INSIDE
Healthy Thanksgiving feast
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Movies to watch over break
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Truths about the Gaza Strip
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SMU falls to Rice PAGE 7
MONDAY
NOVEMBER 19, 2012 MONDAY High 75, Low 55 TUEsday High 77, Low 54
VOLUME 98 ISSUE 41 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
HOLIDAY
Students head home for Thanksgiving AKIL SIMPSON Contributing Writer aisimpson@smu.edu
Courtesy of AP
With Thanksgiving coming up, there are a lot of people with different plans for the holidays. Thanksgiving is a holiday for people to eat well and to be thankful for the things in their lives. SMU students are buying bus and plane tickets many preparing to go home for the first time in the semester. SMU first-year AJ Justice, a defensive back from Houston is anxious to get home. According to Justice, athletes rarely receive a day
off, so he’s looking forward to spending this holiday with his family. After a “gruesome week of practice,” Justice said going home is the best reward he can have. “I bought my bus ticket with the biggest smile on my face,” Justice said. SMU sophomore Rochelle Lauer, a pre-med student majoring in mechanical engineering, is from Arizona. Instead of going home this Thanksgiving, her parents are coming to her. Since she moved to Dallas her freshman year, Lauer has been unable to see her parents a lot, but
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The North Texas Food Bank delivers food and other supplies to underprivileged DFW residents throughout the year.
Nonprofits lack nutritious food REEM ABDELRAZIK Contributing Writer rabdelrazi@smu.edu For 46-year-old Mike Embree, things like orange juice are a novelty item. After falling on hard times, Embree, a social worker by trade, stayed at a family homeless shelter in McKinney, Texas where the concept of healthy eating wasn’t an option. For much of America, the food culture has taken a turn these past few years. With the number of people who are obese on the rise, the country has been forced to take a closer look at what it is eating. Ice cream has often turned into frozen yogurt, the first lady propagates a healthy lifestyle to kids and more and more people are going ‘organic.’ But a group of Americans who lack the opportunity to choose what to eat are the homeless. Nutritional foods are hard to come by in shelters
where donations of food with a longer shelf life are the norm. Whether this is an issue or not is up for debate, but the consequences of this problem have Embree baffled. “When you think of homeless people you don’t think of them as being overweight, but a lot of them are because of the stuff we get,” Embree said. Despite the teetering economy, the number of homeless Americans dropped by 1 percent or 7,000 people between 2009 and 2011, according to a report by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Despite this, about 2.3 to 3.5 million Americans are homeless, and on any given day 79,000 of them are Texans. Amy Trail, who works at Austin Street Homeless Shelter in Dallas, said that the lack of nutritional foods is a point of major concern for her. “Since we are a nonprofit organization, we rely on donations and people want to donate food that
is longer lasting — cookies, brownies and cupcakes. Things that are high in sugar, in carbs and starches,” she said. “We have a lot of clients who have diabetes, but you’re going to eat what’s in front of you even if it isn’t the healthiest thing.” There are many things that contribute to this situation. A dependence on donations means a dependence on receiving what others don’t need. At Austin Street Center, the problem not only lies in people donating cupcakes instead of apples, but in its lack of a fully functional kitchen. “We haven’t been able to bring in a grease trap that’s needed. It’s too expensive for us to get right now. So we can’t really cook anything, just heat the food up,” she said. Embree said there is a similar situation in his facility. “It’s a full sized kitchen, but I don’t see or smell any cooking going on,” he said. “But when you have that many people to feed
and so few staff — it’s only one lady basically — it’s going to be hard.” While quality of the food provided at these shelters may not be the best, some disagree with Trail and believe that it is non-issue. Lezli Perkins, an office worker at the Dallas Life Center, said that when responsible for giving a community of people food, they are generally grateful for whatever they can get regardless of quality. “If it’s two cupcakes, they’re going to be grateful for it versus being under a bridge not having anything to eat,” she said. And for many living in the shelters, this is mostly the case. “When you’re talking about homelessness, you’re talking about a pretty depressing situation. A lot of people are just sitting just staring off into space and not sure what to do,” explains Embree. “I’m not sure
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POLITICS
Fiscal cliff negotiators are facing high hurdles ASSOCIATED PRESS It’s entirely possible that lawmakers and the White House will reach a deal that staves off an avalanche of tax increases and deep cuts in government programs before a Jan. 1 deadline. To do so, however, they’ll have to resolve deep political and fiscal disagreements that have stymied them time after time despite repeated promises to overcome them. For many economists, corporate leaders and politicians, it’s unconscionable to let the government veer over the “fiscal cliff,” which could drain $500 billion from the still-struggling economy next year. But even President Barack Obama says it could happen. “Obviously we can all imagine a scenario where we go off the fiscal cliff,” the president said last week. The likeliest cause, he suggested, would be “too much stubbornness in Congress,” especially on the issue of taxes.
Many Republicans in Congress counter that it’s Obama who is too unyielding. The knottiest issues facing the White House and congressional negotiators include: TAX RATES Obama campaigned on a pledge to end the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for households making more than $250,000 a year. Republican leaders say the lower rates from 2001 and 2003 should remain in place for everyone, including the rich. Both sides have dug in so deeply that it will be politically painful to back down. Republicans say tax increases on the rich would inhibit job growth. Democrats dispute that, and say it’s only fair for the wealthiest to provide more revenue in this era of historically low tax burdens and a growing income disparity between the rich and the poor. Most Republican lawmakers have signed a pledge not to allow tax rates to rise, even if they are scheduled to do so by law, as are the Bush-era
cuts. Some Democrats say it may be necessary to let the Dec. 31 deadline expire and have everyone’s tax rates revert to the higher, pre-Bush levels. Then, the argument goes, Republicans could vote to bring the rates back down for most Americans, but not the richest, without breaking their pledge. The tax rate issue is especially thorny because it doesn’t lend itself to Washington’s favorite tactics for postponing hard decisions. Lawmakers routinely resort to “continuing resolutions” to end budget impasses by keeping spending levels unchanged for yet another year. Politically, no one wins or loses. Obama’s campaign promise to raise tax rates on the wealthy precludes that. Either rates on the rich will rise and Republicans will absorb defeat on a huge priority, or the rates will remain unchanged, a political defeat for Obama. LOBBIES AND THE STATUS QUO Both parties have talked, vaguely,
of raising revenues by limiting the itemized tax deductions claimed by about one-third of the nation’s taxpayers. Among the most popular deductions are those for charitable donations, health care costs and mortgage interest payments. Each is represented by muscular lobbying groups that will fight to protect the millions or billions of dollars these tax breaks steer their way. An array of ideas has been floated. They include capping a taxpayer’s total deductions at $35,000 or $50,000, and limiting the value of deductions to 28 percent, instead of the current 35 percent for high earners. The coalition of universities and other institutions that rely on tax-exempt donations is so influential that some strategists say charitable gifts should be left untouched. The housing industry says the same about home mortgage interest. “Once you put something on the table, there is enormous pushback
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SEE INSIDE FOR GRE AT 2012 GiFT IDE AS
CHARIT Y
Courtesy of Meredith Ashworth
Sophomore Haylie DeFrank and junior Meredith Ashworth participated in the Color in Motion 5K in Fairpark Saturday.
Students, community runs for Make-A-Wish BRIE STRICKLAND Contributing Writer astrickland@smu.edu This past Saturday, Nov. 17th, the Dallas community, including SMU students ran in the Color in Motion 5K at the Cotton Bowl Stadium at Fair Park. The 9 a.m. event, which blasted its participants with colored powder each kilometer, benefited the North Texas chapter of the Make-AWish Foundation. According to the event’s official website, Color in Motion 5K Dallas promised a minimum donation of $5,000 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. For every race volunteer that ran on the behalf of Make-A-Wish, an automatic $50 was given to the North Texas chapter. which grants wishes to lifethreatening medical condition in the area since 1982 and since then has granted over 7,000 wishes. Saturday’s race had a noticeable trend. DYRKSTRONG seemed to adorn the shirts of many runners at the event. The phrase was in reference to Dyrk Burcie, a 4 year old who passed away two months ago from pediatric liver cancer.
Burcie gained national attention with his father’s fellow Dallas firefighters arranged a photo project for Burcie. They began posting pictures, like Dyrk’s name spelled out on fire, on a Facebook page. Soon other fire stations and organizations in the community were posting pictures for Burcie. Color in Motion 5K was inspired by the battle of Dyrk. The organization pledged 15 percent of the registration fees from the Dallas race to the Burcie family. Although no SMU students were part of Team Dyrk, they side-by-side splattered with all colors of the rainbow. Mary Liz Tuttle, an SMU junior, was up bright and early for the run and felt very passionate about the race’s cause. As the community service chair for the Iota Alpha chapter of Chi Omega at SMU, Tuttle is used to working with the Make-AWish Foundation, which is Chi Omega’s national philanthropy. “Partnering with Make-AWish has been such rewarding experience. Color in Motion is like a dream come true,” Tuttle said. It wasn’t just current SMU students that made it out to the race. Alumni like Jessalyn Phillips (’12) were seen colorfully crossing the finish line.