Mirror - Vol. 30, No. 15 - January 27, 2005

              I1
MIRROR
Fire forces Bannow evacuation
BY STEVEN M. ANDREWS
A fire in the basement of the
Bannow North Science Center last
Thursday which knocked out the
building's power has resulted in
classes being relocated for at least
a week while the school waits for
new equipment to arrive.
Just before 6 p.m. a transform-er,
located in the recent addition
to the science building, suddenly
caught fire and set off alarms. No
one was injured in the incident, as
the fire burned only in the room
which contained the transformers.
There was also no danger to
students who were working in
labs while the incident took place,
according to Ric Taylor, associate
vice president for campus plan-ning
and operations.
"All of the life-safety sys-tems,
such as venting and lighting,
are controlled by an emergency
generator," said Taylor. "When
the power was originally knocked
out, the emergency system came
up immediately."
A reason for the sudden fire
has not yet been found, though is
it expected to be the result of a
product malfunction.
"There was nothing wrong
with the wiring or electronics put
in by the school," said Martha Mil-carek,
assistant vice president of
public relations. "It appears to be a
defect in the transformer itself."
Taylor expects to explore
the issue of why a transformer,
which was less than three years
old, caught fire more fully once
the building in back at normal
operational power.
"We don't believe this is a
problem with the building," he
said. "After we've replaced the
transformer, we'll be looking at
the old one to try and determine
what happened."
SEE "CLASSES" ON P. 9
Chris Donato/The Mirror
Fire remnants: Burn marks remain on a transformer in the Bannow basement Tuesday after a fire
caused the building to be closed last Thursday evening and classes to be relocated for the week.
Constitution^
changes move
FUSA elections
BY RYAN BLAIR
As the Fairfield University
Student Association (FUSA) puts
the finishing touches on a new con-stitution,
it has indicated that all
winter elections will be postponed
from now until mid-late March,
according to Brett Ritterbeck,
FUSA's vice president of senate.
"If this were a normal year,
we'd be starting the election process
this weekend," Ritterbeck said.
"Right now, we're very close to
completely overhauling our con-stitution,
so we're going to push it
back about a month. A move from
February to late March is something
we've been contemplating in the
new constitution, so we're going to
go ahead and start that now."
The overhaul Ritterbeck is
referring to is more formally known
as the Constitutional Convention,
a series of meetings comprised of
student representatives from all lev-els
of FUSA. The sole purpose of
these meetings has been to rewrite
the existing constitution. Many
"major" changes to the constitution
have been made since then, said
FUSA President Paul Duffy.
The first meeting was on Nov.
15. "In reviewing the constitution,
one of the most important ques-tions
we wanted to address was
'Is FUSA still effective?'" said
Ritterbeck. "We also wanted to
structure the new constitution so
that the senate fully realizes the
power they possess as representa-tives
of the student body."
To address these concerns,
the latest draft of the constitution
has consolidated the entire orga-nization
from a five-branch to a
three-branch system.
SEE "THREE" ON P. 4
Bucking the trend: StagCard accepted off campus
BY BILL MCBAIN
Have you run out of cash? Not feeling Bar-one
tonight? Sick of The Stag? Students craving
a change can now use their StagCards at local
merchants.
Last week The Chef's Table on Post Road
held a press conference to formally kick-off the
program which allows students and faculty the
ability to use their StagBucks off campus at a few
businesses.
Dean of Students Mark Reed spoke to those
gathered and expressed his happiness with the
program, and shared his aspirations between
Fairfield University and the surrounding com-munity.
"I hope that many merchants follow Chef's
Table in joining this program," said FUSA Senate
Vice President Brett Ritterbeck '05 as he performed
the ceremonial first swipe.
Chef's Table owner Rich Herzfeld said that this
is a great opportunity for his restaurant.
"In the past year we have redone the whole
shop to make it more aimed towards students," said
Herzfeld.
SEE "DINING" ON P. 9
Bill McBain/The Mirror
Expanding its reach: Chef's Table is among the businesses that now
accept StagBucks off campus.