Brown and White Vol. 113 No. 16

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 113 no 16 friday november 4 2005 all the lehigh news first women's soccer hosts pl championships b&w photo by jeff kauffman women's soccer hosts the patriot league championships against bucknell university today at ulrich sports complex at 5 p.m lehigh won its first-ever regular season title see story online at bw.lehigh.edu graduates to hold symposium to discuss further education by morgan white news writer undergraduates will have their questions about further higher educational pursuits answered by a panel of 10 graduate students at the graduate school symposium which will be held wednesday in the asa packer dining room of the university center at 7 p.m the graduate student senate is sponsoring the sym posium to help undergradu ates make their decisions about applying to graduate school the symposium will educate students on the differ ences between graduate and undergraduate studies owen finnegan a graduate student studying industrial engineering and vice presi dent of the graduate senate helped to organize the sympo sium as a graduate student i feel like we need to connect better with undergrads finnegan said i think we need to get more students of the lehigh undergraduate cal iber into graduate school the panel members will represent all four colleges having a diverse panel will give more experiences and advice from which undergrad uate students may draw infor mation and learn finnegan said in addition to choosing graduate students from vari ous fields of study the graduate senate also selected panelists from schools other than lehigh some representatives on the panel began their gradu ate work immediately after completing their undergradu ate while some took time off before they returned to school speakers will include marie maradeo and holly richendrfer for biology kristin mehr for counseling psychology anuja divatia for school psychology donnie mccullough for chemical engi neering scott denegre for industrial engineering liz dailey for counseling and human services enrico palazio for mba melodic kent for mechanical engineer ing and finnegan for industri al engineering donna goldfeder director of career services and lynn dangelo assistant director of graduate student career coun seling and career develop ment will answer questions at the symposium there will also be informa tion about law school and medical school but there will not be representatives on the panel regarding these school ing options finnegan said he hopes topics such as the application process testing letters of rec ommendation interviews and funding will be discussed at the symposium finnegan said not many undergraduate students con sidering graduate school are aware that finding funding for psychology is harder than for his own field industrial engi neering jackie amato was an undergraduate at lehigh and is a graduate student studying to get her master's degree in economics amato said the work in graduate school differs from the undergraduate test cyle in which students have weeks of heavy and light workloads i haven't stopped working since the first day of school amato said i have more papers and presentations that are longer and more intense amato advised undergradu ates planning on graduate school to take courses that will develop a good undergraduate base for graduate work it's important to know what getting a degree would entail finnegan said if you're even considering going to graduate school at all it's well worth your time administrators respond to bias by lindsay mover assistant news editor the four bias-motivated inci dents that occurred in residence halls during the past two weeks are under investigation but no students have been found respon sible vice provost john smeaton said wednesday the incidents involved the defacing of educational bulletin boards and graffiti in common areas according to an e-mail sent to students by dean of students sharon basso one incident involved a racial slur and the other cases involved derogatory language related to sexual orientation smeaton said the administration does not consider the incidents to be hate crimes smeaton said there is a distinction between hate crimes and bias-related inci dents that's not often understood fully smeaton said the difference is that bias motivated incidents are words considered inappropriate or offen sive based on race ethnicity sex ual orientation gender or religion while hate crimes are bias-moti vated actions that threaten vio lence or destroy property accord ing to smeaton smeaton said the police will ultimately determine whether the incidents are crimes regardless the concern we have is about the motivation of this behavior and the way this diminishes our community smeaton said smeaton said the four inci dents do not appear to have been connected they seem to be isolated inci dents at different times and places smeaton said no students have been found responsible yet because no one has come forward to the adminis tration about witnessing the occurrence of any incidents smeaton said smeaton said punishment of the offenders depends on details uncovered in the police's investi gation if the investigation leads to the identification of those respon sible they will be held account able smeaton said depending on the circumstances it could lead to suspension smeaton said he could not recall the last time a bias-motivat ed incident occurred at ix'high but it hasn't happened often smeaton said the university is responding by investigating the incident and stimulating discus sion about what is expected in the lehigh community this presents an opportunity for us to talk about these issues and affirm our commitment to the values of respect and accept ance that are fundamental to our academic community he said let's engage in a dialogue about the kind of community we want to have gryphons questioned about the incidents said they cannot talk about job related issues because they are university employees a former gryphon said he feels students are the people who can respond to the incidents most effectively it won't help to have a bunch of programs about it he said it's the responsibility of the stu dents to react if there's any solu tion it would be with the stu dents the dean of students staff has been working with the residence halls and gryphons in response to the incident smeaton sent a note to faculty and staff to encour age them to have conversations with students and talk about bias motivated issues sports 13 16 news 1-3 men's soccer 13 grad volunteers 2 wrestle-offs 16 spooktacular 3 football 16