On the morning of March 3, 2016, The Summit at University City, an American Campus Communities property announced in a Facebook post that a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant will be opening in the building.

The post, published at 10:03 a.m., reads “It’s official – CHIPOTLE IS COMING TO THE SUMMIT! ‪#‎ChipotleIsMyLife‬.” It was accompanied by a humorous YouTube clip of a young boy exclaiming his love for the popular Mexican food chain. Within the first three hours of posting, the Facebook update had already been “liked” over 35 times and “shared” by more than 25 readers.

Located at 3400 Lancaster Avenue, the apartment complex is directly across the street from the freshmen dormitories, and is only about three blocks from the center of Drexel’s campus, making it a popular new location for housing as well as dining.

The Summit has been open and housing residents since Aug. 2015, and is a popular housing location for upperclassmen at Drexel.

The Summit is currently home to both a Starbucks, located on the ground floor, and Drexel University’s newest dining center, The Urban Eatery.

The Triangle will update this article as more information about the new restaurant becomes available.

The post Chipotle to open at The Summit appeared first on The Triangle.

In an effort to provide affordable produce, reduce food waste and give back to the community, Hungry Harvest has been spreading its services throughout the country in the past year. Of recent, Drexel University has also involved itself with the program. Hungry Harvest buys surplus produce that might normally be left on the shelves for not being attractive enough to some customers and eventually thrown out, with the goal of reducing food waste. This produce is then sold to customers of the service and delivered to their homes as ordered.

“We work with local farms and wholesalers to sell surplus produce, which is stuff that’s perfectly fine to eat, but normally gets thrown away because of aesthetic imperfections,” Evan Lutz, Hungry Harvest’s co-founder and CEO, explained. Furthermore, Lutz explained that for every box of produce purchased by a customer, Hungry Harvest donates a free meal to someone in need.

About three weeks ago, at the beginning of February, Hungry Harvest first began offering its services in Philadelphia. The company attracted 65 customers in their first week and currently has about 230 Harvest Heroes (what the company nicknames its customers) in the Philadelphia area. As the company settles into Philly, Drexel’s Center for Hospitality and Sports Management and the Dana and David Dornsife Center are forming initiatives with them.

“We’ve been talking with Drexel’s [Center for Hospitality and Sports Management] and we’re going to try and get them to create some unique add-ons for our products that we can sell in our boxes,” Lutz said. The initiative is underway, being led by Jonathan Deutsch and Alexandra Zeitz of the Center for Hospitality and Sports Management. Zeitz is the center’s Food Lab Manager. The potential to partner with Hungry Harvest fits in perfectly with the Food Lab’s recent projects to find solutions for surplus food waste.

Photo courtesy: Hungry Harvest

Lutz would also like to be able to designate an area of Drexel’s campus as a pick-up location for customers to pick up their produce deliveries, but this has not yet been confirmed. The company is also looking to set up an avenue through which produce can be donated to the Dornsife Center’s monthly community dinners, which are held on the first Tuesday of each month. This donation would be in line with the company’s mission of donating a free meal for every purchased box of produce.

Lutz believes that getting involved on campuses is a good move for the company and provides a great resource for students. “It really is a way for students to save money, give back to the community as well and eat healthy. It’s really difficult to eat healthy in college,” Lutz added.  

While Lutz was in his senior year at the University of Maryland in 2013, he and co-founder John Zamora were approached by a surplus produce supplier and began buying surplus produce to sell on campus to other students. The tiny business quickly boomed and by the third week of operation, 400 to 500 students were coming to buy the produce. It was in May of 2014 that the company formally branded itself as Hungry Harvest. A little over a year and a half later, the company was featured on 6ABC’s television show “Shark Tank” Jan. 8. On the show, the company received a $100,000 investment for a 10 percent stake in the company from Robert Herjavec, founder of the Herjavec Group and one of the featured “shark” investors.

Although the company started in Baltimore, MD, they are now delivering produce in parts of Philadelphia, as well as Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia. The company states on their website that they will soon expand to also serve New York City, Northern New Jersey, Pittsburgh, and Richmond. Growing up near Baltimore, Lutz was no stranger to poverty and food deserts. The USDA defines food deserts as areas which suffer from a lack of sources for fresh produce and healthful foods, which are often located in impoverished areas. The issue has gained more attention since First Lady Michelle Obama launched the “Let’s Move” initiative to end childhood obesity.

The company ensures that it gives back to the community by partnering with 14 different companies to deliver produce or meals to those in need, some of which include Manna Food Center, Nourish Now and Growing SOUL. Hungry Harvest currently donates between one and a half to five pounds of produce for every purchased box to the partnering organizations according to CSO Mark Leybengrub. Hungry Harvest also hosts Free Farmers Markets in food deserts to give away free produce to anyone who comes. According to their website, a typical Free Farmers Market provides between 5,000 and 10,000 pounds of free and fresh produce to those in need.

Offering three different types of produce boxes and between two and three sizes of each box with prices starting at $15 a box, purchases can be made on their website at any time.

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Drexel University’s student led group Public Health in Action held its first ever town hall meeting Feb. 16 to broach a difficult subject — smoking on campus. The talk, titled “Tobacco-Free Campus College Initiative,” was accompanied by a knowledgeable panel of six public health leaders: former Philadelphia Health Commissioner James Buehler, Smoke Free Philly associate Ann Klassen, Arthur Frank, with a background in occupational exposures and environmental justice, University of the Sciences alumna Alicia Miller, Ryan Coffman, who is the Smoke Free Philly overseer and the Tobacco Policy and Control Program Manager at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, and Drexel University School of Public Health alumnus Joshua Prasad, who is with the federal Department of Health of Human Services.

First year Master of Public Health candidate Vaishnavi Vaidya, who is the current Advocacy Initiative Manager for Public Health in Action, and second year MPH candidate Rosie Mae Henson were among the leaders from Philadelphia Health In Action who decided to begin a smoke-free campus initiative for Drexel. All members of PHIA are students in the Dornsife School of Public Health. Still fleshing out the ideas for what this initiative might entail, a town hall meeting to discuss the opinions of the student body and assisted by knowledgeable panelists, was a strong first step. A total of 41 students attended the meeting to hear some opening ideas about what it would be like if Drexel’s campus became smoke-free.

Ann Haftl: The Triangle

Henson explained that the initiative was given to her as a project to take over. Once the concept was in her hands, she decided to act through PHIA, which she helps lead. “We have the capacity to reach out to these colleagues and these students, and to bring students together to hear this voice. We don’t want this policy to just be ‘this is what we’re doing,’ we want input and feedback,” Henson explained.

The talk opened with a discussion about legal and ethical considerations. It was agreed that enforcing health policies in city-style campuses, like Drexel, is certainly a challenge. However, a reliance on the community to enforce these rules among peers is key, according to Prasad. Later in the conversation it was brought up that in some cases, public safety departments have actually been sources of push-back on campaigns like these, as all of the burden for enforcement may be seen to fall with such departments. However, the room agreed that realistically, a smoke-free campus initiative involves cooperation and reinforcement provided by the community, not just one entity. “If you see something, say something,” Miller insisted.

Some other ethical concerns brought up by the room included introducing the policy on campus, and how student smokers might react to the large change. Miller, who led the University of the Sciences campus into a smoke-free campaign, had some ideas to offer in light of these concerns. She discussed how, at its inception, the USciences campaign sent out two surveys to the students and staff of the university. The questions were aimed at finding out what opinions the University had on going smoke-free.

“What could we do to make sure that this policy is successful and that you are compliant with it?” Miller added, mentioning some of the survey questions. The survey also asked about what kinds of resources the community was looking for, and how they would best be able to comply with the new policies. Coffman took the opportunity to mention the importance of setting the right tone in the conversations which will likely follow the initiation of a smoke-free campaign.

“It’s to protect people from secondhand smoke exposure, knowing that no-smoking policies also help to reduce consumption, prevent initiation, encourage cessation, decrease litter…” Coffman delineated a list of positive aspects of a smoke-free campus. He continued, “Most smokers don’t want to be smokers, and we can use this opportunity to motivate them towards a quit attempt.”

This comment produced conversation about the responsibilities of the group producing the campaign to provide cessation and support resources to campus. The general consensus was that absolutely these responsibilities belonged to the group implementing the campaign, and was an opinion that the group shared. Coffman mentioned that some campuses which have smoke-free policies even extend those services to the surround community members.

There are other concerns about the potential impact of a smoke-free policy on the surrounding neighborhoods. A question raised in the discussion was whether Drexel’s smoke-free policies would push smokers into Powelton or Mantua. This could potentially increase the amount of litter and unwanted student traffic in those neighborhoods, which might cause animosity between Drexel’s campus and those communities.

However, Coffman suggested some easy solutions to this problem which focused on communication. He explained that on other model campuses implementing smoke-free or tobacco-free campaigns, it’s been very important to make sure that the communities are aware of what is happening, and of the changes taking place. There needs to be an open channel of discussion between the campaigning group and the communities, he explained.

The next question was whether or not this smoke-free initiative would take place on the entire Drexel campus, including the Queen Lane and Center City campuses, or just the main campus. The room seemed to agree that the best course of action would be to start small, and begin the initiative on main campus, but to eventually extend the campaign to all reaches of Drexel’s campus. Klassen was also quick to point out that the Hahnemann University Hospital’s campus is already 100 percent smoke-free and tobacco-free, and also that the current laws prohibits smoking in a radius of 20 feet around each public building. Signage on all University buildings indicates this law currently.

Frank took this discussion to a larger scope. “What do you do outside, on a public street, where somebody from 40th street is going to walk to 30th Street Station, smoking a cigarette as they walk down there?” He posed.

“What do you do about public space that is not private space owned by Drexel? It isn’t like it’s a university campus with gates; we’re here in the middle of a city,” Frank went on.

This insight caused some lengthy discussion about solutions for the integration of Drexel’s campus boundaries and public spaces. Again, Miller’s experience in implementing a smoke-free initiative on her own campus provided helpful ideas. “We created a map of our University and we highlighted areas that were clearly owned by the university and considered university campus property and we distributed them on campus,” Miller said.

“Anything outside of the borders that we drew we called a Good Neighbor zone,” she continued, explaining that in the “good neighbor zone” students were told that they should make sure they were properly disposing of cigarette litter as needed, but were also sure of the fact that they were allowed to smoke in these areas, as long as they were being courteous.

These comments were also an answer to some questions raised about the audience of where or how many cigarette disposals would remain on campus, since keeping them around could encourage smoking, but getting rid of them might encourage littering. Miller and Coffman both suggested a gradual movement of the receptacles away from the center of campus that would eventually result in a near removal of the receptacles from the campus grounds.

“It’s very hard to quit when all day long you see cues to smoking. You see cigarette debris, you see other people smoking,” Klassen said in response to concerns about cigarette disposal locations, supporting the eventual removal of those locations on campus. “Strike a balance between accessibility and visibility,” Coffman suggested.

Discussing more local and short-term fixes, Coffman suggested making signage of the current laws, specifically the 20-foot radius around buildings, more robust. “There is something to be said for circling back on existing smoke-free spaces and seeing what can be done to raise awareness and information about those spaces being smoke free as part and parcel of moving towards a smoke-free campus policy,” he commented. Similar statements were echoed by Miller, who said that this was the first step the USciences campaign took.

Another debate emerged on the use of non-traditional combustible tobacco products such as chewing tobacco and the newly emerged trend of vaping. New laws have recently been introduced that disallow the sale of vaporizers to minors, so the prohibition of vaporizers and other “e-cigs” may be an important aspect of the smoke-free campus campaign. Coffman also brought up the fact that a smoke-free initiative leaves a lot of room to change the policies as the campus adapts to the initial changes, leaving more room for later decisions on such issues as vaping.

As the discussion came to a close, all of the panelists echoed similar hopes that while the task of creating a smoke-free campus is daunting, it is definitely not impossible.

“Behavior change and changing norms in culture is a long struggle. Being an older ex-smoker, I remember smoking on airplanes, I remember smoking in bars and restaurants […] and any work you do here, you may not see the victory of it this year or before you graduate, but you’ll build something that other people will continue to build on,” Klassen shared.

“I wouldn’t be discouraged that the logistics seem a little murky right now. If you begin to work on it, it will go in the right direction,” she continued.

“Culture change is possible,” Coffman added in response.

Along the same lines, Miller added: “It’s important to keep in mind that the goal is not to get people to stop smoking, it’s to get them to stop smoking on campus. So as long as you focus on that it makes the project a little bit more manageable.”

Vaidya was pleased with the meeting. “I thought that the town hall went really well and that the panelists had a lot of great things to say and were very knowledgeable about the topic, and I think it piqued the interest of those who attended,” she said.

Looking forward at next steps for the initiative, the timeline of completion was discussed with the leaders after the meeting. Zach Hughes, MD and MPH candidate, also chimed in about a possible timeline for the initiative to really get underway. He said that on similar campuses introducing these types of initiatives, after approval, about a year was required to really get the policies set in place.

The first steps of the plan’s approval include bringing the idea to either the student government or directly to President John A. Fry. Once approved, following a feasibility analysis, PHIA can begin to implement the policy on campus.

“I think that this [meeting] was kind of an initiation into the whole campaign,” Vaidya said.

“Moving forward we do want to make this something that’s widespread, something that students are aware of, and we’re hoping to gain support for this initiative so that we can go on to the later stages of actually implementing this policy,” she concluded.

The post Featured this week: Clearing the smoke – panel discusses creating a tobacco-free campus appeared first on The Triangle.

In an age of constant communication, university life means being overwhelmed in interactions with individuals on a daily basis. Every text, Snapchat, or email sent, every phone call made, every status posted serves as a reminder that humans are fundamentally social creatures, crafted and sewn in identity and ideology by their relationships. But unlike every other day of the year, on Valentine’s Day things quiet down. People cut back on their contact with the outside world, settling in to appreciate one relationship above all the others; that with their significant other.

“It was a week after the big storm two years ago,” James Parsons thought back to his first interaction with Amanda Kraft, a petite brunette with a warm smile.

“My flight was late coming back from California to Philadelphia and I walked into organic chemistry class and I saw Amanda and I thought, ‘Man, she is really pretty. I’ve got to talk to her,’” he laughed, recalling how for months afterwards he made a special effort to talk to her around campus and racked his brain for excuses to chat.

In a lucky turn of events, James realized that he could to offer to drive Amanda home to North Carolina one weekend, where they both happened to live. Despite all odds, with an eight year age difference, the two found themselves dating a few months after. At 32 and 24, the couple has taken trips to Hawaii and California together, and have visited Oahu, Toronto, Niagara Falls, North Carolina, New York, Washington D.C., New Jersey, Delaware, Utah and Las Vegas. They also plan to travel to the Virgin Islands in June. James has had a long and richly colored past, having been employed as an army medic, a bartender and always working on several entrepreneurial concepts at any moment. Amanda, the youngest of her siblings, has always grown up hanging out with those older than her, so it felt natural, she explained, to begin seeing James more seriously.

And so, James, a biomechanical engineering major, and Amanda, a custom-design major studying neuroscience, have been happily dating and living together near Temple University for almost two years. They share two cats and several of their hobbies and interests coincide: they also participate in several clubs and activities together. They’re both members of the Maya Literary Magazine and actively involved in Drexel’s Philosophy Club.

Their unique relationship creates lots of opportunities for making crazy and fun memories.

Photo courtesy: James Parsons

“Right before we started dating, we went for a walk and we walked up past the zoo and toward Fairmount Park, and right in the middle of the intersection there was a car that had broken down,” Amanda started, earning an exaggerated grin from James as he sat beside her in the interview. She continued, “It had caused all this traffic and everybody was getting angry and honking. So James decides to impress me and go push that van. And so I just kind of followed him, a little bit awe-inspired, and watched him push the car across the intersection.”

Across campus, chemical engineering major Phuong Nguyen’s five-year relationship with her boyfriend Minh, who lives in Vietnam, faces a different hurdle–miles, rather than years.

“We were classmates in the same English class in ninth grade,” Phuong shared. “Our first talk was about him having a crush on one of my friends. I thought, ‘Wow, he really falls easily. Maybe I could flirt with him.’”

Minh was clearly very shy about telling Phuong about how he felt. “He passed me a card with a lollipop! I was polite at the time and I said thank you but I thought to myself, I hate strawberry lollipops.” Phuong recalled, giggling at the memory.

“In the card he said, although we haven’t known each other for a long time, I am starting to have some feelings for you. So it would be nice if we could talk more and, since you are really good at chemistry, please help me with chemistry!” Clearly her love of the science continued on. Later in their relationship, Phuong decided to come to Drexel as a chemistry major, eventually switching her studies to chemical engineering.

After a few false starts for Minh (such as accidentally lighting Phuong’s hair on fire at a birthday party for a classmate), he finally got her attention by posting lyrics to a love song as a Facebook status. Although she was shocked to find out that Minh’s post was in reference to her, the two started dating shortly afterwards.

Photo courtesy: Phuong Nguyen

“It was my first love, first serious love … I said yes to him, but we made an agreement that we wouldn’t want a lot of people to find out about us. My family is kind of a traditional Asian family and if my parents found out about me having a boyfriend at such a young age, they would kill me. So we had to keep everything in secret.” This was especially difficult because the Minh’s teacher was an ex-student of Phuong’s father.

Getting into high school presented a challenge for the couple: they knew they could not attend the same school, and would be separated for the first time since the start of their relationship. Phuong convinced her parents to allow her to enroll in a school close to where Minh was studying, about 10 minutes away by motorbike. They would meet each week around lunchtime or to go out and get street food. “That was when I got really fat, just by going on dates and eating food!” Phuong joked. But still, everything was done in secret.

Then the two began another round of tests for college. Minh wanted to get into a school very close to Phuong’s house so that they could be near one another and he got in, successfully, but Phuong decided to go to Drexel instead.

“The first year of a long distance relationship was really hard. It was really different from everything before … Since there is a 12-hour difference, when I’m in school, he is asleep, and when he is awake, I am going to bed,” Phuong explained. She also talked about how difficult her first year at Drexel was, especially due to the quarter system. She was going crazy and didn’t feel like she had much time to give to Minh.

“A few times we did come to the point of saying we would break up, but we just couldn’t. There’s some kind of bond between us, and it was already four years together last year, so it was really hard to say goodbye … So we managed to get through four years, and last summer I flew back to Vietnam to visit him. Last summer was also our official announcement to my mom!” Phuong exclaimed.

Now, their relationship is kept alive with video calls on Skype and lots of messages throughout the day. On the day of their fifth year anniversary, Phuong even created a stop-motion video for Minh and shared it with him over Facebook, continually trying to send her love across the miles in creative ways.

Love isn’t just for the students on this campus; the faculty and staff are finding romance in their lives, too. Mark Andrews, who works as Mandell Theater’s technical director, has been in a relationship with his partner, Derek Carnegie, for 10 years. The two were introduced by Andrew’s roommate — and their first date? A romantic whim.

Photo courtesy: Mark Andrews

“It wasn’t necessarily meant to be a date. During one of the snow storms, we escaped the house and explored the city in a way that we may not have before,” Mark recalled. He says his favorite thing about their relationship is that it never seems to get old.

“There’s still a lot of ‘newness’ to it,” Mark explained. “Whether it be discovering taste differences or going somewhere for the first time and seeing how we both handle it.”

Mark isn’t the only leader in the Drexel community with a heartwarming love story. President John A. Fry claims he knew he was going to marry his wife, Cara, an art historian, from the very beginning. His favorite date with her was their first date, which he thinks back on fondly.

“It was a wonderful little French restaurant where we first got to know each other,” he described, “I knew after [that] first date with my wife that I was going to marry her.”

Romance is in the air among the students as well. In true Drexel fashion, Emily Turek and Seamus Kelly first met at the Handschumacher Dining Center. Three days later, they exchanged life stories in the ever-romantic Van Rensselaer skylounge. That night, which took place over a year ago this Valentine’s Day, he knew that he couldn’t let a girl like Emily slip through his fingers. The next six weeks consisted of many more dining hall meet-ups and furtive math class conversations, until one day she finally said yes.

Photo courtesy: Neeharika Simha

“He’s very unmotivated, in general. So the fact that he actively pursued something every single day for like almost two months…” Emily trailed off fondly.

“She kept saying, ‘I’m not sure about this.’ And I kept saying, ‘I am,’” Seamus recalled with a sentimental smile.

Halie Bury and Leah Meyers*, another Drexel student couple, met on Tinder, epitomizing the way couples meet in the new age of online love. After meeting in person, they soon started dating. When Leah invited Halie to her sorority’s formal, Halie was nervous, “It was the first time that I’d been to something like that with a girl and I was pretty nervous, but she brought me flowers and was so beautiful in her dress. Once we got to the formal, I got to meet a lot of her friends and they told us how cute they thought we were. Then when we were dancing with all of her friends and I looked at her face and how happy she was, that was when I knew I’d fallen for her.”

Leah felt equally as strongly about Halie shortly after they started dating. “I’m not the type of person that typically believed in love at first sight, but she was different. She had a kind of child-like curiosity about her and I was intrigued. I wanted to know her. I didn’t know if she’d felt the same at first, but I could kind of see it from her eyes. I’d catch her looking at me out of the corner of my eye, and the way she looked at me told me everything,” Leah said.

But the modern style in which they first met, through Tinder, has not impacted the rest of their dating style. The couple prefers talking in person over any other form of communication, although they do use Snapchat, and FaceTime to talk when they are not able to see each other.

It’s clear that love today is more complex than ever. Changing ideas in our society, coupled with an influx of social media apps and websites, have made navigating relationships even more difficult. Modern love is making an impact in our world.

Halie has experienced this in her relationship with Leah: “I feel like modern love can mean many different things to different couples. To me it means the ability to love anyone you want, anywhere you want, without judgment or harassment. I think that the world is slowly becoming able to accept all kinds of love, and that’s wonderful to see.”

*Name has been changed.

The post Featured this week: Love on campus appeared first on The Triangle.

In such an era of social media, widespread news and efficient technology, it’s easy to find the world to be a violent place. It’s easy to find evidence of bad things happening every day to good people. It’s easy to hear that cancer and other diseases are killing more and more each day, and that even the wonderful era of scientific advancement has not yet led to a world without sickness and without terminal illnesses. It’s easy to walk through the streets of Philadelphia and find poverty and hopelessness. It is easy to hear word of attacks on humanity in underdeveloped countries, and easy to find the horrors constantly present. It is easy to become a pessimist in the world we are currently living in.
However, this world is not one that is steadily declining, nor is it one that is mostly in a bad place. I do not have the popular advantage in this fight, nor do I have a lot of collected research. But, what I do have is something that seems to be harder to find as I grow older.

Even in this world, I am an optimist. I believe that one of humanity’s greatest traits is that we must be able to find hope. This is not so easy.
It is simple to look at the news for just a few minutes and believe that the world is riddled with war and violence. Actually, however, looking at mathematical figures and representations of war and the number of deaths that have occurred in combat or combat-related scenarios, the numbers have been decreasing. This trend holds when examining the entirety of human history, as well as when looking at just one or a few hundred years. While the decline is not smooth, and there are obvious points of sharp increase, the general trend is still present. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker explained in his research that we are likely to be living in what is considered the most peaceful times in human history.

Similarly, it is simple to watch the news or scroll through social media sites, and become convinced that social injustices and inequalities are higher now than they have ever been before. Between the long fight for gays’ rights and other forms of equality, the movement of Black Lives Matter, the ever-present push for female equality in the workplace and countless other social bandwagons, there is a constant push to show the mass public the general horrors which the minorities of our society face every day. This is real, and I am not denying the importance of these social movements. However, has there not always been repression? Have there not always been class distinctions? Can we not look at slavery, and the abolishment thereof, at least in the United States, and say that we have at least risen above the worst of times? Feminism used to mean the right for women to have a voice in something as basic as a vote; now, the focus is on further complexities of the movement that, while still being large issues in our world, are not as bad of conditions compared to what they once were.

And therein lies the trap of “progress.” Some will say that despite how much progress this country and this world have made, the fact that bad and difficult things are still happening makes all of my arguments to this point moot. What is progress if it is not complete? This is essentially the argument against my rationalizations of the progress we have seen so far. Who cares if there is less violence today per unit of population then there was 2,000 years ago? It is still violence. It is still bad. Who cares if slavery was in fact abolished? Does that even truly matter if the social structures and unfair circumstances into which black Americans are pushed, if not shoved, into still exist? There is no ceasing the progress until there is absolute resolve! This may be the exaggerated, yet present argument of the pessimists.

Here is where I will make my case. Here is where the bravery and the selectivity of the optimist come into play.

I will never deny that this country, this world and all of the people in it, are not perfect, or beyond correction. I will never say that progress has ceased, or that it should. I will always say, however, that this is the beautiful characteristic of humanity. Humans never stop fighting for improvement. I think this is what makes our world a better place each day, despite the difficult and evil things that continue to happen.

I see the world’s population as a bell curve, where there is a large “hump” of the average, and skinny “legs” of the extremes. There are some really, really, terrible people in this world, who want for people to die, to suffer, to be excluded, to be hated, or to be harmed. And, there are some really wonderful people in this world who dedicate their lives to making a difference for others, wherever they can. And then there is the large, looming average; some of these average people tend more one way, and some the other. But in general, the average are just that: average. They do not seek to harm or to help, they seek only to coexist. Sometimes, if there is an injustice or an evil that seems to concern them, they will fight in response. And this is natural. No real population will always follow the rules dictated by probability.

However, there is a phenomenon in probability where an increase in population results in a stricter adherence of the sample to the true average. I interpret this to mean that as our population has grown, so has the amount of average people. But, this fact does not overlook the extremes. If the population is growing, the spread of the data is also, inevitably, growing. More and more people are falling into both extremes. As cliche as it sounds, these extremes are, literally, the good and the bad. The villains and the superheroes.
The good guys, as they grow, make an inevitably larger push to be noticed by the mass of the average. Along with the progress in technology and media our world has experienced in tandem with a population increase, this push is easily seen in internet campaigns and petitions, news articles to expose the evil where it is found, and educational videos to show the people of this world what is happening that is really, totally, messed up. This is excellent. If you think about it in this light, it is really the people who are trying to stop the evil from taking over our world that are exposing the average to it the most.

Glass half empty? All of this increased media showing bad things happening means that more bad things are happening now than ever were before, and our world is a terrible place.

Glass half full? People care about all of the bad things happening in the world, and they are trying to reach out and make a difference by attempting to educate the world around them about what shouldn’t be happening, but is.
And the best part about all of this is that despite the increased flow of negative information, and the increased push to publicize and media-tize everything going wrong in this world, the population at large has not given up, lied down, and said “I quit.”

There are pessimists in this world who will see nothing but the products of increased media about the shit that happens every day, but once those pessimists give up and admit that the world is falling apart, is past hope, and is not and never will be improving, it is them who add to the weight of the extreme that we would call bad.

I am an optimist. I believe that one of humanity’s greatest traits is that we must be able to find hope. That is not easy. But it is possible.

I find hope in the fact that the bell curve has not seemed to shift. I find hope in the fact that deaths due to wars are decreasing, that strides in social justice have in fact been made and that social media and mass-media news exist. I find hope in the fact that people have always cared about the bad that happens in this world, and that people are still trying to correct it. It is humankind’s perseverance against the tide of evil that progress has made more accessible and more obvious that makes me believe that this world is not falling apart, and that perhaps it is even coming together.

And what if, in fact, this apparent stasis that progress will never be able to fix, remains? What if, despite all our best efforts, this is as good as it gets? What if you believe that no progress, or no complete progress has ever really been made on earth? What then? I will not stand here with ignorance resembling optimism and say that the current state of the world is “good enough.” I will not stand here and refute that claim by saying that if this is as good as it gets, that I’m ok with that.

I will say that whatever the truth may be, since the truth in this case is in fact the most impossible thing to grasp, I will accept that as long as humanity continues to try to improve, that is the best that we can do. And honestly, isn’t trying all we can ever do in reality?

Martin Luther King Jr. probably didn’t wake up every day steadfast in the knowledge that he could make a difference, but he tried. And, he succeeded to an extent. Did he achieve complete success? No. Will we ever achieve complete success? Who knows. The same tale could be woven for other figureheads in human history, the list countless. Should this unknowing prevent the attempt in the first place? I believe not.

Humanity’s most beautiful trait is that we must be able to find hope. This hope will always manifest itself in trying to do and be better. And that is all we can do.

We can try. And I think that that can be good enough.

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Good Food Flats, as it’s called by the developer, Cross Properties, will host amenities that will attract students in culinary arts and food-science programs. Construction on the brand new residential building located on 4030 Baring Street has just begun, and the units are scheduled to be ready for new tenants by the end of the Summer in 2016.
The new residence will be located four blocks away from Drexel University’s Vidas Athletic Center. Amenities include a state of the art commercial kitchen and a food lab, according to the developer’s website. The commercial kitchen is designed to host demonstrations from local and famous chefs, and will also be available for student use. Drexel professors and Chef James Feustel assisted in designing the commercial kitchen for Good Food Flats.
The food lab is equipped with an accompanying analytical Chemistry lab for academic use by student residents. The roof of the complex will be comprised of a roof-top lounge as well as a greenhouse where students can grow their own produce.

Photo courtesy: curbed.philly.com

The Principal of Cross Properties, Kevin Michals, said in an interview with the Philadelphia Business Journal that the special amenities being added to Good Food Flats are hoped to appeal to students.
Each of the 44 units consists of the same floor plan, a four-bedroom-and-two-bath shared apartment, and the entire building can hold up to 175 bed spaces. The complex will also make use of individual leases, which might be especially appealing to those interested in travelling for a co-op position.
Located four and a half blocks from the Market–Frankford line’s 40th Street station and four blocks from the Dragon Route shuttle stop, the new property is sure to be easily accessible for students traveling to campus.

Photo courtesy: curbed.philly.com

The plans for the apartment began formulating in the summer of 2015. The developer hopes to attract students from both Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. The residence will not, however, be deemed university approved housing, meaning that sophomore students at Drexel will not be able to satisfy their sophomore housing requirement at Good Food Flats.
The website for the building is still being developed, but interested students are able to begin applying for leases. The rent is not yet advertised publicly on the website.

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Drexel University Athletics Department announced a partnership with the independent student radio station WKDU Jan. 5 that will allow them to broadcast Drexel’s men’s basketball games live. Coverage has so far included the first two colonial association games and WKDU will continue to cover the remaining men’s basketball season.
“Drexel men’s basketball, while only a mere change in the content and format of WKDU’s programming, marks the conception of a beautiful collaboration between Drexel University and WKDU,” Cooper Beaupre, the Program Director of WKDU, Cooper Beaupre, in an email.
Mike Tuberosa, Associate Athletics Director for Communications and Rob Brooks from Drexel Athletics are the broadcasters for the games. However, WKDU retains its autonomy by ensuring that those working behind the scenes to make sure that the broadcasts are aired on live are Drexel students. Specifically, Billy Bauer, former sports editor of The Triangle and Shane O’Connor, current arts and entertainment editor, are tasked with this job.
Although WKDU and Drexel Athletics have tried in the past to work together, this is their first official partnership. According to WKDU General Manager Esmail Hamidi, the negotiations for their collaboration began in 2013 after WKDU decided to accept the Athletics Department’s request to air some games on the radio station.
“In the past, WKDU’s relationship with Drexel Athletics has been rather non-existent…This year however, the current executive staff of the station has chosen to move closer to the University,” Beaupre wrote.
He continued, “We’ve chosen to provide our listeners with an alternate form of programming that hasn’t existed on WKDU in a long time.” According to Hamidi, the only past coverage of athletics included broadcasting of basketball games in 1973 and a failed attempt to begin broadcasting the women’s basketball games in 2008.
“Other avenues into programming, other than music, have been made. But this is a big thing because it is not just music,” Hamidi said.
The partnership is detailed in a contract between Drexel Athletics and WKDU and will be revised each year to determine if it should be continued.
“Creating connections within the Drexel community is always good. Our target market is students and if we’re doing more things to serve more interests then it’s more likely that people will encounter us,” Hamidi remarked.
“It’s exciting for our program and for our fans to have our games back on the radio…It is a great opportunity for our alumni and supporters to hear our games on the radio,” Head Coach James “Bruiser” Flint said in a press release.
Hamidi also said that he is confident that women’s basketball games and other sports may be broadcast by WKDU in the future.

Photo courtesy: WKDU Radio

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Photo Courtesy: Drexel Hyperloop Team

Drexel University’s Hyperloop Team has been working since June 2015 to be one of the world’s first to design and build a working model of Elon Musk’s vision of Hyperloop travel pods. The team, composed of about 87 dedicated undergraduate students and an advising board of 11 professors, has successfully passed through the preliminary design competition and will participate in the Texas A&M Design Weekend Jan. 29-30.

It was in June of 2015 that SpaceX, led by founder and CEO/CTO Elon Musk, announced that rather than taking the proposed design project under their corporate wing, they would host a contest that would invite thousands of people across the globe to work on design proposals for the travel system.

Upon hearing about the competition, Daniel Diazdelcastillo, a junior studying mechanical engineering, was one of several students on campus and hundreds across the world who realized he wanted to get involved. Finding other students interested in the competition, Diazdelcastillo started to build a team. Now, these dedicated students spend an average of 60 hours a week working on their designs to prepare for the next steps in the competition. The team comes together six to eight times a week to communicate.

Photo courtesy: Drexel Hyperloop Team

By Nov. 13, entrants were required to submit a preliminary design briefing. Of the approximately 318 designs submitted to SpaceX, only 124 teams were selected to advance to the second half of the competition, with Drexel’s team being one among them.

Moving forward in the competition, contestants are required to submit the entirety of their final design package by Jan. 20. Diazdelcastillo and fellow team mate Alex Gagliardi, a senior mechanical engineering major, agreed in an interview that the tasks required for this deadline are the most daunting they have faced yet. Once a team’s design package is finalized and submitted, no major changes to the design may be made in the building stages. The design packages will be presented by selected team members during the upcoming Texas A&M Design Weekend.

The Design Weekend, taking place from Jan. 29-30, will give the teams a chance to market their designs in order to gain sponsors who can financially support the teams as they build their final prototype. There will also be several prizes given to teams at the Design Weekend who are selected by a panel of judges from SpaceX, Tesla and Texas A&M. Then in June, these prototypes will be tested on a Hyperloop test-track created by SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, that runs one mile long.

Photo courtesy: Drexel Hyperloop Team

Within the Drexel Hyperloop team, there are 11 subgroups operating on different functional systems for the pod.  The subgroups include Structures, Aerodynamics, Compressor, Air Bearings, Coolant, Human Safety, Power, Controls, Mechanical Braking/Suspension, and Aerodynamic Braking.

Nine of these groups are currently made up of students completing their senior design projects. Although normally a senior design project allows the first full term for design creation and submission, the seniors on the Hyperloop team were given a stricter deadline of Nov. 13, when all preliminary designs were due for the initial round of judging.

“Doing a nine-month project in ten weeks or twelve weeks is a little daunting,” Gagliardi said.

After making it past the November preliminary round, however, the 125 accepted teams and their designs didn’t have to worry about qualifying further. Any teams able to build their pod according to their final design package due by Jan. 20 will be able to showcase their three-quarters scale model on the SpaceX test track this June. Diazdelcastillo said that teams are able to move on to the tests in June so long as they are able to build a working model without altering their final designs.

Teams unable to complete a large model due to funding restrictions may also create a scaled model under 45 kilograms to present in June. If teams wish, they may also add a five-foot tall dummy to their pod when running it on the test track, which could earn them bonus points. Drexel’s team intends to do just that. Their model, coming in at an expected 2,000 pounds, 16-foot length, and four-foot, five-inch diameter, should certainly hold the dummy. The pod is cylindrical and long, resembling a plane cabin without wings. The Drexel team will be making a one-passenger pod, just enough to accommodate the dummy.

The proposed design of the Hyperloop system is reminiscent of an upside-down air-hockey table. The passenger cabin will be pressurized in the style of a plane to ensure livable conditions even at the very high proposed travel speeds. The air compressors in the model will help circulate air through air bearings in the bottom of the pod, which create a frictionless air pocket beneath the car.

Photo courtesy: Drexel Hyperloop Team

“You’re riding on a pocket of air—a very, very small pocket of air, something like two thousandths of an inch—and it creates, basically, a frictionless surface that you can travel across,” Diazdelcastillo described.

The bearings were donated to the Drexel team by the company New Way Air Bearings and really help make the Drexel design special, according to Gagliardi.

“Our air bearing system is basically what sets us apart, we believe, from every other team. There’s off-the-shelf ideas, like magnetic levitation…but we wanted to go a different route,” he said.

Diazdelcastillo has high hopes of winning the competition with the Drexel Hyperloop team, “I think we have a good shot at it, as long as we can get the funding.”

Gagliardi added,“We can make a good pod right now. We can make a better pod with more money.”

The team is currently operating off of donations from family and friends and from a GoFundMe account created to help them build the finished pod. Drexel University President John A. Fry also just allotted the team $10,000 to continue their work.

Photo courtesy: Drexel Hyperloop Team

Currently, most of what the team has done consists of Computer-Aided Design models,  simulations and 3-D printed models, but soon they will advance to building. “Simulations give us a very accurate model for what’s actually going to happen, so it’s not just all up in the air,” Gagliardi assured.

“It’s insanity. It’s fantastic, but it’s insanity,” he joked about the project.

Diazdelcastillo suggests students stay up to date with the Drexel Hyperloop team through their Facebook page or Twitter account. You may also donate to the team through their GoFundMe account.

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A revolutionary form of 3-D printing has captured the innovative minds of Wei Sun, Ph.D., and his research team at Drexel University in the Biofabrication Lab of the College of Engineering. The team has recently become the first known group to successfully print blocks of Embryonic Stem Cells in a way that viably allows these cells to divide while maintaining their ability to differentiate.

Maintaining this pluripotency—the ability to grow into one of four types of tissue—also means that if fine-tuned, this process may lead to researchers being able to 3-D print groups of cells that can grow into functional organs.

The research involving 3-D printing of cells began for Sun and his group in 2002. In the past few years, Sun has also developed technology that is capable of printing cancerous tumors. The other researchers who contributed to the recently published paper are Liliang Ouyang, Rui Yao, Shuangshuang Mao, Xi Chen and Jie Na from Sun’s lab in Tsinghua University in Beijing. The paper was published in Biofabrication Nov. 4, 2015. Sun, the Albert Soffa chair in the Drexel College of Engineering is also the director of the Biofabrication lab as well as the research lab at Tsinghua where this research took place.

The paper outlines the process by which ESCs were printed in a temperature-controlled hydrogel. The mixture was printed into a 3-D construct to support the cells as they grew and divided. Depending on the size of the printed cell block and the cell density of the printing material, the ESCs demonstrated different behaviors when they began to form Embryoid Bodies. These EBs make up the early stages of embryogenesis, which later leads to differentiation, tissue specialization, and eventually, organ growth. Being able to control which types of EBs were created just by manipulating the way the ESC-hydrogel mixture is extruded from the 3-D printing device is a major development this research has made more feasible. In an article by Drexel Now, Sun said: “There is still a long way to go from a varying sized EB to a regenerated organ, but our work provides a promising tool to facilitate this development.”

A simpler task achieved through the recent research was that of printing the cells in a block like fashion so that they could grow into specific tissue types. These lab-made tissues can be used for drug development and testing. This process using 3-D printing results in tissues that more closely resemble tissues in living organisms, since growth in a petri dish is less natural. However, the block shape achieved through printing creates an environment similar to that in vivo, where cells are surrounded on all sides by other cells.

By optimizing their processes, the researchers were able to obtain a 90 percent survival rate for the printed cells, and were also able to observe that by printing the material into the grid-shaped block of cells, the living ESCs were able to proliferate and grow into EBs while still maintaining differentiability.

In the Drexel Now article, Sun commented that “We are not directly going to printing an organ, but we can print an in vitro 3-D biological model which could lead to growing different size embryoid bodies, different types of cells, and, ultimately, to growing a regenerated organ. This will be a significant advance for stem cell research and for regenerative medicine.”

Sun stated in an email that a future research endeavor will involve 3-D printing a “cell-laden, micro-fluidic device” to be used for advanced drug delivery systems. The research in Sun’s lab is partially sponsored by a grant given by the Drexel-SARI Research Center located in Shanghai.

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Outside, the sky is fading to deep purple as the sun disappears, but in the Hagerty Library’s cafe, students are just revving up. All of the red booths with black power outlets in their tables are filled with friends meeting up for dinner before class, study groups lamenting about midterms, and lone wolves—headphones in, heads bent—working on assignments. More people continue to shuffle in with white cellophane boxes containing cheesesteaks, hoagies and Halal food from Drexel’s food trucks. The sounds and laughter of classmates are only interrupted by the beep and swoosh of the turnstile at the front of the library.

Priya Bhut and Loveena Williams sit in the middle of the room at one of the tables. The two friends share a joke over the wrappers and burnt red coffee cups on their table from their successful Wawa run. Bhut, a business and engineering major and an Indian-American at five feet, five inches tall has long layered dark hair and sits with her notebook and a bound printed PDF of her homework. Across the table, with a slightly smaller build, wearing a black and white patched, thick wool sweater is Williams. She’s an Indian native who grew up in Qatar, in the midst of a short study break after a long day of classes.

Williams moved to the United States for college about four years ago, aspiring to become a biomedical engineer and eventually start a company of her own to assist people who may not have enough money to pay for medical supplies. She started at Bucks Community College, then transferred to Drexel University when the school offered her a large scholarship.

Although the scholarship covered much of her schooling, other expenses made it difficult to attain her education. Williams had to make sacrifices. For her, this meant that not buying all the textbooks her courses required.

“Going to the bookstore is almost burdensome for me,” Williams said. “For the past four terms, I have not bought a book.”

Williams is not the only student who has chosen to stop buying textbooks to save money. According to a 2015 study conducted by the Student Public Interest Research Group, Williams is among 65 percent of college age students who opted to save money by not purchasing textbooks.

The price of textbooks is an ever-growing issue in post-secondary education. Over the past 30 years, prices have risen more than 800 percent, which according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, means book prices are showing a more rapid price increase than both medical services and home ownership.

This growth can be attributed to the market structure of the textbook industry: the customer and provider don’t fill their typical roles.

“[Normally,] the consumer exercises control over the prices by choosing to purchase products that are of good value and the competition forces producers to lower costs to meet demand. In the textbook industry no such system of checks and balances exist,” the Student PIRG noted in its study.

In other words, students like Williams and Bhut, have no control over what book they are assigned. When a professor assigns them a book for a class, they must purchase that book. Their lack of options in these scenarios, makes college students a captive market.

This means that the publishers can increase textbook prices with no fear of repercussion because, ultimately, the students need to find a way to access their book. And with only three major publishers monopolizing 90 percent of the market (Pearson, Cengage and McGraw-Hill) there is little to no competition to induce lower prices.

It’s because of this market-based phenomenon that the average college student, according to the College Board, is expected to spend $1,200 per year on textbooks and supplies. For other schools, especially with higher concentrations of students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math based majors, such as Drexel, the estimated amount for textbooks for the upcoming year is even higher at $1,400.

Many students cannot afford to spend that much on books alone. As a result, they find other means of acquiring the textbooks. Some rent. Some buy used. Some make use of the books placed on library reserve, if the book is available there. But for most, this means finding or illegally downloading texts online, which might explain why the Drexel bookstore is seeing less traffic these days.

“Students seem to be more and more relying on Chegg and Amazon and buying less at the bookstore,” Joshua Grimes-Avery, a finance junior who works at Drexel University’s bookstore, commented on the subject.

Second-hand sellers and renters like Chegg, Amazon and Half.com have been a powerful force pushing back against textbook companies and have become popular among students trying to save money. According to a report from Student Monitor, just from Fall 2013 to Spring 2015, the number of renters for Amazon and Chegg increased by 48 percent and 50 percent, respectively, while the rate of renters from on-campus bookstores have declined by 20 percent.

When textbook rentals are too expensive, students look for PDF files or other online sources where they might be able to find the information the textbooks contain.

“There are references with information that you could find online for free, any time,” Grimes-Avery continued, also admitting that he does not buy textbooks and prefers to look for keywords online.

Although like Grimes-Avery, many students resort to online, many of them find that it can be too distracting and struggle to retain what they’ve learned.

Williams divulged that there were various difficulties surrounding learning from websites, rather than textbooks paired with student’s courses.

“It’s very short knowledge, you don’t go in depth,” Williams said. “When you study something from the book, you know ‘I need to learn this’. If I don’t understand something, I’ll go back and ask my professor. But online you’re like, ‘Oh, I remember seeing that on a website? But you have no clue [which one] because you looked at 15 [on the subject] from different authors,” Williams continued.

According to Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, when students had the option to choose between forms of media, 92 percent of them said they concentrated best in hard copy.

Others, like lawyer and commentator Jonathan Band, think that the shift to online is inevitable.

“I would imagine in 15 years, the number who prefer hard copy would be less than those who prefer online,” Band said, speaking on generational shifts in technology preferences.

Already publishers have begun to notice such shifts and started combining hard copy textbooks with online access, using codes that students buy separately. It’s necessary to buy the access codes to turn in assignments in some classes. Furthermore, some access codes only come with new books, eliminating the option to “buy used” for students, which brings them back to buying from the bookstore. Publishers also know that teachers prefer the online access because it means less to grade, especially when they have lecture halls filled with hundreds of students.

“I think it’s a terrible idea because you’re pretty much paying for your grade. I think if you aren’t financially able to buy the you can’t do your homework and that’s a bunch of your grade that you’re losing. But, I think that professors just find it easier to do it that way because they don’t have to grade the homework anymore. The system does it for them. It’s easier for them to just ask the student to buy [the access code], but I just don’t think it’s too fair,” Bhut said.

There is hope for students like Williams and Bhut, however. Legislators are starting to focus more on the attention being drawn to student debts and higher education.

Since 2013, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has been pushing for the Affordable College Textbook Act and re-introduced the bill to Congress on Oct. 8.

“The Affordable College Textbook Act seeks to expand the use of open textbooks on college campuses providing affordable alternatives to traditional textbooks and keeping prices lower,” according to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition website.

This would change how students have access to education. Teachers could select the resources they want from a catalog of peer-reviewed open resources, which would then be free online and about $20 to $40 to print, Band explained in a phone call.  

“We may have reached the tipping point. The publishers have been doing everything in their power to delay it. They’ve been lobbying furiously in Congress to delay this from happening, to slow down the process. Eventually, they’re going to lose,” Band noted.

Already, publishers like Pearson have realized they’re at tipping point and started shifting their strategies. Other publishers will do the same if they’re smart, he offered.

As technology and access to textbooks become cheaper and more available, there will be a shift in the textbook industry. However, the process is expected to take its time.

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