NEWS A3OCTOBER 8, 2012Grand Valley Lanthorn

BRIEFSN E W S

GV food pantry seeks donations: The GVSU food pantry in the Women’s Center is part-nering with the program Access of West Michigan to host a campus food-drive. Staff members will get a paper bag in their mailbox, which they will be asked to fill with donations for the Student Food Pantry at specific locations by Monday, Oct. 15.

Many students on GV-SU’s campus utilize the food pantry, so every donation made is crucial. Common items are Ramen noodles, pasta, cereal, toilet paper, shampoo and conditioner.

For more information about the food pantry, con-tact the Women’s Center at (616) 331-2748.

Women’s Commission talks mentorsGrand Valley State Univer-sity’s Women’s Commission will have a meeting on Mon-day, Oct. 8, that will discuss the importance of mentors.

Patty Stow Bolea, as-sociate professor of social work as well as a Pew Fac-ulty Teaching and Learning Center faculty fellow, will host “Mentors, Mentees, and Proteges” at noon in the Kirkhof Center, room 1142. Bolea will discuss the requirements and expecta-tions of becoming a mentor.

For further information on this event, please contact the Women’s Commission at wcommission@gvsu.edu or go to www.gvsu.edu/commission.

Student veterans donate $2,000 The Student Veteran Organi-zation at Grand Valley State University donated $2,000 to the Wounded Warriors Trau-matic Brain Injury Project, which is a collaboration be-tween GVSU and Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital. This donation was given on Oct. 3.

The project is supported with funding from the De-partment of Defense, which gives outpatient rehabilita-tion services to wounded soldiers with brain injuries, helping them to recover as efficiently as possible.

For more information, visit www.maryfreebed.com/woundedwarriors

Registration available for leadership reception

Registration is still available for the Venderbush Leader-ship Reception, which is an event that appreciates and honors student that exhibit leadership skills on campus. This reception will be on Oc-tober 10, at 3:30 p.m. in the Pere Marquette Room of the Kirkhof Center. Students can register at www.gvsu.edu/leadership. The keynote speaker at this event will be John Maura, who is a Grand Valley College of Education alumnus. This reception is named after Kenneth Vend-erbush, who was an associ-ate professor at GVSU. Ven-derbush’s strong position on student leadership around campus displayed his pas-sion for student’s to succeed. For further information, con-tact the Office of Student Life at (616) 331-2345

GVSU to award sustainability awards

Nominations for the Sustain-ability Champion Awards will be on this Friday, October 12. The entire Grand Valley cam-pus can nominate members of the community that exhib-its sustainable behaviors and practices. These sustainabil-ity champions will be hon-ored and recognized at a cer-emony on October 19, from 7:30-8:45 a.m in the Kirkhof Center. President Haas and Greg Sundstrom, city man-ager of Grand Rapids, will speak at the event about the significance of sustainability within the community. For more information, contact the Sustainable Community Development Initiative at (616) 331-7366.

AA meetings to be held

The ACES office will be holding a weeking 12-step recovery meeting open to students, faculty, staff, and community members looking to quit drinking or doing drugs. The meeting will be on Oct. 9 from 3-4 p.m.

As the projected 2013 opening of the new Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Com-mons approaches, Grand Valley State University’s Zumberge library is preparing for a renovation of its own, creating space for future administrative offices, according to Matt McLogan, vice president of Uni-versity Relations.

“The Zumberge space will be remodeled from top to bottom,” McLogan said. “We want to remove administration (offices from academic buildings and return them) to their intended purpose.”

The administrative offices that could move to the old library currently occupy space at AuSable Hall, Lake Michigan Hall and the Student Services Build-ing.

James Moyer, associate vice president for Facili-ties Planning at GVSU, said all the renovations to the old library will support administrative functions.

Although the exact layout for the Zumberge build-ing isn’t set, arrangements for the space are beginning to take shape, McLogan said. The foundation for the plans are in place, but nothing is definite.

When the new library opens, the current Zum-berge employees will be transferred there, according to Lynell DeWind of the Zumberge library.

“All positions currently working for the Univer-sity Libraries in the Zumberge building will move to Mary Idema Pew Library,” DeWind said.

Along with the retention of Zumberge staff, there will also be opportunities to hire workers for other positions within the Mary Idema Pew library. Staff members are currently preparing for the new influx

of potential workers, DeWind said.“We have made new hires in anticipation of the

new spaces and programs we are planning for the new space,” DeWind said. “The people are already in place to help us execute our plans.”

Though the building will no longer be a library, it will maintain the name Zumberge, according to McLogan.

“It’s not (getting) a renaming,” he said, confirm-ing that the building will “continue to carry the Zum-berge name.”

Zumberge library, named after GVSU’s first pres-ident, James H. Zumberge, was built in 1969, provid-ing GVSU students with a study space for over 20 years.

khaight@lanthorn.com

Renovations planned for Zumberge buildingBy Kara HaigHtGVL STAFF WRITER

Homecoming is soon ap-proaching, and with it comes the Student Senate-spon-sored Battle of the Valleys fundraising competition to see which school — Grand Valley State University or Saginaw Valley State Uni-versity — can raise more money for a charity. This year, the donations are going to the Mental Health Foun-dation of West Michigan.

The Mental Health Foun-dation is a small organization in Grand Rapids that works to bring awareness about issues of mental health and provides resources to fami-lies and those affected by mental health problems.

“They really are just a wonderful organization with a ton of passion,” said Jen-nie Hlady, who is on the po-litical affairs committee of Student Senate and is one of the senators helping to orga-nize fundraising events for homecoming. “Everyone involved pours their heart

and soul into their work. It hits home with the GV com-munity.”

The organization impacts GVSU students because many students on campus have been affected by a mental health issue in some way. Hlady said one out of four people know someone who is or has been affected by a mental health disorder.

The organization does a lot of awareness activi-ties such as the Stomp Out Stigma campaign, which aims to get rid of the stigma surrounding mental health disorders. “They do a lot for families that have been af-fected by suicides or mental health issues,” said Sarah Hay, who is also on the political affairs committee and planning fundraising events.

The Mental Health Founda-tion also does a lot with suicide prevention and awareness, like going to high schools to talk to the students there, Hlady said. “They give grief counseling for families that have been af-fected by deaths or some sort of mental illness.”

The Foundation’s slo-gan is “Live Laugh Love, it’s good for your mental health,” which goes along with its Be Nice campaign.

Student Senate is host-ing a 5k run on Oct. 13 to raise money for the founda-tion. Registration starts by the clock tower at 7:15 a.m. with a $20 registration fee, and the actual race begins at 8 a.m.

“I would just like to em-phasize to the students the

importance of an event such as the 5K because it reaches out into the community,” said Lindsay Viviano, vice president of the public rela-tions committee. “Not only would students be helping the Mental Health Founda-tion, but so many people within our community.”

The senators are also planning Peppino’s and “Pie a Senator” fundraisers. Sen-ate has been mentioning Battle of the Valleys in its

meetings since the begin-ning of the semester and is determined to beat SVSU not only at the football game, but also with their fundraising.

“Get excited for Battle of the Valleys,” Hlady said. “We need all of Grand Val-ley to get involved and re-ally help out this amazing organization.”

shillenbrand@lanthorn.com

Student Senate prepares for HomecomingBy SaraH HillENBraNdGVL STAFF WRITER

ARCHIVE | GVLMeeting of the minds:The Student Senate meets on Thursday night to discuss homecoming events.

ERIC COULTER | GVLSlugger: Jaclyn Frey, GVSU freshman, holds up the fraudulent check she recieved in the mail.

When Grand Valley State University freshman Jaclyn

Frey received an email from a company that claimed to be hiring for “secret shoppers,” she didn’t think much of it.

“I never really questioned if this job offer was real or not because all of the emails seemed professional and the details about the complaints for each company seemed plausible,” Frey said.

She emailed the contact back with her name, her ad-dress and phone number and after a few weeks worth of correspondence, she was told she’d received the job and that she had two assignments: one at a Wal-Mart and one at a Western Union Bank.

“A few days later I re-ceived a letter in the mail the give step-by-step instructions for the jobs, and a check made out for $975,” she said. “I was to cash the check and send the money to a man in the Philip-pines.”

Though the check looked real, she thought it seemed “a little fishy” to send so much money to a man that seemed not only unrelated to the com-pany, but was located com-pletely out of the country.

She took it to the Grand Valley Police Department, where officers confirmed her suspicions.

“I am just glad that I was not tricked by this scam and was able to save myself from losing out on almost a $1,000,” Frey said.

Capt. Brandon DeHaan, assistant director of GVPD, said the police have received four reports from students since Sept. 25 concerning “Nigerian email/letter scams,” a blanket term for these types of email-based schemes.

Between the amount of time it takes to complete correspondence, the effort put into making a fraudulent check and the money spent on postage, Dehaan said it’s clear that “they’re putting quite an investiture into getting this to the students.”

“Be cautious of com-munication with people you have no made any positive I.D. for,” DeHaan said. “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.”

At GVSU, John Klein of Information Technology said they get a number of students who call with concerns over emails that appear to be sent from an IT Help Desk asking students to click on a link to reset their login password.

However, Klein said that though they look very con-vincing, they are never from GVSU.

“We don’t do that,” he said. “We will never do that. We will never send an email message that says ‘we need to confirm your login and pass-word information.’ We will never do that via email.”

Since people tend to use the same password for multi-ple accounts, Klein said pass-words can act as a gateway for hackers or scammers to infil-trate a person’s privacy from all angles.

“So what they’re looking for is that one password that gets them in,” he said. “And then they’re going to other web sites. They’ll go to the Best Buy web site or they’ll go to the Amazon web site and

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUEFollowing student reports of email scams, GVPD, IT Help Desk offer tips for protecting against fraud By aNya ZENtMEyErGVL EDITOR IN CHIEF

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM FRAUD:

they’ll try that same login and password and say ‘well, I’ve got Joe Smith’s email address at Grand Valley,’ because they fell for one of the scams, ‘I’m going to try Joe Smith’s email address on Amazon, now. Okay, now I’ve got the dig-

its to Joe Smith’s credit card numbers.’

From there, scammers get access to PayPal accounts, bank information and then specific account information.

“It all daisy-chains from one account to another,” Klein said. “And people have used those methods to actually hack people’s accounts.”

Klein, like DeHaan, said the whole point of these emails is to gather information, and to establish a relationship with the victim. The probability that someone is going to pick you out of the millions and billions of people out there to help them smuggle money out of the country is slim. And once a student’s money is gone, it’s gone.

“The challenge for law en-forcement is that it’s next to impossible to get your money back,” DeHaan said.

Klein said a lot of these scams are going mobile, too, and becoming increasingly harder to identify. However, there are steps students can take to minimize the risk like keeping a log of your resumes – who you sent them to, when

you sent them, and what infor-mation you included, be wary of unsolicited communication, look for poor grammar, or inconsistencies in language, releasing information on a need-to-know basis and using multiple passwords for differ-ent accounts.

DeHaan said students who feel they may have been vic-timized or may be at risk of being victimized by one of these scams are welcome to visit with the police depart-ment and have a conversation. Currently, GVPD is forward-ing any information they re-ceive on these scams to the FBI, who are tasked with In-ternet fraud crimes.

Both Klein and DeHaan agreed, however, that there is one sure-fire indicator that students should keep in mind when treading the tumultuous waters of online communica-tion.

“(DeHaan) probably told you the same thing,” Klein said. “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is; in fact, it almost always is.”

editorial@lanthorn.com

Keep a log of to whom and to where you send a

resume

No legitimate employer will ever ask for your Social

Security number over the phone

Don’t put your Social Se-curity number on documents

Be wary of unsolicited communication (know who

you are talking to)

Look for poor English, punctuation and grammar

Do not try to deposit any

anonymous checks

Use multiple passwords

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