Politics roundup: Herman Cain and sexual harassment

31 Oct 2011, Posted by Walker Schiff in Politics Roundup, 0 Comments

Cain and Romney neck and neck in key Primary states

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

Herman Cain surprised everyone about a month ago when his poll numbers skyrocketed. For the few weeks preceding this week, Cain was leading national polls as well as many key states polls. States who hold their primaries earlier than most states, such as South Carolina, Iowa and Florida were all showing Cain ahead of Mitt Romney, sometimes by double digits. The only state not to follow this trend was New Hampshire, though it has been clear since polling began that Romney was going to easily take the Granite State.

This week, however, Cain’s poll numbers have come back down to earth. A series of polls released this past Wednesday by CNN show that Cain’s time as frontrunner may be over. CNN polled New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Florida and found that Romney was enjoying big leads in both Florida and New Hampshire, while regaining slim leads in South Carolina and Iowa.

Despite a slight drop in poll numbers this week, Cain is certainly not going away—at least not yet. A poll released Saturday from the Des Moines Register put Cain one point ahead of Romney, with no other candidate within ten points of either of them. Although very few see this race continuing as a two-man contest, Cain’s resilience over these last few weeks has been impressive. That being said, the longer Cain enjoys impressive poll numbers, the more his campaign will seem legitimate to the media and his competitors. The more legitimate his campaigns seems, the more he will be attacked by the media and his competitors.

Herman Cain accused of sexual harassment

Remember in the last section of this article, when I said the longer Herman Cain has good poll numbers, the more he will be attacked by the media and his competitors? Well, let the games begin. As I was writing the section above, Politico broke a story claiming that Herman Cain sexually harassed two women during his tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. Read the full article here.

Cain’s campaign has already responded to the story. In a statement posted on the Washington Examiner’s website, the Cain campaign basically claimed that the allegations were “unsubstantial” and a ploy by the liberal media to tear down his candidacy through personal attacks.

High voltage sticker shock

30 Oct 2011, Posted by Austin Powers in News, 0 Comments

James Lee/The Chronicle

Electricity rate increases proposed by Duke Energy would raise the University’s annual power bill by $3.5 million if approved by the North Carolina Utilities Commission, the University’s energy manager said last Thursday.

Duke Energy, once a major source of University founder James B. Duke’s wealth, has asked the commission to approve significant rate increases for its North Carolina customers. According to documents provided by Duke Energy, the proposal would see rates increase by 14 percent and 17 percent, for commercial and residential customers respectively.

A July article in the Charlotte Observer said this is the largest rate increase requested by Duke Energy in at least 20 years.

Duke Energy is one of the largest electric power companies in the country, serving 1.8 million customers in North Carolina, according to the Observer article. Its operations within the state are regulated by a public commission, which sets rates that allow the company to cover costs and return a certain amount of profit to its investors.

The university purchases all of its electricity from Duke Energy, and consumes about 460 million kilowatt hours each year, according to Energy Manager Steve Palumbo, who works in the facilities management department.

“We spend about $25 million annually on electricity,” he said. “We will absolutely be affected by the rate increases, if they go through.”

Palumbo said that if Duke Energy’s proposal is approved as-is, the 14 percent rate increase would cost the university about $3.5 million annually. The university’s electric bill is paid out of operating expenses, he said.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” he said. “We have to buy our power from them.”

The NCUC is holding public hearings throughout Duke Energy’s service area, including one in the Durham City Council chambers Nov. 2. According to the Observer, the hearings are a chance for Duke Energy customers to raise concerns about the financial impact the proposed rate increases would have, especially given the ongoing economic downturn.

Palumbo said the university has a good customer relationship with Duke Energy, and that his staff regularly communicates with representatives of the utility company.

“We’ve already had discussions [about the proposed rate increases] with Duke Energy,” he said. “They know of our displeasure.”

Despite widespread efforts to conserve energy, the university’s average electricity usage is up compared to previous years, Palumbo said. He attributed the increase to new construction, but said the university is more energy efficient than ever.

“We are up compared to the past because we are adding new buildings,” he said. “We’re always looking at ways to reduce energy use.”

Palumbo said a new chilled water facility, which produces cold water for air conditioning and refrigeration across campus, has helped the university save power compared to older systems.

“Central chilled water production is our single largest use of electricity, but the new plant has helped us reduce overall use substantially,” he said.

Duke Energy is also in the process of obtaining regulatory clearance for its planned merger with Progress Energy, which has been approved by shareholders of both companies. As first reported by the News and Observer, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has raised questions about the possible anticompetitive effects of the merger.

The combined company, which would retain the Duke Energy name, would be the largest utility company in the country, with over 7 million customers.

The FERC found that new company would “have an unacceptably high level of market control, giving it too much power over electricity prices and too much control over who could access its transmission lines,” according to the News and Observer article.

Representatives of DUMAC, LLC, the investment company that manages the university’s endowment and pension funds, declined to comment on whether the university owns shares of Duke Energy.

Bright future for Fuqua

29 Oct 2011, Posted by Kristie Kim in News, 0 Comments

Irina Danescu/The Chronicle

The future looks bright for those interested in pursuing an MBA degree at Fuqua. A recent report on the significant increase in the employment rate for Fuqua graduates gives hope despite sluggish national and global markets.

This year, 93 percent of full-time MBA students have received offers within three months of their actual graduation.

Fuqua’s employment rate this year is an 11 percent increase from the last academic year and a 14 percent rise from 2008 to 2009.

In a news release last week, the career center reported growth in annual salaries and signing bonuses for 2011­—with a mean full-time annual salary at $107,833 and mean signing bonuses at $25,946.

“We’ve seen a number of successes result from what we think are unique collaborative efforts within Fuqua, and Duke to prepare students and to connect them with interesting opportunities,” Associate Dean for Career Management Sheryl Dirks wrote in an email, referring to the high demand for Duke graduates.

Dirks credited Fuqua’s business school faculty and its “bright, talented” students as two main factors contributing to the growth in numbers in the annual report.

She noted that even though this increase is not unique to Fuqua, the growth experienced at Duke has been slightly higher than the average among other top MBA programs.

“The Fuqua culture produces students who not only contribute actively to teams but also step up in leadership roles,” Dirks said.

The report released that there were 17 employers that hired 10 or more Duke MBAs across various industries, including financial services, consulting, health care and technology. This past year, companies that have recruited multiple Fuqua graduates include McKinsey &Company, The Boston Consulting Group, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Companies that recruited the highest number of Fuqua graduates were from the consulting sector—with Deloitte hiring 35 graduates and 26 interns, for a total of 61 hires. This growth has been in line with the increasing numbers in consulting offers, Dirks said.

Dirks added that there was also a growth in relative “market share” at the world’s premier MBA employers.

This year, 224 Fuqua graduates received offers from top ten employers. This growth in recruitment from the top ten employers is a 37 percent increase from 2007- 2010, when the mean number of graduates and interns hired was 163, she said.

Dirks emphasized the critical roles alumni play in the career and employment success of current students and fellow alumni. At established recruiting companies, alumni serve as team captains and lead their company’s recruiting efforts on campus. At companies that hire MBAs but are not currently recruiting at Fuqua, alums serve as advocates to get Duke on the recruiting radar screen or to post jobs here, she said.

“Just as importantly, alumni provide essential help in advising students and preparing them for the job search,” Dirks noted. “Alumni build the Duke and Fuqua brands by helping students to put their best foot forward.”

Facebook hacking, personal kegs and ‘Jersey Shore Studies’

29 Oct 2011, Posted by Melissa Dalis in News, Welcome to Academia, 1 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

This post is part of our new series Welcome to Academia, which gives weekly updates about the interesting, weird and newsworthy happenings at Duke’s peer institutions.

University of Chicago is hosting a one-day academic conference called Jersey Shore Studies today, according to the Huffington Post. Papers to be presented at the conference include “GTL (Gym, Tan, Labor): Reproducing Labor-Power on the Shore,” “The Jersey Saga: Honor Culture in Medieval Iceland and Modern Seaside” and “Foucault’s Going To The Jersey Shore, Bitch!”

In hopes to replace Silicon Valley as the technology hub of the world with New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is offering $100 million and city land to an academic institution that will catalyze technology growth in the city, and Stanford University and Cornell University are the two main contenders. If Stanford’s proposal is chosen, the University will build a 1.9 million square-foot graduate school of applied sciences and engineering in the city, according to the Stanford Daily. If Cornell’s is chosen, it will spend $2 billion to create its applied sciences campus, which would be the “largest building in the northeastern United States that creates as much energy as it uses,” according to the Cornell Daily Sun.

University of Virginia student Farah Shah was sentenced Tuesday 50 hours of community service for computer trespassing last month, according to the Cavalier Daily. Shah had reportedly sent messages from the victim’s email and Facebook accounts on four different occasions, and was  eventually discovered by the victim. She pled guilty to the offense and will not serve jail time.

A new Michigan state law to take affect Tuesday may prevent underage University of Michigan students from getting away with drinking from kegs, according to the Michigan Daily. Retailers now must attach to each keg that they sell a tag with the buyer’s name, address, phone number and sate ID number. Police and law enforcement officials will be permitted to inspect the sales records at any time, and anyone who removes the tag may face serious jail time and fines.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology freshman and son of MIT professor and Nobel laureate, Satto Tonegawa was found dead in his dorm room Tuesday evening, according to The Tech. An odor was reportedly notice near his room, and he had not been seen for a week prior to Tuesday. Tonegawa is the second MIT student to have died in the past two months, following Nicolas Del Castillo, who was found in his room Sept. 4 after an apparent suicide.

Lost in translation

28 Oct 2011, Posted by Danielle Muoio in News, 0 Comments

Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle

With three semesters of a foreign language being a requirement for students in the Trinity College, the use of online translation websites have become widespread across campus.

A survey administered by the Spanish language program last year indicated that 72 percent of Spanish students used machine translation in some way during the course of  their Spanish academic careers, said Lisa Merschel, the visiting associate professor of the department of romance studies.

Whether these websites were used as a dictionary or to check if a student was saying something correctly, the survey indicated to the language department the role translators have in foreign language education.

“We are conscious of [machine translators] and would like to have an honest conversation with our students about it and not ignore it,” Merschel said. “We are now including several languages in our studies.”

The problem with online translators, such as Google translate, is their literal word-for-word translation of sentences.

“What [translators] does not do well is translate idiomatic expressions or account for cultural references,” Merschel said. “It’s very literal in its translation.”

The Thompson Writing Program is currently studying the role translators should have in education. Using translators as dictionaries is a great use, Merschel said, especially for students in lower levels struggling to get through reading assignments.

Merschel said it is very hard for professors to tell whether a student has used an online machine translator for an assignment rather than relying on original thought.

“There’s no way of really telling if someone is using it,” she said. “If I think a student has used Google translate to write an entire paper then I will ask them how they came up with certain phrases and sentences.”

The disciplinary action for using a machine translator to complete an assignment depends on the severity of the situation. Typically, students are mentored to rewrite paragraphs or sentences on their own, said Merschel. If an entire essay has been translated then the student may be assigned to write the essay again, get a zero for the work they turned in and receive further displinary action, she added.

“Often these [problems] can be resolved directly between an instructor and the student through a faculty-student resolution, assuming the student has no prior academic dishonesty,” wrote Stephen Bryan, associate dean and director of the Office of Student Conduct, in an email Thursday.

Machine translators, however,  could have the potential to play a new role in education, Merschel said.

“It would be interesting to see why the translators aren’t working and bring more analysis to critical thinking,” she said. “Why did [the translator] mess up? why was it hard for it to recognize this phrase?”

She added that this type of analysis could give students in advanced level classes the opportunity to understand how translators may not recognize idiomatic expressions, cultural references and certain vocabulary.

Anna Cheng, a freshman student learning Russian, said she only uses translators to check her understanding of the language because of its inaccuracies.

“[I use translators] especially when I’m doing my homework just to check if I did it right or not,” Cheng said. “[However] sometimes the grammar or certain verbs or nouns [translators produce] are inaccurate.”

Merschel said students should avoid using a translator as anything but a dictionary because it robs them of their individual voice and does not give them an accurate product. Students can write papers better on without the use of translators, she added.

Cheng added that translators inhibit a student from actually understanding and learning a new language.

“I feel like if you’re using [translators] for everything you’re not going to learn the language,” Cheng said.