UtahStatesman The
Utah State University
Today is Monday, Nov. 26, 2007
Winter regulations vex students By LINDSAY ANDERSON staff writer
Breaking News With a 2419 win over the Idaho Vandals, the USU football team finishes the season 2-10.
Campus News
Store owners experience a strong start to the holiday shopping season. Page 2
Features
Winter parking regulations have started in efforts to keep streets clean and safe. The regulations, which prevent vehicles from parking on the road, are inconvenient for students living in places with small parking lots. TYLER LARSON photo
Sports Steve DuCharme comes up big for the Aggies in their 75-62 win against Iowa, Saturday night. Page 7
Opinion “Students should come to USU expecting buildings to be a support when needed. Student safety should be a huge concern, especially since a large earthquake has been in Utah’s forecast for the last 50 years.” Page 10
Almanac Today in History: In 1922, archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter King Tutankhamen’s tomb that had remained undisturbed for more than 3,000 years.
Weather High: 42° Low: 17° Skies: Parly cloudy.
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Each year, winter regulations for Logan streets aim to keep roads clear for easy snow removal, prohibiting parking on the street from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. from when the first snow fall is predicted through March 1. Sgt. Barry Parslow from the Logan City Police Department said, “We need to have the streets clear of vehicles so that they can properly remove the snow and make the streets safe to drive on.” Keeping the streets clear benefits everyone, Parslow said. “It’s a little difficult finding places to park, and I understand that, but it’s better than the alternative of having your car damaged, although the street department works really hard not to do that, even if you do leave your car there,” he said. “You want your streets clean so they can be safe to drive on, that’s really the biggest thing.” With the regulations in place, students now need to find new places to park, and Parslow said that responsibility is left to the individual apartment complexes. “Parking is a big problem for several USU students, and the winter parking regulations are just making it worse,” said Mandy Booth, an undeclared sophomore. “When I work until midnight, I already have to park on the street by the credit union, clear down the road from my apartment,” Booth
said. “Now that I can’t park on the road, I don’t know what I am going to do.” Booth said she is a resident of Pine View Apartments, one of several apartment complexes that has a parking problem. “There are not enough parking spots, and way too many cars,” Booth said. Sabrina Sorensen, manager of Pine View Apartments, said that apartment complexes are trying to work with students on this parking issue. “Once the winter comes, since snow plows have to get by, you are allowed to double park,” Sorensen said, “but you have to move your car by 9, and if it isn’t moved by 9 then you get a boot on your car.” Sorensen suggested parking behind roommates, because the lot does get very full and that way residents avoid getting trapped in by someone they don’t know if they need to get somewhere. Pine View is one of several apartment complexes to regulate their parking lot with private companies, she said. Sorensen said, “We go through Cache Valley Parking. We decided to do this because it was a more convenient way to regulate the parking lot. They come 12 times a day to regulate our lot.” Apartments are not the only places regulating parking through private companies. Logan City contracted Logan Parking Authority in
- See PARKING, page 3
Prof honored for science academia
By KATE ROUSE staff writer
Take a closer look at what it takes to get Beaver Mountain ready for ski season. Page 4
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Logan, Utah
The 2007 Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology was awarded this fall to Tom Wilkerson, a research professor at USU. “I was really surprised about the award, it was very gratifying,” Wilkerson said. “Some very good people have gotten the award, and it was just a big, happy surprise.” The governor’s medal is awarded to several people from the state of Utah each year, for “distinguished service to the state of Utah in the fields of science and technology,” according to science.utah.gov. Awards are given in five areas: academia, industry, education, government and special achievement. Wilkerson received the award under the area of academia. Wilkerson was born in Michigan and earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Before coming to USU, he taught physics and math at the University of Maryland for 34 years. He also worked at the Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton researching magnetic plasmas. His research was part of an ongoing national effort to produce controlled fusion, he said.
Governor’s Medal of Science and Technology recipient Tom Wilkerson stands next to Twilite, a current Space Dynamics Lab LIDAR project which will be mounted in high-altitude aircraft flown at 60,000 feet to analyze particles in the atmosphere. CAMERON PETERSON photo
He has also worked on three interplanetary satellite programs with NASA, the most successful of which was sent halfway to the moon in a four-day orbit around
the Earth to measure solar wind. Wilkerson has taught physics at USU, but his work at the Space Dynamics Lab is mostly centered around LIDAR systems, which are lasers built to measure particles in
the atmosphere. Just as a beam of light can be clearly seen through a cloud of chalk dust because the
- See WILKERSON, page 3
Blackboard’s shutdown statewide Thousands of students, faculty lose some information permanently due to corrupt data and system failure of Blackboard Vista
By ARIE KIRK news editor Due to corrupt data in the statewide database Blackboard Vista, the system shut down, causing thousands of faculty and students at USU to lose all information submitted between Tuesday, Nov. 13 and Friday, Nov. 16. Any data entered during its shutdown has been permanently lost, said Mike Petersen, executive director of Utah Education Network. Blackboard is hosted by UEN and is used by schools across the state. In an issued apology, Petersen said UEN “deeply regrets” the problems caused for schools, faculty and students statewide. “The staff at UEN sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience this outage caused for USU students and faculty. We are doing everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” he said. Stacie Gomm, associate vice pres-
ident for Information Technology Services, said it was USU that first reported the problem to UEN. “We do know Utah State was the one that found the problem and alerted UEN. Kudos for Utah State,” she said. Petersen said UEN is working to find the cause of the problem, prevent any reoccurrence and provide greater security for data. “We are working with vendors to determine what caused the corruption of the database to prevent any similar occurrence in the future,” he said. “We are also taking the necessary steps to have a mirrored backup site in place before spring term, which will give us the ability to immediately switch to that backup site if a similar problem were to occur in the future.” Gomm said IT has been in contact with UEN to make sure they secure an off-site storage location for the data entered on Blackboard. Gomm said it is hard to estimate the magnitude of the effects
of the shutdown at USU. She said every faculty member has access to Blackboard but whether or not they use it is up to them. She said she doesn’t know the number of users or the amount of information lost on Blackboard. Tom Peterson, professor of creative arts at USU, uses Blackboard in his classes. Peterson said, “Stuff like this is just annoying.” As a result of the incident, Peterson said he will have to reenter thousands of grades for his classes. Many of his students will have to resubmit assignments, and he will have to grade several hundred papers again, he said. During the shutdown of Blackboard, Peterson said students in his classes had papers due. Because the system wasn’t working, he said his students received notices of submission failure. By the time they were able to successfully submit their work, it was marked as late on Blackboard. Peterson said he
is unsure of how to handle grades now, considering he isn’t sure of which students attempted to turn their work in on time or those who really missed the due date. “We’re still working that out,” he said. “I’m probably not going to jeopardize students. It is an inconvenience more on my end than the students. They will probably be OK.” Raymond Coward, executive vice president and provost at USU, said it is important that faculty members be reasonable with students and that they proceed in a way “that is fair for the students and appropriate for the particular situation of each course.” Peterson said now it is a matter of ensuring this never happens again. “What can you do?” he said. “Now it’s what IT Services thinks that faculty and students should be prepared with in case this happens again.” –arie.k@aggiemail.usu.edu