Friday, April 24, 2009 Print Edition

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friday april 24, 2009 blacksburg, va.

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BOV to raise tuition GORDON BLOCK

'09-'10 Tuition Changes

ct news reporter In the face of large state-funding reductions, Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors Thursday unanimously approved an increase to tuition and fees for the 2009-10 school year.

The tuition hike stems from a large drop in state funding in combination with an increase in students. Tech’s appropriation for instruction from the state is $159 million for the fiscal year 2009-2010, down from $190 million in 2000-2001. In addition, undergraduate admission has increased by 2,018 students, resulting in less money allocated per student.

Federal funds through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 reduced the increase. The university used funds to provide a grant of $130 to in-state undergraduates.

In-state undergraduate students’ tuition and mandatory fees will now be set at $8,605, an increase of $407.

Out-of-state undergraduates will also see an increase, with tuition and mandatory fees at $21,878, an increase of $1,053.

'08-'09

'09-'10

In-state

$6,332

$6,769

Out-of-state

$18,789

$19,522

Undergraduate

Off-Campus Graduate In-state

$8,772

$9,210

Out-of-state

$15,937

$16,734 KELLY HARRIGAN/COLLEGIATE TIMES

Room and board for students living on campus will increase by $348 to $5,824, an increase of 6.4 percent.

Graduate students and students at the veterinary school will also see a rate increase. In-state graduate students in on-campus programs will pay $10,228, an increase of $493. Out-of-state graduate students in on-campus programs will see their rates go to $17,928, an increase of $1,062.

Virginia and Maryland stu-

dents at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine will pay $18,415, an increase of $1,079. Outof-state students at the college will pay $40,607, an increase of $2,337.

Following the vote on the tuition increase, the Board of Visitors started a closed session to talk about litigation brought against the university. The next meeting for the Board of Visitors is set for June 1.

BRIAN CLAY/SPPS

Sophomore chemistry major Alvin Maraya (right) serves himself a plate of adobo (meat) with pancit bihon (noodles) at the Filipino cooking night Wednesday. Virginia Tech is investigating the presence of a diverse student body and staff.

Students discuss diversity RILEY PRENDERGAST

ct news reporter

The Coolest

This is the third installment in a three-part series regarding Virginia Tech’s new policies and plans to focus on diversity in the institution.

MICHAEL MCDERMOTT /SPPS

Rap superstar Lupe Fiasco performed last night in Burruss Auditorium. Fiasco’s penultimate performance of his song “Superstar” electrified a near-capacity crowd.

STUDENTS ARRESTED AFTER GUN SHOTS Blacksburg Police arrested Nandi Stoja and Jonathan Lasater Thursday morning in the 10000 block of Foxridge Apartments for the accidental discharge of a firearm.

A news release from the Blacksburg Police said that Stoja unintentionally discharged a 9mm handgun and later his roommate, Lasater, accidently discharged the same handgun when he attempted to unload it.

Stoja’s shot exited his bedroom window and struck an unoccupied vehicle in parking lot. The second shot lodged in the bedroom wall.

No one was injured from either gunshot.

Both Stoja and Lasater were charged with reckless handling of a firearm and were released on a $1,500 unsecured bond.

They will appear May 7 in Blacksburg General District Court.

index News.....................2 Features................3 0pinions................5

Classifieds..............6 Sports....................8 Sudoku..................6

An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 106th year • issue 52

The Racial Task Force implementation team is not the only program hoping for a change in faculty and student diversity at Virginia Tech.

The Black Student Alliance is one organization that is bringing the culture of African Americans into the mainstream campus community. In a meeting of its executive board, the students discussed the diversity of the faculty at Tech.

“There are not that many black faculty members, and the ones that are here are usually behind closed doors,” said Lauren Purdie, vice president of Internal Affairs.

As Purdie said, the issue of “behind closed doors” is in reference to the fact that it would seem that minority faculty members have little to no visible roles on campus.

“It’s not an issue of across disciplines; it’s more an issue of visibility. You don’t need to know that you have a class with whoever, you need to know that you will see them on cam-

pus at some point,” said Mary Grace Campos, faculty adviser to the BSA. There is also the issue of faculty members not wanting to step on people’s toes.

“Black faculty members are so afraid of offending anybody. … When it comes to race they have to watch everything they say,” Purdie said.

But not all professors have this feeling toward their teaching experiences at Tech.

“I feel like I’ve been given free rein. I don’t feel that there are any restrictions against me,” associate professor Paula Seniors said. “I feel that the departments, both Africana Studies and sociology, have been very open to what I teach.

I’ve just had a very good experience here in terms of teaching.”

Seniors also weighed in on the problem of faculty visibility.

“I guess that’s an important thing if (students) are not seeing the black faculty, or not taking classes with the black faculty,” Seniors said. “I mean you have Nikki Giovanni in the literature department, you have Fred D’Aguiar, you have all of these scholars. … They should come to us as well as we should go to them. It should be a twoway street of them coming to us and us going to them.”

There are some issues, how-

ever, that the BSA and the Racial Task Force agree upon.

Each One Reach One is a program designed to connect upperclassmen with freshmen on campus as a way of creating relationships within the Tech community among minority students.

“There are issues in every aspect (of diversity) with the students, faculty, alumni involvement and retention,” said Destiny Jackson, BSA president and a junior architecture major.

“There are programs that really help with bringing in students, like Gateway,” Jackson said. “Gateway brings minority students to campus after they receive their acceptance letters.

They stay with other minority students and really get a feel for campus. I know that was the first time that all of us (in the BSA) had gotten together at the beginning of the year.”

But there is a perceived roadblock for the potential success of Gateway and Each One Reach One programs, which bring minority students on campus together with upperclassmen to address the issues that they face in succeeding in college. Gateway is open to all students who are offered admission to the university, but is designed for underrep-

resented students.

“The university needs to support these programs more.

I mean Gateway gets shorter every year,” said James Sample, vice president of External Affairs for the BSA. “The funding for these programs is horrible.”

The executive board also touched upon the problems of getting people other than minority students involved in the programs that the BSA puts on.

“We need to support each other’s events, and not just the black sororities and fraternities, and not for just events like our comedy shows and concerts, but our cultural and informational events,” Jackson said.

There are still some hints of prejudice on campus for organizations directed by underrepresented groups on campus that make the BSA hesitant.

“I’ve talked to people who don’t think it’s fair that we have black organizations. … Some people just aren’t accepting of it,” said Ramla Brown, BSA director of speakers.

Brittney Davis, BSA director of communication, said the Commission of Student Affairs should be doing more.

“I mean we are all there together; we should be setting up events together,” Davis said.

Construction slashes Litton Reaves parking KELSEY HEITER

ct news reporter A new construction project in the Litton Reaves parking lot will leave hundreds of graduate and commuter students without a place to park for the next two years.

The second installment of the ICTAS center, Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, is beginning construction on the parking lot behind Litton Reaves.

Graham Smith, special events coordinator for parking services, said the project is part of a “massive building plan for the next 10 years on campus.”

“What is going up now is a fence to block off for the actual construction,” Smith said. “In addition to the footprint of the building, the construction workers have to block off extra space for when they drop off materials so that they have space to maneuver around in.”

Smith added that this project will take up a “big chunk of the Litton Reaves lot, so it is going to have a huge impact on the students’ parking situations, as well as the faculty and staff parking.”

“What parking services has

done is taken away commuter and graduate parking at the back of Litton Reaves lot and converted it to faculty and staff parking,” Smith said. “The displaced students will have to park further up the road in the Smithfield parking lots.”

Bo Frazier, assistant manager for parking services, said commuter and graduate students will have more than adequate amounts of parking even without the use of Litton Reaves.

“We have the upper and lower Smithfield lots for students to use,” Frazier said.

“These lots are not utilized very much at all. There will also be space in the Cage lot, but that is also going to become a construction project, but when that happens, residential students will be shifted to the Chicken Hill lot near the airport.”

Frazier added that the Cage lot will also be undergoing several construction projects, such as an addition of a HABB — Human and Agricultural Biosciences Building — and a parking garage.

“That construction in the Cage is only going to take up a portion of the lot for about the next 10 years,” Frazier said.

COURTESY OF VIRGINIA TECH

Plans detailing the construction that will take place near Litton Reaves and the Cage.

“The parking garage will open up a lot of spaces, and that is what we are looking for.”

Frazier said parking services has received many inquiries concerning the construction in the Litton Reaves lot, but said parking services has issued many notices about the construction.

“We did put out a notice giving students some direction and providing them with

information about the situation as far as alternate locations for parking,” Frazier said. “We are doing the best that we can to accommodate people.”

Smith added that students are going to have to park further away from campus because of the construction, even though that inconveniences many people.

“This is going to be the trend now, because as new buildings

go up, the university wants to site them in the core part of campus to maintain people’s ability to walk from building to building within a reasonable time,” Smith said.

“All of the new buildings will be clustered within the core parts of campus and in open spaces, which are usually parking lots, so parking is going to be pushed farther and farther out,” Smith said.

Frazier said the university is also looking at building an underground walkway from the Cage lot to the Litton Reaves building area.

“As the university grows, parking has to shift around, and we are trying to stay ahead of it,” Frazier said. “So far we still have plenty of parking spaces available to people, but we are going to have people complain about the situation no matter what.”

The alternate locations for commuter and graduate students who normally park in the Litton Reaves lot are the upper and lower Smithfield lots and the Cage, Frazier said.

“Faculty and staff were also displaced,” Frazier said. “We relocated faculty, staff, carpool and TAs within the lot, but the only group we could not accommodate were the commuters and graduate students.

There are 500-plus spots in the cage that commuters and graduate students can use; they are just not as close to the buildings.”

Frazier added that the new parking situation will “just be a little bit of a farther walk for students, unfortunately.”

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2 news

editor: caleb fleming email: nrvnews@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: tth 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.

april 24, 2009

editor: sara mitchell email: universitynews@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: mw 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Lane stays lit year round DEMI ARGIROPOULOS

ct news staff writer

DAVID HARRIES/COLLEGIATE TIMES

Certain levels of Lane Stadium are illuminated around the clock.

The lights of Lane Stadium remain illuminated long after football season concludes, sparking possible concerns of energy efficiency in one of Virginia Tech’s most recognizable structures.

But Pete Pool, athletics department housekeeping supervisor, noted that the stadium serves a much greater purpose than most realize.

“Just because football season stops, there’s still a lot of activity that goes on in the building, said Pool, the housekeeping supervisor within the Athletics Department. “Between dinner functions, rentals, and, not to mention, it’s still new enough to where everyone wants to come tour it.”

Casey Underwood, director of outside facilities, noted that the amount of power actually flowing to the stadium can be deceiving.

Fifty percent of the lights in Lane Stadium are on emergency circuits, Underwood said, adding, “We can have half the lights off in the stadium, and it still looks like all the lights are on.”

This type of emergency lighting system is the same as that used in Tech’s residence buildings. Just as the hallways and crossovers within a residence hall are constantly lit, a number of sections on certain levels of Lane Stadium are also illuminated around the clock.

Underwood cited that premature wear is a common problem with frequently switching the breaker panels on and off. Underwood said doing so creates a problem of having to work around short-notice use of the stadium.

“We don’t want to get caught with half the lights out and somebody having to come in and use a suite on shortnotice,” Underwood said.

Pool echoed Underwood’s expression, noting that it becomes hard to find a balance when you’re operating on short-notice use.

“They’re not always scheduled tours,” Pool said. “Some big donor will come in and want to see the building that hasn’t seen it.”

Underwood maintains the athletics department is in the process of working toward a more cost-efficient lighting system.

“In the last two years, we’ve gone

inside the emergency breaker panels and, when we’re out of season and not in spaces that we rent, we basically turn all the emergencies off except maybe a handful for security purposes.”

In the south end zone Underwood said the department was extremely successful in reducing the number of emergency lights that were kept on this past year.

Underwood added that renovations within the stadium will increase costefficiency.

“What we’re doing in the new bathroom renovations is putting motion detector features in,” Underwood said.

“That way, when you go in a bathroom, the lights will be off unless you open the door; whereas before, the lights basically stayed on through season.”

In addition to these measures, the department plans on using fluorescent lighting wherever possible to increase energy efficiency.

As for the exterior lighting of Lane Stadium, Underwood said that these lights are photocells that automatically come on when it gets dark. The purpose of these lights is primarily limited to creating an aesthetically pleasing west facade.

“We like showing off the building,” Pool said.

Underwood said proposals have been made within the department to limit the amount of time these lights are on by adding timers to the stadium’s lighting control system.

These measures, too, would decrease energy costs.

While some may perceive the interior lights in Lane Stadium as a waste of energy, this is not the case.

“For a long time, our football team ate in there three or four days a week,” Underwood said.

Pool noted the stadium’s additional use for academic purposes.

“We’ve got three floors in that building that are used year-round,” Pool said.

“We have our student academic center in there, the Hokie club …”

The athletics department is currently in the process of working to achieve a more energy- and cost-efficient lighting system.

“And a lot of it is just a learning curve for us; we’re trying to expand upon how much we can continue to pare down our expenditures — as much for cost and conservation purposes,” Underwood said.

Study abroad programs lack sufficient interest, funds JON PFAEHLER

ct news staff writer Virginia Tech Study Abroad programs were canceled recently from safety and economic issues.

After originally being scheduled to go to Mexico to study culture and business, Switzerland for international relations, and Korea and China for management challenges, Tech groups canceled their programs in the early planning stages.

Kent Murrmann, a professor of management at Tech, planned on leading the Mexico program to a university in Guanajuato, a city near the center of the country.

“This was our first year to go down there,” Murrmann said. “I didn’t want to put them (the students) in the position with the potential risk of violence and the uncertainty in the economy.”

The Korea and China program, much

like the Mexico program, was canceled in its preliminary stages.

“The program was canceled due to low enrollment,” said Gilda MachinScarpaci, study abroad specialist in the Pamplin College of Business. “Most programs are full and green to go. It just depends on whether or not there are enough students or money to support the program.”

Factors such as Sept. 11 and the rising cost of tuition in the United States have leveled off U.S. students’ study abroad opportunities in recent years, but the Office of International Research, Education and Development says that this hasn’t affected Tech significantly.

“The desire hasn’t changed; it’s actually increased in some locations,” Matt McMullen, the director of education abroad at Tech said. “Generally it’s still less expensive to study overseas, though the airfare and accommodations haven’t gone down as much.”

Yannis Stivachtis, an associate professor and Director of International Studies, was one of the professors that would have led the five week program that was planned to begin in Switzerland, then travel to Italy, Geneva, and conferences organized for them by the United Nations.

With originally 70 people interested in the program, only 20 (18 students, two professors) were needed to fund the trip and set it in motion.

Only 16 students showed interest by the deadline last fall semester. Stivachtis said, “I could see in the eyes of the students’ parents when we were holding the meetings that the financial crisis was making them unsure. I tried to put myself in their shoes.”

Trying to understand where the parents were coming from, Stivachtis agreed with the idea of creating more facets to help the students financially to study abroad, and commented on how

much effort the professors dedicate to the program, months before a program is advertised.

“Lots of time and energy go into study abroad programs,” Stivachtis said, “It’s difficult for professors because we also have deadlines for books and busy schedules, but we want the students to understand the importance of seeing the international world and how intensive undergraduate research is.”

With only 16 students, the airfare prices were going to increase and with the economic crisis at hand, the program was canceled. Stivachtis is optimistic for another program to launch, and believes there’s still hope since all 16 students that were interested will be returning to Tech next year.

According to Vistawide, an online study abroad statistic tracker, 191,000 American students studied abroad in foreign countries in 2003-04. This was a 250 percent increase from the 1993-94

academic year. Despite these increasing numbers, the recent economic crises and violence in Mexico have sunk Tech study abroad programs that were fighting to stay afloat.

Other organizations not based in U.S. universities, such as the Institute for Study Abroad and the American Institute for Foreign Study, also provide study abroad opportunities and academic credit.

Eryn Espin-Kudzinksi, a program adviser for IFSA at Butler University working with the Latin American-Spain program said that some students were turned away, but noted that the number was minimal.

With the economy affecting nearly any topic, the possibility of future programs’ cancellations is present in the minds of all. Murrmann said the Mexico program was not very expensive, but that there may have been a cutback in study abroad programs because

of the economic environment.

At Radford University there was also a discussion as to whether the Mexico program would take place as scheduled.

Keeping in mind the recent surges of violence and crime in the country, Jon Stauff, the director of International Education at Radford, said the program was never officially canceled.

“The program in Mexico was never formally canceled,” Stauff said. “We did provide the students with the opportunity to study elsewhere, and some of the students migrated to the program to Spain and another program in Chile.”

When asked whether future programs in Mexico will be canceled because of violence, Stauff compared the situation to Sept. 11.

“Just like the international students are coming back now to the U.S., the programs usually rebound,” Stauff said.

“But people around the world are worried about the safety of their children.”

Blacksburg works toward sustainability DEBRA HOUCHINS

ct news staff writer Blacksburg won the gold medal for the governor’s environmental excellence award in the Environmental Program category for the second year in a row.

The town has been honored as an “Exemplary Environmental Enterprise” by the Department of Environmental Quality since 2006 as part of the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program.

The VEEP is a voluntary program that serves as a primary agency in the state for regulating and maintaining water waste.

According to the department’s Web site, “any Virginia facility that impacts the environment through its operations, activities, processes, location, etc. is eligible to participate in VEEP.” David Miles, the deputy regional director at Blue Ridge Office, says that the DEQ has three possible scores: E2 (Environmental Enterprise), E3 (Exemplary Environmental Enterprise), and E4 (Extraordinary Environmental Enterprise).

Although various organizations, facilities, and city departments have scored up to E4, Blacksburg is the only municipality to score E3 throughout all departments, for its extensive Environmental Management Systems, a set of policies and procedures that outlines environmental goals and methods to meet them.

These systems are generally tailored specifically to departments such as Parks and Recreation and Vehicle Maintenance.

EMS successfully reduced landfill waste by 19 tons, and recycled 95.5 tons of materials in 2005. Blacksburg has also initiated an electronics recycling work group, which organized the first e-cycling event in Southwestern Virginia.

Most recently, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded Blacksburg a $95,000 grant to establish a community partnership to reduce toxic pollutants and help create a sustainable community.

Another $10,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Mines Minerals and Energy will help design an environmentally friendly nature center.

When it was initially accepted into the VEEP, Blacksburg scored the lowest rating of E2, but managed to secure the E3 for all its departments in only four years.

“Where with other local governments we’ve worked with will pick a department or two, you know one at a time, Blacksburg did it very comprehensively,” said Sharon Baxter with the Environmental enhancement department of the DEQ. Baxter also referred to Blacksburg as “one of the top entities in the program,” explaining that the city has not only implemented its program in a comprehensive and success manner, but also explained that the city has also already taken it a step beyond that and is working towards ustainability.

Many municipalities will not bother reaching for an E4 rating because it requires a costly, external audit, Baxter said.

Individual organizations with the rating of E4 include a Golf Club in Newport News, City of Charlottesville Department of Parks & Recreation, Volvo Trucks North America in Dublin, and Micron Technology of Manassas.

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features 3

editor: bethany buchanan email: features@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: w 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., f 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.

april 24, 2009

Tim Gunn makes it work on Reid Speed discusses new label, fate of music Bravo’s Project Runway TOPHER FORCHEZ

ct features reporter

MADELEINE MARR

mcclatchy newspapers “Project Runway” fans have been on quite a ride lately.

Bravo’s mega-popular fashion competition had been in lawsuit limbo until earlier this month, when a settlement was reached: Producer Harvey Weinstein consented to sell “PR” to Lifetime, on which Season 6 is set to air Aug. 20. This time around, the designers set up camp in Los Angeles instead of New York.

Series mentor Tim Gunn is pretty pleased.

“Thank God we’re out of Q AND A the courts,” said Gunn. “We got the word on April 1 that it was a go – I thought it was an April Fool’s joke.”

Though the show isn’t the be-all, end-all for Gunn, who taught at Parsons for more than 20 years and is traveling with DKNY Jeans to help women improve their look. He’s also the author of “A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style” and host of Bravo’s “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style.” Phew.

The 55-year-old Washington, D.C., native took a few moments’ time-out for a quick chat:

Q. What fashion advice do you give most often?

A. “I always say there are three key aspects to being fashionable: silhouette, proportion and fit. I think people make the biggest mistake with the latter. They wear items that are too big or too small. Once you find something that fits you perfectly, buy more than one of that item.”

Q. What do you think about South Florida style?

A. “There’s a lot of glamour and pizazz. A lot of great-looking women and men, I have to say. It has a very Euro feeling. But it’s important for clothes to breathe, not be too clinging.

Cropped pants are always worthy. Not jeans. Denim breathes, but it’s not the most comfortable in scorching hot weather.”

Q. Season 4 winner Christian Siriano is in town, too. Are you going to see each other?

A. “Gosh, I hope so. He so impressed

us. I taught for 29 years including the Proenza Schouler boys. He’s the only one I would say is a fashion prodigy. I think he’s his generation’s Marc Jacobs.

I have every confidence of his continued ascension to greatness.”

Q. Did you hear about Season 5 finalist native Kenley Collins assaulting her ex with a cat?

A. “Oh God, yes. To be blunt, I owe it to her immaturity. If the audience had seen excerpts of what we edited out they would have turned off their televisions. She would laugh inappropriately when I made my rounds in the work room. I would call over my shoulder, ‘Kenley, just stop it!’ I’m now very cautious of any designer who has not had even a semester of design education. She took all of the critiquing personally.”

Q. Was she your most difficult contestant?

A. “Ha! I don’t know. Fashion comes with ego and big personalities. I always say if we removed every person who was high maintenance, there would be no one left.”

Drum ‘n Bass queen Reid Speed gets her name from the pace that she sets her life to. After talking to her for awhile, it begins to add up: Her music is fast, she talks excitedly, and even on the advent of her newly released CD, “Under the Influence,” and subsequent tour, she is hard at work.

When she picks up the phone there is a maelstrom of noise that comes out of my receiver, for a second I think she must be standing in a wind tunnel, and then it abruptly stops. It turns out I have interrupted her in the middle of remixing a song when I called her at 2 p.m., our scheduled time. She tells me that it’s 11 a.m., and this is true, in Los Angeles. After the little misunderstanding, she took the time to talk with the CT before her upcoming show at 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Lantern:

CT: What have you been up to recently? How has life been?

RS: Things are really good. I just did this CD that’s on Moist Music that I’m on tour for. It came out like

Q AND A

a month ago. I’ve been just touring a lot for the CD and just been in the studio just working on a lot of tracks.

I have a bunch of new things coming out. I have a new label that’s launching May 1st so that’s in high gear getting all that ready to go.

CT: How is the label coming along?

Heart Beats?

RS: It’s not called Heart Beats anymore. Somebody jacked our name four days before our initial release date. There was some confusion at Beatport. We thought we were set, we had already filled out our applications and stuff but they actually let another person go ahead with the same name literally five days before.

We were supposed to launch on Valentine’s Day and March 9th I started getting all these congratulations from people like “I saw the label’s up, oh that’s fantastic.” I was like “What are you talking about?” and it was somebody else.

CT: Oh no. That was my 21st birthday.

RS: Oh. Happy birthday.

CT: But yeah, that’s too bad. What are you going to do now? Do you just have to rename it?

RS: Yeah, we have to change the name. The label is now called Play Me Records. We’re set to go.

CT: What’s cool about a record label is I feel like it gives you a chance to keep your ear close to everything and to look at things coming up.

How was it finding those acts?

RS: It was great because I’ve been going through this business for so long I just know so many people, and a lot of people in the past two years who used to be really into drum ‘n bass have made this switch to electro and those people, I really like their production quality. People who are just making drum ‘n bass, they always use subs, and their music sounds really fat and has that extra “umph” to it. So that’s pretty much what we’re focused on because it’s myself and SubSonic doing the label together, and SubSonic, he’s killing it with drum ‘n bass. He’s like number one on BeatPort and TrackItDown all the time. So we’re taking that sensibility of the really good production like intricate drum programming and heavy bass and translating that to other styles of music that we like as well.

CT: Is that how you’ve come along?

I mean, “Resonance” is completely drum ‘n bass oriented and then there’s say, the Back to School mix.

RS: It’s been like a circle. In ‘97 when speed garage came out I was playing a lot of speed garage back then and a lot of 2-step, but it never became really popular so I was playing this really unpopular music for a long time. Like 10 years, nobody wanted to hear it and now finally people want to hear it. A lot of people think it’s new to me, but it’s actually kind of like going back to my roots if you will. Getting a chance to finally have people like this music that I was trying to push 10 years ago is really nice. I never got it why nobody liked it back then; I always thought it was so great, I was like, “Oh, it’s like jungle, but it’s house!”

CT: Is that how you see the electronic scene moving toward? Like Dubstep?

RS: It’s moving toward convergence.

If you listen to the Hip Hop that’s on the radio, The Black Eyed Peas “Boom Boom,” whatever that song is. If you listen to Lil Wayne, and T-Pain, and all this Kanye West and then you listen to Dubstep and you listen to electro, it’s just converging.

Like all music is coming to a point.

Q. Did you congratulate Heidi Klum on her pregnancy?

A. “Oh, no, I didn’t know! She’s going to rock those maternity dresses. She is such a dynamo. I love and adore her so much. As gorgeous and breathtaking she is on television, she’s even more so in person. I was holding her hands once and told her, ‘Even your knuckles are stunning!’”

Q. Who do you think has the best style in Hollywood?

A. “When I did ABC’s Oscar show, I was amazed when I saw these people up close who I used to see only from afar and in the tabloids.

Anne Hathaway and Penelope Cruz are simply staggering. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are otherworldly. They don’t look like they should be on this planet.”

Q. What can we expect from Season 6?

A. “It’s a great season. I’ll say there’s a big-time shocker, some purported cheating ... The blogs will be clogged.

They won’t be able to vent enough about it.”

Jamie Foxx goes for gold with every film, character ROGER MOORE

the orlando sentinel Is there a figure in show business today with more breathtaking ambition than Jamie Foxx?

A chart-topping pop star at 41, a “brand name” comedy talent with his own Sirius Satellite Radio channel, and an Academy Award winning actor who has parlayed his film stardom into an array of attention-grabbing “for your consideration” performances, Foxx has made more of his Oscar win (for “Ray”) than most any actor you can name.

“The tag line of ‘The Soloist’ really works for Jamie Foxx,” says Joe Wright, who directed Foxx in the drama about a newspaper reporter and a mentally disturbed musician that opens Friday. ‘You don’t get anywhere without taking some risks.’ Jamie challenges himself, film after film. Not being afraid of failure

makes a different sort of actor. Being brave enough to fail is how you get great performances.”

Foxx made the leap, as actor and movie star, with 2004’s “Collateral.”

After that, Entertainment Weekly and others could pronounce, “Jamie Foxx has arrived as a movie star.” But fans might have picked up the ambition, the attention to craft, as far back as his deep character turn as trainer and friend to Will Smith’s Muhammad Ali in 2001’s “Ali.” “I look at Will Smith and think, ‘Wow, he’s got a niche,’” Foxx says.

“Look at Chris Rock. He’s got a niche.

What’s my niche? So I see movies like this as a chance to find my niche, character roles. To take somebody on and just dive into the role, disappear if I can.”

For “The Soloist,” Foxx disappears into the chattering, fragile and schizophrenic Nathaniel Ayers, a once-promising musician who went

to Juilliard, but whom Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez discovered homeless, living and playing a battered violin on the streets of Los Angeles.

“We have even more in common than you might think,” Foxx says of Ayers, whom he observed and secretly camera-phone recorded to get “the syncopation, the rhythm” of his patter, his no-eye-contact mannerisms.

Foxx says that he, like Ayers, “sees music, visualizes it. He is possessed by it and I am, too. I hear music and I see a movie in my head. Nathaniel, I think, experiences it in a similar way.”

Like Ayers, Foxx was once a promising classical musician who went to college to study music composition.

“When I was 18 years old in college somebody slipped me something into my drink. I lost it for like 11 months.

Paranoid, man, all my childhood fears came back. That’s always been my fear, losing my mind. I played piano

to keep myself grounded. A doctor I saw at the time said, ‘Some people get that done to them and never come back.’ But music and friends really helped me through it.”

He confesses that his fears of mental illness lingered through the filming of “The Soloist.” If you get too deep into character, he wondered, “Can you catch schizophrenia? ... I relied a lot on Joe Wright and Robert Downey Jr. at the end of the day to pull me back.”

The movie pairs Foxx with one of the few actors who can match him in playing fast patter. Downey and Foxx turned their conversations into improvised duologues – both characters talking at once, neither really listening to the other. “Joe told us ‘I want this to be like music, both guys talking at once – solos, duets, competing melodies, complementing one another.’”

“The Soloist” was originally slated for release during last Oscar season.

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friday, april 24, 2009

He said, she said: When it comes to dating, does your major matter?

Being part of a major is sort of like having someone describe your zodiac sign to you. For example, as a Pisces I cry a lot and am a huge tool. Just the TOPHER same, people interFORCHECZ pret your major and make assumptions features about your personreporter ality based on what you’re studying. When I switched my major to English — professional writing, to be specific — sophomore year, I discovered that the world has one new way of rationalizing why I am in such a constant state of massive failure.

To big fancy majors such as biochemistry HE SAID and engineering, I am inferior and don’t have a real major with my literary criticisms and classes such as literature for children.

Because I have no interest in figuring out what a deform is and think Beowulf is a good way to spend a day, my opinion is totally useless and uninformed. Then there are the standard stereotypes and illusions around English majors: They think that we’ll all end up as teachers (a fate that my educators have described to us as the only reason to be an English major), that we all think they’re Hemingway, and also, we all apparently own a journal for their thoughts and feelings … OK, that’s true.

But I stopped writing in mine so much because I wasted too many pages interpreting the meanings behind Death Cab for Cutie songs.

The funniest part about being an English major is that people expect you to speak impeccable English every moment of every day versus just being able to write it, which is where I excel (sort of). I can’t speak English; I can’t hold a conversation without slurring my words or switching around nouns in my sentence i.e. “I’m going to mouth you in the punch.”

Yet, people jump on these various and constant blunders of mine like they caught a mime swearing. “Oh nice job, English major,” they snicker and sneer with pride. It’s really not fair. When will I have the chance

to point out to an engineer that he misinterpreted the reference frame in his vectors homework and then continue on about how he should really reconsider the fact that this major is not for him and to think about how he will look in red and yellow framed through a drive-thru window once he iseffectively rooted out by the system.

From the start, being a university studies major implies nothing about you other than the fact that you’re indecisive or attempting to Van Wilder it. It is the blank slate for people and explains why the communication major exists. The indecisive people need a place to go to after they are forced to change from university studies.

No matter where you end up in school, it’s just important to be part of some-

thing that interests and engages you.

This is why I admire people who are religion majors — the most I can say to them after four years of education, which includes an expansive look at faiths I can’t pronounce, is “God help you.” Same deal with philosophy, something to consider down the road: How did Plato deal with his credit card debt?

The good news is that we’re all in this big boat called college together and in the end, nobody is going to get a job anyway because of the sins of the generations before us. So the years spent being lightheaded from gazing down from the top of a gigantic stool of knowledge that you’ll forget once you squeak by the test don’t mean anything after you’ve graduated and spend the rest of your years surviving off plain pasta and packets of Pop Tarts.

I firmly believe that every person in this world has a “type,” no matter how adamantly or annoyingly they’ll try to deny it (because, for some BETHANY reason, having a BUCHANAN type puts you in features the “cruel-and-thusundateable” cateditor egory in society).

And that type tends to be your polar opposite, typically that one person who you could never fathom dating until SHE SAID you realize how cute he is. Think physics — sorry liberal arts college members — and how the north and south poles smash together when put so-close-but-so-far to each other. Dating is just like that; sure, you might have some common

interests to further bond you together, but that instant attraction comes from the magnitude of your differences.

But what if your mate-to-be is enrolled in a major that totally repels you?

There are many other potential buzz-kills in the dating arena, such as crazy-ex-girlfriend baggage or disgusting body odor, but is it a major deal if he studies an unattractive major that’s just not sexy in the slightest syllabus? Kind of like that metaphorical equivalent of coming in second place at a track race just a fraction of a second behind her expectations.

Take, for example, the lost souls in the undecided major. Perhaps you’d find it appealing that they’re independent and don’t need a definitive label on their

college experience, blowing through school in an attempt to find an interest that might evolve into a job. But if you’re a pre-med student who knows everything you want in life — from what type of a doctor you’d like to be to what brand of stethoscope you’ll use — you’d think that it would get a little tiring trying to tug your darling into a tangible life direction.

And apparently, to boot, they can’t make a decision or don’t really know under what college category their zany life plans would fall under, so who’s to say that they would know what they would want from another person in a relationship if they don’t even know what to expect from themselves.

There is, however, a pair that I am personally dying to witness in the wild: The female engineering student with the male English major combo. Fascinating idea, right? It’s kind of like trying to pair Flava Flav with Carrie Underwood (now, there’s a viable reality show). You’d want to see how this duo works — and I actually believe that it could work.

Granted, a lot of couples could survive if they wanted to remain together, but the engineer and the English student really could have compelling chemistry. He can write her poems and sweet love letters while she can educate him on the way electricity flows through a circuit (and I’m sure energy will be flowing through his circuit) to provide him with mechanical metaphors for his creative writing class. Sure, she’ll have to study a lot and perhaps provide for him when they graduate (at least that’s what I’m banking on as a journalism student, which isn’t considered an English major, mind you, dating an engineer), but it would make for a thrilling match.

It’s not textbook at all — it has the makings for a poorly made romantic-comedy with just-graduated-from-a-soap-opera actors and a huge budget.

The dating arena is much like the sequence of the Olympic game trials, I’ve come to find. At every level of the games, the competitor must qualify over and over and over yet again until he finally makes it to the final round and has been awarded the opportunity to go for the gold — but even then, he has to fight, sweat and conquer the global competition at the big game.

Let’s say a runner makes a mad sprint to the finish line that puts a cheetah to shame but just barely loses the race. He is thus denied of his opportunity to continue on to the bigger game because he simply didn’t run fast enough. And if it’s not that, they fail the drug test.

Consider your major, be it science, liberal arts or anything in between, to be the test of your relationship. Get past your differences and you’re as good as gold.

MINA NOORBAKHSH/COLLEGIATE TIMES

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opinions 5

editor: laurel colella email: opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: mw 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

april 24, 2009

EDITORIAL

Parking conveniences should not come at expense of education New construction in the Litton Reeves lot has many students frustrated with the lack of available parking options.

The bad news for disgruntled commuters: These renovations will be taking place over the next two years, so it’s something worth getting used to now.

To account for the effects that construction will have on the lot, parking services has converted commuter and graduate parking at the back of the lot to faculty and staff parking. Students will be allowed to park in the Smithfield parking lots, which are located farther up the road.

It is obviously an inconvenience when parking services takes away commuter spots, but in looking at the bigger picture, we do need to make sacrifices in order for our university to continue to expand.

Higher education is ultimately why we’re here in the first place.

This campus isn’t a shopping mall or a movie theater, and it is ridiculous for anyone to act like they are entitled to convenient parking on campus.

It is annoying when faculty members park in commuter spots, but there shouldn’t be an “ours vs. theirs” mentality when it comes to claiming parking spots. Many professors are older or don’t live on the Blacksburg Transit route, so driving to campus is one of their only options.

It’s unfair to assert that students and faculty are on the same level and expect our parking needs to be placed above — or even on the same level as — theirs.

Hopefully the reason most of us chose to attend Virginia Tech is for the many educational opportunities it affords us. Tech administrators are doing what they can to expand those opportunities for people in a variety of ways, including the construction of academic buildings.

While annoying, if reallocat-

ing parking spots is what needs to be done to further the educational agenda, then that’s the cost of doing business.

With so many academic buildings on campus, there is only a finite amount of space.

It is understandable that to account for the construction of new buildings, students will be expected to park further away.

This is a campus, not a parking garage and many of us likely drive more than is necessary anyway.

We have an excellent public transportation system here at Tech. The BT is definitely accessible to the majority of students, and a great alternative to battling it out for a parking spot every morning. For those who refuse to take the bus for whatever reason, biking is another alternative. We understand that many students prefer driving their cars to campus, but when accommodating everyone is no longer feasible, we need to start seeking out alternative options, rather than just whining about it.

Compared to other institutions, Tech has a pretty liberal parking policy. At James Madison University and the University of Virginia, freshmen aren’t even allowed to have cars on campus.

Tech should not be expected to provide parking for every single person who feels like driving a car to campus.

Nonetheless, the school has taken steps toward providing convenient parking for students, through the planned addition of a parking garage.

Until then, we should make the best of the situation by taking advantage of the BT, riding a bike, or if you absolutely must drive, leaving a few minutes earlier.

Take the time to personally question our politicians After watching the presidential debates last fall, I, for one, wished I had been asked to submit a question via YouTube or had the chance CATE to sit in at a town hall debate.

SUMMERS For the Virginia regular gubernatorial columnist race this year, we as students finally have an opportunity to have our questions answered by some of the candidates.

On Monday, the Collegiate Times published an article foreshadowing our upcoming gubernatorial debate to be held at the Lyric April 29 at 7: 30 p.m. The three democratic candidates for governor, Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran, will be on stage in downtown Blacksburg, debating issues relevant to Virginia and addressing national politics.

The CT is one of four co-sponsors for this event among liberal blogs the Huffington Post, Firedoglake and Not Larry Sabato.

The moderator for the event has changed since Monday’s publication. The moderators are now Nico Pitney from the Huffington Post and Jane Hamshear from Firedoglake. Ben Tribett from Not Larry Sabato, originally facilitated the connection and resulting co-sponsorship with the CT. Tribett will now serve as the timekeeper for the event.

Tickets will be given free of charge

from the Squires ticket office to the first 200 people.

There will be no tickets available at the door, so get yours as soon as possible. All four Web sites for the co-sponsoring organizations will broadcast a live streaming feed of the debate.

Live video is a relatively new endeavor for the Collegiate Times staff, so we practiced for this undertaking by livestreaming the SGA debate last month on our Web site.

The CT will be responsible for taping the event, and the same live stream will be embedded into all four Web sites. Additionally, C-SPAN will be taping the debate and airing it nationally at a later date.

Students, faculty, staff — heck, anyone with access to the Collegiate Times Web site and an interest in Virginia politics — should take this opportunity to submit questions they find pertinent to the ever-changing nature of state politics.

Higher education in particular has become a hot-button issue for state governments.

We have written a lot this year about the budget cuts facing state universities. Those cuts affect not only the university’s big picture, but trickle down to the departmental levels and affect the number and kinds of classes offered to students.

One of these candidates will be a choice in November, so why miss this opportunity to have your chosen issue addressed personally?

If you have questions pertaining to the recent filing of the April 16 lawsuit and how it will affect our state school

and its highest-level employees, this is a great opportunity to pose them to the men who may be your governor in six months.

You may recall that Creigh Deeds and Bill McDonnell (the Republican candidate for governor) ran against each other for attorney general in 2005. Deeds lost to McDonnell by 323 votes, the closest election in Virginia history. Imagine if the two run against each other again, this time for the governor’s mansion.

We will be taking submissions in the form of e-mailed questions, blog commentary, and Twitter updates.

To send your questions via Twitter, send an @ message to the handle VaGovDebate. Each question that comes in to Twitter will be “retweeted” to ensure your question has been received. Good luck getting it down to 140 characters.

All questions must be submitted by Friday, April 24, at midnight.

Comments from each of the four co-sponsoring Web sites will be monitored by the moderators throughout the debate and used for follow-up questions.

Be sure to note your name, home city and state in your submission. The moderators want to ensure a balanced spread of issues from the state and national levels as well as representing a balanced array of regional submissions. Pitney, Hamshear, Tribbet and our editor-in-chief, David Grant, will select the questions that will be posed to the candidates.

Please take this opportunity to participate in local politics. You never know, you could be on C-SPAN.

The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries and Laurel Colella.

Thomas Williams senior, civil engineering

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Big Event makes difference Our foreign policy affects in Blacksburg community rest of the world I’d like to commend Burke Thomas on his April 23 column regarding the unacceptable hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy — it’s well written and I support his arguments. His message is especially relevant this week, after President Barack Obama’s visit to the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

In this increasingly interconnected world, we Americans must realize that the world doesn’t revolve around us, and that our extreme actions have extreme consequences.

The jingoistic, self-serving attitude of most conservatives and even some liberals with regard to foreign policy is immature, inhumane, and dangerous to our own country in the long run.

The rise of many radical or leftist foreign leaders whom talk radio hosts and other pundits love to hate — Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, and Hugo Chavez, for example — are ultimately reactions to neocolonial, neoliberal, interventionist, or otherwise economically and socially detrimental western foreign policies.

We Americans must develop a new philosophy of foreign policy that emphasizes nonviolence, human rights, fair trade, and environmental issues. We must also recognize the fact that, just like the U.S., other countries try to act in their own best interest, even though they might not be successful. In many cases, extreme and antiAmerican foreign governments are the long-term results of our own selfish, short-term policies.

Collegiate Times Editorial Staff Editor in Chief David Grant Managing Editors David Harries, Sara Spangler Public Editor Cate Summers News Editors Caleb Fleming, Sara Mitchell News Reporters Gordon Block, Zach Crizer, Justin Graves, Kelsey Heiter, Riley Prendergast, T. Rees Shapiro News Staff Writers Debra Houchins, Phillipp Kotlaba, Gabe McVey, Will Thomas, Ryan Trapp Features Editor Bethany Buchanan Features Reporters Topher Forhecz, Teresa Tobat, Jonathan Yi Features Staff Writers Ryan Arnold, Mary Anne Carter, Drew Jackson, Tom Minogue, Alex Pettingell Opinions Editors Laurel Colella Sports Editors Thomas Emerick, Brian Wright Sports Reporters Joe Crandley, Justin Long, Ed Lupien, Melanie Wadden Sports Staff Writers Garrett Busic, Matt Collette, Lindsay Faulkner, Hattie Francis, Alex Jackson, Mike Littier Copy Editors Erin Corbey, Thandiwe Ogbonna, Kristen Walker, Michelle Rivera Layout Designers Go-Eun Choi, Velechia Hardnett, Kelly Harrigan, Rachel McGiboney, Mina Noorbakhsh, Josh Son Illustrator Mina Noorbakhsh Multimedia Editor Phillip Murillas Multimedia Producer Candice Chu Multimedia Reporters Kevin Anderson, Peter Velz Online Director Sam Eberspacher

Student Publication Photo Staff Director of Photography Sally Bull Business Manager Paul Platz

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR I just felt compelled to write this letter to you concerning the Big Event that took place last Saturday, April 18, 2009.

I signed up for the first time this year, really not knowing what to expect. I cannot express the joy and surprise I received that day.

Around 11 a.m. that morning I spotted four young people walking down my driveway with shovels in their hands and broad smiles on their faces. Before they reached my yard I spotted six more coming. These young people were tremendous.

They worked hard, laughed, joked, talked and were a pure joy to be around. They cleaned up leaves, cleaned out gutters, transplanted a tree, cleaned my picket fence and repaired a wire fence around my property. I could not have imagined all of this being done in the span of about two hours.

I wanted to publicly thank these wonderful young people and let them know that what they did for me was so much appreciated.

I watched in complete awe as they worked with such happiness and joy. When they left I thanked each of them and watched them leave with tears in my eyes.

The Big Event is such a wonderful program and it obviously brings out the best of the best in this community. We all have every reason to be proud of our young people here in Blacksburg. I know I am.

Jane Harrison Office Manager Producer, Summer Arts Festival Manager Performing Arts Building, Virginia Tech

The Collegiate Times is an independent student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903

WAYNE STAYSKAL/TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

Treatment of gun advocates is merely intellectual bullying GLENN GARVIN guest columnist Media snicker of the day: those crazy gun nuts, worried the government is out to snatch their constitutional rights along with their AK-47s. “60 Minutes” is the latest to have a chuckle, playing a commercial for a Washington, D.C.-area firearms show that urges viewers to “Celebrate the Second Amendment and get your guns while you still can!”

My own hunch is the sheer number of Americans who own guns (the low estimate is something over 40 million) will keep their Second Amendment rights off the endangered-species list for the foreseeable future. Their First Amendment rights, however, may be another matter. Those are taking a beating these days, right in the place that’s supposed to be America’s rowdiest free-speech zone: college campuses.

A student who speaks up about the right to own or carry a gun stands a good chance of getting suspended or even arrested.

When a Central Connecticut State University senior fulfilled a communications-class assignment by giving a presentation on why students and professors should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus, his professor reported him to the police, who called him in for questioning.

Professor Paula Anderson, questioned by a reporter from the school paper, was unrepentant: The student was a “perceived risk” and she had a “responsibility to protect the well-being of our students.”

Like old Soviet commissars clapping dissidents into psychiatric hospitals, administrators at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., responded to a student’s e-mail criticizing school policy on concealed weapons by suspending him and ordering him to undergo a

“mental health examination.”

Trying to recruit new members, the Young Conservatives of Texas club at Lone Star College near Houston passed out fliers lampooning gun-safety manuals. (“No matter how responsible he seems, never give your gun to a monkey.”)

Administrators confiscated the fliers, threatened to disband the club and — when the worried students sought legal counsel — wrote their lawyers that any “mention of firearms” amounted to “interference with the operation of the school or the rights of others” because it “brings fear and concern to students, faculty and staff.” Oddly, the administrators did not suspend themselves, even though their own e-mail included a “mention of firearms.”

Tarrant County College, near Fort Worth, took the no-mention policy a step further, banning a student from wearing an empty holster to protest the campus ban on concealed guns. “We’re protecting the learning environment,” explained Juan Garcia, the school’s vice president for student development and, clearly, a devoted scholar of academic doublespeak.

It’s tempting to consider these cases as simply an extension of academia’s batty response to the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, in which toy guns, wooden pirate cutlasses and even an entire production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins were banned from campus drama clubs, as if American colleges were a giant firecracker of homicidal psychosis just waiting for any tiny spark to go off.

But Virginia Tech and the blind panic that followed it are two years behind us now, and the treatment of gun advocates feels a lot more like intellectual bullying than over-protective nannying. Like campus codes that lay down ideological rulebooks under the guise of outlawing sexual or racial harassment, labeling any reference to guns

as a threat to public safety is a way for lefty baby boomer administrators and faculty members to impose their 1960s political orthodoxies on a younger generation.

“It’s no coincidence that a lot of these things involve e-mails,” says Robert Shibley, vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a public-interest law firm that defends campus civil liberties and has helped students in several of these cases.

“That’s the popular new way for colleges to regulate speech, through technology-use policies. No college dean wants to go on record as saying he restricts free speech on his campus, so instead he says, ‘We’re just making a rule that you can’t use e-mail for offensive material.’”

Of course, their definition of “offensive” has a distinct political overlay.

I’ve never heard of a college student being suspended for calling George Bush a moron or Dick Cheney a war criminal.

But making fun of feminists (Colorado College), opposing gay marriage (Los Angeles City College) or reading a book — a critical book — about the Ku Klux Klan (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) will bring down the wrath of administrators in a politically correct heartbeat.

A couple of years ago, FIRE even had to defend a hapless philosophy grad student at Marquette University who made the mistake of posting a “patently offensive” Dave Barry quote on his office door: “As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.”

Geez, he didn’t even say “booger.”

Glenn Garvin is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

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editor: bethany buchanan email: features@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: w 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., f 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.

april 24, 2009

Virginia Tech competes in solar decathlon competition RYAN ARNOLD

ct features staff writer You can thank the sun for drying your jeans, but mind you, they won’t hang from a clothesline.

Solar-powered laundry is just one of many requirements Virginia Tech’s Solar Decathlon Team must meet this fall.

Started in 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy is sponsoring its fourth Solar Decathlon competition in October. Teams from 20 different universities and colleges reaching as far as Madrid, Spain, must design and build homes that function entirely on the sun’s graces.

The teams convene on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to form a solar village clearly devoid of a single idiot. Numerous judging panels award honors in 10 comprehensive areas including architecture, appliance performance, lighting design and market viability.

To succeed in such a vast cross-section of categories, the Solar Decathlon Team is composed of students and faculty from many disciplines: architecture, industrial design, building construction, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and business.

After successful entries in the first two decathlons, Virginia Tech opted out of the 2007 event to concentrate on 2009. Currently under construction, its house has already been invited to Spain next summer to compete in the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe.

“It’s going to do well,” said project coordinator and assistant professor in architecture, Joe Wheeler.

In a fundraising effort this past fall, the team conducted a raffle for an electric car previously donated by General Electric Motorcars.

“We thought that this was a good way to activate the students and get them engaged with the community,” said Wheeler.

The car, a GEM e2, is the ideal transport for those with modest daily commutes. The street legal, two-passenger vehicle tops out at 25 miles per hour and 12 horsepower.

With just a two-hour charge on a standard outlet, its six 12-volt batteries produce enough juice for 35 inexpensive miles. It costs less than $100 per year to operate.

Wandering the third floor

HUSSEIN AHMED/SPPS

Alden Haley and Chris Taylor work on the mechanical closet of the solar house for the U.S. Departments of Energy’s Solar Decathlon competition. offices of Pamplin Hall, two Solar Decathlon Team students knocked on Frederick Hood’s door. Hood, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of finance, bought one $10 raffle ticket.

Months later while cleaning out his desk, Hood discovered the forgotten stub. Somewhere on the paper he misread “January” and, assuming the drawing had passed, tossed it in the trash.

During a March 20 visit to Tech, Preston Bryant, Virginia secretary of natural resources, pulled Hood’s winning ticket.

Kevin Schafer, a fourth-year architecture student on the Solar Decathlon Team, washed the car before Hood picked up the keys.

Cleaning the small vehicle for his arrival was apparently quite laborious.

“I spent a solid four hours detailing that car,” Schafer said. “Joe (Wheeler) wanted it like brand new, so I was in there with a toothbrush like scrubbing that thing, literally.”

Hood quickly became comfortable with the sparkling car before cruising

home.

“I just did a little spin in the lot where the (solar) house is,” Hood said.

The GEM e2 currently rests in Hood’s garage while he searches for time to have it registered.

“I’ve tooled around a little bit in the neighborhood,” he said, “but I try not to drive it on the street. That would be illegal.”

With warm weather on our heels, though, Hood says he’ll utilize his electric ride soon. I think he’ll garner a reputation around campus, but Hood casually shrugged off such a consequence.

“I don’t know if it’s cool or not to have one of those,” he said.

Hood’s ticket was one of more than 900 sold, yielding nearly $10,000 for the Solar Decathlon Team. While impressive, the sum hardly places a dent in the nearly half a million dollars needed to realize such a unique project.

The concept of the team’s 2009 entry, LumenHaus, is “responsive architecture.”

At its core, the 700 square foot LumenHaus is a transparent pavilion

RENDERINGS COURTESY OF JOE WHEELER

with an entirely photovoltaic roof.

Large mobile windows on the north and south facades don’t have to be barriers. Once the user slides the glass aside, the two deck terraces essentially triple the floor plan’s square footage.

Parallel with the windows, though, are two motor-controlled wall systems that introduce energy efficiency.

Aerogel-infused polycarbonate panels can close to ensure an insulated interior. These panels are 2.5 inches thick and perform better than your apartment walls. A final shading layer controls the degree of light entry.

The motors operate via sensors that communicate with computer monitors and controls. Interior and exterior conditions are simultaneously measured, and appropriate adjustments are made according to the user’s pre-set comfort levels.

The user will also have the ultimate remote control: the iPhone.

Tech’s computer science department is crafting an application that will place your home’s fate in the palm of your hand.

Among other things, you will be able to move the wall systems, moni-

tor energy consumptions levels, and even control your front door’s lock.

At the Research and Demonstration Facility on Plantation Road, students are tirelessly piecing together the house. It’s an intensive process, but they seem particularly mindful of the experience’s rarity.

“It’s a built project that I have before I graduate,” said fourth year architecture student, Corey McCalla. “When I graduate I don’t know what the heck is going to happen. I may not have anything built that’s my own for decades.”

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8 sports

editor: thomas emerick, brian wright email: sportseditor@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: w 12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.; t 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

april 24, 2009

Harris could be draft diamond in the rough Cavaliers put end to Tech lacrosse season

I have never understood the obsession over Mel Kiper and Todd McShay’s mock drafts in the months leading up to the big event. To ED an extent, they are LUPIEN meaningful, but sports they are also always grossly overanareporter lyzed. Although these projections do address each team’s needs and strategy in the draft, a great thing for any NFL fan, so much importance is put upon when each college player will be taken.

Come Saturday, cornerback Victor “Ma c h o” COMMENT Harris appears to be the only Virginia Tech player who will hear his name called during the first day of the NFL Draft.

But we saw this coming. We knew that there’s not to be a parade of Hokies taken in seemingly every round like last year. This year’s senior class is just too weak. In fact, there will not be another showing like that for quite some time.

So Tech fans will not be as jubilant about this draft weekend. Only two Hokie seniors really have a shot to be taken in the seven rounds. However, they will see one of the most beloved players of their program’s history make the big step into professional football.

We all know Macho’s scouting report by now — a physical playmaker who is quick on his feet and can double as a specialist. Great hands.

Excellent instincts. Six interceptions, 46 tackles in 2008. Confidence has certainly never been an issue for the 23-year-old from Highland Springs.

Even with all this, Macho is not regarded as one of the top five cornerbacks in this year’s draft as his abilities simply cannot compare to those of Illinois’ Vontae Davis, Ohio State’s Malcolm Jenkins or Connecticut’s Darius Butler. As is the case with most prospects, there are several question marks with Macho.

He seemed like a solid secondround selection before his showcase at the NFL combine back in March when he ran a disappointing 4.61 40yard dash time. Although he is not the fastest secondary player in the draft by any means, Macho is definitely better than that time. He recovered in a

MELANIE WADDEN

ct sports reporter

SALLY BULL/SPPS

‘Macho’ Harris, who had six interceptions in 2008, is projected to be a first day selection at this year’s NFL draft. sense, as there were reports of him running a time of more than twotenths of a second faster during his Pro Day back at Tech a month later.

Nevertheless, Macho’s 40-time at the combine could drop him into the late second to third-round range.

Teams have also shown concern over Macho’s aggressiveness on the field as his physical style of play, something that has made Macho so popular at Tech, could lead to a plethora of penalties in the pro ranks.

But these imperfections only matter so much and do not outweigh Macho’s potential. No matter where or when Harris goes in the draft, one thing’s for certain — he’s going. He will get opportunities to shine in mini camp and training camp.

Time and time again we are shown that the type of results a team receives out of a player has no correlation with that player’s draft position. Case in

point — Tom Brady, taken with the 199th overall pick in the sixth round of the 1999 draft, and Matt Cassel, taken with the 230 overall pick in the seventh round of the 2005 draft.

Ultimately, a player’s signing bonus coupled with his ego are the only two things of importance when considering when one goes in the draft.

Harris has, to an extent, already proven himself as an NFL-caliber secondary player. Aside from the second-team All-American and first-team All-ACC accolades from last season, all the confirmation a team needs is right there on film.

Yes, the NFL is a different game but, in Macho’s case, in many ways, it is the same.

There is much optimism that he can continue to be a playmaker in the pros as he’s got the perfect size (5foot-11, 197 pounds). Teams’ mouths water any time a player is as versatile

as Macho in terms of the positions he can play. His agility will make up for his initial lack of straight-line speed, and he was born to play in an NFL zone defense.

For years now, Macho’s career as an NFL player has been largely discussed. Since stepping foot on Tech’s campus back in 2005, it has never been a question of “if” but “when.”

The time almost came last year when Harris initially declared early for the draft before reconsidering and coming back for his senior season, which substantiated his legacy in Blacksburg.

Harris will go down as one of the most explosive and overall best cornerbacks to ever don a Hokie uniform, and we should be watching him making an impact in an NFL uniform for years to come. That, in itself, is enough reason for Tech fans to cheer this weekend.

The Virginia Tech lacrosse team (7-10, 1-5 ACC) concluded its season on Thursday afternoon at Thompson Field after losing to the No. 9 Virginia Cavaliers (11-6, 3-3) by a score of 13-5.

In the opening game of the 2009 ACC Tournament, the fifth-seeded Hokies were unable to handle the speed of the fourth-seeded Cavaliers.

The Hokies got frustrated early, as the Cavs racked up two quick goals in the first four minutes. Tech was able to play it even for about 10 minutes after that, but the always-strong UVa lacrosse team would soon pull away.

“I think it was a combination of things,” said sophomore Allie Emala.

“It only took a couple minutes for them to get up, but I think our defense played really well overall.

There were a few times in the beginning that they (Virginia) just got open and we weren’t prepared for it.”

Virginia, who out-shot the Hokies 30-17, racked up seven different scorers on the afternoon.

Frustrated by its early and constant deficit, Tech began swinging its sticks and over-committing, which only made matters worse.

Hokie sophomore Cailtyn Wier gave a spark to the Tech attack, scoring her team’s lone goal in the first half. Unfortunately it was matched with three by Virginia, leaving the halftime score 7-1.

The second half opened up in an optimistic fashion for the Hokies.

Tech won the opening draw control and sophomore Allie Emala scored one minute in off of a free possession shot.

The Cavaliers were able to weave in and out of the Hokie defense and seemed to take give-and-go shots at will.

Despite a strong performance

by Tech’s goalkeeper, senior Kari Morrison, the Hokies could not keep the ball on attack long enough to make things happen.

“Forget the score,” Wier said, the team’s leading scorer on the afternoon. “We’re a lot more experienced now than we were in the beginning

of the season when we played them [Virginia].”

Even though they ended the season on a loss, this is not the same Tech team that fans have seen in the past, or even at the beginning of this season.

In arguably its best season since the program went to varsity level in 1995, this underclassmen-dominated group has proven, by claiming its first Atlantic Coast Conference win, that it will be able to challenge its league opponents in the future years.

“I think we learned to work with each other a lot this season,” Wier said. “We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, so we knew when to back each other up and where to be.”

“We have more composure now, on offense especially,” Culp said.

Tech will lose just two players from this year’s roster. However for the Hokies, the two departures are their leading scorer, Culp, and their three-year starting goalkeeper, Morrison.

Culp scored a total of 54 goals on the season, which accounted for 31.2 percent of the Hokies’ attack.

Morrison, on the opposite end of the field has started every game since she transferred to Tech from Colgate with head coach Katrina Silva in the fall of 2006. She is second on the team in ground balls and has played every minute of the past two seasons in goal.

“I think they just need to play over the summer and gain more experience,” Culp said, regarding the team’s prospects next season. “There was time and time again where we were making mistakes just because we hadn’t been in that situation before.”

“I think we need to work on our stick work overall,” Emala said. “You can see the stick work in all of the other teams and how everyone has it; it’s something that we lack.”

Although many ACC teams will wait to hear their name called for the NCAA tournament, the Hokies and their under-.500 record are certain not to merit qualification.

Virginia, with the victory, will face the No.1-seed Maryland in the ACC tournament semifinals tomorrow at 4 p.m. at Thompson Field.

RELAY FOR LIFE GUIDE

friday april 24, 2009 blacksburg, va.

www.collegiatetimes.com

Students, survivors aim to celebrate, remember and fight back against cancer This is a behind-the-scenes peek at the intricate workings of Virginia Tech’s Relay For Life, and a small look at those who made it happen. stories by riley prendergast

A team’s journey to fund the fight In preparation for Relay For Life, one team was chosen

she has been doing Relay since she was a freshman, so

out of the hundreds participating at Virginia Tech to

I have been going to Georgetown events since I was a

shine a little light on the process of preparing for the

junior in high school,” Tobia said.

event. Hundreds of teams, one event, thousands of stories — this is simply one of them.

But even with this extensive RFL experience, the cause itself had never really hit her.

Anna Tobia, a freshman hailing from Philadelphia,

“Two of my great aunts had passed away from lung

has spent the past three years of her life perpetually sur-

and skin cancer, but they died when I was 7 and then

rounded by Relay For Life.

when I was 10, so it was hard to be really affected,” Tobia

“My sister Liz goes to Georgetown (University), and

said, “So my junior and senior years when I did Relay at

see RITA, page B3

PAGE B2:

2: ry PAGE B e histo h t t a h. look Take a t Virginia Tec t ya l even a of Rela u n n the ghth a The ei to be one of us has ses i p m m o a r c p is hat th largest t t s e g e lar also th Life in d n a seen lay For e R e t a i colleg ry this year. unt the co

Sit down for a moment with the ACS Vice President of Relay For Life, Reuel Johnson. Learn a bit about the roots of Relay and just how it has expanded as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.

PAGE B2: Meet th Tech’ e directo sR rs learn elay For of Virgin Lif ia a they little bit e and ab Re scen lay. Get out why es ab who look at R ehind th ela e ha much s been p y and ju st ut o the e f his or h ting in so er tim vent. e int o

page B2 2

friday, april 24, 2009

Relay For Life: Connecting the past to the present Few people know the man who started the phenomenon that is American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life. His name was Dr. Gordy Klatt, a surgeon hailing from Tacoma, Wash. who harbored a passion for marathons.

In May 1985, he ran for 24 hours and raised $27,000 to fight cancer. He circled the track of Baker Stadium at the University of Puget Sound until he had run more than an astounding 83 miles. The run was named the City of Destiny Classic 24-Hour Run Against Cancer — it would later become known as Relay For Life.

It was his friends and family who donated $25 to walk around the track with him for 30 minutes. Within the next year, with the help of Pat Flynn, known as the “Mother or Relay,” 19 teams participated in the first-ever team Relay in the Stadium Bowl and raised $33,000. And just like that, a national movement was born.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Klatt’s historic run, and the American Cancer Society will honor his work by creating a unique Gordy Klatt Luminaria.

This year’s Relay at Virginia Tech will be marked with a distinguished visitor.

Vice President of Relay For Life Reuel Johnson, chose Tech as one of the colleges he will be visiting this year.

“We’ve asked communities all across the country to pay special tribute in their own way,” Johnson said, “All year long volunteers have been looking for

that ‘25th’ hour that they can find in the month where they can find a little time to contribute to fight cancer in a way that is personal to them.”

Messages will be written on the bags and they will all be put on display in Tacoma, and later will be shown to Klatt.

“I try to visit lots of different Relays both on college campuses and local communities around the country and I have never been to Virginia Tech,” Johnson said, “It is also looking like Virginia Tech’s Relay will be the largest in the country this year, and I know of all of the success that the program has had, so I put it on the calendar.”

The main goal of Relay For Life is to promote a sense of owning a cause in each community. A major way of allowing communities to take the reins is to allow them to choose their own sites, deciding what spot best defines their community. For Klatt, it was the track in the heart of his beloved Tacoma; for Tech it is the Drillfield, the lifeline of the campus.

Relay “certainly is our largest source of revenue in the organization, but it is more than just fundraising,” Johnson said, “It’s about how volunteers really engage people on the fight against cancer within their communities.”

The focus on community in RFL is a major part of its goal of unifying people under one cause. The ACS brings together more than 3.5 million people every year in communities across the nation and has raised

over $1.7 billion to fight the disease and aid those living with it.

“The whole community organization side of the American Cancer Society is really the heart and soul of what Relay is,” Johnson said.

“You probably will have the largest, as far as numbers of teams, participants and dollars raised — Relay in the country this year,” Johnson said, “But on average there are a lot of college campuses that are only a couple thousand students… So clearly they are on a much smaller scale, but on average there are 5,100 smaller Relays throughout the country. And on average those raise about $89,000 to $90,000, which is sizable, but the value of Relay is that there are 5,100 of them.”

RFL is now located in more than 600 communities in 21 different countries according to the ACS. In 2009 Relay For Life volunteers will organize all-night events in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Taiwan, Malaysia and many other countries.

“There’s a network of cancer organizations and the best ideas get shared at meetings and then sometime in the mid to late ’90s, the American Cancer Society examined places like Canada, Australia and the UK. They heard about Relay and were intrigued by it,” Johnson said. “We have created a network of countries throughout the world who have adopted Relay.

Participating in a meaningful event seems to be universal.”

Why do you Relay?

We talked to the directors and a few others on the Executive Board for Relay For Life to see why they Relay.

Chris Armstrong, Senior, Co-Director Relay For Life at Virginia Tech

ARMSTRONG

Alice Wagner, Senior, Co-Director, Relay For Life

WAGNER

Virginia Tech: The making of a collegiate Relay For Life Virginia Tech’s Relay For Life has a standing date with cancer.

For the past seven years, Tech’s Relay has raised more than $950,000 for the American Cancer Society. So far this year $350,000 has been raised and 5,000 participants have signed up, making the eighth annual year even more ground breaking than any before and pushing the Tech Relay For Life over the million dollar mark in less than a decade.

Tech’s Relay has brought in 9,878 participants over the past seven years and has served as the unifying link between the Tech and Blacksburg communities.

Tech’s Relay For Life was also highly recognized in 2007. Despite taking place less than a week after April 16, it still brought in $284,000, and earned Tech the Youth Hall of Hope Award at the National Conference in Dallas. The award was created to recognize youth Relay For Life events along with chapters of Colleges Against Cancer that demonstrate unwavering dedication to the mission of the ACS. Tech was the first-ever recipient of this award.

In 2008, Tech was honored with the ranking of top collegiate Relay per capita in the nation, holding its ranking from the year before, and setting the bar high for the 2009 event. This year’s ground breaking number of participants is 1,000 more than the next biggest college event, and is helping the Tech community on its way to a top collegiate contender position for the second year in a row.

However the friendly competition between universities all over the nation leads to more than just incredible fundraising for a worthy cause.

“We go to conferences with other schools and meet some really great people,” Josh Burnheimer, the special initiatives chair for Tech’s RFL said. “We compare ideas for fundraising, different ideas for events, and just ways that other schools run their Relays.”

Needless to say such an event calls for massive amounts of planning and even more volunteer hours to put those plans into motion. This year is also the

first that university officials worked alongside the Student Government Association to make Relay happen.

“We started planning for Relay back in August 2008,” said Chris Armstrong, a co-director for Tech’s RFL. “We seem to be starting the planning process earlier each year. We just try and make the event bigger and better each year, so the planning reflects that.”

More than 450 teams will converge on the Drillfield on the afternoon of April 24 to show their support for not only cancer research and awareness, but also for “Virginia Tech’s Largest Co-ed Sleepover.”

The executive board, which consists of more than 20 members, was the driving force behind Relay. They oversaw the event planning, logistics for parking, campsites and venues, entertainment planning for performances by students groups and local bands, and fundraising. These student volunteers began their work in September, and will not stop until long after the huddled masses have cleared from the Drillfield for the comfort of their beds.

This year’s theme not only touches the hearts of family and friends who have lost loved ones in the fight against cancer, but also members of the Tech community. “Celebrate, Remember, Fight Back” has become the mantra of Tech’s Relay and resonates through a community still in the process of healing.

Tech’s RFL has made some bold changes from its past venues, moving the event to the Drillfield, placing the emotional event in the heart of campus.

This change of scene forced the executives along with the co-directors to work closely with the administration.

Survivors have always been marked as a major part of Tech’s Relay, and are honored with their own lap at the opening of each Relay For Life event, stressing the fact that the American Cancer Society really is working to, and succeeding in saving lives.

This year’s Relay is promising to be one for the record books, not only bringing in record donations and par-

ticipants, but also a monumental number of attractions. There will be events including flag football, dodgeball, musical entertainment, a scavenger hunt, cardio boxing, wing eating contests, burger cook-offs, and the well-known “Queen of Relay” competition.

The “Queen of Relay” is a daring male student who bites the bullet for the cause by putting on a lovely dress and going downtown on a Friday night to raise money for Relay. These brave men venture into bars — provided that they are 21 — strut into apartment complexes and sashay through the streets of Blacksburg all for the glory of knowing that they are helping to win the fight against cancer. That, and the man who makes the most wins the entire earnings for his team to put on their donations tally.

Guest speakers will be present, from not only our own faculty, but families of Hokies who have since passed away from cancer, and members of the community who have agreed to share their experiences.

“Another change this year is going to be that teams will not be assigned their own campgrounds, they are going to be arranged in zones,” Armstrong said.

“We’re hoping this is just going to make logistical things easier.”

Themed laps are a well-known occurrence in Relay, and there are competitions for the team who can bang out the theme the best, lending a feeling of levity and celebration. A list of all of the events and themes for each lap, switching on the hour, can be found on page B3.

But campsites are also a cause for competition at the event. Judges patrol the zones looking for the team who has best played up their chosen theme and will award prizes to the team with the best site.

“I feel like all of the love we put into planning the event itself is really what sets us apart from other college Relays,” Burnheimer said. “You can tell how much we really care by the lengths we go to make it a great event.”

“My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was in middle school, I was in the sixth grade, almost 10 years ago this May, which is awesome.”

Chris’s mother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when he was barely out of elementary school, so needless to say, he was not able to fully comprehend just how frightening the aspect of cancer was.

“Cancer had never really affected my life before that point, and it seemed like she was only sick for a few weeks because, thankfully, she was able to beat it. It was not until my senior year of high school and my first year of college that I sat down and really thought about what she had been through.”

Most relayers come into college with a little Relay experience under their belt.

Chris, however, had none.

“I unfortunately never really took the time to go and check out Relay in high school. My freshman and sophomore year I was looking for something to get involved in, so my sophomore year I joined Relay For Life.”

He did, however, make up for lost time.

“I did quite a bit of fundraising and raised over $1,000 and invited my mom to come down and walk with me.”

Chris now directs the logistics for the entire event and has once again invited his mother, his reason to Relay and his own personal champion of cancer, to walk the track with him once again.

“Freshman year I participated with my sorority and I just thought it was really cool.”

It was the passing of her grandfather when she was only nine that first opened Alice’s eyes to the devastating effects of lung cancer. But her life was not truly shaken until six days before she was to return to Virginia Tech for her sophomore year.

“My mother was diagnosed with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. From there I was just like what do I do? I was four hours away from home, I’m from South Carolina. So I decided that I wanted to join Relay For Life.”

Alice worked her way from the team recruitment committee member, to recruitment co-chair with Whitney Law. The ladies brought in more than 3,100 participants. It was seeing the fruits of her labor that really turned Alice on to the idea of wanting the position of co-director.

“Every minute that I spend doing Relay For Life, I feel like is another minute that I’m helping my mom, and help save her life.”

Fundraising is another way that Alice is leaving her mark on Virginia Tech’s Relay. Her freshman year she raised over $5,000, last year she raised over $6,000, and this year her goal was $10,000.

“I’m not sure if I’m going to reach that goal, but I’m really going to try,” she said.

Whitney Law, Junior, assistant director, Relay For Life at Virginia Tech

LAW

“Since I was really young cancer has affected my life. It started when I was 2 and my great-grandmother died. Cancer also runs in my family, and I have watched as 13 of my friends and family battled cancer.”

Whitney Law serves as the assistant director of Relay here at Tech. She began as a captain her freshman year and has slowly been moving up the ranks of the exec board, looking for her chance to take a swipe at cancer.

“I got involved in my high school Relay, and I’ve worked closely with St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. I just wanted to help as much as I possibly could.”

Mollie Blyth, Freshman, Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences

BLYTH

“My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer about 10 years ago, and after that I participated in Relay For Life in my town over the years. She is really the reason why I Relay.”

Mollie is part of the executive board at Virginia Tech, specifically in the area of fundraising.

“I just decided to send in my application because I really wanted to be involved at Relay For Life at Tech.”

Megan Salvato, Freshman, Chemical Engineering

SALVATO

“I Relay in honor of my aunt, uncle and grandmother who are all cancer survivors.”

Megan is a member of the logistics committee and is involved in coordinating volunteers for Relay.

“I was involved with Relay For Life at my old high school, and I saw the table cards one day in D2 advertising getting involved at Tech. I sent in my application for exec committee and it has been really great.”

Dan Caron, Freshman, Mathematics “I Relay for my grandfather.”

Dan Caron is a new member of the Relay For Life exec board.

“I also did Relay in high school and then I saw fliers all over campus showing how to get involved. After seeing them everywhere, I went on the Web site, saw what it was all about, and submitted my application. I really just wanted to help out as much as possible.”

CARON

LEFT, MIDDLE: DANIEL LIN/SPPS; RIGHT: RILEY PRENDERGAST/COLLEGIATE TIMES

Left: Whitney Law, assistant director of Relay For Life, speaks at the final Relay For Life meeting. Middle: Relay for Life holds its last meeting on the evening of April 21, 2009, in the GLC Auditorium. Right: Peter Kraines, team captain of Pike Gold listens intently to instructions and final preparations for the big day.

page pageB33

friday, april 24, 2009

Rita: A journey continued

Calendar of Events for Relay For Life

6p.m.

7p.m.

8p.m.

RILEY PRENDERGAST/COLLEGIATE TIMES

Anna Tobia and her team begin work on the poster that will welcome everyone into their campsite and display their team name.

As they get closer to the big night, the team shares their personal stories for why they Relay from page one

my high school I just don’t think it had really hit me.”

But earlier this year, tragedy struck Anna’s life in a way she will never forget. Anna’s grandmother Rita Tobia, or “Mummum,” lost her battle with breast cancer on Valentine’s Day at the age of 82.

“She was never sick, until she actually was,” Tobia said. “Even when she was in hospice, she was hilarious. She was always making everyone around her laugh.”

All Anna could do was sit on the couch remembering fond memories of the woman for whom she Relays.

“She held out for after Friday 13,” Anna said. “She was just a loud Italian woman who was always saying, ‘Eat more!’ We just loved being around each other.”

Anna went home to grieve with her family in Philadelphia, but returned with a determination to raise as much money as she could for the American Cancer Society.

Donations came pouring in from family members, and sibling rivalry only added to the drive to fundraise.

“Liz and I have always been kind of competitive, and she is one of the directors for Georgetown’s Relay For Life, so we have been competing a little bit to see who can raise more,” Anna said. “I mean, it’s not that bad if we’re getting competitive, because I figure it’s all going to a good cause.”

Relay For Rita is currently in fifth place in the standings for all of the teams participating in Tech’s Relay, a sizable accomplishment for a team composed entirely of freshmen, most of who are participating in RFL for the first time. So far they have raised $4,473 for the American Cancer Society, and they are looking to raise more at the event itself.

Anna has even become one of the top five individual fundraisers for the entire VT Relay. Anna employed the people on her hall as a means of Relay funds.

“I put a vase outside my door in my hall, and I put up signs all over the place asking for spare change and posters trying to get people involved, and I covered bulletin boards with signs for Relay,” Anna said. “It was a little hard to motivate people, even on my own team sometimes because we are freshmen and some of them have never been to a college Relay For Life, so they don’t really get how big of a deal it is yet.”

But motivation was never a problem

for Anna.

“I felt so corny, I wrote ‘change lives’ on the side of the vase and put up really cheesy posters begging people to donate,” Anna said with a laugh, “But it really paid off because I got over $30 from that vase. Who knew all those pennies really add up?”

The team held weekly meetings to plan out the event, its own theme, camping plans, and who was going to bring what in terms of food. But it was more than just planning — it was friends, some of whom have known each other since the sixth grade, coming together for a cause.

“We really are just a bunch of friends trying to raise some money,” Anna said. “We have a really great plan for fund raising at Relay, our theme is MargaRITAville, and we’re going all out. We have baby pools, a ton of leis, and a great tent with a huge poster hanging off the front of it. I got really crafty.”

It’s at these meetings that some of the team members also share why they choose to do Relay.

Mina Dombalagian sat next to Anna and willingly stepped up to offer her story first.

“I did RFL in high school, and I was always involved with activities for cancer awareness and research,” she paused before she went on, “My uncle passed away a month ago from cancer.

I was very close to him.”

It was obvious that her emotional ties to Relay were just as strong as her fearless leader’s.

Emily Hagen also offered her story, speaking about her four years of experience in high school RFL. “One of my best friend’s little sister had cancer; she passed away my senior year. She’s really the reason why I’ve been doing this for so long,” Hagen said. “I also lost my grandmother to cancer.”

She went on to talk about her rather unorthodox method of fundraising.

“I kind of duped my parents, I sent them both e-mails and didn’t tell them that the other one had gotten an e-mail also,” Hagen laughed. “And so they both cut me checks for $50. When my mom called to tell me that she sent the money I was just like, ‘That’s funny, dad sent one, too.’ It was pretty funny.”

Whitney Leet, another team member, is going through the process of Relay for the first time.

“I was friends with Anna, and I heard from her that she was forming a team,” Leet said. “Also, recently my aunt was diagnosed with terminal ovarian can-

cer and three of my family members are participating in Relay at all different colleges.”

That seemed to be a common thread among most of these teammates — Relay For Life is a family affair.

Multiple family members from people on the team are traveling, mostly from Philadelphia, to help out with the event and show their support.

“My parents were really coming down for the Spring Game,” joked Chris Lowry, “But I convinced them to come support me at Relay for a little bit.”

Lowry went on to explain that this is his first time in Relay, and has been very fortunate to not have been affected personally by cancer.

“I really didn’t have any personal experiences when it came to cancer, I just all of a sudden got a Facebook message from Anna asking me to be on the team,” Lowry said. “Seeing her get so excited about it really got me excited for Relay.”

Eric Karn, another team member, also brought family in on his Relay experience, although not in the way that he had initially expected.

“I was really surprised when my brother donated $50,” Karn said.

“Especially because he is just out of college and has to pay off a ton of loans. It was just really cool.”

Anna is not alone when it comes to experiencing the loss of a grandparent.

Eric has shared that tragedy.

“I’ve lost three relatives to cancer, two of my grandparents and my uncle died this past summer,” Karn said. “Stuff like Relay is just about giving.”

Courtney Roy, a friend of Anna’s since the pair was barely out of elementary school, expressed how she was motivated simply through their strong friendship.

“I have never lost anyone to cancer, so I feel really fortunate,” Roy said. “I have known Anna for so many years, that I wanted to help.”

Tobia herself just returned from Georgetown’s RFL event, attending to support her sister in her last year as a director.

“Pretty much my whole family was there,” Tobia said, “But they can’t really make it to mine, which is not that big of a deal. I told them that they can come when I’m a director, but it’s also good because they feel bad for not coming and send more money.”

With a full team of 18 ready to storm the Drillfield Friday at 6 p.m., they are anxiously awaiting friends and family pouring in, stocking up on warm clothes, food, mini grills, and baked goods to sell.

“I got Apples to Apples at Target, I can’t wait.” Tobia said.

9p.m.

10p.m.

11p.m.

12a.m.

1a.m.

2a.m.

3a.m.

4a.m.

5a.m.

6a.m.

6-6:15 p.m. Opening Ceremony 6-7 p.m. Activity Sign Ups 6:30-7 p.m. Celebrate Ceremony 7:00-7:10 p.m. LowTechs 7-11 p.m. Best Campsite Theme 7:12-7:42 p.m. Sensations 7:45-7:55 p.m. Speaker: Justin Caskey 7:57-8:05 p.m. Bamboom 8 p.m. Wing Eating Contest 8-10 p.m. Dodgeball 8:07-8:20 p.m. Belly Dancing 8:20-8:40 p.m. Announcements/Melodime Set-Up 8:30 p.m. Best Burger Cook-Off 8:40-9:50 p.m. Live Music: Melodime 9-11 p.m. Shave-the-Way to a Cure 9:50-10:00 p.m. Announcements 10:00-10:55 p.m. REMEMBER: Luminaria Ceremony 11 p.m.-2 a.m. Flag Football 11:02-11:22 p.m. Naturally Sharp 11:25-11:55 p.m. McComas Class: Cardioboxing 12-12:30 a.m. Relay For Life 2009-2010 Informational Meeting 12-2 a.m. Queen of the Night 12:10-12:50 a.m. Live Music: Dog Lips 12:50-1:05 a.m. Announcements/Shack Band Set-Up 1-2 a.m. Bingo (6 games) 1:05-2:10 a.m. Live Music: Shack Band 1:30 a.m. Scavenger Hunt Due 2:15-2:45 a.m. Fight Back Ceremony 2:45-4 a.m. Rock Band Competition 2:45-4 a.m. Volleyball 2:45-4 a.m. Vault Pong 3 a.m. Pilates 3:02-3:17 a.m. Queen of the Night Results 3:20-3:50 a.m. GERMAN Club Line Dancing 4:00-5:00 a.m. Relay's Got Talent 5:15-5:45 a.m. McComas Class: Zumba 5:45-6:00 a.m. Closing Ceremony

SARA SPANGLER/COLLEGIATE TIMES

NEW!

page B4

Turquoise Zone Yellow Zone

Pink Zone

Green Zone

Blue Zone Survivor’s Tent

Zone Maroon

Orange

Zone

Red Zone

Purple Zone

friday, april 24, 2009

SARA SPANGLER/COLLEGIATE TIMES

Each team is assigned a specific zone designated by color, however the yellow zone is a specialty zone for teams who chose to set up on-site fundraisers. The yellow zone is where you will find bake sales, jewelry sales and shot glasses courtesy of “Tequila Cancer,” among many other fundraisers. If you become lost, proceed to the logistics tent where you will find a map of the Relay area and every team organized in alphabetical order and zone color.

Themed Laps for Relay For Life Hour

9 p.m.

10 p.m.

Theme Survivor's Lap Hokie Spirit Lap Beach Party Decades

Holiday

Judge

6 p.m.

7 p.m.

Mentorship

8 p.m.

Corp.

Logistics Kick-Off Sponsorship

11 p.m.

Midnight

1 a.m.

2 a.m.

Red Neck "I'm on a boat" Relay's Ballin' Superhero Yacht Club (Naturical) (Athletic) HTM

Education Fundraising

Events/ Survivorship

3 a.m.

4 a.m.

5 a.m.

King of the Jungle

Pajamas

American Pride

Ext. Marketing/ Int. Marketing/ Team Entertainment Recruitment Logistics SARA SPANGLER/COLLEGIATE TIMES