• Reservable Study Rooms: These 15 rooms can be reserved up to five days in advance. Reservations are limited to 3 hours per person or group each day. Book yours today!
  
• Open Study Rooms: These 12 rooms are left open for students to use on a first-come, first-served basis. Each room has four seats.  They are located on the Quiet Floors: rooms 553-558 and 653-658.

John 15:5 (NLT) – “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

Philippians 4:13 (NLT) – “But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

“He, the strong, works in me, the weak. I, the weak, abide by faith in Him, the strong. And I, in the self-same moment, know myself to be weak and strong.” – Andrew Murray

“The error of this mode of thinking is that people estimate their weakness, not too highly, but too meagerly. They would still do something by the exercise of all their powers, and with the help of God. They do not know that they must be nothing before God.  You think that you have still a little strength, and that the Father must help you by adding something of His own power to your feeble energy. This thought is wrong. Your weakness appears in the fact that you can do nothing. It is better to speak of utter inability, for that is what the Scriptures mean by the word ‘weakness.’ ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’ ‘In us is no power.’” – Andrew Murray

Prayer: Father, I come to you and first acknowledge my utter inability to do anything in my own strength.  In my inability, may I receive Your strength– the power that comes in fullness with the resurrection power already living inside of us and say, “For when I am weak then I am strong” in Christ.

– JK

Hey guys, my townhouse has three rooms opening up, with availability being in early January (two UMBC students are graduating and one UMBC alum that lives here is moving out.)

The house is located right off Wilkens Avenue by the intersection of Maiden Choice and Wilkens, in the townhouse neighborhood called Broadfield.

Info on the house:

Rent: $375 plus utilities (averages ~ $390-$415 a month), security deposit on move in is $375

Location: Located less than a minute drive from I695, around a 8-10 minute drive (depending on traffic) to the Inner Harbor following Wilkens; about a 5 minute drive, 20-25 minute walk, and a 10 minute bike ride from UMBC.

Accessibility: Accessible via the UMBC shuttle (Groise Ct. and Maiden Choice and Maiden Choice and Wilkens bus stops); accessible via Maiden Choice bus stops via MTA Bus 76 and to CCBC Catonsville via MTA Bus 35.

Additional info: Located across the street from Giant, less than a quarter mile from the Weis off Wilkens and from other grocery stores. Downtown Catonsville is accessible to this location through car, bike, walking trails, and MTA bus. St. Agnes is about a mile down Wilkens from this house. The house has 1.5 bathrooms, with all occupants sharing a shower. There are laundry machines on the property, as well as a functioning dishwasher. Common spaces include the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and washer room in the basement. Storage is located in the washer room if needed.

DISCLAIMER: This house does have cockroaches. A few years ago, a tenant (who no longer lives here) moved in and was not good at keeping their space clean. Unfortunately, this brought cockroaches. Thankfully, the current tenants (including myself) have been working to keep the house clean, and the cockroaches are mostly in the bathroom. Some have migrated to the kitchen, though the situation in the kitchen is being contained. There is a mold problem in the basement room, though it appears to not be severe.

Here's the posting on the OCSS website.

Male college students only. If you're interested in seeing the house, send me an email at steven15@umbc.edu to set up an appointment. 

Every year, Americans waste billions of pounds of food. A 2016 report by “The Guardian” states that roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste also takes up the majority of space in all American landfills. But why do we have all of this uneaten food?

A huge part of the problem is that food is cheaper in the United States than anywhere else in the world due to subsidies on major crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans. There is also a cultural dynamic to the massive food waste problem that is unique to the American psyche.

Fruits, vegetables and other produce will naturally bruise, oxidize, brown or wilt as they travel from farm to supermarket and supermarket to home. The majority of American consumers would rather throw away slightly browned produce than eat it. For a family of four, the average value of discarded produce is nearly $1,600 every year. The American need for perfection is expensive.

Doug Rauch, a former president of Trader Joe’s, admitted that “[g]rocery stores routinely trash produce for being the wrong shape or containing minor blemishes.” This is under the lofty presumption that the produce even reaches stores. Insanely large quantities of produce are grown and then left to rot in the fields, fed to farm animals, or hauled off directly to landfills.

Another huge part of the problem is that there is no single regulation for expiration dates. The majority of Americans do not understand exactly what these labels mean. States have a dizzying variety of expiration date laws that are not based on science or public policy. So between the lack of label uniformity and the gap in understanding on what these labels mean, customers are understandably confused about when food has become too old to eat. This confusion can lead to tons of wasted food.

A federal standard is much needed if America ever wants to rectify its food waste problem. Expiration date labels need to be simplified to two clearly defined options: a quality date and a safety label. The quality date will tell the customer up to when the food will taste its best. The safety label will let the customer know when the food is no longer safe to eat without getting sick.

The amount of food the United States wastes every year has detrimental effects on the health of the environment. All of the food that sits in this country’s landfills releases hazardous methane into the already damaged atmosphere. Creating a uniform expiration date system is a key part to alleviating the problem of food waste and help the environment.

A key part in combating the problem is spreading awareness of the scale of the food wasted each year in the United States. Consumers eating that bruised apple instead of tossing it into the garbage could make all the difference.

After working at UMBC for over six years, SGA advisor Craig Berger will be relocating to Kent State University in Ohio.

His last day at UMBC was Nov. 17.

Although Berger wore multiple hats during his tenure at the university, he was best known as the full-time advisor to UMBC’s Student Government Association. In this position, he attended SGA meetings, including those of the Senate, and would often “meet with members one on one” to discuss current affairs.

SGA took up most of Berger’s workload, though not all. “I’d say I spent about 70 to 80 percent of my [working] time alongside the SGA,” he said.

The remaining 20 to 30 percent mainly belonged to his other duties as the Coordinator of Student Life for Campus and Civic Engagement. In this role, Berger was involved in events and civic engagement initiatives throughout UMBC. Additionally, he was engaged within the campus community as an author of Co-Create UMBC, a blog which, according to its Facebook page, “supports members of the UMBC community as leaders and change agents by sharing news, ideas, profiles and stories.”

As the advisor for SGA, Berger recalled some events that stood out to him. One of these was the impeachment trial of former SGA President Anthony Jankoski, which he described as a “pretty low point” for the organization. The trial took place in 2015 and Jankoski was accused of violating Rule 10, which states that candidates may not be “harassed, badgered, or intimidated by candidates or their supporters.” Jankoski was ultimately acquitted by the SGA Senate, 2-9.

Berger added, “Whenever there’s an impeachment trial, it’s like an atomic bomb… even if the impeachment is justified, that takes a toll on the organization and its reputation on campus.”

He mentioned specifically that these types of events draw attention to the drama and conflict at the expense of productive discussions about “the work that could be done.”

He also went on to say that he views the “work that is being done now” as a “high point” for SGA, noting that, as of this year, many people in positions within the organization have been taking responsibility in ways that previous leaders had not. “There are students that are really investing in their positions and making SGA a better organization or making the campus a better place,” he says, adding, “For me, that makes it inspiring, and it’s a little bit difficult to leave [SGA] knowing the upward trajectory of the organization.”

After leaving UMBC, Craig will be positioned in Kent State University, the main campus of which is located close to his Ohio hometown. His new title will be Assistant Director for the Office of Experiential Education and Civic Engagement. In this post, he will be involved in creating and engaging in opportunities for students for purposes like participating in volunteer work, presenting research or making policies, which he says he looks forward to doing.

He noted, though, that he holds fond memories of UMBC and will miss his time here. During his one-on-one sessions with the students, he particularly enjoyed “getting to know them personally, watching them grow, and seeing what they would do after they left UMBC,” something he described as “the most rewarding part.”

In the days and weeks following the election of Donald Trump, a massive groundswell of anger against the new administration swept the nation. Since then, the opposition has had a hard time organizing. Numerous competing groups are vying for the political power that comes with such an intense level of emotion.

Perhaps the largest and most powerful of these groups feeding off the opposition is the Democratic Party. The party seems to want to harness it to regain some of the thousand seats they have lost in the past decade with their “#Resistance.”

Yet, the Democrats may be poor stewards for such a movement. In many ways they offer little change from the Republican line. For example, they accepted without argument a nearly $700 billion defense budget proposed by the GOP last September. And this is to say nothing of their wholehearted if not extremely vocal support of corporate welfare in the form of things like stimulus packages and institutions like the Export-Import Bank.

Not only that, but the Democrats seem to hold a disturbing tendency to back out of controversial Progressive commitments when the chips are down. This was proved when Baltimore’s Mayor Catherine Pugh ignored a campaign promise to support a living wage by vetoing a $15 minimum wage bill last March.

But the issues do not stop with their present policy; the Democratic Party seems to be headed in the complete opposite direction of forming a “Resistance.” This was indicated as early as this February, when the party declined Senator Bernie Sanders’ challenge to move left by appointing the corporatist Tom Perez to chairman over the progressive Keith Ellison. However, this move was loudly and clearly determined as early as the 2016 Democratic National Convention when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the party’s electoral strategy.

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia,” he declared in a clear challenge to the Sanders supporting faction, “and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

The opposite, of course, proved to be true. “Moderate Republicans” voted with the real Republicans and many blue-collar Democrats, abandoned by their party, were left with no one to vote for at all. Thus, Trump carried working class districts even in supposedly deep-blue states.

This decision to pursue mythical Republican moderates instead of left-leaning Democrats or independents is frankly what produced Trump in the first place. How exactly can a party resist something that they themselves were complicit in creating? Furthermore, how can they defeat Trump without addressing the internal failings that allowed him to win in the first place? They cannot and they will not.

If this tendency continues, the United States will see progressive organizations eclipse the Democratic Party as the effective “Resistance” to the Conservative government, as groups ranging from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Green Party absorb the disenfranchised base of the old party.

At the moment it seems these progressive groups remain fractured and without serious direction. However, should these groups find some sort of unity and common direction they could prove to be a revolutionary force in American politics, providing something not seen in nearly half a century that the establishment simply cannot deal with: a truly different sort of political perspective.

John 15:12-13,16-17 – “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.”

Jesus’ central purpose and desire was to do the will of the Father, which was and still is to love us, this world, and bring everyone into his salvation.  Love is central to the will of God. Love, love one another, lay your life down for them…this is the will that Jesus chose us to experience and live out.

Love changed us and gave us life, and this is the love that will continually change us and draw us deeper into the will of God, our loving Father. When we are loving God (and this is the ultimate outcome of our worship), and when we are loving those around us, we will find that we are much more in the will of God, we are walking deep in the adventure, learning the wonder, and the power, and the beauty of living God’s will for our lives.

Love and loving is central to the will of God. Loving is clearest way of knowing that you are in God’s will. Worship and love. These bring us into the adventure of the Spirit-filled life, walking with the Spirit into the will of God. These are some of the primary means through which we can walk, live, and experience God’s will today. And as we press on to the things that lay before us, the things to come, the future direction that God has planned for us. His will unfolds right in the midst of these decisions and moments to worship and love.

Today, let’s simply pray through each of the passages from the last five days: Jeremiah 29:11-13 ; Galatians 5:16, 25; Romans 8:26-29a ; Romans 12:1-2; and John 15:12-13,16-17. And let’s ask the Spirit to fill our lives with worship and love.

– TR

Romans 12:1-2 (NIV) – “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

As we offer our lives to the Lord in worship, as we center our lives on knowing God’s heart and His ways we, “will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2). The Holy Spirit is at work in us making this our reality!

In and through a life of worship we are transformed. When we begin to live out each day as worship to the Lord – our work is worship, our classed are worship, our raising of kids is worship-filled, etc. Being in God’s presence, living in worship will change us. That is how wonderful and powerful God’s Presence is. And it is in His presence that we know His will more clearly and more deeply.

Let’s that the Lord for His mercies in our lives and the many ways He has rescued us, forgiven us, and changed us. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to increase His activity in the area of worship in our lives, reminding us to live worshipful in all that we do. Let’s scan our days and tasks today and decide to make them all worship unto the Lord.

– TR