SUPER BULLDOG WEEKEND . . . IN SECTION . B:LIFE & SPORTS
COTTON DISTRICT ARTS FESTIVAL SUGARLAND FIVE 22 BLOCK PARTY SPRING GAME TENNIS
FRIDAY APRIL 20, 2012
Reflector The
REFLECTOR-ONLINE.COM 125TH YEAR | ISSUE 49
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1884
Honors College offers new course options
Event seeks to make Kony famous
New curriculum strives to make program distinctive
BY LIZZIE SMITH Contributing Writer
The Invisible Children’s video “KONY 2012” urged viewers to raise awareness of Joseph Kony by participating in an event called Cover the Night tonight. Drew Able, junior forestry major, said he saw his friend Hayley Owens posted the Invisible Children video on her Facebook and from there, they decided to start their own Cover The Night event in Starkville. Tonight around the world, participants in Cover The Night will wear Kony Tshirts, put up posters and use the Kony 2012 action kit to spread the word and as the Invisible Children’s slogan says, “make Kony famous.” “A few people said they tried to do this a couple of years ago and nothing happened, so we should just give up,” Able said. This time, the event does have supporters. The Facebook event has a little over 300 people who have confirmed they will be participating. “I know it’s Super Bulldog Weekend, but I really encourage you to carve out some time to do this. It is up to us to raise awareness and inform people about Kony and the lives he is ruining,” Owens said via a message sent to all members of the event’s Facebook group. Those participating in the event are meeting at 7 p.m. in the center of the Drill Field, where they will divide into separate groups to go out and spread the word about KONY 2012 across Starkville.
BY JAY BALLARD Staff Writer
Students who are members of the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University will soon have more options for their academic schedules. A new honors curriculum has been created. Christopher Snyder, dean of the Shackouls Honors College, said the new curriculum is called The Cursus Honorum, which, loosely translated from Latin, means “The Path of Honors.” Snyder said a main goal of this new curriculum is to make the honors program at MSU distinctive on the regional and national levels. “Our honors students deserve that,” Snyder said. “To be in the honors college should mean something. We want to turn out the leaders at the university and beyond.” The new curriculum stems from the original honors movement begun by Frank Aydelotte at Swarthmore College. The idea was to move away from big lecture halls and have one teacher for no more than about three students, Snyder said. With this in mind, The Cursus Honorum will preserve the small class experience. The new curriculum is an option and will not replace the curriculum that is currently available. SEE HONORS, A3
Starkville board to hold public hearing BY JOHN GALATAS News Editor
The Starkville Board of Aldermen unanimously passed a proposal Tuesday night to hold a public hearing at their next May 1 meeting to amend the city’s bike helmet ordinance. Alderman Richard Corey presented his proposal after a number of complaints received by constituents. “The number of complaints I have received have remained fairly constant,” Corey said. According to Corey many business owners have seen a drop in cyclists, and many of them have noticed a change in behavior by a decline in the number of times and the number of places people ride their bikes. “I’ve had some concerns that the potential negative impact of it could be outweighing the good by creating an environment where people are no longer wanting to ride their bikes as much or as often as they used to,” he said. Corey also said an update from the courts reflected over half of the cases held by the city’s administrative hearing court are helmet violations. “I want to be able to address some of these issues and see if there is something we can do to get some relief,” he said.
Invisible Children viral campaign controversial
O
BY RACHEL PERKINS | Staff Writer
n Friday April 20, the organization Invisible Children will host Cover the Night, an event in which the group calls for supporters of their movement all over the world to promote awareness of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. This event tails a massive and tumultuous six-week campaign by Invisible Children, a group that aims to “make Kony famous” in hopes of putting the warlord behind bars. While Invisible Children was officially founded in 2004, its movement found recent global recognition when their “Kony 2012” video went viral, having reached nearly 90 million views. As the video spread furiously across Facebook and Twitter, a wave of backlash followed in its wake, with many questioning and rebuking Invisible Children’s motivations and credibility. Many accused the charity organization of skewing and oversimplifying the actual facts about modern day Uganda while others inquired about the group’s financial transparency.
SEE KONY, A4
ZACK ORSBORN | THE REFLECTOR
Weekend to attract fans Town Hall generates response BY CANDACE BARNETTE
BY HANNAH ROGERS
Copy Editor
Editor In Chief
The music, sports and tailgating for Super Bulldog Weekend brings in thousands of students annually, and this year is no exception. Chad Thomas, assistant athletic director for marketing, said Mississippi State University is trying something new this year by combining the concert with the spring game, and they are expecting a huge response. “I think this year we expect anywhere from 20 to 25,000 people,” he said. However, the turnout might not be quite as large as past years when MSU did not charge for entry. “It’s the first time in a few years we’re charging because of the concert,” Thomas said. “The past couple of years when it’s been free, we’ve had 30 to 35,000 for the spring game.” The tickets for the spring game and Sugarland concert are still for sale online at hailstate.com/tickets, at the baseball game and at the stadium. “It’s a huge deal,” he said. “The typical Sugarland ticket price for the upper deck nosebleeds is $59.50, and our most expensive is $50 for field level. A ticket in the grandstand is only $25.” Brice Lambert, student director of Music Maker Productions, said putting the production together was not an easy process. “We’re trying to please all the different groups within the Bulldog nation. Like them or not, in terms of
After compiling and analyzing the results of the Feb. 27 Twitter Town Hall, the Starkville Convention and Visitors Bureau and Main Street Association have preliminary data from the responses of the participants. Haley Montgomery, marketing consultant for the Starkville Convention & Visitors Bureau who manages the online and social media for the Greater Starkville Development Partnership, said the original plan was to release the data at the board of aldermen meeting Tuesday. Instead, numbers will be released online through their mediums after Super Bulldog Weekend and try to get a spot on the second board of aldermen meeting in May. At the meeting, a presentation will focus on the subjects that were most talked about and of interest during the town hall. She said the town hall received diverse feedback that included more than college students. “I think the fear or the criticism early on about it was this was just for young people, this would be for students who don’t pay taxes here … well, students pay sales taxes, that’s important to us,” she said. “But the actuality was that there were different types of people who were involved, a number of business owners — retail owners, restaurant owners, things like that. It
JAY JOHNSON | THE REFLECTOR
MSUʼs Davis Wade Stadium will host a concert by Sugarland on Saturday night after the spring game.
READERʼS GUIDE BAD DAWGS....................A 3 OPINION........................A7 CONTACT INFO..............A7 LIFE.............................B6
the world, Sugarland is among those top touring acts in the world,” he said. “It was a challenge to get them here, but one thing that works in our favor is that with country music, they actually want to play in an SEC stadium in Mississippi. They were immediately receptive to the idea, but it took months of negotiation.” There have been mixed feelings toward the concert and event, as some are only interested in watching the game and others only want to see the concert, but Lambert said their main goal was to accomplish something new and different with this combination event.
SEE WEEKEND, A3
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became a good forum for those people to really hear from what we see as 20,000 constituents.” The town hall received a large response that exceeded Twitter’s 1,500 tweet transcript limit, so to track all of the #Starkville2012 tweets, a manual pdf of the web site was made. “If we do a town hall again, we’ll do a transcript each hour, so we’ll have a transcript and that’s easier to deal with,” she said. Montgomery said she was the person to compile the information, and when the information is released, infographics, bullet points and the complete transcript will be avaliable. “We’re just recording the information at this point and not basing specific conclusions on them, except these were the most mentioned types of topics and within those topics how did that information break down. From them, I’ve already seen some common threads throughout those topics,” she said. In the next two weeks, Montgomery said the CVB and Main Street Association will release visual takes on the topics and some specific facts that will be relevant to the discussion. For example, Black Jack Road received many comments, and since then, information has been released on that issue. She said Starkville cannot improve if discussion does not occur and from the information put out it was clear that people were ready to speak.
SEE HALL, A5
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