INSIDE
A trip to the Farmer’s Market Welcome Brown at Moody The sprinklers are on ... again
‘The Hunger Games’ fall
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MONDAY
APRIL 23, 2012
MONDAY High 79, Low 48 TUESDAY High 73, Low 52
VOLUME 96 ISSUE 85 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
president’s briefing
Turner celebrates SMU’s achievements JAN ANDERSON Copy Editor jnanderson@smu.edu
SPENCER J EGGERS/The Daily Campus
Rev. Dr. Stephen Rankin, Student body President Austin Prentice, Dr. Lori White, Caren Prothro, Dr. R. Gerald Turner, Ruth Altshuler, Carl Sewel and Dr. Paul Ludden break ground at the residential commons complex groundbreaking and dedication ceremony Friday afternoon in Doak Walker Plaza.
100 years and counting, SMU breaks ground
SARAH KRAMER Editor in Chief skramer@smu.edu Despite the rain Friday afternoon, Board of Trustee member Carl Sewell ('66) remarked that the reign of President R. Gerald Turner continues into SMU’s next 100 years. Members of the Dallas community joined SMU students,
administration and alumni to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Residential Commons and dedicate the Centennial Cornerstone during the second annual Founder’s Day Weekend. The Residential Commons, which is scheduled to open in 2014, will consist of five residential buildings that will house 1,250 first and second year students as well as faculty.
It will also contain a “It creates a new and innovative shared dining hall and a living and learning experience for parking structure. generations to come,” Dr. Lori “The Residential Complex White, vice president of student really helps identify a tie between affairs, said. student life and academic life,” “It’s the perfect way to mark Turner said. the century.” This multi-million dollar Noting that a residential complex will create a stronger commons is not uncommon sense of community for in universities striving for freshmen and sophomores, while higher education, Provost Paul supporting and sustaining See CENTENNIAL on Page 6 student development.
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Polo on wheels rolls into Texas CHARLES SCOTT Contributing Writer clscott@smu.edu Take a little bit of bike dork, mix it in with a pinch of jock, and what do you get? A “hardcourt” Bicycle Polo player. Dallas is home to more than 100 of them. Hardcourt Bicycle Polo has reached a new level of popularity in recent years, Dylan Holt, a veteran of the sport and a founder of the Dallas Bicycle Polo club, said. “It’s not just a fringe thing anymore. Social networking has a lot to do with it,” he said. “Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, the explosion of the game over the past five or six years has proven to make it a lot more popular.” Hardcourt Bicycle Polo is played either on a street-hockey or tennis court. The rules vary by city; here in Dallas, it’s played 3 on 3. Players ride on bicycles and use mallets made out of ski polls and
plastic tubing. Like horse polo, players try to hit a ball through the opposing team’s goal; in the hardcourt game a hockey ball is used. At the beginning of a game, one player from each team charges the middle of the court — called “the joust” — to battle for possession of the ball. The first team to score five points wins. The origins of bicycle pplo date back further than most may expect: The game was invented in 1891 by a retired Irish cyclist named Richard Mecredy, except it was played on a grass surface, not a hard one. Grass court bicycle polo was a demonstration sport at the 1908 London Olympics. Today the grass game is no longer played, replaced instead by the surge of hardcourt’s popularity. Holt and the rest of the Dallas Bike Polo club use a Facebook group called “Dallas Bike Polo” to organize their pick-up games and upcoming tournament schedules. The Facebook group is “good
Before a nearly full crowd of donors and alumni in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Theatre Friday evening, President R. Gerald Turner delivered the President’s Briefing. Turner’s speech celebrated the achievements SMU has made in the last century. He began his briefing discussing the university’s “Community and Economic Impact” on the city of Dallas. It is estimated that SMU’s annual spending impact is $7 billion. SMU’s president then discussed new spending on campus — the university is projected to expand in multiple ways in the next decade. Approximately $500 million in construction is happening on the southeast corner of the campus. The Park Cities Plaza will also undergo renovations. Its exterior will be redone with bricks to match the SMU campus. Turner and other administrators are hoping that new development will continue to increase SMU’s academic and diversity rankings. The student body is expected to be 25 percent minority with 50 percent of students coming from outside of Texas. In the last 15 years, the average SAT score of students
has increased almost 135 points. SAT scores and diversity rankings are key to SMU’s overall perception as an academic institution — a key part of US News annual university rankings. SMU has rose more than forty spots in the rankings in the last two decades. Rankings have dramatically increased student quality at SMU. More than 200 student athletes received academic honors from Conference USA for having GPAs of 3.0 and above. Turner said that SMU would continue to improve on the quality of education its students receive. Next year, SMU will unveil a new undergraduate curriculum. The curriculum will include a keystone senior project for all students. The campus is improving on many fronts. The Bush Presidential Library will open next spring, and the Meadows Museum of Art will have six new paintings on loan from the Prado Museum in Spain next year. SMU will continue to raise funds to fund all of its new projects. It has now met 81 percent of its $750 million Second Century fundraising campaign goal. “I am excited about all the new changes happening on campus. It’s a great time to be at SMU,” Mehdi Hami, a first year who attended the event, said. “I can only imagine what the campus is going to look like when I graduate.”
for organizing,” Joseph Standley, another Bicycle Polo player, said. “It’s good to see if people are up to play. It’s a quick way to check that kinda thing.” Interest in the hardcourt game increased dramatically in 2007, leading to the creation of North American Hardcourt in 2010, which Holt describes as “the sanctioning body” for bicycle polo throughout North America. North American Hardcourt is an organization thats main goal is to address the concerns of the rapidly growing bicycle polo community, according to its website. “They set the rules, schedules for qualifiers,” Holt said. There are currently 163 registered hardcourt bicycle polo clubs throughout the United States, according to leagueofbikepolo. com, a community website that players from across the globe use to communicate. Today, hardcourt Bicycle Polo
See POLO on Page 6
No-kill animal shelter opens new big-breed dog kennel LAURA C. MURPHY Contributing Writer lmurphy@smu.edu It used to be that the dogs at Operation Kindness in Carrollton were crammed in small rooms. Today, the pups have spacious new digs: a 2,000 square foot brick building with a private courtyard that would have any dog howling. North Texas’ oldest and largest no-kill animal shelter recently opened its new kennel exclusively for large dogs. The new building, called Bear’s Den, will allow Operation Kindness to save an additional 600 dogs each year. The new addition has increased capacity for small dogs by 50 percent by making room in the smaller kennels. Donor Norma Carney
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LAURA C. MURPHY/The Daily Campus
The new 2,000 square foot brick building exclusively for large dogs is named after Bear, a Great Pyrenees adopted from Operation Kindness.
made Bear’s Den a reality for the shelter, donating $250,000 for the expansion. Carney wanted to help the shelter after she and her husband adopted their Great Pyrenees, Bear,
from Operation Kindness eight and a half years ago. “I wanted to make it possible
See KENNEL on Page 6