Halle Nelson

As schools within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) face financial struggles, many are trying to determine the best method to improve their circumstances. RAND Corporation for the Pennsylvania legislature conducted a study whose results were showcased in a presentation to the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, April 25.

In a 73-page Google Doc, 21 former Channel Awesome contributors and employees (not all content creators were paid or had contracts, their videos were just embedded on the site) detail what they allege occurred during their time on the site and channel. It is impossible to tackle all that was discussed throughout the document, so I will try to write about what I feel are the most pressing accusations.

Mahoney, who also teaches Strategic Social Media, stresses the importance of getting students not affiliated with media to get invested in it, especially with the arts. “There’s no industry out there that’s separate from the arts these days. With social media, every single industry, every single business, every single company has their foot in the door,” said Mahoney. “So it’s really important that you’re an accomplished practitioner whenever you graduate. So, a little video production experience can’t hurt anybody.”

Regan, portrayed by a Deaf actress, is not a character pitied by the film. Rather, she is shown as a complete person with her own opinions, sense of responsibility, quick thinking and bravery. Her father, portrayed by Krasinski, continuously attempts to create for her cochlear implants with higher frequencies. However, the film recognizes that a.) cochlear implants are not a cure for deafness and b.) cochlear implants don’t work for everyone. The film never delves into what caused Regan’s deafness, but there are a multitude of reasons why they could be ineffective for her. That is not what’s important here. What is important is that with her deafness Regan is still capable of navigating the abnormal environment she’s stuck in. She doesn’t persevere in spite of or because of her deafness. It’s simply a facet of her life.

One of her lawyers, Dan Kearney, said the following in a Raging Chicken Press interview: “We thought that the case was really unusual in the sense that Colleen had done a very good job of documenting what had transpired here. So, in assessing the case we had a very optimistic view of how the courts would view her case primarily because we weren’t dealing with a ‘he-said, she-said’ sort of situation. We had a black and white paper trail of emails other correspondence, in memorandums, which really set forth in a very clear way factually what had happened here.”

The RAM Initiative aims to integrate small numbers of students with intellectual disabilities into a two year educational experience. Next academic year will start the pilot program, and two students will take classes on campus. They will be commuters taking classes full-time and will be eligible for grants and work study programs. In the future, West Chester University hopes to have a residential component in place.

Going into this event, Raclaw hoped the film would diminish preconceived notions about AAE. “The film did a lot of work to dispel these stereotypes by discussing how the grammar of AAE is just as logical and rule-governed as what we think of as Standard English,” said Raclaw. “For example, in most varieties of AAE the word “ask” is pronounced like “aks,” but “aks” was actually the original pronunciation of that word when it entered the English language over 1,000 years ago! So there’s no such thing as ‘bad English,’ just different Englishes, and I hope students left the event with that in mind.”

The export of these items would have required governmental approval. However, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security conducted a check on Sept. 6, 2016 which found that the accused parties had never even applied for any export licenses. Within the indictment, the U.S State Department said the following: “It was an object of the conspiracy to construct and operate a factory in Iraq for the purpose of manufacturing and assembling fully automatic, less than .50 caliber rifles and carbines without the required license of written approval.”

The FBI confronted Ruchlewicz in June 2014 and Fleck in March 2015. Both consented to being wiretapped and cooperating with FBI investigation. The recordings from wiretaps over the years were used as evidence throughout the trial. Fleck himself, according to Morning Call reporters Emily Opilo, Peter Hall and Matt Assad, plead guilty to “one count of conspiracy to commit extortion and bribery offenses and a single count of tax evasion.” Though Ruchlewicz was not charged with a criminal offence, he did admit to taking $2,000 from Pawlowski’s and Fleck’s Allentown Future Fund.

With 17 dead, Douglas is the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, rivaled with the 1966 University of Texas school shooting with disputed 13-17 dead. The second deadliest was Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 with 26 dead. The most deadly was the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 killing 32 people.

In Harrisburg, Pa. at Graterford and Greene state prisons, five inmates on death row have sued, challenging the policy of solitary confinement. They were assisted by the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union, the Pittsburgh-based Abolitionist Studies Project and three law firms. The inmates involved in the suit are Ronald Gibson (49), Jermont Cox (46), Anthony Reid (50), Ricardo Natividad (49) and Mark Newton Spotz (46). All of the aformentioned inmates have spent between 15 and 27 years on death row. The lawsuit requests the prisons terminate mandatory solitary confinement. This ruling could affect the 156 men currently on death row at the prisons.

Special Agent Scott Curtis took the stand. He said that the FBI suspected Pawlowski’s campaign advisor, Michael Fleck, and business associate, Sam Ruchlewicz, of loan and tax fraud. Further investigation led to the agency alleging a pay-to-play scheme. Pawlowski argues his innocence and his representation claims that the FBI’s case “was built with unreliable consultants to the mayor who were crooked themselves.”

The statement further read, “As we know more we will be sure to deliver updates. In the meantime, we are heartbroken by what’s befallen Barclay Friends and uplifted by the caring and generosity that surrounds them and us.”

Gainer said, “Kudos go to our Interim Director of Public Safety, Jon Brill, who coordinated these efforts with university public safety and the borough emergency operations team members throughout the township, because this was a well organized effort to help our neighbors. It’s important that the university is a resource for our community, and Jon stepped in, did what he had to do because he’s trained to do it, and it really was an effort to be able to get everyone where they needed to be quickly.”

When asked about what the most fulfilling part of his job as a chef at Gemelli is, he said: “It’s bringing something that is authentic and that is dear to my heart. It’s something that I grew up with, you know, so that’s why I opened Gemelli. To share those things, those ingredients, those emotions, those products to people who might not have the chance to go to Italy or they go to Italy and then they come back and they miss that.”

In addition to the stellar cast including 80s acting queen Winona Ryder, the show has a lot going for it. “Stranger Things” made the careful choice to not reveal the monster’s appearance until the end of the season, building up suspense for the viewers. The humor is spot-on. The characters are well written. The mystery is thought provoking. Everything about this show just works, as showcased by the many fans who have used the show as inspiration for their Halloween costumes.

Minasian feels that having an Armenian club presence on campus would be very important. “I want Armenians to have pride in our culture because we are a small community,” said Minasian. “If more people learned about the culture and the history behind our heritage then we’ll definitely get our word out. So I want everyone to be proud of where we come from . . . as well as who we are. For people who are not Armenian, [this club functions for them] just to learn another culture . . . and our values.”

Her work goes further than analysis. Napoli is also a part of a team of professionals that strive to protect Deaf children’s right to language. Her Swarthmore page notes that she, “publish[es] regularly in medical journals,” and is, “engaged in developing materials to promote shared reading between Deaf children and their parents.”

When Lalicker was asked about what he hoped students took away from the event he said, “That people’s lives matter. That the life of every individual is a series of choices. Ethical choices. Choices about how we connect with the world [and] about how we deal with people. The doctors and nurses and researchers who dealt with Henrietta Lacks had a series of ethical choices to make. Henrietta Lacks herself had a series of choices to make and that her family again had to say, ‘what’s the best way I can make decisions that help me to be the kind of person I should be in the world and makes the world better and not worse?’ That sense of the importance of every individual and the choices we make is something that I think is the essence of wisdom . . . I hope that’s something we’re learning at the university.”

Oliver then followed up by saying he loved the train set. “My only criticism of your train set is that I think you deserve a better one. A bigger one. An almost irresponsibly large one.” He then showed the revolving train set built using HBO resources for WNEP. This train set is 18-feet wide and 16-feet tall. It features a running water fall, the Scranton Electric City building, the Scranton sign, the paper building from NBC’s “The Office,” a train tunnel in the shape of NBA coach P. J. Carlesimo and it emits sparks.