town council voted 4-3 in December to pass an ordinance requiring businesses bordering residential zones to be closed between 2 a.m.
There will be a tuition increase of 3.9 percent for the 2016 fiscal year, the University’s Priorities Committee announced in its annual operating budget report released on Monday.The increased budget also includes a 7.4 percent increase in the University’s financial aid budget to $140.2 million for next year.
An Undergraduate Student Government referendum calling for a three-week winter break during the 2015-16 academic year opened for voting online on Monday.
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved Novartis’ meningitis B vaccine, Bexsero, which had been used to vaccinate University students. The vaccine is now approved for use in 10- to 25-year-olds in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading. Seven students and one visitor were diagnosed with and survivedmeningitis B in 2013.
The Albanian conflict and nationalist ideologies both played key roles in bringing about the Balkan Wars, Nader Sohrabi saidin a lecture on Monday. Sohrabi is a scholar of Ottoman and Iranian history currently conducting research at the Institute for Advanced Study. Sohrabi explained that, within scholarship on Turkish nationalism, there are two popular views with regards to Balkan history: orthodox and revisionist. According to the orthodox view, the Ottoman Empire broke downbecause of the irrational nationalism of the Committee of Union and Progress, a well known political organization in the region. According to the revisionist view, however, Turkish nationalism is an entirely new idea — a product of the republic — while the empire’s identity was religious, local, hybrid and Ottomanist. “I counter both,” Sohrabi said.“I claim here that CUP is going somewhere that is close to an assimilationist stance.
Political contributions from University faculty, staff and trustees, including individual contributions to political action committees and candidates, made up 1.47 percent of the total political contributions in the state of New Jersey in 2014. The trustees, faculty and staff together made 237 contributionsover the course of the year, leading to contributionsof $608,505, according to a search of a Federal Election Commission public database.
Codes needed to access women’s bathrooms around campus began to be changed on Monday for security reasons, according to University spokesperson Martin Mbugua. Residential college advisers will inform female students of the new codes over the next few days. Mbugua explained that the decision was made after restroom codes were made public, which he said compromised student security. The publicly available mobile application GirlCode, launched on iTunes by three University students, made the women’sbathroom codes on campus accessible to anyone. “The safety of our students is our top priority, so University administrators, including the Department of Public Safety and Housing [and Real Estate Services], discussed the issue and decided to change the code,” Mbugua said. The app was taken down earlier in January after a meeting between administrators and the developers, Victor Zhou ’18, Amanda Shi ’18 and Monica Shi ’18. Despite ongoing discussions involving administrators and the Undergraduate Student Government about what should be done with the bathroom codes going forward, Mbugua said the University’s immediate priority was to change the restroom codes that were made public through the app.
