The University of Maryland, Baltimore County police department hired John Schaible, the new Emergency Preparedness Director, to help prepare and organize UMBC in case of an emergency situation. It is what he has done for the past 12 years at the United States Department of Homeland Security. Prior to his career at DHS, he was a Security Forces Operations Officer in the United States Air Force for seven years.

Schaible started at UMBC on Feb. 3. Prior to that, Mike Pound, the Director of Environmental Safety & Health and UMBC Police Chief Paul Dillon oversaw the Incident Command System at UMBC. The ICS is a management system set up as an example to be implemented at different institutions and governments, which was developed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

UMBC’s pandemic plan was put in place when the H1N1 or Swine Flu epidemic was rapidly spreading across the United States. Though few pandemics have hit UMBC’s campus, there is much talk about the Coronavirus, or COVID-19, affecting study abroad and international students at UMBC and across the nation. “[Here at UMBC], we started by putting a team together, about a month ago, to talk about what we are doing as a university,” said Dillon. 

The group, made up of a variety of on-campus groups including the Provost’s Office, University Health Services, Chartwells, Student Affairs and others, meets on a weekly basis. “The group has met four times, just to make sure the communications have gone out correctly. We’re putting information in the correct places for our students, faculty [and] staff to access,” said Dillon. “A message went out on January 27th to the entire campus, on where we’re at as far as the global situation, as far as the university situation, as far as our students that are studying abroad.” A second message was sent out on Feb. 19.

Schaible’s job in emergency preparedness mainly focuses on organization in the face of disaster. “I’m making sure that the incident management team structure is in place to define all the key players’ roles and responsibilities not just for this incident, but for any other incident that might occur,” said Schaible. 

Coronavirus has not hit anywhere in Maryland or even regionally; however, Dillon and Schaible ensured students that having an emergency plan in place in case campus needs to be shut down is a “good plan.”

“[The plan] was updated last year. It has to be updated annually. It will be updated as lessons learned occur, so everything we learn from doing this will change things for next time,” said Dillon.

Dillon states that UHS is in daily communications with the Baltimore County Department of Health and has a set of questions for students who are sick, and generally the healthcare professionals are advising students to stay home and self-isolate. 

“One student had come from China, a month ago, and she self-isolated in Texas for several weeks. She did all the things she was supposed to do, and she’s fine,” said Dillon.

For now, Dillon and Schaible agree that Coronavirus is not an imminent threat to UMBC students, but communication and emergency preparedness is always key to campus safety. “Monitoring the situation regionally is our main focus right now and ensuring that the information that comes to us gets out in the appropriate ways,” said Schaible.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

For hungry students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Retriever Essentials is more than just another on-campus program — it’s a lifeline. For three and a half years, this collection of on-campus organizations, student groups, academic departments and off-campus partners have been working to eliminate food insecurity at UMBC by offering food and toiletries donations, as well as connections to other on- and off-campus resources.

One of their newest programs, Save-A-Swipe, offers students the opportunity to donate five or ten meals from their meal plans to other food insecure students on campus. This may be a good start to leveling the playing field for low-income students, but is it enough?

The Save-A-Swipe program requires students to make a decision about whether to donate at the beginning of the semester, with this spring’s deadline being Feb. 14, before most students even know how many meals they are going to need for the semester. Once the Valentine’s Day deadline has passed, there is no option to reconfigure donations, despite the fact that food insecure students don’t begin receiving their meal swipes until March.

Furthermore, there is no option for students to donate more than 10 meals a semester, regardless of how many more they may wish to give.

The logistical difficulties inherent in the Save-A-Swipe program are unacceptable considering how many meal plan swipes expire unused on this campus. Students on weekly meal plans have to use up all their swipes or watch them be thrown away at the end of the week, and the inflexibility of UMBC’s meal periods forces students to spread out and delay their meals even when they have enough swipes left to pay for them.

As a commuter student, I often struggle to line up UMBC’s awkward meal periods with the few days I spend on campus, and end up with multiple wasted swipes at the end of the week. So why doesn’t UMBC give us the option to automatically donate unused meals at the end of every week?

Even if every single unused meal from every single meal plan was automatically donated to food insecure students, the exorbitant cost of on-campus meal plans means that UMBC would still be making a significant profit off every meal plan sold.

If each meal swipe is valued at $6.10, then even UMBC’s least profitable weekly meal plan (the Flexible 5) would give the school a profit of $357 for every plan sold. The school’s most profitable meal plan, the Flexible 14, would give them a profit of $1,122.10 per plan, while still donating any unused meals to students in need.

Throwing away unused meal swipes rather than giving students the food they paid for or donating it to charity is an act of excessive greed. Retriever Essentials and Save-A-Swipe may be a good start to UMBC’s attempts at helping students in need, but until this school is willing to overhaul its system in the name of ending food insecurity, nothing will truly change.

Ballantine Books published R. Eric Thomas’ first book, a memoir titled “Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays,” on Feb. 18, 2020. Composed of 15 personal essays, the book follows Thomas through the ups and downs of his life so far. In “Here for It,” Thomas describes his younger self as “a little ball of potential (but oblivious) gay energy in a Baptist family from a black Baltimore neighborhood.” His essays explore his journey through self-doubt into self-discovery and acceptance as he weaves together complex themes of race, sexuality, love and more in his essays, and develops a strong and unique voice that bolsters the book’s excellent humor.

Thomas is a former University of Maryland, Baltimore County student who worked for The Retriever Weekly, the previous title of this newspaper.  In one of the essays in the book, called “Something Is Wrong on the Internet,” Thomas focuses on part of his time at UMBC, when he gained internet notoriety for an online published article, which he intended to be satirical but was not received as such. This section is particularly intriguing as it is from the point of view of a current UMBC student, and Thomas skillfully sets up his discussion in later essays of writing in the age of the internet.

In his essays about his life during college, Thomas writes with the wisdom of experience but also with honesty. He details the joy he found in such small and crucial things as candy bars and friendship, but does not shy away from describing his turmoil. His stories all add up as he paints a picture of his younger self struggling with his mental health and self-image in terms of his race, his sexuality and its coexistence with his religious beliefs and romantic endeavors. His essays move chronologically and thus progress with time, showing Thomas marvelously bring pieces of knowledge from other times in and out to contextualize each essay. He connects each aspect to the bigger picture, as a story about a time that has impacted his life.

Thomas’ essays are distinct, but are all strongly in his voice; he narrates, explains his thought processes and adds appropriately funny asides. The last device tends to become tiresome with overuse in personal essay collections, but Thomas is always purposeful and inventive in his writing. His essays are easy to read, wise, encouraging and engaging, especially through his humor. He turns phrases matter-of-factly without being overly self-deprecating and also crafts jokes that resonate with and bring a smile to the reader.

“Here for It” is a set of emotional, genuine and hilarious essays. Thomas’ stories, and his courage to tell them, will inspire readers to connect with or learn about the problems and triumphs that he has experienced. He treats his story as human and himself as a human being who has lived and will continue to live in and work on this flawed world by loving himself and others.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

The recent upswing in “anti-homeless architecture,” has once again brought the issue of American homelessness into mainstream conversation, this time on social media. Many cities have adopted increasingly harsh anti-homeless measures, both physical, such as spikes, bars, or sleekly redesigned benches; and policies, such as “vehicle-dwelling” bans, criminalizing panhandling, and increased punishment for loitering and sleeping in public spaces.

As with any issue, activists have taken to social media to combat it. Many organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity, raise awareness and help those in need in concrete ways. Others seek to combat very strong and palpable stereotypes that exist against homeless people in society. These campaigns, including the “Rethink Homelessness,” feature real homeless people in a style that mirrors “Humans of New York,” featuring a pictures alongside quotes or an interview. And though this may do a good job of humanizing a population that society seems to forget are, in fact, people, the question begs to be asked: to what extent does this type of activism help all homeless people, not just the “undeserving”?

Movements such as these, which highlight the personal, educational, or professional achievements of those who now find themselves homeless, scream the message: these people do not deserve to be homeless. They are just like you. They were just unlucky, and they still deserve to be treated like people. Which is true. Everyone who is homeless does not deserve to be homeless. But that is the point. 

No one deserves to be homeless, not just the ones who speak four languages, not just the ones who graduated from an Ivy League, not just the ones who used to work for a bank, not just the ones who were personal trainers. 

I applaud the work of people who run these campaigns, the people who are “in the trenches,” fighting against homeless legislation, aggressive gentrification, and a society that just wants this demographic of citizens to disappear. They are doing their best to remind everyone else that homeless people are people, not “vagrants,” not “losers,” not “worthless drug addicts,” but people. 

However, in qualifying these people as “wrongfully” homeless because of their socially acceptable “achievements,” we leave behind a large demographic of people who are drug addicts, who are former (or current) criminals, who are hopeless and lost and who are no more deserving of homelessness than the richest 1%. 

The right to shelter is a human right. In qualifying certain members of the population as undeserving of homelessness based on their achievements, we diminish the value of those who are not able to accomplish the same things in life, which should play no part in qualifying their humanity.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

Since the start of the fall semester, the friendly greetings of comfort dog Chip and her handler Sergeant Cheatem have become a welcome sight to students across campus. After completing a training course in upstate New York this summer, she now helps students cope with stress over grades, exams and other obstacles. But is her presence of any use if students can’t find her when they need her most?

Many students, including myself, are unable to seek Chip out when they are feeling stressed or overwhelmed. Chip and Sergeant Cheatem roam campus without a schedule, which, while seemingly allows a greater number of students to access to her at the same time, also means there is no way to know where she is. I, for one, have been searching for Chip since the school year started and have yet to catch a glimpse of her.

For students with depression or anxiety — or even those without it, who simply love animals and want to practice self-care by petting one — Chip is a welcome alternative to the exhausting and time-consuming process of applying for an Emotional Support Animal, which is a lengthy process that involves back and forth correspondence with Student Disability Services, speaking with the student’s doctor, documenting the support animal’s ability to help manage their disability and the student’s inability to use on-campus housing without the support animal’s help.

Many students feel that their mental health improves significantly after interactions with dogs, and Chip is a wonderful resource to have on campus. The excitement over her long-awaited arrival to UMBC was evident in the massive online poll to pick out her name, which was advertised by CBS, MSN and WBAL-TV, among others.

Yet many students remain unaware of where she is or even of her existence, due to the Counseling Services’ and the Police Department’s limited outreach regarding this new resource. Most of my friends were shocked to discover that UMBC has a full-time comfort dog dedicated to helping them.

Making Chip more easily accessible to students — whether that means giving her a welcoming home base where students can come to her when they need comfort, or giving her a set schedule so people are able to find her when in need — would encourage students to use her help, and likely encourage the use of other on-campus stress management services as well.

The resources put in place by Counseling Services and other on-campus organizations are doing a great deal to encourage healthy coping methods and destigmatize mental illness. However, unless those resources (including Chip) are fully available and accessible whenever and wherever they are needed, their usage will likely continue to be limited to those lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Six members of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Student Government Association resigned at the start of the Spring 2020 semester: two senators, a finance board representative, the director of communications, the associate director of community engagement and the president. As a result of these vacancies, SGA officials have spent the first few weeks of the semester trying to find suitable replacements.

When SGA finds itself with vacancies between election seasons, which occur every April, positions are filled by appointment, as laid out in the SGA’s constitution. When an SGA president resigns, the executive vice president takes their place; all other executive branch positions are chosen by the president. In the case of the executive vice president, vice president for student organizations and treasurer positions — all of which are usually elected in the spring — the president’s choices must then be confirmed by the Senate and the Finance Board. All other executive branch positions, which are appointed positions by default, need only be confirmed by the Senate.

Because she stepped into the role of president after the resignation of Vrinda Deshpande, President Frances Watson has had to make several such appointments in her first month as president. To take on her former position as executive vice president, she selected Patrick Reid, a former senator who had not participated in SGA in the fall semester because he was studying abroad. 

She talked to a few other candidates before Reid, whom she ultimately chose because she felt that “he had the passion about SGA, that he would be committed, that he would be responsible.” The fact that he had previously been a senator was a huge asset as well. “It would have been really hard to onboard someone” who was not already familiar with the inner workings of SGA, Watson explained.

Watson also had to appoint the new director of communications and assistant director of community engagement. For the former, she selected to promote another member of the SGA’s department of communications: Calista Ogburn, the former coordinator of social media and web design. The search for the latter is still underway.

Filling vacancies in other branches of SGA works somewhat differently. When vacancies arise in the legislative branch, composed of the Senate and Finance Board, appointments are made by the heads of these bodies — the Speaker of the Senate and the Finance Board Chair, respectively. The process for choosing a new senator or finance board representative involves soliciting applications, interviewing applicants and finally, choosing an applicant to be confirmed by the body to which they are being appointed. This semester, the Senate and Finance Board used different methods to solicit applications. The Senate published the application on myUMBC and made it open to all undergraduate students, while the Finance Board invited members of student organization executive boards to apply.

According to Josué Lemus, a junior sociology major and the assistant speaker of the Senate, this method of appointing officials as the need arises is the most practical way to fill vacancies. “Considering how short the semester is, it would be a lot to put up an election,” he said. “[To] set up polling, and all the electronic polling, and then to finally get the results? That alone could take a month or a month and a half.” In contrast, this process has taken just under three weeks. Applications opened on Feb. 6 and closed on Friday, Feb. 14; Lemus and Speaker of the Senate Wangui Nganga began conducting interviews the following Monday; and the confirmation hearing was a week later.

Lemus said he and Nganga have tried to bring on students from populations that are not already represented in the Senate. He also feels that the Senate confirmation hearing, in which the current senators can ask the candidate questions about their involvement on campus and goals with SGA, helps to ensure that Senate selections are being made in the student body’s best interests.

Six resignations in a semester may seem like a significant number, but Candace Martinez-Doane, assistant director of leadership and governance for Campus Life and SGA’s advisor, notes that this is a small portion of the over 50 students SGA employs. To her, these resignations indicate good judgement and self-awareness on the part of the students who resigned: “Their first priority should be to be a student, and there are other priorities that may take precedence [over SGA],” Martinez-Doane said. “I don’t ever bemoan someone for making tough decisions.”

The reasons for this semesters’ vacancies are varied. Former Senator Jared Richard’s resignation comes down to a matter of timing. Along with being a part of SGA, he is also the president of Catholic Retrievers and resigned when he learned that the only time that organization’s executive board could meet was during Senate meetings. 

“As president of [Catholic Retrievers], I felt like I had a great responsibility to the organization. On a personal level, I just felt like that was more important to me than what I was doing at SGA,” Richard explained. 

As a senator, Richard had been working with the staff and students to figure out how the Interfaith Center, currently a part of the same trailer that houses the Counseling Center, would be transferred into the upcoming health services and counseling building.  Though he is no longer working on this project in the capacity of a senator, as the president of a religious organization, he is still able to participate in conversations about the future of the Interfaith Center. 

This is fortunate, as there is a chance that no one will be picking up the initiatives that the two senators who resigned were working on. “There is this issue of transition in the SGA,” he said. “Let’s say you were working on something [and it] turns out that there’s a conflict and that project may or may not be completed. Then somebody else comes in and they have their own ideas of what they want to accomplish. It can be difficult to get something very solid done.”

He noted, however, that many senators who join the organization in the spring go on to do great things, even in just their first semester. One such success story is that of Kelechi Onyeaghala, a senior biology major who was appointed to the SGA in spring 2019. 

Going into her first semester, Onyeaghala did not know exactly what she wanted to use her time in SGA to accomplish. But after speaking with Richard, who was the speaker of the Senate at the time, she decided to focus on a passion of hers: mental health within communities of color. 

“[Richard] really helped me carve out that vision and it was pretty much based on what I was passionate about,” Onyeaghala said. Over the course of that semester, she partnered with the Mosaic Center to create an event entitled “Breaking the Silence” where faculty panelists spoke about mental health within communities of color. She is considering reprising the event this semester.

Watson, too, is an example of a senator who started midyear and was nevertheless able to make waves within the organization. Though she has now risen to the office of president, she recalls her first semester as a senator working to advertise the Career Center’s Traitify app to students. She advised the incoming senators and other SGA officials, whose place she was in a year ago, to focus on keeping open lines of communication with others in the organization and to “[be] patient with yourself … it can be overwhelming to immediately be in a new position.”

For those interested in joining SGA, applications to run for office are open now until March 6.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

Political candidates have a responsibility to disavow the hate or violence their supporters are saying in their name. President Trump has failed more than once to speak out against outright hatred. While he’s been spotlighted many times, no one should be immune to scrutiny, especially as younger people get more involved in politics and use their online platforms to say things they never would otherwise.

Bernie Sanders was recently criticized by Joe Biden for a perceived lack of action in response to his supporters attacking trade union leaders. The Sanders campaign didn’t immediately respond, but at the 10th Democratic debate on Wednesday, Feb. 20, Senator Sanders was asked directly about his thoughts on online attacks by his supporters.

He condemned the attacks and said that the people who commit them are not a part of his campaign’s movement. His words were important and sent a strong and clear message that he cares about what is done and said in his name. While it would have been better to address the situation more quickly rather than waiting for the debate stage, I’m grateful that at least he didn’t just say that those launching attacks online were “fine people” in order to avoid losing their support.

Politicians often go to great lengths to avoid alienating their supporters, which can hinder them from accepting responsibility for their role in political discourse beyond a debate stage. By making a clear statement of  “This isn’t okay, I don’t agree with this,” politicians could encourage people to be more responsible with what they’re saying or doing because they’ll know that their candidate of choice will not support hatred.

Following the Feb. 20 debate, many took to Twitter to assert that not all candidates are being held to the same level of responsibility for their supporters’ words and actions. Moreover, people questioned whether politicians should even be held accountable.

The answer is yes. Political discourse is one of the arenas where if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. To be clear, candidates do not need to address every single time someone uses their name or image to perpetuate something negative.

However, politicians are put in a difficult situation when there is a joint effort to breed animosity or more than just a few supporters who are spreading hate. They can either do something to stop it or do nothing and allow the behavior to continue. Political candidates are extremely influential public figures and, whether they mean to or not, play a large role in shaping the everyday behavior of their followers.

If a celebrity going through a breakup can be responsible enough to say “Don’t be hateful” to fans about their former partner, why are we expecting less from people who are meant to lead the nation, especially when it involves serious and influential policies? If politicians turn a blind eye to problems and injustices during their campaign, it’s reasonable to believe they’ll do the same when they’re in office.

Senator Sanders’ response is an example, albeit an imperfect one, of a politician accepting responsibility for their role in shaping the conversation. Hopefully, others continue this practice.