Tuesday, March 13, 2012 Print Edition

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 www.collegiatetimes.com

COLLEGIATETIMES 109th year, issue 28

Local group organizes to support small businesses MICHELLE SUTHERLAND & DEAN SEAL

News, page 2

Arts & Entertainment, page 5

Sports, page 6

Study Break, page 4

THE APRIL 16 TRIAL

WAS IT ENOUGH? Civil trial asks whether university’s decision-making process adequately protected students during 2007 campus shootings

ct news staff A rainy downtown Blacksburg was hit by a mob during spring break. Thankfully, it was a mob sparked by generosity, rather than aggression.

A crowd of about 30 people assembled at the Market Square Park last Thursday evening to start Blacksburg’s first ever “cash mob," hosted by Downtown Blacksburg, Inc. At about 6 p.m., Laureen Blakemore, director of Downtown Blacksburg, announced the crowd would begin the evening shopping at Homebody, a fair trade shop specializing in clothing, jewelry and trinkets, followed by a stop at the Cellar Restaurant for drinks, food and socializing.

“Cash mobs," which are groups of people assembling at a shop or business with the intention of buying items from the store, is a concept that has been trending throughout the country. Its primary purpose is to stimulate growth in areas teeming with small business, while also bringing together community members for a common goal.

The rules of the cash mob were outlined before the group set off.

“You must spend $20, you must meet three new people,” Blakemore instructed, “and of course, you have to have fun.”

The crowd proceeded to Homebody, which offers items that are 100 percent sweatshopfree, where owner Margaret Breslau saw her small shop inundated with customers.

When most of the crowd had dispersed, Breslau reported the store earned nearly $600 in sales in one hour, a sales mark typically unheard of for a weekday during spring break.

“The mobs will really help all independent business,” Breslau said. “It’s a good opportunity for (people) to rediscover downtown.”

Breslau said the biggest sellers of the day were jewelry and items made from recycled material.

With many students gone for spring break, the crowd consisted mostly of local residents of Blacksburg and surrounding towns.

Ron Rordam, mayor of Blacksburg, attended to show his support and purchased a couple of bags of fair trade coffee.

“It’s a great start to bring people together and help the community get to know the merchants a little better,” Rordam said.

Blakemore has announced that Downtown Blacksburg will honor National Cash Mob Day on March 24 with another chance for a local business to see a surge of sales and support. It also plans host a cash mob every month, in an effort to promote its Live Local campaign.

Opinions, page 3

The victims’ families argue:

BY ZACH CRIZER |editor-in-chief

O

n the morning of April 16, 2007, two students — one male and one female — were shot in a West Ambler-Johnston Hall dorm room. As Virginia Tech’s top officials gathered in Burruss Hall, one of the students was dead and the other was mortally wounded.

Now, nearly five years later, a jury is listening to arguments over what those officials knew and whether their decisions put lives at risk on Tech’s campus.

The actions of those officials — known as the policy group — are at We knew the the center of the trial that will decide whethpolice were er Tech took adequate investigating steps to protect the campus in the time and we put out between Seung-Hui a notification so Cho’s shooting of two students in West AJ and the campus was his shooting in Norris Hall two-and-a-half aware an incident hours later that killed 30 had occurred.” people and injured 17 Kay Heidbreder more.

All but two of the Tech General Counsel families settled with the state.

However, the families of Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde — two students who died in the Norris Hall shootings — refused the settlement and filed matching civil suits against the university.

The suits originally included many individual university officials, but they have all been dropped, leaving the state to defend the university’s actions.

Last week, the plaintiffs presented their arguments, and this week the defense is making its argument after a motion to dismiss the case was denied by Judge William Alexander Monday morning.

The plaintiffs claim the university was negligent, failing to uphold its duty to protect stuby not alerting I don’t recall dents the campus communihearing anything ty to the initial shootings in West Ambleruntruthful, but Johnston Hall. the defense team I don’t recall —As attorneys from anything said at the Virginia attorney office repany of them.” general’s resenting the univerKim Crannis sity — called its witBPD Chief of Police on nesses Monday, the what was said at April central assertion was 16 press conferences that police and university officials acted responsibly based on the information available to them.

Throughout Monday’s proceedings the plaintiffs’ legal team challenged police and university officials as to whether the appropriate decisions were made based on the information being discovered at the time.

Specifically, the sides battled over whether police had enough information to label the West AJ shootings an isolated incident and whether the policy group’s notification to the campus community was adequately informative and timely.

Among Monday’s witnesses were Tech Vice President for Student Affairs Ed Spencer and Tech General Counsel Kay Heidbreder.

State & university officials argue:

“

HALL

There were

foreseeable risks of harm on campus and university officials were negligent for

failing to adequately warn the campus community.

The legal team compared the need for a warning in this situation to a tornado watch: People in the vicinity of a possible tornado are warned so they can take precautions if they wish.

On April 16, the threat was unknown and it was unclear whether another incident would occur, but

the risk was too severe to withhold

from the public.

“

HEIDBREDER

The threat of further violence on campus on April 16

is only clear in hindsight.

University officials were operating reasonably based on the information they had at the time.

At the time, the standard for timely notices on college campuses was between two and 48 hours after a crime had been committed, which the officials met.

It is unfair to fault university officials for lacking the foresight to prevent an incomprehensible act of violence.

see TRIAL / page seven

Future NASA mission to sun ‘a life dream’ for some AMINA KHAN mcclatchy newspapers The chest-high rack of electronics Justin Kasper is assembling in a Massachusetts office park will fit in a shoe box before he's done.

It won't be much to look at a few inches across, shaped rather like a coffee cup attached to a Kindle but to Kasper, it'll serve as eyes across nearly 100 million miles of space.

In less than seven years, that cup will be journeying to the center of the solar system to scoop up bits of the sun.

"This really has been a life's dream," said Kasper, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

In 2018, NASA is scheduled to launch a spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to fly, Icarus-like, dangerously close to our star.

Fitted with a select set of instruments, Solar Probe Plus will address

two questions that solar physicists have tussled with for decades: How does the corona, that ghostly, spiked halo seen during a total solar eclipse, heat to more than a million degrees, far hotter than the sun's surface?

And what powers the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that flows from the corona?

An up-close look at the sun may ultimately help scientists predict solar flares, as well as coronal mass ejections "solar storms" like those launched at Earth last week. These events send a barrage of high-energy particles crashing against the Earth's magnetic field, at times disabling satellites, wiping out power grids, forcing airlines to reroute flights and potentially exposing astronauts to fatal doses of radiation.

Scientists have sent probes to the solar system's edge, but never so near its heart. Coming within 3.7 million miles of the sun's surface 25 times closer than Earth the 1,350pound unmanned spacecraft will

heat to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and endure 512 times the sunlight of vessels orbiting Earth.

The mission "will undoubtedly have impact on our ideas about how life operates throughout the universe if life does operate throughout the universe how our planet evolved and how we're going to contend with the further exploration of space," said Richard Fisher, director of NASA's heliophysics division.

Half a century in the making, with an estimated price tag of $1.2 billion and barely 88 pounds allotted to experimental hardware, the project spawned fierce competition among heliophysicists for a piece of the action.

In September 2010, Kasper learned that his proposal to count the electrons, protons and helium ions in the solar wind had won one of five coveted spots. He happily ripped open boxes filled with commemorative copies of the pro-

posal he'd let them gather dust for months, afraid to jinx his chances and passed them out to his team.

Now, with the instruments selected and the project's next phase under way, some researchers are elated while others tussle with a mix of emotions: sadness at being left out and excitement at what their field stands to learn.

Other spacecraft have ventured toward the sun before: In 1976 the Helios 2 mission came within 27 million miles. The European Space Agency plans to launch a solar orbiter in 2017 that will come as close as 26 million miles.

But Solar Probe Plus, to be built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, is more ambitious by far, venturing seven times closer.

Scientists have talked of such a journey since the 1950s, but plans were always logistically fraught and prohibitively expensive.

They had wanted to study the solar poles because the sun's magnetic field would be strongest there.

But this meant flying over and under the sun rather than girdling its middle like the planets, requiring huge amounts of energy.

The proposed solution: Send the probe to Jupiter, whose gravity would twice lob it back toward the sun, over its north pole and under its south pole.

But sending a probe to such cold, dark reaches of space would require nuclear power not just solar and thus a heavy cooling system. Costs mounted.

Time and again, the mission was revived and then shelved.

"Always off again and on again," said retired solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker. "It came to be a standing joke."

It was time to rip up the plans and start over.

A thought struck the scientists charged with going back to the

drawing board.

"I kept staring at the mission's scientific objectives, which have been around for a long, long time," said Andrew Dantzler, who oversaw civilian spaceflight projects at Applied Physics Laboratory until his death in October. "The word 'polar' wasn't in any of the objectives. So I had to go back and ask, 'Why are we visiting the poles again?' " That question inspired a totally new idea: Give up on the poles.

Swing the craft a few times around Venus and then to the sun, to end up circling its middle.

And everything seemed to fall into place.

Venus is far closer, just 67 million miles from the sun to Jupiter's 484 million miles. The craft would not need nuclear power. It could be lighter and cheaper. Instead of two flybys, it could make as many as two dozen.

As it turns out, the new mission might be even better, Fisher said.

2

news

march 13, 2012 COLLEGIATETIMES

editors: nick cafferky, michelle sutherland newseditor@collegiatetimes.com/ 540.231.9865

Music videos used in Catholic classrooms JENNA ROSS mcclatchy newspapers In a music classroom on the quiet Catholic college campus, a group of students scribbled notes in the dark, their eyes intent on a 10-minute video.

"Take 30 seconds to collect your thoughts," professor Amy Hamlin told the class as the video concluded. They then launched into a discussion of postmodernism, film and religious symbolism.

On the screen? Lady Gaga's music video for "Telephone," featuring Beyonce.

The video's product placements, prison scenes and boyfriend killings are the point of this St. Catherine University course, titled "The Music and Image Monster: Lady Gaga in Context."

The class is one example of courses with a specific pop culture focus that are increasingly populating academia. Another offering at the St. Paul school: "Six Degrees of Harry Potter."

Two University of St. Thomas professors teach an honors seminar on the TV series "The Wire." Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., held one on Jay-Z. The courses sound light, and the professors behind them are sometimes questioned about their seriousness. But like the pop-culture icons who inspired them, the classes illuminate knotty issues about life today and place the "fine art" that came before them in a new context.

"Think of classes that have

a pop-culture 'hook' as that spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down," said professor Edward Schiappa, chair of the Communications Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.

When Schiappa taught a course on the TV series "Six Feet Under," students got to watch HBO in class. But they also digested media theories like cultivation analysis, social learning, parasocial interaction and thanatology. Texts for the Harry Potter class include "Death, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Adolescent Literature." The first thing students read in the seminar on "The Wire" is a chapter titled "The Construction of Ethical Codes in the Discourse and Criticism of Popular Culture."

"I like such classes because if they are done right, the students not only learn about theories and research, but have a very lively example of how to apply such theories and ideas to the real world," Schiappa said.

And none is livelier than Lady Gaga. Amy Hamlin, an assistant professor of art and art history, said that her view of the pop superstar moved from "Who is this charlatan?" to "Whoa, what is she doing here?" once she saw the video "Bad Romance." In it, Gaga performs as a white-anddiamond-clad plaything pushed into dancing for a group of drinking men. Mid-song, she sets fire to a bed and the man in it. The costumes turn from white to red and black. Crying turns to smiling.

"She was really pushing some

buttons," Hamlin said. "That video touches on things like conceptions of gender, our commodity culture, power in relationships."

"You wouldn't know it just by listening to the music," said Allison Adrian, an assistant professor of music and Hamlin's partner in teaching the course.

"Really?" Hamlin asked. "Even in 'Bad Romance'?"

"It's a dance pop tune," Adrian said. "You need the hint the video gives you to make sense of the lyrics."

A few years ago, Hamlin and Adrian paired up their academic specialties to teach a course called "Music, the Visual Arts and Politics in the Twentieth Century," and were struck by how often students brought up Lady Gaga in class discussions. They decided she'd make a powerful focus for a course but worried that students and faculty members might not take it seriously.

"We've gotten asked plenty of times by skeptics, 'What are you going to do? Are you just listening to her music in class?' " Adrian said.

St. Kate's professor Cecilia Konchar Farr got similar "blowback" when she began her class on Harry Potter. Why not teach Shakespeare? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Despite the novels' target audience, her class, which has proven so popular that she has had to raise the cap on enrollment, deals with serious analysis, "not just playful dancing with the text."

In a sense, Harry Potter beats Jay Gatsby at helping students

see how literary theory applies to the texts they read each day, Konchar Farr argues. "I'm not just thinking critically and analytically when I open my volume of James Joyce," Konchar Farr said. "I'm doing it when watching 'The Office.' " She suspects that the current crop of pop-culture courses is the result of a movement in the 1960s and '70s, when students demanded more relevant course work. Some of those students went on to earn doctorates and are now the ones teaching.

When University of St. Thomas professor Wendy Wyatt paired up with a sociology professor to teach a course on the TV series "The Wire," "we thought we were being so unique," she laughed. Turns out four or five universities across the country had the same idea.

St. Thomas' seminar asks two key questions about the series, which depicts the police, drug culture and politics of Baltimore: "Is it accurate? Is it fair?" Students review criminal justice research to help them answer those questions. Pairing the show with the research is more effective than "handing somebody a textbook or a research article about drug legalization," Wyatt said.

Wyatt, who researches media literacy, argues against the idea that "entertainment doesn't matter," and believes the United States is behind on teaching students how to think critically about what's on TV. "If you are willing to engage with pop culture in serious ways, you will see all the ways it does matter."

what you’re saying Tech ends falls to Duke 60-56

Anonymous: The season just didn't end on a sour note, it was a sour note the whole year...

Hello: Greenberg should be fired. He's had several mediocre seasons now.

Stadium Woods worth saving

Mike: Are there not already 3 or 4 football fields to practice on? I swear, all I see on the south end of campus is sport fields. Why doesn't Tech just convert one of these to an indoor facility? Ohhhh I see, then they wouldn't have a place to practice outside when the weather is nice.

Karen: VT isn't an urban campus that's

constrained by the town in all directions. We have plenty of land to build on. Put the training facility in the parking lot (so the precious athletes don't have to walk TOO far in order to exercise/practice...) and move the parking lot somewhere else. Or put the practice facility a little farther away and the football players can run there in order to get in a warm-up.

But of course VT is competing for recuits who are considering schools that have adjacent training facilities.

Chris: Virginia Tech continues to prove that it

no longer has a solid plan of what new buildings and facilities will be constructed, and where those structures will be built. Take the parking lot/deck along Prices Fork, for example. Who builds a massive parking lot, then decides to put a massive parking deck in the middle, and then puts a new engineering building right beside that on top of the old parking lot?

crimeblotter date

time

offense

location

status

arestees

3/11/2012

00.22 am

appear intoxicated in public

Draper Road

arrested

Ben Hensly, 25 Timothy Kinley, 22

3/11/2012

00.59 am

appear intoxicated in public

Otley Street

arrested

Neil Werner, 21

3/11/2012

01.43 am

appear intoxicated in public

Clay Street

arrested

Gregory Mackey, 21

3/11/2012

08.42 pm

possession of marijuana

Turner Street

arrested

Peter Marlowe, 20

opinions

editors: scott masselli, sean simons opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com/ 540.231.9865

march 13, 2012 COLLEGIATETIMES

3

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

Your Views [letter to the editor]

Flu vaccines are effective, sensible use of resources

S

chiffert Health Center would like to respond to Eric Jones’ column from the Feb. 29 edition of the Collegiate Times titled “People can do without yearly flu vaccinations.”

Influenza is a highly contagious disease, and environments such as college campuses with a large number of people in close contact are prone to outbreaks. Those infected with flu are contagious up to 24 hours before showing symptoms, thereby unknowingly exposing numerous other individuals. Flu is spread by exposure to respiratory droplets from infected individuals coughing, sneezing or talking.

It can also be contracted if a person touches a contaminated surface — a door handle, keyboard, chair, etc. — and touches his face before washing his hands. Studies have shown that people touch their faces as much as 30 times an hour.

Studies on college campuses also show hand hygiene practices are less than ideal.

Flu epidemics are real, and people can and do die. The H1N1 epidemic a few years ago showed the young, old or those with underlying conditions are not the only ones who are susceptible. Seemingly, healthy patients (i.e. typical college students) suffered some of the worst cases and complications (hospitalization, pneumonia, sinusitis, otitis, pericarditis, cardiomyopathy, dehydration and death), thus prompting the Centers for Disease Control to change the recommendations to state everyone older than 6 months should be vaccinated annually.

Something that gives 77 percent prevention is far from worthless. What strains are used in the vaccine is not mere guesswork. Analysis is

done of the previous years’ flu outbreaks as well as those of the southern hemisphere. The track record is overall accurate, and there has rarely been a complete miss. Even if not completely preventive, the vaccine does help shorten flu's course and reduce its severity.

Most people do recover uneventfully, but it can be a week or two of misery and falling far behind in classes.

Schiffert sees mostly respiratory complaints, and we typically get requests for class excuses from students with routine colds. The symptoms of a cold do not compare to those of flu.

The flu vaccine cannot cause flu. The injection is a killed virus. Any symptoms are related to the local reaction to the injection itself or the production of antibodies to locally injected antigen. The nasal spray is a live-attenuated vaccine — as is the MMR or measles, mumps, rubella — and its efficacy is well proven. It is a cold-adapted vaccine, meaning it can’t cause infection in the warmer environment of the chest, lungs and sinuses. It can only cause minor symptoms in the colder nasal passages.

Most insurance companies cover the cost of the vaccine, and many employers offer it at no charge to employees. There are also local resources so those who do not have health insurance and cannot afford it can receive it free of charge. A person who gets the flu can easily spend $25 to $30 on symptomatic remedies alone.

Our goal is to promote health and wellness. One of the best ways to prevent and/or limit the spread of influenza is vaccination. We strongly encourage everyone on campus be vaccinated annually unless there is a contraindication.

Noelle Bissell, M.D. Schiffert Health Center medical director

MCT CAMPUS

Friends reflect friends’ identities T

here are three things only your real friends can do: Tell you when your clothes don’t fit, tell you when you’re acting ridiculous and help you celebrate a huge achievement.

Strangers can tell you if you have spinach in your teeth.

Somebody you’ve never met before can help you grieve. It’s easier to offer an incidental observation or sincere sympathy than it is, for example, to offer authentic, enthusiastic admiration.

But only someone who’s known and loved you for a long time can cheer you on and mean it when you receive a significant promotion, drop three dress sizes or win big money on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

A stranger can indicate that you’ve got something in the corner of your eye through the universally recognized action of desperately rubbing the corner of her own eye until you, chimpanzee-like, mimic her action

only to discover that you now have a flake of mascara the size of a tea bag smeared across the top of your cheekbone like an NFL running back.

But only a real pal can tell you that your new iridescent eye shadow makes you look not like Halle Berry but like Tim Curry in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” only less subtle.

It’s not easy to be a friend.

Oh sure, you can hit the “accept” button on a social media site and pretend to be popular, but does that really mean you’d be able to identify the person you just “friended” in a lineup? If you could, would you offer to make that person’s bail? A real friend offers bail.

Would you recognize his or her voice over the telephone? Even more important, if you saw on your caller ID that it was this person phoning you, would you pick up or let it go directly to voice mail? Real friends pick up and don’t pretend not to know

who it is.

Real friends say, “Oh, thank God it’s you,” and then admit who it is they are glad not to hear from (“The only time she ever calls is when she needs bail”).

As I always say, Lorelei Lee got it wrong in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”: It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s your best friends who are your diamonds. It’s your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. They’re everlasting.

And just as there’s no such thing as a fake diamond — it’s either real or it isn’t — there’s no such thing as a fake friend.

Hold your friends close. Talk to them, in person if possible, and cheer them on. Real friends are a better — and kinder — reflection of you than any mirror.

GINA BARRECA -mcclatchy newspapers

Tyler Arthur featured columnist, junior, finance major

he Mediterranean Sea — a body of water that facilitates trade between Europe, the Middle East and Africa — has metaphorically gone from an innocuous, inanimate, watery manifestation to an insidious, infectious, transporter of insurmountable debt and fiscal insolvency. It has washed up on the shores of Greece, Spain and Italy with a categorical disregard for fiscal responsibility.

It ransacked balance sheets, gross domestic product, as well as constituents’ and foreign creditors’ faith in the government to spend within their means. But unlike Italy and Spain, Greece did not just drink the debt poison, they chugged it, and a prolonged cold has turned into the bubonic plague for the progenitor of democracy and western thought.

To understand and ascertain the inscrutable sovereign debt crisis that is mutilating the continent of Europe, the question, “Why would countries collectively band together and be monetarily united, but remain fiscally autonomous?” must be posed. The answer rests within the heart of Europe’s tumultuous history: To prevent another catastrophic war, countries banded together economically to thwart another prospect of war.

But because of their perpetual propensity to distrust one another, they wanted to protect their own fiscal autonomy. So they compromised.

Subsequently, 27 countries fused their fiat currencies into one potent currency, dubbed the “euro.” This audacious confederation was unprecedented and became a prospective template for other nations seeking to augment their own currency and economic clout.

Unfortunately, the archaic adage, “All good things must come to an end,” still holds true. The fundamental problem with the quasi-union is that it was just that — it was a makeshift attempt to try and solve a problem of the human

condition that outright ignored the conspicuous idiosyncrasies of the countries involved.

Furthermore, the quasiunion failed to address the inherent incentives to cheat when individual entities are asked to produce a group product. For example, one of the reasons there are so few cartels in existence is because there is an incentive to cheat the other parties and raise output to gain extra profit. Collectivist actions exemplify the problematic disconnect between theory and reality: If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

Hindsight is 20/20, and there are numerous other causal factors to consider when examining the European Union’s problems, but for brevity let’s narrow the scope of this discussion to why Greece became a ward of the international community and will inevitably default.

In addition to answering those questions, let us also establish why Americans should care if Greece defaults, and why the country should not care when they cry about it.

For 2011, Greece had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 164 percent, and the International Monetary Fund believes that number will shrink to 129 percent by 2020. Intuition says this mitigation is reasonable, but numbers without context are moot. Currently, Italy, the world’s eighth largest economy, has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 120 percent — an analyst at CNBC remarked starkly, “too big to fail, too big to save.”

So let’s put two and two together: Analysts are already having a tough time swallowing Italy’s debt problems at 120 percent, and Greece is only going to decrease to 129 percent by 2020. Therefore, eight years from now and after a series of bailouts, Greece will still be in what some call the “danger zone” and facing problems akin to Italy’s.

Moreover, Greece has currently been in a recession for five years and is facing an

appalling 20.9 percent unemployment rate (for the ages 15 to 24 it is 35.6 percent). Their own politicians have expressed concerns about staying true to the austerity measures they signed off to receive the bailout funds. (Note that Greek elections are scheduled to take place in April.) Also, keep in mind that Greece still has to use an overvalued euro relative to its economy, which will severely restrict any growth possibilities and further burden the downtrodden country.

Remember Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? Of course not because they don’t exist anymore. One was bought out and the other went bankrupt during the United States’ domestic financial crisis. The difference between Greece and an investment bank is that it is a sovereign nation and cannot be bought out. This leaves policymakers with one of two options: default or bailout.

Because Greece is a part of the EU, neither option is preferable.

A bailout would take funds from taxpayers all over the EU and give them to a country that neither deserves them nor will be able to pay them back. The sentiments of the German people symbolize this point: 80 percent of Germany opposed the bailout, although the Bundestag voted 496-90 in approval. A default, on the other hand, could potentially trigger the unfathomable — the debt contagion would infect the world, and the credit default swaps market would go sporadic. (Credit default swaps are essentially insurance on securities in case of default.)

The global financial system is a messy web of intertwined investments and hedges, so just as when Lehman fell, a Greek collapse would send pernicious vibrations throughout the market. Thus, Americans should care if and when the Greeks default on their unsustainable debt. Parents’ pension funds, mutual funds and the like, are

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Voice your opinion. Readers are encouraged to send letters to the Collegiate Times.

Greece must face the facts T

Collegiate Times Editorial Staff Editor in Chief: Zach Crizer Managing Editor: Lindsey Brookbank Design Editors: Danielle Buynak, Victoria Zigadlo Public Editor: Justin Graves Web Editor: Sarah Watson News Editors: Nick Cafferky, Michelle Sutherland News Reporters: Josh Higgins, Cody Owens, Erin Chapman News Staff Writers: Priscila Alvarez, Abby Harris, Gina Paterson, Ashley Seagar Features Editors: Chelsea Gunter, Patrick Murphy Features Reporters: Nick Smirniotopoulos Features Staff Writers: Courtney Baker, Torie Deible, Dane Harrington, Kevin McAleese, Andrew Reily Opinions Editors: Scott Masselli, Sean Simons Sports Editors: Matt Jones, Zach Mariner Sports Reporters: Michael Bealey, Josh Parcell Sports Staff Writers: Eric Avassi, Zander Baylis, Alyssa Bedrosian, Cody Elliott, Taylor Hay, Alex Koma, Ashleigh Lanza, Brian Marcolini Photo Editor: Daniel Lin Enterprise Team Editor: Liana Bayne Public Information Director: Dishu Maheshwari Training Director: Kelsey Heiter Copy Chief: Spenser Snarr Copy Editors: Nora McGann, Luther Shell Layout Designers: Bethany Melson, Alicia Tillman, Tanja Vogel Online Director: Alex Rhea

going to be affected because America’s domestic financial system is exposed to Greece and the peripheral debt-stricken countries. Once one comes crashing down, expect others to follow suit.

In regard to the bailouts that are taking place, there are multiple problems associated with such “solutions.” First, it leads to a slippery slope because once Greece is given funds, other countries are going to be looking for handouts as well, and there is not enough money to go around for that to happen. Second, given the aforementioned economic conditions, giving Greece money is like handing over a portfolio to the E-Trade baby to manage — it’s a losing proposition.

To explain metaphorically, it is like a ticking time bomb with a quarter slot. The more quarters put in it, the more time it adds onto the timer before it explodes. But eventually, there will be no more quarters to put in it, and the bomb will explode. So why would people waste their money merely delaying the inevitable? Would people spend millions on a terminally ill patient? Would people buy them life insurance? No, and the same logic is applicable to trying to bailout Greece.

Invariably, Greece will default, and everyone will be upset with the subsequent repercussions. The Greeks themselves will be the worst off, as they will have a very difficult time trying to borrow money to finance governmental operations. But this natural free market punishment is exactly what they need to correct their gluttonous behavior.

Examples of such behavior include honesty-based machines for their state-of-theart subway system in Athens, an incomprehensible bankrupt railroad system, wages of public sector employees that have doubled over the past decade and more than 600 professions

are allowed to retire at age 50 (which includes a 95 percent pension plan of their last year’s working salary).

In addition, only 0.0004 percent of the country admits to earning more than 90,000 euros (since they are allowed to state their own earnings for tax purposes, and it rarely, if ever, is challenged or questioned by the government), and more than 60,000 homes in Greece are reported to have investments worth more than one million euros. Greece is, as one economist put it, “A poor country full of rich people.”

Greece was irresponsible — think along the lines of Billy Madison — and because of its disregard for fiscal frugality, deserves to temporarily suffer so it can learn from its mistakes. No one, or for that matter no country, is impervious to paying their bills. When people consume, they must produce and spend what they can afford for there to be economic equilibrium. Most people obviously cannot frivolously use their credit card on Fifth Avenue and not expect creditors to come knocking asking for their money.

It is a problem when someone retroactively changes a covenant so they do not have to honor their previous agreement. (Greece coerced bondholders to take a “haircut” on their payments and only received about half of what they should have through what the Greeks called a “voluntary agreement.”)

Unfortunately, Greece cannot make a Trojan Horse this time to solve its problems. It must pay its dues and do so with dignity. With this in mind, I also understand that not too far down the road America’s own debt battle will be fought, and citizens will have to swallow down austerity with a Cheshire smile.

Follow the writer on Twitter: @TylerVA540

365 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, VA, 24061 Fax: (540) 231-9151 opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com All letters to the editor must include a name and daytime phone number.

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Call or text 200-TIPS or e-mail newstips@collegiatetimes.com Student Media Phone Numbers Collegiate Times Newsroom 231-9865 Editor-in-Chief 231-9867 College Media Solutions Advertising 961-9860 The Collegiate Times, a division of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, was established in 1903 by and for the students of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The Collegiate Times is published every Tuesday through Friday of the academic year except during exams and vacations.

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march 13, 2012 COLLEGIATETIMES

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

Your Views [letter to the editor]

Flu vaccines are effective, sensible use of resources

S

chiffert Health Center would like to respond to Eric Jones’ column from the Feb. 29 edition of the Collegiate Times titled “People can do without yearly flu vaccinations.”

Influenza is a highly contagious disease, and environments such as college campuses with a large number of people in close contact are prone to outbreaks. Those infected with flu are contagious up to 24 hours before showing symptoms, thereby unknowingly exposing numerous other individuals. Flu is spread by exposure to respiratory droplets from infected individuals coughing, sneezing or talking.

It can also be contracted if a person touches a contaminated surface — a door handle, keyboard, chair, etc. — and touches their face before washing their hands. Studies have shown that people touch their faces as much as 30 times an hour. Studies on college campuses also show hand hygiene practices are less than ideal.

Flu epidemics are real, and people can and do die. The H1N1 epidemic a few years ago showed the young, old or those with underlying conditions are not the only ones who are susceptible. Seemingly, healthy patients (i.e. typical college students) suffered some of the worst cases and complications (hospitalization, pneumonia, sinusitis, otitis, pericarditis, cardiomyopathy, dehydration and death), thus prompting the Centers for Disease Control to change the recommendations to state everyone older than 6 months should be vaccinated annually.

Something that gives 77 percent prevention is far from worthless. What strains are used in the vaccine is not mere guesswork. Analysis is

done of the previous years’ flu outbreaks as well as those of the southern hemisphere. The track record is overall accurate, and there has rarely been a complete miss. Even if not completely preventive, the vaccine does help shorten flu's course and reduce its severity.

Most people do recover uneventfully, but it can be a week or two of misery and falling far behind in classes.

Schiffert sees mostly respiratory complaints, and we typically get requests for class excuses from students with routine colds. The symptoms of a cold do not compare to those of flu.

The flu vaccine cannot cause flu. The injection is a killed virus. Any symptoms are related to the local reaction to the injection itself or the production of antibodies to the locally injected antigen. The nasal spray is a live-attenuated vaccine — as is the MMR or measles, mumps, rubella — and its efficacy is well proven. It is a cold-adapted vaccine, meaning it can’t cause infection in the warmer environment of the chest, lungs and sinuses. It can only cause minor symptoms in the colder nasal passages.

Most insurance companies cover the cost of the vaccine, and many employers offer it at no charge to employees. There are also local resources so those who do not have health insurance and cannot afford it can receive it free of charge. A person who gets the flu can easily spend $25 to $30 on symptomatic remedies alone.

Our goal is to promote health and wellness. One of the best ways to prevent and/or limit the spread of influenza is vaccination. We strongly encourage everyone on campus be vaccinated annually unless there is a contraindication.

Noelle Bissell, M.D. Schiffert Health Center medical director

MCT CAMPUS

Friends reflect friends’ identities T

here are three things only your real friends can do: Tell you when your clothes don’t fit, tell you when you’re acting ridiculous and help you celebrate a huge achievement.

Strangers can tell you if you have spinach in your teeth.

Somebody you’ve never met before can help you grieve. It’s easier to offer an incidental observation or sincere sympathy than it is, for example, to offer authentic, enthusiastic admiration.

But only someone who’s known and loved you for a long time can cheer you on and mean it when you receive a significant promotion, drop three dress sizes or win big money on “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

A stranger can indicate that you’ve got something in the corner of your eye through the universally recognized action of desperately rubbing the corner of her own eye until you, chimpanzee-like, mimic her action

only to discover that you now have a flake of mascara the size of a tea bag smeared across the top of your cheekbone like an NFL running back.

But only a real pal can tell you that your new iridescent eye shadow makes you look not like Halle Berry but like Tim Curry in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” only less subtle.

It’s not easy to be a friend.

Oh sure, you can hit the “accept” button on a social media site and pretend to be popular, but does that really mean you’d be able to identify the person you just “friended” in a lineup? If you could, would you offer to make that person’s bail? A real friend offers bail.

Would you recognize his or her voice over the telephone? Even more important, if you saw on your caller ID that it was this person phoning you, would you pick up or let it go directly to voice mail? Real friends pick up and don’t pretend not to know

who it is.

Real friends say, “Oh, thank God it’s you,” and then admit who it is they are glad not to hear from (“The only time she ever calls is when she needs bail”).

As I always say, Lorelei Lee got it wrong in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”: It’s not that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s your best friends who are your diamonds. It’s your best friends who are supremely resilient, made under pressure and of astonishing value. They’re everlasting.

And just as there’s no such thing as a fake diamond — it’s either real or it isn’t — there’s no such thing as a fake friend.

Hold your friends close. Talk to them, in person if possible, and cheer them on. Real friends are a better — and kinder — reflection of you than any mirror.

GINA BARRECA -mcclatchy newspapers

Tyler Arthur featured columnist, junior, finance major

he Mediterranean Sea — a body of water that facilitates trade between Europe, the Middle East and Africa — has metaphorically gone from an innocuous, inanimate, watery manifestation to an insidious, infectious, transporter of insurmountable debt and fiscal insolvency. It has washed up on the shores of Greece, Spain and Italy with a categorical disregard for fiscal responsibility.

It ransacked balance sheets, gross domestic product, as well as constituents’ and foreign creditors’ faith in the government to spend within their means. But unlike Italy and Spain, Greece did not just drink the debt poison, they chugged it, and a prolonged cold has turned into the bubonic plague for the progenitor of democracy and western thought.

To understand and ascertain the inscrutable sovereign debt crisis that is mutilating the continent of Europe, the question, “Why would countries collectively band together and be monetarily united, but remain fiscally autonomous?” must be posed. The answer rests within the heart of Europe’s tumultuous history: To prevent another catastrophic war, countries banded together economically to thwart another prospect of war.

But because of their perpetual propensity to distrust one another, they wanted to protect their own fiscal autonomy. So they compromised.

Subsequently, 27 countries fused their fiat currencies into one potent currency, dubbed the “euro.” This audacious confederation was unprecedented and became a prospective template for other nations seeking to augment their own currency and economic clout.

Unfortunately, the archaic adage, “All good things must come to an end,” still holds true. The fundamental problem with the quasi-union is that it was just that — it was a makeshift attempt to try and solve a problem of the human

condition that outright ignored the conspicuous idiosyncrasies of the countries involved.

Furthermore, the quasiunion failed to address the inherent incentives to cheat when individual entities are asked to produce a group product. For example, one of the reasons there are so few cartels in existence is because there is an incentive to cheat the other parties and raise output to gain extra profit. Collectivist actions exemplify the problematic disconnect between theory and reality: If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

Hindsight is 20/20, and there are numerous other causal factors to consider when examining the European Union’s problems, but for brevity let’s narrow the scope of this discussion to why Greece became a ward of the international community and will inevitably default.

In addition to answering those questions, let us also establish why Americans should care if Greece defaults, and why the country should not care when they cry about it.

For 2011, Greece had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 164 percent, and the International Monetary Fund believes that number will shrink to 129 percent by 2020. Intuition says this mitigation is reasonable, but numbers without context are moot. Currently, Italy, the world’s eighth largest economy, has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 120 percent — an analyst at CNBC remarked starkly, “too big to fail, too big to save.”

So let’s put two and two together: Analysts are already having a tough time swallowing Italy’s debt problems at 120 percent, and Greece is only going to decrease to 129 percent by 2020. Therefore, eight years from now and after a series of bailouts, Greece will still be in what some call the “danger zone” and facing problems akin to Italy’s.

Moreover, Greece has currently been in a recession for five years and is facing an

appalling 20.9 percent unemployment rate (for the ages 15 to 24 it is 35.6 percent). Their own politicians have expressed concerns about staying true to the austerity measures they signed off to receive the bailout funds. (Note that Greek elections are scheduled to take place in April.) Also, keep in mind that Greece still has to use an overvalued euro relative to its economy, which will severely restrict any growth possibilities and further burden the downtrodden country.

Remember Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? Of course not because they don’t exist anymore. One was bought out and the other went bankrupt during the United States’ domestic financial crisis. The difference between Greece and an investment bank is that it is a sovereign nation and cannot be bought out. This leaves policymakers with one of two options: default or bailout.

Because Greece is a part of the EU, neither option is preferable.

A bailout would take funds from taxpayers all over the EU and give them to a country that neither deserves them nor will be able to pay them back. The sentiments of the German people symbolize this point: 80 percent of Germany opposed the bailout, although the Bundestag voted 496-90 in approval. A default, on the other hand, could potentially trigger the unfathomable — the debt contagion would infect the world, and the credit default swaps market would go sporadic. (Credit default swaps are essentially insurance on securities in case of default.)

The global financial system is a messy web of intertwined investments and hedges, so just as when Lehman fell, a Greek collapse would send pernicious vibrations throughout the market. Thus, Americans should care if and when the Greeks default on their unsustainable debt. Parents’ pension funds, mutual funds and the like, are

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Greece must face the facts T

Collegiate Times Editorial Staff Editor in Chief: Zach Crizer Managing Editor: Lindsey Brookbank Design Editors: Danielle Buynak, Victoria Zigadlo Public Editor: Justin Graves Web Editor: Sarah Watson News Editors: Nick Cafferky, Michelle Sutherland News Reporters: Josh Higgins, Cody Owens, Erin Chapman News Staff Writers: Priscila Alvarez, Abby Harris, Gina Paterson, Ashley Seagar Features Editors: Chelsea Gunter, Patrick Murphy Features Reporters: Nick Smirniotopoulos Features Staff Writers: Courtney Baker, Torie Deible, Dane Harrington, Kevin McAleese, Andrew Reily Opinions Editors: Scott Masselli, Sean Simons Sports Editors: Matt Jones, Zach Mariner Sports Reporters: Michael Bealey, Josh Parcell Sports Staff Writers: Eric Avassi, Zander Baylis, Alyssa Bedrosian, Cody Elliott, Taylor Hay, Alex Koma, Ashleigh Lanza, Brian Marcolini Photo Editor: Daniel Lin Enterprise Team Editor: Liana Bayne Public Information Director: Dishu Maheshwari Training Director: Kelsey Heiter Copy Chief: Spenser Snarr Copy Editors: Nora McGann, Luther Shell Layout Designers: Bethany Melson, Alicia Tillman, Tanja Vogel Online Director: Alex Rhea

going to be affected because America’s domestic financial system is exposed to Greece and the peripheral debt-stricken countries. Once one comes crashing down, expect others to follow suit.

In regard to the bailouts that are taking place, there are multiple problems associated with such “solutions.” First, it leads to a slippery slope because once Greece is given funds, other countries are going to be looking for handouts as well, and there is not enough money to go around for that to happen. Second, given the aforementioned economic conditions, giving Greece money is like handing over a portfolio to the E-Trade baby to manage — it’s a losing proposition.

To explain metaphorically, it is like a ticking time bomb with a quarter slot. The more quarters put in it, the more time it adds onto the timer before it explodes. But eventually, there will be no more quarters to put in it, and the bomb will explode. So why would people waste their money merely delaying the inevitable? Would people spend millions on a terminally ill patient? Would people buy them life insurance? No, and the same logic is applicable to trying to bailout Greece.

Invariably, Greece will default, and everyone will be upset with the subsequent repercussions. The Greeks themselves will be the worst off, as they will have a very difficult time trying to borrow money to finance governmental operations. But this natural free market punishment is exactly what they need to correct their gluttonous behavior.

Examples of such behavior include honesty-based machines for their state-of-theart subway system in Athens, an incomprehensible bankrupt railroad system, wages of public sector employees that have doubled over the past decade and more than 600 professions

are allowed to retire at age 50 (which includes a 95 percent pension plan of their last year’s working salary).

In addition, only 0.0004 percent of the country admits to earning more than 90,000 euros (since they are allowed to state their own earnings for tax purposes, and it rarely, if ever, is challenged or questioned by the government), and more than 60,000 homes in Greece are reported to have investments worth more than one million euros. Greece is, as one economist put it, “A poor country full of rich people.”

Greece was irresponsible — think along the lines of Billy Madison — and because of its disregard for fiscal frugality, deserves to temporarily suffer so it can learn from its mistakes. No one, or for that matter no country, is impervious to paying their bills. When people consume, they must produce and spend what they can afford for there to be economic equilibrium. Most people obviously cannot frivolously use their credit card on Fifth Avenue and not expect creditors to come knocking asking for their money.

It is a problem when someone retroactively changes a covenant so they do not have to honor their previous agreement. (Greece coerced bondholders to take a “haircut” on their payments and only received about half of what they should have through what the Greeks called a “voluntary agreement.”)

Unfortunately, Greece cannot make a Trojan Horse this time to solve its problems. It must pay its dues and do so with dignity. With this in mind, I also understand that not too far down the road America’s own debt battle will be fought, and citizens will have to swallow down austerity with a Cheshire smile.

Follow the writer on Twitter: @TylerVA540

365 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, VA, 24061 Fax: (540) 231-9151 opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com All letters to the editor must include a name and daytime phone number.

Students must include year and major.

Faculty and staff must include position and department. All other submissions must include city of residence, and if applicable, relationship to Virginia Tech (i.e., alumni, parent, etc.). All letters should be in MS Word (.doc) format, if possible.

Letters, commentaries and editorial cartoons do not reflect the views of the Collegiate Times.

Editorials are written by the Collegiate Times editorial board, which is composed of the opinions editors, editor-in-chief and the managing editors.

Letters to the editor are submissions from Collegiate Times readers. We reserve the right to edit for any reason.

Anonymous letters will not be printed.

Have a news tip?

Call or text 200-TIPS or e-mail newstips@collegiatetimes.com Student Media Phone Numbers Collegiate Times Newsroom 231-9865 Editor-in-Chief 231-9867 College Media Solutions Advertising 961-9860 The Collegiate Times, a division of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, was established in 1903 by and for the students of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The Collegiate Times is published every Tuesday through Friday of the academic year except during exams and vacations.

The Collegiate Times receives no direct funding from the university.

The Collegiate Times can be found online at www.collegiatetimes.com.

Except where noted, all photographs were taken by the Student Publications Photo Staff. To order a reprint of a photograph printed in the Collegiate Times, visit reprints.collegemedia.com.

Subscription rates: $65 semester; $110 fall/spring. The first copy is free, any copy of the paper after that is 50 cents per issue. © Collegiate Times, 2011. All rights reserved.

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march 13, 2012

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Crossword

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Week ending Feb. 18, 2012

Top tracks

( ) Last week’s ranking in top five

We are Young (Feat. Janelle Moneae) • Fun

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(2) 3

Doesn’t Kill You)

• Kelly Clarkson

(5) 4

Set Fire to the Rain • Adele

5

Somebody That I Used to Know • Gotye

word

WORDSEARCH: Harry Potter friends Locate the list of words in the word bank in the letter grid.

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tomorrow’s paper for:

Unscramble the letters to solve the category “Blacksburg Streets” Have a set of words you want to see in puzzles section? Email your lists to ctadsproduction@gmail.com.

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march 13, 2012 COLLEGIATETIMES

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ABC aims for competitors to go ‘Missing’ “H

ell hath no fury like a mother scorned” seems to be the mantra of ABC’s latest drama/thriller “Missing,” and so far, it’s working.

The show premieres Thursday at 8 p.m., but an advance screening allowed it to be reviewed.

Rebecca Winstone, played by Ashley Judd, is a widowed mother and ex-CIA agent raising her college-aged son Michael.

Reluctantly, she allows her son to go to Italy to study in an architecture program, but it doesn’t take long for things to go horribly wrong.

After Michael stops answering his mother’s phone calls and text messages, she knows something has gone awry. The school confirms her suspicions when she learns Michael hasn’t been showing up for class — an unusual behavior for her son.

Maternal instincts kick into overdrive and former agent Winstone is on the next flight to Rome. She may be a PTA mom back home, but her old spy tactics surface immediately in the most brutal and lethal ways.

“Missing” chronicles a mother’s relentless search to find her son who has been taken for reasons unknown to both the characters and the audience.

Judd, starring in her first regular role on a TV series, clearly shows she has the acting chops to transcend the silver screen. While she may be best known for films such as “Double Jeopardy” and “Heat,” she can now add TV to her repertoire.

Judd is not a mother in real life, which is seemingly ironic. But one would never know it given her performance. Her character is completely driven by her emotions and is compelled to find her son at all costs.

This determination is reminiscent of that of Liam Neeson in “Taken.”

In fact, “Missing,” so far at least, has many similarities to the 2008 blockbuster.

However, the obvious difference is the gender reversal. In “Taken,” Neeson plays a father who chases after his daughter who has also suddenly gone missing while on a trip in Europe.

After 93 minutes, Neeson is successful in his quest to rescue his daughter. It seems safe to assume that eventually Judd will also save her child, but this begs the question, when?

Neeson completed his mission in just an hour-and-a-half, but the goal of a TV series is to stretch out a storyline — not to condense it. So how will the series be drawn out? That is, assuming it makes it long enough for that to be a real question.

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It could be ever-so tedious to watch Judd pathetically fall short season after season, getting ever closer but never fulfilling her mission.

Then again, if she does find her son, then the title “Missing” will no longer seem apt.

Despite these obvious concerns about the longevity of the series, there is still a great deal to stick around for.

The mother-son angle is captivating enough, but the overall plot does seem rather intricate. Already, there are many more questions than answers, and if “Lost” has taught us anything, it’s that complexity is a good thing.

First off, there is a mom who claims she retired from the CIA 10 years ago, yet the way she fights suggests she couldn’t possibly have been dormant for that long. No amount of Pilates or Tae Bo can account for the whoopings Judd dishes out.

The motive behind her son’s apparent kidnapping is also shrouded in mystery.

Is he just a pawn in this whole thing or has he done something to secure this fate?

Fortunately for viewers, his mother is just as eager to start getting some answers as audience members.

Adding to the intrigue is a diverse set of characters. There are the “bad guys” Judd is pursuing and the CIA agents who are pursuing her to prevent an international incident. Then there’s an eclectic array of Judd’s acquaintances. After so many years in the field, Judd has many friends — and enemies — who she meets along the way in every country.

One drawback to the show is that Judd’s tough-as-nails persona initially makes her difficult to like.

While I wouldn’t expect a woman whose son has just been kidnapped to be bright and cheery, her character will definitely need to start showing her human side to win over audiences. Adding just a bit of humor wouldn’t hurt either. A few of the “comical” lines in the show are dry and just fall flat.

While I may question the show’s ability to endure, for now, I’m along for the ride and hoping it won’t go “Missing” from ABC’s Thursday night lineup anytime soon.

PATRICK MURPHY -features editor -senior -communication major

‘Missing’ at a glance When: Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m. on ABC Genre: Drama/Thriller Lead actors: Ashley Judd, Sean Bean, Cliff Curtis, Nick Eversman

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If you eat bread, will it lower your BAL because the bread absorbs the alcohol?

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) New opportunities can arise from breakdowns (which could happen).

Most inventions come from a need.

What service will you provide?

Gemini (May 21-June 21) For the next two days, you’re all about partnership. Delegating comes easier... you don’t need to be in control. Send off for an increase in funding. Get it.

Aries (March 21-April 19) Adventure calls. Romance tags along.

A lucky break opens a promising silver door. Make a plan, and get input from partners, family and friends.

Complete details.

Cancer (June 22-July 22) Get lost in creativity, and time lies by. Make a list of potential consts. It’s getting busy, and the work looks good on you. Someone’s checking you out.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) The next few days are good for inancial planning: Consider investing in your own education. Authorities may need persuasion. You can get your message across.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22) Travel beckons, but take care with expenses. You’re entering a romantic phase. Extra work fattens your wallet, but sunsets are free. Share one with someone nice.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Communicate with family, and shop for a home improvement. It’s easy to align on the solution. Someone has a brilliant idea. Talk it over irst.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Your intellectual capacities get a boost... you’re even smarter than usual. Take advantage with study, research and writing projects.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Don’t take your foot off the accelerator just yet. Later take a pit stop to re ill your drive and passion. There’s a lot to learn still. Rest deeply tonight.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Have big dreams, even if they seem impossible. Be practical in planning the steps to make them a reality.

Bring someone along. You’ll get more satisfaction.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Think it over, and get into the details.

Clarify the plan, so you can express it.

It’s really a brilliant idea. Share it with someone interesting over dinner.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Your talents are appreciated, which keeps you in high demand among your friends. Know how to pace yourself to stay fresh. Quiet time in solitary pursuits rejuvenates.

ANSWER: False. Bread, or any food, does not absorb alcohol, it merely slows absorption. Eating before you drink, slows absorption, but it all goes into the bloodstream anyway.

6

march 13, 2012 COLLEGIATETIMES

sports

editors: matt jones, zach mariner sportseditor@collegiatetimes.com/ 540.231.9865

Broncos, Cardinals: Frontrunners in Manning sweepstakes Four-time MVP Peyton Manning has met with several teams over the past week, as he searches for a new home after 14 years with Indianapolis MIKE PLATANIA sports staff writer Following a somber and frankly depressing exit in Indianapolis, Peyton Manning quickly became the most prized free agent in NFL history. Andrew Luck became the heir-apparent to Manning’s throne, leaving the legend to choose which franchise is worthy of his services.

A number of teams are doing everything they can to get Peyton to sign on the dotted line, and Peyton will get to hand-pick where it is he wants to go. The following are a number of destinations for the future Hall of Famer.

Kansas City Chiefs Although Manning hasn’t visited Kansas City yet and there have been reports that the team may be out of the running, it would still make a lot of sense for him to go there.

The Chiefs play in the AFC West, which is easily the weakest division in football, and Manning would be able to come in and make the division his own.

Manning would inherit a strong, young defense led by star safety Eric Berry, as well as a number of offensive weapons in tight end Tony Moeaki and wide receivers Steve Breaston and Dwayne Bowe. Also, with superstar running back Jamaal Charles coming back after an injury, the Chiefs' offense could be deadly.

If Manning went to Kansas City, the Chiefs would immediately become favorites in a very poor division.

Tennessee Titans Titans owner Bud Adams recently stated he’s interested in bringing in Manning, but it isn’t a realistic move. The Titans have a quarterback for the present in Matt Hasselbeck and the future in Jake Locker.

After years of sharing a division, it’s unlikely Manning will go to the team he’s so accustomed to beating.

Denver Broncos Apparent front-runners for Manning, the Denver Broncos would upgrade tremendously at quarterback, a position currently held by Tim Tebow. However, Denver may not be as great of a destination as it seems.

The Bronco’s offense was recently tailored to suit the (in)abilities of Tebow. No team ran the ball more frequently or effectively than Denver last season. But Manning is used to throwing as he pleases, which means either he or Denver’s coaches would have to change their ways.

However, there are reasons why Manning may select Denver. The Broncos' defense showed flashes of brilliance last year, and their offense has a number of young weapons in Eddie Royal, Demaryius Thomas MCT CAMPUS and the ageless Willis McGahee. Similar to Kansas In his time in Indy, Manning won Super Bowl XLI, received four MVP awards and broke numerous NFL records. City, if Manning comes to town, the Broncos would be the favorites to the division.

Although Manning may end up wanting to work with John Elway, it may not be as great of a fit as it seems.

Miami Dolphins The Dolphins would need to overtake the Patriots and Tom Brady if they want to become playoff contenders in the AFC East, and who better to knock him off than Manning, his longtime rival?

Manning owns a home in Miami, so he knows how great the weather and atmosphere is. And the Dolphins boast a young team full of potential. Miami's defense is serviceable, and Manning would definitely make up for the team's flaws.

An inability to win close games was the Dolphins’ Achilles heel last season, so they still have potential to be a good team. Reggie Bush looked more like the player he was supposed to be last year, and Manning would have a number of receiving weapons such as Davone Bess, Brian Hartline and Brandon Marshall, who’s one the best when he’s on his game. Throw in the security of knowing he has Jake Long blocking for him and Manning would feel right at home in South Beach.

Arizona Cardinals Shaquille O’Neal made a big splash years ago by going to the desert to play for the Suns. However, if Manning went to the Cardinals, it would be the only time anyone would make a bigger splash than the Shaqtus.

If the Cardinals can trade Kevin Kolb, who is currently under a massive contract, it would make a ton of sense for Manning to go to Arizona. They have a great head coach in Ken Whisenhunt and a solid defense with a strong secondary led by Adrian Wilson and budding superstar Patrick Peterson.

The Arizona offense is really only missing one piece: a star quarterback. Running back Beanie Wells had a breakout year last year, running for more than 1,000 yards; tight end Todd Heap showed he still has it; and Early Doucet proved to be a strong No. 2 receiver.

But the factor that sets Arizona apart is wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald — his knack for making circus catches has earned him the reputation of being the best receiver in the league. Manning’s pinpoint accuracy combined with Fitzgerald’s vice grip-like hands would make for easily the best quarterback-to-wide receiver combination in the league. When you add the fact that the Cardinals play on a fast track similar to that of Indianapolis, Arizona looks like an appealing destination for Manning.

It’ll be nearly impossible to guess where Manning will end up, but wherever it may be, the lucky team will rocket into playoff contention. Manning’s main objective is winning championships, and it’ll be interesting to see if he can do so without the horseshoe on his helmet.

Hokies in Atlanta Top: Robert Brown gets swarmed by the Blue Devils’ defense in the Hokies’ final game of the season.

Bottom left: Seth Greenberg lectures his team during a stoppage in play in the loss to Duke.

Bottom right: Senior guard Dorenzo Hudson drives the lane in the Hokies’ 68-63 victory over Clemson in the first round.

DANIEL LIN / SPPS

DANIEL LIN / SPPS

KEVIN DICKEL / SPPS

march 13, 2012

editors: nick cafferky, michelle sutherland

COLLEGIATETIMES

newseditor@collegiatetimes.com/ 540.231.9865

7

Trial: Two-hour period between shootings scrutinized from page one

Domestic incident in AJ? Multiple police and expert witnesses testified for the defense that the police made a reasonable assumption in deeming the West AJ shootings a likely case of domestic violence.

Officers from the Blacksburg Police Department, including Chief of Police Kim Crannis, testified that they believed the shootings were a targeted, domestic incident. They were assisting Virginia Tech Police in the investigation that morning.

Emily Hilscher lived in West Ambler-Johnston room 4040, where the shootings took place.

She was killed along with a partially clothed Ryan Clark — a resident adviser who lived next door.

“He was a young man in his underwear in a young lady’s room,” Crannis said. “You’re trying to develop the motive.

We were still trying to develop who committed the crime.”

Spencer, who was then the associate vice president for student affairs, was in West AJ during the investigation aiding police with any needs they had while in the residence hall.

He knew victim Ryan Clark, and was aware of Clark’s identity that morning since he was a resident adviser and part of Spencer’s residence life staff.

He testified that Flinchum asked him about Clark. Spencer described Clark as “one of the best RAs we had on staff,” and also said he indicated that Clark was “active in the gay community.” However, he said he did not recall that detail being relayed to the policy group.

Blacksburg Police Department Detective Scott Craig testified Monday about his interview with Hilscher’s roommate, who wasn’t in the building at the time of the shooting. Craig said the interview led to the identification of Hilscher’s boyfriend —Radford student Karl Thornhill — as a person of interest in line with the theory that the incident was a domestic conflict.

Craig testified that Hilscher’s roommate was unaware of any problems with their relationship, but showed him pictures from a social network of Thornhill handling firearms — rifles and a “Western-style” pistol.

All testimony Monday pointed out that Craig’s interview identifying the person of interest occurred at approximately 8:15 a.m. that morning. On the evening of the shootings, Tech President Charles Steger said a person of interest was identified at 7:30 a.m. The Governor’s Report on Tech originally contained the mistaken time in its timeline of events, but was later corrected.

Still, Steger’s original mistake and officials’ subsequent relaying of that information to the governor’s panel was a major point of contention. The plaintiffs’ legal team questioned Crannis about the timeline, showing a clip of Steger speaking at the press conference on the evening of April 16, in which he stated police were pursuing leads at 7:30 a.m.

Crannis said she attended that press conference and two others, but cannot remember what was said and acknowledged that investigators had not arrived on the scene by 7:30 a.m.

“I don’t recall hearing anything untruthful,” she said. “But I don’t recall anything said at any of them.”

Later in the proceedings, a similar question posed to Heidbreder, the university’s general counsel, drew arguments as to whether she could testify about Steger’s character. Alexander, the presiding judge, stopped her when she attempted to tell the court she had never known Steger to lie.

The defense claimed she should be allowed to speak about Steger’s character because the plaintiffs had assaulted his character on multiple occasions by deeming his statements “falsehoods.” The plaintiffs, meanwhile, claimed they were only referring to one incident and not making a broader statement about his reputation.

Alexander is reviewing the arguments and will rule on the matter this morning.

The pursuit of the domestic incident theory ended abruptly just as Craig was interviewing Thornhill at a traffic stop. He was called away to respond to shootings in Norris Hall.

However, defense witness Steven Healy — a former Princeton University police chief who now runs a firm consulting colleges on campus security issues — emphasized during his testimony that the knowledge officers had that morning pointed most strongly toward a domestic, isolated incident.

He asserted officials acted reasonably based on the information available to them.

“When you put all of those pieces of the initial investigation together, it is reasonable to think it was domestic,” Healy said.

Adequate warning?

During cross-examinations, the plaintiffs’ legal team repeatedly asked witnesses about the need to inform the campus community of a gunman whose identity and whereabouts were unknown.

Healy was asked how university officials should have balanced the severe risk further shootings posed with the small probability that they would actually occur.

He pointed out that domestic incidents rarely continue into further violence and from that explained his opinion that the officials reached a reasonable decision based on the information they had available — there was no imminent threat.

The policy group — which included Steger and Heidbreder, among others — met in Burruss Hall beginning at about 8:30 a.m. that morning.

Testimony indicated the group agreed on a campus notification at about 9 a.m. that did not specify that one student was dead and another was wounded. The notification, which referred to the West AJ shootings as a shooting incident, was delayed by technical difficulty and sent to the university community at 9:26 a.m., shortly before Cho entered Norris Hall.

Heidbreder testified that Larry Hincker, the vice president for university relations, originally wrote a message that included more information about the shootings, but Zenobia Hikes, then the vice president for student affairs, objected to releasing the information before notifying the victims’ families.

After Hincker drafted a new message that would become the initial notification, Steger went around the boardroom and asked each member of the policy group if they were comfort-

AP POOL

(Top) Judge William Alexander oversees the court. (Bottom) Blacksburg Chief of Police Kim Crannis testifies Monday about her involvement in the investigation of the West Ambler-Johnston shootings. able with the release, according to Heidbreder’s testimony.

The plaintiffs claim an earlier and more detailed notification, or warning with instructions, would have allowed Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde to make informed decisions about their safety and potentially avoid Norris Hall.

Defense witnesses such as Healy countered that Tech’s actions conformed to typical procedures as they existed in 2007. Healy said the notification met prevailing standards for timeliness and content.

Heidbreder came under fire for not addressing the universi-

ty’s promise to protect students — a resolution Steger and top officials encouraged the university’s board of visitors to adopt in 2006.

After several iterations of the question, the judge stepped in to instruct Heidbreder to answer the question of whether policy group members considered their resolved responsibility to protect the student community.

“We knew the police were investigating, and we put out a notification so the campus was aware an incident had occurred,” she answered.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Robert

Hall responded by asking why the group elected to withhold information about the severity of the shootings. Heidbreder replied that they did not include the information in the notification but specified that further information would be released when it became available.

Hall replied, “the information you already had,” as he sat down.

Heidbreder could return to the stand today. At least two other policy group members are expected to testify this morning as the state calls its final witnesses. The trial will resume at 8:30 a.m.

8 Star-spangled comedy march 13, 2012

COLLEGIATETIMES

editors: chelsea gunter, patrick murphy featureseditor@collegiatetimes.com/ 540.231.9865

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Washington-based political comedy troupe, The Capitol Steps, to perform at the Lyric Thursday ANDREW REILLY features staff writer American politics is the gift that keeps on giving for comedians, even more so during an election. When the stakes get higher, the laughs get louder, and this year is especially ripe for a skewering.

Who better to take on task than the venerable political comedy troupe The Capitol Steps?

For more than 30 years The Capitol Steps have traveled around the country performing its trademark political song parodies. On Thursday, the group will bring its act to the Lyric Theatre. Tickets for the 8 p.m. show start at $45, and are now on sale online and through the box office.

Founded by three congressional interns in 1981, The Capitol Steps has grown from a small Washington, D.C.-based group to a nationally touring act with more than 25 members. The crew has released 35 albums of song parodies including four

during the Obama administration with titles such as “Obama Mia!” and “Barackin Around the Christmas Tree.”

No party or politician is safe from the satiric gaze of the group. Recent songs poke fun at everything from the Tea Party’s emergence (“Fun Fun Fun ’til Obama Takes Our Tea Bags Away”) to the perception of Vice President Joe Biden as gaffe-prone (“You Can’t Hide This Biden Guy”).

Far from being disliked by the politicians it targets, The Capitol Steps claims to be popular among the Congressional crowd. The only time the politicos get mad, group member Mark Eaton told the Washington Post in 2011, is when they’re not mentioned.

“You gotta remember the egos on these guys,” Eaton said. “Say there are three senators in the crowd; the third one, who didn’t get mentioned, is the one who gets mad.”

Most of the troupe’s material consists of parodies of popular songs. Recent examples include “Under the Sea” being turned

into a jab at British Petroleum in the song “Under B.P.” and The O’Jays’ “Love Train” altered to “Love Cain” to lampoon former presidential candidate Herman Cain.

The Capitol Steps’ show at the Lyric promises a proper election year roasting of American politics from the group publicly hailed by figures such as former President George H.W. Bush and Larry King.

“They’re the best,” King said.

“There’s no one like them — no one in their league.”

event info What: The Capitol Steps political comedy troupe performance When: Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m.

Where: the Lyric Theatre Cost: Starting at $45