Last week, North Carolina passed a new law that openly discriminates against the LGBT community. Titled “The Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act,” people using schools and government buildings must use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificate, or their “biological sex.” Along with the public outcry and derision from local and national businesses, this law will not be beneficial for the greater North Carolina community as it is illegal.

First, under Supreme Court precedent, forcing someone to reluctantly reveal a personal or private attribute is illegal. According to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

Many supporters of the law have argued that it would benefit the greater public from being attacked by the transgender community in the bathroom. However, this is simply not the case. The Human Rights Campaign, ACLU and Transgender Law Center have all confirmed that there is no evidence supporting this argument.

Vincent Villano, spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said that “NCTE has not heard of a single instance of a transgender person harassing a non-transgender person in a public restroom. Those who claim otherwise have no evidence this is true, and use this notion to prey on the public’s stereotypes and fears about transgender people.”

In fact, forcing transgender people to only go to the bathroom of their “biological sex” hurts them even more. In 2013, the Williams Institute conducted a survey for transgender people in “gendered restrooms” in D.C. The survey found 54 percent of all respondents “reported having some sort of physical problem from trying to avoid public restrooms, such as dehydration, kidney infections, and urinary tract infections.” 10 percent of survey respondents “who attended school in DC reported a negative impact on their education, including having excessive absences and dropping out of school due to issues related to restroom access.”

It is clear that laws such as North Carolina’s will do more harm than good. Not only are they unconstitutional, they also exile a part of society that just wants to feel comfortable when they go to the bathroom.

The post Discrimination in public accommodations appeared first on The Retriever.

Hello precious

How wonderful you would have been

You would have been greeted with kindness

You would have been welcomed with open arms

You would have been wrapped with

All the love I could have possibly give

But it wasn’t your time

I remember the day like it was yesterday

Your presence became so clear to me

I heard stories

But I couldn’t relate

Until that day

When I saw you

It wasn’t the way I thought

It would end up being

I didn’t know I could draw so many tears

I was left alone to find my own healing

Everyone was clueless

I knew of your presence while no else did

Today I fully understand that we wasn’t ready

It wasn’t our time to see you

I just want to let you know

That you were loved

The post Last Name Allen appeared first on The Retriever.

College is often portrayed as this financial nightmare where students spend thousands of dollars that they don’t have and years of their lives, in order to work towards a degree that would supposedly open up many new job opportunities for them. This archetype is facilitated by students who take out loans without knowing what they were getting into, then ending up in a sticky situation.

Educational institutions, such as high schools and universities, should provide their students with support in learning how to finance their education through careful planning and consideration. The monetary aspect of an education beyond high school is a major factor that deters many potential scholars from pursuing it and prevents students from realizing that in some cases, a college education is priceless and beneficial.

If high schools would reach out to their upperclassmen, and provide them information about using financial aid, it may help overcome the financial barrier that exists. It may sound cliche, but this is a perfect example of how knowledge is power. A simple thing such as an advisor meeting with the class, and providing information about the resources the students could access has the potential to go a long way.

In a similar manner, universities should continue to help students keep track of their loans, and plan for loans that they would need for graduate school, if they decide to pursue it. They can also help expand the knowledge that students have about their loans by teaching them about some basic concepts, such as how interest can compound over time and accumulate, how students can start paying back loans in installments and the different interest rates associated with each loan.

In some cases, the problem is not the unavailability of resources for students, it often stems from the fact that universities are not taking up a more active role in informing them. I can and have emailed my financial aid advisor here at UMBC about a couple questions that I had, which may have required scheduling a meeting. I was able to receive the information and answers that I needed within a couple hours via email. It made me think about how many students would benefit if they were mandated to meet with their financial aid advisor to go over their loans and get any updates. Maybe it would keep them conscious of the day-to-day financial decisions they make, and plan their futures accordingly.

I know that coming from an immigrant family, the only resources that I had when it came to learning how to finance my education was through doing my own research, and it seems clear that the system needs to play a more active role.

If schools become more active when it came to educating their students about financial aid, it would help put the students in a better financial position. It would also open up the opportunity to attend college for the students who decided not to solely due to the financial barrier. With undergraduate loans that have interest rates of 4.3 percent, and graduate loans that can peak at interests rates of 6.8 percent, students should be able to make a knowledgeable decision about whether the benefits outweigh the costs of a higher education.

The post Financial aid is hard to get, but harder to learn about appeared first on The Retriever.

On Sunday, April 24, Grandmaster Timur Gareyev, economics, a UMBC Chess Team alumnus, will return to campus to play a number of chess games while blindfolded and to lead a strategy session on how to play blindfold chess. This event comes in advance of an attempt, planned for later this year, to break a world record by playing 50 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded.

At UMBC, Gareyev will play chess games against 10 challengers, all while wearing a blindfold. After the games, Gareyev will talk about the art and strategy of playing chess without being able to see the boards.

Several members of the current UMBC Chess team will also have the opportunity to compete in knockout-style chess matches against Gareyev. All players participating will be blindfolded.

UMBC Chess also recently announced that in early March, eleven-year-old Pieter Heesters, a sixth grade student at the Calvert School in Baltimore, became the youngest winner of the Sweet 16 Maryland Scholastic Chess Championship, hosted by the Maryland Chess Association and held during the Alvin S. Mintzes UMBC Open. Heesters won a four-year scholarship to UMBC, which will be available to him when he graduates from high school in 2022, if he chooses to attend UMBC. Heesters is interested in math and music, and says that he wants to be a doctor. He will be one of the 10 challengers in the upcoming blindfolded chess event.

Grandmaster Tanguy Ringoir ‘19, economics, was the winner of the open division of the 2016 Alvin S. Mintzes UMBC Open competition.  

For more information about Gareyev’s upcoming chess event, please visit the UMBC Chess website. 

Photo by Gabriel Saldana, CC by-SA 2.0.

As ransomware reportedly held MedStar Health’s records system and data hostage, two UMBC cybersecurity experts offered insight on the situation and the possibilities for preventing future cyber attacks.

Anupam Joshi, director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity and professor and chair of the department of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE), spoke with CBS Baltimore (WJZ) about what MedStar Health or other organizations in similar situations can do to better understand and address the threats of ransomware.

He explained that ransomware takes over a computer system and holds it hostage until a demand is met, often a demand for bitcoins in exchange for returning access to the threatened data.

“Unbreakable. It’s simply unbreakable,” said Joshi, in describing how ransomware is highly challenging to crack.

Rick Forno, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity and director of UMBC’s graduate program in cybersecurity, spoke with The Daily Record about the MedStar Health system attack, specifically how ransomware attacks can be prevented.

Organizations like hospitals should back up their systems and data regularly, says Forno. However, he explains, malicious programs, like ransomware, can be hard to detect. This means that companies may not be able to guarantee that if encrypted backup files don’t contain  viruses or malware.

See “Cyber Attackers Who Broke Into MedStar Want Big Payout” on CBS Baltimore, and “MedStar cyberattack highlights health care IT challenges” in The Daily Record.

Photo by Yuri Samoilov, CC by 2.0.