OPINION TechNews STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SINCE 1928 McCormickTribune Campus Center Room 221 3201 South State Street Chicago, Illinois 60616 editor@technewsiit.com http://www.technewsiit.com E—mail: Website: TECHNEWS STAFF Editor—in-Chief Assistant Editor Ryan Kamphuis Hannah Larson Opinion Editor Mike Purdy Campus Editor Utsav Gandhi A&E Editor Ryan Hynes Sports Editor Melanie Koto Chris Roberts Kori Bowns Karthik Kumar Swasti Khuntia Chris Roberts Pranava Teja Surukuchi Copy Editor Layout Editors Art Editor Distribution Manager Business Manager IT Manager Adin Goings Mike Purdy Ryan Kamphuis Pranava Teja Surukuchi Vickie Tolbert Gregory Pulliam Financial Advisor Faculty Advisor MISSION STATEMENT The mission of TechNews 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. 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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 ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact Mediamate at orders@mymediamate.com S'.' I.. i.. ILLINOIS INSTITUTE l// OF TECHNOLOGY MIKE PURDY opinion@technewsiit.com TechNews | Tuesday, April 1 7, 2012 GLAM ||T presents Pride Week By Hannah Larson ASSISTANT EDITOR You might think this story belongs in TechNews’ Campus section. But it doesn’t. As some of you may know, this week kicks off GLAM’s (Gays, Lesbians, Allies, and More!) Annual Pride Week. The (obligatory) schedule of events is as follows: Tuesday, April 17 Free Tie Dye Morton Park 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. “The Bro Code” Screening with Feminists United Life Sciences Auditorium 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. With free food! Wednesday, April 18 Transgender Speaker: Ian Harvie MTCC Welcome Center 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. With free food! Thursday, April 19 Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby Perlstein Hall 109 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. With free food! Friday, April 20 Day of Silence Activities Free rainbow cake & snacks in OCL 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. “The Laramie Project” Screening Wishnick Auditorium 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. GLAM is very excited to bring this to campus again, though I have become a little disheartened by the amount of people who have declined my invitation to this event on Facebook, I try not to take it personally, but GLAM works hard on Pride Week, and it’s sad to see students not want to participate in some- thing so inclusive. It also seems as though this event has become less and less prominent on campus. So I’m trying to change that with an “open letter” of sorts. Today’s events will be fun, I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s been a tradition to do tie- dye at the beginning of Pride Week, and then proudly display our colors on Day of Silence on that Friday. Tonight’s event is a joint sponsor- ship between GLAM and Feminists United, a screening of “The Bro Code.” A documentary that “takes aim at the forces in male culture that condition boys and men to dehumanize and disrespect women,” according to information that is available on Media Education Founda- tion’s website. Please keep in mind these are the filmmaker’s words, not mine. But if you’re interested in dispelling this rumor, or curious about exactly what this documentary is about, stop on by tomorrow. Though this is not spe- cifically related to the LGBTQ community, but it’s a great way to show two groups coming to- gether, with a common cause (as cheesy at that sounds) to co-sponsor an event. The keynote event of the week is a speaking engagement on Wes infused with comedy by Ian Harvie. Harvie identifies as a G LA“ I [T PRIDE WEEK 201 2 SAF FUNDED female-to-male (FTM) transgendered individ- ual, and is the first and only FTM professional comedian in the world. He was worked with Margaret Cho, and has numerous comedic ac- colades, though it will be hard to compete with Dave Coulier, a.k.a joey from “Full House” coming this Saturday. I’m so excited to bring this “edu-tainment” to campus to help bring awareness to the transgendered community on campus. There is a lack of education on cam- pus, though the actions are not as prominent, I feel it’s a step in the right direction to bring more diversity to campus, as well as more edu- cation about the transgender community. I encourage all students who have a shred of support in their bodies to come to this fabulous event, plus we’re having fancy food, what’s bet- ter than free food? Last year, we had a similar event, and it was severely lacking in attendance from the IIT community. I’d love to have a full house for this event to show IIT’s support. Thursday’s event is, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby,” a sex-education and masturbation Image courtesy ofHannah Larson workshop to show off our sex positivity! These events are always popular, and of course, free food. Friday, campus will be bursting with LGBTQ pride from GLAM, resident advisors, and Office of Campus Life (OCL). There will be stations all over campus handing out duct tape and information about Day of Silence, free rainbow cake (as per tradition) and other goodies in OCL at noon. In the evening, we all be sponsoring a showing of “The Laramie Project” a heart- wrenching true story of a hate crime against a gay teen at 6:30 p.m. in Wish- nick Auditorium. Aside from all from of these fantas- tic advertisements that you’ve read through, this is my call for everyone on campus to par- ticipate in these events, eat the free food we’ve generously provided, as well as promote pro- LGBTQ actions on campus. As far as LGBTQ- friendly, I feel we are an accepting campus, but we need to be louder with our support. Apologies for the clichés, but what else am I supposed to say? It’s okay to be gay! URJiit: the sleeping giant By Chris Roberts COPY EDITOR & LAYOUT EDITOR The Undergraduate Research Jour- nal of Illinois Institute of Technology (URIiit) is releasing a preview of its premier issue this week. The preview will feature abstracts from research conducted by IIT undergrads over the past academic year. The full premier issue will be printed in the fall semester, allowing time for summer researchers to submit their work, and will contain full articles and information about undergraduate research at IIT. This marks the first official printed publication from URJiit, and I, for one, would like to stress the following: “It’s about time!” URIiit is a student-run organization that was born at the conclusion of an IPRO from 2010. Things were looking up at the end of the IPRO; then URIiit went idle. Most people involved became busy with other things, some gradu- ated, and a few simply lost interest. Eventually, there were less than a handful of students keeping the organization alive. That was the tallest hurdle in creat- ing the publication: maintaining the neces- sary support and enthusiasm. Since none of us wanted the journal to be a simple, home-made pamphlet, we waited until we had the num- bers to produce a proper publication. Over the course of this academic year, URIiit has man- aged to attract enough support to get it back on its feet and moving forward. Now comes the hard sell: no matter how excited and involved any group of stu- dents are, eventually, they will have to graduate and move on, creating a vacuum. In many cas- awakens es, this vacuum swallows organizations just as they were shining; ask anybody from the SGA Senate who has to re-approve dormant student organizations. URIiit needs students to help keep up the momentum that has been gained. Ev- ery facet of the organization could use more hands: editing, design, peer review, and ad- ministrative. More importantly, it needs people so that it will no longer rely on a handful of brave souls to keep it alive. Speaking of which, I would like to personally thank Ciaran Shaughnessy, Nicole Valio, fellow journalism major Mike Purdy (The few, the proud, the Humanities), and ev- eryone else who helped to shape URIiit from an idea into a glorious, copy edited, semigloss reality. Let’s keep it up, folks!