INSIDE
Knox-Henderson revitalized
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Huskies hammer Lady Mustangs
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Harold Ramis dies at 69
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Republicans, stop campaigning with racists
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WEDNESDAY
february 26, 2014
Wednesday High 43, Low 28 Thursday High 57, Low 43
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With success comes hassle for Mustang fans Dacota Taylor Contributing Writer dstaylor@smu.edu Five years ago, if someone had told SMU students their school would have a nationally ranked basketball team their eyes would have hit the ceiling. Fast forward to 2014, and SMU has been ranked No. 23 in the AP Poll and is on its way to its first NCAA Tournament berth since 1993. Not only has SMU scored its first AP ranking in more than 20 years, they’ve also broken the 1984-1985 season record of five sell-out games with a whopping seven sell-out matchups this season. But with great teams come some hassles. Getting coveted tickets to high-profile (and often low-profile) matchups is getting tougher. Camping for tickets on cold January nights, previously an unknown sight at SMU, has become commonplace Sunday and Monday nights for student ticket giveaways. Other problems include hunting for parking on those nights, as well as on game nights. “I had no problems getting tickets, but I camped overnight with friends,” SMU senior finance major Scott Robison said. “Others I know waited overnight and didn’t get any tickets at all.” Veteran Head Coach Larry
Brown tries to make the late night waits easier for students. He, along with the men’s basketball team, have been delivering coffee and donuts to the ticket campers on chilly nights. The students don’t seem to care about the cold. According to SMU Sports Management Professor Michael Lysko, a graduate of basketball powerhouse Indiana University, it’s actually helpful for the tickets to be so rare. “Scarcity is a good thing,” Lysko said. “The harder the tickets are to get, the more people will want to come.” It’s a simple system that SMU followed: Hire a winning coach, train winning players, create a winning basketball arena, reduce the number of seats to create demand and watch the crowds go wild as they try to get tickets to what the Dallas Morning News has called the hottest games in Dallas. Across the country, college students with popular teams camp for tickets, going to extreme lengths to acquire them. Ross Pulliam, a former student of the University of Kansas who now works in the communications industry, said camping for Kansas tickets was a way of life for the Jayhawks’ zealous fans. “[Student] teams were formed and a team member was required to camp inside their stadium for five days on a waiting list for tickets,” he said. Team members
Religion
RYAN MILLER / The Daily Campus
Students set up a couch and television to help pass the time while waiting nearly 24 hours to buy tickets to the Louisville game March 5.
would rotate out when necessary for classes, but there would always be someone there. Just four years ago, none of this was happening at SMU. The program was struggling and Moody Coliseum was far from full. “We went as a group when I was a freshman and the only people at games were a few fraternities,” Robison said. “Now the games are packed and my fraternity even has its own box.” Lysko said that when basketball games are like going
to parties or bars, people become more attracted to them. People like to be where other people are having fun. “The Mob student section was a great idea and helped us come a long way,” he said about the exclusive, student-only section off the Moody Coliseum arena floor. But in the competitive world, SMU basketball is still the new kid on the block. And unlike SMU, who has been trying to rebuild its program for years, many of the major schools never
Politics
Nigerian students burned by militants Associated PRess
Natalia Ramirez Contributing Writer nramirez@smu.edu
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done that at SMU. That’s how SMU became a basketball school whose fans are more than willing to brave the cold, whose fans finally rally behind their school like students from Kansas or Syracuse. And as foreign as all of this seems, the students wouldn’t have it any other way. “The students really have a program to rally behind now, and they seem to really be loving it,” Lysko said. “Whenever a community comes together like this it’s a really neat thing.”
World
MSA celebrates Islam awareness The smell of samosas and beef kabobs wafted throughout Hughes-Trigg Student Center Commons Tuesday afternoon as students made their way from table to table visiting colorful display boards and taste-testing a plethora of good eats. “The goal is to inform the greater SMU population about Islam,” said Muslim Student Association President Ali Anwar. For those who have not ventured into the Hughes-Trigg Commons this week, Anwar is referring to the Islam Awareness Week held daily Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. According to Anwar, each of the five days is dedicated to a different theme, all of which work together to “dispel stereotypes associated with Islam.” Tuesday was dubbed “Interfaith Perspectives” and focused on outlining similarities between Muslims and nonMuslims. At one table a display board contained excerpts from the Quran, each of which had a similar Bible verse alongside it illustrating parallel religious beliefs. SMU first-year and member of MSA Omer Ahmed said each display table presented information dedicated to drawing similarities and spreading awareness about
get chances to retrain or start over. They’re just always good. “There are no ‘rebuilding’ years in Kansas basketball,” Pulliam said. “The team is under huge pressure to perform every single season.” But Coach Brown knows all about Jayhawk basketball and the pressures that program is under. After all, the Godfather coached there before moving on to the San Antonio Spurs back in the ‘80s. Brown knows more than just how to build a team; he knows how to build a society. And he’s
Courtesy of AP
Gay rights activists protest against the Arizona bill, which would allow businesses to discriminate if signed into law.
McCain, others oppose Arizona anti-gay bill Associated Press Republican Gov. Jan Brewer faced intensifying pressure Monday from CEOs, politicians in Washington and state lawmakers in her own party to veto a bill that would allow business owners with strongly held religious beliefs to deny service to gays and lesbians. Senate Bill 1062 has set off a political firestorm since the Arizona Legislature passed it last week, with critics denouncing the measure as blatantly discriminatory and embarrassing to the state. The chorus of opposition has grown each day, and on Monday, three state senators who voted in favor of the bill changed course and said they oppose it. U.S. Sen. John McCain asked Brewer to veto the measure, as did Apple Inc. and the CEO of American Airlines Group Inc. State Sens. Bob Worsley, Adam Driggs and Steve Pierce sent their letter urging a veto just days after they joined the entire 17-member Senate GOP caucus in voting for the bill. “I think laws are (already) on
the books that we need, and have now seen the ramifications of my vote,” Worsley told The Associated Press. “I feel very bad, and it was a mistake.” With the three GOP senators joining all 13 Senate Democrats in opposition, there would be enough votes to defeat the measure in a revote. But too much time has passed to allow for reconsideration, and the bill was sent to Brewer in a routine transmittal Monday that was accompanied by “boos” from Senate Democrats. Brewer now has five working days to sign or veto the bill. She returns from governors association meetings in Washington on Tuesday afternoon. The governor doesn’t comment on pending legislation, but she vetoed a similar measure last year. That action, however, came during an unrelated political standoff, and it’s unclear whether she would support or reject this plan. An estimated 350 people gathered outside the Arizona Capitol on Monday evening in a peaceful protest. They listened to speeches and many held homemade signs in opposition to
the bill. The bill is being pushed by the Center for Arizona Policy, a social conservative group that opposes abortion and gay marriage. The group says the proposal is needed to protect against increasingly activist federal courts and simply clarifies existing state law. CAP President Cathi Herrod is urging Brewer to sign the legislation and deriding what she called “fear-mongering” from its opponents. “The attacks on SB 1062 ... represent precisely why so many people are sick of the modern political debate,” Herrod wrote in a weekend posting on the group’s website. “Instead of having an honest discussion about the true meaning of religious liberty, opponents of the bill have hijacked this discussion through lies, personal attacks, and irresponsible reporting. “Our elected leaders have a fundamental duty to protect the religious freedom of every Arizonan, and that’s what SB 1062 is all about.”
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Islamic militants set fire to a locked dormitory at a school in northern Nigeria, then shot and slit the throats of students who tried to escape through windows during a pre-dawn attack Tuesday. At least 58 students were killed, including many who were burned alive. They “slaughtered them like sheep” with machetes, and gunned down those who ran away, said one teacher, Adamu Garba. Soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the coed government school were mysteriously withdrawn hours before it was targeted by the militants, said the spokesman for the governor of northeastern Yobe state. Female students were spared in the attack, said the spokesman, Abdullahi Bego, though girls and women have been abducted in the past by militants of the Boko Haram movement, whose name means “Western education is forbidden.” This time, the insurgents went to the female dormitories and told the young women to go home, get married and abandon the Western education they said is anathema to Islam, Bego said. All of the dead were teenage boys or young men. The militants, whose struggle for an Islamic state has killed thousands and made them the biggest threat to security in Africa’s top oil producer, have increasingly preyed on civilians, both Muslim and Christian. Some 300 people have died in attacks this month alone. Local officials buried the bodies of 29 victims and another 29 were taken to Damaturu Specialist Hospital, according
to the hospital records and an Associated Press reporter who went to the mortuary. Most of the victims appeared to be between 15 and 20 years old, Bego said. Eleven wounded survivors of the attack were being treated at the hospital. Touring the smoldering ruins Tuesday at the Federal Government College of Buni Yadi, Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam decried the federal government’s failure to protect the population. “It is unfortunate that our children in schools are dying from lack of adequate protection from the federal government,” Gaidam told reporters. He called on President Goodluck Jonathan to deploy more troops to the region. Jonathan, who rarely comments on individual attacks, said in a statement that he felt “immense sadness and anguish” by the loss of life at the school, and vowed that the military would “continue to prosecute the war against terror with full vigor, diligence and determination.” Garba said the militants locked the door of a dormitory where male students were sleeping, then set it on fire. Some students were burned alive in the attack that began around 2 a.m., he said. The governor said it took hours for troops to arrive, giving the assailants plenty of time to set the rest of the school campus ablaze— six dormitories, the administrative building, staff
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