The student voice of Midwestern State University
The Wichitan page 4 Cultural explosion
Caribfest entertained and enlightened onlookers with colorful celebration.
MSU kicks up digital dust on campaign trail Chris Collins Managing Editor
Mass communication students at MSU are ushering presidential campaign coverage into the digital age. TubetheVote.com, a non-partisan, web 2.0 political magazine, launched Oct. 1. MSU, along with mass communication departments at Florida A&M University, the University of Texas and Michigan State University, will be providing weekly material for the online magazine. The project will last until Election Day in about four weeks. “This is the first time this has been done,” said Mitzi Lewis, instructor of mass communication at MSU. Her ‘Internet and
page 7 Picking up steam
No. 2 Mustangs claim impressive victories over the weekend as they tune-up for SSC play.
WEDNESDAY, October 8, 2008
Society’ class of eight students is representing Midwestern on TubetheVote. Lewis learned of the political magazine at the New Media Academic Summit in June 2008. One of the presenters was Michael Maier, co-founder of TubetheVote. Maier proposed the idea of consolidating campaign coverage from several media sites into one easy-to-navigate online platform. Lewis thought the idea was a hit. She talked about Maier’s idea with a mass communication instructor at Florida A&M University, the first college to participate in the project. Soon MSU was the second.
Curtain rising on lecture series See TUBE p. 3
Kayci Provence For the Wichitan
A CNN special correspondent, a former NFL player, a noted biologist and herpetologist, a paleoanthropologist, and a jazz trio will make up this year’s Artist Lecture Series. Dr. Tyrone Hayes, biologist and herpetologist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will kick off the annual series Monday night at 7 p.m. in Akin Auditorium. Hays grew up with a fascination of amphibians and reptiles. That fascination led to an undergraduate degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Brittany Norman Editor in Chief Photo Courtesy Dr. Tyrone Hayes
One of his chief discoveries included Reed frogs. He found they could be used to detect chemicals and toxins in water used by people for bathing and cooking. He observed that male See ARTIST p. 3
Students helping to clear cold cases Chris Collins Managing Editor
Wichita Falls police are asking MSU students to be criminals for a day. The MSU Correctional Counselors Association, in cooperation with other academic disciplines, will volunteer to reenact cold case murder files this semester. The reenactments will air on Channel 6 during Cold Case Files programming. “We’re looking forward to people joining and getting involved,” said Ricky Spradlin, Vice President of the Correctional Counselors Association. The CCA, which is organizing the project with police, wants to get the whole school involved. “We’re trying to make this
a school-wide idea,” Spradlin said. The psychology department will help volunteers understand the mindset of criminals, while mass communications personnel will help write scripts for the scenes. Volunteers and Wichita Falls police will meet with Channel 6 personnel Wednesday to discuss writing and shooting the scenes, said Harold McClure, a Wichita Falls police officer. “We appreciate these guys participating,” McClure said. “It’s the actors that are going to help us out a lot.” There will be about 20 reenactments in all, spanning from the mid-1980s to the current day. All the crimes took place in Wichita Falls. Acting and scripts should coSee COLD CASE p. 3
Adam Shepard graduated from college in Massachusetts and set off to live the American Dream. All he had were the clothes on his back and $25 in his pocket. He took up residence in a homeless shelter in Charleston, South Carolina. His goal was to prove that the American Dream was still alive and well, that success could be attained with hard work and determination. He believed that rock bottom could be a starting point rather than the end of the road. Ten months later, he returned home to write a book about his experiences. Shepard was at MSU this week discussing his book S cratch Beginnings: Me, $25 and the Search for the American
Dream. Homelessness didn’t seem to be in the cards for the graduate of Merrimack College, a private school with tuition of about $30,000 a year. “I was surrounded by a group of kids that was, for lack of a better word, spoiled,” Shepard said. “I just saw a group of people who didn’t appreciate the American Dream.”
He got the idea for his experiment from a book called Nickel and Dimed. He read it the summer after his freshman year. The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, wrote that the American Dream was a thing of the past, unattainable. “That book kind of got under my skin,” Shepard said. “I decided to put together this philosophy that you can do it. I had a great opportunity because after I graduated, I was broke anyway.” He graduated with a major in business management. His long-term plan wasn’t comprehensive, but he had an idea of what he wanted to do. “Eventually I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wasn’t sure what way I wanted to go with it,” Shepard said. For the moment, though, he planned to be a See DREAM p. 3
Senator explains necessity of bailout Brittany Norman Editor in Chief
U.S. Senator John Cornyn said that while he hates the federal bailout bill, passing it through Congress saved America a great deal of hardship. Cornyn made the statement on a campaign stop in Wichita Falls Saturday. “I sort of felt like a firefighter who got a call that somebody accidentally lit their house on fire,” Cornyn said. “You have two choices. One is to put out the fire, two is to let it burn to the ground.”
U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.)
He likened that burning house to Wall Street. “The problem was this was not just limited to Wall Street,” he said. “This would be like let-
Photo Courtesy
ting the house burn down and taking the whole neighborhood with it.” Cornyn said that if the bill had done nothing but bail Wall
Street out of a financial mess he would have voted against it. “We were successful in improving the bill quite a bit,” he said. “Some people said this is tantamount to socialism and the federal government taking over. But I think rather than a failure of the free market, what this really showed was what happens when the federal government tries to influence business decisions.” He said that government pressure on companies like Freddie Mac and Fannie May to provide See CORNYN p. 3