The
S TUDENT P RINTZ www.studentprintz.com
SERVING SOUTHERN MISS SINCE 1927
January 22, 2013
Volume 97 Issue 31
ON CAMPUS
Beloved English professor dies at 60 Hannah Jones Managing Editor
A University of Southern Mississippi English professor known for his humor, thoughtfulness and eccentricities died Friday of heart failure. A memorial service is planned for Saturday to commemorate his 27 years of service to USM. He was 60. Kenneth Watson, a British Romanticism professor, taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses, including World Literature and Literary Criticism.
“His students will always remember his kindness, and no one will ever forget his brilliance,” said senior English major Cade Varnado, who took several undergraduate courses with Watson and worked with him on his Honors thesis. “He was teeming with knowledge, literary and otherwise, and he did everything he could to grant his students access to it. No one ever left his class not feeling like they had been exposed to the wisdom of the ages.” Watson earned degrees from Kenyon College and the University of Vermont in Burlington and completed his doctorate in English
Kenneth Watson
with a specialization in Romantic poetry from Duke University be-
fore joining the USM English department in 1986. In addition to his academic achievements, Varnado remembers Watson for his character. “Dr. Watson’s most legendary attributes were his many quirks—his refusal to give up smoking even when he had bronchitis, his approval of in-class cursing so long as it pertained to the Nazis, the way the floor in his office was always completely covered in papers while his desk remained bare,” Varnado said. According to Martina Sciolino, an English professor and academic adviser, Watson made an
impact on Southern Miss faculty as well as students. “Ken Watson was witty, sardonic, had depths of perspective that still surprised me after twenty years of knowing him, was truly loving, deeply non judgmental and hilarious,” Sciolino said. “There was nothing he could do that didn’t appear elegant—truly a gentleman of the old school who would extend his friendship to anyone. He could move effortlessly from the sacred to the profane, the satirical to the sublime, the beautiful to the bawdy without a seam. He had the
See WATSON, 3
GULF COAST
BASKETBALL
Audit finds misuse of $5.3 million in post-Katrina funds Tyler Hill News Editor
Jamie Gominger/Printz
Sophomore guard Chip Armelin shoots on a UAB opponent during the game in Reed Green Coliseum on Saturday. The Eagles topped the Blazers, improving to 15-4 overall and 4-0 in Conference USA. The win marked the Eagles’ seventh straight win and 22nd straight home win as well as set a new school record of 10 straight conference wins.
INAUGURATION
After an internal investigation, a federal auditor told Federal Emergency Management Agency officials they should demand the University of Southern Mississippi return $5.3 million of Hurricane Katrina recovery construction money, citing a misuse of funds. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reviewed funds the campus received for rebuilding USM’s Gulf Park campus in Long Beach. The Gulf Park campus received $41.1 million following Hurricane Katrina, and the inspector general reviewed $12.2 million of those funds. Local FEMA officials claim they will evaluate the auditor’s report and work with USM to resolve the issues. The auditor said university
MANTI TE’0
COKE
officials did not have sufficient records for almost $1 million of allocated funds, such as timingand-materials spending, allowed USM to receive money that exceeded insurance claims and received duplicate grant funding. While the vice president of the Gulf Park campus, Frances Lucas, said $3.85 million was mostly spent properly, $1.44 million should be returned since it was never spent. That specific money was replaced by a grant, and USM has yet to spend it since receiving it in 2005. “We do agree with the audit that a million-four ($1.4M) of that is indeed money that should not come to us because it was replaced by a grant,” Lucas said during an interview with WHLT of Hattiesburg. Lucas said that all the spending was approved by both the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) and FEMA. The report also states that
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USM did not properly hire its contractors to complete the project. When a government entity, such as a public university, receives funding for projects, they must bid out a contract to engineering services or companies. Following Hurricane Katrina, the university paid for the contractor’s time and materials instead of taking bids, so the auditor concluded USM improperly awarded a $2.4 million contract for permanent and temporary repairs and a $453,000 contract for architectural and engineering services. “There was absolutely no way under the sun to run a bid process,” Lucas told The Sun Herald. “You had to hire whoever you could find that you thought was good to come in and do time and materials. In a situation like this [post-Hurricane Katrina], exceptions have to be made.”
See BUDGET, 3
INDEX
Calendar ........................ 2 Sudoku ........................... 2 News .............................. 3 Arts & Entertainment......4 Feature ............................5 Opinion ............................6 Sports ..............................7