Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 6

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 6
Tuesday, September 27, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Women in STEM represented at Lehigh
By TANNER BUSS
B&W Staff
Malcolm Scobell/B&W Staff
TOP: (from left) Society of
Women Engineers officers
Maria Castro, ’18, President
Cassandra Gakos, ’17,
Elisabeth Oglevee, ’18,
Kianna Lauck, ’18, Rachel
Santangelo, ’17, and in
front Kira Gobes, ’18, talk
about the upcoming WE16
conference in Philadelphia
at a club meeting Thursday
in Maginnes Hall. LEFT:
Lehigh women engineers
attend a Society of Women
Engineers meeting
Thursday. The club will
attend the WE16 conference
this October.
Students and professors
discuss the progress
in representation and
perception of women
in engineering and
computer science
University
imposes rules
for political
programming
At Lehigh, 28 percent of engi-neering
majors and 15 percent
of computer science majors are
women. Lehigh falls above many
universities in terms of female rep-resentation
in these fields but is
not among the top 20 universities,
according to a Washington Post
article.
In light of the recent push for
gender equality in the workplace,
the number of women pursuing
engineering and computer science
degrees has increased at some of
America’s top colleges and univer-sities,
according to the Post article.
Nationally, men outnumber
women 4 to 1 in engineering and 5
to 1 in computer science. Although
men still dominate these fields,
recent pushes for gender equality
have been successful.
Students and professionals in
the engineering and computer sci-ence
fields have seen this change
firsthand. Computer science major,
Rachel Santagelo, ’17, has noticed
changes in perceptions of women in
computer science.
Santagelo said the first time she
took a computer science class was
in high school.
“I was the only female in the
class and right off the bat there
were jokes like ‘go make me a
sandwich’ — really derogatory com-ments
about me being the only girl
there and that I couldn’t do (the
work),” she said.
The Lehigh community is gen-erally
more accepting of women in
computer science, Santagelo said.
“Girls know there are guys smart-er
than them,” she said. “Guys
know there are girls smarter than
them. I never really had any specif-ic
problems with it.”
When professor Mooi Choo Chuah
of the computer science depart-ment
was pursuing her undergrad-uate
degree in electrical engineer-ing
at the University of Malaya
in Malaysia, there were only four
women out of about 200 engineer-ing
students. Chuah has been in
the computer science and engineer-ing
field for around 30 years.
“Things have changed a lot from
many years ago,” Chuah said.
Both students and professors
noted Lehigh’s inclusive environ-ment.
Although men greatly out-number
women in these degrees,
most students and professors do
Winter abroad includes option to travel to Cuba
By DANIELLE CAMPBELL
Assistant News Editor
With busy schedules and rigorous
academics, not every Lehigh under-graduate
can find the time to add a
semester-long experience into their
schedule.
To help combat this issue, Lehigh
has introduced other options to
make abroad experiences more
accessible to busy students. Through
winter abroad programs, students
have the opportunity to travel to
countries such as Cuba, Costa Rica,
Martinique, Germany, South Korea,
Singapore and the United Arab
Emirates.
Katy Rene, the assistant director
of Study Abroad, said all of the pro-grams
count for three credits and
are taught by Lehigh faculty.
“The (programs) range in size and
destination,” Rene said. “They stay
standard from year to year, but
occasionally, based on student inter-est,
we’ll either have a program take
a year off or have a new program.”
The lengths of abroad opportu-nities
range from 10 days to three
weeks, depending on the desti-nation.
This year’s addition is an
abroad program in Cuba.
Jack Lule, the chair of the jour-nalism
and communications depart-ment,
said he first led the program
two years ago.
“At that point I felt like Lehigh
should have some type of presence in
Cuba,” Lule said. “Most Americans
hadn’t been there before.”
More than 50 years ago, the U.S.
placed an economic embargo on
Cuba, which was on the verge of a
nuclear war. This embargo affected
travel between the U.S. and Cuba.
Earlier this year, that embargo
was lifted, and the countries have
worked to reestablish diplomatic
relations. With the relatively new
changes, safety issues are at the
forefront of discussion about travel
to Cuba.
“When a group travels to Cuba,
they’re actually required to work
through some kind of Cuban edu-cation
provider, and so those people
are aware of any issues the group
should be aware of,” Rene said.
“The students have a safety orien-tation
on the first day, but we don’t
have any more concerns about going
See STEM Page 3 See POLITICAL Page 2
See CUBA Page 4
By CATE PETERSON
Associate News Editor
In the fall of 2004, Michael Moore
visited Lehigh as part of the “Slacker
Uprising Tour” to colleges in swing
states, aiming to encourage people
to vote in that year’s presidential
election.
The event was supposed to be
non-partisan, Lehigh’s general coun-sel
Frank Roth said during a Sept.
20 meeting. Moore was supposed to
promote voting, but not who to vote
for. However, in the last moments
of his presentation, Moore told the
audience to vote for John Kerry, the
Democratic candidate. In doing so,
Roth said Moore violated multiple
university polices.
Lehigh is a nonprofit institution
of higher education, a designation
that allows the school to enjoy tax-ex-empt
status. In order to maintain
this, however, Lehigh must comply
with Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal
Revenue Code, which states the uni-versity
is prohibited from “(partici-pating)
in, or (intervening) in (includ-ing
the publishing or distributing of
statements), any political campaign
on behalf of (or in opposition to) any
candidate for public office.”
After the Moore incident, Roth
revisited the guidelines to be followed
on Lehigh’s campus. These guidelines
are outlined in a document entitled
the Guide for Ensuring Compliance
with Lehigh’s Tax Exempt Status
during Political Campaigns.
This year, Americans will elect
their 44th president. During election
years such as this, Lehigh’s compli-ance
guide is particularly significant.
The guide includes rules pertaining
to political fundraising on campus,
event registration and event compli-