“All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.”

It’s not the most tasteful tweet, especially taken out of context. I’m not going to come out here and defend to the death professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s specific phrasing or wording; it was easily misinterpretable and somewhat inflammatory. It was also not, until recently, something that would have been worth addressing with an article.

For context: “White Genocide” here refers to a specific white supremacist term which generally encompasses things like affirmative action, interracial marriage, desegregation, anti-lynching laws, the Emancipation Proclamation, resistance to the Klan, resistance to neo-Nazi movements, basically anything which detracts from a vision of a pure Aryan master race dominating the globe or whatever it is they want. It doesn’t actually mean the professor wishes to go around having all the white people killed. It is emphatically not hate speech but could certainly be seen as such out of context. But I digress.

An article on Breitbart.com mentioned the tweet and also referenced a few of the professor’s other tweets, mentioning that he was an actual communist, disliked the president-elect, and, horror of horrors, a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. Also mentioned: “As Thomas Lifson notes, this communist professor ‘teaches’ [scare quotes theirs] at a university that charges over $34,000 in tuition a year.”

Lifson himself wrote an article on AmericanThinker.com, which was picked up by Breitbart. His article follows a similar pattern: implying that Drexel students will be “triggered” by his statements, implying the professor is racist, insulting the professor’s’ research history, insulting his political alignments in light of his research history, insulting his facial hair, insulting his coffee order, etc.

While I agree with Lifson’s assessment that Drexel’s tuition is exorbitant, I don’t find a piece which is entirely a character assassination, as both of the articles referenced above are, to be very good journalism. It’s not “fake news” per se, it’s just intellectually lazy. (That goes without saying, of course; intellectually-thorough conservative discourse, if there ever was such a thing, died with William F. Buckley Jr.)

In response to Breitbart and the media firestorm, the University released a rather lame statement through its propaganda arm, DrexelNow, on Christmas Day:

“Drexel became aware today of associate professor George Ciccariello-Maher’s inflammatory tweet, which was posted on his personal Twitter account on Dec. 24, 2016. While the University recognizes the right of its faculty to freely express their thoughts and opinions in public debate, professor Ciccariello-Maher’s comments are utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University. The University is taking this situation very seriously. We contacted Ciccariello-Maher today to arrange a meeting to discuss this matter in detail.”

I’m sure that made Ciccariello-Maher’s Christmas extra-special.

Let’s lay out the facts of the case: Ciccariello-Maher expressed a political opinion, on his own time, representing himself and not the University. It was picked up by a fringe alt-right website, who ran a character assassination piece on him, which in turn was picked up by Breitbart.com, which ran another character assassination piece on him, prompting a media circus, a public rebuke from the University plus a nice phone call on Christmas Day and undoubtedly untold amounts of online harassment. This was all caused by two websites which no one would think to have called relevant or legitimate until the tragic events of 11/9/2016.

What is the lesson in all of this? Is it “don’t tweet dumb things?” If you think that, you’re wrong: the president-elect got where he is today by tweeting dumb things. Dumb tweets are the new diplomacy and anyone who thinks otherwise is a loser. Sad!

The lesson is this: the concerted attack on free speech is here, it is loud, it is effective, and worst of all, it is grassroots. Those who were expecting a blatantly unconstitutional edict from the congress declaring speech unfavorable to the president to be libelous and punishable by law will be disappointed — the attack is coming from below, from the true believers. Internet trolls can and will pick up your tweet, your Facebook status, your repost from Marxist Memes, and send them to alt-right blogs. They can in turn write character assassination articles, which can in turn be picked up by Breitbart.com and the likes, which in turn can result in undesirable publicity for you, and for your employer, resulting in discipline and even dismissal. If at this point I sound unreasonable, I am only repeating the series of events which happened to the professor.

It is wise to remember in the next four to eight years, or more, the definition of fascism frequently attributed to Benito Mussolini (though never actually ever said by him): “The merger of state and corporate power.” This is particularly relevant with the president-elect’s choice of ExxonMobil for secretary of state and Goldman Sachs for securities and exchange Commissioner, but in addition to the blatant and obvious corporate influence in the new administration, there are more subtle power dynamics at play. The Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech, and you will probably never be hauled into prison for the mere act of disagreeing with, disparaging, or otherwise defaming the president or his policies in a public forum.

However, your livelihood, your housing, your healthcare, your security, your ability to live your life as you want it, does not derive from the state. It derives from your means of income, be it a salary or wage from your employer, profits from your business, income from your investments, what have you. Your employer or your customers have leverage over you. Your political speech will become a liability — it won’t land you in jail, but it can and will land you in the poorhouse. Your life can be turned upside-down, leaving you destitute from something your employer read in the news, whether that news be fake, misleading, or (heaven forbid) true. With employment protections likely being rolled back, even industry-wide blacklisting may return — ruining your chances at financial stability.

Is there a solution? We can’t legislate against anonymous internet trolls, certainly not in this political climate. We can’t, for our best efforts, effectively legislate against discrimination in hiring and firing even in a politically-favorable climate. We could start a popular revolution and bring about Full Communism Now, but it seems unlikely. The only solution is to resist any way we can. Post political statuses. Make political tweets. Do political actions. Join the Democratic Party. Join the Socialist Party. Let your views be known, and let them be known loud: they can’t drown out or fire all of us.

If, political speech, even if it is not strictly phrased in a politically correct or tasteful way (i.e. “White Genocide,” or, “eat the flesh of the capitalists,” or a headline reading “Bernie Sanders 2016, Full Communism Now, Hail Satan”) is now grounds for discipline or dismissal by your employer, than by all means blacklist me now so I can get it over with. I stand with professor George Ciccariello-Maher.

Justin Roczniak is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org

This month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, as the University president informed us in an e-mail this week, and in the spirit of the season I found myself having to file a Title IX sexual harassment report to the Office of Equality and Diversity, describing how a member of my senior design group targeted staff of this newspaper, in my own home.

Serendipity, right?

For reference: I was a witness, not a victim. That doesn’t make it much better.

I’m happy to report that the Office of Equality and Diversity was very supportive, pleasant to deal with, and made me feel like real progress was being made and I was doing the right thing. They’re good people.

Meanwhile, the academic side of the situation had to be addressed.

Representatives of the College of Engineering (who shall go unnamed) told me that the senior design program wasn’t able to accommodate my desire to no longer work with the accused party because there were only four weeks left in the 9 month program – which is a reason I understood and with which I sympathized; there were two uninvolved people’s grades at stake here after all. The lesson plan had to be respected – there weren’t many other equitable alternatives.

Unfortunately, there was a part two to this explanation… which is why we’re here.

The “professional” thing to do, I was told, would be to finish out the job, despite the “awkward situation.” They also appealed to my previous experience at the Triangle in handling “awkward situations” and, best of all, alluded to the possibility of not getting a degree if I wasn’t able to cooperate and finish the project.  

I didn’t really have great responses off the cuff to any of those pearls of wisdom and meekly agreed to keep my head down and keep working on the project.

Now that I’ve had some time to roll those words over in my head I’m frankly pretty offended that in a progressive university in the year of our Lord 2016, I hear that I as a witness to incidents of sexual harassment need to keep working with the harasser in the name of “professionalism” and the incident trivialized to an “awkward situation.”

Handling “awkward situations” (and that was the exact phrasing used) is something we have a lot of experience with here at The Triangle. We’ve misquoted people. We’ve misspelled “Philadelphia” on the front page. We’ve had office romances blow up in our faces. We’ve had folks who work in the same office who just don’t get along. We’ve even had folks just walk out production night and, had to panic to figure out how to finish the issue.

These are “awkward situations.” Sometimes the solution involves retraining, or stricter copy editing, or other systemic solutions. Sometimes it involves merely confronting the person who is in the wrong. Sometimes there isn’t much of a good solution and we have to muddle through it as we go.

A little heavier than “awkward situations” are incidents which directly victimize people: We retracted an article this term which had entirely fabricated quotes, and which got an innocent person fired from their job. That writer was fired from our paper and referred to the University for formal discipline. He will never write here again.

The difference is that “awkward situations” involve a difference of opinion, a different way of going about things, friction between personalities, or maybe a colossal error or mistake, which may or may not be the fault of distinct parties or groups, or even a systemic failure. Sexual harassment involves a distinct person or persons directly victimizing another real human being.

I get it, sexual harassment is not sexual assault, and it’s certainly not rape. However, in an environment where such things are so common – last year’s AAU study confirmed one in four women are sexually assaulted in college and 11 percent are raped – I don’t think it benefits anyone to trivialize sexual misconduct of any form.

“Professionalism” involves holding colleagues to a certain standard of conduct which allows for ethical practice of that profession. I don’t think it involves sweeping our own deep-seated outrage at a person’s conduct towards other people under the rug in the interest of keeping a system working.

Unfortunately, academics, particularly engineering education, is notable for its inflexibility. You can’t walk off the job in academic work– that’ll make you unqualified for your $330,000 piece of paper for another year and make that magic number between 0 and 4 drop a tenth. You have to do the work as ordered and god help you if  you have serious ethical and moral qualms about who you’re working with.

(And we wonder why mental health is such a problem in elite universities?)

But I’ll conclude by saying this: people ask why girls don’t get into STEM. They try to entice young girls with scientist Barbies, pastel LEGO, pink train sets. They hold up great female STEM role models at school – any that they can find. The University itself has created the condescendingly-named “Introduce A Girl to Engineering Day” in an attempt to attract women to STEM programs.

All I can say is that once you’ve heard the word “professionalism” used to explain away your deep seated qualms about witnessing a colleague sexually harassing your friends in front of your face – you start to understand that the reason for male-dominated STEM fields might be a little more deep-seated than a simple lack of interest in math and sciences.

The post Define ‘professionalism’ appeared first on The Triangle.

Architecture, I think, isn’t one of those subjects you really get into when you’re drinking. Unless you’re an architect, in which case it is actually the only subject you get into when drinking because, you slur, “itsh related to everysthing we do,” and then go on about how much you admire the bar’s “fenestwashun, itsh very romanesch”; which is possibly the worst combination of words to say while drunk, in terms of volume of expelled phlegm.

So when I saw, on the shelf at Total Wine in beautiful Claymont, Delaware, an Imperial IPA called “The Illinois” made by Goose Island Brewing Company, clearly with a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired label, I thought, better review this one.

To understand this beer, we need to understand both Goose Island Brewing Company and Frank Lloyd Wright. Goose Island Brewing Company is located in Chicago, as are some of Wright’s most famous works. Goose Island is well known as a pioneer in the craft brewing industry, as Wright is known as a pioneer in the field of architecture. Goose Island produces solid, if not unremarkable beers which appeal to a wide audience, while Wright produced remarkable, if not solid buildings which appeal to a wide audience. Falling Water is falling apart; Broadacre City would have been an environmental disaster and a nightmare for pedestrians; Beth Sholom Synagogue leaks (as do most of his buildings) – but folks travel miles to see them.

Conversely, Goose Island’s beers are good, solid examples of their styles, but usually only find their way into me when I’m traveling miles to see something – they’re the only craft beers United Airlines offers. (Goose Island is owned by AB-Inbev, and as such enjoys excellent distribution and market penetration.) I’m otherwise uninterested.

The Illinois Imperial IPA, then, shouldn’t be interesting to me, but I bought it anyway. Let’s let the brewer do the talking about the beer:

“The Illinois is an homage to the mile-high skyscraper Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the city of Chicago that was never built. Had it been built, it would still be the tallest building in the world today. Inspired by this big idea, Goose Island’s brewers craft a beer with a towering hop character.”

I think this beer shares only one thing in common with The Illinois: When he designed it in 1956 for his book “A Testament,” Wright handwaved away concerns about elevators, saying they’d be extremely fast, because they would be atomic-powered elevators. Likewise, Goose Island has handwaved away concerns about how exactly this beer relates to The Illinois, by saying the hops have “towering character,” whatever that means. I guess the label reminds me of the stained glass.

“Shut up and talk about the beer!” OK. Purchased in a single 12oz bottle from Total Wine in Claymount, Delaware. (Remember kids, transporting alcohol across state lines is illegal and a federal crime.) Poured into a shaker pint glass. Large, strong head, and bright gold in color. Very clear – no haze to be found here. This beer is strong, but only a little boozy – most of the alcohol flavor is effectively masked by the hops. The hops are… unremarkable. Goose Island has successfully made a beer where the flavor from Citra does not dominate – at the cost of removing all the Citra flavor. I doubt it’s even necessary to the whole composition of the beer – Citra hops are just trendy, though Goose Island is certainly late to the party.

Other than that it is a solid, if unoriginal, imperial IPA. I would happily drink this if I wanted an imperial IPA, and it were on tap, and there were not other options to try first. I am not unhappy with this beer – but it is not unique, and certainly not something I would go out of my way for.

Perhaps it is telling that they choose to honor Frank Lloyd Wright, a household name, and not develop a beer named after Louis Sullivan, or Henry Hobson Richardson, or any other pioneer of the Chicago School. Wright is mass-market and so is this “limited release” beer which is widely available 650 miles from the brewery.

If I’m honest, I’d rather see, say, Victory come out with a Louis Kahn beer (presumably an enormous, monolithic Imperial Baltic Porter) or maybe have a local Philly bar promote a Frank Furness special (4oz straight whiskey. Slogan: “Like most of Furness’s work, you’ll get demolished!”) As it is, we’ve got a solid, mass-market beer, named after a popular, mass-market architect. Boring.

The post New IPA ‘The Illinois’ pays homage to architect Frank Lloyd Wright appeared first on The Triangle.

In Philadelphia, we frequently bemoan antiquated liquor laws which force separate points of sale for beer, wine and liquor. Beer cannot be sold in grocery stores without some questionable interpretation of existing laws, and restaurants cannot give you more than two six-packs at once. (It is still perfectly legal to leave the store and immediately come back and purchase two more, however.) Cases can only be purchased at beer distributors, and so on.
Despite this, Philadelphia has the best beer selection in the country. Why is this? Apart from our 14 craft breweries within city limits and 35-ish within a hundred-mile radius, we’re close enough to the coast that importation isn’t cost-prohibitive. Shipping costs over the Rocky Mountains usually prohibit East coast breweries from marketing out west (good luck ordering a Yuengling Lager in San Francisco, for instance), but West coast breweries can’t afford to ignore the market back east. As such,¬¬ we get their beers as well.
With that in mind, today I’m going to eschew the usual local beer review and instead go for the Lagunitas India Pale Ale, direct from Petaluma, California, or Chicago, Illinois. (The Chicago brewery opened only recently, in 2014, while the main California location has existed since 1993.) The bottle did not indicate where this particular batch came from, so I’m going to pretend it came from Petaluma in sunny Sonoma County.
Lagunitas would be the fifth most popular craft brewery in America right now, but Heineken purchased a 50 percent stake in the company recently to distribute its beers internationally. This means, under the rules of the Brewers’ Association, they cannot be considered a “craft brewery” as they are more than 25 percent owned by another, non-craft brewery.
This does nothing to discredit the quality of their beers, however. Lagunitas produces not only this excellent IPA, but several unconventional beers, like the high-alcohol pale wheat “Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale”; the limited-release espresso-and-milk “Cappuccino Stout”; and of course the barley, wheat, rye and oat malted “Lagunitas Sucks.” Today, however, we’ll focus on just their bog-standard, normal old Lagunitas IPA.
Picked up a six-pack at Old Nelson’s Food Market at 31st and Market streets. It was about $15 or so; the place isn’t exceptionally cheap or expensive, especially for being so close to campus. Poured into a shaker pint glass, deep amber to light copper in color. The thick, off-white head dissipated fairly slowly despite the high alcohol content. Lagunitas claims the beer is “made with 43 different hops and 65 different malts” (a typical beer has no more than three of either!) and discerning individual flavors is difficult. There is a little citrus, plus a piney aroma towards the back of the palette. A lot of carbonation mellows out the complex malt profile, which becomes more pronounced as the beer warms and flattens. Lagunitas’s 43 hops and 65 malts aren’t published, but they do mention Centennial and Cascade hops and crystal malt in their YouTube “virtual taste” video, which put it solidly in the West Coast IPA style. Has a clean mouthfeel and overall dry taste, again typical for a West Coast IPA.
As much as the flavor is well balanced, it isn’t overall as clean as say, a Sierra Nevada IPA. That may be why they aren’t as popular: if you’re using 65 different malts, the flavor is going to be just a little confused. Despite this, it’s an immensely drinkable IPA and is objectively better than its other main West coast competitor.
Evidently looking at the book of hop and malt varieties and saying “Yes, we’ll use these” worked for Lagunitas. I can’t even think of 43 different hops and 65 malts, let alone put them together to work this well. The beer is 6.2 percent alcohol by volume and 51.5 International Bittering Units. It’s available nearly anywhere beer is sold in this city. Go out and pick up a six-pack today, you’ve got nothing to lose.

The post Popular craft brewery Lagunitas offers solid IPA appeared first on The Triangle.

Head East on Spruce Street and take a left turn off the South Street Bridge onto a locally famous riverside right-of-way and you’re promised a speedy trip from downtown to points upriver on the Schuylkill. There are broad lanes, gorgeous river views and limited access points. It is vital to the health and well-being of Philadelphia. This right-of-way, however, has been ruined by excessive traffic, people on cellphones, inappropriately-sized vehicles, and worst of all, slow people who aren’t paying attention. And it needs to be widened.
I’m not talking about Interstate 76, which is a lost cause. I’m talking about the Schuylkill River Trail.

(In fairness, both get you from Center City to Conshohocken in about the same amount of time.)
If you’re like me, the only thing that keeps you from falling into suicidal depression and allows you to control your otherwise crippling alcohol dependency is regular exercise. My usual exercise bike ride is from my home (near the Fresh Grocer) to just about the county line (just upriver of Manayunk) and back. I don’t go further because I don’t trust the suburbs (They vote Republican out there!). It’s twelvish miles to the county line, and seven of them are very pleasant, easy, fast riding. Two and a half further miles are on-street and that’ll be the subject of another irate cyclist opinion piece. Then there are two and a half miles, from the South Street Bridge to the Connecting Railroad Bridge (just north of Girard Avenue), which are consistently fender-to-fender hell on wheels.

And what a variety of wheels there are: Segway tours. Rollerbladers. Skateboarders from Payne’s Park. Cyclists, of course. On mountain bikes. Or BMX bikes. Or serious commuter bikes. Or recumbent bikes. Or Indego bikes. Or those four-person bikes which take up the full lane.
Add to that the runners, joggers and walkers, and you have a lot of traffic moving at a wide variety of speeds. And thanks to the fit and beautiful people of Philadelphia who make use of the trail, a hell of a lot of these people are riding or running distracted.
This is a “mixed-use” trail, of course, so all these people have a right to be there. It also has signs posted reading “Speed Limit Five Miles Per Hour” so if you’re a law-abiding citizen, passing oughtn’t to be an issue, since you’re then jogging, running or riding at just above a brisk walking pace.

This is patently ridiculous of course. Part of the reason you ride a bike, jog, or run is to get somewhere quickly, or to get exercise from going nowhere quickly, so a 5 MPH speed limit defeats the purpose of a multi-use trail—it restricts it to being a walking trail.
Furthermore, it’s unenforceable. Traffic engineers have known this for ages, and that’s why your typical 55 MPH limited freeway has a “design speed” (the speed at which a curve can be taken safely) much higher than 55 MPH, since free-flowing traffic picks its own speed, frequently as high as the lower 80s

On the trail, it is more nuanced: Runners run at 7 MPH, cyclists ride at 12-14 MPH typically. Add in the Segways at 10MPH, rollerbladers at some other speed, and so forth. Now add the skateboarders screaming down the hill from Payne’s Park. Then add the couples with baby carriages and the small children on small wobbly bikes everywhere. Then, of course, realize that many of these people see the yellow line in the center of the trail as nothing more than a pretty decoration, and you have a recipe for nasty collisions. (The combined impact speed of a head-on collision between a cyclist and a baby carriage can be as high as 20 MPH, remember.)
All this traffic is expected to coexist in a 10-foot wide trail with one lane in each direction, and traffic is only getting worse as the trail grows in popularity, not only with recreational users but cycle commuters, for whom speed is essential. (Philadelphia, incidentally, has the highest share of cycle commuting amongst major cities in the United States. A whopping 2 percent of Philadelphians get to work by bike, despite our generally poor-to-nonexistent cycling infrastructure.)

The trail is becoming a victim of its own success, in short. We’ve seen this before with the construction of Interstate highways, which promised free-flowing traffic, easy relaxing commutes to work and a bright clean suburban future free of the dirt and grime of the inner cities. We ended up with miles-long traffic jams instead, thanks to the phenomenon of induced demand. Who would have thought that better roads would lead to more drivers? (At the expense, of course, of the railroads, of walking and cycling, and most of all, of the natural environment, which we paved over to build subdivisions and Walmart parking lots.)

If we acknowledge that widening roads causes more traffic, then why advocate it for the trail? Well, it would require widening with a caveat: separation of traffic modes. Cyclists traveling at 12-14 MPH shouldn’t have to interact with traffic moving at 5 MPH, especially not parents with baby carriages. A separate trail, only through the most crowded lengths, for cyclists and other high-speed traffic, would do wonders for trail safety and speed.

The right-of-way, of course, is constricted in many areas, so a fully separate trail may not be practical in some areas. The Federal Highway Administration recommends a five-foot minimum width for cycle lanes, and such even if the lanes were added as interior “fast lanes” they would at least double the width of the trail and would have to disappear in some areas. Even if they are limited to where room exists, they would eliminate a vast amount of traffic conflict along the trail. Ideally these fast lanes would have some kind of barrier between them and the slow lanes, to prevent stray pedestrians and small children from wandering into the fast lanes and being run down and mangled into unrecognizable smears of blood and viscera. It’s common sense.

As we move forward into a less suburban and more urban world, we’re going to have to rethink what constitutes a major artery. We think nothing of widening an Interstate highway or an arterial road. Let’s then take the Schuylkill River Trail for what it is: an arterial high-capacity multi-use trail, and treat it accordingly. And that’s to say nothing of the public health benefits: a wider Schuylkill River Trail means a less wide Philadelphia.

The post It’s all fun and games till a biker hits a baby appeared first on The Triangle.

October is here, and with it sweaters, earthy colors, cool breezes, long walks with your significant other to see the fall colors and of course pumpkin spice. Yes, it’s time for pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin spice beers, pumpkin spice candies and pumpkin spice toothpaste.

If you want to hear about any of that pumpkin garbage, pick up another newspaper.

Are they gone? Good. I for one don’t see the appeal in beers that taste like a candle. That’s why I decided to review the Flying Fish Hopfish India Pale Ale this week.

Flying Fish opened late in 1996 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, just across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia, plus seven miles. Some of their best-liked and most recognizable beers are in their “Exit” series, which are named after exits on the New Jersey Turnpike. (Exit 4, an American Trippel, comes to mind.) Hopfish is an English style IPA brewed with Magnum, Ahtanum and Nugget hops.

English IPAs differ from American IPAs in a few significant ways: they are usually lower ABV, they possess more earthy bitterness than citrusy or floral bitterness, and they are typically darker in color. The English IPA was the original IPA, developed to weather the long boat trip from England to colonial India. Don’t believe anyone that says your beer was brewed “without preservatives”—both alcohol and hops are preservatives, and as a result IPAs typically contain more of both than a standard beer. The shelf life is still limited though, so don’t let your IPAs sit around—drink up!

Let’s get down to the beer in question, then.

Purchased a six-pack from Old Nelson Food Company at 31st and Market. Poured from refrigerated bottle into a shaker pint glass. Deep amber in color, almost brown. (Hey, fall colors!) Very hazy, but this beer did not last long enough for me to determine whether this was caused by chill or if it’s inherent to the beer. Plenty of carbonation evident, with an initially large head that dissipated quickly. Some subtle citrus was balanced out by general hoppy bitterness and a strong malt character. Manufacturer states alcohol content is 6.2 percent by volume, pretty typical for the low end of IPA alcohol content. It’s nearly sessionable (for the uninitiated in craft beer lingo: you can drink a few in one session) but I wouldn’t recommend driving or operating heavy machinery afterwards.

Hopfish IPA is a well-balanced beer. The citrus note added by the Athanum hops is surprising in an English IPA, but not unwelcome. It’s complimented well by the deep earthy bitterness of the Nugget and Magnum hops, which Flying Fish states are added at five times in the brewing process.

This is a solid, local English-style IPA, best enjoyed at a slightly warmer temperature. Flying Fish says the beer is also available cask-conditioned, which would be enough to make this good beer really great, but I don’t know where to find that offhand beyond the brewery itself. As it is, though, I would recommend to anyone looking for a good local beer to stave off the pumpkin spice hoard to pick a few Hopfish IPA up as soon as possible.

The post Hopfish’s Flying Fish IPA strikes good balance appeared first on The Triangle.

Well the candidates for your Undergraduate Student Government have presented themselves, and it’s time for you to go out and vote! Or stay inside and vote, since ballots can only be cast through DragonLink. There are 28 positions up for grabs, but only 10 of them are actually contested, so we’re only printing those candidates’ speeches. If you want to find out what the rest of the candidates have to say, check out our online feature on thetriangle.org to find out. Of special note this year is maybe the first instance of partisan politics in USGA: the so-called “Integrity Party” intends to take up to six seats.

Click here to jump to the relevant section:
Engagement & Operations Assembly

Student Life Assembly

Academic Assembly

Engagement and Operations Assembly

These are the people at USGA who actually do things: the movers and shakers who are at the top of the USGA totem pole.
Back to top.

President

It’s his ship now, his command; he’s in charge. He’s the boss, the head man, top dog, big cheese, the head honcho. A living Smitty Werbenjagermanjenson, if you will: he’s number one. The President of USGA’s responsibilities include serving as the official representative of USGA to the administration and to other student governments and to preside over joint sessions of USGA. James Gordon is the only candidate for USGA President, so if you’re unsatisfied, get your write-in campaign moving now.

James Gordon

Biological Sciences

College of Arts & Sciences

Communications Director

Communications Director is the most hotly contested position on USGA’s Engagement and Operations Assembly. The Communications Director is responsible for promoting USGA events and maintaining relationships with campus media outlets, including The Triangle.

Shawn Parker

Entrepreneurship

LeBow College of Business

Charles Burnett

Political Science

College of Arts & Sciences

Alissa Reichert

Marketing

LeBow College of Business

Archivist

The Archivist serves as the secretary of USGA as a whole and takes minutes at meetings and joint sessions. They are the primary contact between USGA and the library. Daredevils and thrill-seekers only, please.

Kim Post

Political Science, History

College of Arts & Sciences

Akshay Koottala

Finance

LeBow College of Business

Archivist

Money: it’s what Drexel is about, in the end. The Treasurer maintains USGA’s finances, attends all SAFAC coordinated meetings and is the sole keeper of the keys to USGA’s enormous vault of gold coins where they go swimming on weekends.

Phil Holder

Finance

LeBow College of Business

Molly Cuka

Finance

LeBow College of Business

Events Director

Equivalent of Office of Campus Activities’ favorite new position that your student organization needs to have for some reason. Really need a description? Fine. This officer coordinates events. Uncontested position.

Brittany Tuccirone

Entrepreneurship

LeBow College of Business

Personnel Director

The Personnel Director directs USGA personnel (duh). Duties include but are not limited to attendance tracking and, per the USGA constitution, “grade point average assessment,” which sounds like something which would likely get The Triangle’s editor-in-chief thrown out of the organization, and maybe even the school…

Veronica Monteiro

Product Design

Antionette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Student Life Assembly

The Student Life Assembly actually consists of 11 positions from all walks of student life, but only three of these seats have contested elections. The remaining seats either have only one person running, and three seats have no candidates and will presumably go vacant at the end of this term. Those uncontested candidates also have speeches, however.
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International Student Representative

The International Student Representative exists to advance the interests of Drexel’s large international community. Four candidates have applied for this hotly contested position, two of whom account for over 66 percent of the visible pocket squares in this election.

Nino Avreyski

Political Science

College of Arts & Sciences

Mridul Chulet

Civil Engineering

College of Engineering

Kiki Liu

Mahmond Hallak

Greek Life Representative

The Greek Life Representative brings to the table the needs of fraternity and sorority life at Drexel University. They are also presumably responsible for all procedures relating to keg acquisition and management at all USGA functions serving alcohol.

Mario Squicciarini

Business and Engineering

LeBow College of Business

Chris Brennan

Biomedical Engineering

College of Biomedical Engineering, Science & Health

Gary Voltaire

Student Organization Representative

The Student Organization Representative comes from Drexel’s student organization community, which, if DragonLink is to be believed, includes as many as 472 separate student organizations. It’s a tall order for one person, but evidently four are eager to take on the task.

Shahmar Beasley

Political Science

College of Arts & Sciences

Robert Hermann

Mechanical Engineering

College of Engineering

Radhika Amin

Legal Studies

LeBow College of Business

Lenni Paolini

Marketing

LeBow College of Business

Transfer Student Representative

The position of Transfer Student Representative is uncontested.

Chelsea Bann

Design & Merchandising

Antionette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Co-op Student Representative

The position of Co-op Student Representative is uncontested.

Christina Schweingruber

History

College of Arts & Sciences

Commuter Student Representative

The position of Commuter Student Representative is uncontested.

Joseph Dougherty

Legal Studies

LeBow College of Business

Inclusion & Diversity Representative

The position of Diversity Representative is uncontested.

Pankti Acharya

Library Representative

The position of Library Representative is brand-new for 2015, and is uncontested.

Michael Haskel

Undecided Engineering

College of Engineering

Athletics Representative

No candidates.

Veterans Representative

No candidates.

Residential Living Representative

No candidates.

Academic Assembly

The Academic Assembly consists of representatives from all colleges at Drexel University. There are 12 seats on the Academic Assembly, corresponding to each college. Four of these seats currently have multiple candidates, which are listed below and to the right. Four further seats have uncontested races, and four seats have no candidates for this year. One seat, the School of Public Health Representative, not only has no candidate, but is also currently vacant.
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College of Engineering

Tauheed Baukman

Chemical Engineering

Ryan Hoos

Chemical Engineering

Chelsea Chapeliere

Electrical Engineering

Pennoni Honors College

James Shallow

Chemical Engineering

College of Engineering

Helena Xie

Health Sciences

College of Nursing and Health Sciences

LeBow College of Business

Kirtan Patel

Finance

Duncan Faris

General Business

College of Computing and Infomatics

Mitul Shah

Information Technology

Meghna Malhotra

Software Engineering

Antionette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

The position of Antionette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design Representative is uncontested.

Kyra Gray

Design & Merchandising

College of Education

The position of College of Education Representative is uncontested.

Mionee Desai

Elementary Education

College of Arts & Sciences

The position of College of Arts & Sciences Representative is uncontested.

Colin O’Hara

Biological Sciences

College of Nursing and Health Professions

The position of College of Nursing and Health Professions Representative is uncontested.

Katey Raiser

Nursing

Close School of Entrepreneurship

No candidates.

College of Hospitality & Sport Management

No candidates.

College of Biomedical Engineering, Science & Health Systems

No candidates.

School of Public Health

No candidates, post currently vacant.

An earlier version of this article erroneously identified Katey Raiser as Colin O’Hara. The Triangle regrets this error.
An earlier version of this article erroneously identified Meghna Malhotra (College of Computing and Informatics) as Mitul Shah (also College of Computing and Informatics.) The Triangle regrets this error.

The post USGA Candidates, 2015 appeared first on The Triangle.

No tuition dollars were used to create The Summit, the new “not-a-residence-hall-but-kinda-a-residence-hall” at Drexel University. The new residence hall comes entirely for free, financially speaking, and without any strings attached, financially speaking.

In actuality they came with the loss of one extraordinary building: The Frederic O. Hess Laboratories. It was dirty. It wasn’t code-compliant. It was falling apart. The ventilation was bad, and the interior layout was even more confusing than the Main Building, owing to the fact that it was converted from the stables for horses delivering milk from Abbot’s Dairy (now F lot). The concrete was merely a facade overlaying 19th-century building with load-bearing Wissahickon Schist.

It also had spaces for heavy civil engineering research, a strong wall for seismic research, enough space for large-scale structural testing, a space for a race car team, the concrete canoe team and the steel bridge team, the machine shop and so on. (There was also a lab for testing explosives, which was unfortunately unused for all of recent memory.) These were labs for fields of engineering and science without research-dollar-multiplying prefixes, like “bio” or “nano” or “green,” but nevertheless essential.

Some of these spaces have been replaced, by (frequently much smaller) labs in 3101 Market Street or the Woodring Laboratories. Some of them have gone away entirely. (There is, to my knowledge, no strong wall for seismic research any longer.and Drexel Racing also has not been provided a new space.)

What’s done is done. It wasn’t done with tuition dollars, but that’s beside the point: Why demolish one of the core research facilities on campus without a concrete replacement plan that satisfied all (or even
most) parties?

In probably the most significant book that you haven’t heard of in the 20th century, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” author Jane Jacobs made the point that “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” You can throw money at brand-new “maker spaces” and “app labs” chocked full of 3-D printers and the latest computer-aided design software, but in reality one of the best spaces for real innovation is a 100-year-old labyrinthine stable-cum-engineering lab with 40 years of research use and 40 years of equipment and spare parts lying around inside, where you can swing a hammer and turn a wrench without worrying too much about scratching the floor or putting a hole in the wall.

Now that it’s gone, we’ll have to wait another 40 years for an adequate replacement. I doubt The Summit will last as long.

The Drink:

Like an old-growth tree, labs like Hess are nearly irreplaceable. Juniper trees, for example, can live for over 1,000 years, and, coincidentally, gin is made from them. (What you just saw in those last two sentences is called a “comically bad segue.”) I recommend a martini, whose ingredients can be remembered easily through rhyme thanks to musician and mathematician Tom Lehrer:

Hearts full of youth! Hearts full of truth! Six parts gin to one part (dry) vermouth!

Shake with ice, strain into a martini glass, garnish with an olive. Drink to remember bright college days when we had labs for heavy engineering research.

Justin Roczniak is the editor-in-chief at The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org

The post The true cost of The Summit appeared first on The Triangle.

I was in an unspecified 400-level engineering course March 5, drifting off to sleep and hoping desperately the school would cancel classes in time for me to get home and catch some sleep before The Triangle production night. (That didn’t happen.)

Dimly conscious, I looked up at the board and saw equations upon equations filling the board like so many hieroglyphics, and a PowerPoint slide with a picture of the problem in question. It was then that I realized the truth: I was looking at an extremely verbose way to describe the sum of the areas of three triangles and a rectangle.

That was it. That was all it was. People were vigorously taking notes on this subject, and asking questions about the specifics, and though there were some tricks about it, (there was, for instance, a factor that varied the slope of the triangles’ hypotenuses, and the slope varied with the depth) it was all just an area summation.

You could call it “basic calculus” but even that’s a much more complicated way of thinking about the problem than it needs to be; it’s grade-school level math being explicitly explained to junior engineering students. It took the better part of 45 minutes for the lecturer to slowly and painfully write out these calculations on the board.

I use this simply as the most handy example, and I mean nothing personal to the lecturer, but I have to say that it’s astonishing how common this is in high-level courses; where a simple, simple grade-school concept will be explained in excruciating detail and take up tons of class time, leaving very little time left to explain the concepts at work.

What this ultimately results in is a huge barrier to developing an intuitive understanding of a subject: instead of being asked to “sum the area of these three triangles and this rectangle which are determined by factors x, y and z, and find the resultant force,” I am being asked to put x, y and z into an equation that takes up a page and a half and leaves me with no understanding of what I’m doing.

(The textbook, of course, explains it in even more excruciating detail, with many graphics and text boxes which are attractively formatted, thoughtfully colored and labeled, and are ultimately confusing and useless.)

Forty-five minutes of a 400-level engineering lecture can be better used rather than a slow and painful explanation of 7th grade math. If it’s necessary to say anything more than “Find the area and resultant vector” to junior engineering students for them to figure it out, well, maybe you should be reconsidering how you’re teaching engineering.

An ounce of intuitive understanding of a subject at a high level is going to go miles further than a pound of memorized equations and symbols. Or, if you prefer a cliche, it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees in a lot of Drexel engineering classes.

If you’re a junior Drexel engineering student and haven’t made a presentation or worked on an open-ended problem in over three years, and haven’t experienced liberal arts education in five or more, you probably need a stiff drink. I recommend the mind eraser.

Ingredients:

2 oz vodka
1 oz Kahlua (bonus if it’s home-made!)
Crushed ice
Soda water

Directions:

Shake and strain vodka and Kahlua into a highball or old-fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Top off with soda water.

Drink through a small straw until you forget how to calculate the area of a triangle and have to be taught explicitly.

Justin Roczniak is the Editor-in-Chief at The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

The post From the Editor’s Desk | Some concepts are too basic for college appeared first on The Triangle.

I want to talk about the phrase “academic career” today.  It’s counterproductive and dishonest. It should be removed from the English language, and the phrase “education” substituted.

I guess the idea is that you’re supposed to think about your time in school as your “career” and devote as much time to it as you would a normal career. Do your homework, get good grades and you’ll be compensated … in some abstract way.

This is, I guess, an extension of the general theme that college education is about preparing you for a career, rather than existing for the purpose of education. All right, I get that. Learning for the sake of learning is dead; college is now a glorified trade school, only without the straightforwardness, economy and guarantee of a decently paying career with a lot of job satisfaction, which comes with trade school.

So let’s imagine you work in company run the same way as the organization where you have your “academic career:”

You have multiple supervisors, who all assign you unrelated tasks that you are expected to complete at home on your own time. (There are no fixed hours; however, you are expected to put in x amount of hours a week per task, which will frequently total more than 40 and extend to holidays and weekends.) These supervisors are all in charge of several hundred people performing similar unrelated tasks in several branches of the company. There is no coordination between these several supervisors, nor is there expected to be.

These same supervisors then review your submittals for each task, and a performance review is issued for each one. The work is then thrown out and never looked at again. Every three months your supervisors and assigned work changes and very little of your previous work is relevant.

There is no monetary compensation. Instead, after five years you get a number between two and four and a piece of paper.

If someone told me this was their “career,” I would tell them that they’re being subject to several labor law violations, chief amongst them unpaid overtime and, well, slavery.

Education isn’t a “career.” Most of us intend to get out of here at some point. There is such a thing as an “academic career,” and it is called being a teacher, or a professor, or a researcher, or whatever.

As Mark Twain reportedly said, “Never let your schooling interfere with your education.” Prevent your academic career from interfering, too, with a mint julep.

Ingredients:

2 ounces bourbon whiskey

2 teaspoons water

1 teaspoon powdered sugar (or 1 ounce simple syrup, and omit the water)

4 fresh mint leaves

Directions:

Muddle mint, sugar and water in a highball glass. Add cracked ice and the bourbon. Stir, garnish with mint and serve. Have one to commemorate the end of your academic career and the beginning of self-worth, relaxation and a healthy work-life balance.

Justin Roczniak is the Editor-in-Chief at The Triangle. He can be contacted at justin.roczniak@thetriangle.org.

The post From the Editor’s Desk | The falsity of the ‘academic career’ appeared first on The Triangle.