INSIDE
Workout myths defined
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Why millennials say ‘I do’
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Women’s tennis wins 6-1 on Senior Day
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‘This Isn’t Funny’ makes crowd roar
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monDAY
APRIL 13, 2015
MONday High 75, Low 61 TUEsday High 72, Low 55
VOLUME 100 ISSUE 78 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
CELEBRATING 100 YEARS 1915 - 2015
NEWS Briefs World PRAGUE—The good news for visitors to the Czech capital: the newly expanded A line of Prague’s subway network that opened this week will comfortably take them from downtown closer than ever to the city’s international airport. BAMAKO, Mali— A military vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the south, killing two soldiers and wounding three others Sunday. The attack in Segou comes a month after a masked gunman opened fire in a restaurant leaving five people dead.
National BOSTON— A federal jury convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of all 30 charges against him and found him responsible for the deaths of the three people killed in the 2013 attack and the killing of an MIT police officer. Jurors will begin hearing evidence next week. SAN FRANCISCO— A pedestrian was killed and another injured when they were struck by a car fleeing police during a wild chase. Suspects involved are still on the loose. Witnesses riding a cable car saw the black sedan go airborne, and the windshield was badly damaged.
Texas FORT WORTH— Authorities are investigating after five people died and 12 were injured in a fiery multi-vehicle accident on Interstate 30 in Fort Worth. Medstar spokesman Matt Zavadsky tells The Dallas Morning News that an 18-wheeler and about 10 other vehicles crashed around 2:25 a.m. Sunday. Zavadsky says a man and three women died at the scene. Officer Daniel Segura says a fifth victim later died at a hospital.
Courtesy of Caroline Mendes
Approximately 32 percent of men and 48 percent of women on campus participate in Greek life.
Being gay and Greek at SMU caroline Mendes Contributing Writer cmendes@smu.edu The two freshmen met at the first Boulevard of the football season in 2012. After forming an inseparable friendship, the two became roommates, and later began dating. The two women decided to keep their relationship private since neither were ready to come out to their friends and family. One of the women, a Meadows student, was a member of a popular sorority and urged her girlfriend, a student in Cox at the time, to rush in the spring of their sophomore year. Both women shared a close group of friends who were members of Greek life and thought the social and networking activities a sorority offered would be fun and rewarding. The Cox student, who is now majoring in a communications discipline, decided
to go through the recruitment process. At first, the recruitment process went well. She thought she was on her way to receiving a bid. But then, suddenly, everything changed. A few upperclassmen in the sorority the woman had her heart set on, the one her girlfriend and close friends were members of, had discovered the secret and shared it with other members. The couple’s sexuality, once private, was now public. The communications major dropped out of the Greek recruiting process the day she was outed. Soon, news about the relationship spread across the chapter and the Greek community. “I know there were a couple of individuals in the organization that decided they did not want me because of my sexuality,” the communications major said. “At the time, all I knew was that everyone would eventually find out and that terrified me.”
The Meadows student, who was already a sorority member, said she was approached by a sorority sister who told her that her girlfriend would have been cut anyway because the group didn’t want to be known as the “lesbian sorority.” The sorority has declined to comment on the two students, their situation, or whether or not the student would have received a bid if she had not dropped out. One member of the sorority said that many of the members that had been involved are no longer students at SMU. She said that many current members would welcome new members regardless their sexual orientation. Although the sorority would not comment, the organization is known nationally as relatively open minded and open to a diverse membership, according to Campus Pride. Despite dropping out of recruitment, the communications major said she
received a number of text messages from sorority members: close friends, girls she had met during recruitment week, and some she had never spoken to. These supportive messages helped her realize she had friends regardless if she was Greek or not. Despite the support, one thing remained. “In the end, after rush, word got out and people knew about the one thing I was not ready yet to reveal,” she said. Both she and her girlfriend declined to speak on the record for fear of their sexual identities becoming more widely known. The two women are still not out to their families. “When news got out about our relationship, it wasn’t our decision,” said the Meadows student. “I’m not ashamed of my relationship or who I am, but that
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business
Cox Alumni Association allows students to have network connections for life SAVANNAH JAMES Contributing Writer sjames@smu.edu Jim Bernard had a job in real estate finance in Dallas when the economy crashed in 2008, leaving both him and his wife unemployed. Bernard received his MBA from the Cox School of Business in 2002 while working in Dallas, so having a job was second nature; not having one was frightening. Unemployment left Bernard, a member of the Cox Alumni Association Board of Directors, with few options. He found himself seeking connections and personal support and although he had not spoken to him in years, he turned to Kevin Knox, the assistant dean of external relations and the executive director of the Cox Alumni Association. “I thought renewing that connection would ultimately be worthwhile, not just professionally but personally,” said Bernard, “Frankly, I needed as much personal support as anything else. Kevin was great, quick to introduce me to folks and share what he had and what he knew.”
With Knox’s help, Bernard got back on his feet and is now living and working in Austin. Cox has a network of 40,000 alumni worldwide who are passionate about promoting the school and helping more high-school students find out about SMU, according to Knox. The Alumni Association has become stronger since the arrival of Dr. Albert Niemi, the dean of the Cox School of Business, say students and alumni. Niemi came to SMU from the University of Georgia in 1996 and brought his colleague Knox with him. Together, Niemi and Knox have built up a solid alumni network that is very involved with the school. “There had not been a lot that had gone on prior to our arrival,” Knox said. Knox has been a critical player in the creation of the Executive Board and Alumni Board for the Cox Alumni Association. He works closely with the Alumni Board to create events for prospective students and alumni and knows most of the members very well. Knox asks that all Cox alumni who remain involved with the school do three
things: help recruit future students, send their company recruiters to SMU to hire students and make a gift to the school. “We’re not looking at the dollar, we’re looking at the percentage,” said Sharon Gambulos, the associate director of annual giving and stewardship for Cox. According to Gambulos, the school is hoping to have 100 percent participation from their alumni. In the last fiscal year, which ended May 31, 2014, 92 percent of the Alumni Board members and over 5,000 undergraduate Cox alumni made gifts to the school. “I don’t think there is a business school with better professors and a faster growing finance program than Cox,” said Ryan Arndt, a graduate of SMU and a current student in the Cox Master of Science in Finance program. “I am excited about the opportunities that are presented to me at Cox now, and what I will have in the future when I become an alum.” Arndt is excited to represent Cox after he graduates and hopes to remain very involved with the school and provide other students with opportunities similar to those that he had.
Mark Galyardt is one of the original members of the Cox Alumni Association Board of Directors. He received his MBA from Cox in 1988 and met Knox when Knox was working at the University of Georgia. According to Galyardt, the members of the board are asked to attend two meetings a year: one at homecoming and another in the spring. This year the spring meeting is at SMU-in-Taos, which he says the members are excited about attending. Galyardt lives in Atlanta and promotes SMU Cox and SMU in the Atlanta area. He enjoys speaking with prospective students and he and his wife are active in the SMU Atlanta Alumni group. Galyardt and other SMU alumni in the Atlanta area got together a few years ago because they felt it was important to promote SMU in more schools in Atlanta. They put a program together in December 2013 and had a luncheon in Buckhead, an affluent district of Atlanta, for college counselors at several private schools. The goal was to drive more
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