COLLEGIATETIMES
wednesday october 15, 2008 blacksburg, va.
www.collegiatetimes.com
BUDGET CUTS
VIRGINIA TECH GOT A FISCAL HAIRCUT FROM GOVERNOR TIM KAINE’S BUDGET REDUCTION PLAN. AT ROUGHLY $8 MILLION, THE HIT TO THIS YEAR’S BUDGET WAS RELATIVELY MINOR. BUT MANY FEAR BIGGER CUTS TO COME. —BY RILEY PRENDERGAST ith the country moving through a financial crisis, the commonwealth of Virginia, and subsequently Virginia Tech, are experiencing cutbacks in terms of the federal budget. Of the $200.3 million provided to Tech by the state, about $8.9 million will be cut from the academic budget (approximately 4.4 percent). An additional $2.3 million in Cooperative Extension/Agricultural Experiment Station division funding will also be cut, totaling an $11.2 million budget reduction. “We know we can expect further reductions for fiscal year 2009-10,” said President Charles Steger in a letter to Tech faculty and staff members. “The university will have to consider a variety of measures including the permanent elimination of selected programs.” Steger also wrote that decisions regarding the lack of funds have become increasingly difficult as the budget cuts grow. Tech suffered a $10 million reduction last year, an approximate $1.8 million difference from this year. Some may look at these numbers as a very small piece of the university’s $1 billion budget. While roughly $192 million will flow to the university from the state this year, most of the budget — $527 million — originates with the Virginia Tech Foundation, the group that manages university investments and assets
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which, as of June 30, were valued at roughly $926 million. Student tuition and fees, grants and contracts, sales and services, federal sources and user fees contribute all remaining dollars.
ON THE WEB See the text of the governor’s budget reduction plan at www.collegiatetimes.com. While the numbers appear small now, Steger warned that budget troubles will hardly be a one-year phenomenon. “With current reductions of this magnitude, combined with the loss of more than $10 million last year and larger reductions projected for next year, we must make hard decisions,” Steger wrote in his e-mail to university faculty. Higher education will be cut between 5 percent and 7 percent statewide, amounting to about an $80 million decrease. This accounts for almost 30 percent of what Kaine was hoping to cut out of state spending. Kaine is also proposing to layoff more than 570 state employees. Tech will face three layoffs. It’s not just universities that are taking the hit; Kaine himself has forced his cabinet to cut back, according to the governor’s official news release. Some of the efforts being taken include cutting back on cell phone usage, dry cleaning, and state-to-state travel by him and his wife.
see BUDGET, page two SALLY BULL AND GO-EUN CHOI/SPPS
sports THE CT WANTS TO KNOW: WHO ARE THE GREATEST? Go to www.collegiatetimes.com to vote on the top ten players in Tech football history starting today. Rank the top ten and find out the final list on Election Day, Nov. 4.
WOMEN’S SOCCER FACES LONGWOOD TONIGHT The Longwood Lancers will face the host Hokies tonight at 7 p.m. on Thompson Field in a non-conference match-up. Tech enters the game with an overall record of 7-5-2 and has won both of their two meetings with the Lancers.
weather SUNSHINE high 82, low 54
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coming up TOMORROW’S CT See our reporters’ take on his up-close-and-personal encounter with the joys of SEC football. Listen to the CT’s sports junkies discuss last week’s events in their weekly sports podcast.
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Classifieds..............8 Sports....................5 Sudoku..................8
An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 105th year issue 93
For Virginia voters, an incoming ‘Obsession’ GABRIEL MCVEY
ct news reporter When many voters across the country open their mailboxes, they may find a DVD that was not on their Netflix queue. Roughly 28 million copies of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” have been mailed to households in prominent battleground states such as Virginia and Ohio. “Obsession” is a 2006 documentary film detailing the threat posed to the United States, Israel, and the West in general by violent Muslim extremists. The Clarion Fund, a nonprofit organization that seeks to raise awareness of “the radical Islamic threat,” is distributing a pared-down 60-minute version of the documentary to voters by mail, as well as to local newspapers in partnership with the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a political advocacy group. “We feel that the media is not adequately covering or addressing the issue,” said Clarion Fund Communications Director Gregory Ross. Ross insisted the mailings were not electioneering for any particular candidate. “We’re not legally allowed to influence the election; we’d say that whoever is elected, they need to take this threat seriously,” Ross said. The Council for American-Islamic Relations asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the DVD distribution, which targeted about 28 million. “American voters deserve to know whether they are the targets of a
Outlining The Clarion Fund’s organizational ties
multimillion-dollar campaign funded and directed by a foreign group seeking to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria as a way to influence the outcome of our presidential election,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, in a statement. Ross said that the Clarion Fund is funded via private donations from several thousand donors who span the political spectrum. However, local viewers contested the film’s implicit cultural conclusions. “This is a very strategic move, whoever’s made this movie; it’s probably a McCain supporter,” said Mona
Masood, a member of Tech’s Muslim Student Association. “It says that the 9/11 terrorists were trained at American flight schools, so you can’t really trust Muslims. Or in the London attacks, they say that these people were homegrown; they grew up on suchand-such street so you can’t really trust anyone.” Other members of Tech’s Muslim and academic communities said the film presented a skewed picture of Islam, particularly linking modernday radical Islam to Nazism in the 1930s.
Police have no leads after Squires incident ZACH CRIZER
ct news reporter Virginia Tech Police have no suspects in the case of a weapons violation in Squires Student Center during the early morning hours of Saturday, Oct. 4. The Late Night Party held in Old Dominion Ballroom as part of this year’s Homecoming festivities was interrupted by a man carrying what several witnesses told police was a .22 caliber handgun. Tom Foster, assistant chief of Virginia Tech police, said officers working the door responded to a fight in progress. “The officers had to make their way through the crowd, so the ballroom was fairly crowded,” Foster said. “There were two people being held back. The officers never witnessed any physical fighting. At least two witness statements indicated that they witnessed a gun.” Foster said the witnesses described the gun as small and silver or chrome in color. Witnesses described the man as wearing a whiteshirt.ResidentialProgramsAdministrator Lauren Harris works in the Fraternity and Sorority Life office. She was the sponsoring
organization’s representative at the Late Night Party, and reportedly aided in breaking up the altercation. While the fight is believed to have involved fraternity members, Harris was unavailable for comment. Organized as a part of the Homecoming festivities, the Late Night Party was open to all, with a $5 entrance fee. It began at 10 p.m. Friday and was scheduled to last until 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Police entered to break up the fight at approximately 12:30 a.m. and received reports of the weapon during interviews. Foster said most people left the party when the police entered. University Unions and Student Activities officials indicated all proper security measures were taken. Old Dominion Ballroom holds approximately 500 people for a general admission event such as the Late Night Party. As of Monday, the case was inactive, but Foster stressed that it can be reopened at any time if new information emerges. Foster said if any one has information, they should contact Virginia Tech Police.
The Endowment for Middle East Truth recently organized a seminar on the issues presented in the film “Obsession” for members of Congress in collaboration with Sheldon Adelson, an American casino billionaire, the right-leaning Freedom’s Watch advocacy group and the Republican Jewish Coalition. The film also features commentary from Caroline Glick, a member of EMET’s board of directors and deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Adelson is a low-profile but heavyweight donor to Republican and conservative causes, who the New Yorker reported is “fiercely opposed to a two-state solution” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “betrayal of principle.” Ross said that the Clarion Fund was founded in 2006 to raise awareness among the general public of the threat to the West from radical Islam. According to the Associated Press, current and former employees at the Clarion Fund involved with the film are connected to Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox Jewish organization and yeshiva. Aish HaTorah is a staunchly pro-
Israel organization that promotes Jewish pride and helps send young Jewish-Americans to Israel. The three founders of the Clarion Fund are or were full-time employees of Aish HaTorah. Raphael Shore, the leader of the Clarion Fund, is a rabbi and full-time employee at Aish HaTorah. At a screening earlier this year at New York University, distributors of the film required viewers to register at IsraelActivism.com, the Web site of Aish HaTorah’s Hasbara Fellowships. The executive producer and the production manager of “Obsession” are listed under aliases, though Peter Mier — the putative executive producer — is an alias for an anonymous Canadian Jewish businessman who provided about 80 percent of the movie’s $400,000 budget, according to a report in Haaretz. “I don’t understand why it’s biased if Jews are behind the creation of an objective film,” Shore told Haaretz, a leading Israeli news daily. “There’s nothing wrong with Jews saying the radical Islamists are coming, just like there’s nothing wrong with Jews in Nazi Germany saying the Nazis are coming.”
see OBSESSION, page two
Barr visits campus
PETER VELZ/COLLEGIATE TIMES
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr spoke in Squires Colonial Hall last night. A former Republican congressman from Georgia, Barr spoke on issues ranging from the economy to foreign policy. After his talk, Barr retired to Cabo Fish Taco to hobknob with local libertarian supporters who organized his visit to campus.
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