TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYSINCE 1928 McCormick Tribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South State Street Chicago, Illinois 60616 E-mail: editor@technewsiit.com Website: http://www.technewsiit.c0m Teehfiawa STAFF Editor-in-Chief Kori Bowns Austin Gonzalez Nathan McMahon Opinion Editor Sports Editor IT Manager Pranava Teja Surukuchi Copy Editors Vijai Baskar Kristal Copeland Sharath Ramesh Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Shreya Jha Ruby Le Sijia Wu Xiaoyu Zhang Distribution Manager Khaleela'Zaman Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam "sga@iit.edu 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, Illinois Institute 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 ofTechNews 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. SU BM ISSIO NS 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 technewsiit.com. EDITORIAL POLICY The editors reserve the right to determine if submitted material meets TechNews' policy and standards. For more information about our editorial standards, please 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. ”Ennis eases I Tuesday, March 10th, 2015 SGA Executive Election nominations open Akinade Aderele SGA PRESIDENT The time has come again, as it does yearly, when the leadership of the Student Government Association (SGA) and the stu— dent body is up for grabs. The nominations have officially opened, and they will close on March 20, 2015. The debates, to be moderated by TechNews, will run in the welcome center on March 26. This campus—wide election will be held on the April 7. All students of HT are eligible to run for these positions. If you are interested in nominating yourself or someone who you think will be great in one of these p0~ sitions, email iitnominations@gmail.com. The positions up for grabs include the President, who is the primary leader of the student government and primary representa- tive of the student body of administration, the university trustees, and the alumni board. This position requires leadership skill, tactfulness, patience, attention to detail, communication skills for presentations and speeches, excep— tional time management and much more. Executive Vice President is leader of the student senate and a smaller administra- tive committee that consist of the events chair and the parliamentarian. This student is also the treasurer of the student government and works with new student organizations. The po— sition requires organizational skills, patience, a strong sense of responsibility, leadership skills, and more. These skills are required for all fol; lowing positions. The Finance Board Chair is leader of the Finance Board, which handles allocations of funds to all student organizations over the lIT SGA course of the year. The chair runs all of the Fi— nance Board hearings and ensures consistency in following the guidelines for all allocations. Vice President of Academic Affairs leads the board in charge of bringing academic improvements to HT campus through the stu— dent voice. This role represents the student body on the undergraduate studies council, the campus@technewsiit.com TEDxIIT seleCts best ideas for April 12 event Olumurewa Og'untade TECHNEWS WRITER With only five weeks left until its main event on Sunday April 12, 2015, the TEDxHT planning team is taking strides to conclude plans for the event. Its most notable achievement so far is the selection of speakers after a widespread speaker nomination carn— paign. The TEDxHT speaker selection pro- cess gets more competitive every year, with some of the brightest minds in the HT com— munity contesting for this prestigious platform to showcase their ideas to the world. So, as expected, there was a great influx of applica- tions. This year, more than 50 nominations were submitted for 10-12 speaker slots. The nominations were divided into 4 categories: Student, Alumni, Faculty, and Others, based on the nominee’s affiliation with HT. To ensure that only the best ideas were submitted, the nomination process was thorough. Speakers had to be nominated by someone other than themselves, proving that there is at least one person—the nominator— that believes and supports the speaker’s ideas. Nominators were required to pro- vide a brief bio of the speaker, their reason for nominating the speaker, and most importantly, the speaker’s ‘idea worth spreading? Nomina- tors were also provided the opportunity to attend a planning meeting, and present their speaker’s ideas to the voting team, with the possibility of increasing their speakers’ chanc- es of selection After the idea presentation on Thursday February 19, a predetermined num- ber of speakers were shortlisted from each of the four categories through votes by the Execu— tive Team and members of the Speakers Com- mittee. In total, 19 speakers were selected to undergo further screening involving an inter- view, commitment confirmation, and message refining, if necessary. In the end, due to some shorter, but nevertheless powerful speeches than expected, 16 speakers were selected to present their ideas on the TEDxHT stage: 3 alumni, 2 students, 5 faculty members, and 6 others. The entire selection process was suc- cessful, and one of the guests even remarked, “This was the most professional and efficient voting process I have ever experienced.” The final ideas selected for presenta- tion are interesting and varied, as each speaker faculty council, and the academic affairs divi- sion of the university board of trustees. This position also works on bringing career man— agement improvements to the HT community. Vice President of Student Life leads the Student Life Committee and is in charge of bringing improvements to student and campus life at HT. This student serves on the university community outreach board and works to bring improvements to the student life experience at HT. ' The Vice President of Communica— tions leads the communications committee of the student government. The committee man— ages all of SGA’s communications and market— ing with everything from events promotion to posters. The committee also works on im- provements to internal communications sys— tems within the university and makes sure the information network at HT is accessible to all. To find out more information about' these executive positions, check our website at sga.iit.edu which contains our constitution and bylaws. If you are interested in seeing what types of projects we have worked on over the past year, check our website and feel free to email the current holders of any of the ex— ecutive positions for any questions about their roles. We are excited about seeing the future of student leadership at HT. If you are interested, we look forward to seeing you take part in it. Image courtesy ofIIT Student Government Association adapted the concept of ‘Fusion’ differently. Some concepts of fusion were homogenous, for example: the fusion of different times (past, present and future), the fusion of different pro- fessional experiences (professional manage— ment and dance), and the fusion of different generations (Silent generation, the Boomers, the Gen X’ers and Gen Y’ers). Other fusions were heterogeneous, for example: the fusion of nature and technology, work and play, and neuroscience and architecture. This diversity in ideas is exactly what the TEDXIIT planning team had hoped for with its selection of the theme ‘X—Fusion’ where ‘X’ represents the in-\ finite amount of possible topics. To learn about more innovative and inspirational fusions and their benefits, attend the live event on Sunday April 12, in the HT Auditorium. Attendance at the event requires an application, and since TEDxIIT is orga— nized by HT students, for the global commu— nity, seating priority is given to IIT alumni, professionals, and community leaders. Stu- dents are encouraged to attend by stopping by the dress rehearsal on Saturday, April 11, or to participate as volunteers for the main event. = independently organized TED event Image courtesy of TEDxII T TechNews Corrections II has come In llit' attention ol Ihe Te il\'ews sttifl‘thzil L111 article published in our previous March (3 isxre, entitled ,. ‘ u, Whitt- Pl; thzil \\'L"]L , Conversation: Black pm'lioi‘is ol {In external source without proper attribution. Plagiarism is laiken seriously by TechNews and by the university; the author will no longer be contributing to 'I'echNews through article submissions or sitill‘ \‘(tii‘lx’ in the 1mm ialc future. The matter has also been reie ml to the universitys Director of Student Conduct. We apologize Ior this error.