THE BEHREND BEACON
Friday, January 21, 2005
Scam artists target students
By Annie Sevin
staff writer
Chief of Police and Safety, James
Amann, is asking Behrend students to
beware of phone and e-mail scam art
ists. Students are receiving fake phone
calls and/or e-mails every semester re
garding scholarships or grant money.
The scam artists ask for financial in
formation from the students so that they
can rip them off. These people make
their case sound legitimate, they can
even go as far as making fake websites,
but students are advised to not give out
any information to such people.
"I just wanted to make students aware
that these types of things are going on
and that if you do receive a phone call
or an e-mail or something along those
lines, don't provide any financial infor
mation at all. Just delete it or tell the per
son on the phone that you're not inter
ested.” said Amann.
He says these sorts of scams happen
at colleges everywhere and that students
need to be aware of it.
I received a call from the police down
Protestors rally in downtown Erie
A 1 Richardson. Erie resident, passes
along his pledge for peace.
Women’s basketball, SPORTS,
Page 10
LEB’s twisted film series,
STUDENT LIFE, Page 8
CONTENTS
News 1-3
Editorial 4
Humor. 6
Student Life 7-8
Sports 9-10
CONTACT US
Newsroom: 898-6488
Fax: 898-6019
E-mail: behrendbeacon@aol.com
Our offices are located down
stairs in the Reed Union Building.
at Gannon; they say that the students
down there had also been receiving
calls,” Amann said. “This is going
around all the colleges. It’s a big thing.”
Amann said, “usually they’re
offering...grant money or scholarship
money and they want banking informa
tion or checking accounts or savings ac
counts.”
He also advises students to “never pro
vide any of that stuff over the internet.”
If students do hear from any scam art
ists, they may report them if they wish,
but Amann says it won’t do much in the
way of catching the solicitors.
“These calls are extremely difficult to
trace and the stuff on the Internet could
be from a foreign country for all we
know... so the best thing to do is pre
vention.” said Amann.
The biggest problem with identifying
these phone calls or e-mails as fakes, is
the fact that they look legitimate. Some
of the solicitors go to extreme lengths to
make students believe that they are real.
Amann warns that, “if something
comes out of the blue...it’s not a legiti
mate offer...legit companies or organi
zations are going to go through channels;
By Bradley Stewart
news editor
While republicans were celebrating
George W. Bush’s inauguration into his
second term as president yesterday, Erie
democrats were protesting the inaugura
tion and the war in Iraq.
In West Perry Square, from 3 p.m. to 6
p.m., a collection of more than 20 stu
dents, senior citizens and middle-aged
Americans braved the cold to gather and
send a message of peace. Protestors held
signs that read “Stop the War” and “We
the People Say No to the Bush Agenda.”
From the gazebo platform in West Perry
Square individuals rotated reading the
names of soldiers killed in the Iraq war.
The mood of the event was a general
negative feeling towards the war, not spe
cifically a protest towards Bush and his
inauguration.
“It’s always important to support action
against the war,” said Ben Haire, PLTSC
04, president of the Young Democrats at
Behrend. Haire and several other Behrend
Gray shares synthetic vision with students, staff
By Lacy Buzard
copy editor
Dr. Robert Gray, assistant professor of
engineering, developed synthetic vision
systems after witnessing four airplane
crashes over the course of three years due
to bad weather conditions.
Gray was living in Shemya, a small
island near the former Soviet Union,
when he first acknowledged the need to
augment traditional navigational aids,
such as GPS and radar.
He and 24 other people (only two
women) had dorm rooms in an Air Force
hangar so they could be near the aircraft
they were assigned to support. There
were no other people on the island and
necessities, like food, were carried in by
plane.
Shemya was notorious for its high
winds and fog that made if difficult for
pilots to see. Pilots were forced to use
instrument flight rules, which resulted in
a controlled flight into the terrain.
Gray was able to focus more on SVS
upon his return to the United States, mo
tivated by the deaths of so many people
due to low visibility in the air.
Advancements in technology were in
strumental in the development of his sys
tem. Computer memory, like the hard
drives in PCs, grew larger and the price
grew smaller. Micro-controllers became
faster, but most importantly, CD-ROMs
allowed for larger optical storage space.
The SVS basically paints a picture of
the surrounding landscape using a static
database that must be updated for new
construction, like new cell phone tow-
A Penn State Erie Student Publication FEB ? j
they’re not just going to come out of the
blue promising money.”
Some of the scam artists will say they
are from banks or lending institutions
and then they can prompt a student for
his or her financial information to trans
fer funds. Some of them even make
websites that look professional in order
to convince students that they really do
have money coming their way. “A lot
of these sites from banks and
whatnot.. .look just like legitimate ones,
so even if it looks to be legitimate it may
not be,” says Amann.
“Websites that identify themselves as
banks or whatever and they’re asking for
you to confirm your financial informa
tion with them .. .it's bank that you may
or may not have ever heard of.. .they’re
just fishing for financial information that
they can use to rip you off,” said Amann.
Again. Amann mentions prevention is
the best way not to fall victim. A good
form of prevention is to think logically:
If a student has not applied for a schol
arship or grant, chances are they are not
receiving one and they don’t need to pro
vide any financial information to any-
democrats were present to rally and share
in the peaceful message.
Another student organization in atten
dance was the Voice for Peace from
Gannon University. The organization’s
slogan: peace and justice for all.
“No to war, no to empire, no more blood
for oil,” said Matthew Ochalek, a junior
liberal arts major from Gannon.
Ochalek, along with two fellow mem
bers, stood in the cold with their anti-war
flags draped across their shoulders in sup
port and an attempt to keep warm.
“It’s a disagreement with his [Bush’s]
policies,” said Sarah Sunseri, a senior
math and secondary education student,
another member of Voice for Peace.
A 1 Richardson, an Erie resident and or
ganizer, was circulating the crowd and
distributing “pledge for peace” cards.
Richardson is part of the 9/11 peace ini
tiative of Erie, and he was there “to make
a statement that invading and occupying
Iraq is causing great pain and suffering to
troops and families and soldiers that have
been disabled and Iraqi women and chil
dren.”
Dr. Robert Gray gave a seminar on synthetic vision systems Thursday in Reed
114. The systems provide navigational directions similar to GPS and radar.
ers. Programmers take a visual finger
print of an airport’s surrounding and save
it to the SVS.
A high-definition television depicting
the real landscape was placed directly
beside the SVS monitor during testing.
The MLK day festivities ended with a candlelight ceremony in the McGarvey
Commons. Jenna Gregory, Adriane Smith, Lindsey Giuliana, Erie Hilla, Jed
Smith, Scott Soltis, Amy McCullough, Chrissey Lambert, Pam Sumah,
Hayolom Tadesse, George Morgan, Tabitha Chase and Kara Humphris huddled
on stage and pressed their candles together in commemoration of Martin Luther
King Jr.
Matt Ochalek shows off his flag and
listens to soldier fatalities.
The displays were remarkably similar,
according to Gray.
“This display is much better and the
resolution is fabulous,” said a pilot dur
ing the video of the system test, com
paring SVS to then-current navigational
Vol. LII No. 17
Steelers fans
speak out
By Andy McNeil
opinion editor
With the NFL season coming to an
end, it is evident that one team in par
ticular has grabbed the attention of the
students at Behrend. Since a large ma
jority of the student populace is from the
Pittsburgh region, the black and gold are
an obvious favorite.
Steelers fans, known for their tena
cious nature and diehard committment,
have become a sort of unduplicatable
phenon. Take for instance this ferocious
quote by fan Mike Orr, MIS 08: “We’re
gonna treat the Patriots like kids treat
bumblebees. We’ll rip off their wings
and burn them with a magnifying
glass...then we’ll go inside for a
popsicle.”
Such brash statements and boastful
ways have given the terrible towel-clad
fans an indisputable untidiness in the
question for humbling other teams and
league domination. Alan Dolhi, HIST 08,
STEELERS, continued on Page 3
“It’s not error-proof,” Gray said, but
there is continuing research.
Eventually, Gray sees this technology
being used in every mode of transporta
tion, even in the commercial arena.
Students at Behrend have been in
spired by Gray’s success. “I really en
joyed him as a teacher.” said Brian Lee,
EET 08. “He gave us real life examples
in his life for the type [of] material we
were covering and how it was impor-
“I didn’t realize he was in this deep,”
said Isaac Aunkst, EET 06. “I’m im-
pressed.”
Departments of transportation in
Michigan and Minnesota have already
adopted SVS for snow maintenance ve
hicles. SVS can display where the cen
ter and sidelines are supposed to be on
the road.
Gray offered to sell the technology to
PennDOT, but with no success. Accord
ing to Gray, PennDOT is very reluctant
to adopt new technologies even though
the technology has been used in similar
circumstances in other parts of the coun
try.
Gray earned his Ph.D. in electrical en
gineering from Ohio University and a
MSEE from the United States Air Force
Institute of Technology. He is currently
the director of the Center for Navigation,
Communication and Information Sys
tems for the Transportation Institute at
University Park.
The School of Engineering and Engi
neering Technologies’ next speaker will
be Dr. Joseph McClellan on Feb. 17 at