Twenty-three hours a day spent in a cement box, with little to no human interaction. If two years of that did not show you the error of your ways, then nothing would. That was the logic behind the Eastern State Penitentiary, a massive prison that specialized in separate and solitary confinement. The belief was that this solitary environment would breed “penitence” in criminals, hence the term “penitentiary.”

      On Oct. 25, 1829, the Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) accepted its first prisoner, and it continued to grow: by 1836, the ESP could hold 450 inmates. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the Penitentiary, an architectural marvel for its time (ESP actually had running water before the presidential White House). However,

       the technological advancements present in the prison did not make up for the barbaric psychological and physical torture that the prisoners were forced to endure. Dickens later wrote, “The System is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement, and I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong….”

      The Penitentiary’s focus on isolation was intended to move criminals towards reflection and remorse; however,  in reality the ESP guards inflicted the prisoners with a variety of physical and psychological methods of torture.

      By 1913, the ESP had abandoned the practice of solitary confinement due to overcrowding, and practiced congregate imprisonment. Throughout this century, a series of increasingly violent prison-riots took place. Inmates short-circuited electrical outlets, started fires, and destroyed workshops in protest of low-wages, insufficient recreational activities, overcrowding, and idleness. The federal government finally decided to close ESP after a particularly large riot in 1961.

      Throughout its 142 years of operation, the ESP held over 75,000 inmates, including notorious gangster Al “Scarface” Capone, Morris “The Rabbi” Bolber, and William Francis “Slick Willie” Sutton, and although the Penitentiary has not held inmates for almost half a century, the decrepit building seems to still echo with the ghosts of mistreated prisoners.

       Visitors  have reported seeing mysterious figures and hearing strange sounds throughout the prison. More eerily, these sightings and sounds all tend to corroborate; laughter in Cellblock 12; shadowy figures in Cellblock 6; ghostly faces in Cellblock 4; the silhouette of a guard in the abandoned watchtower; footsteps; wails; feelings of being watched. The Penitentiary is now considered one of the most haunted places in America.

      Since the 1990s, the Penitentiary has been a museum open to the public seven days a week from 10 a.m. to five p.m., with the intent to educate visitors on the prison’s history. However, the Penitentiary particularly embraces the dark, violent parts of its past every year with “Terror Behind the Walls.”

       From Sept. 22 to Nov. 11, the already-spooky Penitentiary is transformed into a massive haunted house. For one price, thrill-seekers can experience six different attractions within the prison’s crumbling stone edifice.

      On Oct. 19, Eastern University’s Student Activity Board (SAB) took a group of students to Eastern State Penitentiary to experience the “terror” themselves.

       The frights began the minute the group got off the bus. Even while waiting in line, guests were frequently startled by costumed actors patrolling the vicinity of the Penitentiary.

       Once inside, each person has the option to wear a red glow stick, which symbolizes that the actors can touch you and separate you from your group at any point.

   “Terror Behind the Walls” has your traditional haunted house fare: smoke machines, flickering lights, sudden noises, and fake disembodied limbs. However, the immensity of the Penitentiary allows the creative minds behind “Terror” to thoroughly utilize many traditional fears.

      There are clowns, there are chainsaws, and there is a plethora of enthusiastic actors who are eager to give you your money’s worth of fear.

       Furthermore, if you opt for the more “interactive” option, you are not only walking through all of these frightening scenes, but you are participating in them. You are being put into the crooked dentist’s chair as he threatens to pull out your teeth; you are the innocent being chosen for a brutal human sacrifice; finally, you are the prisoner breaking out of Eastern State Penitentiary.

      This ending to the haunted house raises the question, at what point does this fun, scary seasonal attraction cross the line and begin disrespecting the immense suffering of the prisoners who were once held there? Certainly “Terror” is all in good fun, however as thrill-seekers filter past the actual museum within the Penitentiary, one sees the im

ages of past prisoners and remembers that this was an actual place of genuine human suffering at the hands of the state.

      Whether you are looking to learn some troubling but important local history, or just have a thrilling, spooky Halloween experience, Eastern State Penitentiary is certainly a must-see while you are in the Philadelphia area.

     

Sources: easternstate.org, npr.org, smithsonianmag.com

      “Did you see Eric McCloy’s latest email?” If you hear EU students and faculty discussing the latest campus-wide email from Chief Information Officer Eric McCloy,  it is not because they are bemoaning a Wi-fi shortage or shocked at a recent phishing scam. Rather, Eric McCloy’s emails are eagerly anticipated for two reasons: firstly, he is able to explain the technological state of EU in simple, easy-to-understand language,  and secondly, he is hilarious. From sentient trash trucks to the romantic relationship between Colleague and MyEastern, you can never quite anticipate what delightful combination of information and humor awaits you when you see you have an email from Mr. McCloy. So, I decided to embark on an a quest to Ott Hall to meet the mysterious man behind the emails, and I am extremely glad I did.

      I felt rather like a video game heroine as I made my way across campus on a rainy day, armed with an umbrella, my computer,  and an absurd amount of enthusiasm. This feeling was even intensified upon my arriving at McCloy’s office (decorated with polar exploration memorabilia, an apparent passion of McCloy’s), as the EU chief information officer jollily greeted me and offered me cookies and coffee.

      After we sat down with our cookies and coffee, McCloy explained to me how the chief information officer (or CIO) position came to be: the EU administration realized that the technology infrastructure on campus needed to be improved significantly (something I’m sure we all can agree on) and thus they began advertising for someone who was familiar with the specific technological issues that face a college campus, and could thus help bring EU up to speed.  Enter Eric McCloy, who has worked in Information Technology (or IT) for about 30 years, including experience working with IT for higher education since 2000. McCloy has worked with programs and databases for many years, generally working in leadership roles as project manager.

      Now that McCloy is at Eastern, all of EU IT staff reports to him, and they have been exceptionally busy upgrading networks on campus. Bringing EU’s tech into the 21st century is an extensive task — McCloy says that they started with the university’s core processor, which “most students don’t care about,” but acts as the “traffic cop for the entire network.” According to the CIO, the old core processor was so fragile that consultants were afraid to touch it, but fortunately for us it was finally updated in March of this year.

      The IT team (comprised of 11 people, including McCloy) then updated the university’s firewall, which acts as a foundation for our network and prevents cyber attacks. After that, the IT team began battling the internet access points throughout campus. They began this process by changing EU’s internet providers, and doubling our amount of megabits (which controls the speed of the internet, for technologically-inept people such as myself). McCloy also made sure to install two different providers on different sides of campus, as he explained in his beloved sentient trash truck email, so that if one provider is damaged then the internet will still operate properly.

      McCloy and his coworkers, Philip E. Mugridge, Richard White, Mark Hoffman, Andrew Whitmore, Paul Thorpe, Daniel Edwards, Joseph Spedding, Matthew Lyke, Jennifer Moore, and J. Robert West, are working to prevent any wi-fi drop-off around campus, and the grand IT plan involves 388 new access points, with 35 access points in Walton Hall alone. McCloy says his goal is to have a wifi access point in every other room on campus, however the plan is contingent on available funds: “[the dream is for] someone to airdrop hundreds of dollars onto campus which could fix everything.” However until the money miraculously appears, EU IT department has to “be smart with the resources that we have” and work on one project at a time.

      This gradual process is part of why McCloy is so enthusiastic about receiving emails and suggestions. Feedback informs the IT team what areas need the most urgent upgrading. “We go in based off help-desk tickets. What gets the most complaints gets the quickest help.” A large part of McCloy’s job is responding emails — but he says that fortunately if something goes wrong then “out of 100 emails, 99 are about the same problem.” The rest of McCloy’s time is generally spent planning different projects. The wireless upgrade, for example, went through four different iterations, and necessitated the IT team taking inventory of what technology was on campus and what needed upgrading. Beyond that, McCloy says he spends most of his time checking up on the rest of the IT team and assisting them in their endeavors. Recently these endeavors have included hooking up the laundry rooms to the internet to allow for the new card-based payment systems. McCloy has spent “an inordinate amount of time in the laundry rooms of Kea and Guffin.”

      While the McCloy and the rest of his team certainly have their hands full with the current internet upgrade project, McCloy still has a lot of plans for the future: “I’d love for the dorms to be completely wireless…to redo how people reset their passwords. All the buildings need new switching and access points…What I want to do is plan it out — all the things we’re installing have a known lifespan…Here’s my theory: we live in a world where things break down; you carry a spare tire because you could run over a nail. People are always surprised when tech breaks down but it’s literally like everything else; even new cars break down and get flat [tires]…the funny thing is a lot of people want IT to be like electricity, you just switch it on all the time. [But] it takes work and investment and all that kind of stuff” Thus, the IT team is trying their hardest to upgrade all of the technology on campus as quickly and effectively as possible, and then maintain it.

      While McCloy understands internet and processors (a lot of things that I usually just turn off and back on again in times of crisis), he does not quite understand the reputation he’s earned on campus: “When people meet me they say, ‘you’re THE Eric McCloy?’ and I just don’t know what that means.” The real irony, McCloy says, is that his two college-aged children do not find him funny at all. The only explanation McCloy gives is that in Eastern he “found an entire campus who loves dad jokes.” Perhaps McCloy simply feels at home around young people, given that he worked in youth ministry for 11 years before switching to IT, and he actually majored in Urban Studies at Temple University, with the initial plan of becoming an inner-city pastor. His extensive education did not stop there; McCloy went on to attend Westminster Theological Seminary for his Masters of Divinity with a focus on counseling, and then to Arcadia University for his Masters of Business Administration. While McCloy is certainly qualified to work in ministry, he found that his being a youth pastor continuously clashed with his being a dad, and he “wanted hours that would let [him] see [his] kids a little.”

      This is all just a glimpse into “the” Eric McCloy, the man behind the emails. To learn more about Eastern’s CIO, or to help the IT department track down any technological issues on campus, email eric@eastern.edu, or follow him on Twitter at @eu_CIO. Or, if you are feeling particularly adventurous, journey over to Ott Hall to have some cookies and chat with Mr. McCloy about core processors, cookies, or his obsession with polar exploration.

     On Monday, Sept. 26, a large crowd of Eastern students abandoned their nightly routines of homework and Netflix and went to a McInnis classroom to watch the first 2016 presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The event was held by Eastern’s political science honor society, Pi Sigma Alpha. Attendance was so high that a dividing wall between two classrooms had to be taken down in order to comfortably fit the approximately 100 students who showed up to watch Trump and Clinton discuss topics such as taxes, foreign policy in the Middle East and race relations in America.

     More than 80 million viewers tuned in to watch the televised debate, setting a new record for presidential debate viewership. This record does not even include the vast number of people who watched from places other than their living rooms, including restaurants, bars and college campuses, so the actual number of viewers is even higher. Not only did a large number of Eastern students physically come to watch the debate, but it was clear that they were also actively engaged in the debate and interested in Clinton and Trump’s statements. Although it was stressed that each student should remain respectful to one another’s views throughout the debate, there was a clear sense of camaraderie in the occasional laughter and vocal responses that rang out in the classroom as Trump and Clinton debated each other on national television.

     What do these surprising attendance statistics mean in a modern society that often assumes political apathy from its citizens? Furthermore, what does this say about the civic involvement of millennials (those born between 1982 and 2004), a generation often described as uninvolved and uninterested in politics? If the number of Eastern students interested in this presidential election is representative of millennials as a whole, then this generation could have a drastic impact on polls. According to the Pew Research Center, millennials’ political clout has recently become equal to that of the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964). Both generations represent roughly 31 percent of the entire electorate, so not only is it interesting that college students appear particularly interested in the election, but they could also potentially affect who is elected president this fall.

     But the key word here is “potentially.” Millennials may comprise a large proportion of the electorate, but that is merely an empty statistic if there is no follow-through come Election Day. So does this widespread interest in the presidential election mean that there will be a greater voter turnout on Election Day? Eastern political science professor Alexios Alexander hopes so: “The desire to watch this debate for many might be more akin to guiltily watching a car wreck and the aftermath, or the gladiators of Rome, a fascination that itself displays how wrong and unfortunate is the event being observed, and the reveling in it all the worse. My hope is that the fascination with this debate at some point gives rise to a call to conscience within the soul of most people watching…and that people do indeed turn out and vote their conscience.”

     Dr. Alexander’s concern that our nation’s interest in debate is merely reflective of a desire to be entertained seems valid, especially when one takes into consideration that Pew statistics show that Clinton and Trump are two of the most unpopular presidential candidates the U.S. has ever had. Eligible voters from every generation seem to have remarkably strong feelings about the presidential candidates, which may explain the surprisingly large viewership among Eastern students and U.S. citizens in general. However, whether potential voters’ interest will remain this ardent throughout the rest of this electoral season is yet to be seen.

     No matter who is sitting in the Oval Office come spring, this election is certainly remarkable, and has created plenty of space for intergenerational discussion and debate. Pi Sigma Alpha is going to continue to provide this space by hosting more political events throughout the semester, including another “Pizza and Politics” on-campus viewing party on Oct. 19.

     Sources: Alexios Alexander, CNN, Pew Research Center

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The political science department will continue to foster political discussions at Eastern University by hosting several events:

A Truly Representative Debate: Assessing the Four Political Parties in the Presidential Election on Issues Important to Students: On Thursday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. in Baird Library, four political science students will each represent one of the presidential candidates in a debate.

Windows on the World: Christian Politics? Making Faithful Decisions in the Midst of Political Turmoil: This event will take place on Friday, Nov. 4. Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe, chair of the political science department, will be moderating.

Events in the Perspectives Series (co-sponsored by Student Development) include:

For the Masses or Masters: Is the Electoral College Democratic?: Drs. Alexander and Gramby-Sobukwe will debate on Monday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. in Baird Library.

Do Black Lives Really Matter?  Who’s Responsible for Black Life? The Black Community?  The Police?: Local speakers who hold various perspectives on these issues will participate in a roundtable discussion on Monday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. This event is hosted by several Eastern organizations.

Source: Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe