1.26.12 edition of the auburn plainsman

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Recycled paper INSIDE Campus » A1 | Community » A5 | Opinions » A7 | Classifieds » A8 | Sports » B1 | Intrigue » B5 A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID ursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Vol. 118, Issue 16, 16 Pages Strike up the bands Chelsea Harvey CAMPUS EDITOR One couple is getting ready to experience what many people only dream of. Slade Ponder and Katie Oliver, both Auburn alumni, have been announced as the winners of the War Eagle Wedding. “(We’re) so relieved,” Ponder said. “Because campaign, it was a job, you had to work at it, so it’s a relief that it’s over and that we were the winners.” Ponder and Oliver will be given a nearly all-expenses-paid wedding, with the use of Samford Lawn for the ceremony and the Hotel for the reception. Other provided services include bridal and bridesmaid dresses, tuxedos, photography and food for the reception. According to Teresa Whitman-McCall, director of campus and community events for the Department of Communications and Marketing, the War Eagle Wedding is the result of a partner- ship between Auburn University, the Hotel at Auburn University, the Opelika-Auburn News and WRBL News. e wedding is sponsored by Metabolic Research Center and Prudential Preferred Real Estate. “We decided to give away a wedding,” Whitman-McCall said. “And we asked that any couple that was looking to get married, engaged, fill out an application or submit a two-minute video, or they could fill out or write us a letter on why they should win.” Afterward, a committee met to narrow the applicants to five couples. From there, the committee interviewed the couples and selected three. e Auburn community was then invited to vote online for the winning couple. “You could just tell, each of the couples that we selected, they came from long generations, third generations of Auburn men and women,” Whitman-McCall said. “You could just tell how much they loved Auburn, and they were just dynamic, young in- dividuals who really wanted to, in some way, give back to the University, as well as make one of the biggest moments in their lives happen at Auburn.” Although candidates for the wedding were not required to be Auburn alumni, Ponder and Oliver both graduated from Auburn in December 2010. Ponder received his degree in supply chain management and Oliver received hers in early childhood edu- cation. e couple became engaged on Dec. 18, 2010. Slade and Pon- der both grew up in Lanett, Ala., where they live now. “Our families have known each other, we’ve both known each other, for all our life,” Ponder said. “Our dads actually went to high school together.” Ponder said he and Oliver had originally intended to be mar- ried in the church where they grew up. “You know, it did cross our mind to have the wedding (in Au- burn), but we’re definitely glad to have it (here) now,” Ponder said. Details for the wedding are still not complete, however. In the time leading up to the wedding, the Auburn communi- ty will have the chance to vote online for various aspects of the wedding, including the bridal gown design, bridesmaid dress design, jewelry and reception menu. “Having that takes a lot of the planning part off it and the stress of doing it, so we’re just happy for that part, and we’ll be glad to win anything,” Ponder said. Whitman-McCall said several local and national vendors have agreed to provide the products that will be voted on. Voting for the bridal dress has already begun and will contin- ue until 8 p.m. Monday. “We have three students from the advanced apparel design PHOTO COURTESY OF FLIPFLOPFOTO Slade Ponder and Katie Olliver sit on a ledge of Samford Hall in engagement pictures taken for the War Eagle Wedding. Couple wins competition to marry on Samford Lawn Alison McFerrin COMMUNITY BEAT REPORTER Nine seats need filling on the Auburn University Board of Trustees. From a pool of 170 candi- dates, the trustee selection committee chose 35 to ad- vance to the interview stage. Six of those candidates hope to be chosen to serve for District 3–Lee County. “It’s a big responsibility,” said Denson Lipscomb, one of the District 3–Lee Coun- ty nominees. The other nominees in- clude Al Cook, Charles Pick, Joe Beckwith, Howard Porter and Robert Dumas. “I do know that it will be an investment of time,” Por- ter said. District 3–Lee County is part of the group interview- ing Monday. The selection committee will announce its selections in early February. Each candidate brings something different to the table. Porter said the career ad- vice from a former mentor about getting into appraisal and real estate brought him where he is today. “If you’re going to be suc- cessful in this, you’ve got to learn a little bit about engineering, a little bit about architecture, a little bit about con- struction, a little bit about banking and I took that to heart,” Porter said. He said he thinks the range of knowledge has led LIPSCOMB PORTER DUMAS Lee County fights for Board of Trustees chair The Auburn Plainsman Jenny Steele WRITER ere’s more than one way to talk to a librarian. Ralph Brown Draughon Library has adopted a service that allows students to send librarians questions via text message. Implemented Friday, the new service stems from the popularity of the library’s live chat, an instant-messaging program available on the library’s homepage. “It’s about us helping the patron as much as we can,” said library assistant Cory Latham. “e pre- ferred method is face-to-face communication, but when you’re looking for convenience this is a great option.” Latham, who has worked at the library for five years, said RBD began offering live chat a couple of years ago. e new texting option began “before Christ- mas in a soft rollout, and we are just now publiciz- ing fully,” said Marcia Boosinger, associate dean for public services for University libraries. “We are us- ing a commercial product called Ask a Librarian, which is a different product than what we use for chat.” Joe Wanders, graduate student in clinical men- tal health counseling, works at the RBD reference desk and answers both text and live chat questions. “You send the question from your mobile phone, and then we receive them here at the reference desk,” Wanders said. To ask a question via text message, students must first send “AskAULib” to 66746. is prompts RBD offers new text assistance » See TRUSTEE, A2 » See TEXT, A2 » See STRIKE , A2 Home & Garden issue Check out the special feature placed in the middle of our regular edition. It features ar- ticles on decor, sustainability, home crafts and more. SPECIAL FEATURE Local coffee shop owner sells storefront Toomer’s Coffee Company to close storefront after eight years. Owners plan to expand wholesale and roasting operations. COMMUNITY // A5 EDITOR’S NOTE Fate of Toomer’s rolling decided President Jay Gogue has ac- cepted the recommendation to replace the Toomer’s oaks with one or more large trees. see A3

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Page 1: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Recycled paperINSIDE  Campus » A1  |  Community » A5  |  Opinions » A7  |  Classifieds » A8  |  Sports » B1  |  Intrigue » B5

A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAIDThursday, January 26, 2012  www.theplainsman.com  Vol. 118, Issue 16, 16 Pages

Strike up the bandsChelsea HarveyCAMPUS EDITOR

One couple is getting ready to experience what many people only dream of.

Slade Ponder and Katie Oliver, both Auburn alumni, have been announced as the winners of the War Eagle Wedding.

“(We’re) so relieved,” Ponder said. “Because campaign, it was a job, you had to work at it, so it’s a relief that it’s over and that we were the winners.”

Ponder and Oliver will be given a nearly all-expenses-paid wedding, with the use of Samford Lawn for the ceremony and the Hotel for the reception. Other provided services include bridal and bridesmaid dresses, tuxedos, photography and food for the reception.

According to Teresa Whitman-McCall, director of campus and community events for the Department of Communications and Marketing, the War Eagle Wedding is the result of a partner-ship between Auburn University, the Hotel at Auburn University, the Opelika-Auburn News and WRBL News.

The wedding is sponsored by Metabolic Research Center and Prudential Preferred Real Estate.

“We decided to give away a wedding,” Whitman-McCall said. “And we asked that any couple that was looking to get married, engaged, fill out an application or submit a two-minute video, or they could fill out or write us a letter on why they should win.”

Afterward, a committee met to narrow the applicants to five couples. From there, the committee interviewed the couples and selected three. The Auburn community was then invited to vote online for the winning couple.

“You could just tell, each of the couples that we selected, they came from long generations, third generations of Auburn men and women,” Whitman-McCall said. “You could just tell how much they loved Auburn, and they were just dynamic, young in-

dividuals who really wanted to, in some way, give back to the University, as well as make one of the biggest moments in their lives happen at Auburn.”

Although candidates for the wedding were not required to be Auburn alumni, Ponder and Oliver both graduated from Auburn in December 2010. Ponder received his degree in supply chain management and Oliver received hers in early childhood edu-cation.

The couple became engaged on Dec. 18, 2010. Slade and Pon-der both grew up in Lanett, Ala., where they live now.

“Our families have known each other, we’ve both known each other, for all our life,” Ponder said. “Our dads actually went to high school together.”

Ponder said he and Oliver had originally intended to be mar-ried in the church where they grew up.

“You know, it did cross our mind to have the wedding (in Au-burn), but we’re definitely glad to have it (here) now,” Ponder said.

Details for the wedding are still not complete, however.In the time leading up to the wedding, the Auburn communi-

ty will have the chance to vote online for various aspects of the wedding, including the bridal gown design, bridesmaid dress design, jewelry and reception menu.

“Having that takes a lot of the planning part off it and the stress of doing it, so we’re just happy for that part, and we’ll be glad to win anything,” Ponder said.

Whitman-McCall said several  local and national vendors have agreed to provide the products that will be voted on.

Voting for the bridal dress has already begun and will contin-ue until 8 p.m. Monday.

“We have three students from the advanced apparel design 

PHOTO COURTESY OF FLIPFLOPFOTO Slade Ponder and Katie Olliver sit on a ledge of Samford Hall in engagement pictures taken for the War Eagle Wedding.

Couple wins competition to marry on Samford Lawn

Alison McFerrinCOMMUNITY BEAT REPORTER

Nine seats need filling on the Auburn University Board of Trustees.

From a pool of 170 candi-dates, the trustee selection committee chose 35  to ad-vance to the interview stage.

Six  of  those  candidates hope to be chosen to serve for District 3–Lee County.

“It’s  a  big  responsibility,” said Denson Lipscomb, one of the District 3–Lee Coun-ty nominees.

The  other  nominees  in-clude Al Cook, Charles Pick, Joe Beckwith, Howard Porter and Robert Dumas.

“I do know that it will be an investment of time,” Por-ter said.

District 3–Lee County  is part of the group interview-ing  Monday.  The  selection committee will announce its selections in early February.

Each  candidate  brings something  different  to  the table.

Porter said the career ad-vice  from  a  former  mentor about getting into appraisal and real estate brought him where he is today.

“If you’re going to be suc-cessful in this, you’ve got to learn a little bit about engineering, a little bit about architecture, a little bit about con-struction, a little bit about banking … and I took that to heart,” Porter said.

He said he thinks the range of knowledge has led 

LIPSCOMB

PORTER

DUMAS

Lee County fights for Board of Trustees chair

Historic Civil War-era cemetery renewal

The Auburn Plainsman

Jenny SteeleWRITER

There’s more than one way to talk to a librarian.Ralph  Brown  Draughon  Library  has  adopted 

a service that allows students to send librarians questions via text message. Implemented Friday, the new service stems from the popularity of the library’s live chat, an instant-messaging program available on the library’s homepage.

“It’s about us helping the patron as much as we can,” said library assistant Cory Latham. “The pre-ferred method is face-to-face communication, but when you’re looking for convenience this is a great option.”

Latham, who has worked at the library for five years, said RBD began offering live chat a couple of years ago.

The new texting option began “before Christ-mas in a soft rollout, and we are just now publiciz-ing fully,” said Marcia Boosinger, associate dean for public services for University libraries. “We are us-ing a commercial product called Ask a Librarian, which is a different product than what we use for chat.”

Joe Wanders, graduate student in clinical men-tal health counseling, works at the RBD reference desk and answers both text and live chat questions.

“You send the question from your mobile phone, and then we receive them here at the reference desk,” Wanders said.

To  ask  a  question  via  text  message,  students must first send “AskAULib” to 66746. This prompts 

RBD offers newtext assistance

» See TRUSTEE, A2

» See TEXT, A2

» See STRIKE , A2

Home & Garden issue

Check out the special feature placed in the middle of our regular edition. It features ar-ticles on decor, sustainability, home crafts and more.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Local coffee shop owner sells storefront Toomer’s Coffee Company to close storefront after eight years. Owners plan to expand wholesale and roasting operations.

COMMUNITY // A5 EDITOR’S NOTE

Fate of Toomer’s rolling decided President Jay Gogue has ac-cepted the recommendation to replace the Toomer’s oaks with one or more large trees.

see A3

Page 2: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Campus A2 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

CRIME REPORTS FOR JAN. 19 – JAN. 22, 2011DUI ARRESTS IN THE CITY OF AUBURN JAN. 19 – JAN. 22, 2011

■ Kelsey M. Miller, 19, West Lafayette, INDuncan Drive at Po Davis DriveJan. 19, 3:18 a.m.

■ Lucy M. Williams, 19, Anniston, Ala.North Ross Street at East Glenn AvenueJan. 21, 2:53 a.m.

■ John S. Andress, 19, Durham, N.C.South College Street at Southparke DriveJan. 22, 1:56 a.m.

■ Andrew K. Morris, 21, Montgomery, Ala.North Gay StreetJan. 22, 2:49 a.m.

■ Joshua A. Nickerson, 26, Chapel Hill, N.C.US Highway 29 South at Lee Road 17Jan. 22, 8:38 p.m.

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EDITORIALMiranda dollarhide Editor-in-chief Madeline hall Managing editor Nikolas Markopoulos Copy editorNick Bowman Associate copy editorLaura Hobbs Assistant copy editorRebecca Croomes Photo editorChristen Harned Assistant photo Danielle Lowe Assistant photo Chelsea harvey Campus editorLane Jones Campus reporterBecky Hardy Campus reporterKate Jones Intrigue editorHayley Blair Intrigue reporterKristen Oliver Community editorAlison McFerrin Community reporter Coleman McDowell Sports editorRobert E. Lee Sports reporterPatrick Tighe Sports reporterSarah Newman Design team leaderRachel Suhs Design teamMelody Kitchens Online team leaderVictoria Rodgers Online team

Nick Bowman Opinions editor

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Stephanie Garner, Lorenzo Lane, Courtney Marinak, Stacey McMahan, Jasef Wisener

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The Auburn Plainsman

A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID

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Editor: 334.844.9021News: 334.844.9109

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MAILING ADDRESS255 Heisman Drive,

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a message with further in-structions from Mosio, the software company providing the service.

All RBD librarians have been taught how to respond to text messages.

“We had to teach the li-brarians the general inter-face, but it’s easy to pick up,” Wanders said.

The library homepage states that all questions, whether by email, live chat, text or phone call, will be an-swered within 48 hours.

“We monitor chat all the hours we have two or more people at the reference desk,” Boosinger said.

Inappropriate questions include asking librarians to research topics, forward messages to other staff mem-bers, place interlibrary loan

requests or obtain books for patrons, according to the li-brary website.

“The most common ques-tions the librarians receive on live chat are about avail-ability of resources,” Wanders said. “It’s made it more conve-nient, especially for distance education students.”

Additional information may be found in the “What’s New” section of the Auburn libraries homepage.

to his success and would serve him well as a trustee.

Lipscomb said his experi-ence working on other boards, like Auburn City Council, has given him the experience he needs to serve as a trustee.

“I think one of the biggest problems most boards have …you’ve got to encourage peo-ple in the committee to speak their mind during the meet-ing,” Lipscomb said. “There’s so many times when people sit there silent because they’re scared to say anything, then when you get out of the meet-ing, people start talking … Say what you believe, and no-body’s going to dislike you for

that.”Dumas also said back-

ground is a factor in his suit-ability for an Auburn trustee.

“I believe I have a back-ground in education and busi-ness, which I would certain-ly love to bring to the table for Auburn,” Dumas said.

Gov. Robert Bentley an-nounced Jan. 18 the nominees who would move on to the in-terview process.

Porter said he felt “sort of like the dog that catches the car: What now?”

Porter didn’t initially seek a trustee position, but a friend urged him to consider it.

“At first I blew it off and said it was not something that I thought I would be qualified for,” Porter said. “But he was

persistent.”Lipscomb said he has put

his name up to be on the board previously.

“I believe I’ve got the train-ing experience right now to as-sist the board and lead Auburn and help Auburn improve and go the direction I’d like to see it go,” said Lipscomb, who spe-cifically mentioned availabil-ity of scholarships. “I would like to make sure that we don’t get into the situation some of our neighboring schools have gotten in, and that is turning down qualified Alabama stu-dents that could come to Au-burn that may get displaced because of scholarships we’re giving to all over the country.”

STRIKE» From A1

program within the College of Human Sciences that actu-ally have designed the dress-es,” Whitman-McCall said. “We have those online at ware-aglewedding.com.

You can also go to the Ho-

tel at Auburn University and see half-scale models that the students have sewn and put together of the dresses, so if you wanted to be a little clos-er and get a close look at them, they’re on display over at the Hotel.”

Ponder and Oliver will be married May 26.

“Katie and Slade, from our point of view, they were just a fabulous couple,” Whitman-McCall said. “And they real-ly went above and beyond to promote themselves to win the wedding, and it was very evident in their numbers how many people voted for them.They’re just a great couple.”

TRUSTEE» From A1

Lane Jones CAMPUS BEAT REPORTER

Students returned to Au-burn this spring to find Ein-stein Bros. Bagels replaced by Chick-N-Grill—the only du-plicate restaurant on cam-pus.

Gina Groome, Tiger Din-ing marketing director, said students were not informed about the impending change because the decision was not reached until after final ex-ams.

Jacie Coressel, sophomore in political science, said she was shocked when she re-alized the switch had been made without notifying the students.

“I don’t feel like my voice was heard in the process,” Coressel said. “It was really unexpected. We came back over the break and didn’t know where Einstein’s had gone. There was really no ex-planation for it. I think Chick-N-Grill is great, but I think they should have gotten some sort of student input for that.”

Groome said the decision was a partnership between Tiger Dining and SGA.

“Toward the end of last se-mester, we were approached about the idea and we pre-sented it to SGA,” Groome said. “They liked it and they approved it, so we went for-ward.”

Einstein’s closed at 3 p.m. on weekdays, which Groome said limited the restaurant’s

ability to meet the lunch and dinner demand.

Coressel said she would have preferred extended hours, but Einstein’s food quality and service were worth the inconvenience.

“Every now and then you crave a bagel mid-after-noon around three and [Ein-stein’s was] closed,” Coressel said. “It never became an is-sue because the service was great and the people always seemed happy to be work-ing there. It was a break from the typical sandwich on sand-wich.”

Groome said the switch from Einstein Bros. Bagels to Chick-N-Grill was a response to the quad’s limited selec-tion.

“We wanted to have a dinner option in the quad,” Groome said. “It helps re-duce the peak lines in the Stu-dent Center. It still provides a breakfast option.”

Kirby Turnage, SGA pres-ident, said the decision cen-tered around concerns that Einstein’s wasn’t drawing enough traffic. Chick-N-Grill is trying to expand its influ-ence on campus after being introduced last fall.

“They’re more willing to work with the customer,” Turnage said. “Einstein’s has some national standards about how they do their dif-ferent chains. Chick-N-Grill is much more flexible since they’re a smaller-scale oper-

ation.”Turnage said the new loca-

tion provides Chick-N-Grill with better facilities and stu-dents in the quad with more dining choices. In the long term he expects the student center Chick-N-Grill will be replaced.

“It will eventually free up some Student Center space, which is prime real estate in dining culture,” Turnage said. “It would be my hope that there would not be two Chick-N-Grills within 100 yards of each other. That was my concern, and I expressed it to them.”

Groome said Chick-N-Grill plans to provide breakfast items in addition to the lunch and dinner menu.

“We know that there’s a de-mand for bagel sandwiches, so Chick-N-Grill is already working on those,” Groome said. “If students just tell us what they miss the most, Chick-N-Grill is more than willing to help provide any of those items.”

Turnage said although stu-dents will miss Einstein’s, the change will open opportuni-ties for expansion.

“I always enjoyed my din-ing experience at Einstein’s,” Turnage said. “I loved the blueberry muffin. It was re-ally good. It wasn’t so much a problem with Einstein’s as it was there was a greater op-portunity with Chick-N-Grill and an expanded menu.”

Einstein Bros. Bagels closes for second Chick-N-Grill

TEXT» From A1

Jan. 19 — Dewey StreetBurglary of one laptop comput-er, two flatscreen televisions, three bottles of liquor, one iPod docking station and one bottle of champagne reported.

Jan. 20 — Over Look CourtTheft of one stand-alone Ken-more dryer and one Kenmore washer reported.

Jan. 20 — Dumas DriveTheft of one refrigerator reported.

Jan. 21 — Lee Road 137Burglary of one desktop com-puter, one flatscreen monitor, six deodorant sticks, one pair of hair clippers, 50 DVDs, one clothing iron and various towels reported.

Jan. 21 — Bent Creek RoadTheft of one University of Alabama shirt, one red and black plaid shirt, one Columbia plaid shirt and one pair of Nike shoes reported.

Jan. 21 — East University DriveTheft of one Gucci purse and one Gucci watch reported.

Jan. 21 — Bent Creek RoadTheft of one pair of men’s con-verse shoes reported.

Jan. 22 — West Magnolia AvenueTheft of one trash can re-ported.

— Reports provided by Auburn Department of Public Safety

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Page 3: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Thursday, January 26, 2012 The Auburn Plainsman Campus A3

Andrew YawnWRITER

Few are aware that, among the livestock of the Auburn Veterinary School, there lies a cemetery older than Lee County, itself.

Now the Auburn Heritage Association wants to restore this landmark for future use.

The Pinetucket Cemetery, a Civil War-era cemetery owned by H.D. and Mary Nor-man is located in the cow pas-ture of the Wilson Beef Lab on Wire Road.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Federal Wire Road, the predecessor to its modern namesake, ran from Savannah to New Orleans. Along this road, in the fledgling town of Auburn, there sat a tabernacle and a cemetery.

Federal Wire Road no lon-ger exists, and the tabernacle is gone—in its place is the Au-burn Veterinary School. The cemetery remains hidden from plain sight by groves of trees on both sides and is now visited most frequently by cows and their handlers.

“They say we got ghosts over here,” H.D. said.

Each year the AHA, with the help of the Alpha Pi Ome-ga service fraternity, combats the weeds and overgrown brush. Mary, however, wants a permanent solution.

“We’re going to go and clean it off again,” Mary said. “We’re going to rebuild the rock wall. We’re going to re-sod around it and maintain it.”

The cemetery sits atop one of the highest points in Au-burn and provides visitors with a sweeping view of the town.

“It’s a very beautiful place,” H.D. said. “We want to make it memorable where people can walk in, sit down and have a picnic.”

Despite its panoramic view,

the cemetery has faded from memory of many Auburn res-idents because of its secluded location.

Joseph Warren, freshman in political science, has lived in Auburn for 10 years and had never heard of Pinetucket un-til recently.

“They ought to restore it, if only out of respect for … the people buried there,” Warren said.

The restoration is predicted to be finished within the next year and cost about $10,000, Mary said.

The burial ground is esti-mated to contain about 50 people, including two Confed-erate soldiers and Lewis “L.A.” Foster, a key contributor to the rise of Auburn both as a city and an educational haven.

Despite being outside city limits at the time, Foster es-tablished Pinetucket as a self-sustaining community with a store, church, school and nu-merous factories, including the brickworks mill that pro-duced the materials to build Samford Hall.

He is also the fourth-great uncle of Mary Norman.

Dating back to the 1860s,

the Pinetucket Cemetery pre-ceded the establishment of Lee County and was but a small slice of the 1,280-acre Pinetucket estate owned by Foster.

Five hundred of the cam-pus’ 1,900 acres were bought from the Foster family.

The cemetery was one of the last plots of land sold to the University, not leaving the Foster family until 1942. The use of the site as a hog pen and the subsequent desecra-tion of the graves eventually led Auburn to close the road and provide the Normans ac-cess.

Family cemeteries usual-ly only last about two to three generations, H.D. said. Pi-netucket has lasted for eight.

“Hopefully with my help and the help of the Auburn Heritage Association, which will hopefully go on long af-ter I’m gone, it will continual-ly be maintained,” Mary said. “I’ll probably be buried there.”

Despite the long tenure of the cemetery as the family grave, the Normans stress that it has been, and always will be, both a family and a communi-ty grave.

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Civil War-era cemetery marked for restoration

REBECCA CROOMES / PHOTO EDITORPinetucket Cemetery is located in the Wilson Beef Lab’s cow pasture on Wire Road. The Auburn Heritage Association has plans for a $10,000 restoration of the cemetery within the next year.

REBECCA CROOMES / PHOTO EDITORPinetucket Cemetery dates back to the Civil War. Every year it is cleaned by AHA and Alpha Pi Omega service fraternity.

AU VIEW

REBECCA CROOMES / PHOTO EDITOR

From right, Carol Linde, undeclared freshman, Krishane Suresh, sophomore in software engineering, and Mary Car-olyn Kind, sophomore in industrial engineering and French, take a break from studying to blow bubbles on the concourse Thursday afternoon.

Lane JonesCAMPUS BEAT REPORTER

U.S. News & World Report ranked Auburn’s online grad-uate programs in the publica-tion’s first Top Online Educa-tion Program Honor Roll.

“Their definition of an ex-cellent online degree pro-gram is one where strong stu-dent services and technolo-gy are provided, the faculty have good credentials, they use teaching practices that engage students and they are selective in admissions,” said Drew Clark, director of Insti-tutional Research and Assess-ment.

“If you got into the top group of at least three of those four criteria, then you get an honor roll ranking.”

Analyst Karen Battye said this is the first time U.S. News & World Report has ranked online programs.

“This is the first year they’ve done the surveys, so there was no real methodol-ogy provided to us prior to the survey,” she said. “It was just a blank survey with lots of questions, both qualitative and quantitative.”

Greg Ruff, director of en-gineering outreach and con-tinuing education, said his department provided infor-mation used to help deter-mine the ranking.

“They asked us to com-plete a 102-question sur-vey that was completed by this office, a couple people in engineering, communi-cation and marketing and some folks at the Universi-ty academic side, and that’s what the ratings were based

on,” Ruff said. “There were three schools that were hon-or schools, and Auburn was one of them.”

The online graduate pro-grams in the College of Ed-ucation ranked fifth in the teaching practices and stu-dent engagement category.

“The programs are highly interactive, and I think that’s one of the things that made our teaching practices be ranked so high,” said Susan Bannon, Learning Resourc-es Center director. “Our fac-ulty are engaged with their distance students just as they would be engaged with their face-to-face students.”

The graduate programs in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering were ranked first in admissions selectivity and fifth in student services and technology.

“Most of the students get-ting a graduate engineering degree are already at work,” Ruff said. “So they’re tak-ing the (online) course to en-hance their job status and

personal career and, in a lot of cases, to glean information about what they’re already doing. Having it delivered to them is an obvious plus rath-er than them having to come to campus.”

The technology behind Au-burn’s online graduate pro-grams was developed in the engineering department.

“The reason it was devel-oped here was that we tried a lot of different programs and none of them did what we wanted them to do,” Ruff said. “The main problems were the clarity of the images, the abil-ity to see with more than one camera and the ability for anybody to pick it up on any-thing they had. Most of the delivery systems could not deal with Macs. Ours does.”

Content is delivered through live streaming me-dia so students can access lectures online.

“Because it’s accessible with almost anybody’s sys-tem, we tested it to begin with with some soldiers in Afghanistan,” Ruff said. “We figured if it worked there, it would work anywhere.”

The technology allows for easier communication be-tween distance education students and professors.

“The programs are good because the technology that we use help the students not feel that they are so distant from campus,” Bannon said. “The students can receive the information from their pro-fessor; they can view the lec-tures; they can view the class activities as though they are here on campus.”

Online graduate programs make honor roll ranking

“The programs are good becaue the technology that we use help the students not feel that they are so distant from campus.”

—Susan Bannon DIRECTOR, LEARNING

RESOURCE CENTER

Page 4: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Campus A4 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

Callie WardWRITER

With a heart for music and an ear for the right note, pro-fessor Michael Pendowski is teaching Auburn students what music is all about.

Born and raised in Chicago, Pendowski attended North-western University in Evan-ston, Ill., where he earned his bachelor’s degree in music and his master’s in wind and or-chestral conducting.

In 2011 Pendowski received his doctorate of musical arts in jazz studies and contempo-rary media at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

He started out playing sax-ophone, but it wasn’t his idea to learn to play it, Pendows-ki said.

“My father picked it out when I was in grade school,” he said. “He liked the instru-ment. He was a big Tommy Dorsey fan.

“He said, ‘Here is the in-

strument that you’re going to play.’”

Pendowski said he also be-gan playing the flute and clari-net in college.

Pendowski worked in vari-ous career fields before arriv-ing at Auburn. He was a high school band director, wrote and produced more than 4,000 television commercials and composed and arranged music for 25 albums, films and other media.

Pendowski has performed with some of music’s greats, such as Aretha Franklin, Nat-alie Cole and Johnny Mathis.

Even though Pendowski has performed with a number of famous musicians, there is one musician who he wishes he could’ve played with.

“I’m sorry I never got to play with Buddy Rich,” Pen-dowski said. “I always wanted to play with him, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, unfortunately.”

McDonald’s, Budweiser, Disney, State Farm and the Madden football video game are just a few of Pendowski’s clients.

He also composed the mu-sic for the major motion pic-tures “Othello,” “Groundhog Day,” “Dead Presidents” and “Our Father.”

“(Othello) went on for three, four months and you had to be involved 12–14 hours a day on that project,” Pendowski said. “When you got done you looked and said, ‘I can’t believe we did this.’”

Pendowski has been teach-ing at the college level since 2001, and he started at Auburn in August.

He currently teaches music appreciation, jazz ensemble, jazz combo, the saxophone quartet and music methods.

Thomas Harbin, senior in piano performance and Span-ish, has Pendowski for jazz combo and explained his

teacher is well liked among his students.

“He is really dynamic and direct, very encouraging,” Har-bin said. “If you miss some-thing, he’ll help you and go back.”

Mark DeGoti, trumpet teacher at Auburn, said Pen-dowski is experienced, ener-getic and has an enormous amount of knowledge.

DeGoti said Pendowski’s students seem to love him.

“They like what he is doing with the program and have an overall respect for him,” DeGo-ti said.

Pendowski has worked in both the professional and ac-ademic world, but said he couldn’t pick one over the oth-er.

“Each has its own set of problems, but I think each is very rewarding in its own way,” he said. “It’s apples and orang-es. You always miss the thing you aren’t doing at the time.”

Professor known for collaboration with the greats

WEGL uses resources for variety of campus projects

CHRISTEN HARNED / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORMichael Pendowski has been teaching music at Auburn since last fall. He is known for performing with some of the nation’s most well-known artists, including Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis.

Becky HardyCAMPUS BEAT REPORTER

Auburn University’s WEGL radio station hopes to make an impact on Auburn and its community this spring.

WEGLfest is the station’s main spring event and is

scheduled to be held in April.“We want to have at least

two stages, bring in different bands, and it’ll be an all-day event,” said Natalie Stevenson, senior in communication and business and station manager for WEGL. “It’ll be a great way for people to relax, come out and enjoy some great music.”

WEGLfest is intended to make students aware of WEGL and the up-and-coming musi-cians it plays.

WEGL hosted a Halloween rave party in the fall that drew between 300 and 400 people, and broadcast associate Reed Alexander expects even more for the spring’s all-day event.

“Depending on how we pro-

mote it, it is possible we could get about 500-plus people,” Al-exander said.

Not only does WEGLfest help promote Auburn’s stu-dent-run radio station, it also helps raise money for local charities.

“In the past, the last time we did WEGLfest we did it in con-junction with the local food shelters, so we raised money for hunger,” Alexander said. “We’ve also tried to do our events with an organization.”

Earthfest, an annual event held at Auburn every spring, will also be covered by WEGL.

“We help them every year,” Stevenson said. “They asked us to emcee the event this

year.”At each event WEGL helps

with various technical and entertainment aspects of the show, including providing food for special events.

“We play music. We hook up sound for the bands that come in,” Alexander said. “We do this free of charge because we are nonprofit. During events the only thing that really has cost is food. Sometimes we will get Tiger Dining to cater the events.”

Along with events, WEGL’s budget is used to purchase equipment necessary to run the station.

“Most of our money goes to-ward equipment,” Alexander

said. “Other money goes to staff members, such as myself, or the secretary.”

The station must also buy radio licenses, hardware, of-fice supplies and pay tele-phone bills, Stevenson said.

“There is a lot of other as-pects that go behind the scenes for WEGL to run,” Ste-venson said.

One of WEGL’s overall goals is to connect Auburn’s cam-pus.

“We get all this stuff from all over campus … for events to promote for them, so we help people know what’s going on on campus,” Alexander said.

The station also helps pro-mote other organizations on

campus.Stevenson said WEGL runs

public service announce-ments to advertise events for organizations like Student Government Association, Uni-versity Program Council and the Glomerata.

Stevenson reiterated that any student or faculty mem-ber at Auburn can become a DJ for WEGL.

“I think people forget that we are here for the students,” Stevenson said. “Everything that we do is student run and student operated. We’re here for you, so if you need some-thing you can come to us, and we are absolutely more than willing to help you.”

This week, The Auburn Plainsman continues its examination of Student Activity Projects

Page 5: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

A5

» See PEOPLE A6

Community

Hope BurlesonWRITER

Eleven years ago Jon Deason saw the need for a breakfast restaurant in downtown Auburn, and he ful-filled it.

Deason, who graduated from Au-burn in 1999 with a degree in ho-tel and restaurant management, opened Big Blue Bagel in Auburn in May 2000.

However, his road to a success-ful business was not a convention-al one.

“I left Auburn when I was 24 and still had two classes left to graduate,” Deason said.

He moved back to Birmingham and worked for his father for three years when his mother was diag-nosed with cancer.

Before his mother passed away, Deason came back to Auburn to fin-ish his last two classes and gradu-ate—something he wanted to do for her.

“After my mom passed away, I approached my dad about open-ing the restaurant,” Deason said. “I was originally going to be the silent partner, but, as you can see, it didn’t quite work out that way. So, it’s just me now.”

After 10 years of successful busi-ness in Auburn, Deason opened a second Big Blue Bagel location in his hometown, Birmingham, in Jan-

uary 2010.Contrary to rumors over the past

few years, he is not selling the Au-burn location.

“I considered it about two years ago,” Deason said, “but not any-more.”

He is living full time in Auburn again after commuting between Au-burn and Birmingham.

“Auburn always felt like home,” Deason said.

Deason said Auburn has a special,

small town feel.“I always tell everybody Auburn’s

kind of like Mayberry, everybody knows everybody,” Deason said. “I’ve been working between here and Bir-mingham for the last two years, so when I come back and the guy from the barber shop comes down and says he misses you or he’s glad to see you, it’s nice.”

Deason describes himself as hon-

Thursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Community

Ethan BernalWRITER

After eight years of successful busi-ness, Sandy and Trish Toomer, own-ers of Toomer’s Coffee Company, have decided it’s best to part ways with their retail shop.

The couple has instead chosen to focus on expanding their wholesale and roasting operations.

“We’re looking at this point of our life,” Trish said. “How do we want to spend the next 15–20 years? Do we want to be tied down to a retail loca-tion, or do I want to be a little freer to do some things that really my heart is pulling towards?”

Toomer’s sells beans to coffee shops across the U.S., including five in Alabama. Because of the high de-mand for Toomer’s beans, Sandy has spent more time roasting and less in the retail shop.

“I haven’t been there one day this week,” he said. “I used to work here every day in the mornings in the shop, but what we’ve found is I can’t. Our roasting has taken on such a crit-ical mass to the point that it’s like ev-ery day we’re getting these big orders

of coffee.”As a result, Trish has been left run-

ning the storefront.“Retail is very time consuming.”

Sandy said. “It’s six days a week, 12–14 hours a day. She’s left here all the time with the shop.”

The Toomers opened in Opelika in August 2004, but moved their coffee shop a year later to its current loca-tion at 1100 S. College St.

“We built the shop ourselves, so there’s a lot of memories,” Trish said.

Before opening Toomer’s Coffee, the couple trained at Moody Avia-tion from 1990–93 and later volun-teered at Mission Aviation Fellow-ship, where Trish served as hospital-ity coordinator.

“One of my main areas of responsi-bility was to handle all of the in-coun-try arrangements for work teams that would come down,” Trish said.

Sandy was a missionary pilot and transported coffee beans from a rural city in Ecuador.

“I’d fly out, load 1000 pounds of cof-fee on, fly it back, we’d unload it and

Local coffee shop owners selling storefront

City seeks citizen input for 2012

Kids’ art program connects Auburn students to community

Alison McFerrinCOMMUNITY BEAT REPORTER

Auburn citizens will have the op-portunity for their voices to be heard in the community when the 2012 Cit-izen Survey is distributed during the second week of February.

“It has a series of questions for them to answer, and it also has an open-ended question,” said David Dorton, director of public affairs.

Dorton called the survey a report card from the citizens.

“The way we use it and the reason we do it is just as another avenue to get citizen input,” he said.

Although other avenues for com-munication between citizens and the city are open—including city council meetings and open door policies for both the mayor and city manager—the annual survey allows the city to gather information and find out the community’s opinion on a variety of issues.

“It’s designed to be a scientific sur-vey so that there’s some scientific va-lidity to the results,” Dorton said.

Citizens’ responses are analyzed and a report is prepared by ETC In-stitute, a market research firm in Olathe, Kan.

“We’re shooting for 600 complet-ed surveys altogether,” said Chris Ta-tham, ETC executive vice president.

The firm will send1500 surveys to addresses in the Auburn city limits. Once all the surveys are out, ETC will make phone calls to confirm people have received their surveys and of-fer them the option to complete it by phone.

“It takes about 4–5 weeks to ad-minister the survey,” Tatham said.

“The administration of the survey will be pretty much completed by the end of February. We’ll then analyze the results and prepare the report in March.”

Dorton said the report will be pre-sented to the city during a regularly scheduled city council work session prior to a Tuesday city council meet-ing.

Tatham said the focus will be on pointing out trends from previous surveys and identifying emerging is-sues for the city.

“There are questions that ask about … specific projects,” Dorton said.

Skateboard parks have been fea-tured on the survey for the past cou-ple years.

According to Dorton, the results are used to help develop the city’s budget, adjust operations and set goals.

The survey covers a number of top-ics, including traffic flow and public safety.

“It’s a five-point Likert scale, from very dissatisfied to very satisfied,” said Chris Vessell, public information officer, “but I think there’s also a pri-ority rating that they also match up.”

In other words, citizens can distin

Survey infoThe 2012 citizen survey will be distrib-uted the second week of February. The survey includes questions about spe-cific projects and is used to develop the budget.

Kendall WangmanWRITER

The Auburn CityKids Art Program is a free visual arts program for chil-dren ages 7–13.

The art classes will be every Thurs-day at the Jan Dempsey Community Arts Center from 4:30–5:30 p.m. be-ginning Feb. 2.

According to the City of Auburn website, the program gives children “the opportunity to learn in an intel-lectually stimulating and creative en-vironment while developing mean-ingful relationships with peers and mentors.”

Chichi Lovett, assistant profes-sor of the arts at Auburn, is the pro-gram’s director.

“I’m trying to make sure that every child has an opportunity to the arts,” Lovett said.

The program is also offered as an elective for all majors at the Univer-sity.

Lovett said her college students will spend about 30 hours of their class time with the children each se-mester.

“One does not have to be an art major to be involved with the pro-gram,” Lovett said.

Allison Gair, junior in pre-elemen-tary education and active Boys & Girls Clubs volunteer, is looking to get involved with the program.

“I want to teach the second grade, so I think the program would be a great way to introduce art to kids, as well as give me the skills necessary to teach it,” Gair said.

CityKids is a partnership with Au-burn Arts Association, the City of Au-burn and the University art depart-ment.

“My students have the opportuni-ty to interact with the community,” Lovett said.

Donna Young, of Behind The Glass, graduated from Auburn with a de-

gree in art.“It’s wonderful to hear that the

University is taking the initiative to not only get kids interested the arts, but to also get more involved in the community,” Young said.

Auburn CityKids began several years ago, but went on hiatus and is now being revived.

“When I began the program there was not the emphasis on civic en-gagement,” Lovett said. “I just knew I wanted to bring art to the kids. I’m looking forward to it growing.”

The program has gained signif-icant popularity and involvement since it first started.

“There are 30 children registered now, and we have a waiting list,” Lovett said. “We’re expecting 40 chil-dren in total.”

Auburn CityKids strives to reach out to all children in the surround-ing area.

“In order to ensure that all of the

children in Auburn have an oppor-tunity, information was sent to all of the schools,” Lovett said. “Project Up-lift and the Boys and Girls Club were also included with program recruit-ment.”

Lovett promotes art as a crucial component for education.

“Studies show that art is not only beneficial for academic success, but emotional well-being as well,” Lovett said. “It’s a pity because art programs are usually the programs being cut first.”

The program exposes the children to all different forms of art, includ-ing painting, sculpture, theater and dance.

“We took field trips to the muse-um, theater and even the ballet in Montgomery,” Lovett said.

Lovett said past participants from Auburn CityKids have gone on to study art or be the college students involved with the program.

Jon Deason serves up family feel at downtown Auburn eatery

REBECCA CROOMES / PHOTO EDITOR Jon Deason, owner of Big Blue Bagel on South College Street, grabs a banana to slice up for fruit salad. Deason also owns a Big Blue Bagel in Birmingham.

AUBURN CITYKIDS ART

PROGRAMWho:- Children ages 7-13- College students of any major can earn elective hours for helping

What:Program designed to give children an intellectual and creative envi-ronment while developing peer and mentor relationships

Where:Jan Dempsey Community Arts Center

When:Every Thursday from 4:30-5:30 p.m. beginng Feb. 2

DANIELLE LOWE / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORMeredith Harbison, a barista at Toomer’s Coffee, makes coffee for a customer Wednesday. The coffee shop, located on South College, is for sale after seven years of business so owners Sandy and Trish Toomer can pursue other life dreams.

» See SURVEY A6

» See COFFEE A6

Page 6: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Community A6 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

est, trustworthy and some-one who doesn’t take him-self too seriously. His employ-ees have even higher praise for him.

“He’s very laid back,” said Alicia Degroot, senior in edu-cation, who has worked at Big Blue Bagel for four and a half years.

It also seems that he is tak-ing notes from the barber a few doors down whenever it comes to making people feel welcome.

“He knows everybody,” said Sara Jane Moorer, 18, who has worked at Big Blue Bagel for a year. “He personally greets ev-

eryone.”“Also, he probably has the

biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met,” said Degroot. “He genuinely cares. He’s one of the best people I know.”

Deason said there are chal-lenges to being a small-busi-ness owner.

“It takes a lot of hard work,” Deason said. “For the first four or five years, I was here every day. I missed a lot of weddings and stuff that made people not talk to me for awhile.”

Big Blue Bagel has attracted attention across the state over the years because of several of its dishes.

The Alabama Tourism De-parment named one of Dea-son’s sandwiches and most popular sides one of “100 dish-

es to eat in Alabama before you die.”

Besides running a success-ful business, Deason likes camping and canoeing.

His love of nature instilled environmental awareness in

him, which he has integrated into Big Blue Bagel.

“We recycle a lot of card-board and plastic and any-thing else we can that the City will take,” Deason said. “And we use no bottled drinks, not even for orange juice.”

He also uses biodegrad-able cups and boxes, which are more expensive, but worth the effort.

Deason admits that one thing he is looking forward to now that he’s back in Auburn is the more access he has to sports, specifically football and basketball.

But sports aren’t the only thing he’s looking forward to.

“I actually have a little daughter on the way,” he said smiling ear-to-ear.

Jessa PeaseWRITER

On Jan. 18, Internet users who frequent websites like Reddit, Google and Wikipe-dia found themselves in a protest against the Stop On-line Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

SOPA, in the House, and PIPA, in the Senate, are two bills that were proposed to increase the capability of the U.S. government to fight In-ternet-based piracy by black-listing the IP addresses of websites that link to other websites that host pirated material.

Dustan Jones, senior in industrial design, noticed Wikipedia’s blackout and said he doesn’t support of the bills.

“Well, quite frankly, we would be pissed,” Jones said. “The Internet has become a huge part of our lives and I think most of us would like to keep it that way.

“This legislation could bring about mass shutdowns of sites like Google and Face-book just because they are connected to piracy sites.”

Some people, like Asim Ali, information technology specialist at Auburn, believe the bills came out of nowhere and were proposed without proper research being done beforehand.

“I think the most concern-ing aspect of the bills that is not getting a lot of attention is the fact that, historically, legislation has always been written as a result of research or as a result of discussions at a think-tank level,” Ali said.

Ali said the legislation for copyright protection wasn’t being written by the right, unbiased people.

“Here we have legislation being written by people who should not be writing (it),” he said. “It is written from the point of view of greed rath-er than the point of view of access and sharing infor-mation, which is the whole point of the Internet.”

Sites including Wikipedia and Google directed their visitors to online petitions the day of the protest, gath-ering more than 7 million sig-natures and prompting Con-gress to announce Friday it was shelving both bills.

According to Ali, if passed,

SOPA and PIPA would have virtually shut down websites like Google, Wikipedia, You-tube and Facebook for dis-playing copyrighted mate-rial.

“The biggest threat would be to innovation, to how in-formation is shared,” Ali said. “The power of the Internet is that it gives regular people … in the middle of nowhere the ability to be heard.”

Local attorney Ben Hand predicted the noise com-ing from the American peo-ple could be enough to send SOPA and PIPA back to the writing block.

“I’ve noticed that a lot of congressmen have backed off, especially with Wikipe-dia going black and several of the other sites,” Hand said. “The possibilities of these be-ing passed are greatly dimin-ished. I think there is enough protection in the copyright laws that exist to protect copyright law. “

Hand said he doesn’t be-lieve further legislation than was exists today is necessary to protect copyrights.

“I think most of these bills have some very scary aspects to it.” he said. “I think the laws that currently exist are certainly sufficient to crimi-nally prosecute users and to slowly pursue ramifications if you need to.”

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fly back out,” Sandy said. “I’d do like five flights a day until I got all of their coffee in. About two weeks later I’d come back and pick up more.”

After nearly a decade of serving customers, the Toom-ers are ready to enjoy some ex-tra free time and embark on new challenges.

“There are some other things I’d like to do within our church, within the communi-ty and with family that I can do once I’m able to transition out of the retail,” Trish said. “It just seems like the right time. We always kind of knew when the time would be.”

“He probably has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. He genuinely cares. He’s one of the best people I know.”

—Alicia DegrootSENIOR IN EDUCATION AND

EMPLOYEE AT BIG BLUE BAGEL

Anti-SOPA, PIPAIn response to the bills, many popular websites protested. Wiki-pedia blacked out their site with a link for visitors to contact their rep-resentatives. Google blacked out their logo and included a link to an online petition. Other sites that protested included Reddit, Craigs List, Word Press and more.

guish between what they believe to be high- and low-priority community issues.

The 2011 Citizen Survey re-vealed that citizens felt the city should focus on improv-ing the school system. Citi-zens’ priorities for public safe-ty were to enforce speed lim-its in neighborhoods and pre-vent crime.

These results are just the beginning of the 200-page re-port the city receives, com-plete with maps, tables and analyses matrices.

“(We’re) just asking folks, if they get a survey, if they would just fill it out and participate,” Dorton said. “That is a way to make your voice heard in gov-ernment.”

Page 7: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

A7Thursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Community

Opinions

Mailing Address

Auburn Student CenterSuite 1111HAuburn, AL 36849

Contact

Phone 334–844–4130Email [email protected]

PolicyThe opinions of The Auburn Plainsman staff are restricted to these pages. These unsigned editorials are the majori-ty opinion of the 9-member editorial board and are the of-ficial opinion of the newspaper. The opinions expressed in columns and letters represent the views and opinions of their individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the Auburn University student body, faculty, administration or Board of Trustees.

SubmissionsThe Auburn Plainsman welcomes letters from students as well as from faculty, administrators, alumni and those not affiliated with the University. Letters must be submitted be-fore 4:30 p.m. on the Monday for publication. Letters must include the author’s name, address and phone number for verification, though the name of the author may be with-held upon request. Submission may be edited for gram-mar and/or length.

The Editorial Board

THE PLAINSMAN POLL

Vote at theplainsman.com

US race relations progress beyond EU

I’ve been thinking a lot about diver-sity and an individual’s responsibility to accept, or I might go so far as to say one’s responsibility to discover, other cultures.

The majority of my life was pretty sheltered. Until this past summer, I’d never left the continental U.S. I spent last summer studying at an Italian language school in Taormina, Italy. To say it was a culture shock would be the understatement of the century.

Studying at a language school means exposure to many cultures. We had classes with people from Ger-many, Switzerland, France, Australia and England. It was fascinating to see the differences between the Ameri-can students and the other English-speaking students. Even our cultures were vastly different.

I took a class here in Auburn be-fore the trip called Italy in Black and White. It was a film class designed to exhibit the racial prejudices in Italy. Here’s the breakdown: Italians hate Sicilians for bringing in Africans, who they hate even more. Throughout his-tory, Italians have idolized the idea of being “white” and considered them-selves to be “white.” The irony is that many Americans would probably dis-agree.

The Italian prejudice against Af-ricans has a long history that still resides today in a very real, tangi-ble way. While there, I witnessed the struggles of minorities in Italy. Think-ing about it now, it resonates with me how far our own country has moved to overcome similar prejudices.

I bought a pair of sunglasses in Taormina from a man who was from Ghana. He sold his sunglasses on the side of the road. We struck up a long conversation with him, and he was very interested in our life in America. When we asked him if he missed his home he just laughed and shrugged.

I bought a purse from anoth-er street vender in Florence. Vend-ers lined the streets with purses laid out on trash bags. I saw him and his friends shortly after, frantically shov-ing purses into the trash bags as the polizia drove by.

The purpose of this column isn’t simply to be an exposé of the racial is-sues of some far off land. It’s to high-light the leaps and bounds I think our own country had made. Study-ing abroad was an amazing experi-ence that taught me to recognize the strengths and struggles of another culture and in turn recognize them in my own.

Diversity ought to be in the defini-tion of American. I’ve seen a nation of people who truly look alike. I stood out like a sore thumb. That doesn’t happen as often here.

One of the locals in Taormina told me about the money he was saving for a trip to “America.” He wanted to fly into Atlanta and see “the big fish tank.” I remember laughing and tell-ing him he was sure to be disappoint-ed in the city. To me, it’s not all that great.

“Your life is a dream,” he said, quite seriously. “America is a dream.”

I think he taught me one of the biggest lessons I learned studying abroad. I spent the summer in wide-eyed wonder at their culture, but I also learned to value my own. If you don’t care about experiencing new people and places, that’s fine. But don’t undervalue your own culture while you neglect others’. This is a dream.

SOPA teaches valuable lessons about politicians

While we support copyright

protections, we are also concerned about websites being shut down without their day in court … ”

—Rand PaulREPUBLICAN SENATOR, KENTUCKY

“QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Kisten [email protected]

We’re happy to see SOPA and PIPA have been shelved. They were imperfect and poorly written bills that, because of their vague language and questionable defi-nitions, were certain to be abused.

There was a good deal of con-fusion about whether a website based in the U.S., but which also has servers overseas or a foreign domain name, would be consid-ered domestic or foreign.

The bill also obligated owners to monitor their sites constant-ly to keep copyrighted material or links to such material from be-ing posted again after the original complaint is made to the Depart-ment of Justice.

Worst of all was the lack of due process for site owners. A com-plaint from any copyright holder could be quickly acted on, allow-ing the government to blacklist—and for all intents and purposes kill—a site.

These bills were simply heavy-handed disasters crafted with no concern for the thousands of sites that make the Internet such a powerful tool.

This is not to say we oppose all copyright legislation. We believe copyrights can be enforced online without taking a flamethrower to the whole of the Internet.

We also believe it should be enforced. Intellectual proper-

ty is just as important as physi-cal property. The automobile, the iPod and the lightbulb were ideas before they were things.

Copyright holders have a right to protect what they created, and to such an end they must be en-couraged. An idea has no value to its creator if he or she doesn’t have the power to protect it.

We recognize the fragile nature of the Internet. It’s a new and em-powering technology beyond any-thing the world has ever known. Never before have the people of the world had the means to defy distance and time to instantly communicate with one another. Keeping the Internet free should be a concern equal to copyright protection in importance.

We can happily say this dodged bullet taught us, and should have taught you, a couple of things.

The first and most obvious is that politicians, like a child, re-quire the constant observation of the people. It’s no rare thing to find a politician changing his or her mind on principles and cam-paign promises. If we slack on oversight, we’ll find ourselves ser-vants to our servants.

Who knows—they could even stray far enough to sponsor a bill that transforms the free and won-derful Internet into a frustrating, beauracratized line at the DMV.

Liberals and conservatives alike supported these legisla-tive catastrophies. Small-govern-ment conservative Marco Rubio from Florida and Alabama’s own Jeff Sessions supported PIPA be-fore the blackout. In the House and Senate a host of Democrats and Republicans supported the bills. It doesn’t matter what a pol-itician says. What matters is what he or she does, and to know that you must keep your eye on them.

The second is that the peo-ple are powerful not just in their voting, but in their control of their representatives. The black-out resulted in thousands of calls and letters and emails descend-ing upon Washington from citi-zens concerned about their free-dom—and Washington respond-ed. We hope Americans now un-derstand the power and respon-sibility they’ve always had in their hands.

Americns must understand it. We no longer have the luxury of si-lent majorities, which can only be a majority on voting day. Through the rest of the year their silence is music to the ears of irresponsi-ble and short-sighted politicians. Outside of election season a silent majority is no different than an army of useful idiots.

Never be hesitant to phone Washington, America.

The movie about black Tuskegee Airmen in WWII titled “Red Tails” is currently making the rounds.

This story and movies have been around a long time—with the current movie by George Lucas of Star Wars fame spending $58 million for the re-make.

Is the movie factual and accu-rate? In its long, arduous effort to release a successful movie, Holly-wood has played fast and loose with the facts. The airmen did see signifi-cant combat in Italy and North Africa in WWII. Slightly over 1,000 trained in Tuskegee with 445 seeing combat as the 332nd Fighter Group. Their mission was to escort heavy bomb-ers into combat. Overall the unit did shoot down a total of 109 ene-my planes. Yet, their records reflect that they were the only WW II unit to have actually lost more planes than they shot down! The Tuskegee group had no aces—five kills or more. Com-paratively, Maj. Richard Bong alone claimed 40 enemy planes shot down.

Perhaps the most glaring misstate-ment about the “Red Tails” is that they never lost a plane they were es-corting. This is simply amazing to the point of being laughable. The 332nd unit records document pilots wit-nessing 25 escorted bombers being shot down. A fairly complete and ac-curate essay covering the Tuskegee Airmen was published in 2008 by Dr. David Haulman.

The movie industry is notorious for embellishing the truth to max-imize patrons, but it is unfair to no-table groups as the Tuskegee Airmen not to state their story factually.

James AndersonTalladega, Ala.

Your view: ‘Red Tails’ misleading on airmen’s history

Our View

Miranda DollarhideEDITOR

Madeline Hall MANAGING EDITOR

Kristen OliverNEWS EDITOR

Chelsea HarveyCAMPUS EDITOR

Kate JonesINTRIGUE EDITOR

Coleman McDowellSPORTS EDITOR

Nick BowmanOPINIONS EDITOR

Nik MarkopoulosCOPY EDITOR

Rebecca CroomesPHOTO EDITOR

For religious and ideological reasons the government in Iran for the past 30 years has denied members of the Baha’i religion the right to attend any Iranian institu-tion of higher education.

It seems the Iranian govern-ment also forbids other students to take courses in higher educa-tion if they have joined organiza-tions, expressed views or engaged in activities that are critical of the government.

The government has also tried to restrict instruction in several fields in the social sciences and in the humanities. Moreover, faculty have been fired in Iran for ideolog-ical reasons, thus denied their ac-ademic freedom.

Without any means of receiv-ing higher education, the Baha’i Community in Iran created The Baha’i Institution for Higher Ed-

ucation in 1987, described by no-bel laureates Archbishop Des-mond Tutu and President of East Timor Jose Ramos-Horta in their open letter addressed to the aca-demic community as “a decentral-ized network of teachers deliver-ing college-level classes in kitch-ens and living rooms across Iran.”

The Iranian government in May 2011 attacked the BIHE and has raided more than 30 homes. In so doing they have jailed sever-al of the BIHE administrators and faculty, some of whom are still in prison for delivering higher edu-cation to Baha’i youth.

The Baha’i Club on campus wants to initiate a dialogue in or-der to raise awareness of the im-portance of defending Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that education is the inalienable right

of every human person. As a part of nationwide initia-

tive called “Education under Fire” (which has started conversations around university campuses and communities to raise awareness and bring forth specific actions defending the fundamental right to education), this campaign now comes to Auburn.

To this end the Baha’i Club, in collaboration with the Of-fice of Multicultural Affairs, in-vites students and faculty to at-tend a screening of the documen-tary film, “Education under Fire,” followed by a conversation to be held March 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Student Center Ballroom.

Richard Penaskovicprofessor, religious studies

adviser, Auburn Baha’i Club

Your view: Tehran persecuting Iranian followers of Bahá’u’lláh

Page 8: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Community A8 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

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Page 9: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Sports B1Thursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Sports

Basketball hits the road

» Page B3

Coleman McDowellSPORTS EDITOR

When Scot Loeffler was named Auburn’s new offensive coordinator, he got a congratulatory phone call. Pretty standard procedure—except the caller was two-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady.

“It was a great conversation and he goes, ‘Scot, you got one of the best jobs in America. Go be yourself. Go be who you are, and go keep being a team guy and you’ll help Auburn,’ Loeffler said. “And that’s all I want to do is I want to help Auburn and keep the traditions that have been in-stilled at this place for several years.”

Loeffler, 37, began his career as a graduate assistant at the Universi-ty of Michigan after playing quarter-back there from 1993–96. Brady was starting quarterback for the Wolver-ines during the ‘98 and ‘99 seasons.

Loeffler has 14 years of experience coaching in college and the NFL.

After leaving Michigan for a two-year stint at Central Michigan Uni-versity beginning in 2000, he re-

turned to Ann Arbor to coach quar-terbacks for the next seven years un-der coach Lloyd Carr.

A one-year position with the De-troit Lions led him to his first taste of the Southeastern Conference with the Florida Gators.

At Florida, Loeffler was the posi-tion coach for one of the most deco-rated players in college football his-tory: Tim Tebow.

Loeffler took the offensive coordi-nator position at Temple University following the 2010 season, and the Owls finished the season seventh in total rushing yards, averaging over 250 yards per game.

Loeffler has coached spread, pro-style and power-running offenses during his career.

”I like it all,” Loeffler said. “We’re going to take our players, we are go-ing to assess exactly what they do best, and then we are going to form that offense around them.”

Loeffler’s track record has many regarding him as a quarterback guru.

He’s coached Brady, Tebow, Brian Griese, Chad Henne, Drew Henson and John Navarre—each of whom was drafted and started in the NFL.

Loeffler will have talent to work with at the position for the 2012 sea-son: returning are junior Clint Mose-ley and sophomore Kiehl Frazier, neither of whom appeared to solid-ify their role as starting quarterback last season.

Also, true freshman Zeke Pike has enrolled early and is currently taking classes.

“(Loeffler) is really great in relat-ing with players and being able to—which was one of the most impor-tant things to me—develop a quar-terback,” Chizik said.

Loeffler’s job was made easier with the return of offensive weapons Onterio McCalebb, Philip Lutzen-kirchen and Emory Blake, but the fate of Auburn’s offense rests on the shoulders of whoever is under cen-ter for the Tigers.

Loeffler’s former boss believes any of Auburn’s quarterbacks will learn from him.

”He’s a great teacher,” Carr said. “There’s not a QB out there that wouldn’t enjoy playing for him.”

TOP PROSPECT LIST:

QB – Jeremy Liggins

WR – Stefon Diggs

WR – Cordarrelle Pat-terson

WR – Ricardo Louis

OT – Avery Young

OT – Jordan Diamond

OT – Menelik Watson

OG – Alex Kozan

DE – Arik Armstead

DE – Leonard Williams

DT – Eddie Goldman

LB – Kwon Alexander

CB – Ronald Darby

CB – Deon Bush

Patrick TigheSPORTS BEAT REPORTER

The annual Braves Country Car-avan, a meet and greet with former and current players and coaches from the Atlanta baseball team, will roll through Auburn on its tour of the Southeast.

Academy Sports & Outdoors is hosting the regional Caravan, which will stop at the store’s Bent Creek Road location Jan. 29 from 3–4 p.m.

Braves players who will be present for autographs include former Au-burn players Tim Hudson and Da-vid Ross, along with Eric Hinskie, Ty-ler Pastornicky, Scott Fletcher and Braves radio announcer and MLB Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton.

The Braves’ fan fest that preced-ed the Caravan—which is in its third year—took place at Turner Field, but Braves Senior Vice President Der-ek Schiller spearheaded the effort to take the fan appreciation series on the road in order to reach the largest percentage of the fan base possible.

“Some version of the Caravan has been around since the Braves have been in Atlanta,” said a Braves spokes-person. “The Caravans have a lot of history; they have evolved over the years. Instead of having 25 players on one day, we will have three or four players every single day.”

The Caravan will travel through five states and stop in more than 25 cities, from Charlotte, N.C., to SEC towns like Athens, Ga., and Knoxville, Tenn.

“We try to get headliner guys on every single trip,” the spokesperson said. “On every trip there are always future stars. Last year one of the cit-ies had first baseman Freddie Free-

Braves rolling into Academy

Loeffler named new offensive coordinator

Barbee’s begging pays off

CURRENT COMMITMENT LIST:

QB – Zeke Pike

RB – Javon Robinson

WR – Jaquay Wil-liams

TE – Ricky Parks

TE – Darrion Hutch-erson

OT – Shane Callahan

OT – Patrick Miller

OG – Robert Leff

DT – Tyler Nero

DE – Gimel President

OLB – Javiie Mitchell

OLB – Cassanova McKinzy

CB – T.J. Davis

CB – Jonathan Jones

CB – Josh Holsey

PREVIOUS RECRUITING CLASSES:

2011 – Scout No.2, Rivals No. 7

2010 – Scout No. 6, Rivals No. 4

2009 – Scout No. 16, Rivals No. 19

Coleman McDowellSPORTS EDITOR

There’s no doubt Auburn is in a transition stage.

From replacing both coordina-tors to having the face of the program transfer—this off-season has been busy.

It doesn’t stop now, however, with the Feb. 1 National Signing Day less than a week out.

It’s the day when 18-year-olds will hold the collective attention of col-lege football fans, analysts and coach-es across the nation.

Last year, Auburn closed NSD with

a flurry of commitments, climbing the charts to No. 2 overall.

Scout.com currently ranks the Ti-gers’ recruiting class No. 20 with just days to go, but Auburn is poised to move up the charts with several high-profile recuits strongly considering coming to the Plains.

National Signing DayPHOTO COURTESY OF THE OPELIKA–AUBURN NEWS

Valley High School star Erique Florence unzips his jacket to reveal an Auburn tie on National Signing Day last year.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OPELIKA–AUBURN NEWSFlorence, who grew up 26 miles from Auburn, chose Auburn over Alabama and USC.

The 12th win of the season is rarely a milestone for a basketball team. But for Auburn, it was a big one.

With 11 games remaining on the schedule, the Tigers have surpassed their win total for the entire 2010–11 season.

Slowly but surely, the Auburn bas-ketball team is figuring things out. Coach Tony Barbee has implored the team to play inspired defense, and for the past stretch of SEC games, they have listened.

Following the team’s embarrass-ing loss at Vanderbilt where the Ti-gers scored a paltry 35 points, Auburn bounced back with solid performanc-es at the next four conference match-ups, going 2–2 in that stretch.

Barbee has begged for someone on the roster to step up and become a “catalyst.”

Saturday, junior guard Frankie Sullivan responded to the challenge. Looking healthy for the first time all season, Sullivan scored 14 of Au-burn’s 24 points in the first half and kept them in the game, positioning Auburn to make a 31–10 second-half run.

This team has talent, and they’ve recently begun to play to their poten-tial.

Junior guard Josh Wallace start-ed the South Carolina game ahead of sophomore Varez Ward, who was mired in a shooting slump, and did precisely what was necessary for Au-burn to win that day.

He constantly pressured the Game-cocks’ primary ball-handler, Bruce El-lington, and pushed the tempo of the

BEST MOMENT OF NATIONAL SIGNING DAY 2011:

Auburn was targeting defensive tackle Gabe Wright and running back Isaiah Crowell, but they both kept

Georgia and Auburn waiting until the final day for their decisions. After Crowell used a bulldog puppy

to announce he would be signing with Georgia, many thought Wright would follow him to Athens to

complete the “dream team.”

Instead, Wright donned an Auburn hat with “Nick Who?” embroidered across the tiger-eyes logo on the back. Wright explained the phrase was not a shot at

the coach of Auburn’s arch-rival, but a bold prediction that he would make Auburn fans forget

Nick Fairley.

WORST MOMEMT OF NATIONAL

SIGNING DAY 2011:

Five-star offen-sive lineman Cyrus

Kouandjio com-mitting to Auburn. What’s bad about a 6-foot-7-inch,

322-pound lineman committing to your

school?

When he doesn’t sign the scholar-ship papers after the commitment

and flips to your ri-val three days later. Kouandjio did just that when he ver-bally committed to play at Auburn, but ultimately signed

with Alabama.

» See BRAVES, B2

» See BASKETBALL, B2

TODD VAN EMSTNew offensive coordinator Scot Loef-fler answers questions during his intro-ductory press conference.

TWEET US!@PlainsmanSports

Coleman [email protected]

Page 10: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Sports B2 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

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man and pitchers Craig Kim-brel and Johnny Venters. At the time they weren’t that well known.”

Membership costs $29.99 including a special member-ship card and an invitation to a “Braves Country” game with a pregame parade honoring all the members.

Hudson and Ross attended Auburn’s Home Run Derby last Halloween weekend that ben-efited the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Lee County and the Hudson Family Foundation.

“Our goal is to make this into a premier fundraising event for both the Auburn baseball team and the Hud-son Family Foundation,” Hud-son said. “Having moved back into the Auburn area and rais-ing a family here, we want to give back to the community as much as we can. This is a win-win for our foundation and for the Auburn baseball program.”

Hudson played at Auburn from 1996–97 and earned the Rotary Smith National Player of the Year Award.

Hudson’s statistics from that season include a 15–2 re-cord with a 2.97 ERA, along with 18 home runs and 95 RBIs.

Ross was a teammate of Hudson’s that same season. Before his transfer to Florida, he had a .251 batting average, two home runs and 26 RBIs.

In 1997, Auburn scored five runs in the ninth inning against Florida State, includ-ing a go-ahead home run from Ross to help clinch the

game and a spot in the College World Series.

Along the Caravan route the Braves will also make stops at schools and hospitals to visit and speak with students and sick children.

Braves right fielder Jason Heyward especially enjoyed the team’s stop at the Birming-ham Civil Rights institute dur-ing last year’s Caravan.

As an African-American player, Heyward said he was especially moved by the expe-rience.

“It was a pleasure and an honor,” he said. “Anytime you can go see stuff firsthand, it al-ways exposes you to what peo-ple felt back then. It brings you closer and it gives you peace of mind on how fortunate you are today.”

After the Caravan the Braves head to Orlando, Fla., for spring training. The team’s season opener is April 5 on the road against the New York Mets.

The Braves’ home opener at Turner Field is scheduled for April 13 at 7:35 p.m. against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Kimbrel was named the 2011 National League Rook-ie of the Year. He set the rook-ie save record with 46 and had 127 strikeouts in 77 innings.

Kimbrel was also credited with a blown save when the Braves were defeated by the Philadelphia Phillies 4–3 and were denied a playoff spot.

“I can’t say it’s something that I’ll get over,” Kimbrel said, “but it’s something that’s go-ing to push me and something that’s going to make me strive to do better next year.”

transition offense to avoid fac-ing USC’s extended 3–2 zone defense.

I’m unsure if Ward’s an-kle injury is still slowing him down, but he’d be an All-SEC guard if he played with half of

Wallace’s intensity.Regardless, Wallace’s will-

ingness to challenge every op-posing point guard is fun to watch, and from the look of Saturday’s game, Barbee’s fre-quent rants on his team’s non-chalance toward defense ap-pear to have sunk in.

The Tigers forced 23 turn-

overs. They played with the type of constant intensity nec-essary to be a good defensive team. They seemed to have lost the demeanor that they could step on the court and win on talent alone.

I think this team is one of-fensively skilled big man away from leaving the bottom rungs

of the SEC. Junior center Rob Chubb

has improved tremendously from last season, but he still has to be considered a work in progress.

Maybe freshman Willy Kouassi could be guy, but cur-rently he’s more offensively challenged than Chubb.

Barbee has the team im-proving, and that’s the most important thing in my mind.

While I’ve yet to decide if I view Barbee as a guy who fin-ishes what he starts at Auburn or leaves for a more attractive job in a few years, he has been exactly what Auburn needed: a fresh face to recruit high-pro-

file athletes and invigorate a student body that had grown indifferent to Auburn basket-ball.

Judging by the packed stu-dent section at recent games, all that’s holding up a fully packed arena are the scholar-ship seats which remain half-empty game after game.

BRAVES» From B1

BASKETBALL» From B1

Ward determined to fight backRobert E. LeeSPORTS BEAT REPORTER

Varez Ward hasn’t been in the starting lineup for long.

“Everything is up for grabs,” said coach Tony Barbee in a press conference late last year. “I told these guys they’ve got to earn it on their perfor-mance on the floor.”

Ward made the starting lineup his sophomore year of high school while playing un-der coach Terry Posey at Jef-ferson Davis High School in Montgomery.

“Varez is a very intelligent kid,” Posey said. “He really un-derstands the game of bas-ketball. He picks up on things. He’s very coachable and very talented. You don’t teach tal-ent.”

Ward also played on the 2005–06 Alabama 6A state championship team.

“His junior year, he is one of the main reasons we won the state championship,” Posey said. “We beat Huffman in the state finals and they had three very good players. (Ward) was a main force for us.”

After high school, Ward had his sights set on an out-of-state college.

“I had originally commit-ted to Cincinnati, then I de-committed,” Ward said. “Lat-er on in the recruitment I opened it back up whenev-er more schools started to open, so I took a visit to UTEP where coach Barbee was coach.

“I enjoyed the time out there. I went to Kentucky. I went to Texas. And it came down to it, and I love Texas so that’s where I chose first.”

After playing 32 games as a freshman, he suffered a sea-son-ending injury, rupturing his right quadriceps tendon three games into his sopho-more year.

In fall 2010, Ward trans-ferred to Auburn to be with his mother.

“She was sick and, you know, I was twelve hours away,” Ward said. “And it was hard going back and forth, so I wanted to be close to her.”

His decision was also swayed by prior relationships.

“I already had a relation-

ship with the coaching staff,” Ward said. “Because I already had a visit to UTEP, it made it an easy decision for me to come back and play for coach Barbee.”

Ward was a redshirt his first year at Auburn and didn’t see any action until 2011.

“Sitting out was horri-ble for me,” Ward said. “That was one of the hardest things in my life to do—to sit out of basketball for two years, be-cause I have been playing all my life.”

That’s when Barbee an-nounced to his team that starters had to earn their spot.

“I’ll never let (sitting out) stop me from going out

there and getting out there and competing,” Ward said. “That’s where I get my mo-tivation from, because this game can be taken away from you at any time, so that’s where I look for motivation.”

This is Ward’s first season starting since 2009, but he isn’t letting his prior absence keep him from reaching his own expectations.

“Sitting out all these years, it’s been kind of hard to come back,” Ward said. “I’m just now getting back to where I used to be as far as my ex-plosiveness. It’s been a kind of up-and-down year for me, but you know, the season isn’t over, and I’m still trying to get better.”

CHRISTEN HARNED / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORVarez Ward transferred from Texas last season to be closer to his mother. Ward suffered a season-end-ing injury his sophomore year at Texas and was redshirted last season at Auburn.

Page 11: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Thursday, January 26, 2012 The Auburn Plainsman Sports B3

Coleman McDowellSPORTS EDITOR

Following a solid home vic-tory against South Caroli-na, the Auburn Tigers are on the road for two conference matchups.

“We have a tough week,” said coach Tony Barbee. “Ob-viously, playing on the road in college basketball is a tough task, and as good as the coach-es and teams are in this league, it is even tougher.

“Going to Arkansas and then to Tennessee—two teams coming off big weeks for them beating Michigan and UConn, respectively—it is going to be a tough task.”

The Tigers have enjoyed the home court of Auburn Arena this season, posting a 11–1 re-cord thus far.

“We have been playing well at home and not so well on the road, even though our last out-ing against LSU we gave our-selves a chance,” Barbee said. “We will be prepared and we will go in there with a game plan that will give our guys a chance to win.”

After scoring 14 of Auburn’s 24 first-half points against South Carolina, junior guard Frankie Sullivan led the Tigers with a season-high 22 points.

“Frankie is playing well,” Barbee said. “He is still not back 100 percent in terms of the speed and quickness. Frankie’s game is never mea-sured by that—it was by his toughness and the size of his heart and his leadership abil-ity—so that is what he has brought back to the team. ”

Barbee also commented on Sullivan’s desire to fight through his recent lack of of-fensive production.

“There is nobody who has worked harder to get his game back than Frankie has,” Bar-bee said. “He is one of the guys who deserves to play well be-cause of what he puts in the game. He works hard in prac-tice, but when he is on his own time, he will come in an hour early, stay an hour late,

come back after study hall and stay an hour and work on his game.”

The Tigers were scheduled to take on the Razorbacks Wednesday night, and the team will travel to Knoxville Saturday to take on a Tennes-see squad that has had an up-and-down season.

The Volunteers have defeat-ed No. 11 Connecticut and No. 14 Florida this month, but they also lost to unranked Vander-bilt, Georgia and Memphis.

Both of Tennessee’s Janu-ary wins against ranked oppo-nents were at home, while four of their five losses have come on the road.

The Volunteers have got-ten a spark from early enroll-ee Jarnell Stokes, who fore-went his last semester of high school to join the team earlier this month.

T h e 6 - f o o t - 8 - i n c h , 250-pound freshman has shown the ability to hold his own against the best big men in the nation.

Against premier shot-block-

er Anthony Davis of Kentucky, Stokes scored nine points and grabbed four rebounds in his 17-minute college debut.

Against Alex Oriakhi of Connecticut, Stokes filled the statsheet with 16 points, 12 re-bounds, 2 blocks and no turn-overs.

The Tigers will rely on ju-nior center Rob Chubb to con-tain Stokes, and Barbee said he thinks Chubb’s improving play has helped the Tigers es-tablishment themselves dur-ing games this season.

“He is a guy who gives us an interior presence that can compete in this league,” Bar-bee said. “He is definitely a key for us.”

With Saturday’s win over USC, the Tigers surpassed their win total from last sea-son.

“We are just going to build it the right way, and each year we want to keep taking the steps in the positive direction,” Bar-bee said. “We are kind of on track of where we want to be in year two.”

All Auburn Opelika Locations

Bradley RobertsWRITER

Senior swimmer Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace was rec-ognized last week in the con-ference and nationally by be-ing named both SEC and Na-tional Swimmer of the Week.

These add to the long list of accolades Vanderpool-Wal-lace has earned during her four years at Auburn.

Her performance at the Jan. 11 meet against the University of Texas won Vanderpool-Wal-lace player of the week status; she won all four of her events in the 167–133 win over the Longhorns.

Vanderpool-Wallace is an 18-time All-American who was named the SEC Women’s Swimmer of the Year in 2011 and earned the SEC Commis-sioner’s Cup as the high scor-er at the SEC Championships in Gainesville, Fla.

During the 2010–11 season, Vanderpool-Wallace helped Auburn land its first NCAA championship in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle.

It is the third time this sea-son she has been awarded SEC Swimmer of the Week honors.

“It’s really nice to be recog-nized by people in the SEC and other people in the nation,” Vanderpool-Wallace said. “It helps you know that your hard work is paying off.”

Vanderpool-Wallace said she attributes her most recent string of success to the sup-port given to her by her team-mates.

“The team has become more of a family lately,” she said. “So, just kind of coming together makes me want to swim faster.”

She said she trains hard throughout the week, hitting the weight room Monday, Wednesday and Friday and

swimming for two or three hours daily.

In the days leading up to a meet she tries to alleviate stress by focusing her mind on other things.

“Right before, I try to not really think about the race because it can kind of over-whelm you a little bit,” Vander-pool-Wallace said. “The day of, I’m going to think of anything other than the race.”

Vanderpool-Wallace said she doesn’t follow any specific rituals or superstitions before a race, but she will always lis-ten to music.

“I usually listen to rap mu-sic,” she said. “Lil Wayne most-ly.”

The senior hasn’t let her training and workouts inter-fere with her studies; she will be graduating in December with a degree in hotel and res-taurant management.

“My life is swimming and school,” she said. “I swim and I go home and I do schoolwork.”

Vanderpool-Wallace par-ticipated in the 2008 Olym-pics for the Bahamas national women’s team and looks to do the same in London in 2012.

“I just qualified for 2012 in July,” she said. “I’m excited to go again and give it a shot again.”

As team captain, Vander-pool-Wallace leads best by ex-ample.

“She always comes in with the right focus every single day for practice,” said Haley Krakoski, sophomore sprint swimmer. “She’s definitely al-ways the hardest worker we have on the team.”

Krakoski said she has learned a lot from Vanderpool-Wallace about improving her technique and trying to main-tain the right mindset, adding that her teammate has always

been there to help her fellow swimmers.

“She’s just someone that it helps us to look up to and al-ways try to get to the same lev-el as her,” Krakoski said. “We are all together collective-ly trying to be just as good as her.”

Krakoski said Vanderpool-Wallace has handled the pres-sures of success with ease.

“There is a lot expected of her this year, being the se-nior,” Krakoski said. “She was named our captain for this year. She has a lot on her plate, and she has a lot to live up to, but she does a great job at it.”

Brett Hawke, men’s and women’s swimming and div-ing coach, said having an ath-lete of such high caliber makes his job much easier.

“She’s consistent from the start of the season,” Hawke said. “She brings the right at-titude and makes everyone around her better.

Hawke, a former Auburn sprint swimmer, is experi-enced working with superb athletes.

“I’ve raced at the Olympics myself, so I have a very good

connection with kids with a lot of talent,” Hawke said. “So, I feel comfortable coaching her.

“It makes you feel good knowing you’ve got someone you can rely on. She’s one of

the toughest competitors I’ve ever met. It’s good to walk into a meet knowing you’ve got a girl that can take down any other girl in the country.”

The Auburn men’s and

women’s swimming and div-ing team lost to the No. 13 Florida Gators Jan. 21.

They are now preparing for the SEC Championships, which will be held Feb. 15–18.

Vanderpool-Wallace earns swimming accolades

DANIELLE LOWE / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORRecently named SEC and National Swimmer of the Week, Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, senior in hotel and restaurant management, prepares Friday morning for a meet.

DANIELLE LOWE / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORArianna Vanderpool-Wallace is an 18-time All-American and led Auburn to it’s first NCAA championship in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle last season. Vanderpool-Wallace has been named SEC Diver of the Week three times this season.

Tigers hit the road for two

DANIELLE LOWE / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORSenior forward Kenny Gabriel throws down a dunk against the Game-cocks Saturday. The Tigers defeated South Carolina 63–52 at home.

Page 12: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Sports B4 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

Robert E. LeeSPORTS BEAT REPORTER

The equestrian team is sending two of its top-ranked riders to the third annual col-legiate equitation challenge at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Fla.

Auburn has had success at the WEF in the past, with se-nior hunt seat rider Maggie McAlary placing first in the competition’s inaugural year and second last year.

Sophomores Christine Lin and Jennifer Waxman will ride south for this year’s Feb. 10 challenge.

Lin said the competition is different than the team’s aver-age meets.

“It’s about the same caliber, but it’s a little bit different,” Lin said. “It’s not really like our na-tionals, per se, because I’m not here with my whole team, but I am representing my school. It’s special.”

The competition consists of riders from 16 U.S. univer-sities.

New to the tournament this year is equitation on the flat, or flatting, in which only four schools—including Auburn—were chosen to participate.

Flatting is judged on how well an athelete handles her horse on the ground with no jumps.

“It’s actually new to the tournament this year,” Lin said. “Before it was all jump-ing, and there’s 16 schools that are participating. The four schools that are doing the flat-ting are randomly selected for this year because its a new for-mat they want to try it out.”

Waxman will compete in equitation over fences, which consists of jumps up to 3-feet-6-inches high.

“It’s a little nerve-racking,” Waxman said. “The course will probably be a little harder than our regular competitions, but the one thing that makes me feel better is that the people we’re going against are in the same position.

“It’s hard for everybody. It’s

not just hard for us.”Waxman has been riding

for 14 years and credited the coaching staff for the team’s continued success.

“Our coaches do a real-ly good job on stressing the importance of the team,” she said. “And we know wherev-er we go we always have each other’s back, and it’s always nice to know that everybody is working hard.”

Coach Greg Williams be-gan the equestrian program in 1996, with Varsity status com-ing in 2002.

Lin said the coaching staff has motivated them all year, and working as a team has been a cornerstone of their success.

“We’re putting in a lot of hard work. We’re also really working together as a team,” Lin said. “You do ride for in-dividual points, but at the end of the meet they all go toward the team.

“We’re all just trying right now to put in as much practice

as we can. We’re riding when we’re outside of school. We do as much riding as we can.”

Riding on unknown territo-ry is something Lin and Wax-man are familiar with, as the team competes in similar situ-ations at regular competitions.

“We get on and ride a course that we have never ridden be-fore,” Lin said, “so there is only so much practicing that we can do because we’ve basical-ly been doing this our whole lives.”

The competition follows the National Collegiate Equestri-an Association head-to-head, bracketed format, and the first round will start at 2 p.m.

The eight losing teams from the first round will compete in a consolation bracket.

The overall winner will re-ceive a trophy sponsored by the South Florida Hunter Jumper Association,.

The competition will be held at the International Are-na of the Palm Beach Interna-tional Equestrian Center.

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Coleman McDowellSPORTS EDITOR

Junior sprinter Harry Ad-ams came to Auburn as a wide receiver, but he will leave one of the fastest sprinters in Au-burn track and field history.

At the Auburn Indoor Invi-tational in Birmingham, Ad-ams finished the 60-meter in 6.55 seconds, the fastest time in the world so far this year.

Adams’ world record fin-ish ranks him second all-time in Auburn history, just .05 sec-onds behind Coby Miller’s 6.50 in 2000.

“I’m really impressed with what Harry was able to do to-day,” said coach Ralph Spry. “He’s been solid for us from the beginning, but he worked hard all fall and he’s looked good in practice. I thought he would be ready to run fast today.

“It was a very impressive win, and I couldn’t be happier for him to get rewarded for all his hard work. I’m looking for-ward to seeing him get faster the rest of the season.”

Adams came to Auburn in 2008 as a wide receiver.

He was recruited by former Auburn coach Tommy Tuber-ville and switched to defensive back before leaving the team in 2009.

He then joined the track team in 2010 and earned All-America honors for his per-formance at the NCAA Indoor Championships.

Adams also was a 2010 NCAA Outdoor All-America for his role on the 4x100m Re-lay.

For his performance in the Auburn Indoor Invitational last week, Adams was named SEC Runner of the Week and a Primetime Performer of the Week by College Sports360.

Adams is the first track ath-lete to earn an SEC weekly honor this season.

Even though the meet didn’t have team scoring, Spry

thought the team made the necessary strides in the short-er indoor season.

“I feel pretty good with what we were able to do as a whole,” Spry said. “We made a big im-provement over the course of one week, and that is what you want to see. It’s a short indoor season, so you have to make improvements like that.

“I’m pretty pleased over-all. We had a lot of big perfor-mances. This was a very com-petitive meet with some of the best teams in the country competing. This was a good measuring stick of where we are at as a team.”

The team travels to Blacks-burg, Va. for the Virginia Tech Invitational Feb. 2–3.

Adams sets world record at Auburn Indoor Invite

Auburn to send two riders to WEFUpcoming eventsThursday

Women’s basketball vs. Kentucky, 6 p.m.

Friday Men’s tennis vs. Middle Tennessee, 11 a.m.Women’s gymnastics vs. Alabama, 7 p.m.

Saturday Women’s tennis @ Troy, 12 p.m.

Women’s equestrian vs. Oklahoma State, 1 p.m.Men’s basketball @ Tennessee, 7 p.m.

Sunday Women’s tennis vs. Alabama A&M, 10 a.m.

Men’s tennis @ Georgia Tech, 12 p.m.Women’s basketball @ Ole Miss, 1 p.m.

Women’s tennis vs. Southern Miss, 2 p.m.

MondayMen’s tennis vs. Illinois and North Carolina, TBA

WednesdayMen’s basketball vs. Georgia, 7 p.m.

COURTESY OF ANTHONY HALLSophomore Jennifer Waxman will be competing in the equitation over fences in the WEF Collegiate Equitation Challenge.

CONTRIBUTEDAdams poses beside the scoreboard of his world record run.

CONTRIBUTEDAdams was recruited in 2008 as a wide receiver before he joined the track team.

Page 13: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

IntrigueThursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Intrigue

Wii’s health benefits» Page B8

B5The physics of fitness» Page B7

Hayley BlairINTRIGUE BEAT REPORTER

Now a postdoctoral research-er in the department of chem-istry and biochemistry, Idris Cerkez came to Auburn in Au-gust 2008 through a scholarship program.

As a Turkish Muslim, Cerkez said students and professors alike have been accommodat-ing and supportive of his Islam-ic beliefs.

“You really do have freedom in terms of religion, I think, here,” Cerkez said. “I can pray in my lab. We have prayers that we need to attend every week, and if I have any course or need to do something in the lab, my advis-ers and professors are always OK when it comes to religion.”

Cerkez recently earned his Ph.D in polymer and fiber engi-neering, but became more inter-ested in chemistry because he

felt he could help more people in that field.

“I decided to have a chemis-try-related ac-ademic life be-cause you can produce prod-ucts useful to humanity and develop solu-tions to glob-al issues such as pandemics and epidem-ics,” he said.

Cerkez said Islam teach-es its adher-ents that all life should be appreciated and respected, as each living thing contains a part of Allah.

“I don’t want to generalize anything, this is just how I view it, but the only thing you need

to do is just to see the signs of your creator, your God—we call it Allah—everywhere you look,”

Cerkez said. “ We h av e five pillars of faith and dif-ferent things you need to do, but that’s t h e m a i n thing a Mus-lim should do I think.”

C e r k e z also said the word Islam is derived from the Ar-abic root S-

L-M, which means peace.Asim Ali, adviser for the Mus-

lim Students’ Association, said about 20 percent of the Muslim population on campus use the MSA to meet with one another.

There are only about 80-100 Muslim students at Auburn, but many non-Muslim students par-ticipate in events hosted by the organization, as well.

MSA hosts many lectures, and Vice President Emad Mansour recently spoke on the prophet Abraham’s role in Islam.

The group also goes on out-ings together, such as bowling nights. Ali said there are many reasons a non-Muslim student might attend one of the MSA’s events.

“If it’s a speaker it’s general-ly because of extra credit for a class, and if it’s a social activi-ty then it’s usually because they want to have fun with some of their Muslim friends,” Ali said.

Cerkez said he has a lot friends from different religious denominations, and he is hap-py to discussreligion with all of them.

“I have lots of Christian friends. I used to go to their Sun-day school,” Cerkez said. “We would study the Quran and the Bible together, and I feel that we have so many commonalities, and that’s the thing we need to focus on. That’s how we can keep the society together I think.”

Though Islam isn’t as preva-lent as Christianity in this area of the world, Cerkez said he still has a place to worship.

“There is a small masjid, or mosque, nearby,” Cerkez said. “We have different denomina-tions, different Muslim people, but we all go there and pray to-gether. There’s a good harmony there.”

Though religious differenc-es can at times be polarizing, Cerkez said he hasn’t experi-enced intolerance from other re-

Kristen WardWRITER

Feeling down and tired isn’t al-ways a sign of a college student’s lifestyle.

Brandy Smith, psychologist at Auburn Student Counseling Ser-vices, said students need to be more aware of the signs of depres-sion, which could be feelings of sadness, loss, anger or frustration strong enough to interfere with ev-eryday life for weeks or longer.

Smith said decreased interest in activities, changes in weight, sleep patterns or appetite and feelings of worthlessness or guilt are all symp-toms of depression.

“You do not have to have all of these signs at once to be consid-ered depressed,” Smith said. “Some students may just have one or two of these symptoms.”

Smith said Student Counseling Services normally addresses one of two types of cases.

“We have some cases where the student is just feeling down be-cause of relationship problems, school, work, family or because of other situational problems,” Smith said. “This type of case can nor-mally go away after a short peri-od of time, but we also have cases where there is an intense feeling that can’t just go away. These types of cases can be related to biologi-cal reasons.”

Smith said she tries to help stu-dents understand that although depression is not always relat-ed to problems in day-to-day life, one’s daily routine can have an im-pact—students should be aware of the amount of sleep they are get-ting, their eating habits and the

amount of physical activity they perform each day.

Brett Sullivan, junior in pre-pharmacy, said antidepressant medication is used to bring into balance brain chemicals that can cause depression.

“I do believe depression is com-

mon in a college town,” Sul-livan said. “However, I

think it depends on the student’s situ-ation. College is a major adjustment for a lot of stu-dents.”

Michael Han-sen, a pharma-cist in Birming-ham, said most

mental health e x p e r t s agree that

medication can help with severe depression. The role of medication comes into play when therapy, exercise or self-help strategies do not work.

“Some common side effects of

Not down with depression

HAVE A SUPPORT SYSTEM FIND A WAY TO MANAGE DAILY ACTIVITES & REQUIREMENTSFIGURE OUT AN OUTLET FOR STRESS GET ENOUGH SLEEP

KNOW YOUR LIMITS & WHEN TO ASK FOR HELP

Relax with home spa treatments

» See DEPRESSION, B6

REBECCA CROOMES / PHOTO EDITORAsim Ali, adviser for the Muslim Students’ Association, came to Auburn with his father at age 10.

Heather AllenWRITER

The hurried, stressful pace of col-lege life can make it difficult for stu-dents to find inexpensive ways to re-lax at home.

Jana Gwin, owner of One Eighty Wellness Spa in Auburn, said stu-dents are stressed trying to keep up their grades and balance extracurric-ular activities.

“Stress can affect your skin be-cause the stress hormone corti-sol can cause more oil on your skin, which clogs your pores,” Gwin said.

Gwin recommends professional-grade products with the active ingre-dient salicylic acid, which kills acne bacteria, and facials to oxygenate pores.

“It is also beneficial to get your skin regulated with vitamin A prod-ucts and treatments like facials to help control breakouts,” Gwin said.

College students also complain of neck pain, back strain and muscle soreness from carrying backpacks

All-Auburn Muslim

“I feel that we have so many commonalities, and that’s the thing we need to focus on. That’s how we can keep the society together I think.”

—Idris Cerkez POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

» See RELIGION, B6

» See SPA, B6

Despite being a minority group at Auburn, Muslims find community with one another

Page 14: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Intrigue B6 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

ligious groups on campus.“It doesn’t matter if you

are Muslim, atheist, Hin-du or whatever,” Cerkez said. “I think it is totally the same. Everyone is real-ly accommodating. It may not be the same around all the University, but that’s what I’ve experienced, and it’s been great.”

Living in an educated community plays a role in how Muslims are treated, said Ali, who came to Ala-bama at 10 years old when his father was hired as a professor at Tuskegee Uni-versity.

“For me, personally, it’s been very comfortable,” Ali said. “I guess the ad-vantage of living in an edu-cated community is there are people who are will-ing to appreciate a diverse community.”

Without a doubt, the tradition of rolling Toom-er’s Corner with the Au-burn Tigers after foot-ball games was my favor-ite part of being at Auburn University,” Cerkez said.

Skinny Eggplant Rollatini

Kerry’s recipe of the week

Ingredients:1 large eggplant, peeled and cut 1/4 inch wide, lengthwisesalt and pepper, to taste 24 ounces low-fat cot-tage cheese10 ounces frozen spin-ach, thawed and squeezed free of water2 eggspinch of fresh nutmeg, grated8 ounces (2 cups) re-duced fat mozzarella cheese, divided1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, divided2 cups marinara sauce, divided

Directions: Preheat oven to 400° F. Place the sliced eggplant onto a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Lightly spray the surface of the eggplant and season with salt and pepper. Bake for 10 minutes and immediately lower the oven to 375° F. In a large bowl, combine the cottage cheese, spinach, eggs, nutmeg, salt, pepper, 1 cup of mozzarella cheese and 1/4 cup of Parme-san cheese. Mix until combined. Coat the bot-tom of a 9 x 13 casserole dish with 1/2 cup of marinara sauce. Cover the surface of each egg-plant with the cheese mixture. Roll up the egg-plant lengthwise and place into the casserole dish, seam side down. Repeat this process for all remaining eggplant slices. Top the rollatini with remaining sauce and cheese. Bake for 40–45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbling.

Serves: 6

Contributed by Kerry Fannon

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antidepressant medications are nausea, insomnia, anx-iety, restlessness, dizziness, weight gain, dry mouth, diar-rhea, constipation and head-aches,” Hansen said. “Some side effects go away after a few weeks of drug treatment, others will continue and even get worse.

“Along with side effects, there are health risk factors for people over 65, pregnant women, teens and young adults and people who may have bipolar disorder.”

Hansen said changes stu-dents go through in their college careers could result in more students being de-pressed.

“I think that a lot of stu-dents don’t realize signs of de-

pression because they think it’s a part of the college life-style,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that depression will not look the same for ev-ery person and that there is nothing wrong with acknowl-edging what is going on.”

Student Counseling Ser-vices is located in the Auburn Medical Clinic and offers free individual or group counsel-ing sessions.

DEPRESSION» From B5

full of textbooks across cam-pus.

“I am a big advocate of tak-ing very warm soak baths in Epsom salt, which re-lieves stress, strains and sprains from your muscles and joints,” said Sonya Hil-dreth, owner of Create A Spa in downtown Auburn. “And consistency is key with that technique.”

Students can soak away aches and pains by purchas-ing a container of Epsom salt at a local pharmacy for about $2 for a 16-ounce container.

Another tip for soothing backaches can be as simple as sitting straighter.

“Students spend a lot of time over computers, and you have to be careful with pos-ture,” Hildreth said. “That can cause a lot of strain, and good posture is vital.”

Hildreth said she often re-minds her clients take fre-quent stretch breaks when spending hours hunched over a laptop studying.

Rather than purchase products to use for a relax-ing spa experience at home,

some students are making their own.

“Last year, I made home-made body scrubs for my friends for Christmas,” said Alysha Ledbetter, junior in nursing. “It was inexpensive and a great way for them to treat themselves after finals week.”

Ledbetter found the recipe for body scrubs on Pinterest, a popular do-it-yourself web-site.

She said she would recom-mend the body scrubs recipe to others because they were easy and quick to make, only taking about 10 minutes, and because they made her kitch-en smell amazing.

“College students aren’t ex-pected to spend a lot of time and money on their skin,” Gwin said. “But you can pri-oritize and use what you have and incorporate that into an overall wellness.”

SPA» From B5

RELIGION» From B5

BODY SCRUB RECIPE 3 cups white sugar

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Page 15: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

B7Thursday, January 26, 2012 www.theplainsman.com Intrigue

Health & WellnessPhysics determine efficient exerciseHayley BlairASSOCIATE INTRIGUE EDITOR

Physics may not be the first thing people think about when it comes to fitness, but it may actually be the most important aspect of exercise.

Joe Perez, physics department head, said its important for athletes to use physics to their advantage if they want to win.

“If you watch sprinters now, they run with their hands in a very spe-cial place with a special rhythm and everything,” Perez said. “All that is to get this last little bit out of them-selves, and that has to do with the bio-mechanics, weight distribution and wind resistance.”

Wendy Weimar, director of the Sport Biomechanics Laboratory, said she’s studied everything from the physics of flip-flops to the biome-chanics of Auburn’s athletic teams.

“When you watch the gym-

nastics team do flips or the diving team do flips and twists and things like that, it’s really the application of Newton’s laws which allows them to exercise those movements,” Weimar said.

The data gathered from Weimar’s research with athletes is relayed to coaches who use the information to improve the athletes’ performance.

“We believe that coaching is an art and a science,” Weimar said. “We know how to watch the athletes and identify things, but they know how to talk to their athletes.”

The study of biomechanics can be applied to individual fitness as well.

“Exercising incorrectly is just as dangerous as not exercising at all, maybe more,” Weimar said. “Our goal is to teach people to train appro-priately and effectively so they enjoy it, and it becomes a lifestyle for them.”

Joey Young, owner of World Gym, said he sees many people lifting weights incorrectly in the gym.

“When you see people sling-ing weight that is obviously mo-mentum-driven, that momentum can take you further than what you might be able to bend or what your muscles might be able to stand,” Young said. “When you’re swinging weights, you’re invit-ing injury.”

Young said a prior-ity for

World Gym is to make sure clients exercise safely.

“One of the things we do is help anyone who seems to need

it or asks for it,” Young said. “Every-one who works here has a pretty

good idea on how to stay safe in the gym.”

The flip of a gymnast or the brick-breaking of a mar-tial art-

ist can all be explained by physics and the study of biomechanics, and Weimar said she never ceases to won-der at the results of her research.

“We study those things, and that’s why we think we have a really cool job,” Weimar said, “because we’re stunned by the capability of the hu-man body and what it can do.”

Gravity is the only force working on this gym-

nast, and tight control is needed to keep her

form in the air.Kylie Shields performs

on the beam.

Austin LankfordWRITER

Many people lift weights and jog to improve their physical fitness, but the importance of stretching and flexibil-ity is often overlooked.

“Improving your flexibility is just as important as cardio and strength workouts,” said Valerie Lee, graduate teaching assistant in kinesiology and aerobics and yoga teacher.

Lee said it is important to do some basic stretching before a workout or any activity that requires a lot of movement. She also said stretching reduces the soreness that occurs af-ter a workout.

Kent Games, doctoral fellow in the Neuromechanics Research Lab and nationally certified athletic trainer, said stretching and flexibility are as important as cardiovascular fitness and weight training in a person’s over-all health.

“Stretching not only helps you for a workout, but it can help you do dai-ly activities more easily,” Games said. “It also decreases the risk of injury and the likelihood of a muscle strain or tear.”

Games said stretching also helps improve posture, which can provide long-term health benefits down the road.

“If you didn’t stretch, then your muscles would remain tight, and that makes it harder to sit up straight,” he said.

Games said no matter the activi-ty, whether basketball, football, soc-cer or ultimate Frisbee, stretching can improve an individual’s athletic ability.

Games said there is a greater range of motion with a flexible body.

“When you are flexible, you are able to move in ways and do things that you would not be able to do if

you are not flexible,” he said.Games suggests two stretching

methods for before and after physical activity. One method is static stretch-ing, or basic stretches such as touch-ing your toes for 10 seconds. The oth-er is dynamic stretching involving movement.

“To do the inchworm stretch, you start standing up and walk your hands forward until you are in a push-up position and then walk your feet back to your hands,” Games said. “You can do both dynamic and static stretches before and after your work-out to improve flexibility and reduce injury.”

Lauren Thomas, junior in physi-cal education, teaches a body pump class at Max Fitness on East Univer-sity Drive.

“The classes I teach require move-ment from the entire body, so it is im-portant to make sure everyone’s mus-

cles are warmed up before we begin a class,” Thomas said. “We spend about five minutes before and after each class to stretch and warm up.”

Thomas said the five most impor-tant components of wellness are flex-ibility, body composition, aerobic fit-ness, muscular strength and muscu-lar endurance.

“If flexibility was not important, it would not be on that list,” Thomas

said.Games said flexibility is one of the

most overlooked things in people’s health because they rush into activ-ities without taking proper time to stretch. He also said it is the easiest thing to improve.

Games said it’s easy to feel tense and tight while studying for long pe-riods. If a break is needed, he suggests taking a minute to strech your legs and loosen up.

Stretching is good not only for the body, but also the mind, Lee said.

“A great way to relieve stress is by doing yoga,” she said.

Though it may seem difficult to get started at first, Games said the results of stretching regularly can be realized almost immediately.

“If you just take a few minutes ev-ery day to stretch, you will be able to see and feel results within a week,” Games said.

Stretching appears left behind for personal health

TODD VAN EMST

““Stretching not only helps you for a workout, but it can help you do daily activities more easily.”

—Valerie Lee KINESIOLOGY GTA

The circles represent the forces the batter is exerting on the ground. The force the ground exerts on him is transferred through his body

and bat to the ball. Of interest biomechanically are his bat veloc-

ity, joint angles and rotational timing.Casey McElroy bats against

South Carolina on March 27, 2010.

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Page 16: 1.26.12 edition of the Auburn Plainsman

Intrigue B8 The Auburn Plainsman Thursday, January 26, 2012

Robert E. LeeSPORTS BEAT REPORTER

Wii Fit may be more inter-active than most video games, but whether it provides supe-rior health benefits than a trip to the gym is yet to be deter-mined.

Danielle Wadsworth, as-sistant professor of kinesiol-ogy, said fitness-related vid-eo games cannot replace the benefits from participating in a sport, but have yielded pos-itive results.

“Playing a sport or actually doing it would be better than the video game,” Wadsworth said. “What we’ve found in our lab with the fitness-based games is if you spend 45 min-utes doing it, you'll get about 30 minutes that would be equal to if you went and did a typical exercise.”

Wadsworth mentioned studies relating the symptoms of prolonged gaming to drug and alcohol addiction.

“If your’re spending a large

amount of time in front of the screen, you really need to think about how it’s going to affect your health,” Wadsworth said. “There’s been multiple studies that show that cognitive abil-ity, or the ability to think and process information, actual-ly decreases in terms of ad-vanced-level game play.”

Vanessa Ocasio, fitness coach and owner of Fitness To-gether Auburn, believes fitness games, while not for everyone, are beneficial.

“It seems like when they have done the fitness type of games, especially the boxing, that they seem to actually get a workout,” Ocasio said. “Now, this is coming from people that maybe you wouldn't con-sider in shape, but for them they get a workout.”

Wii Fit includes four train-ing modes: yoga, balance, strength training and aerobics.

The hands-free Xbox Ki-nect is another alternative to fitness video games. The Ki-

nect resembles the Wii mod-el of gaming, but uses a sensor to record players’ movements rather than a controller.

Kris Dixon, personal train-er at Fitness Together Auburn, believes fitness video games can’t accomplish what a disci-plined workout in the gym can.

“I don’t believe that playing Kinect or Wii would be even close to a good alternative to going to the gym,” Dixon said.

“I do, however, see it as a sup-plementary tool for exercise. If you were to do Wii yoga to help with flexibility, or maybe even Wii fitness for the condition-ing component of your work-out, it would be OK. Not great, just OK.”

Dixon said the Wii is insuf-ficient because of its static workout regimen.

“There is no way to increase strength past a certain point with those types of games, and you will plateau in your prog-ress in a few weeks if done without a gym setting,” Dixon said.

Casual gaming can impact fitness as well, Ocasio said.

“Anything where you’re sit-ting down for long periods of time, it’s unhealthy for you, and unfortunately that in-cludes having a desk job,” Ocasio said. “So, if you hap-pen to have a desk job and then go home to play video games, that’s a double wham-my there.”

CHRISTEN HARNED / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITORXavier Beasley, senior in supply chain management, plays “Just Dance” on Wii.

Wii controller no replacement for dumbell

Weekly Drink SpecialsMonday:

17-16: Happy Hour 5–9 p.m., $4 pitchers Quixotes: $2 tallboys 7–9 p.m.

Tuesday: 17-16: Happy Hour 5–9 p.m., $2 tallboysSkybar Cafe: $2 tallboysQuixotes: $2 Mexican beers

Wednesday:17-16: Happy Hour 5–9 p.m., $2 24-oz. wells, $4 after 9 p.m.Skybar Cafe: $3 32-oz. wells 7–9 p.m.Quixotes: $3 32-oz. wells 7–9 p.m.

Thursday:17-16: $3 wine by the glass, $2 tallboysSkybar Cafe: $2 tallboysQuixotes: $3 everything

Friday: 17-16: Happy Hour 5–9 p.m.Skybar Cafe: $2 20-oz. wells 7–9 p.m.Quixotes: $2 20-oz. wells, $2 Landshark tallboys

“If your’re spending a large amount of time in front of the screen, you really need to think about how it’s going to affect your health.”—Danielle Wadsworth

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, KINESIOLOGY