1'36th | Tuesday, September 16th, 2014 TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South State Street Chicago, lllfiiois' 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiitcom Website: http://www.technewsiit.com TechNews STAFF Editor-in-Chief Kori Bowns Opinion Editor Austin Gonzalez Sports Editor Nathan McMahon IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Copy Editors Travon Cooman Kristal Copeland Kapeel Daryani Shireen Gul Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Rachael Affenit Amy Czarkowski Marc Sednaoui Sijia Wu Distribution Manager Khaleela Zaman Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to promote student discussion and bolster the IIT community by providing a newspaper that is highly accessible, a stalwart of journalistic integrity, and a student forum. TechNews is a dedicated to the belief that a strong campus newspaper is essential to a strong campus community. GENERAL INFORMATION TechNews is written, managed, and edited by the students of, and funded in part by, Illinoianstitute of Technology. The material herein does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Illinois Institute of Technology or the editors, staff, and advisor of TechNews. There will be no censorship of TechNews publication by the faculty or staff of IIT. Sole authority and responsibility for publication and adherence to the values set forth in this policy rests with the TechNews staff. This paper seeks to bring together the various segments of the Illinois Tech community and strives through balance and content to achieve a position of respect and excellence. TechNews strives for professionalism with due respect to the intellectual values of the university and its community. All material submitted becomes the property of TechNews, and is subject to any editorial decisions deemed necessary. 5 U BM | 55 l O N S TechNews is published on the Tuesday of each week of the academic year. Deadline for all submissions and announcements is 11:59 pm. on the Friday prior to publication. Articles, photos, and illustrations must be submitted electronically to the TechNews website at technewsiitcom. EDITORIAL POLICY The editors reserve the right to determine if submitted material meets TechNews' policy and standards. For more information about our editorial standardsjplease email assteditor@technewsiit.com. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters to the editor may be submitted by anyone, but are subject to review by the Editor-in-Chief. All letters-to-the-editor become the property of TechNews upon submission. TechNews does not accept or publish anonymous letters or stories. ADVERTISING Legitimate paid advertisements, from within or outside the IIT community, which serve to produce income for the paper, are accommodated. TechNews holds the right to deny any advertisement unsuitable for publication. Media Kits are available upon request. Ad space is limited and is taken on a first-come, first-serve basis. Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. Career Fair disappoints international students Shireen Gul COPY EDITOR Life is not easy for an international student and when I say this, trust me, I really do mean it. First of all, we are the people who leave our home country and family‘and travel so far to come here and pursue good education. Once we are here, we have a lot of things in mind to start off with in pursuit of a good career. We are the ones who pay more than domestic students, and what makes it worse is that we have to pay in dollars and not in our currency. Coming to a place which is totally different from our place in every way possible is not an easy task. Still, we manage to stay here, study and look out for good jobs. Now, when I have mentioned about jobs, how will it be possible to get a good job for people like us who are new to this place and don’t know anybody? The only groups of people we know are our university friends, staff, or faculty. Hence, they are always the one who come up in our mind when we think of searching for a job. Thanks to IIT for arranging career fairs for us so we can go there and apply for as many jobs as we can. But wait a minute; did I tell you that most of the career fairs are only targeted to two majors and one nationality? Yes, you guessed it right. Once again, the career fair for this semester was really disappointing for me, my friends, and many other people. Why is that so? It’s because most of the companies were looking for students with a computer science major or engineering. Even if we fall in these categories, then guess what? We are not a US citizen or permanent resident which makes things worse for us. The question is, why are we being treated like this in a place that we consider to be our home away from home? According to the demographics on the myIIT portal, IIT has 46 percent international students. This means almost half of the population here is international. Then, why can’t we have companies who are ready to accept us (international students)? Have you realized how frustrating it is when you are a perfect match for a job, and you are rejected in the end just because you are not a US citizen? No, nobody can ever realize it, because we are the ones who are going through this. Moreover, if someone one is ready to accept you on an F1 visa, then guess what? You are not a computer science major or engineer. I have a very humble request from the new management of CMC. There should be a career fair for the international students with all majors and not just computer science or engineering. Since we all are equally working hard and pay the same amount of tuition, then why do I always feel discriminated against when I tell someone that my major is communications and not engineering, computer science or architecture? Why do I have to face rejection when I know I am worth it? Why do I have to compete harder than other majors to make my place in this nest? In the end, all I want to say is that I am writing this article on behalf of everyone, not just myself, and I hope this will be taken positively and we can see a change soon. Students Share Career Fair Opinions Medoyin Adeni'i TECHNEWS WRITER There is no hungrier pack than the group of students who gather every semester at the Career Fair looking for job opportunities. These students spend weeks in preparation for hunting season. They find the professional attire that best portrays them, work on their resumes, research the companies, and practice their pitches. They do this all in wait for that special day when they can finally take home the prize which could be a full time job, a co-op, or an internship. This semester, that special day was Tuesday, September 9, 12:00 pm. to 04:00 pm. IIT students gathered in Herman Hall to meet possible future employers. Resumes exchanged hands; contact information was traded; pitches were sold out. But just like every pack, at the end of the season, every member has a different experience or opinion about how the season went. I met with a couple IIT students to hear their opinions about the just-concluded career fair. ' One student says that he found the career fair to be very beneficial. He said the fair was beneficial to him because: he is a US Citizen, he has prior experience in his field of study which makes him more attractive to employers, and there were a lot of companies looking for students from the Electrical and Computer Engineering field. He explained that he usually leaves the career fair successfully. Last year, he got his summer internship from the fair, and this year he’s gotten a lot of callbacks from employers. He loves the career fair, but wishes it would be set at a different time since the time clashes with some of his classes, and work. Maria Gonzalez unfortunately did not have such luck at past career fairs and so decided to opt out of attending this fair. She stated that the amount of companies looking to hire students in the social sciences or science field were very few. She also stated that many of the companies that are usually present at IIT’s Career Fair do not show great interest in hiring students with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) work authorization, or are clueless as to what DACA actually is. She suggests that the Career Management Center (CMC) have smaller career fairs targeted to different fields of study rather than the large one they usually have. She also suggested that CMC research about DACA and make sure the companies invited to the career fairs are knowledgeable about DACA. 0 “I think it’s a very good opportunity for students to go out there and sell themselves, but I wish that more opportunities would be available for international science students,” said Jeanette Roberts, a 4th-year biology student from Grenada. She advises the CMC to look for more companies geared towards the science field, and also encourages science students to attend the fair even if there are not a lot of opportunities present for them there. Ieanette and Maria aren’t the only ones who wish that there were more major- diversified companies at the career fair. I, myself, as an international chemical engineering student, did not find a lot of companies that were looking to hire Chemical Engineering students that were non U.S Citizens. The Career Management Center has done a great job so far in providing IIT students with opportunities, but there are several ways in which the career fair can be improved. I hope by next career fair some of the changes suggested by students will be implemented, and there will be more students satisfied with the fair than there currently are.