OCR Text |
Show 111 0 Professor says Utahns passive-aggressive ... page 4 Iou 41\ 4 mom Signpost ndoor track season winding down ... page 6 AT A GLANCE EDITORIAL BUSINESS & SCIENCE SPORTS CLASSIFIEDS 2 3 4 6 7 E VOL 82 ISSUE 66 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012 WWW.WSUSIGNPOST.COM WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Expanding -- 1441A1? efforts New student chapter of USGBC formed By Chelsee Boehm correspondent I The Signpost In an effort to support sustainability initiatives around campus, Weber State University faculty and students recently created a student chapter of the United States Green Building Council. USGBC is a nonprofit organization for educating Americans on the importance of sustainable building. USGBC, which has chapters across the U.S., formed a division in 2010 focused on educating and involving students. Jeremy Farner, assistant professor of engineering technology at WSU, worked as regional chair in Utah to help major universities become involved with the USGBC. The University of Utah was the first to take on the task, followed by Utah State University and then WSU. Farner said he wanted WSU to be first, but U of U and USU had prior affiliations with the USGBC. After establishing the club at WSU, Farner became the adviser. He began speaking to his students about their interest in the council and on whether or not they wanted to be involved. "I wanted it be student-driven, rather than faculty-driven," Farner said. Aaron Conlin, a senior at WSU who is getting his bachelor's degree in integrated studies with a focus in architecture, became the president of the council after Farner asked him if he wanted to get involved. Conlin said he was first interested in the USGBC because he wanted to know how people were able to make buildings "green." The WSU student chapter of USGBC had its first meeting on Jan. 19, 2012. "(USGBC's goal) is to make the students aware of what they can do to make buildings green," Conlin said. See Green page 5 Learning about the Civil War By Sarah Gribble correspondent I The Signpost 1 . II Is ..111111 • '1111111111111111111111111 101 . ... 1 ;OOP II I ill I,. UM 1111111111111111 ' PHOTO BY TYLER BROWN I THE SIGNPOST Solar panels installed on top of the Shepherd Union Building. Weber State University faculty and students recently formed a student chapter of the United States Green Building Council. Along with the community, two Weber State University professors met at the Pleasant Valley Library Wednesday night to discuss many events of the Civil War and novels about that time period. "A thing that we have to understand is that we live in the year 2012, and we make a lot of our judgments associated with what we do now," said Richard Sadler, a history professor at WSU. "We are going to go back 150 years and will be dealing with people that have different ideas and feelings, and to be fair with them, we need to use their ideas to make judgments about them." The discussion series "Let's Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War" is a reading and discussion program that brings the community together to talk about that moment in history. Sadler and Brandon Little, another professor at WSU, have devoted their time to guiding this discussion within the community. "In many ways, I think Americans are more interested in two events in our history than any others," Little said. "Those are the Civil War and World War II. The Civil War captures the imagination, I think, in part because it's this crucible of national survival, and the costs and stakes were extraordinary" On Wednesday, Sadler started the night's discussion with mentioning the role of personal bias, and asked the audience about their own personal biases. He also addressed document authentication and the history of the 1860s. He touched on subjects like the economy and slavery during that time period and compared it to present time. At the end, Sadler addressed the assigned reading, and asked questions to get the audience thinking. This week, the group read the novel March by Geraldine Brooks. See Civil War page 5 Free HIV testing The art of acting By Stephanie Simonson managing editor I The Signpost The Northern Utah Coalition offered free and confidential HIV testing to Weber State University students from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Thursday. Coalition volunteers administered tests in the Shepherd Union Building's Diversity Center, where Planned Parenthood also manned a table of safe-sex supplies and pamphlets. Carlie Benson, a volunteer for the coalition, graduated from WSU in microbiology in spring 2011. She is currently studying Spanish at WSU while she applies to medical school. She said HIV education is particularly important in Utah because of the conservative culture, which often discourages people from being tested. "Part of it is because, especially here in Utah, it's kind of stigmatized to have multiple partners or to have extramarital sex, so people might not be as honest about their sexual history," Benson said. ". . . So I think that it's important to just raise awareness that nobody's judging you, we just want you to be healthy, and we want you to know your status so that your partners can be healthy. I mean, people have sex, they're going to. So you may as well just educate them and be smart." According to Amy Martinez, also a volunteer and recruiter for the Northern Utah Coalition, the HIV blood test only took around 15 minutes per student. Students were given their results on the spot. However, Benson said no one there was definitively told he or she had HIV. Students who tested positive were declared "preliminary positive" and referred to their local health department. "Once they get the confirmatory test from the health department, they're provided with a lot of resources, support groups, with a lot of different community resources that can offer them help while they're going through this time of their life, and then they're referred to a clinic in Salt Lake City, down at University Hospital at the University of Utah," Benson said. "There's no cure ever, but they treat and manage symptoms .. . There's only one clinic that does that in Utah, and it's at the University of Utah." Misconceptions about HIV See HIV page 5 PHOTO BY TYLER BROWN I THE SIGNPOST Participants in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival rehearse for a showing of the play 365 Days in the Browning Center. Weber State University has played host to the regional festival this week. |