Mirror - Vol. 37, No. 20 - March 07, 2012

              FREE I Take one
Week of March 7,2012 | Voi.37,iss20
THEUFMIRROR
fairfieldmirror.com
The Independent Student Newspaper
of Fairfield University
Nicholas DiFazio/The Mirror
Gathered in the Lower Level BCC, students set the foundation for mending discrimination and encouraging open-forum discussions on campus.
Students "Act Against" Hate
BY RICHARD O'CONNOR
STAFF WRITER
Although Fairfield Univer-sity
aligns itself with Jesuit morals,
preaching acceptance and social
justice, there still lurks a sense of
discrimination within the campus
community. And for some, it has be-come
intolerable.
The group Act Against held its
first official forum last Thursday
March 1, in the lower level of the
BCC. Act Against was started by
students living in McCormick in re-sponse
to the vandalism incident,
which occurred in Claver earlier this
semester, where a vandal carved ra-cial
slurs and an anti-Semitic symbol
onto a plaque residing in the dorm.
The group drew inspiration for
their name from a carving in their
own dorm, bearing the inscription
"Act Against." For them the name
exemplifies their stance towards dis-crimination
on campus.
The topics covered at the forum
focused on students' sense of social
injustice on campus: the failure to
integrate the student population,
lack of respect for female students by
their male counterparts, and stereo-types
that male and female students
feel they need to live up to in order
to fit in on campus.
Senior Ashley De La Cruz talk-ed
about some of the instances of
discrimination she had come across
in her time on campus. She said:
"I've passed by the townhouses and
heard drunk white people saying,
'I'm tired of these f**ing n***ers on
campus.'" On another occasion she
overheard two students discussing
how they believed minority students
had an easier time in the admissions
process.
Sophomore Xavier Francis,
one of the group's core members,
believed that not enough of the stu-dent
community was taking these
issues seriously. When presented
with a student's analogy, comparing
the vandalism with trash on the floor
and other dorm damages, he replied:
"I can pick up garbage from the floor
and put it in the bin, but you can't
just pick up racism from the floor
and put it in the bin. It's rooted in the
DISCRIMINATION | PAGE 2
The Reflection of Fairfield
2014 Elects
Final Senator
BY MAGGIE AJVDREW
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
One of the most anticli-mactic
FUSA election seasons
is finally over, with Harry Cinti-neo
named the fifth class of 2014
senator.
Cintineo won over oppo-nent
Astrid Quinones '14, 38 to
13 votes. He will now join Paul
O'Brien '14, Samantha Hart
'14, Alex Long '14 and Nicoletta
Richardson '14 in representing
the rising junior class.
The positions in Senate
were the only contested races of
the 2012 FUSA Election. Cintineo
and Quinones tied last Tuesday,
when seven students ran for five
Senate seats.
Both candidates received
exactly 87 votes in the tie. The
Election Code stipulates that
a run-off election must deter-mine
the winner within a week,
prompting the last-minute ballot
casting in the BCC on Tuesday
Upon hearing the news of
his win, Cintineo expressed grat-itude
for everyone who came out
and voted for him.
Quinones commented, "I
don't know my opponent per-sonally,
but I'm sure he will do
his best on FUSA Senate."
Sam Maxfield '14, the newly
elected Chair of Senate, said, "I
am happy this process worked
and I'm excited to get started
next year."
Barstool Blackout Gets Blacked Out
BY MARY KATE MCCORMICK
STAFF WRITER
The biggest party to hit Fairfield
University and access to Ticketmas-ter
were blocked on the University
network, preventing students from
using the FUSA sponsored pre-sale
code this past Thursday.
A University email sent out
on Monday by Vice President for
Student Affairs Thomas Pellegrino,
however, explained the reasons be-hind
the error message and said that
the school was not at fault.
Word that Boston Barstool
Sports had chosen Fairfield U and
Sacred Heart for their Barstool
Blackout Foam Party tour spread
over the past two weeks.
Because the event is being held
at Webster Bank Arena, the tickets
are open to anyone. The FUSA-spon-sored
pre-sale code increased stu-dents'
chances of scoring a ticket to
the popular event, a perk that FUSA
President Rob Vogel'13 said he has
been talking to Barstool about for
months.
"Rumors that the Fairfield serv-er
was purposely blocking Ticket-master
because they did not endorse
the Foam Party spread throughout
the townhouses on Thursday after-noon,"
according to Matt Watanabe
'12.
Watanabe said he and his friend
Matthew Levinson '13 received a
message that said "access forbid-den
by server" and quickly drove to
a friend at the beach's home to use
their WiFi. But the reasons for the
website block were unknown.
"It just would not make sense
for Fairfield University to block stu-dents
from buying tickets after FUSA
had worked with Barstool to arrange
the event... It would be ofno benefit
to the University," Vogel said.
Rev. Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J, se-nior
vice president for Academic Af-fairs,
did not know what the server
error message was about, but he did
comment on the fiercely anti-Fair-field
administration article posted
by Barstool.
The posting portrayed the Uni-versity's
rumored website blockage
as "Hitler-like," even saying, "Are you
sh***ing me Fairfield? What is this
Nazi Germany?" A Nazi propaganda
poster was embedded in the article.
Fitzgerald was angered and
hurt by the Barstool article, saying,
"Many of the blog posts are repre-hensible
and should be condemned
as hate speech.... My goodness, the
anti-Semitic accusations about Fair-field
are so wrong."
President Rev. Jeffery von Arx,
S.J., Dean of Students Karen Dono-ghue,
and Steve Dailey from Com-puter
and Networking Services
(C&NS) sought to correct these ru-mors.
"Fairfield University did not
block the Ticketmaster site. We
would never arbitrarily block a web-site
to stop students from purchas-ing
tickets," said Donoghue.
She went further to state,
"After speaking with him
[Steve Dailey at C&NS], it
appears this site is actually
blocking Fairfield Univer
sity."
Von Arx confirmed: "it is
important to set the record straight
that Fairfield did not block access to
any website or take any other action
that would prevent members of the
Fairfield community from purchas-ing
tickets to an event at the Web-ster
Bank Arena at Harbor Yard in
Bridgeport."
Dailey explained the possible
issue stating, "We checked our sys-tems
and we are not blocking either
site. The issue, more than likely, re-sides
on the hosting service provid-ers
side," meaning that this is a Tick-etmaster
issue, not a University one.
"Many times Ticketmaster will
block IP addresses or ranges of IP
addresses when they think some-one
is trying to purchase mass
amounts of tickets at
once," Dailey said.
This would ex-plain
the
blocking
*1k$^*"' of on-cam-
■^^* *- pus students
who were si-multaneously
send-ing
requests to Ticketmaster from
the same IP Address.
When the blocking occurred,
students encountered an error mes-sage
on the screen in place of the
website, explaining the trouble that
Watanabe and friends experienced.
Donoghue concluded, "We
would not censor the events our
students want to attend on or off
lp ^S5
campus.
The website is now up and
running. Although many students
have missed the pre-sale, there are
still tickets available for the Foam
Party. '•'.,..,., ' '. .-.-, , :.