5worldTongva Times April 30, 2015
IRELAND MINES AWAY CultureTECH announced the use of Minecraft in
Northern Ireland schools on March 25. This game will teach students
topics such as mathematics, science, and the humanities.
FREEDOM RESTRICTS The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has
sparked outrage across America, with many claiming it is a
prejudiced law. An amendment was created to ensure
nondiscriminatory practices.
By William KhaineOpinion Editor
Northern Ireland will become the fi rst country in the world to
implement Minecraft as an edu-cational tool on a national level, as
the innovation culture festival CultureTECH announced on March 25
that the nation will uti-lize this computer game to teach its
post-primary students. Originally created by Markus Notch Perrson
and his com-pany Mojang AB, Minecraft en-ables players to interact
with tex-tured blocks and share creations with others. It has
become one of the most popular games since its release in 2009,
with over 100 million downloads. Game players regularly ex-hibit
persistence, risk taking, attention to detail and problem solving
skills, all of which they would ideally also demonstrate in school,
stated Northern Ire-lands Department of Culture, Arts, and Leisure
(DCAL) Min-ister Car l N Chuil n. By mak-ing Minecraft available we
hope to encourage this kind of behav-ior. The nations schools will
have a modifi ed version of the game, MinecraftEdu, to give users
ac-cess to teacher-made lesson plans focused on mathematics, the
sciences, and the humani-ties. It requires a user license for each
student as well as a server license to use information in the
By Cynthia SorFeatures Editor
On April 1, 26-year-old doctor-ate student Xiangyu Ouyang was
offi cially banned from Stanford Universitys campus following
allegations that she poisoned four of her classmates water bottles
with paraformaldehyde. Ouyang, a Singaporean study-ing cancer
biology and described as awkward and strange but without any
glaringly obvi-ous issues by a student to The Stanford Daily,
admitted that she started spiking her classmates water bottles with
the deadly chemical in September. Her peers in the Nusse Lab, where
Ouyang worked studying stem cells, reported a chemical smell that
came from their wa-ter bottles, which were often left unattended in
the lab overnight. Another student reported that her stem cell
cultures suddenly died after they had been fl ourishing. According
to a police statement obtained by student newspaper, The Fountain
Hopper, one of the victims described a burn-ing sensation in her
mouth and throat upon drinking from the poisoned bottle. She began
to salivate uncontrollably and felt [her] esophagus contracting.
Ouyang was arrested on No-vember 16, 2014 after she ad-mitted to
interfering with her classmates research samples and poisoning
their drinks, though she claimed she was not con-scious of her
actions. Previously, she had been tak-ing antidepressants up until
No-vember, but had stopped due to its side effects. As
investigators began questioning the victims, legal documents from
the Santa Clara County Superior Court re-vealed that she checked
herself into a hospital for mental health issues and was placed on
psychi-atric hold. I am truly sorry for what hap-pened, but I
really didnt mean to harm people, Ouyang said in the police report.
It was me cry-ing out for help. Ouyangs attorney, Adrienne Dell,
plans to pursue an insanity defense against the four felony counts
placed against the student. As she awaits trial, Ouyang is free on
$50,000 bail, restricted from leaving the United States, and
formally ordered to stay away from Stanfords campus. She is
currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation and will be due in
court on May 15. This was a sad, heartbreaking situation for
everyone involved, university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin told The
Fountain Hopper in an email. This was a con-fi ned, isolated
circumstance, and there was no threat to the broader campus
community. The univer-sity has been providing support to the group
impacted.
Studentpoisonsclassmates
Northern Ireland schools use Minecraft
network. Although the price of the educa-tional tool is half of
the original game, which is approximately $27, DCAL has agreed to
sup-ply [...] licenses to as many as 240 sites across Northern
Ireland, including over 200 schools, 30 libraries and community
[orga-nizations], and a number of vol-unteer-led coding clubs, a
Cul-tureTECH press release stated. In effect, post-primary students
will get to learn through the program for free. The roots of the
project started
in 2011, when the group Teach-erGaming received licensing in
2011 from Mojang AB to sell MinecraftEdu in Finland. It spread
internationally once the game gained traction among the educational
community. Last year TeacherGaming ran a tour and one of the major
stops was [...] the CultureTECH fes-tival, stated Santeri Koivisto,
co-founder of the organization, to the news agency Belfast
Tele-graph. This visit turned into a starting point for a
collabora-tion that has very quickly led to
MinecraftEdus biggest deploy-ment ever. TeacherGaming is also
ex-panding the use of educational video games, with its release of
KerbalEdu last year. A spinoff of the indie space simulator Kerbal
Space Program, the new game teaches its users physics. When
implementation is com-plete, Northern Ireland will not alone in
using educational gam-ing; it will join over 5,000 teach-ers in 40
countries and interna-tional organizations such as the United
Nations.
By Hattie XuEntertainment Editor
On March 30, the Indiana House of Representatives passed the
Religious Freedom Restora-tion Act (RFRA), which pro-hibits a
governmental entity from substantially burdening a persons exercise
of religion unless the government proves it has reason for doing
so. While supporters believe the bill pro-tects deeply religious
business owners from possible govern-ment action, opponents believe
it clears the way for discrimination against the gay community.
Many critics of IRFRA fear that the law could give business owners
with certain religious or personal beliefs, such as the OConnors of
Memories Pizza in Walkerton, IN, the right to deny service to and
actively exclude certain groups of people. Co-owners Kevin OConnor
and daughter Crystal OConnor faced enormous backlash when they
expressed support for the IRFRA and told ABC 57, a lo-cal news
station, If a gay couple came in and wanted us to pro-vide pizzas
for their wedding, we would have to say no. We are a Christian
establishment. Threats forced the OConnors to shut down the
pizzeria, but a campaign on GoFundMe raised, to date, $842,442 to
keep the shop open.
Religious freedom law in Indiana passes
Indiana Governor Mike Pence quickly rejected the notion that the
measure allows for discrimi-nation. After signing the bill into
law, Pence stated at a news con-ference at the Indiana Capitol, If
I thought it legalized discrimina-tion in any way, I would have
ve-toed it. The IRFRA was based on the Religious Freedom and
Restora-tion Act of 1993, which was a federal law passed by 20
states. According to the National Pub-lic Radio (NPR), Doug
Laycock,
who assisted with writing the federal law, believes that the
controversy over Indianas bill stems from an exaggeration of its
effect on the gay community and civil rights from both propo-nents
and critics. [Religious freedom laws are for] cases about churches
feed-ing the homeless, Laycock told NPR. There are cases about
Muslim women wearing scarves or veils. Theyre about Amish buggies.
Theyre about Sabbath observers.
In response to the controver-sy and protests against IRFRA,
Pence signed an amendment to the bill on April 2 that the Na-tional
Law Review states, may not be used to discriminate in the providing
of services [] on the basis of race, color, religion, an-cestry,
age, national origin, dis-ability, sex, sexual orientation, gender
identity, or United States military service. The IRFRA, as well as
its amendment, becomes effective on July 1.
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