Break place

Need a good cup of hot java to warm your bones, or maybe a quick snack? Students, faculty and staff have discovered the newest spot to take a coffee break on campus. It is The Gourmet Bean, a coffee kiosk located in the Library Tower.

The kiosk is open 8 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. It opened Nov. 7.

Weekly peace vigil

Every Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., the Binghamton Peace Network holds a peace vigil at the Library Tower Fountain. Barbara Regenspan, assistant professor in the School of Education and Human Development, is one of the group's organizers. Attendance is small but consistent — 10 to 25 people at most — and evenly divided between faculty and students, said Regenspan.

"Our goal is to get people to stop and think about what we're doing [in Afghanistan]," she said. "And we do have good conversations with people about the direction we're taking, about the way the world is going, about what freedoms we think we are protecting [by bombing Afghanistan] and about global social justice."

In addition to the weekly peace vigil, the Binghamton Peace Network collects money for the work of Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan. Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) is a non-governmental organization that delivers emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics and natural and man-made disasters, and others who lack health care due to social or geographical isolation. "Telling people about Doctors Without Borders and collecting funds for the organization gives people a concrete way to ally themselves with a humanitarian response, whether they are for or against the war," said Regenspan. In November, the Peace Network sent MSF a check for over $1,000, a combination of funds collected at the vigils and matching contributions from faculty.