February 6, 2014 | Volume 3, Issue 17 | Orlando, FL
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GREEK OF THE WEEK: JENNI GAGNE page 3
mY Plan For FeBrUarY page 2 trenD alert: CoUPoninG page 4 FUll DisClosUre page 12
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MY PLAN FOR FEBRUARY CASSIE WILKINSON Zeta Tau Alpha Editor-in-Chief
Cassie is a junior studying Englishcreative writing. You may contact her at cwilk92@knights.ucf.edu.
the third largest parade in the world and also the best place to go if you’re dying to be creepily hit on by a tipsy, smelly pirate. Hey, it’s all in good fun!
Greetings, UCF students, and welcome to February! In case you were wondering, yes… you should all have your books and have your syllabi read by now because we can no longer use the excuse of “Oh, it’s still January” to put off all our schoolwork. I truly hope I’m not the only person who uses that excuse. However, yes it is February. The most romantic month of the year.
All-in-all, February is a new month. A clean slate if you will. Don’t let the 14th bring you down. Instead, work to better yourself by indulging in all the sweetness that life has to offer. Don’t hiss at all your friends in relationships. DO grab all your single friends and paint the town red! After all, it is Valentines Day!
In a blink of an eye, all of the NYE decorations get taken down from the shelves, and red and pink start creeping their way into every store around.
the oDYsseY at FloriDa
This may depress all the cold and jaded hearts beating in the area, but not me. I refuse to let Valentines Day, nay the ENTIRE month of February, be consumed with pouting and moping about singlehood. You see, I’ve decided to dedicate the month of February to appreciate and better myself. Instead of spending money on that ball and chain boyfriend I might desire, I shall spend money on myself. This means new bathing suits for Spring Break, stepping it up and buying a $12 bottle of wine instead of an $8 bottle, and treating myself to a mani/pedi once each week. I’m sure having someone to cuddle with every night is fine, but my kindle
EXECUTIVE TEAM President
Matthew Gruda, Sigma Nu
CREATIVE TEAM Editor-in-Chief
Cassie Wilkinson, Zeta Tau Alpha
does a pretty great job. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for anything more serious than my kindle.
On another note, January ended fabulously for me. I was able to travel west to my hometown of Tampa, Fla. for Gasparilla a.k.a. the only day that an outsider could consider “fun” in Tampa. When most people think of my town, the word MEDIOCRITY flashes in their heads, but this blessed day is a notable exception. No, no, for a Tampa native like myself, Gasparilla is the one day I am able to share my love for the 813 with all of my friends.
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Gasparilla is based on a pirate named Jose Gaspar who came to pillage Tampa Bay. He and his
Will McGuinness, Managing Editor Grant Hohulin, Designer
motley fleet of pirates invaded the area many moons ago, but the invasion is actually recreated
We want a representative from every house!
every year. The parade follows, but most people don’t know that Tampa natives actually do recreate the invasion, and that, to me, is super cool. I was also informed that Gasparilla is in fact
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campus connections
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GREEK OF THE WEEK:
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JENNIE GAGNE would be so rewarding to help create a performance for my sisters’ enjoyment,” she says. “It’s definitely been one of the highlights of my dancing career.” While Gagne loves sharing the stage with her sisters, she has also spent time performing with UCF’s Rukus hip-hop crew. This year, she and six other dancers are making their big debut as Orlando’s first all-girls dance crew, eXist, with the capital “X” representing the crossroad where the girls all came together. “It’s about more than just dance for us. It’s about making a movement,” Gagne explains. The crew just came out with a video on YouTube under the name of “THE E-X-PLANATION | Presented by EXIST,” which Gagne encourages everyone to watch. “It’ll be really exciting to see what eXist will bring to the Orlando community,” she says.
When you watch the ladies of Zeta Tau Alpha dance on stage at events such as Kappa Delta Shakedown and Beta’s Best Dance Crew, there is a good chance your eyes are glued to the girl in the front center. Her name: Jennifer Gagne. Known to her family, friends, and sisters as Jennie, the sophomore has been taking the dancing world by storm since she was a toddler. “I started dancing when I was three years old and I haven’t been able to stop since,” she says. She danced with studio companies up until she was in high school, where she joined the Seminole High School Dazzlers for four years, spending her last two as varsity captain. The team won nationals and Gagne herself received 10th place in the nation for jazz at the Marching Auxiliary competition. In fall 2012, Gagne arrived at UCF and made the decision to go through sorority recruitment, where she ended her week running home to Zeta Tau Alpha. She immediately got involved with KD Shakedown, and knew she wanted to be in charge of choreographing the next one. This past fall, she not only choreographed her chapter’s dance at Shakedown, but helped them take home first place, as well. “I never thought joining a sorority would expand my passion and love for dance even more, or that it
STEPHANIE GOENAGA
Though her to-do list Zeta Tau Alpha may seem hectic with Stephanie is a senior studying human communication. You may all the choreography contact her at smgoenaga@knights. ucf.edu. and performances she’s working on, Gagne has made time for an exciting project – a wedding performance business. “I danced at a wedding two months ago with a couple friends and next thing we knew, people were approaching us and asking for our numbers,” she remembers. “I’ve always wanted to dance as a career, but it’s exciting to realize I can make an actual business out of it, too.” While Gagne has future plans to dance in Los Angeles, she is enjoying her time in Orlando dancing with her crew and her sisters. “All those dance practices at Zeta, my first semester, brought my roommates and I close together,” she says. “It’s living proof that dance has changed my life.”
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business
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TREND ALERT: COUPONING coupons. Instead of having to print them out and bring them into the store, shoppers can digitally clip the coupon, then type in their phone number at the check-out line to immediately redeem coupons, which makes the process hassle-free. Winn Dixie also allows customers to load e-coupons from their website onto their loyalty cards.
You see them walking around the grocery store with their stuffed envelopes or bulging binders. They peruse aisles with a plan and strategy in mind, and you definitely don’t want to get stuck behind them in the check-out line. These are extreme couponers. “People really take time to strategize and plan out their shopping trips. They have written out lists and have calculated all the costs before they step foot in the Publix,” said Mariana Seabra, who has worked at a local Publix for three years. Since the late 1800s, Americans have been utilizing coupons to save money. Despite what many people might think, due to the recent attention coupons have been receiving from reality shows like Extreme Couponing, coupon usage has actually decreased 14.3 percent since 2011, according to Inmar. In 2012, 310 billion coupons were distributed and only 3 billion of those coupons were actually redeemed in stores. Comparatively, in 2011, 3.5 billion coupons were redeemed out of the 313 billion distributed. That has been the highest redemption year to date. Although there has been a slight decrease in coupon usage, some couponers are continuing to utilize coupons to their advantage. “I recently saw someone at the park who was reselling a bunch of nonperishable items, like hygienic products and napkins, that she acquired from couponing. I’m not sure how much she actually had to spend, but considering her resale prices, it probably wasn’t a lot,” said student, Jordan Crawford. Coupons first became popular from newspaper and publication inserts. These inserts are called free-standing inserts and are still the most distributed and redeemed coupons, which account for 88.8 percent of printed coupons, like the ones you find in a Sunday newspaper. Other coupon types include direct mail, first-time shopper coupons, buy-one-get-one free (BOGO) and free giveaways. These, along with other forms of coupons, accounted for more than $484 billion of coupons that were distributed in 2012. As technology advances, it shoppers have more opportunities to find and use coupons. In fact, 67 percent of customers said they would use coupons more if they were more available online. Grocery stores have started to adapt to these trends by offering coupons on their websites, or online, as well as in print. For example, Publix allows shoppers to go online and view digital
HEATHER HENDERSON Kappa Kappa Gamma
Heather is a sophomore studying journalism and marketing. Yo u m a y c o n t a c t h e r a t heather51013@knights.ucf.edu.
“I like looking online at the grocery store’s deals and coupons before I actually go to the store. Then I make a list of the discounted items or items that I found coupons for. I’m not extreme about it, or anything, but the most I’ve saved is $21 and I only spent a little over $30,” said Meredith Reagin, a student and local shopper. The majority of people who use coupons don’t consider themselves to be extreme, although 60 percent of shoppers in a survey said they used coupons for more than half of their shopping trips. Even so, there are some people who dedicate hours to finding and clipping coupons so that they can save unheard of amounts of money. Some of these people even walk away without paying a dime, and are actually given money back “People get really into it and watch the check-out screen like a hawk to make sure that I don’t miss anything. There have been a few times where the person left with over $200 worth of groceries for basically pennies,” said Seabra. There are restrictions to some coupons, for example, how many you can use or if you need to buy a certain amount for the coupon to be redeemable. Guidelines vary and most are listed on stores’ websites. Other restrictions can be found on the coupon itself. For example, Publix accepts manufacturers’ coupons, but limits to one per item, while Winn Dixie allows shoppers to stack coupons, meaning they can combine in-store coupons with manufacturer’s coupons, which could be equivalent to paying nearly nothing. It may surprise you to learn that, according to Nielson, consumers living in households who have income levels of more than $100,000 are almost twice as likely to use coupons as those living in $35,000 income level households. Most people would assume that a wealthier household doesn’t need to use coupons as much. This could be a reflection of technology availability. Since printing coupons and finding coupons via internet and smartphones is becoming more popular, it wouldn’t be as easily accessible to people from lower income households. Although coupons decreased in redemption rates last year, the future looks promising for these budget savers. The continual advancement in technology will put ease into coupon usage, making it a more hassle-free and routine activity for shoppers. Even if you’re not an extreme couponer, coupouning electrictronically, or the old-fashion way, is an easy way to save a few dollars and keep you and your bank account happy.
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business career
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campus connections
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travel & adventure
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travel & adventure
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sports talk
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hiDDen KniGhts: UCF CheerleaDinG here in Orlando, Florida. The Knights are lead by coach, Linda Gooch, who has lead the squad to national titles in 2003 and 2007. She has also been the backbone of this program’s success, resulting in top 10 appearances 19 times in the past 21 years. The success of UCF’s cheer squad has been astronomical. They’re a hidden diamond in the rough of this young school, but they’ve proven, year in and year out, that they’re one of the most prestigious programs not only on campus, but nationwide. Go check them out, support them, these guys and girls are the real deal and continue to be one of the top performing programs we have here in Knight nation. Here at the University of Central Florida, we have recently earned a name for ourselves in athletics. For Sigma Nu the first time in our school’s history, not only has our Bailey is a sophomore studying hospitality. You may contact him at football team made it to, baileyglessner@aim.com. and won, a BCS bowl game, we were also the youngest program in NCAA history to do so. With the help of Blake Bortles, Storm Johnson and other star athletes, who were instrumental to the team’s success this past season, UCF is now considered a prestigious and respectable program. What a lot of people don’t realize, students included, is that athletic prestige is not something new to the Knight community. In fact, UCF has had its fair share of National Championships that most students have never even heard of.
BAILEY GLESSNER
We’re starting a new series to highlight lesser-known athletics here at UCF to showcase their talents and successes in hopes of generating more support for these hard working athletes. So to start our inaugural edition, we’re highlighting the University of Central Florida’s cheerleading squad. When I think about cheerleading, I think back to the days of fall: tailgates, football games, getting wild for our Knights. I think about sitting in the stands, looking out onto the field and after every down, looking at what acrobatic flips and cheers the cheer team were showcasing before turning my attention back to players on the field. I must admit, before I saw the team’s routine they took with them to nationals, I was like every other ignorant, ex-high school athlete, I thought the cheer squad was nothing more than a bunch of preppy girls who made an activity of looking good and doing what they do best – yelling. Boy, was I wrong. These Knights are I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E and, apparently, they’ve had a history of being so, for quite some time. Jan. 19 marked the squad’s ninth top five appearance, in a row, at the College Cheerleading National Championships. If that wasn’t unbelievable enough, the Knights finished second overall for the second year in a row. It was a proud moment, especially being in the Knight’s home turf at the Walt Disney World’s Wide World of Sports Complex
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philanthropy & service
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FULL DISCLOSURE they were practically all that was being played at clubs. They played a show in Central Park that was unreal. Their music is undeniably refreshing and with a stage presence that you wouldn’t believe, it’s safe to say, I was beyond excited to see these two brothers perform at an intimate venue in the 407. Downtown Disney’s House of Blues is a great venue with fabulous ambiance. With voodoo and old school blues decor all around, it was obvious that the venue had soul. Plus, I’m always a big fan of any concert venue with an upstairs. However, since the venue is surrounded by the most family friendly vacation spot in all of America, all shows end around 12 a.m. This meant Disclosure was coming on around 10 p.m., which may seem early for electronic shows, but a small price to pay for being able to see your favorite DJs at such an awesome venue. Another small price to pay was the loss of my chapstick which, of course, was opened so that meant to the security guards that it had been tampered with. In the EDM world “tampered with” means infused with drugs, so I had to toss it. The jury is still out on my opinion of that rule, but at that point I could care less because Disclosure was just moments away.
In December, when I purchased two tickets to Disclosure at House of Blues I was just a fan Zeta Tau Alpha buying tickets to what I thought was going to Cassie is a junior studying Englishcreative writing. You may contact be a casual concert in her at cwilk92@knights.ucf.edu. Downtown Disney. I had their album, Settle, on a loop ever since I realized they had more than just a few good songs. Fast forward to Jan. 24 (day of show) and the show was sold out with hundreds of fans begging and scouring for last minute tickets. I posted one status on Facebook and within 20 seconds I had three desperate offers to buy my other ticket. I was stunned to see how popular they had become in just a few short months.
CASSIE WILKINSON
I’ve been a Disclosure fan since I spent my summer in NYC interning and
The lights fell black and brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence took the stage. They opened with their hit song “F For You” which is about playing a fool for someone you trusted. I always love a good song with angst as inspiration. Fun fact about “F For You” is that Disclosure just released a new music video to the song starring legend, Mary J. Blige. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds. The crowd was alive and pulsating to every beat. The next song up was “When A Fire Starts To Burn” which is a sample from a homily the brothers heard from a Baptist church. Interesting enough, right? The concert continued with the London natives playing just about everything they released in the past year. From “White Noise” to their latest “Apollo,” the lights and sound did not disappoint in any way, shape or form. Disclosure was everything I could’ve wanted and more. Their debut album, Settle, put them on the map and even received a Grammy nominated. I’m excited to hear and see what they have for the future but, for now, I’m just grateful I was able to see them live.
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entertainment news
The Phenomenon That Is @Pharrellhat Pharrell Williams, record producer, singer–songwriter, rapper, fashion designer and, as of last night, the talk of the Twitterverse. After debuting his 1980s vintage Vivienne Westwood headpiece at last night’s 56th annual Grammy Awards, the Internet exploded with memes and others jokes poking fun at the multi-million dollar mogul. Pharrell Williams’ hat needs a name and passport. Maybe even a talk show. Hebah (@hebahhubzy). Within minutes, his trendy (?) accessory had its own Twitter handle, @Pharrellhat, which today has nearly 16,000 followers! Brands saw this as the perfect opportunity to hit target audiences: While artists like Lorde, Macklemore and Jay-Z walked away from last night toting Grammys, the real winner – according to MTV’s infogrammys – was Pharrell’s hat: Did you catch the show? What do you think about Pharrell’s choice in headgear?
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laugh out loud
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