Dealing With Stink Bugs

Dealing With Stink Bugs
By Adam Winfield

Small brown insects have migrated north to Long Island. They are named Maromated stink bugs because when they are alarmed or disturbed or threatened, they let off a foul odor. These bugs eat plants such as fruits and vegetables and they have been destroying agricultural crops. Stink bugs are also looking for a place to live and this can cause problems as they enter into student’s households.
Students were asked what they thought of these smelly brown invaders. “I have never heard of Maromated stink bugs said Claire Poitvien a Liberal Arts student at the Ammerman campus. Even more surprising was that these stink bugs were coming in large numbers. “I didn’t know there was an invasion of these bugs, that’s crazy.” said Peter Carroll a Liberal Arts student at the Ammerman campus. A prominent question asked is if they are dangerous. No they are not. This biochemical reaction is not as it is designed to keep predators away. The smell permeates through a large area causing one to want to leave the room.
How can one keep out stink bugs from their household? To keep them out you should seal up every possible opening. The same things that you would do to weatherize your house will keep stink bugs out. Yes, this is a time-consuming, difficult, and expensive process. But physically sealing out stink bugs is the most effective way to keep them out, especially once they’ve discovered your house.

The worst mistake a person can make is squashing a stink bug. They will release their odor when provoked and you will not be a happy camper. The best way to kill individual stink bugs is cheap and easy. Get a jar and fill it about halfway with water, and mix some dish soap into it, like Dawn. Flick the stink bugs into your jar with a sheet of paper or a paper towel. Stink bugs don’t like water, and the dish soap helps penetrate their armor. The soapy water is a surfactant which reduces the surface tension of their membranes so the water can penetrate their bodies. You’ll see them die after a few minutes of struggling, and they won’t leave their lingering stink. You can put the soapy water in the bottom of the vacuum bucket. When you suck them in, they’ll plummet into the water and die.
How can the stench be removed from the surfaces that the stink bug was in contact with? In order to get rid of the stench Orange juice or lemon juice should be used. The citric acid helps to remove the smell from the surface, leaving the surface smelling as it did before the incident.

It is very easy to get rid of stink bugs by using a vacuum cleaner. Dead stink bugs leave a residue inside your vacuum cleaner, which can stink up your home. Once you suck them up, their smell clings to engine parts, and any vacuum attachments you used. A small, handheld vacuum might be best, and empty the bag as soon as possible once you’re done. Put the vacuum bag in a thick plastic bag and tie it tightly before throwing it out as far as possible from your house. Then spray some air freshener or deodorizer into the vacuum while it’s running.

Even though it would be better to keep your windows closed, if you have them open and see stink bugs outside on the screen, put the soapy water solution into a spray bottle and spray the underside of their bellies. It won’t be enough to kill them, but it’ll send them flying off of your screen. If stink bugs gather on the side of your house, you can hose them off with water, or attach a hose sprayer full of the soapy water solution. Spraying them will send them flying and drop a lot of them to the ground, but this method is only effective if you plan to scoop up the fallen bugs into your soap bucket, or vacuum them up with a wet-dry shop vac.

While stink bugs can be a hassle, one should not worry about them. Simply following these steps and accepting that nature sometimes stinks will make for an easier time when dealing with tis invasion. If one does have a very large amount of these bugs one should contact their local exterminator. “I will certainly be more aware of stink bugs” said Bryan J. Magnam a Liberal Arts student at the Ammerman Campus.

Problems exist with MySCCC

By Lou Figurito

It’s hard not to feel like you’re getting ripped off when you’re dealing with the College’s web services, and students agree.

“It’s frustrating when I’m trying to sign up for a class and get kicked off the site for hours, only to come back and find the class has filled up and closed when I get access,” said a frustrated Ninamaria Barbara, a full time student. The website is unreliable, noticeably only on the student side, called MySCCC, during peak times. The unreliability of the site is highlighted the night of “drop day”, when there’s a big influx of students to the site trying to pick up on classes that were dropped by others that held the spot, but didn’t confirm their attendance. These issues, while frustrating, are usually taken with a grain of salt by most of the student population, as if it’s a fact of life that has to be dealt with. In addition, the wi-fi on Ammerman campus that’s offered to students is generally slower than your regular cell phone reception, especially at peak hours during the day in certain buildings. If you’re accessing it from your phone, it’s also prone to drop. The school website states that service and bandwidth isn’t guaranteed campus wide.

Every semester students pay thousands of their hard earned dollars, or take loans, in order to be a student at Suffolk. Associated with their tuition are numerous fees, one of which is the “technology fee”. The school’s website offers the explanation for the fees as such: “The Technology Fee is a dedicated fee charged to students taking credit courses offered by the College. The fee is committed to fund technology and equipment; it is non-refundable on or after the first day of the session.” The technology fee is $80. Now take that $80, and multiply it by the 25 thousand students (on average) that are enrolled at SCCC. That’s two million dollars from the technology fee alone.

So why, if the school is making at least two million dollars on the technology fee per semester, averaging four million or more a year (not considering winter and summer sessions) is the service not upgraded? “You would think that after all these years of collecting these fees they add on, the school would have pumped some of this money into creating a more reliable website…I have spent hours of my busy days on line at registrar because the website has been down,” said Adam Matros, a part time student who has attended sporadically over the course of five years.

Hosting is not an expensive commodity nowadays. There are websites that offer hosting for websites, offering plans where a terabyte of bandwidth (1000 GB) cost roughly $1000 a year. The average page size of MySCCC is under 200 kb to load. If all 25,000 students tried to access at the same time, that’s roughly 5 GB of transfer. Do all 25,000 students ever try to access at the same second? Probably, most definitely not. It’s time for the school to address improvements in the website, and the wifi. They seem to have the resources allocated for this area, so why not use them?

Remedial Courses Helpful or Harmful?

By Matthew DeBragga        

      Remedial courses give students the opportunity to brush up on skills that may be sub-par for a college level class. The fact that these classes are offered is a great asset to many students who may not have been prepared properly for college work. It remains the student’s responsibility to prepare him or herself for classes. But why is the percentage of students that are taking these classes so high? What is going on in our public education system that is graduating students without properly preparing them for what lies ahead in the realm of further education? Though the student’s themselves are ultimately responsible for their own lives, it is difficult to prepare yourself when the proper tools are not provided.

      One reason these remedial classes are so packed could be that the public education system is funded by a flawed system that disburses school budgets based on irrelevant standardized test results. The teachers are pressured to “teach to the test” and consequently have their hands tied. Life is not about multiple choice tests! The real tools that need to be taught to high school students involve comprehensive reading, organized writing, and the ability to think critically. Alternatively math can easily be standardized and measured as such because it only has one standard, right or wrong. The best way to prepare students for life is by having students write more, which is what happens in college. Unfortunately in high school the amount of essay or report writing is fairly limited and a majority of the tools used to measure progress are these standardized tests. Yes, writing is subjective and difficult to grade on a standardized basis, but this is a great preparation for life! Life is not standardized, and a great deal about where you get in life depends on who you meet and how you come across to them!

      Students are coddled and the bar is lowered for them in high school, only to leave them with an inflated sense of self confidence that comes crashing down upon them when they enter the adult world of college and or careers. The people holding the purse strings need to stop trying to influence the education system. It is as if the education system is a company being run by shareholders demanding more profits! Schools need to be about learning, and that involves mistake making and lots of it. The schools are so afraid to submit poor results because they are afraid of losing needed funding! Forgive me for saying so, but perhaps the administration of these schools does not need six figure salaries. I imagine if their salaries were contingent upon how many students did not need to attend remedial college classes, things would be much different.