INSIDE
SMU sweeps Rice, 67-55
Lemon Bar moves locations
PAGE 2
Leave Chris Christie alone
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Review of Brown Bag week
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PAGE 6
FRIDAY
MARCH 1, 2013 FRIDAY High 61, Low 30 SATURDAY High 61, Low 30
VOLUME 98 ISSUE 64 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
CRIME
Students turn themselves in for alleged assault Julie Fancher Assignments Desk Editor jfancher@smu.edu Four male students turned themselves in to SMU Police on Feb. 28 in connection with the Feb. 10 alleged assault of another student at the Sigma Phi Epsilon House. The students turned themselves in after warrants were issued for their arrest on Friday Feb. 22. On Feb. 10 a male SMU student reported that he had been
held against his will and struck numerous times. Kent Best said in a statement, “The students have been temporarily suspended from SMU pending the outcome of the legal process and any student conduct review proceedings.” SMU Police sent their findings from their investigation to the Dallas County District Attorney’s office. The SMU Police Department has not updated the daily crime report log.
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MEREDITH CAREY/The Daily Campus
Art Spiegelman, a Pulitzer winning comic book writer, spoke to students and faculty in Crum Auditorium Thursday.
Pulitzer winner Spiegelman talks all things comics MATTHEW COSTA Associate Sports Editor mcosta@smu.edu Comics have become an ever growing medium throughout their short tenure on earth and although the quality of work defers widely from artist to artist, the history and expression involved in each page can show off more than most writers can ever hope to display. “It’s just another medium, but you can do a lot more now,” Art Spiegelman, speaker for SMU’s Gartner Honors Lecture Series, said. “Comics echo the way the brain works.” Spiegelman arrived at Crum auditorium on Thursday night to discuss, in the artist’s opinion, “What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?” The 65-year-old is a Pulitzer Prize winning comic book artist best known for his dramatic and awardwinning comic “Maus” in which
Spiegelman brings his father’s time during the holocaust to life. The graphic novel, completed in 1991, is a haunting replication of a Polish Jew’s time in Nazi-occupied Europe, including a stint in the infamous Auschwitz prison-camp. “Maus” was more than a difficult piece of art for Spiegelman to create, but putting his emotions aside he was able to produce one of the benchmark publications in the timeline of comics. “The past hangs over the future,” Spiegelman said. “For the first time, comics have a history.” When asked about a possible change of stage for the famous story of Spiegelman’s family to the big screen, he quickly denounced the idea of moving any of his pieces up. “It’s very rare to have someone come up and say, ‘I want to make something with this,’” Spiegelman said. “I’m so interested in compression
that most everything I do is too short.” In the 90-minute lecture, the history of his time with comics was also expressed as Spiegelman went back to his roots in drawn art. “Comic books were my escape,” Spiegelman said. “[They have] always been a battle of adults versus children; traditional versus new.” Along with their diverse past, the future of comics was discussed in the Q&A section of the session, where Spiegelman spoke more on the accessibility of graphic novels. With the overall growth of the online community, finding past and present comic books on the internet is the kind of move that will keep the medium relevant for years to come. “I can get the history of comics online,” Spiegelman said. “There’s something about reading online that is the adrenaline of clicking
and wondering what’s going to happen next.” Spiegelman’s last statement rang true to his opinion during the length of his speech. With just a small amount of non-super hero comics remaining in production, the ability to convey differing artistic styles has become harder to display. “I think Donald Duck had much more nuance than Peter Parker,” Spiegelman said. “He was far more interesting than the mood swings of the Hulk.” Comics seem to have a stereotype of being nothing more than the origin stories for famous movie characters such as Batman and Superman. Art Spiegelman displayed a multilayered discussion about how the future of comics can be as artistic as its gloried past. “The future of comics will have to do with what’s online,” Spiegelman said. “I know it’s the future, but I’m happily living in the past.”
New Residential Commons expected to change campus life Geenah Krisht Contributing Writer gkrisht@smu.edu Not all students living in residence halls on the south side of campus have experienced the livelihood that comes along with a central quad or dining hall, but in a little over a year more students will be migrating that way. SMU is on track to transform the entire campus into a Residential Commons model by the summer of 2014. This transformation includes both the current housing experience and the construction of five new communities in the southeast corner of campus. “The Residential Commons model, with the addition of approximately 1250 new bed space on campus, allows us to house all first- and second-year students on campus with limited housing for upper-class students and graduate students,” Jeff Grim, Assistant Director of Residence Life for Academic Initiatives, said. Along with these new
residence halls, several living rooms, study rooms, multipurpose rooms, and a new dining hall are all a part of the plan. Creators hope to facilitate a close-knit learning and living environment that students can call “home.” “My hope is that it will create a more vibrant campus ‘after hours.’ With so many students residing and dining on campus, I hope an increased energy will develop,” Julie Wiksten, Associate Vice President of Campus Services, said. The new dining hall will be a two-story facility with indoor and outdoor areas, seating up to around 500 people. It will be largely naturally lit through two-story windows and a rotunda. Wiksten described multiple seating areas and said they would each have a feeling of their own: booths, high top tables, banquette seating and outdoor seating. In addition, there will be limited unseen kitchen space.
See CAMPUS page 3
history
SMU goes through 8-year process to receive Bush Center bid Julie Fancher Assignments Desk Editor jfancher@smu.edu The story of how SMU was selected to become the home of the Presidential Center begins with a bid. Baylor University was the first school to begin drafting a bid to house the presidential library. “While we realize that a decision on the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Library is likely several years away, we feel it is important to formalize our process so we are in a position to deliver a well-conceived, well constructed and financially certain proposal,” former Baylor President Robert B. Sloan Jr. said in 2003. Baylor’s close proximity to the Bushs’ ranch in Crawford was a key point in their proposal. The university also stated: “With the George H.W. Bush Library in College Station and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, a George W. Bush Presidential Library at Baylor would create a triangle of presidential libraries
within 90 miles of each other, positioning the region as the most important area in the country for presidential research.” SMU began working on a bid just after Baylor University; however, the White House announced it would not be considering locations until President Bush was elected to a second term. Following his re-election, the White House asked for six universities to submit bids. The six that submitted bids, in addition to Baylor and SMU were Texas Tech, the University of Texas System, the University of Dallas and Midland College. Texas Tech and Midland College later teamed up to form the West Texas Coalition. The West Texas Coalition proposed that Texas Tech would house the presidential library and museum, while Midland College would be home to the Laura Bush Reading Center. In addition to these six schools, the White House asked for one city to submit a bid, which the city of Arlington did. There were pros and cons to
all of these sites. Most of the pros were that a lot of these schools had large amounts of land to build on. SMU, however, is surrounded by homes, leaving it with little room to grow. A flurry of legal battles ensued, but SMU finally obtained the space it needed. In late 2005, nearly a year after the schools submitted their bids, the White House announced that SMU, Baylor, University of Dallas and the West Texas Coalition were the finalists. The four schools headed to Washington, D.C. to pitch their proposed presentations to the library committee. A few weeks later, it was announced that Texas Tech had been dropped from consideration. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that former commerce secretary and chairman of the presidential site-selection committee, Donald Evans, gave some bad news to the West Texas Coalition. “This was a difficult decision for the committee. Your team has brought to light many important
SIDNEY HOLLINGSWORTH/The Daily Campus
SMU won the bid for the Bush Presidential Library against Baylor, the University of Dallas and the West Texas Coalition.
ideas, and it is our hope that the final selection and site will make you and the institutions you represent proud,” Evans said. The same article reported that it seemed as if SMU looked to be the favorite. Not only is the school the alma mater of former First Lady Laura Bush, but also to Bush Adviser Karen Hughes and White
House Counsel Harriet Miers. Miers was also an adviser to the library selection committee. While SMU was settling its legal disputes in late 2006, it announced that it had entered “the next phase of deliberations” with the presidential library site selection committee. Evans said in a 2006 statement
sent to the three final schools that “The Selection Committee is taking another step in the President’s decision to select a site for the George W. Bush Presidential Library as we enter into further discussions with Southern Methodist University.”
See BUSH page 3