COLLEGIATETIMES
thursday february 28, 2008 blacksburg, va.
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sports
‘Green’ jobs up for grabs on grist.org
FREE ADMISSION TO BASKETBALL GAME Students, faculty and staff, along with one guest, will be admitted free of charge to Tuesday’s men’s basketball game against Wake Forest. Admission is on a space-available basis and those without tickets are asked to vacate seats claimed by ticket holders in attendance. To gain entry, those eligible for free admission must show a valid Virginia Tech ID at Cassell Coliseum Tuesday evening. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and fans are encouraged to arrive early to find a seat and to catch senior night ceremonies.
LIZA ROESCH
ct staff writer
What’s your secret?
COOK NAMED TO ACADEMIC TEAM Tech forward Brittany Cook was named to the 2008 ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Women’s Basketball University Division third team. The redshirt junior forward is a health, nutrition, foods and exercise major and has been named to the Dean’s List and the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll every Cook semester. She has made the All-ACC Women’s Basketball Academic team twice. Cook currently leads the conference in scoring, averaging 17.9 points per game. She has four double-doubles and set a Tech single-game record when she scored 36 points in the Hokies 81-73 overtime victory at Miami earlier this month.
EMOTION AND INSPIRATION RUN HIGH AS POST SECRET FOUNDER, FRANK WARREN, SPEAKS TO STUDENTS ASHLEY OLIVER & GORDON BLOCK
ct news staff “I trashed my parents’ house to look like I had a party while they were gone … so my mom would think I had friends.” Frank Warren, creator of the hit Post Secret Project, is currently collecting nearly 1,000 postcards a week, just as the one above, and compiling them into books. Three of the books have already become New York Times best-sellers. With the help of Virginia Tech Union, which sponsored the event, students and community members crowded into the Commonwealth Ballroom in Squires Student Center last night to listen to Warren speak about his project. An audience just shy of 800 engaged itself in the emotion-packed event for over two hours. “It was very inspiring to hear not only his perspective, but hearing all the secrets from other people, too,” said freshman engineering major Matthew Parker, who visited the Post Secret Web site on a regular basis before attending
see SECRET, page two
BASEBALL WINS Clawing its way back from a large deficit, the Virginia Tech baseball team members slugged their way to a 14-10 win over the Davidson Wildcats on Wednesday. The Hokies jumped on the board in the first, plating a pair of runs. Tech starting pitcher Rob Whitley allowed nine runs in just two innings, as Davidson built a six-run advantage. The Hokies responded in the the fourth, sending 12 men to the plate and scoring five runs in the frame. The Hokies completed their comeback in the eighth scoring six runs in. The win puts the Hokies at 2-3 on the season.
Online dealer sells to both campus BZA denies First and Main appeal gunman JOSH MILLER/SPPS
ABOVE: Anonymously-submitted secrets, including one from a Virginia Tech student, are displayed on the Post Secret Web site. RIGHT: Post Secret Founder, Frank Warren speaks to students last night in Squires Student Center.
ASHLEY OLIVER
weather
ct associate news reporter
PARTLY CLOUDY
“We are challenging the approval of the site plan because it overlooked existing laws,” Rogol said. The BZA and Rogol discussed the requirements for Guest and Sprague to be considered aggrieved. The BZA stated that landowners have to show that their property has some sort of damage because of the site. Furthermore, the appellants had to show the burden is suffered on their property, but not by the public at large. After discussing at length the two residents’ property damage in reference to the development of the site, the BZA voted to go ahead with the hearing for the appeal. The rest of the hearing focused on whether or not the zoning administrator made the right decision to approve the site plan.
No matter how carefully gun store owners and gun dealers follow the laws of gun buying and selling, there is always the possibility of their product being connected with a crime. A single company selling to two campus shooters, however, is a much more rare and disturbing revelation. “My initial thought was pretty much shock, I was just sickened by the whole news. … the fact that somebody would do that., said Eric Thompson, president and owner of TGSCOM, an online gun-dealing company based out of Green Bay, Wis. It was recently found that Thompson’s company was the source of both a firearm used by Seung-Hui Cho in the Virginia Tech shootings and several handgun accessories used by Steven Kazmierczak, the man who killed five students earlier this month at Northern Illinois University. Despite the controversy that surrounds gun dealing over the Internet, Thompson said his company followed all the standard protocols in the dealing of their merchandise. “My company and anybody that legally deals with firearms is all pretty much the same,” said Thompson. “If somebody from another state were to buy a weapon from us, we take the money from them, we send it out to a dealer of their choosing in the state of their residence, and they go ahead and pick it up from that dealer.” As far as background checks, Thompson said all his purchasers are properly checked by dealers with specific federal forms, which vary from state to state. Cho purchased a Walther P22 pistol from www.thegunsource.com and Kazmierczak bought a holster and two 9mm Glock magazines
see MAIN, page two
see GUNS, page two
high 34, low 24
corrections If you see something in today’s paper that needs to be corrected, please e-mail our public editor at publiceditor@collegiatetimes.com, or call 540.231.9865.
coming up TOMORROW’S CT Pick up Friday’s paper for a story about “Dark Matter,” an upcoming movie about a campus shooting. Watch video from the lacrosse team’s win over William & Mary.
index News.....................2 Features................4 0pinions................3
Classifieds..............5 Sudoku..................5 Sports....................6
An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 105th year • issue 27
When Virginia Tech seniors graduate this May, they’ll have more than career fairs and Monster.com to help find them the perfect job. An environmental news Web site called Grist.org recently launched a job postings board that advertises environmentally friendly jobs and employers. Priding itself on “green journalism,” Grist started in 1999 and focuses on providing news on environmental issues in the form of articles, book reviews, consumer tips and opinion pieces. It features news on everything ecological — including current legislation, green living, climate issues and environmental justice. It even provides a “How green is your candidate?” fact sheet to determine how your favorite presidential candidate measures up on environmental policy. The job board, however, may be the most interesting part of the site for college students. It allows organizations to post “green” job advertisements in hopes of attracting the environmentally conscious audience that frequents Grist. “It was just launched in November 2007, but so far we’re really happy with how readers and employers are taking to it,” said Linda Ingersoll, director of business development for Grist. In order for a job advertisement to be posted on Grist, it must be from either a nonprofit environmental organization or a job in the environmental department of a corporation. Ingersoll is in charge of approving or denying the job ads before they’re posted on the site. “We just want to make sure the jobs are appropriate for our audience,” Ingersoll said. “But so far I haven’t been faced with the question of whether or not to approve one.” Job advertisements range from a staff attorney for Earthjustice to a “green genius” for Planet Smoothie. Although the site has only 50 or 60 jobs listed currently, new jobs are added each day. Catherine Copeland, assistant director for assessment at Virginia Tech Career Services, said this is an example of the many Internet resources. “I think a lot of Web sites like this target college students because most of them are typically looking for jobs upon graduation,” Copeland said. Copeland said there are Web sites similar to www.grist.com everywhere, catering to students’ specific interests. Angie De Soto, a senior environmental policy and planning major and officer of the Environmental Coalition at Tech, said the job board on Grist is a great source for college students because of the direction society is heading in dealing with environmental issues. “Younger people are moving into decision-making careers, and Web sites like this are opening doors that haven’t been opened before,” De Soto said. “Especially as our society is moving to live in harmony with the planet rather than against it.”
JIM DICKHANS /SPPS
Last night the Blacksburg Zoning Authority determined that three Blacksburg residents lacked the standing to hear the appeals.
MEG MILLER
ct campus life editor The Blacksburg’s Board of Zoning Appeals chose to uphold the zoning administrator’s decision today when the town met to continue a hearing regarding the approval of the First and Main Phase 1 Site Plan. The appeal put before the BZA claimed that the approved First and Main Phase I Site Plan was not in conformance with Ordinance 1412 when it rezoned a portion of the property by taking the residential units out of the plan. The appellants claimed that the developers were not following the ordinance and that the zoning administrator overlooked the ordinance when the plan was approved. On February 13, the BZA held a hearing in
which the appellants, Blacksburg citizens Carol Guest, Jane Sprague, and H.C. Rogol, presented to the board the reasons they felt that they qualified as an aggrieved party, which is required to have standing for an appeal. Last night’s meeting came after the two-week period the Board established to evaluate the appellant’s standing. The hearing began with a request by Llamas, a regional division of First and Main developers Fairmont Properties of Ohio, that the file of suit be dismissed because of a lack of evidence provided by the appellants to prove they should be considered aggrieved. Rogol, the one member of the three appellants who does not live near the site, stated that he was speaking on behalf of the other appellants to prove they were aggrieved. Rogol also stated his reasons for wanting to appeal the zoning administrator’s decision.
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