Mirror - Vol. 30, No. 14 - December 16, 2004

              The
December 16.2004 Vol. 30. Iss [■•airfield I Iniversirv's
Fairfield renews effort to promote academic honesty
BY TRISH MCGAHAN
Fairfield students, faculty members and
administrators are wrestling with a package
of changes designed to promote academic
honesty on campus.
Action came after a scathing Decem-ber
2003 faculty report found that Fairfield
was at the bottom of the list of peer schools
in terms of its effort to promote academic
honesty and combat plagiarism.
The report surveyed a range of schools
including Villanova, College of the Holy
Cross, Fordham, Princeton and Wesleyan
among many others. It found Fairfield was
closer to Marist with the least comprehen-sive
policies on academic honesty.
Paul Caster, a professor at the school
of business, has been teaching at Fairfield
for just over 10 years and has encountered
"very few instances of cheating." Accord-ing
to Caster, these happened during his
first couple of years here, causing him to
believe "the climate of academic honesty
has improved."
"One thing I try to do is create an envi-ronment
in the classroom that makes it more
difficult for cheating to occur," said Caster.
"I'd much rather prevent it form happening
than to have to deal with it after the fact."
"Another thing I do is to have the honor
code printed on all exams," he said.
Caster is not alone in his efforts of
prevention.
Art history professor Philip Eliasoph be-lieves
the issue of academic honesty should be
viewed as an "unequivocal 'no brainer'."
"Just as faculty members realize that we
are required to attribute and cite all external
sources for our scholarly writing, students
need to appropriate the same 'rules of the
game' [and] represent an indestructible wall
that cannot be bypassed," said Eliasoph.
"I strongly believe that the weakening of
these standards has been exacerbated by
easy access to a global cyber-web of instant
information."
"This alarming trend, reduced to a 'click
and copy', has completely transformed the
manner in which students search, capture,
SEE "STUDENTS" ON P. 4
BREAK: FAST FOOD FOR FINALS
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Chris Donato/The Mirror
Servin' it up: Assistant Vice President of Student Services Jim Fitzpatrick and Director of Public Safety Todd
Pelazza prepare plates to serve to students at the Midnight Breakfast on Tuesday night in the BCC.
RecPlex biological tests show some dirty spots
BY MEREDITH CLINTON
The Rec Plex underwent bacterial testing
by a Fairfield student conducting a biological
experiment, and while some areas were clean
enough, others were downright nasty.
Carolyn Canonica '05 tested the Rec Plex
for microbes in the gym for a biology project.
She swabbed an elliptical machine, a Nautilus
machine and an exercise mat.
"We grew [the samplesj for a few days, and
we found the mats had the most growth: bacte-rial
and fungal," she said. "The elliptical and
Nautilus machines didn't have too much growth,
just bacteria which is the normal one found on
people's skin... nothing too surprising."
Cannonica said she also tested a sample
of the disinfectant that is left out with the
towels for people to use to clean the machines
when they are done. It does prove effective
against the bacteria found on skin, but it won't
work on fungal bacterial.
"The mats were disturbing," she said,
"No one ever cleans them, there's no way to
clean fungal growth. Also, we're assuming
someone had cleaned the elliptical machine
right before we swabbed it."
Phil Palumbo, director of the Rec Plex,
said this is the first study of this type done at
the gym.
"I felt it would be interesting data to
have regardless of whether it was positive or
negative," he said.
Although he has not had a chance to read
the report yet, he has been informed of the
overall outcome of the experiment.
"Those exercise mats are not ours. I am
not sure where they came from. They are being
thrown out," said Palumbo.
As for the other machines, there are al-ways
going to be people that don't wipe them
down when they are through, or wipe them
down thoroughly enough.
SEE "TOWELS" ON P. 5
Improvements
in town-gown
relations seen
BY Liz BAE
According to this year's
Princeton's Review The Best 357
Colleges, which gathers its figures
on student responses, Fairfield
University ranks number one in the
nation for "Town-Gown Relations
are Strained".
But whatever problems still
exist, there is a general consensus
from students, year-round beach
residents, and administration
that the situation has improved
greatly.
"This [Princeton Review's
ranking] is simply from the per-spective
of the students, and we
all know that many feelings can
carry over from previous years,"
said Dave Parrot, president of the
Student Beach Resident Associa-tion,
SBRA.
Students currently living at
the beach can't account for a
hostile environment that would
be deemed worst in the country.
"I've seen a good deal of noise
complaints, can't say I've seen
anything more exciting," said
Tomasz Grodzki '05, a resident of
the Doghouse.
Duane Melzer, coordinator of
off-campus students, said while
underage possession of alcohol,
fighting and vandalism are almost
always present, the main concern
is the noise.
Vincent Biondi, beach resident
for the past 25 years, believes that
while there had been significant
improvement, "the vast majority of
it was compulsory," he said.
Biondi and his neighbors have
spent approximately $50,000 to
$60,000 taking Lantern Point own-ers
to court, he said.
SEE "SENIORS" ON P. 6