Dear Editor,

As business students, I am sure we each recognize that December is one of the busiest times of the year. The season of gift-giving is about to begin, companies are looking to get out of the red and into the black, and students are ready for winter festivities. As the year approaches a close, I would like to make a request of the Bentley Community.

Let’s individually consider learning about a new cause and donating to it. I realize it’s a lot easier to just give a dollar to St. Jude’s hospital when they ask you at the Ann Taylor register or to throw your change in the red metal collector as people ring jingle bells for the Salvation Army. At the same time, there are many charitable organizations that equally merit recognition and could also put your hard-earned money to good use. More importantly, in learning about a non-profit organization you may find a cause that better reflects your interests.

For me personally the Central Asia Institute is one of the causes I support. It works to empower communities of Central Asia by sponsoring infrastructure projects and building schools. I specifically like how the organization invests to achieve higher literacy and education, especially for girls, in these remote communities. This “teach a man to fish” concept allows the communities to develop a sustainable process to improve their standard of living.

I am not expecting everyone to identify with this specific cause, but I am sure that there is an organization that reflects the varying ideals on this campus. For those who sympathize with the food security plight in the world, they may consider giving to Heifer International. For someone whose cause is closer to home, maybe a local shelter could use a couple of your cans. I have a couple of suggestions for those who are looking into a new cause. Understand who the beneficiaries of the donations are. Are they entire families? Individuals? What does the money actually do? Then find out how much money you donate actually benefits the people. Some organizations have a heavy administrative cost which means that not all of your donation will make it to the people in need.

So as we all hit the registers and buy gifts for the holidays, we will undoubtedly hear, “Would you like to donate x dollars to x charity? It’s for a great cause!” However, if that cause does not reflect your own values and does not serve the cause you want, do not feel obligated to donate to it. There are plenty of institutions around the world that address your philanthropic belief and with a little research your thoughtful gift can go a long way.

Sincerely,
Edith Joachimpillai

The Vanguard can often be quite critical of other student and administrative organizations on campus, particularly when we see room for improvement. Similarly, when the campus community feels that we are not living up to our expectations as the student newspaper, we expect students to be critical of us.

While we are often quick to dole out criticism, we can often be much slower to dole out praise, but we feel that a major student organization is worthy of praise: AIA.

AIA has always been a background organization that many students will never deal with directly, unless they are the president or treasurer of an organization. However, AIA holds considerable power over campus organizations and the student body, managing the student activity fee budget and allocating the budget that runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ultimately, this task doesn’t come without challenges and risks, particularly when students get upset with how their activity fee is allocated.

While it would be quite easy for AIA to maintain an air of secrecy over their decision making, Ryan Dechance, president of AIA, has gone out of his way to improve transparency throughout the organization. Students are regularly encouraged to set up meetings with AIA or their AIA liaison and can sit in on meetings and ask questions about their activity fee allocation.

AIA regularly makes available data which shows students how their activity fee is allocated so that students are able to make sure that their activity fee allocation is benefiting them. Transparency is key with any Student

Life-sponsored organization, and AIA is a superb example of how a Student Life organization should be run.

AIA has also worked on improving contact with organizations and working on improving their interactions with student organizations. As a result of their improved dialogue with student organizations, they’ve also been receptive to changing AIA policies and implementing those changes to further benefit the student body.

In recent years, AIA has continued to raise the bar for the major student organizations on campus, and under the leadership of Dechance, they have continued to do so.

At Bentley, it’s unlikely you’ll ever find a class on “The Philosophy of The Matrix” or “Harry Potter: Finding Your Patronus.” And while it’s understandable that a small university or college wouldn’t offer such unique electives, it’s still necesary to allow students to have the option of specific upper-level major electives. These electives are helpful in finding a specialized area of interest that could ultimately lead to a potential career path.

After the unfortunate passing of Professor Nelson, the Finance Department found itself short by one professor. While many other professors were gracious enough to pick up his classes, Finance majors and professors found the department short-staffed for next semester. According to a Finance professor, the Finance Department alone is short by about four full-time professors.

This crunch was most notable during registration when a significant majority of the finance electives were closed at the end of the first day of course registration, depriving many of the juniors and underclassmen a way of taking major classes. Yes, there were still options available for students who were willing to be flexible, but let’s be honest, no one wants to take a major class at 8:30 in the morning or with a professor with poor SETs.

Seniors will remember the headaches during registration early in their college careers when MyBentley would become so slow that it was practically unusable. This year, so many students were checking the registration website during the first day of registration that the website went down several times.

One junior in particular will be finishing up the spring semester working on his minors after being locked out of all of his major classes. Despite appeals to the Registrar’s Office and the department chair, he was unable to get into any major electives. Similar situations were also mirrored throughout many of the other departments. The only majors who don’t seem to have any issues with course registration are CIS majors.

This situation isn’t just unfair for Bentley students, but it’s also more importantly unfair for Bentley professors. With professors working double time and a general professor shortage on campus, the entire school suffers.

Whether it is through decreased availability or natural exhaustion, professors need to be left to teach and mentor students and students need to be able to register for the electives they want to take, not the ones they’re forced into.

An even bigger problem brewing across the campus this year are budget cuts. These cuts are are creating a domino effect throughout the entire campus, not just academic departments. As  the school evaluates what costs should be included in tuition and what should be paid for a la carte,  we need to remember that our education should always remain paramount at Bentley.

The “No Love for Bachelor of Arts Majors” editorial in the November 10, 2011 issue of The Vanguard is a timely commentary on an important topic for Undergraduate Career Services. In fact, at the November 1, 2011 SGA meeting, I spoke specifically about the progress we have made in building programs for Bachelor of Arts and LSM majors and outlined our commitment to expanding these offerings in the coming semester. I’d like to highlight a few examples of our Bachelor of Arts resources and clarify many of your article’s misperceptions.

For example, our Media majors and LSMs are invited by their dedicated advisor, Alyssa Hammond, to participate in Success in the City, a one-day program in New York City providing students with structured visits to key employers hosted by Bentley alumni and parents.  Most recently, participating students have networked with professionals at major media companies including Horizon Media, NBC Universal, and Disney. Last week, at our Marketing, Management and Communications Networking Night, we hosted numerous media companies, including Clear Channel and Scratch Marketing + Media, to name a few.  The opportunities are there for students who are proactive and engaged in the process. And, as Alyssa is making every effort to partner with Media faculty, we anticipate strengthened outcomes from this active collaboration.

In other areas, we are excited about recent developments for LSMs in Earth, Environment and Global Sustainability. Led by Colleen Murphy, our First Year advisor and dedicated advisor to EEGS as well as Health and Industry, in collaboration with Amanda King, we have offered two exciting Sustainability career programs this fall and have plans for a number of new initiatives this spring. Last year, we collaborated with recent graduate, Tom D’Eri, to publish a Sustainability Career guide now featured on our new website.

In addition, a number of Nonprofit and Social Entrepreneurship programs are underway, including last week’s exciting visit by Joseph Sinatra, Investor Relations Officer at Root Capital. Previously, Mr. Sinatra worked at Ashoka, where he successfully developed proposals and managed relationships with leading philanthropic organizations and investors, raising more than $20 million to finance social entrepreneurs worldwide.

As one student commented after the session, “I know I was not the only one who truly benefited from this experience, so I hope that you can keep more of these programs coming! We as Bentley students have so much power and knowledge to change and help others.”

This week we will be hosting alumni from five area Nonprofits in a dynamic panel focused on leveraging business careers in Nonprofits. At that program we will have a Resource Expo connecting students to campus resources including the new Nonprofit Society and Minor, and plan to showcase our new Nonprofit Career Guide developed in collaboration with current senior, Gregg Grenier.

We are pleased with our progress to date, but are never complacent. We have many initiatives in the works to strengthen our collaboration with faculty to leverage our collective resources and expertise. As Melissa Sawyer highlighted to the SGA on November 1, we are preparing a survey for BA majors to assess career interest areas to ensure programming meets student needs. With four full-time and one part-time advisor for nearly 4,000 students, we need to be thoughtful and strategic about resource allocation. On this note, as Bentley considers additional BA majors, we do have a seat at the table with faculty and administration to ensure career implications are considered.

We care about each student at Bentley, whether they are a first-year student or a senior, a BA, BS or LSM. We thank you for raising this issue and allowing us to respond, and we look forward to continued productive dialogue.

Sincerely,
Susan Brennan

Managing Director, University Career Services

An overwhelming majority of Bentley students are business students who go through the whole GB curriculum, from the 100 level to the 400 level. After all, Bentley was originally the Harry Bentley School of Accountancy and Finance, which is likely why Accountancy and Finance are among the strongest and most popular majors at Bentley.

Bentley also has one of the top career service programs in the country. So, why are the Bachelor of Arts majors at Bentley so often overlooked and underserved by Career Services?

While the BA majors may be an afterthought for Career Services, they are certainly making their presence and talent known on their own, and Admissions is certainly taking note and using them to help sell Bentley.

Look at Jim Ferguson, a senior Media and Culture major who spent this summer interning with the Cannes International Film Festival. His film Twelve Acres was also selected to be shown at the Cannes Festival and was subsequently picked up by DirecTV for their Shorts network.

He was at Open House helping to sway prospective students interested in the arts toward Bentley as the bridge between the arts and the business world.

Ferguson is following in the footsteps of Alex Hagen, a Bentley Alum who graduated in 2010. After producing several short films with other Bentley students, he graduated and started Hollow Skull Films, a nonprofit production company and grant program for aspiring directors and producers.

Do you want to look outside the Media and Culture major, a major which has only gained significant traction in the last few years? Look to the Global Studies major, and you’ll find Dan Merica. After being a Vanguard News correspondent during his time at Bentley, Merica headed over to NPR to serve as the Executive Producer of their Intern Edition. He is now a writer for CNN.com and is working his way through the journalism field.

Many BA majors say they have felt neglected or underserved by Career Services, who they say are often too busy focusing on the business majors on campus. While this may not accurately be the case, several BA majors have felt that they are an “odd ball” at Bentley and can’t get help from Career Services.

However, that being said, those who have been there for help have found the experience helpful and the staff willing to dedicate time to assist them. One alum said that although they didn’t receive help from Career Services for jobs or internships, they did find them helpful for the career process overall.

The progress that BA students are making is often due to their own persistence and networking, as well as the assistance of their professors.

We may not be an arts school at Bentley, but we all pay the same tuition and we should all receive the same treatment from a key support resource such as Career Services.

There are a lot of benefits to attending a business school, including being provided with an education which will significantly benefit us and prepare us for entering the workplace. By paying hundreds of dollars each year as our Student Activity Fee, we each rightfully feel that we should be able to derive some value from the fee to focus it on events we would like to participate in. But one of the downsides to that is the massive number of students who want to create their own organizations and receive AIA funding, without looking to see if they can get involved in an existing organization.

This seems to be happening much more this year than it has in years past, but it seems to be a regular occurrence for the fall semester. ABA and AIA are required to do more work with either recognizing new organizations or specifying their reasoning for not recognizing a student organization. AIA’s and ABA’s job should focus on approving and creating organizations for the long term, with stability and demand that will last for decades.

A stir was created earlier this semester when ABA informed Her Campus, an up and coming online magazine for women, that they would be better suited by partnering with the Women’s Center. Her Campus wanted to start their own organization and not be directly integrated with the Women’s Center according to a member of ABA.

However, Her Campus ultimately approached the Women’s Center about an integration which eventually fell through according to a member of the Women’s Center.
Other organizations, such as the Bentley Consulting Club and Falcon Foodies are also pending ABA recognition.

With everyone looking to strengthen their own resumes by being the “founder” of an on-campus organization, few studentse looking at the existing opportunities for them to create and build their own area within an existing organization. When several students were looking to start a political forum last year, they realized they wouldn’t be able to join the Democrats or the Republicans because it would make them appear partial to one side or the other. Instead, they joined the Speech and Debate Society and found a natural fit within that organization.

Bentley doesn’t need yet another fraternity or sorority on campus because you believe yours will promote business better than DSP does. Instead, we challenge you to enhance the organizations that Bentley already has established and strengthen them one organization at a time. Besides, that would be a much better story for an interview, about how you approached an issue and you affected change within an established group, than just circumvented the group entirely and created yet another organization.

John Karakelle and Ian Markowitz, board members of The Vanguard, are both members of the Bentley Speech and Debate Society.

Student Life has regularly struggled with managing student organizations on campus in terms of verifying the number of active members and helping students find organizations that they are interested in.

They thought they had found the perfect solution with CollegiateLink, which, from their website, looked like it would be the perfect cure to all of Student Life’s problems. With the system already in use at schools like Tulane, Villanova and University of Michigan, it seemed like the perfect solution.

Student Life began implementing Collegiatelink two years ago, after spending an unknown amount of money on the system.  (Framingham State’s newspaper says that their school spends $8,000 a year on CollegiateLink.) Requiring all student organizations to create and update their pages on CollegiateLink, Student Life wanted it to become the hub for student organizations at Bentley.

After two years in use and almost no adoption by any campus organization other than CAB, CollegiateLink became a repository for reimbursement slips and locating the organization constitution. Although there was a promised upgrade to the website at an unknown cost, ultimately CollegiateLink went the way of MySpace and became obselete.

While CollegiateLink didn’t really take off at Bentley, it seems that many other schools are struggling with its adoption, as well. Framingham State’s campus newspaper The Gatepost wrote an article on CollegiateLink, saying that their campus leaders were criticizing the tool as being ineffective and inconvenient. The article further explained that Fitchburg State’s campus was also struggling with the adoption of CollegiateLink.

Unfortunately for CollegiateLink, it is a web service that is just too little, too late. On campus, most people use Facebook to publicize their events because it’s where many people are already signed up and accessing on a regular basis. Forcing Bentley students to also visit a secondary website was just redundant, and we’re glad that Bentley finally eliminated the system.

Further complicating the issue with CollegiateLink this semester were the mixed messages which were given out by ABA and Student Life regarding the website’s use. While Adam Payne, assistant director of Student Activities, e-mailed the student leaders announcing the arrival of CollegiateLink, apparently he jumped the gun a little bit by announcing the service’s demise.

It wasn’t until last week that Ryan O’Keeffe, president of ABA, finally announced CollegiateLink’s demise, providing instructions for student leaders on how to successfully transition away from CollegiateLink.

This transition is long overdue and should never have been necessary in the first place. Student Life should have solicited feedback from students and student leaders before making this transition. If they had done so, they wouldn’t have wasted the school’s money on an unnecessary service.

One of the hallmarks of Bentley is that we’re surrounded by many high-tech facilities on campus, from the Trading Room managed by Mr. Gibble to the Center for Marketing Technology managed by Mr. Cross. One of the most often overlooked facilities at Bentley is the Center for Languages and International Collaboration, the room we all know as the CLIC lab.

While we would all love to hate the dozens of e-mails we get from Professor Li advertising the CLIC lab’s tutoring sessions and seminars, it is an invaluable resource to Bentley. Although Global Perspectives LSMs and study abroad students are the only students who are required to study a language at Bentley, oftentimes the CLIC facilities and staff are overlooked.

Since most of us just delete the e-mails from Professor Li automatically, we almost universally miss out on many of the seminars that the CLIC lab offers. The fact that you can go into the CLIC lab and learn a language from one of the tutors completely free and without a regular time commitment is something very few students take advantage of but should.

Most students have no idea that you can install Rosetta Stone on your Bentley laptop and learn any language you want, anytime you want. If it’s one of the six languages Bentley offers, you can also meet with the Bentley tutors to get real-life experience practicing the language.

Other tutoring centers have tutors that often leave a lot to be desired beyond the intro-level classes (we’re looking at you, Trading Room tutors). A student tutoring in a foreign language that they are fluent in can be a better teacher and tutor than someone who has taken the class. This is because other, less experienced tutors are helping you with a class they themselves took only a semester ago.

We’ve found the CLIC tutors to be among the best tutors Bentley has to offer in terms of the programs they offer and how helpful they’ve been to us both as students in language classes as well as members of the overall student body. While we feel that many of the tutoring positions in the other learning centers on campus should be filled by graduate students or come with better training, we feel the CLIC lab tutors are spot-on and worth commendation.

Welcome to Bentley, Class of 2015! We’re sure you’ve heard lots of different advice on the college experience from friends and family, but we thought it would be important to give you advice from the people, both current students and alumni, who have lived it. If they could go back and do things differently, what would they change, and what would they do over again the exact same way?

Foster relationships with professors.
Professors are your biggest asset both on and off campus. Show up at their office hours, even if you don’t have any questions or need help with the material. Cultivate your relationships with your professors and they will not only help you out inside the classroom, but they will also go above and beyond when you need them outside of the classroom.
Many professors still maintain contacts outside of the “Bentley Bubble” and can often help you find your dream internship, write a phenomenal letter of recommendation for you or help you land that internship you’ve been interviewing for. Oftentimes, professors also attend industry networking events or get e-mails about jobs in the industry, so talk to them often and use them as a resource in your job search.

Take chances and learn to accept failure.
Many Bentley students are risk averse, and rightfully so. It’s something almost all of us are conditioned to be as we grow up, but maybe it’s not necessarily a good thing.

College is the last real time any of us have a safety net below us with which we can fail into with minimal consequence. Take advantage of the one pass/fail course you can take at Bentley and take a difficult class which stimulates your mind.
Take courses you’re curious about, and be willing to accept that it’s ok not to get a 4.0 in every class you take. While it may give your GPA a small hit, your willingness to take risks will be a great story to share in your job interviews.

Network, network, network.
Meet as many people as you can – you never know who will come in handy down the road. Attend those corny networking events that Career Services puts on. You can take all the help you can get in the job hunt.
While some people will be able to just walk into an interview and land a job, most people don’t have 4.0 GPAs or are presidents of four different clubs on campus. Meet with the recruiters and follow up with the afterwards, look on LinkedIn for connections who work at your “dream company” and leverage them to help you land that job at Apple or Google.

Bentley is very political – get on people’s good side.
You’ll quickly learn that everything at Bentley is highly political, and it will often come down to who you know on campus and who owes you a few favors.

Do you need a favor from Mail Services? You better hope you’re on Matina’s good side. Do you go to Lower Café in LaCava often? Treat the cooks right and you’ll start getting a fresh batch of fries or some extra food whenever you show up.

Do you need help booking a room or need another last-minute favor for an event? You better be on Paul Stanish’s good side, or otherwise he’ll likely be too busy to help you out. While this isn’t something obvious, treating Bentley employees nicer will help you stand out and will also earn you a few favors when you really need them.

As the semester draws to a close, the age-old tradition of student evaluations of teaching (SETs) begins to kick off this week. The juniors and seniors have been doing SETs since rating was on a five-point scale, were all completed in class with a pencil and required bubbling in responses on two separate, blue and orange bubble sheets. While these rankings carry heavy weight with Bentley, there are rumors that it affects tenure and promotion, and we question whether the SETs are as effective as they could be.

Although upperclassmen know the ins and outs of SETs and how the rankings work, based on our discussions with the underclassmen, especially freshmen, there seems to be a lack of understanding as to how the ratings system works. We applaud the Registrar’s Office for finally posting the newest revision of SETs on the web for students to see, but now it’s time they provide clarity to the newest incoming classes as to how the SETs work and what each question is asking.
Students flock to ratemyprofessors.com for an in-depth look at how professors actually perform in class, in addition to little tidbits that you wouldn’t otherwise know. For example, Professor O’Leary loves Crab Rangoon, a tidbit you might pick up in class but something you would never pick up from reading SETs. The problem with ratemyprofessors.com, aside from it causing viruses (according to the Help Desk), is that a majority of the reviews are written by people either upset or thrilled with the professor; not too many people review professors if they were indifferent.

Although SETs capture a majority of the class in their reviews, there are still areas for improvement. For example, there are some people who intentionally don’t complete SETs to have their grades withheld so that their “helicopter” parents can’t determine what grades they got. Further, let’s push professors to be at the top of their game all semester long and publish a ranking of the best and worst professors in every department.

Bentley is a business school, and as such it should adopt a model similar to the staffing model adopted by Jack Welch at GE. If the worst professors at the school consistently rank among the worst professors, it’s time for them to go, tenure or not. Tenure was an idea which was originally adopted to allow faculty to propose radical ideas in the classroom without risking their position with the school. Unfortunately, we have a very difficult time understanding what crazy and radical ideas can be proposed in a business class, but if we’re wrong, feel free to correct us.

Just because a professor is tenured is no excuse to retain them if they are among the worst professors at the school. We have no problem retaining all of the professors if they are all top notch and phenomenal, but each of us can name at least one professor who wasn’t even close to good, let alone phenomenal. This isn’t just a problem which plagues Bentley; it certainly plagues every higher level institution of learning, but it is something Bentley can take the lead on changing.

To the Editor,

As outgoing seniors who serve on the Student Government Association, we were extremely disappointed to read in the April 21st Fireside Chat the opinion that in the past four years SGA has failed to make a “single positive change.” We would like to take the opportunity to point out a handful of the many positive changes that have occurred. Several of these changes have been featured in past editions of the Vanguard, often on the front page no less.

In the realm of student life, in 2009 and 2010, we heard numerous concerns about people smoking right outside dorm rooms and buildings. We worked to educate students on the policy, get signs posted at all doors, and have the ashtrays permanently moved 25 feet from doors.

We also worked to expand shuttle hours and create the campus loop service, added late night weekend service to North Campus on the Harvard shuttle, and pressed for the GPS tracking system that is now available to students. The fitness classes offered by the Center of Health and Wellness came from a joint partnership and work was done by SGA to add classes as attendance increased.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, the Student Diversity Council (SDC) was formed with input from SGA and in the Spring of 2009, we started a yearly Diversity Roundtable dinner. From here, both SDC and the Diversity Roundtable became traditions that encouraged inclusion and integration among all cross-sections of campus. Last year, SGA and SDC worked together to put on for the first time Creating Connections in the Classroom (CCC), a diversity panel for the Wilder professors that spoke to diversity within the classrooms. This year, SGA will be participating in a panel about having an honest conversation about diversity. Diversity is an ongoing concern and SGA is currently continuing to strengthen our relationship with the Bentley Cultural Council (BCC) by helping with the planning and support of the cultural events as well as working towards strengthening our relationship with the Faculty Diversity Council at this time. While we have made progress in specific accomplishments we understand we should always be working towards striving to improve in the area of Diversity.

Student Government was responsible for the idea of installing lights controlled by motion sensors or timers in many of the study rooms and laundry rooms within the dorms last year; most recently, in conjunction with RHA, we passed a bill recommending gender neutral housing be implemented beginning with the 2012-2013 school year, which developed out of an idea brought to us by a student at the end of the 2009 school year. This was an action that 89% of the student body thinks would be a positive change based on the survey that was recently done by SGA and RHA.
SGA has done much additional work with academics including with the new GB core, extending library hours during finals, IT issues, and improving food service on campus, especially in Seasons, as is detailed in the food report we put out last year. We did have a column in the Vanguard last year, in which we detailed, week after week, the work that we did, including many of the above noted accomplishments. While we were no longer allowed to have the column this year and therefore, a better job could have been done communicating these efforts, it would be amiss to say nothing positive has been done in the past four years.

Sincerely,
Kara Bohde
Sucheta Desai
Erik Ginthwain
Christopher Hayes
Michael Kearney
Monica Mohan

With the government on the verge of shutting down last week, a deal was finally reached in the 11th hour, literally. The issues with the government on the verge of shutdown have little to do with your party affiliation, and ultimately the budget should never have been strung out this long. Congress needs to learn the art of negotiation. Negotiation isn’t where one side sticks to their guns and refuses to get in and another side does the same with their key issues and refuses to give in to the other, resulting in this stalemate.

Congress is beginning to seem like a group of elementary school children who all want their own things, but refuse to share and compromise so everyone is happy. One of the most maddening things about the potential government shutdown is that the people in Congress and the President would still be collecting their paychecks while the servicemen and women around the globe would have received nothing if the budget hadn’t been passed. It should have been the other way around; people who have direct control of a budget getting passed should lose their salaries, while others who have no say in the matter should be able to retain their salaries and benefits. We’ll see how quickly a budget gets passed if that’s the case.

We understand that no senator or representative wants to be the one who slashes defense spending, but the time for the Department of Defense to keep receiving a blank check has run out. The defense budget has ballooned to nearly five percent of GDP for fiscal year 2010. Although we’re fighting some form of conflict on three fronts in the Middle East, we’re not working on raising our revenues to help cover the massive defense expenditures we’ve been making.

Gregory Singer, a managing director of AllianceBernstein, said, “This is clearly far and away the most generous tax situation that’s existed.” The mainstream media is quickly picking up the story, as well after it was reported that General Electric paid no corporate taxes this past year and has a team devoted to ensuring it pays as few taxes as possible.

By all means, GE and every company out there should be allowed to legally exploit the loopholes in the system to the best of their abilities, but it’s time for the government to start closing those loopholes and working to bring down the astronomical debt. Taxing the rich and the corporations is necessary and would help bring down the debt and reduce the ever increasing income gap between the rich and the poor. Otherwise, the next lower and middle class uprising like Egypt’s and Jordan’s might happen right in our own backyard.

To the Editor,

As the funding board for recognized student organizations on campus, the Allocation and Internal Audit Committee (AIA) is no stranger to criticism and backlash regarding our allocation decisions. The recent editorial, however, contained certain inaccuracies and areas of concern for the board that we felt were necessary to address to clear up any misconceptions.

The tone of the editorial overall called into question the level of transparency that AIA provides for students regarding how the Student Activity Fee portion of their tuition is spent. Ironically enough, however, The Vanguard was provided with, but chose not to publish, a report from the AIA Treasurer, providing a breakdown in allocations among organization clusters and line item categories for an article that ran in the exact same issue of the newspaper. This report and its accompanying graphs and charts, from our standpoint, were intended to be published to provide the student body with a greater level of transparency for how their money is being spent.

To address smaller concerns—the editorial mentioned that AIA will only provide funding for food if it is through Sodexo; however, Bentley has a master contract with the vendor, so it is outside AIA’s control that food must go through Sodexo. As far as our t-shirt policy, our manual states that given their cost, they are rarely funded, but it does not rule out the option entirely. Spring Day and the upcoming Bentley Arts and Music Festival have been provided funding for t-shirts after the board concluded that the number of students who would benefit from shirts was larger in comparison to those organizations who request them for much smaller-scale events.

To come to the defense of the particular organizations that were called out in the editorial, we wanted to address a couple of issues. As we make our funding decisions, the AIA board attempts to remain as unbiased and fair as possible, holding all organizations to the same standards. Given the nature of different organizations, however, not every organization can be considered and funded in the same way.

While the Ski and Snowboard Club’s budget may exceed the budgets of other organizations, it cannot be denied that they function in a manner that lends itself to off-campus activity—something requiring transportation that is funded by the Student Activity Fee. Personal costs like lift tickets and room and board, however, are each participant’s responsibility to cover.

Two other organizations targeted in the article were the Bentley Rugby teams. Do the Bentley students as a whole stand to benefit from the travel funding that the rugby teams receive? If it means that the transportation takes them to Nationals competitions where they win first place, then many would argue that it does. The importance of considering the nature of organizations plays out most strongly with the Club Sports like Rugby. They simply do not function in the same manner as those in other clusters. AIA, however, does recognize certain funding

Disparities, which led to the decision to implement a new policy specific to Club Sports, requiring members of their teams to pay a certain portion of their budgets through dues and fundraising.

Lastly, while CAB’s budget may seem big, their events serve the largest percentage of the Bentley population. In a survey sent to the entire campus by ABA, 84% of students expressed that they would like their Student Activity Fee to go towards large-scale events such as those put on by CAB. Additionally, with around 3,600 Bentley students partaking in Spring Day activities last year based on MyBentley wristband sales, it seems logical and fitting that their budget is so big. When AIA decides to allocate funding for the Spring Day concert, it is important to keep in mind the greater costs of high quality artists.

AIA always welcomes constructive criticism, opinions, and suggestions for how we can improve our policies and processes, but we wanted to take the opportunity to clear up misconceptions, as well as to defend our decisions and those organizations mentioned in the editorial. If any students have questions about the use of their Student Activity Fee or wish to see the AIA Treasurer’s Report, please e-mail GA_AIA@bentley.edu.

Sincerely,
Elise Hanaoka
Allocation and Internal Audit Committee Chair

Although a minority of Bentley students will have any direct interaction with AIA and ABA, it’s important that they understand what is happening with their student activity fee, which, theoretically, should benefit them directly. Although these issues only have a direct impact on organization presidents, there is ultimately a trickledown effect which affects students who pay the activity fee, or every Bentley student.

Let’s say you’re an organization president and you want to have your organization’s name or constitution changed, or make any change to your organization which requires ABA approval. You would typically submit the request to your ABA rep, ABA would discuss and ultimately vote on your proposal behind your back without any input from you, and then let you know whether the proposal was ok or not.

ABA also pretends to use CollegiateLink to help determine how many members are in a particular organization and to say that certain organizations regularly use it as a method of publicizing events. The only organization which seems to regularly use it is CAB, and that’s simply because they are their own cluster rep due to their size. Student Life and ABA continue to regularly push organizations to utilize CollegiateLink to publicize their events and manage their membership, yet no students actually utilize it and even freshmen barely know what it is or how to use it.

Let’s say you wanted to start a new organization on campus. You will have to collect signatures and complete the daunting and arduous new organization packet, which at the very least will take weeks to get approved and may ultimately be rejected after you’ve completed all the work for a club you’re very passionate about starting.

The ultimate question is what determines the legitimacy of one organization over another? Is the Bentley Ski and Snowboard Club, which runs trips to ski mountains in the winter and doesn’t have an active membership any more legitimate or illegitimate than the Bentley Democrats or Republicans, which don’t run many events but ultimately have a very active membership?

Furthermore, why shouldn’t the Democrats or Republicans receive funding for food at their meetings when they have a regular consistent membership, whereas the Ski and Snowboard Club receives much more funding for their events?
Ultimately, the funding creates another issue for the treasurers and presidents of Bentley organizations. Oftentimes when organizations receive funding, there are too many restrictions on the funding that ultimately the organizations question whether the funding is worth it in the first place. AIA will only provide money for food if it’s through Sodexo, unless Sodexo issues a food waiver instead. Let’s be honest, though, if you want to have Chinese food at your event, just because Sodexo can make Chinese food, doesn’t mean that they should.

Similarly, AIA has a fairly blanket policy prohibiting funding for t-shirts, although somehow the large-scale student events always manage to receive funding for Spring Day or the upcoming Bentley Arts and Music Festival (B.A.M.F.). For organization trips or certain events, any student organization should be able to have AIA fund t-shirts, especially if it makes identifying a group much easier.

Bentley students pay $288 per year for the student activity fee, which should benefit all students equally. The ultimate question comes down to whether Bentley students are benefiting from their share of the student activity fee.

Do Bentley students as a whole stand to benefit from the travel funding that the rugby teams receive? CAB was allocated over $360,000 last year for their events, including Spring Day and the comedy shows, adding up to about $90 per person alone. Are you getting your money’s worth?

To the Editor,

SGA acknowledges the misrepresentations in the recent Vanguard article about our proposed reorganization. Two Executive Sessions were called during our General Board Meetings in past weeks so our members could internally discuss the draft elements of a Reorganization Proposal that was presented to students for discussion at our General Board Meeting on Tuesday, March 8th.

That meeting was open to all students, and, as always, we welcomed their input. Further, the Reorganization Proposal being considered will be posted on SGA’s website (BentleySGA.com) by Jon Rockett, SGA’s Vice President for Information Technology, in advance of our final vote on the issue, which is scheduled for March 22nd. Input is welcome from all students.

To address a separate point, the minutes from our February 22nd General Board Meeting have been amended to reflect the Executive Session held that day, and the minutes from our March 1st General Board Meeting do note that an Executive Session was called. These Executive Sessions were called to allow SGA members to streamline their draft ideas so we could present a clear proposal to the student body.

Most importantly, this reorganization is meant to help SGA better respond to student needs and concerns. We intend to achieve that goal by ensuring that future elections are contested and that students continue have a voice in the election process. Following the lead of other elected bodies on campus, specifically the Class Cabinets, we continue to believe that an internal placement model with a commitment to openness and engagement with the student body best suits the needs of both our organization and the wider campus community.

This information was provided to The Vanguard upon request, but did not appear in the article published on the topic. Furthermore, we find the nature of this article to be disappointing and ask only that The Vanguard’s coverage of all organizations be presented in context and in a constructive way. We look forward to continuing our strong working relationship with this publication going forward.

Sincerely,
The SGA Executive Board

One of the hallmarks of a Bentley education is the abnormally high amount of group work students have to do in virtually every class, from your GBs to your Philosophy and Literature classes. It’s one of the most dreaded aspects of any class, especially when you can’t pick your own groups, and as anyone who has taken GB301 knows, there are always countless problems which arise in the process.

As the administration says, you’re ultimately going to have to deal with similar group projects and conflicts in the “real world,” so we might as well learn to deal with the issues now.

But in actuality, the group projects are less like the “real world,” especially when students have little incentive to perform. In the “real world,” a paycheck is riding on the performance of all players, but in the Bentley world, all that’s riding on the performance is a single grade in a class.

Further adding to the problem is the fact that everyone’s definition of a “good grade” varies from person to person, which inevitably leaves the freeloaders to make out ahead by pulling in a decent grade for virtually no effort and minimal punishment as a result.

We are all subjected to these “freeloaders,” and since we all have countless group projects, we have each dealt with them at some point. By sheer numbers, some of us are probably those freeloaders, as well. While they ultimately win out in the deal, the other students who hold themselves to a higher standard are left holding the short straw.
Ultimately, they are the ones that have to bridge the gap between the C/D grade work that the freeloaders create (if they create any at all), and bring it up to the A/B level that they strive for.

Almost every class which has some component of a group project has some peer evaluation system, which is supposed to make us feel that they will be penalized for freeloading. But we have yet to see peer evaluations that are successful in bringing all group members to carry their own weight on a project. The closest that we’ve seen has been firing a group member from your GB301 team.

While theoretically firing someone would be a major deterrent, in reality the firing process is so complex and arduous that doing so is almost impossible. Furthermore, you rarely see people’s true colors in a group until it comes down to the wire where everyone has to work together to pull the final project together. By that point, it’s too late to fire someone, so you’re stuck struggling to pull together the final pieces just so you have something to turn in for the final business plan.

We understand that this is practical experience for when we head off into Corporate America, or wherever our careers may take us. Once we’re in the corporate world, however, the stakes are higher and a pink slip is a pretty good incentive for everyone to start pulling their weight.

It’s time Bentley starts incorporating the pink slip into the classroom to give students a real practical experience in the business world.

After Bo Burnham rocked the Koumantzelis Auditorium this past Sunday, it was a shock to find out that he is one of the few comedians who hasn’t made fun of the venue he has performed in. Everyone from Bentley’s own Brandon Schug to nationwide headliner Stephen Lynch has made fun of how embarrassing the auditorium is.

With on-campus rooms like the CMT and the Trading Room, the state of disrepair of the auditorium is embarrassing. With creaky old seats, some broken ones, half with desks, half without, the auditorium looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 1980s, and it looks as if it’s the oldest, most rundown part of the entire campus.

When Bo Burnham had his comedy show on campus this weekend, Bentley’s facilities were inadequate for his performance, and CAB was forced to outsource the sound needs for his performance. It’s not as if the auditorium isn’t used, especially when APO uses it for their bi-annual performances – SASA uses it for Diwali, and FYS uses it for plenary sessions.

It’s time for the Koumantzelis Auditorium to enter the 21st century and become yet another part of Bentley that we’re proud to show off. It’s absurd that Bentley needs to hire outside help for a basic comedy performance because our speakers and sound system are inadequate. Although the lighting in Koumantzelis is pretty terrible as well, that seems to be a function of both a terrible space with low ceilings and stage and underutilization of the space.
On the days that the space is utilized, it serves as an embarrassment to the entire Bentley community. The fact that the closest available bathroom during events, which regularly causes visitors to get lost, is in the basement on the other side of the building is a terrible embarrassment.

One would assume that after a pipe burst in Lindsay and thousands of dollars in equipment and classrooms that Koumantzelis might have been fortunate enough to get some updating out of the deal as well, but apparently not. While buildings around it have been updated in the last decade (Smith was built in 2002, the Library in 2006 and the Lower Café in LaCava and Seasons have been updated in the past two years), Lindsay, and especially Koumantzelis, have been neglected.

Bentley doesn’t have a large function area for the school to embrace the arts and performances. Even though Koumantzelis is larger than the Wilder Pavilion, the Center for Business Ethics regularly hosts their keynote speakers in Wilder because it is a better venue. Bentley shouldn’t have to decide between enough seating and a strong venue. There should be a venue on campus with enough seats to accommodate all who want to attend which and is a strong venue to host even Warren Buffet. It’s time for Bentley to step up and update the area of the campus which is most in need of updating.

Dear Editor,

All students received an invitation this week from the Counseling Center and the Peer Educators to the second annual Fat Talk Free week of events. What is “fat talk?” It surrounds us.

How many times have you heard someone complain that some item of clothing, or a certain color, or a horizontal stripe makes them look fat? Many students plan on avoiding meals prior to a night of drinking in order to “cancel out” the calories from alcohol – a practice so common, the media has dubbed it “Drinkorexia.” And fat talk is not only negative; any talk that reinforces the thin ideal and body dissatisfaction can be fat talk.

How often have you received or made the common compliment, “You look great; have you lost weight?” Yes, women talk fat more than men, but the unhealthy obsession with body image and weight is not exclusively a woman’s issue. Men are increasingly impacted.

Fat talk, like most habits, goes unnoticed. But its effects are quite noticeable. The emphasis on the unattainable thin ideal creates, at the least, body dissatisfaction and, at the worst, extreme self-loathing. More importantly, the thin ideal contributes to an environment conducive to the development of eating disorders.

At Bentley, we know from NCHA survey data that 66 percent of our female students are trying to lose weight, despite the fact that only 29 percent consider themselves to be slightly overweight, and 2 percent very overweight. Dieting does not cause an eating disorder. But the pervasive and distorted desire to lose weight when one is not overweight becomes part of the social environment that strongly contributes to disordered eating.

We hope you can attend FAT TALK EXPLAINED tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. in the EDR. The Peer Educators, along with FIRE and Panhel, promise an interesting collage of movie clips, dance performances and a special opportunity to hear a Bentley graduate explain her journey to recovery from an eating disorder while a student here. Please join us!

Dr. Brenda Hawks
Associate Director of Counseling

The second you move into your first apartment, you’re filled with glee. You think about all the meals you’ll be cooking, all the parties you’ll be hosting and how amazing it feels to finally be off of a meal plan run by the evil empire: Sodexo.

After the novelty finally wears off, a new problem eventually arises, the bigger mess that comes with having your own kitchen.

After dishes and pots begin to sit in the sink for days on end, and days turn into weeks, eventually you give up. Now, don’t let yourself become delusional – this happens to everyone regardless of how many roommates you have, where you go to school or if you live on campus or off campus.

Ultimately, the hassle just becomes too much to bear and you give in and break out the disposable plates and utensils.
Bentley has been pushing the sustainability angle for a few years now, and the on-campus apartment seems to be the biggest area for sustainable gains. Disposable plates and utensils are used all across campus by all of us because we’re too lazy, too busy or just hate cleaning in general.

Not only would the dishwashers encourage the use of reusable dinnerware, but it would also help to reduce the waste that we all throw away on a daily basis.

According to treehugger.com, the average kitchen faucet flows at about two gallons per minute, while the average Energy Star rated dishwasher uses about four gallons of water per cycle.

If you honestly think that you can wash the same number of dishes that can fit in a dishwasher in two minutes by hand, we would like to see you try and achieve a fairly decent level of clean.

Even treehugger.com, a blog about making sustainability more mainstream, concluded that it is virtually impossible for hand washing dishes to be more efficient than the efficiency of a dishwasher. Similarly, the University of Bonn in Germany concluded that a dishwasher utilizes half the energy, one-sixth of the water and less soap than hand washing dishes would.

North Campus apartments are very nice and well-furnished, with brand-new appliances. All it’s missing is a dishwasher to go with it. There is plenty of unused cabinet space that could easily be replaced with dishwashers, and all apartments would stand to benefit from them.

Put dishwashers in any of our apartments and we would almost immediately stop using disposables and going back to our cheap Target dinnerware.

Bentley should give it a shot, even if it is in the form of a limited trial in certain on-campus apartments, and they should measure the results. The amount of trash generated by Bentley students would quickly fall and the total water consumed by all of us would hopefully fall with it (unless we’re all using disposable plates).

This is the next great frontier for Bentley sustainability, and it’s certainly within reach.

This year has been a great year for snow if you like skiing, snowboarding, sledding or really any other outdoor winter activity. This year, upwards of 60 inches of snow has fallen in Boston already, according to WCVB-TV, with over another foot anticipated to fall on Wednesday and Thursday at press time. This winter is certainly one for the record books, but University Police and Facilities seem to be struggling to manage the snow.

Chief Leffler emailed campus last Wednesday afternoon outlining snow removal procedures and parking regulations for the entire campus, informing everyone where to move their cars to assist with snow removal. While we all went to sleep praying for a snow day, all we were graced with was a 2 1/2 hour delay.

Typically, when there is a snow day or a school delay, it is because the conditions aren’t safe for people to travel to campus. Although a significant percentage of students live on campus, we certainly can’t forget that both commuter students and professors still must make the drive from their homes to campus in whatever conditions Mother Nature presents.

Last week’s snowstorm ended up closing Gann Academy and Waltham Public Schools for the entire day, both less than a mile from Bentley’s campus, and both decided to cancel school before Bentley, according to thebostonchannel.com.

When school is held and it is or has been snowing, we as students have a reasonable expectation that it is safe for us to go to school and that the roadways, parking lots and pathways at school are clear. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case after last week’s storm, and we doubt it will be the case after this week’s storm.

At 11 a.m. last week when classes were supposed to return to normal, North Campus students were unable to get their cars out of the parking lot they were told to park in because it was never plowed. The Miller parking deck was still covered in a layer of snow, which a week later turned into ice and with another foot of snow on the way, was still there.

This winter is certainly going to be one for the record books, which is why it is one which the entire Bentley community can learn from. It is imperative that Chief Leffler and Facilities work in better cooperation to ensure that Bentley students are easily able to make it to and around campus.

If they aren’t able to do so in a timely manner, Chief Leffler should err on the side of caution and close the school before a member of the Bentley community is involved in an avoidable and preventable accident.

To the Bentley Community,

To be honest, when I decided to run for this job, I never expected it to be easy. And after receiving 1,263 emails of criticism over the last 12 months, it seems that that was one call I got right.

(To put it into context for you, I received 79 emails I would consider praise over the last year.)
Being Editor in Chief of The Vanguard for the past 12 months has been a true honor and privilege, and not only have I learned a great deal about this campus, but also gotten a greater sense of myself and my limits.

For the first time in my life, I ascended to a position of power I never aspired to have when I first joined this organization four years ago as a sports writer, and I’ve since had the time of my life.

This role was surprisingly difficult, and I had expected quite a challenge, with frustrations and issues arising just about every week I sat behind the Editor’s desk. One week we would have too much content or a lack of ads, a piece would completely miss the mark or offend someone, and occasionally I received an email about just how I personally (not the organization, writer, columnist etc.) upset  someone. Leadership, this role has taught me, is about taking responsibility every time.

Criticism is more than warranted of every publication, and if there is one lesson I would want to impart on Bentley students today, it would be that you are not perfect; you never will be and get ready to hear about it when you leave this campus.

The real world does not tolerate late papers or missed deadlines, slapped together projects or half-assed assignments. The company you will work for hires you for the best you have, and if you make a mistake, you’ll be called on it.
Please be willing to hear criticism, learn from it and also learn that some must be taken to heart while other comments must be taken with a grain, if not a pound, of salt.

I thank each and every one of you for sharing your comments and concerns with The Vanguard and I, as well to all of you for reading this past year, even if you never emailed me.

We have worked hard every week to make this paper the best possible product for you, our reader, and provide you not simply with entertainment, but information relevant to your Bentley experience and beyond.
Have we always been successful? This is not The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal folks, and we don’t have a paid staff, massive funding or an ample amount of free time, but every single person who puts their name on our pages gave it 200% with every single submission and every last edition.

I can’t thank the Editorial Board of this newspaper enough or properly for all of their hard work and dedication over the last twelve months, and of course, of our wonderful staff of writers, photographers, columnists and production workers.

Rebecca, my superb Managing Editor, can’t be thanked enough for being my right hand man all year long and never failing to bring fresh perspective, John for being the General Manager who brilliantly calmed our business operations, Tomer and Alyson for showing every week why you love this organization with your superior effort, all of the section editors (Andy, Dan, Robbie, Sindhu, Chris, Brian and Phil) for providing the consistently excellent sections we’ve enjoyed, Greg for not only sustaining but expanding our national advertising to fantastic levels, and all of the hard work that Leslie and Heather put forth on Production (which was always good for some laughs), Nic for all of his passion for the website, and Brandon for bringing his many talents to the team this semester.

These people were more than colleagues or gifted companions, they have been the backbone of this organization and many of them will continue to be for years to come.

Lindsay & Ryaboy….I can’t put the weight of my thanks into words, and won’t try here.

I must thank our journalism advisor Judy, who has guided me from a copy editing assistant to Editor in Chief, and has helped me understand both how to be a journalist and a leader through the best and hardest of times, while Maria DiLorenzo came through for me time and again, and tolerated my frequent drop-ins to her office all year long. Thank you to my parents, my family and my friends for all of your support as well as your pointed feedback, and thank you to Bobbi-Lynn, Emily, Jen, John and the rest of the Res Life team for supporting me throughout this fantastic opportunity.

Lastly, thank you to Dave Hennessey, who left Bentley for a great opportunity my sophomore year, but who made it clear to me when I first came to Bentley that the best way to enact change is to never stop fighting for it and to use your voice until your breathe runs out. Those words have motivated me throughout my time at Bentley, and will likely inspire me for the rest of my life. Thank you Dave.

This paper starts and ends with this community, and I know that I will greatly enjoy watching the growth of my successor, Leslie Dias, who has the drive and intelligence to push this paper to greater heights than I ever could, and has the wit and personality to bring our message to all corners of this campus. Bentley is lucky to have such a gifted individual ascending to this role, and I couldn’t be happier for her or The Vanguard.

There will always be those who try to push us down, deride us with comments for daring to question their “accomplishments” and analyzing their work; however, we are the University newspaper. We are not “shamed” for pushing Student Government or CAB to deliver for students rather than waste time and funding, we will not be “bullied” by this administration or other organizations that stand terrified of negative press, and we are not here to favor, hate or harm this community.

The Vanguard has been here since 1963 to inform you, entertain you and provide you with a voice when all else fails.

That, my friends, is a promise, no matter who sits behind this desk.

Cheers,

Jon McColgan
Editor in Chief
The Vanguard