Monday, February 2, 2015
Volume 99 Issue 34
www.studentprintz.com PAGE THREE
PAGE FOUR
PAGE SIX
PAGE FIVE
NEWS
F E AT U R E
OPINION
S P O RT S
Students offer tips for a healthy lifestyle to prevent heart disease.
Mysterious DJ introduces electronic music to campus.
Band’s second album ‘Then Came the Morning’ a must-listen.
Late interception seals the deal for Patriots’ win over Seahawks.
Heart Health Month
WUSM
Lone Bellow
Super Bowl
ON CAMPUS
McGillis proposes Reed Green overhaul Jacob Kemp Printz Reporter
The University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Director Bill McGillis proposed the options for renovations to Reed Green Coliseum in the Trent Lott Center Thursday. The news brings a bit of hope to USM’s athletic program and fans after a rough season of NCAA investigation. Reed Green Coliseum hosted its first game back in 1965. The building has only received minor upgrades since then and is long due for a makeover. Sports architecture firm Populous will headline the project and have already come up with several renderings of what the future Reed Green could look like. The main complaint about the arena now is the distance of the seats to the court. Most basketball arenas have their seats right on top of the action, but USM fans have had to sit far away. McGillis said that was the department’s main focus in renovating. They wanted fans closer to action and to provide a more comfortable experience. Renderings show that fans will indeed be closer to the court than ever before. Also, the bench seating will be taken down and every seat in the arena will be chair back. The new arena will also have a centerhung score board, something the athletic director and others have wanted for a long time.
ON CAMPUS
Courtesy Photo
Southern Miss Athletics revealed its plans to renovate the Reed Green Coliseum Thursday. New renovation features will include a practice court within the arena, a new ticket booth and five to seven new concession stands.
The building’s arena holds about 8,000 people, but McGillis said seating would drop to somewhere between 6,600 and 7,000 because of changing bench seating to chairbacks. Other new features to Reed Green Coliseum include a practice court within the arena, a new ticket booth and five to seven new concession stands.
The renovations to Reed Green Coliseum would not only be just for the basketball teams, but also for volleyball and other events. Populous and McGillis were adamant about the arena being multipurpose and being able to host not just potential graduations, but concerts as well. The last time Reed Green Coliseum hosted a concert was
in 2004, when the band Train came to campus. USM has also wanted to host a Conference USA basketball tournament at Reed Green for a while now and McGillis thinks that this is now their best opportunity. When asked about when the project could potentially get underway, McGillis was mum on the situation.
“It’s going to happen when our community decides it’s going to happen,” McGillis said. “I want go forward at the first opportunity, the sooner the better. But it’s going to be a determination made by a lot of folks as how to do it and when to do it.” McGillis said the project would cost from $35 to $45 million and its funding and timetable for completion has not been determined yet, but identifying funding will be part of the next phase, according to the Hattiesburg American. He said the department will start this year with contacting community leaders, campus leaders, financial experts and industry experts together to tackle different funding models and pick the best model for the coliseum. Populous has been a major proprietor in recent renovations. The firm renovated places such as Yankee Stadium, the University of Phoenix Stadium and a number of NBA arenas like the United Center. However, McGillis said those projects were not what caught the department’s attention. There was a special renovation they did that got them intrigued in Populous. “Probably the single most important project that they did that impacted our decision to use them was their renovation of Georgia Tech’s on-campus arena, which is very similar to Reed Green Coliseum,” McGillis said.
Black performance troupe showcases new talent Lindsey Kelley Printz Reporter
On Monday, Feb. 2 at 6 p.m., new performance group Harlem will produce “A Night At The Cotton Club” to kick off The University of Southern Mississippi’s celebrations of Black History Month. Harlem, which formed in 2014 and presented its first showcase, is an all-inclusive arts performance group for minorities within the Department of Theatre. Hillary Lewis, a theatre graduate student and one of Harlem’s founding members, said that
Harlem was founded because the group noticed a lack of minority representation in the arts at Southern Miss. “There (are) a lot of wonderful works out there that we felt that the students at USM needed to see. Our mission was to put works of new playwrights on the stage, particularly those who are a minority, and present them to the students,” Lewis said. While last year the founding members were primarily theatre majors, this year they have expanded to add other artists in differentiating fields. “Everybody
from every art form (is welcome),” Lewis said. “We now have musicians, opera singers, dancers and theatre people, so it (involves) all of the performing arts.” Brittany Butler, a senior theatre major and performer, said that “A Night At the Cotton Club” will be a diverse performance of many different styles. “It is a piece that is incorporating poetry, dance, music and acting. It’s basically a night of different acts,” Butler said. All of these acts will be based inside of the historical old-fashioned Cotton Club, a club based in New York’s Harlem that saw its heyday
in the Prohibition Era, featuring black artists like Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters. The performers bring back that old jazz and swing, with each of the artists acting as a club performer. “I am the nightclub singer, one of the acts that does poetry,” Butler said. “In the (theatrical) scene, I play Sister Taylor, who is kind of a gossip.” Jasmine Neal, a theatre graduate student, said that she has been enjoying watching the rehearsals. “I’m just as excited as everyone else to see the show,” she said. Neal also stressed the
importance of representing minorities in the arts. “I believe it is so important because there are other stories to be told. Each story of each different minority group is different and each has their own struggles,” she said. “It’s very important for us to show, as theatre artists, the experiences of each group on the stage.” “A Night at the Cotton Club” will be performed in The Woods Theatre at 6 p.m., a small classroom based theater inside the Theatre and Dance Building. There is no cost to attend the event and seats are first-come, first-served.