Month: February 2017

How­ev­er, not every­one thought it was as com­i­cal, with one stu­dent com­ment­ing, “This is so fuck­ing stu­pid. If you real­ly cared about ani­mals then you would stop eat­ing them for every meal.”

But Josh did not let the haters get to him and respond­ed, “If humans real­ly cared about ani­mals we’d stop eat­ing alto­geth­er.” Sassy, yet inspiring.

When asked what he hoped to do if elect­ed, Josh said that he is pre­pared for any­thing that comes his way.

“Obvi­ous­ly as a com­muter stu­dent, some of my con­cerns revolve around park­ing and gen­er­al prob­lems of the like.”

Every UConn stu­dent who has to dri­ve to school in the morn­ing knows that park­ing is a huge con­cern on cam­pus. Most stu­dents have to leave their house 30–45 min­utes ear­ly just to have that slight chance of get­ting a good park­ing spot, but most end up park­ing in lots that are far away like C‑lot or I‑lot where they have to take a bus to campus.

Being a com­muter stu­dent him­self, Josh knows first hand how bad the park­ing real­ly is.

“I have had to walk 20 min­utes from I lot to my first class even after arriv­ing to cam­pus 45 min ear­ly,” he said.

Josh vows to do what­ev­er it takes to fix this issue if he is elected.

“It’s unac­cept­able that I should have to pay $244 for a park­ing pass when decent park­ing is that scarce,” he said.

Josh want­ed to ded­i­cate the paint­ing to Gam­ma Sig­ma Sig­ma, the com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice soror­i­ty that had the rock paint­ed before them.

To vote for stu­dent elec­tions, stu­dents can vis­it the elec­tion web­page to cast their bal­let. Elec­tions end Sep­tem­ber 21st at 11:59 pm.

UConn senior and Sec­ondary Social Stud­ies Edu­ca­tion major Elaina Ram­pol­la says that stu­dents, along with the rest of the coun­try, are in shock, and as long as Trump does not make any hasty deci­sions, peo­ple will come around to his Presidency:

“The peo­ple that sup­port­ed Trump are excit­ed obvi­ous­ly, but the oth­er demo­graph­ic of peo­ple that sup­port­ed Clin­ton are absolute­ly shocked.

“As long as some­thing incred­i­bly dras­tic isn’t announced by him, I think that peo­ple will start to accept him as pres­i­dent, in real­i­ty its the best option for peo­ple right now.”

UConn junior, Lynsey Grze­jszczak says that the elec­tion has had a neg­a­tive impact on our cam­pus, as many peo­ple have been neg­a­tive­ly labeled for who they supported:

“It seems that no mat­ter who you sup­port­ed you’re labeled as that person’s vot­er, and seen in that neg­a­tive light,” she said.

The His­to­ry and Human Rights major went on to say that despite people’s char­ac­ter­is­tics, if they vot­ed for Trump, they were seen as “a cer­tain type of person”.

“All the char­ac­ter­is­tics that make you who you are are no longer rel­e­vant and you are is then seen to be like him because you’re ‘sup­port­ing his ideals’ when in real­i­ty you might not… This elec­tion became about the can­di­date who was the less­er of the two evils,” she said.

If one per­cent of those who’d vot­ed for Gary John­son had vot­ed for Hillary, Trump would not be our cur­rent President-elect.

“I know so many peo­ple who couldn’t bring them­selves to vote either Hillary or Trump, but also want­ed their note to count which is why they didn’t go third par­ty,” she said.

UConn senior Ken­neth Thomp­son agreed that both can­di­dates were not suit­able for the presidency:

“I could not trust either can­di­date. The emails from Clin­ton were hor­ri­ble and Trump is a busi­ness­man, not a politi­cian,” he said. How­ev­er, the Psy­chol­o­gy major believes that cam­pus life will remain the same for him for the remain­der of his time here.

“Life will be the same for me and as long as Trump doesn’t do any­thing too crazy, I think we’ll be fine,” he said.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is remain­ing hope­ful as well as he addressed the nation today, root­ing for Trump’s suc­cess in lead­ing this coun­try, and sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments are pan­ning out across campus.

“Hon­est­ly I’m opti­mistic in hop­ing he can do good. He under­stands busi­ness so I’m hop­ing he helps with the debt and trade,” Grze­jszczak said.

Dur­ing Hillary Clinton’s speech to her sup­port­ers,  she expressed that she is sad about los­ing the elec­tion, yet she hopes that the coun­try will come togeth­er after this elec­tion. Clinton’s vision is no doubt an attain­able goal.

By Syd­ney Jennings

MANSFIELD–Outdated ele­va­tors, lock­ers, doors, bath­rooms, walls and doors are appar­ent issues at the Mans­field Mid­dle School.

Lead­ing into the build­ing, there are large stains on the brick
wall sur­round­ing the entrance, as well as rust around the edges of the doors and stains at the bot­tom of the doors.

The ele­va­tors are fair­ly old and have scuff marks on the doors, as well as dam­age to the bot­tom of the doors, such as yel­low marks and chipped paint.

“The ele­va­tors are clear­ly out­dat­ed, which makes it more unsafe for the stu­dents to ride in,” Board of Edu­ca­tion mem­ber Sarah Lacombe said.

The lock­ers are in sim­i­lar con­di­tion with dents, scuff marks, and miss­ing locks on some of the doors.

The bath­rooms are out­dat­ed and have dam­age to the stall doors, as well as decay­ing sinks with rust around the han­dles and brown col­or­ing in the sinks.

“It is clear that our schools need to be repaired and updat­ed with new facil­i­ties so it is safer for the chil­dren,” Lacombe said. “It also just looks more pre­sentable if our schools are updated.”

The pub­lic schools in Mans­field date back to the ear­ly 1950s and are in dire need for repairs at an esti­mat­ed cost of $1,323,000, which have left the res­i­dents divid­ed between those who sup­port the ren­o­va­tions and those who oppose them.

The ren­o­va­tions are part of the Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Project, which is meant to iden­ti­fy need­ed cap­i­tal projects and to orga­nize the financ­ing and tim­ing of those projects, Super­in­ten­dent of Schools Kel­ly Lyman said.

“The Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Project will take a few years to accom­plish,” Lyman said. “It is a very long and rig­or­ous process.”

The mid­dle school gym­na­si­um has become a tar­get for need­ed ren­o­va­tion at the mid­dle school includ­ing a new floor, divid­ing wall, cur­tain and bleach­ers, accord­ing to Lyman’s facil­i­ties pre­sen­ta­tion to the school board.

The most cost­ly ren­o­va­tion to the gym­na­si­um would be the floor, which has mis­matched wood­en tiles and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of wear and tear, which would cost between $157,000 and $175,000 to replace, accord­ing to the presentation.

In a sur­vey tak­en of 30 Mans­field res­i­dents, 90% of them were in favor of these ren­o­va­tions even with the high cost of repairs.

“My chil­dren attend the mid­dle school and I place a high val­ue on phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion,” Mans­field Mid­dle School Asso­ci­a­tion mem­ber Marie Hodrin­sky, a par­ent in the town, said. “But they should not have to have their class in a dingy, old gymnasium.”

The boys and girls lock­er rooms are also in need of ren­o­va­tions, accord­ing to the presentation.

The lock­er rooms have unus­able show­ers due to the decay­ing show­er heads and tile floor along with rusty, dent­ed met­al lock­ers, which would cost around $180,000 to fix, accord­ing to the presentation.

The over­all cost to fix the gym­na­si­um, includ­ing the boys and girls lock­er rooms, would be $873,000, accord­ing to the presentation.

One res­i­dent said that the class­rooms should be the top pri­or­i­ty if the schools do get renovated.

“Chil­dren go to school to learn and they spend the major­i­ty of their time in the class­room so they should have a mod­ern space where they are com­fort­able and can focus,” res­i­dent Bill Latz said.

The class­rooms will be a pri­or­i­ty, Lyman said.

“Our stu­dents deserve a nice space to learn. That is the whole rea­son they come to school,” Lyman said. “They need tables that do not have writ­ing on them, chairs that don’t wob­ble and com­put­ers that are not outdated.”

In 2006, the board start­ed talk­ing about the fate of the schools, but a deci­sion was not made, Lacombe said.

“The town was divid­ed on whether the town should have ren­o­vat­ed all the schools or knock one or two [of the three ele­men­tary schools] down,” Lacombe said. “This cre­at­ed a big debate so a deci­sion was not made at that time.”

The sur­vey also found that 10% of Mans­field res­i­dents said that the schools should be razed.

“I think the town needs to start fresh instead of adding onto the already aging schools,” res­i­dent Chris­tine Reil­ly said.

Lyman said she is aware of the need­ed ren­o­va­tions and hopes to address them in the future.

“We know our build­ings have sev­er­al infra­struc­ture needs and that many of the spaces with­in our schools will not con­tin­ue to be ade­quate,” Lyman said.

Lyman will be address­ing these issues in the future with a facil­i­ties study, which will help deter­mine if the pro­posed ren­o­va­tions should be done or if any­thing else needs to be fixed as well.

“I am look­ing for­ward to this study because I expect it to be more than a ‘state of the build­ings’ report,” Lyman said. “But rather a process that helps us define our needs and con­sid­er sev­er­al options while get­ting lots of input from our community.”

Some par­ents said they hope that the study will allow them to express some con­cerns about the schools and get some of the issues fixed.

“I hope the board will not only hear our con­cerns, but see them first-hand in the facil­i­ties study so they will make more of an effort to fix the prob­lems,” Hodrin­sky said.

Some of the oth­er prob­lems being looked at include new solar pan­el roofs, mod­ern cafe­te­rias, and a new $450,000 boil­er at Vin­ton Ele­men­tary School, accord­ing to the superintendent’s facil­i­ties presentation.

Some res­i­dents said they are pleased with the pro­posed renovations.

“It is impor­tant for our schools to be up to date because the stu­dents need good resources and a good envi­ron­ment to learn in,” res­i­dent Noel Popoli said.

Anoth­er res­i­dent said that the ren­o­va­tions have been a long time coming.

“It is 2016 and many oth­er schools are being updat­ed with new tech­nol­o­gy and facil­i­ties and I think it is time for Mans­field to do the same thing,” Latz said.

The school board vot­ed and approved the pro­posed ren­o­va­tions in Jan­u­ary that were shown in Lyman’s facil­i­ties presentation.

Some res­i­dents said that they were pleased with this approval.

“I think this is a good step for­ward for our schools to get a much need­ed makeover,” Popoli said.