Mirror - Vol. 30, No. 09 - November 04, 2004

              The
BY KELLY SHEEHAN
With rumors of unregistered town-house
parties being broken up with Stag
Card readers purchased this year, students
have been nervous about throwing and at-tending
parties on campus.
But residence life says the department
is no longer using the two $ 189 machines
at unregistered townhouse parties that ap-pear
to be in violation of party policies or
the student code of conduct.
"The plan was never to use them at
registered parties, but only at parties in
violation of policies," said Laura Cantrell,
associate director of residence life.
The CardTool devices, which are
three-track magnetic stripe card readers,
each come equipped with one megabyte of
flash memory. They store data in databases
and display it on iPod-like screens, called
CardVisors.
These machines are typically used to
read driver's licenses' magnetic strips at
clubs, bars, automobile dealerships, liquor
stores and health clubs.
They seemed like the perfect way to
discourage underage drinking and record
students' Stag Card information quickly.
However, problems soon arose.
"They worked fine at [unregistered]
townhouse parties," said Cantrell. "The
problem was that it is a bit more labor
intensive to get the. information from
the palm pilot to a report than we had
wanted."
Cantrell said that in order to get the
information from the CardVisor to a report,
many computer applications are needed
and it is not any easier than manually re-cording
names at parties. The software was
never broken, although a phone call to the
company's tech support was needed.
SEE "CARD" ON P. 8
Getting carded:
The CardVisor
allowed for easy
capturing of
student ID
information, but
ultimately created
difficulty when
trying to move
the data from the
device to a report.
Contributed photo
ELECTING TO VOTE
Chris Donato/The Mirror
Making a choice: Rob Zwillich '08 votes at Osborne Hill School in Fairfield Tuesday during the 2004 presi-dential
elections. In a similar electoral breakdown to 2000, Bush defeated Kerry in a close race. Other
races were similarly close; Christopher Shays hung on to his congressional seat, narrowly defeating Diane
Farrell. For pictures of Shays and Farrell from election night, see page 2.
0
BY HEATHER MANNING
The hard seats of a courtroom are the
last place carefree students expect to end
up after a weekend spent enjoying them-selves
off campus.
Yet for some unlucky students, this
scenario has been a reality, and not always
a pleasant one.
When Tony Bachich '05 and Tom
Andreacchio '05 attended Bridgeport
Municipal Court along with their room-mates
for a noise violation at the beach,
they were surprised by the treatment they
received.
"Basically, the judge said we were
a waste of her time and didn't want to
hear our story. She said if we plead guilty
and paid a fine nothing would go on our
records," they said. "But if we tried to
plead not guilty we would lose, and then
that would go on our permanent record.
We felt like we had no choice but pay
the fine."
The group was upset since they had
planned to fight the ticket because they
believe that the loud noise came from
adjacent houses and not their own.
SEE "ONE" ON P. 4
Chris Donato/The Mirror
Challenging rules: Students felt bullied
by the local judicial system over fines.
RA
BY MEGAN J. MAHONEY
The department of residence life
has been under fire lately for its policies
and university codes of conduct after the
dismissals and resignations of several
residence life staff members in recent
weeks.
However, more
alarming to many current
and former members of
the resident staff is the
lack of trust within the
system as the infractions
of Clark Callahan, Becky
Robinson and Kevin Sav-ille
were reported by other
RAs.
"Another problem is
the lack of brotherhood
among the RAs them-selves,"
said Sean Bar-rett
'05, a former RA in
Loyola. "The students that
are RAs are supposed to
support one another so that
there can be some kind of
trust, not police each other,
but that is exactly what's
going on."
John Vallee '06 pre-viously
told The Mirror,
"When you become an RAr it's a common
understanding that you look out for each
other, watch out for each other. It's like a
family."
The department of residence life
takes pains to ensure that this "family"
does exist within each residence hall and
within the entire staff during the inten-sive
two-week-long training all RAs go
through.
RA STRIFE
This is the
third in a
series of
stories on the
difficulties
facing the
department of
residence life.
EDITORIAL
Is res. life doing
the right thing?
Page 15
QUESTION OF
THE WEEK
Are RA jobs
too difficult?
Page 16
SEE "TRUST" ON P. 6