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The Washington DC metropolitan area has a major undiscovered crime problem. Today, for the first time, in an exclusive, inclusive, and obtrusive video, we have started the process of exposing these atrocities.

Over the weekend, I began to notice a conspicuous series of clear violations of the law. Be it deceased men on the ground, nazis espousing nonsense or illegally parked drug vans. We found crime to be rampant both in the city and the suburbs. Underground, above ground, over ground and on the lawn. Law breakers, bigots, murders, stealers, bankers, thiefs and lairs. Everywhere. Anywhere. Nowhere at all. Nothing is as it seems.

What an unpleasant weekend.

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   In case you haven’t heard, BuddyPress is the latest addition to a series of grassroots social networking software. BuddyPress is no more than a few months old, and just recently out of beta. The concept of a Stony Brook social network has been around almost as long as BuddyPress. I spent months looking for the perfect solution to host a robust campus event system, much like the events application on Facebook. After looking seriously at Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress, I found that there is no particular piece of software made for this purpose, but most content management systems have event plugins available. The other social networking solutions, such as Ning, do have event components, but the software itself is unbearable.

   I found BuddyPress completely by accident after already choosing to work with Joomla. I was looking around for better event plugins for Joomla, and I stumbled across a BuddyPress site that was using a primative Wordpress events plugin. On that day I decided to switch to BuddyPress, and soon after someone began developing the events component I was looking for.

   BuddyPress 1.0 was released just a few weeks ago and it’s already getting a lot of attention. It is stable and awesome enough for VW to base its cool new TankWars website on BuddyPress. TankWars disables most of the features of BuddyPress, but they have made very similar design modifications to the ones I have made on sbulife. They only allow sign-ups through Facebook Connect, and they have removed most of the redundant navigation. This means that not only is BuddyPress officially awesome, but that sbulife is also awesome, because we have made BuddyPress even more user-friendly. And the highly paid developers at VW can back me up on that. So, where is my check?

Tags:   awesome · buddypress · drupal · joomla · sbulife · Stony Brook · VP of Communications · Web Development · wordpressNo Comments.

The Statesman printed this piece in their first issue of volume 13 on Friday September 19, 1969. It was printed in a special feature section called “The Freshmen Herald.”

As man and boy I have watched Stony Brook evolve from a drive-in movie theater to a used car lot. The rumors that it exists is being investigated. Stony Brook, is itself being investigated; SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] is being investigated; the Statesman is being investigated; and State Senator Ozzie Mandias is going to investigate you, kid. You will inevitably be investigated because you are ripe for investigation. Which brings me to the point: you can always find yourself in hot water if you do not know how to…

RULE NUMBER ONE: Be cool. As man and boy I have watched John Toll for two years, and he watched me for two years, which brings us to the year 1965 when my parents were complaining about taxes and prices and the Prices, who lived next door, were complaining about me. It seems that I fell into the habit of watching the chimney on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa. Little did I know that Santa was down the street visiting the children who had been perceptively better than I, which brings us to…
RULE NUMBER TWO: Santa will not find you, you must find Santa. You will all graduate in 1973, and by 1973 we will either have a new president or we will have the same president. In either case, the sun will not set on some discontent. Now if you were good kiddies, and read The New York Times, you read that we had a sit-in, and a riot, and an ad in The Times. But no matter how hard you read, and no matter how tediously you scoured the articles, you will never know what happened here. Why? Because you weren’t there. I was there and even I don’t know what happened. And if I don’t know what happened, how can anyone know what happened. And no matter what you read here, we’re not sure.
RULE NUMBER THREE: Be there. Whatever side you’re on be there and don’t hit anybody. Hitting is in direct violation of rule number one. And now down to the brass tacks, which can be painful or helpful, depending on how you use them. Stony Brook is the metaphysical midpoint between Harpo Marx and a premature baby. Stony Brook was not conceived, bred, passed through embyonic and fetal stages, and then born. No. It sprang from the brow of Nelson Rockefeller fully armed and fully confused, and it was thrown upon the world like an eight foot giant with the mind of a two year old. Which brings us to the observation that very often we deal with six-foot giants with the minds of two year olds; in the faculty, Administration, and even in the student body. And the best way to deal with a two-year-old is to…
RULE NUMBER FOUR: Give him his bottle. You take it from there.
Oh yeah, Social life, dating, broads, guys, the whole bit. The best thing you can do is to read Harold Rubenstein’s movie reviews and to take it from there. When the right movie comes up, get working. Remember dances are moods, not hops. A Hop is something that went out long, long, ago. And girls, if you’re looking for a respectable husband who will serve you well, John Toll is single. Which leads us to believe that…
RULE NUMBER FIVE: Nothing is impossible. This freshman class is probably the most sophisticated that this school has seen. You probably don’t need any advice. And when you finally come to the point where you are standing somewhere and tell yourself, I don’t need any advice, you will either be made a university president or you finally won. It certainly paid to buy Park Place didn’t it?
- EVERETT EHRLICH

Source: Statesman vol. 13 no. 1

Tags:   freshmen · literature · progressive · protest · Statesman · Stony BrookNo Comments.

Congratulations. The republicans have finally taken control of the New York State Senate after the evil democrats’ long tyrannical reign over New York State. The new republicans promise a bipartisan effort to move forward and eliminate the old corrupt ways of democrats doing business behind closed doors and keeping certain people out of the process. After a long and terrifying period of the democrats’ old stagnation politics and back-door deals, we are free at last, free at last.

If this doesn’t sound familiar, then maybe you haven’t been living in New York any time in the last 70 years. Republicans finally get a taste of their own medicine and suddenly they are the party of reform and bipartisanship. I’m not buying it, and neither should any liberal. Democrats gain control for a few months, and immediately the republicans are up in arms as if they haven’t been playing the same games for decades.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any democrat; we are just as much to blame for the coup as they are. What have democrats really accomplished in their short time? I’ve heard a lot of bickering, not a lot of transparency, and very little progress on important civil rights issues or health care. I am talking to you Mr. Brian Foley. We didn’t elect you to put up with this nonsense. What happened to change and progress? You let them distract you, just like we always do. Democrats never fail to fall apart when it counts, and this late attempt to stop the coup is just the epitome of their attitude towards getting things done.

But, maybe giving the minority party more power will be a good thing in the long run. I think it was certainly a good thing to give the long-standing republicans a scare. Now they know New York is liberal enough to beat them and they may have changed their attitude as a result. The current rhetoric is nonsense, but I hope democrats can learn something from this. Keep the bickering behind closed doors, and make unified decisions in a transparent manner. Republicans will continue to do whatever they can to hold on to power. Appreciate it as part of the democratic process and never stop pushing back.

Tags:   bipartisanship · Brian Foley · democrats · New York · nonsense · republicans1 Comment

The Catholic Church continues to deny their crimes against children, or otherwise downplay child rape within their community as isolated and insignificant. As a young Catholic, this was one of my first signs to me that there is no god. When I first heard about priests raping young boys, my eight year-old mind immediately thought that no god would allow this to happen. I realized that there probably is no god when the priest in my own church di not denounce the acts and pray for the children, but rather he played the victim card and accused the media of exaggerating the reports.

This problem is far worse than a few clergymen fondling genitals, this is a mass of people blindly defending and supporting an organization that condones and practices child rape and abuse. My family denounced the acts, but also assumed that the incidents were isolated. They continue to monetarily support the Catholic Church’s mission to cover up their crimes. I am deeply ashamed of my family’s position on the matter, but I try not to think about it.

Bill Donohue

This week a report was released on the rape and abuse of 127 girls in Ireland, Bill Donohue continued to minimalize the incidents as the “culture of life,” an absolutely despicable attitude which permits and enables the crimes to continue. We should be questioning the moral integrity of Bill Donohue and every Catholic who defends and supports the church on this matter. Rather than responding to Donohue, I will link to PZ Myers who has already written a beautiful response: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/the_catholic_league_downplays.php

We deserve a better moral standard than this. When people ask me why I oppose religion, I point out these repeated incidents. I couldn’t care less how many homeless people they feed, because any secular organization could do the same humanitarian works. I only hold organizations to the same moral standard that I hold myself. I don’t need an eternal supervisor to tell me that child rape is wrong, but apparently their god finds it to be excusable anyway. I cannot have respect for any member of such an organization, and I hope they will soon recognize the same thing that I did as an eight year-old; these acts are inexcusable, and no proper moral standard to live by.

Tags:   Catholics · dissent · god · rape · religion · republicansNo Comments.

I remember posting a Facebook status way back in the first week at Stony Brook all in caps; something to the effect that Stony Brook had been awesome, and I was hoping that it would remain as awesome as it had been in that first week. As I sit here around midnight on a regular rainy Wednesday night I am listening to the wonderful sound of a guitar from Sanger, the next building over. I recognize the song immediately and it is one of my favorites from Explosions In The Sky; “Your Hand In Mine.” I am reminded of why I loved Stony Brook so much in that first week and why I love it even more today.

Once again, Tabler is in flames…

A look back at freshman year at Stony Brook

Tags:   Facebook · freshmen · music · Stony Brook · Tabler1 Comment

This story began when I found out that our Career Center is a close partner with the scam widely known as Vector Marketing. They are a company that uses college students as independent contractors to sell Cutco knives. Although their current business model is considered “legal,” their practices are less than ethical not to mention their recruitment methods, which you have all experienced first hand. Although the word about this particular scam has reached most of us, the Career Center at Stony Brook has a very different opinion about Vector Marketing, which throws the legitimacy of this Partnership Council into question.

My biggest issue with Vector Marketing is the way they attract students, both in the content and quantity of their posters. It is usually advertised as part time work, big money and $17.25 for something (sounds awesome to me). I shouldn’t need to remind you. We find this all over campus, in bus stops, on student poster boards, in academic buildings and right outside of the career center. They also tile the posters, which is specifically in violation of the “1 poster per board” policy. I have yet to find out if they have permission from the university to hang any posters at all, which is an entirely separate issue.

I had an interview with the Career Center, who has been vehemently defending Vector Marketing via email. They continued to defend them without much regard for my concerns today. They mostly did this by claiming that all of the companies they work with have had questionable histories, and that it is not their position to judge these companies. They persistently diverted the focus from Vector Marketing to other direct sales companies who they assumed I would trust. About 20% of students who try it out have success with Vector. Apparently Vector is justified in having vague advertisements because of the stigma that is associated with sales. They hope students will come with an open mind If they don’t reveal that it is sales, or commission pay. The career center says this is an excellent marketing technique because it makes students look for more information. They think this is perfectly ethical.

Well, maybe not perfectly ethical. The Assistant Director of the Career Center did sympathize with me to some extent. She says they have had multiple talks with them over the years about their advertising techniques on campus, including a meeting just in January. Since then she claims they have reduced the number of posters they put up because “more posters doesn’t mean better results,” although I think a marketing company should know that. She also says that they monitor Vector’s table at career fairs to make sure they are not misleading the students. I am at least happy to hear that someone is keeping an eye out, but they still maintain a firm partnership with these people.

The Partnership Council is essentially a fundraising outlet for the Career Center. They invite companies whom they have worked with for many years to join this council in order to funnel money into the Career Center’s events and such. Seems fair enough, as long as the companies on the council are making a legitimate effort to serve the students. Our discussion came down to a difference of opinion. Even considering their arguments for the legitimacy of Vector Marketing, I feel that Vector Marketing operates unethically in order to recruit students. The Career Center sees no problem with it, and explicitly denied my requests for them to have further discussions with Vector about their on-campus marketing. They fundamentally disagree with my position, and most students’ opinion about this scam.

Tags:   ads · advertising · Career Center · ethics · marketing · quality standards · scams · Stony Brook3 Comments

A few years ago at a retreat, students and faculty came up with this idea of a free period of time each week that clubs would use to host major events, and the campus could connect at a personal level. They were addressing the issue of campus community, an issue that has faced this campus for as long as we have been here. Many colleges have similar issues, so they throw money at it, and people are content. We don’t have such luxuries, so we need to be a little bit more creative. I love the idea of “Campus Lifetime,” but they have forgotten one important detail; you actually need to tell people about the events you are hosting.

A student rally during Campus Lifetime

It is 12:30pm on a Wednesday today, just a few minutes before campus lifetime, and I am sitting in the basement of the union writing this article. I would be leaving for my physics lab that is scheduled during campus lifetime, but we have the week off, so I am looking for something to do with my day off. I started looking in my own calendar, nothing until Rev. Billy tonight. Then I went to Facebook, same results. I looked at all the Facebook events for today, and I only found some kind of career fair for liberal arts people. Finally the University has a little secret “Student Life” calendar. I won’t link to it, see if you can find it yourself. I use this as a last resort. It is usually full of junk from the fitness center, as it is today. I found out that there will be a table for Alternative Spring Break, and an SAB event. That’s funny, I had no idea there was an SAB event. I didn’t even find that on Facebook. Well it doesn’t look interesting anyway, but at least I know about it now.
I checked SAB’s Facebook group for it, and it turns out that it was rescheduled for April 15, although the official Student Life calendar hasn’t been updated to reflect that. Turns out there is a Baseball game against Hofstra after campus lifetime, so I might go to that.

So here I am, and it is almost campus lifetime, with no plans. I have been talking to some friends as I write this, and they also don’t know about any events going on today. Almost everyone is out of class with nothing to do. I am sure there are plenty of club meetings, but I can’t even find a current list of clubs no less their meeting times and locations. We have a serious problem here folks.

What we need is a central location for students and clubs to post events. Stony Brook needs a social network, and I think I just may have the solution. I started developing http://sbulife.com a few weeks ago with this grand vision. Clubs will create profiles and post events in one central location that students can check at any time. It works almost exactly like Facebook, and you can even use your Facebook account to connect with it instead of creating a new account. It’s not out of beta yet, but sign up now if you like the idea. We are still working on design and branding, so I am very open to ideas. Feel free to comment below.

Tags:   Campus Lifetime · SBU Life · Stony Brook · SUNYSB Net · USG · VP of CommunicationsNo Comments.

I was born to church-going Catholic parents with enthusiastic hopes for my future as a Catholic, following in the family tradition. Many would say that I was a Catholic child, but I reject that wording for a few reasons. There is no such thing as a “Catholic child,” “Muslim child” or a “Jewish child,” there are only children born to Catholic, Muslim and Jewish parents. If I ever could have been considered a Catholic child, I was never a very good one. I always had big questions and concerns that most children were stifled about. Those questions lead to an early rejection of religious establishment, followed by the existence of god.
My indoctrination began in first grade at the local church once or twice a week. I eagerly received my first communion in second grade; around the time I learned the truth about Santa Claus. These weekly religion classes continued, and by third grade, I felt the irritation of doubt. I always perceived biblical stories to be made up in order to teach a lesson. I never realized that the Bible was supposed to be an historical account of events. When I figured out that these were supposed to be real such as Noah’s arc, I began to question the stories.
The first major trigger of my dissent was the child molestation scandals going on at them time. Every week as I was reluctantly dragged to church, I would hound my family with questions about why any real god would let this happen to children. I asked them why the pope and bishops tried to cover it up. I started to deny everything in anger, and my parents brushed it off as a phase. By the end of the third grade I was already angry about religion.
I calmed down for a while, but I still had occasional arguments with my parents about the existence of god. Around sixth grade my parents gave me an option to stop attending religion classes for confirmation. I decided that I might be too naive to make that decision, and I continued on to get confirmed as David Edward “James” Mazza.

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First, two simple facts of life:

1. Software changes.
2. Facebook is software.

Once you have accepted that, then we can continue. I must stress that I do not intend to waste your time by telling you to suck it up and deal with the changes, although that might be the best thing for you to do. It seems that every time Facebook releases an update to their software, a ton of angry groups and status messages pop up around facebook in opposition of the changes. I rarely ever see anyone in favor of the changes, or even a specific reason why the changes are so bad. From what I can tell, apparently facebook got it right the first time, and every change they have made since then is making it worse and worse. People now threaten to leave Facebook and go back to myspace (who has also been making a lot of changes).

There must be something about the new Facebook that you like, or at least you will like it once you get used to it. Most of what I see is complaints about being lost, or just a dislike for the new layout. These are only temporary issues that aren’t worth mentioning. Suppose there is actually something specific about the new facebook that you don’t like. Instead of inviting all your friends to some anti-facebook group and complaining, you should tell the developers specifically what you have a problem with. They are always open to ideas and suggestions, they want your feedback. If you think you have a better idea, please share it!

This is how software works. A relatively small group of people plan and develop it based on their own ideas and user studies, and then that software is released to the user base. Ideally, that user base should come back with suggestions and ideas, and the developers use that feedback to make small updates to the release. If the developers are flooded with messages like “I hate the new facebook” or “Bring back the old facebook,” that doesn’t help them at all. The entire facebook community might hate it, but that wouldn’t change anything. If the entire facebook community came back with specific ideas and suggestions, we would have almost a Utopian facebook.

So my question to you is; are you going to keep hating facebook and wishing for the old one, or are you going to do something about it and make positive suggestions? Until you make up your mind, please stop bothering me about it. I do not hate the new facebook, and I will never join your stupid group of over 9000 idiots who think the same way as you.

Tags:   change · dissent · Facebook · software · Web Development5 Comments