Students listened as Shor, a member of the Israel Water Authority spoke of the importance of water in relations among Jordan, Israel and Palestine.

Shor discussed Israel’s water sector, the sources of water in the region, and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

“A lot of Israel’s water is not from natural resources,” Shor said. “Israel reuses 72 percent of its water.”

Because of a lack of natural resources, Shor said water has been a source of contention in certain regions. The Golan Heights, a territory Syria also claims, has water, which increases each nations desire for the land.

The presentation, hosted by BU Students for Israel, is part of the Israel Peace Week campaign to educate students about peace efforts and other facts involving the nation.

Shor also said the Gaza Strip faces water problems.

“There is a pipe [from Israel] to Gaza, but the valve is closed,” Shor said. “In the past, the Palestinian Authority would not agree to buy the water from Israel and [treat the water] because they did not want to lose power in the negotiations.”

The Palestinian Authority at one point received money to help them treat their water, but did not use the funds for that purpose, Shor said.

“The United States and parts of Europe stopped sending money after the Hamas victory,” she said.

Students for Justice in Palestine member Kareem Chahayeb said in a phone interview that there is not enough water in the West Bank and that the Israeli government “stole” the water.

“The reality [of the water in Israel is] far different from what’s being portrayed,” Chahayeb, a CAS junior, said.

BUSI members said they feel differently.

“The bottom line is Israel guarantees water to the Palestinian Authorities through the Oslo Accords that were signed in 1993,” Goldberg said. “As soon as the peace treaty was signed with Jordan, Israel has transferred since 1994 and will continue to transfer 50 million cubic meters of water to Jordan every year. So when the Palestinians are ready to make peace with Israel, Israel will be more than willing to transfer water.”

However, members of both groups said they agree that the lack of water is a serious problem for the Palestinians.

“People in the West Bank are living with under 20 liters of water a day.  Which is terrible,” Chahayeb said.

“The Israeli people and the people of Palestine, it’s a tragedy really,” said CAS sophomore Sarah Close. “They’re being denied access to basic human rights including the same water privileges that Israelis have. I think the problem is more with the government.”

“It’s the first day of the week but today has been really successful, we engaged a ton of students and tried to educate people throughout the day about Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan,” Goldberg said.

In a letter to the editor published in The Daily Free Press Tuesday, CAS junior Kristen Martin said Israel stole water from the Palestinians and destroyed Palestinian capacity for water. Martin also said BUSI attempted to “whitewash” Israel’s image, while ignoring international law and human rights organizations. She did not attend the presentation.

CAS junior Alex Alpert, vice president of BUSI, said Martin’s decision not to attend the presentation showed that she generalized rather than made “accurate” conclusions.

“As an Israeli, I think there’s a generalization of what our opinions are,” Alpert said. “The fact that [Martin] didn’t come here and actually attend our event and listen to us, just shows that they were making no effort to actually make conclusions that are accurate, because they are not even hearing the other side.”

Matt Goldberg, BUSI president, said Israel Peace Week is designed to educate students about what Israel’s global efforts towards peace.

“[It is] especially focusing on the Jordanians, as we talked about tonight and what Israel has done around the world globally to promote peace whether it be being the first field hospital in Haiti or donating aid to countries after the tsunami,” Goldberg, a CAS sophomore, said.

Chahayeb said he understands why Israeli Peace Week exists, even if it isn’t a stance he supports.

“This campus has people from all different walks of life,” he said. “In the end they’re going to have an event that promotes Israel.”

Chris Faraone's new book, 99 Nights with the 99 Percent, documents his experience at Occupy movements. COURTESY/CHRIS FARAONE

Boston University College of Communication alumnus Chris Faraone calls his new book about 10 nationwide encampments a time capsule of the “Occupy revolution.”

“It’s got pictures. It’s got haikus. It’s got the word ‘f–k.’ It’s a fun book,” said Faraone, author of the new book “99 Nights with the 99 Percent: Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution.”

Faraone’s book features a compilation of articles he wrote as a reporter for the Boston Phoenix, as well as some unpublished material, according to a press release.

The book is due for national release on March 27.

Faraone received his master’s degree in journalism from COM in 2004 and began writing for The Boston Phoenix in 2008, according to the release.

He said the topics he covers are “all over the place,” but he primarily writes about “social justice and equality issues.”

Faraone said the book is a culmination of everything he did while covering the Occupy movement.

“It’s a travel book as well as a political book,” Faraone said. “It is a time capsule of the first three months of the Occupy revolution, as I saw it.”

The book recounts the activities of Occupy camps across the country, including pictures and illustrations, as well as a bonus chapter, which delves into Anonymous and the “hactivists” movement.

Faraone brings his readers into the thick of the Occupy movement, introducing its characters, displaying its rallies, uncovering its struggles and highlighting its overall goal.

Faraone said between October and December, he was in Boston about half the time and traveling the other half.

“My life became occupied,” Faraone wrote in the introduction of his book. “I became compelled to look under the hood and get inside of tents not just in Boston and New York, but whatever the energy spread and my sock drawer bank account could get me.”

Faraone traveled across the country visiting Occupy camps in Miami, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, according to the press release.

“New York was the mother ship, so I went there a bunch,” he said.

The book also prefaces each chapter with a series of ten haikus, or “Occupaikus,” as Faraone calls them.

The “Occupaikus” serve to focus on what Faraone was reporting about and catch the reader up with other issues occurring at the time, he said. He said the haikus add to the style of the book.

Each chapter also has a miniature introduction to set up the following article in the context of the larger picture.

“I’m only one person so I can only cover what was in the book,” Faraone said. “I wanted to put my stuff within context of what was going on across the country. I wanted it to flow.”

Faraone calls himself an “alternative journalist” because he is passionate about his coverage and expresses sympathy for the cause and its people.

“The bottom line is American people got screwed by greedy f–king banks,” Faraone said. “I have no apologies for demonizing people who led people to camp out in our cities.”

Faraone said following the Occupy crusade was like “watching a brain-dead society wake up for a movement,” and he admired seeing people finally stand up for themselves, rather than sit idly watching “American Idol.”

He called it “the early steps of a revolution.”

“People give a s–t,” he said. “A little protest here and there works to create a significant cultural movement.”

But this book may be only an introduction of the demonstrations to come, Faraone said.

“Even I think it’s ridiculous to have a book about Occupy already,” Faraone said. “This is a time capsule of the first 99 days. By no means is the movement over.”

Faraone said he was at a meeting in Boston, which people from Rochester, N.Y., Providence, R.I., and D.C. attended, and many Occupiers are getting ready and planning marches and rallies.

“Now it’s legitimate,” he said.

The book will be available one month earlier than the rest of the country at Brookline Booksmith, Trident Booksellers & Cafe and Harvard Book Store, according to the press release.

Faraone is also holding “kick-offs” for his book on Feb. 27 at Brookline Booksmith and March 1 at Good Life Bar.

Border control officials found a number of underage students in possession of alcohol, according to the police report released by the Vermont State Police Department. Officers issued 26 minor citations in possession of alcohol violations, as well as criminal citations to four BU students found in possession of drugs.

The report named BU senior Laura Eldred, 22, as a suspect found in possession of ecstasy. Sophomore Kelly Greacen, 19, senior Aanchal Khaneja, 22, and sophomore Dylan Turk, 19, were found in possession of marijuana.

BU spokesman Colin Riley said the students’ citations will be handled as normal off-campus incidents.

“What I’ve said to the media is that it’s no different than if they were cited off-campus for having alcohol or drugs,” Riley said.

Riley said though the students in question were not arrested, they will probably be contacted by the Dean of Students office.

“Now that we have their names we will call them in and . . . there could be sanctions,” Riley said. “It’s not something that’s good to hear, but they should know better.”

Eldred and Greacen were cited to appear in Orleans District Court on April 17 to answer for their charges, according to the police report. Khaneja and Turk were cited to appear on Mar. 13.

The students were returning from a trip sponsored by the BU Ski and Board Club that was open to both members and non-members, said Jason Kashdan, College of Communication sophomore. The trip included three buses for undergraduate students and one for alumni.

According to students that were on the trip, a bus from the University of Massachusetts was in front of the BU buses in the line for border control.

“With the UMass bus in front of our bus, they found a lot of weed and other kids under 21 bringing alcohol,” Kashdan said via phone. “I’m pretty sure that gave border patrol an opinion of what was to come on the buses following.”

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences of sophomore Erin Yetter said at first she did not notice anything different about the search procedure aboard her bus.

“My bus just got searched just like normal, standard procedure,” Yetter said in a phone interview. “They asked everyone to declare whether they had anything with them.”

Kashdan, who also went on the ski trip last year, said last year officials didn’t check as much on the bus as they did under the bus.

“It was just a coincidence that border control was trying to crack down a lot harder, really bad luck,” he sa

Kashdan said when a U.S. border control officer came on the bus while still in Canada, he told students they would not be processed if they came forward with their illegal substances.

“What bothered me the most was that when the guy came on our bus, the first thing he said was that anyone who had anything that would be considered illegal in the United States . . . wouldn’t be a problem and that they would just dispose of it if they students came forward,” Kashdan said. “That didn’t end up happening. The people that admitted to having things ended up getting processed and just having a hard time, which ended up being five hours.”

COM sophomore Erica Stapleton said border patrol said it was enforcing more stringent search procedures aboard the buses.

“They told us they were trying to make a statement and that they were trying to crack down on it because a lot things go through that shouldn’t be, necessarily,” Stapleton said.

An officer from the BU Ski and Board Club declined to comment.

“The Vermont State police wanted to get that message across,” Riley said. “Don’t bring alcohol and drugs across the border. You shouldn’t be in possession of them if you’re underage or if they’re illegal.”

Christina Harms, who retired from her post on Jan. 11, was set to meet with Human Resources on Jan. 19 to sign paperwork indicating her appointment as the associate director for Judicial Clerkship Advising, according to an email from Harms’s spokeswoman.

Harms postponed the meeting due to a death in the family, but received confirmation that the meeting would take place on Jan. 23, the email stated.

BU, however, reportedly decided not to hire Harms after learning about the controversy surrounding a case Harms heard involving a pregnant woman with schizophrenia. In the case, brought forth by the woman’s parents, Harms ordered the woman to abort her pregnancy and get sterilized.

Harms received a phone call on Jan. 24 from Maura Kelly, the assistant dean of Career Development, in which Kelly said “the University decided not to proceed” with the appointment due to the media attention involving the case.

Stephen Burgay, vice president of Marketing and Communications, said the School of Law decided not to hire Harms because the controversy associated with her would prevent her from providing opportunities for law students.

“It was just clear by watching the reaction around Judge Harms that she attracted great controversy,” he said in a phone interview. “Our question was ‘Is [Harms in] this position going to be able to open the largest possible options for our students?’ ”

Burgay said BU never officially offered Harms the position, but that she had been a candidate until they reviewed more information about her and the attention they had received.

Jenny Carron, assistant to Law Dean Maureen O’Rourke, also said there had been several discussions with the judge about the position, but no offer.

In the case, the parents of the 31-year-old pregnant woman, referred to as “Mary Moe,” asked to be appointed their daughter’s legal guardians, said Karen Schwartzman, Harms’s spokeswoman. The parents asked the court to determine the proper course of action for their daughter, as her mental condition prevents her from doing so.

“The parents wanted Mary Moe to have an abortion,” Schwartzman said. “They were . . . saying to the judge if she were competent she would make an abortion [and were] asking the judge to make that determination.”

Schwartzman said Moe’s schizophrenia medication put the fetus at risk and would have to stop taking it to protect the fetus. However, Moe would have threatened her own well being by discontinuing the medication.

The woman aborted her first of three pregnancies. While she carried the second one to term, her parents are raising the son, Schwartzman said. The parents argued that it would not be in her best interest to give birth to another child.

Harms’s decision concluded Moe was incapable of making the decision partly based on several questionable and false claims, Schwartzman said.

Moe claimed she opposed the abortion because she is a devout Catholic. However, Schwartzman said she had not only undergone an abortion in her first pregnancy, but also engaged in pre-marital sex with multiple partners and did not attend church regularly. She also claimed at one point that she wasn’t pregnant and that she had a daughter named Nancy, both of which were false.

The judge determined if the woman were in her right state of mind, she would decide to have an abortion, Schwartzman said.

It is not certain whether or not the woman aborted her first pregnancy willingly and if she was on the same medication throughout the second pregnancy, Schwartzman said. While the information may have appeared in the court records in written decision, they were sealed when sent to the Appeals Court.

Schwartzman said no BU official ever asked Harms about her reasoning behind the decision and that none had access due to the sealed records.

BU officials, however, focused on the reaction to the decision rather than the decision itself, Burgay said.

“We felt that an individual who brought a degree of notoriety would not be the most effective person in opening the biggest number of doors,” he said.

Harms approached BU in August 2011 with the idea to help place law students into clerkships and unpaid internships, according to her email.

Schwartzman said Harms, who worked on the bench for 23 years, had several law students working under her direction as interns. The judge’s experience could help BU, which Schwartzman said ranked low compared to other colleges in terms of law schools.

“BU doesn’t have a strong track record in placing its law students in paid clerkships and internships,” she said.

Carron said while officials try to improve the schools standing, they are not “lacking” in that category.

Schwartzman noted a U.S. World News ranking that reviewed which college’s 2009 graduates are most likely to be employed as Federal judicial clerks with Article III Federal judges. The ranking, released in April 28, 2011, listed BU as 51st on the website.

However, U.S. World News’s Best Law Schools list ranked BU as the 18th best college in March 2011.

Harms’s attorney Joan Lukey sent a letter to Dean Maureen O’Rourke on Jan. 30, requesting that the School of Law to reconsider rescinding what she called the “offer” made to her.

“Certainly, the lawyers and judges of this city and beyond, as well as your student body and the public, will be left to wonder what this decision says about the University’s ideal of academic freedom, if your approach to judicial freedom is to be taken as an indication,” the letter stated.

In a letter sent to Lukey on Feb. 1, Deputy General Counsel Erika Geetter wrote that the judge was considered for, but not offered an administrative position, which involved “marketing to a wide variety of people within the School and the legal community.”

Geetter stated the office of General Counsel worried about whether or not the controversy would make the judge’s work less effective.

Geetter declined to comment to The Daily Free Press.

In a Feb. 14 response to Geetter’s letter, Lukey wrote that the office of General Counsel and the judge had an “area of significant disagreement,” as Harmes believed she accepted an offer of employment for the position. All that remained was filling out the final paper work.

Schwartzman said Harms plans to offer her services to other colleges and universities.

Burgay said the spot was posted as an open position in late 2011 and remains vacant. BU is seeking to fill the position, however.

“Boston was a place that never left my father,” Michael, a Los Angeles political writer for the Associated Press, said in a phone interview. “He liked nothing more than eating a clam chowder up in Wells Creek.”

Richard, 83, died of respiratory failure at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan on Friday, his son said.

He spent 28 years in the news business and went on to teach at New York University, Columbia School of Journalism and Seton Hall University for two decades, according to a Feb. 18 article in the Daily News.

Michael described his father as a devoted journalist who spent most of the week working at his office.

“Probably the thing I remember the most was his passion,” Michael said. “He loved to go to work. He spent many hours there.”

Richard’s career stemmed from a “challenging upbringing,” Michael said. Born in 1928, Richard grew up during the Great Depression and decided to join the Navy while in public school as a teenager. He went on to work as a merchant mariner for a number of years.

He decided to attend college after traveling to Pennsylvania with a friend from the Merchant Marine. His friend’s two older sisters encouraged him to attend college. With their help, Richard enrolled at BU.

“Boston University was really a turning point and spring board in his life,” Michael said.  “The important part about his days in Boston University was that he moved from a sort of wayward youth in the military and then the merchant marines to a . . . path to his journalism career.”

Richard graduated from the School of Public Relations in 1954. He went on to get his master’s degree at Columbia University, where an annual award under his name for excellence in reporting continues to be awarded, according to the Daily News.

Richard began working for news publications in New Hampshire and Vermont and worked at the Newark Evening News in New Jersey, according to the article. He moved on to the Daily News, working there for 12 years.

“He was passionate about journalism as a force for good and obsessed with the practice of the craft,” Michael said.

While Michael’s decision to pursue a career in journalism was his own, he described his father as an inspiring figure in the field.

“I saw how he relished each day in the newsroom, its excitement, the challenge of chasing a good story,” he said. “He was passionate about journalism as a force for good and obsessed with the practice of the craft.

“First of all, it was unbelievably cool,” said Executive Director of the Charles River Watershed Association Bob Zimmerman, referring to the Atlantic sturgeon  a local accountant spotted swimming close to the river’s surface last week.

The fish, a member of an ancient and endangered species, is the first Atlantic sturgeon to have been found in the river in years, he said. The brief sighting of the sturgeon has raised area scientists’ hopes about the future of the historically polluted river.

“I’ve been here [at the CRWA] for 21 years and I’m unaware of anyone seeing a sturgeon in the Charles River in living memory,” he said, adding that he had nicknamed the fish “Henry.”

Though sturgeon were plentiful in Colonial times, used by early Massachusetts settlers for food and caviar, they are currently so rare that in most parts of the state they are classified as endangered.

The sighting was “one of those remarkable events that we have no explanation for so far,” Zimmerman said.

The man who found the fish, Rick Bellitti of Charlestown, was walking along a bridge near the Charles River harbor when he spotted the fish swimming in the water just below him, Ayer said.

Since he did not recognize the species, he snapped two photos with his phone and later emailed them to the New England Aquarium for identification.

Zimmerman said scientists easily identified Henry as an Atlantic sturgeon because of his pointed snout and armor plates.

“That’s a very telltale fish,” he said.

Atlantic sturgeons, which can be about three to five feet long and weigh up to 800 pounds, have “been around for potentially millions of years,” said Matt Ayer, an aquatic biologist at the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries.

He added that this sturgeon in particular, not a sexually mature adult, might have been foraging for food.

There is almost no way to tell exactly where the fish came from or where it was going, he said.

He said its presence, though inspiring to many scientists, might not be indicative of any larger sturgeon-related trends.

Henry may have appeared in the river “potentially because of the cleaner environment in the Charles and the harbor in general,” Ayer said.

In the 1960s, untreated sewage and “toxic discharges from industrial facilities” spilled into the river. Also, “fish kills, submerged cars and appliances, leaching riverbank landfills and noxious odors were routine occurrences,” according to the CRWA website.

Since then, national and state legislature, including the Clean Water Act of 1972, combined with the efforts of volunteers and organizations such as the CRWA have worked to clean the river.

Now the river is swimmable in “dry weather” and populated with more than 20 species of fish, according to the CRWA.

Zimmer said seeing pictures of the sturgeon was reinvigorating and “very hopeful.”

Still, he said, “we’ve got a long way to go.”

Kenneth W. Freeman, dean of the School of Management, talks with Dennis Swanson, President of Station Operations for FOX Television Stations Inc.

School of Management sophomore Albert Tawil said Dennis Swanson gave insight not only about the television industry, but also its present-day obstacles.

“He’s such a big name and he contributes [to programs] that we can all recognize like Monday Night Football and the Olympics,” Tawil said. “It seemed like it was something that would be worth my time and that he would be interesting to hear from.”

Tawil was among about 30 students went to the SMG Auditorium to listen to Swanson, the president of Stations Operations for FOX Television Stations Inc. Tuesday night, as part of the dean’s speaker series.

In his lecture “FOX TV: Leading the Media in Turbulent Times,” Swanson took students through his career and the history that shaped the current state of the broadcast industry. A focal point of Swanson’s lecture reviewed how television news must find a way to compete with new media technologies if it expects to survive.

“I point to this thing here,” said Swanson, referring to the iPhone in his hand. “This is our competitor.”

“How many people in this audience here watch television for news? A few,” he said as people raised their hands. “How many people get their news off of this and their information off of this? Yeah, more hands.”

Swanson said students interested in entering the field of broadcast news should remember it’s the hard times in life that matter.

“As you go through life, you’re going to have ups and downs folks, trust me,” he said. “The quality of your life will not be determined by the ups. Your quality of life will be determined by the downs and how you deal with them.”

SMG graduate student Atip Viyakornvilas said Swanson’s rise to major networks, as well as his advice, inspired him.

“It was interesting, especially how he progressed in his life like he started small and how he is where he is after moving around other networks like ABC to Fox,” Viyakornvilas said.

Other than advice, Swanson also talked about the problems recording devices such as TiVo and DVR cause in the market for television news, especially late-night news. The number-one time slot for DVR viewing is 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.

“So our competition at 10 [p.m.] is not the other stations doing news at 10 [p.m.], we beat them easily,” he said. “Our competition at 10 [p.m.] is mobile devices and DVRs.”

Despite the obstacles television news must overcome, Swanson said the business doesn’t look too bleak.

“I don’t want any of my comments to scare anybody about the future of media and broadcasting.” Swanson said. “It’s still a wonderful business, and if we’re smart and we don’t let ourselves sit around and become dinosaurs, we’ll be around for awhile.”

Tawil said he was impressed with hearing about Swanson’s inside knowledge of the industry.

“I thought it was really interesting to hear a personal perspective from such a high-ranking executive in these big companies,” Tawil said. “It was very interesting to hear about the contrast between the networks and how he helped with them.”

An elderly women struggles down the steps at Boston City Hall Plaza. AUDREY FAIN/DFP STAFF

Boston officials will make City Hall Plaza in Government Center more accessible to physically disabled patrons after the Architectural Access Board gave the city a $627,000 fine in 2004, state and city officials said.

Kristen McCosh, the commissioner for the city’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities, said  there will be a five-foot wide access route, beginning at the Washington Mall entrance on Court Street.

The path will lead to a ramp and the front steps of City Hall, McCosh said, so people will not have to traverse the uneven brick.

McCosh said the plan will be “a step in the right direction for the City of Boston in welcoming people with disabilities into City Hall.”

The city gets complaints all the time about the brick sidewalks, McCosh said, and it works very closely with historical commissions and the public works department.

McCosh said the accessible path of travel is really a result of a number of agencies coming together, including the AAB, the disability commission and the Boston community.

Thomas Hopkins, the executive director of the state’s AAB, said this project proposal was made in response to a $627,000 fine given to the City of Boston by the AAB.

A man named John Kelly was the original complainant in 2004, bringing attention to an accessibility problem with Huntington Avenue, Hopkins said.

The bricks there will be replaced with either red asphalt or red concrete, Hopkins said.

The AAB allowed the city to keep half of the money to fix Huntington Avenue and the rest was allocated to the disability commission to meet other complaints or give attention to other problem areas, such as Boston’s City Hall Plaza, Hopkins said.

The city brought together advocates in the community and different disability nonprofit agencies to get input on the best way to use the money, he said. Through a community process, the plan for an accessible path onto City Hall Plaza was chosen.

Hopkins said the type of brick currently used on the plaza and various other locations around Boston is called “Boston City Hall Paver.”

The bricks are manufactured specifically to look distressed and broken for “an historic, ‘this is a hundred-year-old sidewalk’ feel,’ ” he said.

“Historians love the brick, but it’s really not practical, not even for able-bodied people,” Hopkins said.

In an attempt to compromise with brick lovers, alternatives to City Hall Paver includes concrete sidewalk with a brick trimming and “wire-cut” brick, which are all purposefully cut with the exact same dimensions to increase smoothness, Hopkins said.

The Public Facilities Department issued an invitation for bids in search for a construction company to carry out the plan. The bids are due on March 1.

The construction on City Hall Plaza, McCosh said, is set to begin in April and will finish by July.

Dead mice litter the yard of an apartment in Allston. ALYSON WHITMAN/DFP STAFF

Boston University College of Arts and Sciences senior Will Huebner’s bedroom is larger than the average-sized double in Warren Towers, but the room is riddled with cracks and holes.

Two cracks in the drywall, about six inches in length each, run along the ceiling, he said. Mice and rats use a two-foot-long hole in the wall to enter and exit the apartment.

“It’s like the rats have chewed away at it for years and years,” Huebner said. “Every night I can hear them.”

Huebner resides at 48 Brighton Ave. in Allston, where Boston’s Inspectional Services Department conducted inspections last week to check up on and enforce city and state building, health, sanitation and safety codes.

The inspections yielded over 40 violations, said ISD Spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake.

Over the course of three days, building, housing, electrical and environmental inspectors teamed up with firefighters to canvas the Allston area and performed more than 150 inspections of various apartments and houses, she said.

“There were quite a few issues, here and there,” she said. “A lot of the violations were smoke. Missing smoke detectors, missing carbon monoxide detectors. Those, I believe, were the main issue.”

After the ISD records the violations, they report the issues to the owners of the property, Timberlake said. Depending on the violations, owners have between 24 hours to 30 days to fix the problem.

“If they don’t comply within the time frame allotted to them, then we will have to forward that complaint to housing court,” she said.

The conditions in Huebner’s apartment violate the code of Safe and Sanitary Housing for Massachusetts Residents, which requires the owner of a residential building to “keep the structural elements free from holes, cracks . . . or other defects [that] may cause an accident or constitute an insect or rodent haven.”

Huebner said he enjoys living off campus, but living in Allston has its ups and downs.

“Living in Allston is a very special experience that is good and bad for a lot of reasons,” Huebner said. “It’s a great place to live for a short time, but I think the turnaround in Allston is about two years.”

A BU School of Management senior who lives at 45 Ashford St. in Allston and asked to remain anonymous said the management and landlord staff ignore issues and rarely act to solve problems.

“This past weekend I was having a little get together,” he said. “It came to a screeching halt when twenty gallons of this nasty, yellow water started pouring down from the ceiling in the bathroom.”

When seven firefighters showed up, they fixed the leak but had to shut down power in fear of wires short-circuiting if exposed to water, he said.

At press time, he did not yet have power restored to his bathroom or bedroom.

“We’ve called the landlord a couple times [and] the guys upstairs have called the landlord,” he said. “As far as I know nobody’s even gotten a response from them yet and it has been four days.”

The students said they find it difficult to contact the companies that manage their apartments, Brighton Realty Management and J A Wood Management.

Brighton Realty Management plays a pre-taped message to callers that directs complainants to an outsourced company that is not located in Boston, where operators said they forward the complaints they receive.

Effectively, tenants cannot reach landlords directly, said Kathy, an operator for the service who asked to keep her last name anonymous.

Callers who select the “emergency service” option when calling J A Wood Management reach operators who say that only damaging incidents such as fires and floods constitute “emergencies.”

One J A Wood Management operator, who asked to remain anonymous, said a call about a rodent problem “would be logged and would not get an immediate response, and then we would educate the person on what truly is an emergency.”

He said he would not divulge contact information for landlord or realty companies to tenants.

The SMG student said the gap in communication grows larger when building managers do address problems.

“They didn’t really bother to water-tight any of the bathroom,” he said, explaining why a mushroom had begun growing on his bathroom ceiling. “All [J A Wood Management did was] take the mushroom and drop it in the toilet. They didn’t even flush. They blatantly ignored the real problem, which is the bathroom is totally moldy.”

Boston University senior guard Darryl Partin dribbles by the University of New Hampshire defense JUNHEE CHUNG/DFPStaff

Much in the same way, a basketball team is dependent on dissimilar parts coming together to form a coherent, successful product.

After spending the last four days in the Baltimore area, the Boston University men’s basketball team is hoping for all of their pieces to come together at just the right time. Currently riding a two-game losing streak, the Terriers will look to get back on track as they take on the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

BU (14-15, 10-4 America East) is fresh off of a 69-56 Sunday loss to Loyola University (Maryland) in the annual ESPN BracketBusters game. It was BU’s first BracketBuster loss in three seasons, and it came on the road against one of the better and more undervalued mid-major teams in the country. The Greyhounds’ win over BU was their 20th of the season and they currently find themselves ranked No. 92 in the most recent RPI standings.

“It was a much closer game than the score would tell,” said BU head coach Joe Jones of the loss.

Indeed, BU hung with Loyola for much of the game. The Terriers were down just a point, 29-28, at halftime and trailed 54-50 with just under six minutes remaining in regulation. From there, however, the Greyhounds pulled away on a 15-6 run, a stretch in which Jones said his team “never recovered.”

A few different factors led to the loss, with 3-point shooting being a major factor. The Terriers went 3-of-18 from beyond the arc which, including their woeful performance against the University of New Hampshire, means the team has gone 5-of-40 (12.5 percent) from 3-point range in their last two games.

For Jones, whose team is third in America East in 3-point percentage in conference play, the last two games stand as an anomaly that always comes about in such a long season.

“During the course of the season, that happens,” Jones said. “We’ve got to make sure we take some good ones and the right guys take them. We will. I always feel confident.”

As has become standard procedure this season, senior guard Darryl Partin and sophomore point guard D.J. Irving were the team’s leading scorers with 17 and 16 points, respectively. The Terriers’ starters accounted for all 56 of the team’s points as the 50 minutes logged by the six players on the BU bench wielded no points. It was just the second time that the BU bench has been held scoreless this season.

For a team looking to rebound and resume its seemingly never-ending battle with the .500 mark this season, there’s hardly a better sight for sore eyes than UMBC, a team that is statistically not only one of the conference’s worst, but also one of the nation’s worst.

The Retrievers (4-23, 3-11 America East) have been in something of a downward spiral since the program’s lone NCAA Tournament appearance in 2008. In the past three seasons, UMBC has gone 13-74, winning no more than five games in a given season. Two of the team’s wins this season have come over two one-win teams – Binghamton University and Towson University.

Of 344 teams in Division I basketball, the Retrievers are currently ranked 337th in the most recent RPI standings.

While UMBC may not be the most difficult of opponents, the Terriers have gone just 2-4 in their last six road games there, including a shocking 71-67 loss last season.

With just two games remaining for the Terriers in the 2011-12 season, Jones insisted his team is intensely focused on those contests, with no opponent being looked over whatsoever. In order for the Terriers to get where they want to be when the season ends, all of the pieces have to come together.

“I’m much more concerned about that than the overall record . . . We’re not defending as well,” Jones said. “We tend to defend better when we make shots. We’ve got to grind teams out and play harder.”