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.com TechNews STAFF Editor-in-Chief Kori Bowns Austin Gonzalez Nathan McMahon Opinion Editor Sports Editor IT Manager Kristal Copeland Copy Editors Vijai Baskar Kristal Copeland Sharath Ramesh Anoopa Sundararajan Layout Editors Ruby Le Sijia Wu Xiaoyu Zhang Distribution Manager Khaleela Zaman Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor 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. 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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@ technewsiitcom for more information. LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. AUSTIN GONZALEZ opinion@technewsiit.com TechNews | Tuesday, April 14th, 2015 IIT Student Gift needs you Nathan McMahon S P0 RTS E D ITO R The students have spoken and the 2015 Student Gift will be renovations to the Keating Sports Center! Now it is up to us, the students, to make this idea a reality. The Stu- dent Gift needs donations from the students in order to bring big changes to Keating. These changes will include repainting the walls of the weight room, adding more mirrors to the weight room, and improving the existing equipment. As a graduating senior and final year student-athlete I understand as well as anyone the struggle that it is to try to work out at Keat- ing. Nobody will disagree that it is an eyesore and an impractical space for what it’s used for, but with these improvements. we, the students and main users of Keating, will be able to fi- nally make the changes we have wanted to see for years now. This gift may appear to only benefit the small fraction of students who are student- athletes, but in reality this will benefit every single person who ever goes to Keating. Please visit the IIT Student Gift 2015 Facebook page to find out how you can contribute! The smell of free: WI IT ticket giveaways Timothy Ayodele TECHNEWS WRITER A couple of weeks ago, I got the op- portunity to go to a concert at the Concord Theatre to see Earl Sweatshirt perform. It was exciting, sweaty, dope, lame, and exhilarating all at the same time. Yet, out of all the things I loved about the concert, the fact that it was free made it all the better. Through the students at WIIT, our local school radio station, I was able to win free tickets via a Facebook contest. The contest was as simple and easy as naming my favorite Sweatshirt song, but the challenge didn’t make the tickets any less real. At first I was surprised, even dumbfounded, that I was able to get these ‘ tickets, but the fantasy soon became my reality that Sunday afternoon. My friend and I geared up and hit the train to the Concord Theatre. Showing up just on time, we were able to catch an amazing performance by Vince Staples and Earl Sweat— shirt. The music had the crowd going wild, as I quickly found myselflost in a sea of cell phone selfies. Despite that, I had a front row seat so good that I couldn’t have done better if I tried. Concerts are amazing, but a free concert is a different beast altogether. To be able to get such an experience without paying a dime is a gift that only WIIT could get me. Under new management, WIIT has been able to start do- ing some amazing things for the school, to cre- ate great opportunities for guys like me, and I can only hope they continue this trend in the future. Writer awaits SGA Election Review Austin Gonzalez OPINION EDITOR Student Government Association (SGA) elections are over, and the results are in. Let’s see how we did, from the position of a student outside of SGA. The basic numbers show a total of 508 people voted; 504 were from IIT. 4 from VanderCook, and 0 from Shimer. Of the 11 people running, six candidates were present at the debates. Of the six positions available, three were uncontested. Our new President- Elect, Rahul Wadhwani, had his campaign and candidacy confirmed just six days before the election, well after candidate bios were pub- lished and debates took place. Some problems were apparent at the polls. The polling volunteers did not ap- pear to have complete knowledge of the elec- tions. There are reports that Shimer students were told they were unable to vote, which may explain their complete lack of representa- tion. Some poll stations were also incorrectly reporting that there was no option to abstain from voting. There was a general agreement among the persons I’ve had the opportunity to discuss the situation with that the elections and nominations were poorly done. I hear you: “Austin, you often appear disgruntled in your business@technewsiit.com articles, constantly pointing out fails in the systems we have.”thether it was OCL Staff, students, or even SGA Senators, I have yet to hear someone proclaim that these elections were the best they could be, or even adequate. The nomination process was poorly advertised. The only reason I personally heard of nominations was because a good friend told me she was running for a position. It should come as no surprise that current SGA Senators were the immediate (and for a while only) can- didates who were aware there was a race to an- nounce candidacy for. On the day of elections. I mentioned this problem to the then-Finance Board Chair hopeful, Jacob Aynessazian, and his response was to the tune that an email was sent to every student on campus, and it is SGA’s responsibility to make sure everyone sees it. Yes, Jacob, yes it is. There are clearly problems and con- cerns that students have. Every day, my social media is inundated with one problem or an- other. How is it that we can accept the results of an election where the number of voters is less than the number of people who would have to evacuate MSV in the case of a fire alarm? It should be SGA’s passion to hunt down the problems plaguing the students, SGA’s con- stituency, and destroy those problems with un— ending joy. It is SGA’s duty to publicize SGA’s business@technewsiit.com goings-ons. Every permitted voter should know; it shouldn’t take friends on the inside to know that nominations are open. It is sur- prising considering these very same problems existed during the SGA Senate elections, and none of them were addressed over the course of an entire year. I have a hard time understanding how the Executive Elections Committee was unable to pull together a more organized elec- tion since their appointment in February. Per- haps SGA can take lessons from the clubs that it presides over that are able to put on success- ful events. I gladly await the review the Ex- ecutive Committee prepares at the end of this month. Hopefully, it will be published to the student body as well, not only the Executive board as per their bylaws. The immediate ac- tion of those elected should be to revise the by- laws and procedures of SGA, specifically those regarding elections. At the end of the day, I’d like to quote one part of SGA’s bylaws that we should take to heart: “Representing the interests of the student population of IIT requires high stan- dards of behavior, In order to effectively serve students, and function in general, there must be a culture of trust within SGA.” business®technewsiit.com