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Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Issue 30

T H E

E D I T O R I A L L Y

http://utdailybeacon.com

Vol. 119

I N D E P E N D E N T

S T U D E N T

PAGE 6

PUBLISHED SINCE 1906

N E W S P A P E R

O F

T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y

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T E N N E S S E E

Sorority Village almost done Members look forward to sense of community Wade Scofield Staff Writer It won’t be long until the massive project across Alcoa Highway is complete and UT adds another beautiful piece of architecture to the campus. With the first houses expected to be completed in August, the termed Sorority Village will provide a sense of community to Panhellenic members and also seek to increase UT’s ability to bring to campus students for whom Greek life is important. “We expect if everything goes according to plan, we will have more than half the sororities open this fall,” Lindi Smedberg, Panhellenic adviser, said. “And the sororities that have not opened will remain in the Panhellenic Building and expect to have completed construction within the next year.” The 13 houses will range from 9,000 to 17,000 square feet. The most expensive house will cost about $5 million, and each house is funded by private, sorority funds. The plans

indicate that between 35 and 48 women will be living in each house. One of the biggest perks of Sorority Village is the opportunity for sisters to have a common space to share for more than one hour for every week. “Houses will be a place not only for the women to live and for meeting space, but to also be a kind of hang out space,” Smedberg said. “If you are in between classes and you want to hang out, it’s now a great place to strengthen inter-sorority bonds.” “We’re probably most excited about the common space of community that Panhellenic has been lacking,” Morgan Owens, junior in public relations, said. “Right now, it’s hard for some of the younger girls to get acquainted with the older ones in the chapter because they only see us for a brief period of time weekly. Now, at times chapters will be eating together and can host events at their houses instead of having to go off campus.” See SORORITY VILLAGE on Page 3

George Richardson • The Daily Beacon

Construction continues on Sorority Village on Monday. The housing will alleviate overcrowding in the residence halls as well as the future hall that will be built near Presidential Court.

Applications requested for medical device accelerator The Associated Press

Sarah Houston • The Daily Beacon

Jessie Van der Laan, printshop technician, and Jered Sprecher, associate professor of art, talk to Jackie Battenfield after her lecture “How To Make a Living Doing What You Love” on Friday. Battenfield lectured on three tools that an artist needs to make a living through artistic work.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Applications are now open for ZeroTo510, a program designed to help entrepreneurs bring medical device products and companies to market, and are being accepted now through April 5. ZeroTo510 is a unique, entrepreneurial accelerator program that focuses on leveraging the regional strength of the Memphis area in medical device research and manufacturing. The goal of ZeroTo510 is to help medical device entrepreneurs navigate the start-up process, refine business models and achieve the Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) pre-market notification filing. Through a competitive application process, six companies will be selected to matriculate through an intensive, mentor-driven, 12-week program of instruction and hands-on activities designed to guide the entrepreneur through the process. In addition, each company chosen for the program will receive $50,000 in seed capital from coinvestors Innova, a pre-seed, seed and early-stage investor focused on starting and funding highgrowth companies in the healthcare, technology and healthcare technology fields across the state of Tennessee, and MB Venture Partners, a Memphisbased venture capital firm that provides equity capital and strategic direction to life sciences startups.

The program is launched by Memphis Bioworks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that is leading the collaboration among public, private, academic, and government entities to accelerate the growth of the bioscience industry in the Memphis region, and Innova. ZeroTo510 is an initiative of the Greater Memphis Accelerator Consortium, a Startup TN affiliate program funded by the State of Tennessee Economic and Community Development Commission. “ZeroTo510 is the first-ever program of its kind in the United States focused on medical devices,” said Allan Daisley, director of innovation and sustainability initiatives for Memphis Bioworks. “An entrepreneurship program for medical devices is an ideal match for the resources and talents of the Memphis area. Typically, it can take years for ideas to pass through regulatory hurdles. An accelerator program that focuses on the 510(k) filing is the right approach to achieving an expedited path to market, but achieving success in that path requires unique skills and knowledge. ZeroTo510 will provide that.” At the end of the 12-week program, the participants will pitch to a group of investors. The investors will select up to three finalists, who will receive as much as $100,000 in additional capital infusion and the opportunity to further develop their business and then present at the 10th Musculoskeletal New Ventures Conference in Memphis this October.

Court hears affirmative action case The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will once again confront the issue of race in university admissions in a case brought by a white student denied a spot at the flagship campus of the University of Texas. The court said Tuesday it will return to the issue of affirmative action in higher education for the first time since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor in admissions. This time around, a more conservative court is being asked to outlaw the use of Texas’ affirmative action plan and possibly to jettison the earlier ruling entirely.

A federal appeals court upheld the Texas program at issue, saying it was allowed under the high court’s decision in Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003 that upheld racial considerations in university admissions at the University of Michigan law school. The Texas case will be argued in the fall and the changed makeup of the Supreme Court could foretell a different outcome. For one thing, Justice Samuel Alito appears more hostile to affirmative action than his predecessor, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. For another, Justice Elena Kagan, who might be expected to vote with the court’s liberalleaning justices in support of it, is not taking part in the case.

Kagan’s absence probably is a result of the Justice Department’s participation in the Texas case in the lower courts at a time when she served as solicitor general. The challenge to the University of Texas program comes from Abigail Fisher, who filed a lawsuit with another woman when they were denied admission there. They contended the university’s race-conscious policy violated their civil and constitutional rights. By then, the two had enrolled elsewhere. The other woman has since dropped out of the case and the state has said that Fisher is a senior at Louisiana State University whose impending graduation should bring an end to the lawsuit. But the

Supreme Court appeared not to buy that argument Tuesday. Most entering freshman at Texas are admitted because they are among the top 10 percent in their high school class. The Texas policy applies to the remaining spots and allows for the consideration of race along with other factors. Texas had dropped affirmative action policies after a 1996 appeals court ruling. But following the high court ruling in 2003, the university resumed considering race starting with its 2005 entering class The case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 11-345.


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