The new center has been under discussion for years, according to the university, but the actual implementation of it could happen very soon.

“Discussions of a Center for the Arts arose out of the Strategic Planning Process in December of 2009 and the plans have yet to be finalized,” said university spokesman James Montalto.

Even so, sources within the art departments say that the new Center for the Arts could be “taking effect this semester.”

The plan would include bringing the music, art, and theater departments, as well as the Staller Center’s performance spaces, together under a single administrative staff. According to Montalto, no decisions have been made in terms of leadership.

John Lutterbie, an associate professor and the director of graduate studies in the Department of Theater Arts, said that the separate departments would maintain a degree of independence.

“The departments will maintain their own autonomy but share the administrative staff,” he said.

The move comes amidst the gradual implementation of shared service centers, a university-wide initiative to consolidate the administrative components of individual academic departments. But the creation of the Center for the Arts is not directly related to planned shared service centers, says Montalto.

“This would be an academic and performance center for the campus and is independent of shared-service centers,” he said in an email.

Still, the university will be watching closely to see how well the Center for the Arts adapts to their new administrative structure, with the hopes of modeling future shared service centers on it.

“The prototype for these shared service centers has been in the arts,” said President Samuel Stanley at his annual State of the University address on Monday.

The new Center for the Arts will serve as more than just a trial balloon for shared service centers. Combining all of the arts-related departments into a single entity will have several practical benefits as well, says Lutterbie.

“The reason for creating a center, in part, is to give greater visibility to the arts on the whole,” he said. “And it’s easier to raise funds for the center than individual departments.”

Raising money from outside donors or foundations is not uncommon in the hard sciences and other research-focused disciplines. But in the humanities and arts, academic departments are not typically big beneficiaries from grants. The inclusion of the Staller Center for the Performing Arts, which has no direct academic component, within the new Center for the Arts will allow the new administrators to raise money simultaneously for the performance component and academic component of the center.

To help with those efforts, the center will budget in a salary for a full-time fundraising person, according to Lutterbie.

Students who are currently enrolled in academic programs within the arts won’t notice much of a change at all.

“What they will see,” said Lutterbie, “is a change in terms of new opportunities and our innovative program.”

Here is video footage of the press conference from Thursday morning.

Think Magazine spoke with Nadia last week about her situation, the DREAM Act, and the rally scheduled for today in support of her, her family, and the thousands of other undocumented students who could face deportation at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security.

(Apologies for the less-than-great audio!)

Undocumented Stony Brook Student Faces Deportation from THiNK Magazine on Vimeo.

This is the second high-profile Twitter hack for The Script Kiddies, who made headlines in early July when they gained access to the @FoxNewsPolitics Twitter account to post false reports about President Obama being shot.

In an exclusive conversation with Think Magazine, a representative claiming to be from The Script Kiddies said that NBC News was simply an unlucky victim, not a premeditated target.

“We planned to hack any media group; NBC wasn’t specifically targeted,” said the Script Kiddies representative.

In the months since they hacked Fox News, The Script Kiddies have carried out several smaller scale hacks, mostly against corporations, and almost entirely targeted to social media platforms. Pfizer, McAfee and Verizon all had Facebook pages hacked by The Script Kiddies in the last two months, though the extent of the damage never extended beyond a few tweaks to profile information and a few self-congratulatory wall posts.

The Script Kiddies’ preference for social media sites may relate to the relative ease of breaking into Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. At news organizations like NBC News or Fox News, often interns or low-level employees are given broad access to social media sites like Twitter. And while NBC News reported that only three senior executives at the company had access to their main account, the Script Kiddies representative said that there were gaping holes in NBC’s online security.

“Since we got the idea, it took about 4 minutes until we were on the Twitter account,” said the representative, who was reached via Instant Message. “NBC has more security issues we are trying to contact them about.”

NBC did not return calls for a comment.

The Script Kiddies say that their tweets, which went out to @NBCNews’ approximately 130,000 followers, were simply the fastest way to attract attention to their message.

“Under normal conditions no one would care to hear our message. Although it’s not something we would normal [sic] want to do to the American people, it was needed to accomplish our goal.”

And the goal?

“It’s our first stand against the Patriot Act,” said the representative. “The Patriot Act is a clear violation of our natural given rights, we hacked NBC to bring attention to this issue.” It’s unclear how NBC News or any other news outlet is directly related to the Patriot Act.

Over 40 students dressed entirely in black gathered outside the Student Activities Center and proceeded quietly towards the Administration building, many clutching flyers with Davis’ face on them.

Melissa Mayard, an executive board member of the campus chapter of the NAACP, helped organize Wednesday’s event.

“[The executive board members] were talking about it and how devastating this trial has been and we said we’ve got to do something, we can’t just sit on this campus and not do anything,” she said.

Davis was convicted of the 1989 killing of police officer Mark MacPhail, based largely on the testimony of eyewitnesses and circumstantial evidence. In the subsequent years, seven witnesses retracted their testimony, and several public figures, including former President Jimmy Carter and Al Sharpton, have called on the courts to grant clemency. The execution was previously scheduled three times in 2008, with each date stayed by federal court.

Last-minute attempts by civil rights groups, the national NAACP and other sympathetic organizations to get the Supreme Court to stay Davis’ execution for a fourth time were unsuccessful, and Davis was pronounced dead just after 11:00 pm.

The students who marched on Wednesday afternoon gathered by the fountain and shared a song and an impassioned speech from Mayard.

“You have Casey Anthony, where [the jury] said she got off because there was too much doubt. Now you have Troy Davis and there’s too much doubt. It just tells you this justice system works for whoever it wants to work for,” she said.

“I’ve known about this case for a while,” said Olusola Yussuf, the executive editor at Blackworld. “From the moment that I heard about it, it’s been this overwhelming feeling of helplessness above all else. Yes there’s some sadness and anger, but the overwhelming feeling is helplessness.”

Prolonged discussions between the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and the Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies program are coming to fruition this fall, when the two academic programs merge into a larger department, to be called the Cultural Analysis and Theory Department.

“This is the result of a discussion that was initiated in the summer of 2010,” said CLCS Chair Robert Harvey. “Those discussions also involved other departments in the humanities.”

Several trees and large branches came crashing down in the morning hours, including one large tree outside of Kelly Quad and another by a parking lot behind West Apartment G. Branches near the Student Activities Center and Roth Quad also fell, though none appeared to cause any damage to buildings, cars or other property.

“We’ve looked at the infrastructure of the campus, and we’ve had some minor trees damaged, but really not a lot else,” said University Chief of Police Robert Lenahan on Sunday afternoon.

According to Lenahan, the university never had to rely on generators last night. Several people on Twitter said that the surrounding community was not so lucky, and several large trees appeared to have knocked out power lines.

Governor Cuomo has been sending out frequent updates about power outages across the state. The latest, sent out at 1:00pm, says that over 900,000 New Yorkers are without power, more than half of them on Long Island.

In Roth Quad, the pond was much higher than normal at 9:00 am this morning. The path between Roth and the Student Activities Center was littered with twigs and small branches, and nearby a large branch nearly crushed a black Jeep parked in the pay lot next to the SAC.

In West, some siding off of the roof of West Apartment B was torn off and thrown about 100 feet, coming to rest in the parking lot. The woods behind West G also had several large branches fall, none near any parked cars or nearby machinery.

At Kelly, the large tree that was split at its base is being removed by University Police, according to Lenahan.

The biggest issue that the university police is currently monitoring is the powerless traffic lights on Nicolls Road by the main and south entrances to campus. Those are under the jurisdiction of Suffolk County, but university police have been deployed to ensure traffic is moving safely though the area. Because those lights also serve Stony Brook University Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center, Chief Lenahan says that LIPA should give the area priority.

“We anticipate the power to be back on in time for the 3 o’clock rush,” he said.

[Show as slideshow]

Campus Residences has already moved up the scheduled move-in date for returning students to Saturday, ensuring that thousands of students won’t be moving back to campus in the middle of a Category 1 hurricane. But other departments within the university are beginning to take similar steps to ensure that students and staff are safe and well prepared for a potentially dangerous storm.

The Faculty Student Association has begun exploring emergency hours for dining halls on campus, allowing students to stockpile snacks and other food that can be stored and kept in dorm rooms in the event that leaving the building for a meal on Sunday is not an option. The Student Affairs office, tasked with planning and executing the opening weekend activities for freshman, are booking space indoors for Saturday activities, and are looking at canceling Sunday events altogether in the event Irene hits sooner than it’s estimated 2:00 pm arrival on Long Island.

Stony Brook Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Brian Colle says that unless the hurricane makes a dramatic and unexpected turn out towards the Atlantic Ocean or further inland, Stony Brook University will be experiencing high winds in excess of 70 miles per hour, with gusts reaching as high as 100 miles per hour during the peak of the storm. Even if the eye of the storm lands in New York City 60 miles due west of Stony Brook, the cycle is big enough that it will still produce heavy rain and damaging winds.

University Police aren’t betting on friendly wind patterns. Already they have begun securing objects around campus that could be picked up and tossed across campus by high winds. The colorful umbrellas usually attached to outdoor tables on the Academic Mall have been removed, and several construction sites around campus are being evaluated to ensure no equipment is left out.

“I think, looking at the forecasts that we’re receiving for Stony Brook, we’ve been preparing as much as we possibly can for a bad event,” said Chief of University Police Robert Lenahan on Thursday afternoon. How bad will depend on several elements of the storm, but Professor Colle says that even an indirect hit could knock out power and down trees.

Projections suggest that Irene will likely be a Category 1 hurricane by the time it reaches Long Island, meaning serious infrastructure damage is unlikely. Cars and anything else normally kept outdoors are at risk, and Colle suggests moving what you can indoors or into a garage.

Government agencies began alerting residents about hurricane safety through emergency management offices on Wednesday, and Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for all of New York. The National Weather Service’s hurricane watch zone extended as far north as Sandy Hook, New Jersey by Thursday evening, but Colle believes that area will be greatly expanded on Friday morning to include New York City and Long Island, among other areas along the coast.

“It’s obvious we’re near the center of that cone,” he said, referring to the impact zone of Irene. “We’re going to be under a watch, I suspect, by tomorrow morning. It’s time to prepare.”

If the current trajectory holds, the weather will begin to worsen by Sunday afternoon, according to Colle.

“We’ll basically be dealing with a hurricane nearby by the late morning, and conditions will be deteriorating rapidly,” he said. “We’re looking at a possible crescendo into Sunday evening.”

If that time frame is adjusted any later, the first day of classes may be in jeopardy on Monday. Only the Governor has the authority to close state agencies like SUNY campuses, and those decisions are often made the night before. SUNY’s central administration in Albany is monitoring the storm carefully and has been in close contact with Governor Cuomo and administrators at Stony Brook University, according to SUNY spokesman David Belsky.

Other colleges on Long Island were taking a more optimistic approach as of Thursday afternoon. SUNY Old Westbury, which was scheduled to welcome students back to campus on Sunday as well, had yet to change the move-in date as of Thursday afternoon.

“We’re keeping students informed of emergency services, but I don’t know of any changes to our schedule,” said a spokeswoman from Old Westbury.

At Farmingdale on Wednesday, Director of Communications Kathy Coley was also remaining hopeful that the hurricane would pass them by.

“We are being optimistic that the storm will not hit Farmingdale,” she said. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed. We’re tracking it and we think it’ll be ok.”

But Wednesday’s forecast models had the storm out over eastern Long Island, near Montauk. Thursday’s models—which benefit from more data and are therefore more accurate—tell a different story though, one where the center of the storm passes directly over Nassau County.

Hofstra University, perhaps the college campus closest to the current predicted trajectory, is on a schedule one week behind Stony Brook University, meaning most of their students won’t be returning until the weekend after Irene.

Students at New York University are not as lucky. Like Stony Brook, NYU’s move-in day for returning students was set for Sunday. No changes to that schedule had been announced as of Thursday evening, though that may change by Friday. A spokesman from NYU was not immediately available for comment.

Think Magazine will be continuing our extensive coverage of Hurricane Irene and it’s impact on Stony Brook University throughout the weekend. We will be on campus Friday as well as all day Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday, sporadically throughout the day, we will be hosting Hangouts on Google+ to answer questions from students as well as hear stories from students stuck indoors. Add us to your Circles to get live updates. We will also be updating our Facebook page, Twitter feed using the #HurricaneSB tag, and Tumblr.

“A message is being posted to the Campus Residences home page (with a similar message being sent via email to all returning students) encouraging them to arrive on Saturday between 10 am and 2 pm to move in,” said Al DeVries, the Director of Campus Residences at Stony Brook, in an email to Think. The charges usually associated with moving in early will be waived.

According to the most recent forecasts from the National Weather Service, Irene will likely brush eastern Long Island on Saturday night into Sunday, right in the middle of what would have been the scheduled move-in date for thousands of Stony Brook students returning to campus for the Fall semester.

Current models place the eye of the storm closer to Montauk, meaning Stony Brook would escape the most devastating effects of the hurricane. But even an indirect hit from Irene could mean up to a foot of rain and sustained winds as high as 60 miles per hour, says Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Brian Colle.

“If it’s a tropical storm warning even, that is still a dangerous situation. Tree limbs could fall, bad things could happen,” he said on Wednesday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been steadily updating the most likely path of Irene for the last few days, pushing it further and further out into the Atlantic Ocean. A model from two days ago placed the path of the storm directly over Stony Brook, but it has since been moved about 60 miles east. Colle said that in order for Stony Brook to avoid the effects altogether, the projections would have to shift Irene another 60 miles east.

Elsewhere on Long Island, SUNY Farmingdale is remaining optimistic that the worst of the storm will miss them. Students there are scheduled to return on Sunday as well.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” said Kathy Coley, the Director of Communications at Farmingdale State. “We’re tracking it and we think it’ll be ok.”

Stony Brook is taking no chances.

“We are doing extensive planning to prepare for [Hurricane Irene],” said Gary Kaczmarczyk, the Director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety. “The Office of Emergency Management is working with Student Affairs and they are coming up with a number of contingency plans.”

“My concern is, if the warnings are issued, that people take them seriously,” said Colle. “If a warning is issued, that is not the time to move into Stony Brook.”

“By tomorrow, or in the next 24 to 48 hours, we’ll know more.”

This is a developing story. Stay with Think for the latest news on Hurricane Irene. Follow our continuing coverage on Twitter at #HurricaneSB, on Facebook, or sign up for our breaking news alerts on Google+.

Students at Stony Brook University reacted on Tuesday afternoon to an unusually strong earthquake that struck in Virginia and sent shockwaves up and down the eastern seaboard

“The entire SAC shook,” said Debbie Machelow, the Executive Vice President of the Undergraduate Student Government. She was in the USG offices on the second floor of the SAC when the initial tremors struck at around 1:55pm. “There were maybe two or three tremors. It lasted at most a minute.”

Thomas Kirnbauer, the USG Treasurer, was in the College of Business offices in Harriman Hall and felt his chair vibrate. “I was sitting there, leaning back in the chair and it started to shake,” he said.

Not everyone felt the tremors though.

“I was on the train, I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t see anyone or hear anyone talking about it when I got here,” said Ken Udoji, a student who was working in the Library shortly after the quake. I didnt know that we got that many earthquakes on the east coast.”

A number of Stony Brook students took to the Internet to complain they hadn’t felt the earthquake, even if a few of them noted the irony of wanting to experience the tremors. “Everyone had an earthquake but me,” said a disappointed student.

Think Culture Editor Alyssa Carroll was working in the Provost Liaison’s office in the library basement at the time of the earthquake and didn’t feel anything either.

“My boss was claiming she felt an earthquake, and all of my coworkers and I thought she was crazy,” she said. “But she turned out to be right.”

Next door, in the University Bookstore storage room, student employee Brendan Kann also didn’t feel anything at first either.

“I didn’t notice it at first until someone shouted,” said Kann. “[A fellow employee] said ‘come over here,’ and I sat down and felt the table. The table actually started moving, the boxes were moving a little bit.”

The storage room now houses hundreds of boxes filled with textbooks ordered online by students who are beginning to return to campus for the Fall semester.

“We were told that people from the top floors started running down,” said Kann, who remained inside with the rest of the bookstore staff.

Maureen Robinson, a staff assistant at the School of Journalism on the fourth floor of the library, was one of the people to evacuate the building.

“We all headed out, it was very calm,” she said. “It was more people reacting as opposed to standing around.”

Stony Brook University’s Office of Emergency Management activated the Emergency Operations Center shortly after the first tremor to assess the integrity of campus infrastructure and buildings. No serious damage had been reported, according to Chief of University Police Bob Lenahan.

As a precaution, the EOC activated SBAlert, the university-wide emergency alert system. According to Lenahan, 42,699 emails were sent shortly after 2:00pm to all currently enrolled students, faculty, staff and affiliates informing them about the earthquake and how to respond.

“We got a lot of calls about buildings shaking,” said Lenahan. No injuries had been reported as of 4:30pm.

While the earthquake seems to have shaken up more conversations on campus than actual buildings, the Office of Emergency Management is preparing for another potentially damaging act of nature: Hurricane Irene, which may impact Long Island over the weekend.