Tag Archives: NECC

News

NECC Parking Accrues More Controversy

 

NECC’s parking permit policy is in its third semester of employment and it is still stirring up controversy. The passes themselves cost $8.50 for students and adjunct faculty per semester and $17 for full-time faculty for the academic year. Although they are inexpensive when compared to other colleges’ parking passes, some faculty, staff and students still dislike them based on the principle of the matter.

Lt. Dan Tirone, operations commander of security for the Haverhill campus, said that the permits are disliked but very helpful. In situations where someone has left their lights on or has gotten into an accident, the permit system makes it easier to locate the owners of the cars involved and handle the situation. Tirone said, by administration’s standards, the main purpose of the permits is to keep tabs on who is on campus.

If a student, staff or faculty member gets a new car or has to take a car that isn’t theirs to the school, they have to notify security that there is a vehicle in the lot that belongs to someone with a permit, without a visible permit. “It’s imperative to come in if you have a different car and let us know so we can give you a temporary pass,” said Tirone.

Tirone said that there are two or three rounds a day in the different lots to look for violators of the parking policy, depending on how busy campus is that day. Weather conditions rarely affect rounds.
“I’m not going to put my people in harm’s way but weather doesn’t matter. That would be unfair to people paying for permits. People without permits could be taking those spots closer to their building that they’re actually paying for,” said Tirone.

“We see more people going for free parking more in the fall in Haverhill,” said Tirone. The nicer weather makes the walk from the Tech Center to wherever people are heading a lot easier.
The Buckley Garage in Lawrence isn’t a very far walk no matter the weather. Lt. Tirone said, “Lawrence [security] has to be more careful because they’re downtown with meters. More people try to sneak in.”

The only people exempt from buying permits are those with handicap placards and plates. State law states that as long as these drivers are parked in handicapped spots, they cannot be ticketed.

When cars without permits park in permit-only areas and get ticketed, they can be issued a fine. The fines collected throughout the year do not disappear but can be appealed in person at the security office or online where the permits are sold. Unpaid fines do not affect your ability to sign up for classes, petition to graduate or anything else having to do with academics, but they do accrue interest.

For those still against paying for permits, Tirone says there are roughly 300 or 400 non-permit parking spots next to the Hartleb Technology Center in Haverhill, and the Buckley Garage offers free parking for the Lawrence campus.

Editorial

Meta Toolkit

 

A news employee wears a lot of hats, especially on a small, student-run paper like this one. That can be a really good thing! It’s a great opportunity to learn a whole lot of valuable skills and acquire some very useful knowledge.

To take the best possible advantage of that, there are some other skills you’ll want to keep in mind.
Getting good at things is a skill you can get good at. It’s called rapid skill acquisition — you can learn how to identify the core principles in any discipline, and, with a little time, effort and enthusiasm, get pretty good at it. Not great. Maybe not even professional. But good enough that you could put it on your resume.

If you sign up for the Observer (and there are openings) you’ll have the opportunity to get reasonably competent in some very valuable computer skills. You’ll get experience with programs like Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, and with WordPress.

These are the programs that professionals use to edit photos, to design publications. They’re very powerful programs, and one of the things you should keep in mind is that if you think something ought to be possible using them, there’s a really good chance that it is. You may have to do some Googling to figure out what the feature is called, where to find it and how to use it. (Though with experience you’ll get the hang of exploring to find the things you’re looking for.)

But when you know it should be there, you’ll often be able to figure out where to find it.
Also: Learn keyboard shortcuts. You can’t imagine how much time you’ll save.

You can also learn how to Google. Like, really Google. It’s one of the best research skills you can develop for getting good introductiory information about any given topic.

I’ll let you do some digging on your own but the main points are: use search settings to narrow your range; learn search modifiers (putting site:[url] returns only results from a particular website. Putting a phrase in quotation marks returns only results that contain those words in exactly that order.); and word choice.

Word choice is possibly the most powerful one. Definitely a good one to learn as a writer: get the hang of guessing what other people would say about the thing you want to find, and you’ll be able to effectively search for it. (And you’ll be better at writing about things in a way that helps people find it. Which is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Which is a skill you can put on your resume.)

In some small part, journalism is about becoming a kind-of-expert on a dozen things a week for long enough to explain the basic idea to non-experts. That’s a really cool thing to be able to do! And it’s a thing you can learn how to do, and get better at.

It’s really important to understand that you can improve your ability to acquire skills, and you can improve your ability to learn and use information.

Sports

NECC Knights Keep On Winning

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The NECC Knights just keep on winning. The Knights closed out the season with an incredible 20-game winning streak and finished the year with a 25-2 record. Both losses occurred back on April 18 when they were still in Florida for spring training. The Knights are 13-0 in conference play.
In 27 games this year, the Knights have scored 203 runs. They average roughly 10 hits per game (271 total), but they have only hit four home runs on the season. The key to their success is timely hitting and good baserunning.

With a .339 team batting average and a .449 on base percentage, it’s hard to keep these guys off the basepaths. NECC has also stolen 81 bases as a team this year. They’ve only been caught 18 times for an 82 percent success rate.

Sophomore catcher Harrison Smoske has been a big part of the offensive success this year, leading the team with a .462 batting average. He leads the team with four triples on the year and has driven in 16 runs. He is also second on the team with 13 stolen bases.

Freshmen Colby Maiola and Ellidio Reyes have continued to make an impact in their first year with the Knights.

Maiola leads the team in home runs (3), RBIs (26) and stolen bases (16), while Reyes is hitting .370 with 34 total hits and 22 RBIs. MacDaniel Singleton has knocked in 18 runs and leads the Knights with 10 doubles this year.

The pitching has also been stellar this year. Knights pitchers have thrown three shutouts and have a collective 3.87 ERA with a .263 opponent batting average.

Ryan McAuliffe and Zarif Pajazetovic continue to lead the way on the mound for NECC, and it’s almost hard to tell who is the ace of the staff.

McAuliffe leads the team in innings pitched (44), strikeouts (46) and ERA (1.84) and has notched a 5-0 record this year.

But Pajazetovic isn’t far behind. He has thrown 40 innings this year and leads the team with a 6-0 record, and his ERA is 2.03.

While it may be hard to pick an ace, it is certainly a good problem for coach Jeff Mejia to have.

Freshmen Anthony Dally, Robert Barry and Gianni Esposito have also made an impact for the Knights this year. Dally, a lefty, is 2-0 with a 4.23 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 27.2 innings pitched.

Barry and Esposito are both right-handers and have both pitched 19 innings this year. Barry has put up a 3.28 ERA, while Esposito has a 1.89 ERA.

The Knights will look to continue their success into the playoffs, hopefully culminating in another trip to Tyler, Texas for the NJCAA World Series.

With the quality depth both on the mound and at the plate, the Knights will look to be a serious contender to win it all in 2015.

Arts and Entertainment

Children’s Present Stuart Little

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Stuart Little by the NECC children’s theater class opened Friday, May 1 at 10:30 a.m. to a small audience.

Stuart Little is the story of a walking, talking, car driving mouse who is adopted by the Little family. The older brother, George, is not happy to welcome Stuart into the family, creating a very unusual sibling rivalry. The only character more reluctant to accept him is the family cat, Snowbell.

The story is based on a classic children’s novel written in 1945 by E.B. White and was released in 1999 as an American family comedy film with an all-star cast, including such greats as Michael J. Fox, Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie.

Though the budget was considerably smaller for NECC’s performance, this small cast did a great job creating a very entertaining show.

News

Getting Enough Sleep to Survive Finals

 

By Rachael Sarcione​

NECC students are preparing for upcoming final exams, and possibly some sleepless nights. However, lack of sleep could cost them more than good grades.

Sleep deprivation in college students is a major contributor to poor academic performance. According to the National Sleep Foundation, students getting less than seven hours per night of uninterrupted sleep are more likely to experience severe memory loss.

“Talk about being stuck between a rock and hard place,” said NECC student Melissa Dow. “I need to rest so I can remember what I studied, but I have to stay up later and study.”

According to the American Psychological Association, being extremely tired can have negative effects on your attitude and social behavior due to the inability to tolerate noise and bright lights. When someone is tired, fluorescent lighting (often used in classrooms) can cause impaired judgement and poor concentration.

Besides the effects that sleep deprivation can have on brain function, some people experience visible symptoms, such as dull skin or even hair loss.

“I have a few clients who always develop Alopecia Areata (baldness in spots) during final exams,” said hair stylist Diana Brown. “I can’t wait for them to graduate and start getting some sleep.”

With so many distractions, some students find that time management issues make it hard to get to bed in time for a good night’s sleep. “There are way too many awesome shows on TV, and […] by the time I look at the clock, it’s like 4 a.m. I don’t know if I should even bother going to sleep at that point,” said Dow.

News

NECC Hosts First Speechapalooza

 

NECC’s first Speechapalooza event took place on Wednesday, April 8 in the Spurk building. The event was planned and promoted by Professor Amy Callahan’s Principles of Public Relations class.

Speechapoolza is a public speaking event that promotes student empowerment and gives student speakers the opportunity to present their work done in previous classes at NECC.

Professor Amy Callahan created this event because she wanted a chance to showcase the inspiring work her students do in public speaking and public presentation classes at NECC.

“I wanted to create a venue to celebrate these students and allow them to share their work with a larger audience,” said Callahan.

Students who participated in Speechapalooza gave five to ten minute presentations on various topics. Some of these topics included, the history of the chocolate chip cookie, sexualized images of women in media and graffiti as propaganda.

Shaina Richards, communication major at NECC, spoke about sexualized images of women in media.

“Getting the opportunity to speak in front of a larger group of people than I previously have in class settings was exciting and nerve-racking. One of my personal goals has become to improve my public speaking skills, and this was a great opportunity for me to be able to do that,” said Richards.

Being able to be a part of this event and speak to an audience about how the media sexualizes women was important to Richards.

“I identify as a feminist and am very passionate about women being treated and seen as equals to men. I’m probably going to continue to write and hopefully speak on this subject in the future,” said Richards.

According to a newsletter written by NECC President Lane Glenn, “An event like Speechapalooza brings you the best that colleges have to offer their communities and the world: the academic freedom, the critical thinking, and the voices of our students—tomorrow’s opinion-makers and leaders of change.”

“This event was a celebration of free speech and student voices, and I think the spirit of the event came across. It was meaningful because lots of people showed up to listen to students. In that way this event was about the importance of listening to each other — listening to young people — as much as it was about students demonstrating their public speaking skills” said Callahan.

Students and faculty can expect another Speechapalooza next year according to Callahan.

Opinion

Teacher Evaluations

 

By Kyle Benson

There are many different ways to evaluate teachers today. There are websites like ratemyprofessors.com, ratemyteachers.com and teachercomplaints.com, but the one way schools, including NECC, crack down on how students feel about teachers is
the end of the semester teacher evaluation sheets. This is a good tool, but do students take the evaluation seriously?

“When they hand those sheets out, it usually is at the end of class, and I just want to get home,” said Greg Komornick. “If I like a teacher I’ll fill out the sheet with all 5’s, and if I don’t like them, I’ll just fill out the whole sheet with the lowest number.”

Many students agree with Komornick. They would like to just get home at the end of the day and not fill out sheets that don’t concern themselves. There are others that take the evaluations seriously however.

“I take filling out the evaluations seriously,” said Mike Bilodeau. “They reflect upon how students feel the teacher is doing and lets the school know whether they are doing good or bad.”

These evaluation sheets and evaluation websites are important for teachers. It affects their jobs and whether or not student will sign up for their classes. If students don’t take the evaluations seriously, it could really end up negatively affecting a professor. These sheets and websites are there to rate a professor on individual parts of their jobs and then averaging the results out to have a better look at what they need to work on.

News

NECC Spring Jam

 

Spring Jam was held on the quadrangle on the Haverhill campus on Wednesday, April 15.

Club tables were set up to hand out different information to the students to make them aware of what goes on on campus and what they can get involved in. They had information regarding health, volunteering and fun stuff activities as well.

The student Senate held a hula hooping contest, where students could win little gifts for participating and chatting with student senators who were there working the event.

Kim Daigle, a paramedic student said, “It’s fun talking to new students and potentially new senators. I love being involved and I would love to get the students as passionate as I am — Spring Jam was the perfect place to do that.”

Along with the hula hooping contest, the Sport and Fitness department held a couple different activities. They held a limbo contest as well as a ladder ball competition. Donna Passemato, an exercise science major said, “its good to get out and get some fresh air. Plus you can have fun playing games and maybe get a little bit of a workout. “

Student Engagement passed out free cotton candy — The students seemed to enjoy this because the people making the cotton candy were absolutely covered in it from head to toe. Ari Chiklis and Kadee Tapley both who work in the student engagement center had the cotton candy in their hair.

Most of the clubs on campus were there so students could learn about what they do and how to join them. One of the clubs that put on a special talent show was the Community Outreach Club — they had an array of performers, some a little more controversial than others, but overall it seemed everyone watching the show enjoyed it

Kristen Curry, a general studies student said, “I really enjoyed the show, they had some gutsy people to get up there and sing — I could never do that.”

Curry was watching the show while waiting for her foam finger that was getting her name put on it in bright graffiti. A few students were upset that they waited in line and were not able to get a foam finger because of the high school students visiting for the “College for a Day” event.

Daigle said, “I saw a few people upset over that — they said it was not fair that they did not get them. They were pulled aside and a happy medium was accomplished.”

The Spring Jam event for the Lawrence Campus will take place on April 29 on the patio of the Dimitry Building.

Campus Life

GSA Welcomes Potential Students at Spring Jam

 

During NECC’s College for a Day, which happened alongside the annual Spring Jam celebration on April 15, high schoolers from around the area visited to get an idea of what the average day in college is like. In an effort to help the LGBTQ+ demographic feel more welcome, the GSA set up a table outside where these students could ask questions about the organization and sign up for a list to receive news and information via email. In the spirit of celebration that comes along with Spring Jam, those at the GSA table handed out candy and stickers.

Kelly Schwing leads the group as student president, explaining the possible benefits for those entering higher education for the first time.

“Having the GSA could make the transition from high school to college a little easier,” she said. “Students in the LGBTQ+ community sometimes find themselves feeling left out and the GSA gives them a place to hang their hat.”

Of course, transitioning to college is overwhelming for almost anyone, but there’s an added level of stress for those who identify somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. According to a national report compiled by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, “more than 60 percent of LGBTQ+ students do not feel safe in schools because of their sexual orientation, and 38.4 percent do not feel safe because of their gender expression.”

Colby Patrie, another member of the GSA, explained how having a safe space benefited him during his transition to college.

“In high school, I was the only openly gay, genderqueer student,” he said. “No one else knew what that was, and I was harassed for it all the time until I stopped talking about it out of fear. Transitioning to college was rough for me . . . I was scared of what other students would think of me. The GSA was my first club I joined when I came to NECC . . .
“I remember they were talking about the transgender panel they were making, and I shyly raised my hand and asked if genderqueer could be added as well. They said they thought it was a wonderful idea, and from then on I made friends, I opened up, and I am so glad that every Friday I look forward to being able to talk about my personal issues without feeling judged.”

Patrie isn’t alone; students who have organizations like the GSA available to them generally have a better experience at college. Researchers from the California Safe Schools Coalition found a link between safe spaces for LGBTQ+ students and feelings of safety among all students attending that school. Results from the survey found that “76 percent of students who attended a school with a GSA felt safe, versus 69 percent of students who attended a school without a GSA.”

“The GSA is a safe environment,” said Sara Ramirez, a student staff member of the group. “Our officers are equipped with phone numbers and assistance to help anyone. Our members have knowledge of different types of people, and we have a trigger warning protocol.”
Students who go to a school with a GSA don’t just feel safer — they are safer. The sex education provided by such student organizations often has a ripple effect beyond those within the group.

For example, students in schools with a GSA are more able to name faculty they feel safe with, less likely to be victims of dating violence and/or harassment related to sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.

“The GSA is one of the most accepting places on campus,” said Patrie. “Even if you’re not in the LGBTQ+ community, everyone is always welcome to come by and see what we’re all about.”

News

Expansion on Lawrence Campus

 

“This is big news,” said NECC President Lane Glenn, referring to the upcoming expansion of the Lawrence campus. “We expect to be welcoming two new college partners.”

Having these new partners will enable students to get a bachelor’s degree in several majors right on the Lawrence campus.

Regis College, a private college in Massachusetts, will offer students a BA in nursing, public health, and health science. Lyndon State College will offer a BA in Information Technology, a BFA in Graphic Design, and a BA in Visual Communication and Music Business. This is the first time bachelor’s degrees in these majors will be available in Lawrence.
The college is also hoping to open a Regional Public Safety Center in the next few years, and are currently looking for funding for the building. According to Glenn, the facility will be a “new police center for the city of Lawrence as well as a training center for college students.”

The opening of this center would make Lawrence the “premier location for police training in the Northeast,” he said.

The Lawrence campus will be offering “more tutoring services and more developmental coursework, replicating what’s happening on the Haverhill campus,” said NECC Dean Chuck Phair. NECC hopes to create more opportunities for students at Lawrence High School to become involved with dual enrollment.

Glenn also expressed interest in rehabilitating some of the facilities themselves. “We’re hoping to renovate the Dimitry building and the library on the Lawrence campus,” he said.
The college has been working with the city of Lawrence to improve the Buckley parking garage. As part of this, increased lighting in the garage will help students walking to and from their cars feel more safe and secure.