Mirror - Vol. 39, No. 25 - April 16, 2014

              THE MIRROR Student newspaper Week of April 16,2014 Vol. 39, Iss. 25
www.fairfieldmirror.com IV1
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The Fairfield Mirror
M donation will partially fund new RecPlex
By Christina Mowry
Assistant News Editor
Last week an alumnus and
trustee gave a monumental $10
million donation exclusively in-tended
to partially fund the pro-posed
renovation and expansion
of the Quick RecPlex.
However, the project, estimat-ed
to cost $20 million, is pending
additional finances and approval
from the board of trustees.
The $10 million gift came
from John C. Meditz '70, managing
director, co-founder, and senior
portfolio manager of Horizon Ki-netics,
LLC, and member of Fair-field's
board of trustees. Meditz
has made large contributions in
the past, including a $2.5 million
gift which funded the Bellarmine
Museum of Art in addition to nu-merous
contributions which cre-ated
student scholarships.
According to a university
press release, the renovation plans
for the RecPlex include the addi-tion
of an indoor track, air-condi-tioned
field house and additional
floor space for sports programs.
Swimming and diving locker
rooms and multi-purpose exercise
rooms will be modernized. The
new building will be 11,000 square
feet larger and two stories tall.
The renovated field house will
also be utilized by varsity athletics
when needed, according to Reed.
According to Reed's state-ment,
"our tennis teams go off-campus
to practice indoors dur-ing
the winter or other times of
inclement weather. We would like
these teams to be able to practice
on campus, so a permanent or
temporary floor that is suitable for
indoor tennis will be considered."
Thomas Pellegrino, vice pres-ident
for student affairs stated that
"we want a facility that is com-petitive
with what students see at
other campuses. Meditz's extraor-dinary
donation could not come at
a better time."
According to the press release,
schematic plans are complete and
all approvals have been granted
from the Town of Fairfield, how-ever
additional fundraising is nec-essary
for the project to become a
reality.
"When we [have] a funding
plan in place, we will complete the
remaining construction plans and
seek the approval of the Board of
Trustees," stated Mark Reed, se-nior
vice president for administra-tion.
In a university press release,
Meditz expressed the importance
of investing in nonexistent or out-dated
facilities. Both Reed and
Pellegrino agreed, and recognized
the crucial role Fairfield's many
recreational facilities play in main-taining
Fairfield's reputation.
Reed stated: "Ideally, we
would like to see all or most of the
remaining funds need[ed] come
READ RECPLEX ON PAGE 3
Yale chaplain
to speak at
graduation
By Shauna Mitchell
Editor-in-Chief
By Jennifer Calhoun
Executive Editor
On April 10, Fairfield
announced that Yale University
Chaplain Sharon M.K. Kugler will
be the commencement speaker for
the undergraduate class of 2014.
According to a university press
release, Kugler is the first ever female,
first Catholic and first layperson to be
Yale's chaplain.
Kugler transferred to Yale in
2007 after working as the university
chaplain for Johns Hopkins since
1993, and is currently a member
of the executive committee of
the International Association of
Chaplains in Higher Education.
As chaplain, Kugler's role is to
support and guide students spiritually,
which she may do through community
activities and personal counsel.
According to the press release,
"Her main focus at Yale is ... serving
the needs of the richly diverse
religious and spiritual traditions
on campus allowing for deeper
dialogue, increased accessibility,
personal growth, creative educational
opportunities and pastoral leadership."
While Kugler does have the
religious connection to Fairfield, some
seniors said they wish there would be
a more recognizable name standing
behind the podium next month.
"I would have preferred an
[alumnus] or like a cool celebrity ...
someone I had known or like could
have done a simple Google search on,"
said Brian Gillespie '14.
No matter who gives the address,
Gillespie said he already knows what
he wants to hear at graduation.
"I'd want [the commencement
READ KUGLER ON PAGE 4
Jesse Erickson / The Mirror
DPS on bike patrol monitors students participating in "Around the World" near the Townhouses 5 block.
Fairfield travels 'Around the World'
Mirror Staff Report
Despite controversy and prohi-bition
from the administration, the
members of the junior class gathered
in the Townhouses area Saturday to
celebrate their annual "Around the
World" event.
The event endured for several
hours before the flags and costumes
were retired. Following tradition,
Townhouses represented countries
from all over the world.
Dean of Students Karen Dono-ghue,
in cooperation with Residence
Life and Department of Public Safety,
said she was unable to work with stu-dents
to plan this event with univer-sity
sponsorship.
According to Donoghue, "There
were two different meetings that tried
to bring student leaders that had come
forward as potential people to kind of
run the event to kind of monitor the
event in the sense that we fence off the
area, we still allow outdoor drinking,
but to sort of control the area," how-ever
she was not directly involved in
this process until after any plans to
cooperate with students had fallen
through.
After the event's failure to gain
university sponsorship, anonymous
ghue, the university decided that ad-ditional
ResLife staff and DPS should
be present to help monitor the event,
even though it was not university
sponsored.
"At no point am I saying that stu-dents
have no right to socialize and I
I think a lot of people get along with Public Safety, but
it's frustrating to have them around ... but of course they
have to watch out for us and make sure we're safe.
-SeanMcDermott'15
members of the class of 2015 orga-nized
the event a through a Facebook
page, where Townhouses could decide
what country they would represent.
Donoghue said the Dean of Stu-dents'
Office "had reason to believe
that even though we asked them not
to run it, they were going to run it,"
so when the Around the World Face-book
page was forwarded to Dono-clearly
articulate that but they have to
adhere to policies and unless they're
working in the parameters of the in-stitution
in a controlled environment,
they can't drink outside."
In addition to the regularly
staffed Resident Assistants, accord-ing
to Rowe-Allen, seven ResLife staff
members were present and approxi-mately
three to four staff members
were not dressed in the red polos that
signify an RA on duty. According to
Assistant Director of Public Safety
John Ritchie, DPS mandated extra
staff members to work the event.
Despite Fairfield's policy that
prohibits open containers outside,
students still brought solo cups, beer
cans and bottles outside, which re-sulted
in DPS alone documenting
over two dozen people, according to
Ritchie.
However, the problems with this
year's event went even further than
violating the open container policy.
In recent years, Around the World has
become a growing concern because of
property damage and excessive drink-ing.
"It's not the students who are
drinking a beer or two that I'm con-cerned
about, it's the ones that are do-ing
multiple shots, abusive consump-tion
of alcohol that goes on, which
READ ADMINISTRATION ON PAGE 2
A,0^insid(
the 1ssue
-Stories in our DNA, pg 7
-Softball sweeps doubieheader with
Monmouth, pg 5