CRIME: University student arrested for stealing from LSU’s Barnes & Noble, p. 3
FOOTBALL: Who are the hardest hitters on the No. 8 Tigers? p. 5
Reveille The Daily
www.lsureveille.com
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 • Volume 117, Issue 58
Sharing the Road
POLITICS
Students cast third party votes
Bike lanes to be added as part of Easy Streets II Ben Wallace
Johnson wins 1 percent of vote
Senior Contributing Writer
Louisiana state law provides bicycles the same rights as cars when it comes to sharing public roads, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. Stipulations exist, such as staying as far right as possible, using hand signals for turning and keeping at least one hand on the handlebars at all times. But for the most part, a bike is no different than a car in the eyes of the justice system. The University will add dedicated bike lanes and shared road signs to some campus roads during this coming summer’s Easy Streets II project — small victories for the cycling community. Yet bike-related accidents happen all the time, no matter how many provisions have been made. According to avid bike riders, more often than not, it’s cyclists abusing their road privileges who cause the problems. Bikers blowing through stop signs and red lights, riding along pedestrian crosswalks and traveling opposite the flow of traffic are among the concerns of LSU Cycling Club
Megan Dunbar Staff Writer
race coordinator and mechanical engineering senior Joey Bacala. “A lot of times I’ll see somebody on a bike, without a helmet, going the opposite direction of traffic — it’s just an accident waiting to happen,” Bacala said. “If all cyclists followed the rules, then you’d see the number of accidents with bicycles go down tremendously.” Don’t place the blame solely
on careless bicyclists, said German associate professor Gundela Hachmann. “Cars honk at me, people yell at me, people get angry — some drivers feel that a cyclist should be using the sidewalks, which of course is not according to state traffic laws,” said Hachmann, who never owned a car until she moved to Baton Rouge three years ago.
MCAT changes not affecting pre-med students’ decisions Senior Contributing Writer
Pre-medical school students are not looking into different career paths despite impending changes that may make the Medical College Admissions Test, or MCAT, more difficult in 2015, a recent Kaplan Test Prep study suggests. Russell Schaffer, senior communications manager for Kaplan, said 265 University students applied to medical school last year, which puts the University at No. 39 nationwide of the most medical school applicants.
BIKES, see page 11
THIRD PARTIES, see page 11
photo illustration by ALYSSA SIRISOPHON / The Daily Reveille
A vehicle passes LSU Cycling Club member Joey Bacala on Highland Road on Tuesday afternoon.
ACADEMICS
Danielle Kelley
The native German described Highland Road as notoriously dangerous for bikers, citing the narrow lanes and heavy traffic as major safety concerns. But according to Parking, Traffic and Transportation Director Gary Graham, complications with utilities, right of ways and space limitations
Animal science junior Brittany Castete voted for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the presidential election, even though she predicted Johnson wouldn’t win. However, Castete was surprised none of the major national news outlets addressed anything about his standing during their coverage. At the election party she attended, she said everyone else was paying attention to President Barack Obama and former Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and she “was freaking out about whether Johnson would get the 5 percent.” If he would have, bipartisanship would be over, Castete said.
Some schools that beat the University include larger institutions like the University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin and University of California, Berkeley, said Owen Farcy, Kaplan’s director of pre-health programs. The MCAT hasn’t been changed since the early 1990s, so the test is considered outdated by many medical school professors. The Association of American Medical Colleges, which is updating the test, is hoping the changes will better prepare pre-medical students for medical school, Farcy said. “Over the years, there’s been a
lot of changes in the ways medicine has been practiced,” Farcy said. Farcy said the biggest change to the test will be the introduction of a behavioral sciences section, which means that pre-medical students should take different courses to prepare for the MCAT. She said freshmen will be the students affected most since they will take the MCAT in 2015, when all the changes will have been implemented. Despite this more intensive test, Farcy said about 4 percent MCAT, see page 4
CREATIVE CRAFTS
CONNOR TARTER / The Daily Reveille
Ceramic artworks are displayed Tuesday afternoon in Free Speech Plaza as part of a sale hosted biannually by the Ceramic Artist Student Association.