Charger Bulletin: What motivated you to start this
sister project with The Charger Bulletin?

Mia Becker: The project had great support from
the beginning, which I think was the first real motivating factor. I wanted to
start a music magazine on campus just through a large interest in what’s
happening within our school, and events going on downtown. Our music program is
such a large part of our school and I wanted to create an additional outlet for
what’s happening within the musical
community.       

CB: What impact do you see this having
on the University
of New Haven?

MB: Hopefully a positive one. Something
that can really expand and shed insight into the local scene and expose some
new talent-both on and off campus. I’d like the project to be able to continue
for years to come.

CB: What specific groups are you
looking to get involved with?

MB: We’re looking to be involved with
all Music/Entertainment based clubs on campus-especially MEISA, because it’s
one of the largest. Any club/groups that would be interested in teaming up with
our publication, let us know!

CB: Tell us a little bit about what
topics you will be covering.

MB: A solid range of topics: various
events happening on campus (concerts, club events), upcoming shows within the
CT area, new music releases, conferences and news within the Music Industry,
and features on local artists in the area, both on and off campus.        

CB: Can non-music majors help with this
publication?

MB: Definitely! Just having a
general love for music is key. Anyone is welcome to join our staff. Everyone’s
musical tastes and musical experiences are so different. Contact us with any
questions or intent of interest!

CB: Will this be in a print format
anytime?

We’d like to be eventually. We’re
looking to expand the project into print in the future; maybe by next year.
There are advantages to being published online and advantages to being
physically published. But having a great public response/participation, as well
as being printed is our ultimate goal.

WEST
HAVEN–UNH had its first Beanhouse of the semester in Bartels Hall on Wednesday,
Sept. 17. This first Beanhouse, a celebration of the hidden talents of UNH students,
had a first set of performers which consisted of an interesting mix of poets,
singers, songwriters and guitar players.

Beanhouse started
with Kristin Merlin, a freshman, on guitar and vocals. She sang two original
songs, “To Be With You” and “Out Of Your World.” Brendan Burke, another
freshman, followed by singing a cover of the popular Death Cab for Cutie song
“I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” gathering others to sing along.

Amongst
the subtle flow of music, a performer going by the name of “Shadow” spread a
few pearls of poetry through her unique and self-reflecting poem “I Am,” and Phil
Duchesne imbued the crowd with his nonchalant and slow song, “Unintended.”
Other performers included Nathan Byrne and Kenzie Roeder, and Beanhouse concluded
after two hours with a beautiful performance by Ethan Tyler.

There was
a huge crowd of spectators – freshmen and upperclassmen alike – congregated to
cheer on the performers, sing along to their favorite songs and enjoy the hot
chocolate and cake provided by SCOPE. Overall, the night was an excellent
example of everybody from the UNH community coming out and supporting the
talent of various performers.

Positives

I’ve really been enjoying the wide variety of cultural food
(World Taste) being offered in the old faculty dining room where Take 3 is
located. It’s good food with good variety and is a great alternative to waiting
in the long lines in the cafeteria. Plus the people there are awesome!

It’s finally fall! I won’t miss summer one bit! Cooler
weather, pumpkins, apple cider, fudge, donuts, pie, Halloween–fall is totally
the best season!

The amount of people who have registered to vote on campus
and then sent in for absentee ballots is just amazing. I’m glad so many people
are taking the initiative to vote in the next election. Way to go!

Negatives

It’s about time they turn the AC off in Bartels! Walk inside
from the chilly weather into some nice, arctic weather–just the way we don’t like it. Everyone who spends any
time in Bartels knows they overcool it, and they better stop as the weather
gets colder. But before we know it, it’ll be way too hot to breathe in there.

Who thought it would be a good idea to get the garbage cans that have flaps on them? I have a
plate of lots of messy, slimy food and I need to throw it away. Oh wait, there
are flaps over the garbage can. Someone else already dumped food all over the
flaps. Oh well, I’m not going to touch it. And then it’s just disgusting.
College kids can be dirty, but seriously?

On Tuesday,
Sept. 16, Lindsey Buckingham, the famed and oft-overlooked musical engine
behind Fleetwood Mac released his fifth solo album. Gift of Screws is Buckingham’s fifth solo project since his 1987
departure from Fleetwood Mac.

Though
Buckingham was the mastermind behind Fleetwood Mac’s bestselling 1975 album Rumours, which according to the
Recording Industry Association of America has sold approximately 19 million
copies, he remains surprisingly under the radar. Indeed, in one of the tracks
off Buckingham’s 2006 Under the Skin,
he sings “reading the paper, saw a re

view, said I was a visionary, but nobody
knew.”

But with Gift of Screws, Buckingham bursts back
onto the scene with raw vocal expression, scathingly brilliant guitar work and
an attitude of freshness not seen in a fifty-something musician in quite a long
while. Contrast these qualities with 2006′s Under
the Skin and you find a very interesting parallel.

Buckingham’s
music is always introspective. Under the
Skin finds that personal reflection in a folksy, sweeping, almost ballad-like
sense. Gift of Screws is driven by a
more rock-oriented feel; it might
even be considered an improvement on Buckingham’s 1991 Out of the Cradle, an album huge in scope
and artistic progression.

Gift of Screws has plenty of moments where the listener
recognizes Buckingham’s signature guitar finger-picking, a method he utilized
while in Fleetwood Mac and on all of his solo projects. In the opener “Great
Day” there is a solo that Rolling Stone describes as “so
blowtorch-hot, it seems specifically designed to bitch-slap anyone with the
nerve to wonder if Lindsey Buckingham still rocks.”

“Right Place to
Fade” is a song that is directly reminiscent of a Fleetwood Mac rock piece, and
that is nothing to complain about. Indeed, Lindsey does still rock, and will
continue to do so if Gift of Screws is
any indication.

Buckingham
has a tour scheduled for this fall, and will be at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Wednesday,
Oct. 15.

“It’s a silent killer. It’s hard to diagnose,” stated current
Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson. He revealed a new campaign Monday, Sept. 15
concerning dangerous blood clots that have killed many Americans. These blood
clots are often masked as merely leg pain. 

A deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, develops in large veins,
generally a leg or the groin. It can quickly kill if it travels up to the
lungs, where it goes by the name pulmonary embolism, or PE. These clots make
headlines every few years when outwardly healthy individuals collapse after
long airplane flights or being in confined places. Vice President Cheney
endured one after a long trip last year. NBC correspondent David Bloom died of
one in 2003 after spending days inside a tank while covering the invasion of Iraq.

Each year 350,000 to 600,000 Americans get one of these
clots according to the new surgeon general’s campaign. At least 100,000 die
from them. Risk factors and triggers for these clots involve: recent surgery or
a broken bone; a fall or car crash; pregnancy, taking birth control pills, or
menopause hormones; and being immobile for long periods of time.  These risks increase with age, especially
over 65, as well as among those who smoke or are obese. Some individuals have
genetic conditions that cause no other symptoms but increase their risk, making
it vital to inform your doctor if a relative has ever suffered a blood clot. Symptoms
include swelling, pain, particularly in the calf, or a warm or red or even
discolored skin on the leg, shortness of breath or pain when breathing deeply.

The problem is that doctors are ill-informed too. Studies
suggest about a third of patients who need protective blood thinners when they
enter the hospital for major surgery do not receive them. Patients have even
been turned away despite reporting symptoms, like Le Keisha Ruffin. Ruffin went
to the hospital repeatedly following the birth of her daughter, reporting that
she had growing pain in her leg and groin in December 2003 and January 2004.
She was told it must be her healing Caesarean section scar. One night Ruffin’s
husband drew a hot bath for pain relief, only to have his wife get out minutes
later. Her leg was swollen three to four times its normal size and then she passed
out. 

“I like to call that my miracle bath,” Ruffin said, the
sudden swelling tipped off the doctors. Pieces of a giant clot in her right leg
had broken off and floated into her lung. 
The ER doctor told Ruffin if she had not made it when she did that she
may not have lived through the night.

Due to the surgeon general’s campaign, “DVT after all these
years will finally get the national spotlight like cigarette smoking did in the
mid-60′s,” said Dr. Samuel Goldhaber, chairman of Venous Disease Coalition and
a cardiologist at Boston‘s
Brigham & Woman’s Hospital.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is issuing a
12-page booklet to help consumers tell if they are at risk for DVTs and what to
do, as well as a 60-page DVT treatment and prevention guide for hospitals and
doctors. Starting Oct. 1, as prevention and incentive, Medicare will withhold
payment from hospitals when patients develop the clots after knee or hip
replacement surgery.

LOS ANGELES.–The nation’s deadliest rail disaster in 15
years, left train cars so mangled that some bodies had to be removed in pieces.
The commuter rail collision killed 25 people. Officials are investigating by
reviewing cell phone records to see if an engineer had been text messaging before
the accident. Claims have been made that the text messages caused the crash
because they caused the engineer to run a stop signal. The commuter train
carrying 220 people rolled past stop signals Friday, Sept. 12 and barreled
head-on into a Union Pacific train in Chatsworth. 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) confirmed
that the engineer, who was killed in the crash, had failed to stop at the red
signal. NTSB experts plan on reviewing the cell phone records of two
14-year-old boys and the engineer. The teens told CBS2-TV they received a text
message from the engineer shortly before the crash. The boys were among a group
that befriended the engineer and asked him questions about his work.

NTSB board member Kitty Higgins stated investigators never
found a cell phone that belonged to the engineer among the wreckage but would
still request his cell phone records, as well as the cell phone records of the
boys. “We are going to be obtaining records from their cell phones and from the
cell phones of the deceased engineer and will use our subpoena authority or
whatever other legal authority we need and to begin to determine exactly what
happened and what if any role that might have played in this accident,” she
said.

At a news conference Higgins said that because of the
failure to stop at the final red signal, the train was forced onto a track at
42 mph where the Union Pacific freight was traveling in the opposite direction.
She stated she believes the collision could have been prevented with technology
that stops a train on the track when a signal is disobeyed. The technology was
not in place where the crash occurred. “I believe this technology could have
prevented the accident. If he ran the signal the train would have been stopped.
I’ve seen it tested. It makes a difference,” she said.

Audio recordings from the commuter train indicate a period
of silence as it passed the final two signals prior to the wreck, a time when
the engineer and the conductor should have been performing verbal safety
checks. Higgins reported that the train could have entered a dead zone where
the recording was interrupted.

Metrolink said earlier Sunday, Sept. 14 that a dispatcher
tried to warn the engineer of the commuter train that he was about to collide
with a freight but the call came too late. The dispatcher reached the conductor
in the rear of the train, but by then it had already crashed into the oncoming
Union Pacific train. 

NTSB contradicted Metrolink’s report. Higgins said that the
dispatcher noticed something was wrong, but before he could contact the train,
the conductor, who survived, called in to report the wreck. 

Mayor Antonio Villaragiosa boarded one of the morning’s
earliest trains. “I want to dispel any fears about taking the train,” the mayor
stated. “Safety has to be our number one concern, and while accidents can and
do happen, taking the train is still one of the safest and fastest options for
commuters.”

The slight falling of the temperature and few leaves at the
feet of our New England trees signal the approach of fall, arguably the most
exciting season in our area. Several events occur within the next months that
deserve to be mentioned, and allows a certain dynamic to where we go to school
that many schools in big cities do not have.

This week’s coming event is the Durham Fair. This fair,
located in Durham, Conn. approximately 25 minutes from campus (exit 15 off of I-91
North), mimics the Big E in size, yet not in notoriety. It is this weekend,
Sept. 26, 27, and 28, and may seem like just another small town fair however
upon arrival it is obvious that it is not.

Unlike the Big E, this fair is much more focused on
agriculture, with tractor pulls, horse pulls, animal judging where you can see
cows, llamas, chickens, and sheep, and sit on a hay bail while watching them
all.

There’s also live music throughout the three-day event. This
year country singer Blake Shelton (with the most recent hit Home), the Guess Who, and another
country singer Phil Vassar (returning to the Durham Fair main stage with his
new single I Would) will perform each
night respectively. Also, the smaller stage located close to the fair entrance
promises to have local music all day and night.

For thrill seekers, there are a large variety of carnival
rides, ranging from daring upside-down mini rollercoasters to rides suitable
for smaller children.

The food at the Durham Fair is extraordinary. Anything that
could ever be asked for is sold, as food stands line the hill in several rows,
and are also scattered throughout the fair grounds. The apple crisp, hot fudge
sundaes, and fruit smoothies are highly recommended, as well as the large rack
of mouthwatering baby-back ribs that can usually be purchased near the ride
area.

Local crafts are sold in two separate places, one in a large
tent at the top of the fair grounds, and another in a building also near the
rides. Tractors are on display here, as well as cars, trucks, fire engines, and
other utility vehicles.

Last year, a sculptor created animals out of trees, as well
as a life-sized grizzly bear out of ice.

This exciting fair should not be missed, so grab a friend
with a car and head out this weekend for the annual experience. It is prided on
by the locals and is a great way to cure campus boredom and add a twist to the
typical weekend at UNH. Visit www.durhamfair.com for more information.

Okay, so we all know quite a bit about Barack Obama’s healthcare policy and his
stance on universal healthcare. But what about John McCain? Surely with so many
Americans for universal healthcare, he must have some crazy amazing policy
plans, right?

Wrong.
A study came out last week from educators and scholars at prestigious
universities Columbia, Harvard, Purdue, and Michigan who decided it was
appropriate to investigate McCain’s healthcare policy. And what they found is
beyond shocking: 20 million Americans who have employment-based health
insurance-what many students with health insurance have-would lose it under the
McCain plan.
It’s also ironic that the McCain campaign keeps saying how Obama would tax Americans
if he became president. But the fact of the matter is that the only groups
Obama would tax would be those making over $600,000-they can certainly afford
tax increases. Anyone making less than that, which is all of us, would not be
taxed.
The irony kicks in when you find out that the McCain health plan would treat
health benefits as income-that means employees would have to pay taxes on it.
What that pretty much means is that your boss would be making an estimate on
how much you are receiving in health insurance, and then you have to pay taxes
on that money.
According to this study, “the McCain plan will force millions of Americans into
the weakest segment of the private insurance system-the nongroup market-where
cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access
to benefits they have now.” The net effect of the plan, in fact, would “almost
certainly increase family costs for medical care.”
Hmm. Interesting. Shall I go on? (You: “Yes, Zack! Go on!”)
The McCain-Palin healthcare plan would make employees find additional money
being withheld each week on their paychecks, in order to cover the taxes on the
value of their healthcare benefits. Although there is undoubtedly going to be
less money in the paycheck, Senator John McCain says that this is nothing to
worry about. He would be giving $2,500 credit to a single worker and $5,000 for
a family to be used “to help pay for your healthcare.”
The sad part is when you actually realize what $2,500 means in healthcare: a
broken bone that required surgery would certainly go over this amount; a week’s
worth of medication would easily go over; if you need a serious operation done
or work performed on your heart, lungs, or brain, forget it-you’re screwed.
Take a moment to think about what you can afford as a college student. Under
the McCain-Palin plan, and under the McCain presidency, you will be able to
afford a lot less.

We’ve all been there: that point mid-lecture, when your
professor switches gears from talking about microbiology to preaching about
politics. In some classes, with some professors, it almost seems inevitable. No
matter what topic is being discussed, they find some way to work in their
political opinions. I do not intend to infringe on any individual’s freedom of
speech. However, I do find it to be disturbing when a person (other than a
politician) uses his or her position of authority to not only promote their
political beliefs, but to idealize them.

Instructors should be encouraging students to develop their
own thoughts and ideas. Unfortunately, many students take on the “if my teacher
said it, it must be true” mentality. The majority of Americans are misinformed
or completely uninformed when it comes to our country’s political issues. The
future depends on the minds of today’s youth-especially the minds that are
supposed to be enlightened by college, but instead are being squandered by it.

This political brainwashing does not just happen on the
college level. Younger students, whose minds are even more malleable than our
own, are being negatively influenced by their teacher’s opinions. My sister,
who is a senior in high school, has a class in which the teacher is a huge fan
of Obama. Each night she brings home homework that is Obama-focused. She has
researched his background, his policies, and his overall views. And while
Barack Obama has definitely stirred things up around the nation, last time I
checked, there was another candidate named John McCain. These students aren’t
even going to realize that their teacher is being biased. They will simply
accept that the only candidate who matters is the one that they have studied.

If voicing an opinion was the furthest a professor ever
went, this would not be an issue. However, rather than simply stating an
opinion, or working it casually into conversation, select professors teach their opinions. They treat their
very biased beliefs as facts, and present them in such a manner. Not only is
this inaccurate, but it can also be insulting to a student who may not share
those particular views.

I’ve often heard that if a teacher tells you his political
views, he is automatically a Democrat. Obviously, this is a great
generalization and oversimplification, but there is some truth behind it. In
Connecticut, or even in the Northeast, the majority of the population has
democratic beliefs, leaving Republicans in the minority. Therefore, individuals
(professors included) often assume that they are surrounded by a group of
Democrats. This leads those Democrats to feel comfortable in preaching their
opinions, while leaving the few-and-far-between Republicans much more cautious.

It would be impossible to attend classes in a completely
unbiased atmosphere. Teachers should feel free to give their opinions, but only
if they are willing to accept others’ opinions as well. Political opinions do
not need to include criticism, hatred, accusations, or assumptions. And most
importantly, opinions should be given, not taught.

-Melanie Rovinsky, Staff Writer