Author: Luke Lauer

Killing and kidnapping by terrorist group continues in Nigeria, despite alleged ceasefire. The ceasefire, between the Nigerian Government and terrorist group Boko Haram, was officially reported October 17, but the group has not confirmed the ceasefire and continue violent actions.

The Boko Haram is an Islamic group that was founded in 2002. Their full name, Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, translates to “people committed to the propagation of the Prophet’s teachings and jihad” according to the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR). However, their more common name, Boko Haram, translates to “Western education is a sin.” The group rejects Western concepts such as the big bang and evolution theory.

Boko Haram gunmen have been accused of abducting at least 30 boys and girls from the village of Mafa, northeast Nigerian state of Borno, last Friday and Saturday. A CNN article said heavily armed gunmen entered the village and abducted the children, as young as 11. It is speculated the children will be used as foot soldiers. Local leaders complained the government military has done nothing to stop the raids.

CNN also reported several other raids. Sixty women and girls were taken from two Christian villages in the neighboring Adamawa state last week. Additionally, the group also raided the nearby village of Ndongo, killing 17 people, looting and burning the location.

Between 2002 and 2009 Boko Haram was not involved in trying to violently overthrow the government. However, in 2009 unrest broke out when group members refused to obey a motorbike helmet law. The government responded with strong police tactics and which involved brutality according to the CFR.

During the 2009 unrest, revolts broke out in the state of Bauchi and spread to the neighboring states of Borno, Yobe, and Kano. The conflicts left eight hundred dead. As a result of the conflict, Boko Haram’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was publicly executed. Since then, the unrest has spiraled out of control and the group has launched military operations to create an Islamic state.

In May 2013, the Nigerian Government assembled a joint task force and declared a state of emergency in three northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa. The force pushed Boko Haram out of the city, but violence continued in rural areas.

In 2013 experts began seeing influences from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a Northern Africa terrorist group, in Boko Haram’s operations, according to the CFR. They were officially declared a foreign terrorists organization by the U.S. State Department. Attacks have been targeted towards civilians, including beheading truck drivers with chainsaws, killing travelers along northern roads, and then in September 2013, the killing of 65 students while they slept at an agricultural college in Yobe state. In April, the group bombed a bus stop in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, killing nearly one hundred people.

In April, 219 girls were kidnapped by the group, sparking international protest and provoking the hashtag on social media “bringbackourgirls.” The fate of the kidnapped girls is still unknown. While the Nigerian government was negotiating and hoping for their release, recent violent events in spite of the ceasefire have rendered future of the abducted girls more uncertain.

Allegany County towns seek to ban oil and gas drilling to prevent hydraulic fracturing.

The town of Burns, located in the northeast corner of Allegany County, is in the process of banning further oil and gas drilling, which includes hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, according to Allegany County planner, Keir Dirlam. According to Lauren Oliver, Burns town supervisor, the town had a public input meeting this past June and will have a hearing on October 29th, 2014, to address the issue.

Oliver said the Town Board members are currently split on their opinions for a ban. He said “All agree that the financial boost would be a great thing, but at what cost?” Most people he talked to are in favor of the ban, but there are several larger landowners against it.

Dirlam stated in addition, the town and village of Alfred have moratoria (temporary bans) on oil and gas drilling and are seeking to change their existing zoning laws. According to David Slottje, Community Environmental Defense Council (CEDC) co-founder, this would add these towns to around 200 other towns in New York State, have placed bans on oil and gas drilling to prevent hydraulic fracturing.

CEDC, a non-profit organization, works with towns interested in banning or placing moratoria on oil and gas drilling in their town as more Allegany towns may pass a ban. He said, “We are working with multiple communities [in Allegany County] on bans and moratoria.” Dirlam was unaware of any pending bans in Caneadea.

David Slottje explained these bans are legal under the New York State Environmental Conservation Law ECL 23-0303 subsection 2, that allows towns and villages to pass laws to protect the “health, safety, and welfare” of its residents. Four court cases involving Middlefield, Avon, Dryden, and Banton, NY and the oil and gas industry, were brought to the NY court system David Slottje said. The towns won at all three levels of the state court, the Supreme, Appellate Division, and Court of Appeals; and on June 30th, 2014, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, ruled in favor of the towns. This ended the court cases.

The bans, however, do not prohibit already existing oil and gas drilling. Dirlam said, “The way these laws have been written is that if you have an operating gas or oil well, then you can continue, but if you have to change it significantly then you cannot.” According to Dirlam, these bans are all or nothing. Towns cannot pick and choose fracturing methods.

Dirlam explained the oil and gas industry has been a large part of the county’s economy since the 1870s, and the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has 10,000 mapped wells in the county.

According to Helen Slottje, co-founder of CEDC, the DEC estimated 30,000 unmapped oil and gas wells in New York. She said because of these unmapped wells, there are dangers and potential problems for drilling new ones, because the old wells were not adequately plugged.

Allegany has a lot of support to continue using the natural resources said Dirlam. On the flip side, he said, there is nice clean water and a country setting.

“The county, over the last year,” he said, “has tried to keep a rather neutral stance in what they have said and done.” Though the bans must come from the towns and villages, Dirlam said the the county has made recommendations for towns to control road uses, so if oil and gas trucks were to come in, they would not destroy local roads.

Sarah McCloy, a junior and resident of Elizabeth, West Virginia has seen hydraulic fracturing impact her neighboring town of Parkersburg. She said there have been both positive and negative effects. There has been economic growth, but for a limited amount of people. “There hasn’t actually been a huge influx of jobs,” she said. “Most of the jobs require a certain technical expertise. So people from outside the community come in.” She said fracking companies have been giving out scholarships to students in the area to “convince people that [hydraulic fracturing] is a good thing.”

Helen Slottje said New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, is not addressing the issue of hydraulic fracturing for political reasons as he is up for reelection this November. She said, “These community level prohibitions are a first step, but we are still waiting for Governor Cuomo to step up and work on a statewide prohibition.”

The “Shades of Black” exhibition located in the Campus Center basement was found with unapproved alterations early Monday morning. The number “50,” the word “light,” and paper chains were added to the display.The exhibition title then read: “50 Shades of Light Black” with handmade paper chains hanging above the title. The new title allegedly made reference to the erotic romance novel, Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.

The exhibition, which began at the beginning of February and was scheduled to be taken down at the end of the month, was sponsored by the Black Heritage Club (BHC) and Student Programs office. The purpose of the series, originally conceived by Niala Pressley, a BHC member, was to the share the stories, inspirations, uniqueness, and diversity among black students at Houghton, according to Abena Griffin, senior and BHC member, and Greg Bish, director of student programs. It displayed portraits of black students and a paragraph-long biography about each one.

The idea behind the series came from comments being made about black students. Griffin said, “I heard ‘all black people look alike, we’re the same.’” Bish said the members were looking to exemplify diversity among black students, both domestic and international. He also said any student who self-identifies as black was invited to participate.

The modifications to the wall happened sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning, when they were discovered. Yinka Araromi, senior and BHC communications director, was the first to make the vandalism widely known. He posted an image of the alterations on Facebook with the single hashtag “nowords.” He tagged several friends who were involved in the project. Griffin found out about the alterations through text and Facebook messages, along with the image posted by Araromi, before visiting the exhibition herself. The alterations were taken down shortly after their discovery.

Araromi said that although the chains were allegedly a reference to E. L. James’ book, many students, including himself and Griffin, connected the chains to slavery. He also said that putting racism aside, it was about the “…disrespect of defacing that display, which was meant to be about sharing stories and inspirations.”

Bish said there was a “breadth of student response” which varied from feelings that it was a prank to a hate crime. Katrina Sawyer, BHC president and junior, said “…even if this was a joke that had nothing to do with race, how can you think this was okay?” A similar question was also asked by other students on campus, she said. Griffin said one of her first responses to seeing the alterations was, “When I saw ‘light,’ I saw that replacing black.”

The person responsible for the vandalism, a 2013 Houghton graduate, confessed and publicly apologized Monday evening for what was done to the display. The student was on campus visiting for the weekend and he met with Pool and talked to several students on campus. He also called Sawyer to apologize. The perpetrator then left Houghton campus late Monday night. According to Pool, after a discussion with campus Safety and Security director, Ray Parlett, they decided it was neither in his or the college’s “best interest” for him to stay.

Late Monday morning through the evening, upset students met with various student life administrators, including Bish, vice president of student life Robert Pool, Dean Michael Jordan, and dean of students Dennis Stack. Bish organized and attended a dinner in the south end dining hall Monday night for students involved with the project to come talk about the incident face-to-face. Approximately 30 students attended. The president’s staff, who met Tuesday morning at a previously scheduled meeting, also discussed the incident, the college’s response so far, and intents to move forward, according to Pool.

After the incident, students on Monday afternoon began posting sticky notes on the wall around the portraits. The act was started by Leah Sweeney and Caitlin Aloi, according to Griffin and Araromi. Each note had positive and encouraging words to specific students pictured in the display or for all black students on campus. Griffin also said that students stayed close to the display, ensuring that no more vandalism would occur nor that the sticky notes would be removed.

There have previously been minor incidents involving the “Shades of Black” project. Griffin said the picture of Daniel Thompson, a resident of Shenawana Hall and featured student, was removed from the exhibition, moved to the hallway of his floor in Shen, and defaced with writing and drawings. Another copy was then printed to replace the stolen one. Earlier in the life of the exhibition, Bish said an unknown person wrote in pencil “50 Shades of Black.” Shortly after, another student erased it.

The college administration decided to address the issue in front of the student body in chapel on Wednesday morning. Pool opened chapel by speaking to the campus about the incident. Dean Jordan then talked about the issue in his chapel message. He emphasized the importance of listening and dialogue, saying that a collective response must be to continue to talk about this issue as individuals and as a community.

The Diversity Task Force, a preexisting committee chaired by Stack, focuses on campus diversity and related issues. The committee includes students with various backgrounds, including Sawyer. It began last year and generated a “campus climate survey” last spring. The members have done a series of focus groups concerning underrepresented groups on campus, including African American and black students earlier this semester, as Pool explained. Members ask what life is like on campus for these groups and ask for their stories.

Griffin said that the conversation which has begun as a result has been quite encouraging. She said many students feel this is not just a black issue, as they also felt disgust and hurt by it and for black students on campus. Bish has committed that his office will work on at least two events before the end of this semester that will “encourage a healthy dialogue about race and respect.” Griffin said we need to do a better job of explaining what Black History Month is about. She said it must start amongst faculty and in classrooms; it can not be from black students alone. Pool voiced his hopes that the student voice is prominent concerning this issue and said that “this is a community wide concern, but it’s only going to change when we individually act.”