NATIONAL Signing day preview To keep up with signing day follow @thedmsports on Twitter See thedmonline.com and pages 7 and 8 for stories about signing day
THE DAILY
MISSISSIPPIAN
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Volume 105, No. 78
T H E S T U D E N T N E W S PA P E R O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I S S I S S I P P I S E R V I N G O L E M I S S A N D OX F O R D S I N C E 1 9 1 1
Visit theDMonline.com
@thedm_news
Student senators announce elections, green plans SLADE RAND
thedmnews@gmail.com
The Associated Student Body announced a vote to fill four newly vacant Senate seats next week. ASB Vice President Michael Howell also announced ASB will hold a vote to fill four newly vacant Senate seats next week. Past candidates are automatically invited to run, and all other students can turn in a petition by Monday to be considered. Howell said though these senators will only serve five weeks, they will get credit for a full term and be eligible to run for other campus positions. The Senate also voted to pass a set of regulatory and efficiency-centered bills, when they met for the second time this semester. Howell led the evening’s meeting, ushering three proposals through the senators’ voting process. The Rules Committee presented two of these regulations to address senators’ attendance and duties, and the Student Life Committee presented a third resolution to promote campus environmentalism. Senior Rules Committee member Alison Hanby au-
PHOTO BY: ARIEL COBBERT
Allison Handy, college of liberal arts senator, presents bill 1701, which she authored, Tuesday evening in Lamar Hall. The bill’s goal is to hold senators accountable when they are absent from senate meetings by requiring prior notice before an absence. thored a bill that would enforce a strict attendance policy for formal Senate meetings. She ar-
gued the bill in front of the Senate Tuesday night. “I wrote this bill so that all
senators could be held accountable,” Hanby said. The Rules Committee’s sec-
ond bill sought to define and re-establish senators’ duties to
SEE ASB PAGE 3
OUT bus system changes shorten routes to campus
SPECIAL TO THE DM
XINYI SONG MARLEE CRAWFORD
The new Oxford-University Transit bus routes put in place the first week of January have changed the bus flow, and other improvements are on the way. Mike Harris, the director of the department of parking and transportation, said the buses are running about five minutes quicker than they were previously. A bus picks up students at the Kennon Observatory hub
WHAT’S INSIDE...
Monday. (Photo by Xinyi Song) “It’s running so much better,” Harris said. “The students that are riding it have communicated to the drivers that they like it so much better because they get to the buses quicker. They get to campus quicker.” The buses are now only entering campus to drop off at the Kennon Observatory hub and the Union hub, avoiding on-campus traffic that was slowing them down previously. The problem, according to
Harris, was that buses were circling around campus where the flow of both car traffic and pedestrians delayed buses throughout the day, pushing arrival times further apart. He said the transportation office wanted to solve the problem by redesigning those routes to make them the most efficient and direct. In fall 2017, four more buses will be added to the campus for interior routes. Two will constantly run clockwise, while the other two will run
PHOTO BY: XINYI SONG
SEE BUS PAGE 3 A bus picks up students at the Kennon Observatory hub Monday.
Facts or feelings? A reflection on our political climate
This spring, catch local musicians at the ‘Small Hall’
Rebel hoops wins fourth SEC game against Mississippi State
SEE OPINION PAGE 2
SEE LIFESTYLES PAGE 5
SEE SPORTS PAGE 7