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INSIDE

Mother-daughter open bakery Leave bumper stickers alone Basketball previews

Downtown Dallas’ newest planned park

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WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Wednesday High 76, Low 52 Thursday High 79, Low 45

VOLUME 96 ISSUE 63 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS

Greyhound adds cheap option to Houston

TASHIKA VARMA Assignments Editor tvarma@smu.edu

Greyhound, the largest intercity bus transportation, is bringing the Greyhound Express to the Lone Star State. Greyhound Express provides short-distance nonstop or one-stop service to and from major Greyhound service hubs including New York, Washington D.C. and now Dallas. Following its one-year anniversary, Greyhound Express will be expanding its service by adding routes between Dallas and Houston. SMU students who want to visit Houston can now take the Greyhound Express instead of driving or flying. Greyhound is the first company to bring a premiumlevel, low-fare intercity bus service to Texas. “[The] expansion into Texas signifies that Greyhound Express is rapidly becoming the type of service customers prefer, covering four major regions of the United States — Midwest, Northeast, Southeast and South — and also in Alberta, Canada,” Dave Leach, Greyhound president and CEO, said in a press release. “Last month, we celebrated our one-year anniversary by launching service in Florida. We’re proud nearly 1.3 million customers have experienced this new premium service since it launched,” Leach said. “Greyhound Express has proved to be a service that our customers truly appreciate.”

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Intercity buses, like Greyhound, are actually the safest mode of transportation over cars, trucks, trains, plans and other commercial vehicles. The Greyhound Express buses come with improvements. Customers get a guaranteed seat as well as free Wi-Fi, power outlets, extra legroom and leather seats. The buses seat 50 passengers. They currently have 88 of these new buses running the express route. “Since Greyhound made a lot of improvements to their buses, the trip would be worth a try,” junior and Houstonnative Ryan Cole said. The express trip from Dallas to Houston will take four hours and eight minutes each way. Dallas native Sameen Ali thinks the Greyhound Express will be a great addition to Dallas. “The buses are an economically convenient alternate choice if people don’t want to drive,” she said. The bus would leave from 205 S. Lamar St. in Dallas and arrive at 2121 Main St. in Houston. “I’d love to try the Greyhound’s new service,” junior Jacqueline VelasquezRoss said. “The drive to Houston is four hours, and it’d be nice to enjoy the ride.” Ross travels back and forth from Houston many times

PROGR AM COUNCIL

Student body responds to spring concert SARAH KRAMER Editor-in-Chief skramer@smu.edu

SPENCER J EGGERS / The Daily Campus

Greyhound plans on offering $1 tickets from Dallas to Houston.

a semester to visit family and friends. She thinks that this will give people another option for transportation since gas prices and plane tickets are on the rise. Service from Dallas to Houston and vice versa begins Feb. 29. Ticket fares begin at a dollar and are now on sale at www. mygreyhoundexpress.com. Greyhound customers can now buy their Express ticket online for discount pricing. Then they can either print their ticket at home or pick it up at a self-service ticketing kiosk. “I would definitely try the Greyhound, especially if I didn’t have a car,” senior Allie Feldman said. “Flights to Houston are about $70 each way, so this is a really great deal.”

BY THE NUMBERS Automobile

$88 SOUTHWEST AIRLINES

$168 GREYHOUND BUS

$72

Program Council didn’t ‘Nail’ it this year. After announcing the artists for the spring concert last Friday, students were quick to voice their opinions. While Program Council boasts that Gavin DeGraw and David Nail are well-known artists, much of the student body would disagree — at least about the latter. “Compared to the last couple of artist like Guster and Girl Talk, even though he didn’t play, this year was a big disappoint,” senior Pierce Jordan said. “I don’t even know who David Nail is.” Jordan’s discontent with this year’s choice resonated amid the majority of students. “I don’t know who David Nail is and I don’t care for Gavin DeGraw,” William Floyd, a senior, said. “I don’t think many people will go.” “It’s a horrible choice,” junior Toshica Rathore said. According to Rathore, DeGraw isn’t a favorite among SMU students. In her opinion, a pop-artist would be a better fit. “I would like Drake,” she said. “I think Program Council needs to bring in some hip-hop or pop.” Though Program Council did not get the rap artist Drake for the spring concert, he will be performing at University of Texas at Arlington on March 2. Last year, when Program Council announced that Ke$ha, who most would categorize as a pop artist, was performing, both faculty and students were

hesitant to have a “popular” artist at SMU. “People complained about how trashy and ‘talentless’ Ke$ha is,” senior Tori Spickler said. Due to her reputation and controversial lyrics, Evening Programs Initiatives Contributions (EPIC) denied funding for last year’s spring concert. EPIC belived that Ke$ha would promote activities that are against its goals, such as drinking. Program Council has applied for EPIC funding this year, but does not expect to hear back from them until next week, at the earliest. They did, however, receive less money from Student Senate than previous years. A smaller budget is only one factor when it comes to coordinating schedules with artists. “It’s hard getting artists no matter who it is,” Spickler said. Though Spickler wasn’t overly thrilled about the artists, she is still looking forward to the concert. “I like Gavin DeGraw, but I don’t know of David Nail,” she said. “It should be fun anyway — It’s cool finding new music.” Junior Corinne Matthews agrees. “I think people are generally pleased about this year’s choice,” she said. “They’re not overly excited, but nobody seems incredibly disappointed.” Yet, the number of students who have said they are attending the concert on Program Council’s Facebook page is significantly smaller than last year. Currently, only 294 students have responded ‘yes’ compared to the 2,520 people who said they were attending Ke$ha last year.

TECHNOLOGY

Lecture

Twitter partners with Russian search engine

Author discusses new book

STEPHANIE BROWN News Director stephanieb@smu.edu Twitter has enhanced its microblogging empire by signing its first search deal with Russian search engine Yandex. This deal will allow Russian users to yield Twitter search results on Yandex’s blog section in real time. The most crucial aspect of the deal is the far reach that Yandex provides Russia. Yandex is Russia’s search engine of choice over Google for web users. This appears to be a strong move since Twitter has an estimated one million users in Russia and does not have any competitors within the country. “Twitter’s ability to tap into this emerging market will significantly enhance its popularity with Russian users as well as potentially grow their Russian user base,” SMU junior Luke Johnson said.

Graphic by Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus

Twitter has previously held agreements with both Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Google. However, Twitter’s agreement with Google expired last July. Since the expiration, Google and Twitter have not struck up a second deal. According to England’s The Daily Telegraph, Google and Twitter have had some disagreements over the details

of a potential new deal, and thus nothing has come about since the last deal’s expiration. Twitter continues to hold partnerships with Bing and Yahoo! Search, providing access to its public feed of tweets. The monetary components of this deal involving licensing agreements have not yet been released, nor have the time constraints surrounding the deal.

RUTHIE BURST Contributing Writer rburst@smu.edu

Dr. Sebouh David Aslanian’s new book, “From the INDIAN OCEAN to the MEDITERRANEAN: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, Isfahan,” focuses on the history of trade and the key components to the success of certain merchants. “My newly published book is a detailed study of the economic global network of these merchants,” Aslanian said. Aslanian’s Stanton Sharp Lecture revolved around his book and his studies of Julfa trading networks. He said the aspects that made Julfa successful were the level of trust between the merchants and the master and their level of multi-cultureless. “The larger question is how merchants, before the age of the Internet, established networks of trade,” Aslanian said. Aslanian shared his studies and beliefs to a crowd of about 30 people at SMU in the McCord Auditorium in Dallas Hall. “Living in the United States, we

are so limited in our perspective. I love it when they bring in speakers like this,” Andrea Boardman, a member of the audience, said. Aslanian was born in Utopia, studied in several parts of the world, speaks seven languages, has written several articles and has recently published a book. Aslanian shared his thoughts at the lecture Tuesday evening. The Stanton Sharp Lecture Series is associated with the SMU Department of History and tends to draw a crowd consisting of SMU alumni and students interested in history. “I think this lecture series is wonderful and this lecture was unbelievable. I went in there with a totally blank slate and came out with so much more,” Mary Marshall an SMU alumna said. Aslanian’s book emphasizes how Julfan trading networks began and survived in the 1700’s. His studies stress the importance of establishing and maintaining trust. Julfan trust was constituted through contracts and longdistance partnerships. Both the master and the merchants exhibited a high level of trust. “If you’re really smart, you

will find mechanisms to have trust,” Aslanian said. Aslanian believes that the merchants remained loyal because when they traveled, they realized they left their families behind. This meant, if a merchant left town with the master’s money, his family would be put in danger. “There always needs to be something that establishes trust,” Aslanian said. Aslanian also expressed two reasons why the Julfan community should be important to world history. “First is that they are arguably the only Asian community that simultaneously operated all major empires at that time,” Aslanian said. The Julfan community controlled the Gunpowder Empires including Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals and others. Julfan settlements were scattered throughout these empires. When asked about the most interesting piece of information from the lecture, John Mears an SMU professor of world history said, “The geographical extent and diversity of the trade network

SeeTRADE on Page 6


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