Technique Friday, October 29, 2010 • Volume 96, Issue 13 • nique.net
The South’s Liveliest College Newspaper
Taste of Atlanta
Foodies were treated to cuisine from over 80 different restaurants at Taste of Atlanta last weekend.415
Plans released for basketball pavilion
Regents postpone UGA decision By TJ Kaplan Contributing Writer
Camish Pavilion. The campus team in charge of the project, consisting of members from the Athletic Association, government relations, campus planning, facilities and administration recently hired the architectural firm Populus and contractor Whiting-Turner. “We’re incredibly excited about this opportunity to really reshape the home of Georgia Tech basketball,” Radakovich said. McCamish Pavilion’s design has a strong focus on how fans will take in Tech basketball games. It will look drastically different from AMC on both the inside and the outside, which is why the decision was made to completely rename the venue.
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted on Tuesday, Oct. 12 to postpone any action regarding a possible engineering school at UGA. The proposal in front of the board was to allow UGA to begin offering undergraduate degrees in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. The vote followed Gov. Sonny Perdue’s address to the Board of Regents, in which he warned that the university system should not launch an engineering program at UGA without careful consideration of possible negative effects or an attempt to gain public approval. Perdue urged the board to slow down their considerations and build support first. “Take a deep breath, relax, slow down and work diligently to win support,” said Perdue to members of the university system of Georgia Board of Regents. Perdue accused the Board of Regents of running the proposal through quickly without consulting the governor’s office, and expressed concerns about how the current financial state of the system could be negatively affected by the installation of an engineering program at UGA. “Even if this new school at UGA did make sense, I would be hard pressed to believe this is the right timing. We are in an economically-constrained situation. When you see these new budgets – where stimulus has disappeared and where program enrollments continue to grow – you are going to see just how constrained things are,” Perdue said. Perdue told the regents to think with an “enterprise” mindset and represent the interests of the entire state of Georgia, not their respective areas or institutions. The first regent to express an opinion following Perdue’s address was Dink Nesmith,
See Pavilion, page 7
See UGA, page 5
Illustration courtesy of Athletic Association
This rendering shows the exterior of the proposed new basketball stadium where the Alexander Memorial Coliseum currently stands. Construction will begin following the end of the 2011 season and is scheduled to complete in fall 2012. By Matt Schrichte Assistant News Editor
In a press conference held last week, Athletic Director Dan Radakovich unveiled the renderings of Hank McCamish Pavilion, the future home of Bobby Cremins Court and Tech’s basketball teams. The new venue will replace Alexander Memorial Coliseum (AMC), which has housed Tech’s basketball programs since 1956. Plans to construct the replacement basketball facility began when Tech received a $15 million lead gift from the family of Henry F. “Hank” McCamish, Jr., IM ’50. The Board of Regents approved plans for the rest of the renovation and rebuilding project at their Oct. meeting. The total estimated cost for McCamish
Illustration courtesy of Athletic Association
The interior of the new basketball stadium will have 8900 seats, 300 fewer than the number currently in the Coliseum. Pavilion is $45 million. It was estimated that the current facility would require between $15 and $18 million in currently unfunded maintenance over the next seven to 10 years.
Radakovich noted favorable construction costs and interest rates as well as the significant donation from the McCamish family as key reasons to construct the new Mc-
Authorities identify suspicious package at Klaus By Yameen Huq Contributing Writer
On Oct. 15, Tech police discovered a suspicious package in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building. The recipient professor received the package under unusual circumstances and called the police to check for any potential dangers. While police found the package to be harmless and full of cookies, the circumstances that led to the package’s arrival remain bizarre. “These [investigation] processes are never completed in a quick time. It’s a very deliberate process for the safety of the community and the responders. We’re going to take any kind of threat seriously,” said Andy Altizer, Director of Emergency Preparedness at the Georgia Tech Police Department (GTPD). The professor who received the packaged had been in correspondence with a student from the University of Tehran for
about two years. He communicated with the student through email and Facebook. The student found him through his research and began sending him emails asking for feedback on his own work. “There was some communication between the professor and a student from another country,” Altizer said. When the professor failed to respond, the student sent more emails asking why the professor would not talk with him, and whether he still liked him. The emails became progressively stranger, and the student began writing about how he had discovered time travel and was currently researching with Albert Einstein. He also asked the professor if he would like to be a keynote speaker at the University of Tehran. The professor declined the invitation. At this point the professor ceased com-
See Package, page 7
Photo by Craig Cameron / Student Publications
GTPD, Atlanta Fire Department, FBI Bomb Squad, Atlanta SWAT and Homeland Security arrived on the scene at Klaus to investigate the report of a suspicious package which was identified to be harmless.