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One homecoming activity left some stu-dents feeling blue Monday, Feb. 18, but not with school pride.
The event, which was listed as “Wear Blue Get Food” on university advertisements, was held on the first day of Georgia Regents Uni-versity’s homecoming week. The premise was for students to wear a blue article of clothing in exchange for free food in the JSAC Food Court. However, when some students showed up, they were turned away for not wearing the right shade of blue.
Senior communications studies major Kar-leigh King was one of those students.
King approached the food line wearing a
red Indiana University hoodie, which prompted a response from one of the event coordinators, who she identified as Assistant Director for Stu-dent Center Operations Dean Smedley. After lifting the sweater to show a blue Georgia Col-lege & State University shirt, she was denied the free food.
“I said, ‘Are you guys really not going to let me have any food?’ and (Smedley) said, ‘Yeah. Dead serious. We’re not,’” King said. “They just kind of embarrassed me in front of people and I didn’t appreciate it, so I just walked away.”
Smedley said students were turned away because the event coordinators were, in fact, looking for a specific shade of blue. The adver-tising to the event, however, may have left out the specific shade of blue required to receive
E-mails are one of the quickest ways to con-tact people in the modern world, but they can also be the most frustrating way when the intended re-cipient does not receive them.
Students, faculty and staff experienced an-noyance earlier this semester when the new Geor-gia Regents University domain for e-mailing went into effect. Professors sent students assign-ments and students sent questions or concerns to professors, some of which were never received.
Walter Ray, the director of client services for Georgia Regents, said students and faculty are experiencing multiple problems for a number of reasons.
“First of all, we are still (using) two e-mail systems,” Ray said. “We had to pick for each
person which system would actually host their e-mail. We have had to create these rules to deter-mine that. In some cases, those rules didn’t work well because some people were both employees of the health system and they might be students. We (also) had situations where people were ei-ther forwarded to the wrong place because we made an improper determination about where they should get their mail.”
Another scenario, Ray said, was duplicate IDs for students and faculty on the Summerville campus and the Health Sciences campus.
“There was a(n) msmith at GHSU and a(n) msmith at ASU,” he said. “We had to resolve that duplicate and then some people didn’t get the message that we were doing that. They might have gotten the message, but they didn’t read it so they didn’t know this change was coming neces-
Student arrested on identity theft charges
In order to raise money for the American Heart Association, a local gun competition is trying to blast away heart disease.
The Shootout for the CSRA Heart Walk is now underway, meet-ing at Shooters Indoor Range and Gun Shop, located at 1025 Patriot’s Way, every Tuesday night in February from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Randal Gossert, the security operations supervisor for the Georgia Regents University Medi-cal Center and the coordinator of the event, said the fundraiser made sense for his department to host.
“We figured, ‘We’re security,’” Gossert said. “‘We’re police-oriented. Police carry guns. Let’s go ahead and
use them.’”Now in its second year, the fun-
draiser acts as a shooting competition with an admittance fee of $10 that gives competitors the chance to fire 10 rounds at a target 50 feet away. People seeking to join the competition do not have to worry about renting guns or ammunition at the range because Gos-sert provides them. Letting people use his own handguns and ammunition al-lows him to raise more money for the Heart Walk.
“If you give me $10 to enter and fire ten rounds… that $10 goes to the CSRA Heart Walk,” he said. “None of that money goes to ammunition. None of it goes to Shooters. It’s 100 percent to the Heart Walk and the American Heart Association.”
By RON HICKERSONchief reporter
Driving back into action
GEORGIA REGENTS UNIVERSITY
VOLUME 55, ISSUE 12 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013www.asubellringer.com
Local group practices bird and wildlife watching at surrounding parks and ponds.
NEWS | PAGE 2 ARTS & LIFE | PAGE 7 SPORTS | PAGE 12Basketball teams victorious in final home game as Augusta
State on Homecoming and Senior Day.Homecoming week brings festivities to unite the two
consolidated campuses.
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GRU Disc Golf Club cleared to compete after resolving issues with charter, leadership
GRAPHIC BY TRAVIS HIGHFIELD AND JILLIAN HOBDAY
After making a couple hundred dollars in purchases on a friend’s debit card without permission, a Georgia Regents University student was ar-rested on charges of fraud.
According to a police report from Georgia Regents Department of Pub-lic Safety, Jasmine Jackson, 20, was charged earlier this month with steal-ing a friend’s debit card information in late January and using that infor-mation to make several purchases. The victim of the fraud became aware of the theft once she began receiving calls from her bank informing her of some recent charges.
“(Jackson) made several charges using the (debit) card number by or-dering on the phone and using Ama-zon,” Capt. Ted McNeal said. “We found out that the phone that was used to make the transaction came back to that same person and we went from there.”
Public Safety officers were able to trace the purchases to Jackson once the victim began contesting a $30 charge to T-Mobile, where she was given Jackson’s first name and the last four digits of her phone number, according to the police report. This discovery led the victim to suspect Jackson, which gave Public Safety officers the opportunity to question Jackson about the incident where she confessed to making the charges.
In addition to paying for phone services, the police report said Jack-son also used the card to order food from a local Chinese food restaurant and several products from Amazon.com. After Public Safety officers were able to trace the purchases back to Jackson, McNeal said she was ar-rested on felony charges of fraud.
Crimes like this one are becom-ing more and more common, McNeal said, citing scams that have recently cropped up in students’ e-mail inbox-es like an e-mail from the University Health Credit Union. The e-mail told students that their debit cards were malfunctioning and needed to send in their information in order to be sent new cards.
Another scam that showed up in inboxes across campus that students heard about was e-mail messages supposedly sent from friends or fam-ily members saying they are stuck in a foreign country due to having their passport, cash and credit cards sto-len and need to have money wired to them if they ever hope to get home.
“People are trying to scam every-body,” McNeal said. “The economy’s so bad and everything. They’re just
By RON HICKERSONchief reporter
Students wearing wrong ‘shade’ of blue denied food at campus event
The GRU Disc Golf Club will be able to fling plastic once again.
After spending much of the 2012-2013 academic year inactive, the club, which won the 2010 National Colle-giate Disc Golf Championship, had its charter reactivated this past week but not without difficulty.
John Baker, an undeclared soph-omore, became the club’s president at the beginning of the year after the former president, Kolbe Seklecki, be-
came ill. Upon taking the reigns from Seklecki, Baker said his primary focus was to receive funding so the team would be able to travel to tournaments throughout the Southeast. To learn more about the funding process, Bak-er set up a meeting with Betsy Adams, the coordinator for Greek Life and Leadership at Georgia Regents Uni-versity. When he got there, however, he wasn’t prepared for what Adams had to say.
“When I went into the meeting, expecting to just find out information about what we needed to do to get funding, I come to find out we’re not
even an organization with the school,” he said. “We’re not official. We don’t have a charter. We don’t have any-thing. We cannot represent ourselves anything GRU, anything associated with the university.”
Most of the shock stemmed from the former president of the GRU Disc Golf Club never making any mention of the deactivated charter, he said. After Adams made him aware of the club’s status, Baker said he immedi-ately tried to find a way to rectify the situation.
“She said if you can complete the chartering process quickly and
show her evidence of how it was Kolbe’s fault, she would reconsider us and maybe deem us active,” he said. “These were her exact words: ‘Give me everything you have proving Kolbe dropped the ball.’”
Baker then printed out several pages of Facebook messages he had shared with Seklecki and handed them over to Adams. By the end of the week, Baker had completed all of the forms necessary to reactivate the charter.
The reactivation request, how-
see DISC GOLF on PAGE 2
By TRAVIS HIGHFIELDeditor-in-chief
By TRAVIS HIGHFIELDeditor-in-chief
IT staff continues to correct problems after the merging of new e-mail domainsBy ASHLEY TRAWICKstaff writer
RON HICKERSON I STAFFCarla Noe aims a .22-caliber handgun at a target, participating in the Shootout for the CSRA Heart Walk shooting competition at Shooters Indoor Range and Gun Shop.
Gun competition promotes heart health
see THEFT on PAGE 3 see SHOOTOUT on PAGE 2
see E-MAIL on PAGE 2see BLUE on PAGE 3
APPROVED
ever, was denied. “I gave him an opportunity to
make a case for why they should get an exception,” Adams said. “Unfortu-nately, that documentation itself was not strong enough to grant excep-tion.”
Adams also noted that at no point was the club ever stripped of its charter. Charters remain in place, but can only become active when mem-bers follow the appropriate steps to reactive the charter once each year. This includes having an active roster and attending the Student Leadership Workshop in either the fall or spring semesters.
Jason Allind, the club’s head coach, decided it was time to contact Adams in an attempt to persuade her to reconsider her position when he caught wind of the club’s troubles.
“Basically what happened is I told her that this club has a lot of sup-port and meaning to a lot of the peo-ple in the community, not just to the students,” he said. “I think showing some support for it hopefully helped in the grand scheme of things. I think she had good reasoning to why she was not allowing the renewal of the
charter. I’m just glad she was solution oriented and came up for a way for us to do it.”
The solution was simple, Baker said.
“As long as we turned in an ac-tive roster with officers and one other member, so five members total, and one of the members attended the (Stu-dent Leader Workshop), we could be active again,” Baker said.
Baker then went to a fellow stu-dent for help. The student, who had attended the leadership workshop, joined and the charter was once again active. For Baker, it was a lesson in awareness.
“Really, it was just a breakdown of our organization,” Baker said. “Their deadlines are set. It’s not like we met their deadlines or anything and she just told us no. We were so late with everything only because we were not aware of what was going on.”
With an active charter and the trouble behind it, the club will be able to compete in the Georgia Tech Col-legiate Golf Invitational beginning Saturday, March 9. The team will also be eligible to compete in the National Collegiate Disc Golf Championship at the Hippodrome in North Augusta, S.C., the week of April 3.
By RYAN MCLAY staff writer
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Local Audubon Society members know their way around the swamps, ponds and sanctuaries of the CSRA.
The local chapter has been operating on both sides of the Savannah River since 1973. The group officially became the Augusta-Aiken Audubon So-ciety in 1997 and now includes about 600 members, according to the society’s website.
“Basically, it’s to educate the public about na-ture, not just birds, because if people are interested in something, then they are interested in preserving it,” said fieldtrip chairwoman Anne Waters about the so-ciety’s mission. “When they don’t know about some-thing, they don’t care about preserving it.”
She and her late husband Vernon Walker joined the society in 1972, not long after a vacation to Everglades National Park in Florida, where they bought their first field guide on birds from a park ranger, she said.
“We looked in the field guide, we ended up buy-ing it,” Waters said. “It was like, ‘Oh my gosh! Look at these birds!’ We joined and thoroughly loved it. It just opened up this world we just never knew existed.”
Augusta-Aiken Audubon Society chapter presi-dent Lois Stacey, active in the society for about 10 years, said the group’s overarching goals are outreach and “birding,” or identifying and watching birds.
“Anne and Lois are world-class birders,” said Eugene Howard, an Audubon Society member since the early 1970s. “It’s an education going out with them any time.”
Stacey also said the organization wants to en-courage people to become more aware of the nature that is around.
Howard said the group has a lot to offer students on campus, such as conservation work, annual bird counts and more than 20 field trips per year. The most recent count was the Christmas bird count, which spans a four-week period in December and January. Chapter members went out in teams and counted birds in order to track wintering populations.
The Society’s upcoming events include a field trip Saturday, March 23, to Crackerneck Wildlife Management Area, an area normally used for hunt-ing, where people will take a rare venture into a cy-press swamp near the Savannah River Site. Then, Saturday, April 6, the society will host “Wings and Things,” which will be held at the Georgia Conven-tion Center. Waters said Augusta-Aiken Audubon Society’s website will have directions to these events for interested parties.
“They’re going to have some of the education birds out, which will be on tethers, where students can see them up really close,” Waters said, adding that they expect either a great horned owl or a red-tailed hawk to be available for viewing.
They will also check buckets on the premises
for wild salamanders, lizards and frogs for people to view and hold. She said that, if any dragonflies are out, they will also capture some for viewing.
He and Waters said that, more recently, people are branching out and becoming experts in butterflies and dragonflies.
“We don’t have too many people who are experts in butterflies yet,” Waters said. “We’re getting better. One girl tries to get pictures of them, blows them up on her computer and studies it.”
She also said some of the people who come out on the fieldtrips are more into photography than any-thing else.
“Photography is one thing that is really popular with groups,” she said. “They come out on the field trips just to be able to go out to places they didn’t know where to go.”
Waters recommended that people interested in field trips wear closed-toed shoes, such as sneakers.
“You’d be surprised by how many show up in sandals and get bit by fire ants,” she said, adding that people should also bring insect repellant and a set of binoculars.
She also said it is important that people keep an open mind.
“If (people) come and try they might not like it, but you never know unless you try,” Waters said. “Like my husband and I, we didn’t know we would like looking at birds. It’s more fun than you think it is.”
Audubon Society welcomes birds, butterflies and students
CONTRIBUTED BY LOIS STACEY Several members of the Augusta-Aiken Audubon Society search for wildlife, ducks and other water birds with binoculars at Merry Brother’s Brickyard Ponds.
Disc GolfCONTINUED from PAGE 1
Each Tuesday evening, Gossert brings with him a “small arsenal” of .22-calbier, .25-caliber, .380-caliber, .357-caliber and 9 mm handguns, giv-ing the competitors a variety of guns to choose from.
Buddy Lichty, the owner of Shoot-ers, said his store reserves one lane in the shooting range for the competition free-of-charge and also provides the targets needed to compete ever since he was solicited to host the competition.
“They came in and asked, and it’s for a good cause, so why not?” he said. “It’s part of the community.”
Last year, Gossert said the shootout raised $250. This year, the first week of competition raised $50, and Gossert said he expects a significant increase in par-ticipants competing than last year.
“By the feedback I’m getting from other staff in the hospital and from the facilities maintenance (staff), you see a lot more interest,” he said. “There are quite a few staff nurses that sound ex-cited to be able to learn a little bit about self-defense and protection through fire-arms and were encouraging other staff members to come out and at least learn.”
In fact, the second night of the fun-draiser hosted more people than it ever has in one night, said Divisional Leader of Facilities Management Jim Pruitte.
“Tonight is the best response we’ve had,” he said. “It’s going to get better over the next two nights.”
One of the competitors who came to the range was Carla Noe, a nurse manager for the Georgia Regents medi-cal site. She said she loved the fundrais-ing event.
“It’s a good cause, and I like to shoot weapons,” she said. “(It’s) just a chance to come out and have fun.”
Though this was her first time par-ticipating in the Shootout, she said she plans to come back again sometime
during the next two evenings. She also said she has been trying to get the word out by sending e-mails to her cowork-ers, asking them to support the event.
Gossert said the majority of people who have participated in the fundraiser have been staff members and their fami-lies, but out of those people, there were a few people who had never even held a gun, much less fired one.
“Last year the (vice president) for facilities brought his wife and his son,” he said. “It was the first time his son had held a handgun, period.”
By bringing less-experienced shooters to the fundraiser, the competi-tion also becomes an opportunity for learning more about gun use.
“This year, I’ve heard a lot more staff members say, ‘Hey, I’ve heard you’re doing this, can you show me how to fire?’” Gossert said.
But as a result of having more less-experienced shooters compete against more knowledgeable competitors, he said, two top scores will be recognized: the highest score a person has after fir-ing 10 rounds and the highest cumula-tive score for people who pay to com-pete multiple times.
“Even if you’re not such a good shot, you can enter more than once and accumulate your score so that if you re-ally want to try for that grand prize you enter more often and up your score,” Gossert said.
This year, Gossert said the grand prize was a $370 Dewalt impact driver power tool.
Along with the Shootout, Pruitte said there are six fundraisers that have been benefitting the Heart Walk, like one with the help of Maryland Fried Chicken. The restaurant will donate 10 percent of a dinner’s cost every time someone leaves his receipt with the res-taurant as a part of the fundraiser.
ShootoutCONTINUED from PAGE 1
CONTRIBUTED BY DAVID WICKER Jason Lynn, the 2011 disc golf singles national champion, reacts to a throw at the 2012 National Collegiate Disc Golf Championship at the Hippodrome in North Augusta, S.C.
sarily.”Anne Smith, the help desk man-
ager for the Health Sciences campus, said the Microsoft outage that occurred a couple of weeks ago didn’t help the situation either but only added to the number of issues. Smith said transition-ing from one domain to another has been hectic because things are not the same as they used to be.
“Anytime you start a semester, we always have a spike in login problems,” Smith said. “You’ve got somebody who hasn’t logged on for a month or two and passwords expire and now it looks dif-ferent. Then you throw in the fact that
we’ve consolidated and changed our website and done some things with e-mail… That definitely adds some com-plexity.”
Smith said not all problems are re-solved but they will be soon.
Ray added that students and faculty should know that if there is a problem to please report it and try to give as many details as they can.
“Reporting of the issue is really the only way to get things solved,” he said. “If you have a problem, please report it. We will definitely try to follow up on it as quickly and try to get it resolved for you.”
E-mailCONTINUED from PAGE 1
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PHOTOS BY MINDY WADLEY
To promote a healthier campus and com-munity and to persuade more people to go green, Georgia Regents University has imple-mented a sustainability program – The Green Team.
Although the program has only been active for about three years and initially began before the merger eight years ago, the team found its direction in the last two years. However, upon the start of the committee no one knew exactly how much work was entailed, eventually caus-ing a significant growth in members.
“We started out with one chair, then we got two chairs; the committee became so involved that we actually took on a lot more work than we thought it was going to be,” said Mario En-riquez, the co-chair of the team. “Since then, one member has retired. Now we are back to two chairmen, Mark Williams and myself.”
The Green Team consists of five different work groups. The combination of these work groups consists of education awareness, envi-ronment, purchasing, recycling and facilities utilities.
“The facilities work group is all about saving money across campus as far as lights, electricity and natural gas usage is concerned,” Enriquez said. “As a team, one of our claims to fame is our Energy Star certification. We are the only academic hospital in the state of Geor-gia that has that acclaim.”
Georgia Regents has been able to help the school reduce the amount of energy being used, inevitably reducing their carbon footprint. By no means is sustainability cheap, but the team’s purchasing group keeps a strict budget on what is needed.
“We try to raise awareness for environmen-tal responsibility and sustainability,” said Jamie Coffee, a senior purchasing agent. “There’s a lot more to being green than just recycling.”
The purchasing work group’s main focus is on reducing what the university uses, reusing office products and determining what is to be recycled.
“For purchasing, we take in account for
the life cycle of a product when we go to pur-chase it, how it is made, can it be reused or can it be recycled,” said Jamie Coffee, a senior purchasing agent. “Right now we are recycling materials from the hospital; we sell used medi-cal supplies that can be refurbished, toner cart-ages, batteries, cellphones, cardboard, bottles, glass; and we are still trying to find a company in Augusta that can handle the volume of office paper we produce. It has been a challenge, but we are working on that collectively.”
The team meetings include every employ-ee who wants to participate in saving the cam-pus and community. Recently, the team has set in effect Operation Clean Air, which consists of a “no idling across campus” aspect and a tobacco ban.
Core member Linda Saunders of the edu-cation awareness work group said the groups are seeking to combine the Summerville Green Team with the Health Side Campus Green Team.
“We are really excited about the oppor-tunity to consolidate with the Summerville campus because we feel like that gives us a lot more people to become aware of things,” Saunders said. “We are trying to get that back together so we can become more of a consoli-dated committee to work at both locations.”
The main goal of the Green Team is to reduce the effect of pollution in our environ-ment and save as many resources as possible. The group is adamant about reducing what is being placed in our landfills and not wanting to see the city or campus being over thrown with trash.
With Earth Day steadily approaching, the Green Team members said they are looking forward to having the crowd triple in size.
“We are really excited about Earth Day,” Saunders said. “We are trying to get volunteers from sororities, fraternities, basketball players, faculty, students and local community mem-bers to help out this year. The more people we have involved the better the event will be.”
The Green Team’s Earth Day event will be held Friday, April 19, behind the student center at the Health Sciences campus from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
A group of historical reenactors honored the memory of the Buffalo Soldiers at Georgia Regents Univer-sity Monday, Feb. 18.
The Greater Atlanta Buffalo Sol-diers have been sharing the memory of the all-black U.S. Army regiments with the Augusta, Ga., area through annual presentations on campus since 1999. Assistant Professor Emeritus Michael Searles, also known as Cow-boy Mike, said the program is a unique approach to the many black history month events on campus.
“I think that there are certain areas in which people are fairly familiar,” he said. “If you talk about African-Amer-icans in boxing or organized sports, people will say, ‘Yes, we’re familiar.’ But if you talk about black soldiers or
Buffalo Soldiers during the frontier period of American history, in a sense it’s opening up for many people a new window on the West.”
The event included a video pre-sentation of the documentary “Buffalo Soldiers” followed by a question and answer session with the reenactors, Searles said. Students were then able to watch the reenactors demonstrate various horseback military maneuvers utilized by the Buffalo Soldier cavalry-men.
The riders demonstrated their mil-itary maneuvers on the sports field in front of Science Hall. Lauren Gordon, a junior biology major, said she loves horses and has ridden them for years, so when she saw them on campus she wanted to learn more.
“I saw the horses last year, but I didn’t see any of the background of it,” Gordon said. “But I knew they were showing a video, so I wanted some
more information on it. It’s very in-teresting. I love history and horses.”
The history of the Buffalo Sol-diers began after the Civil War when the Army decided to include blacks in part of the standing militia, Searles said. The segregation of troops result-ed in the all-black regiments serving through the 1950s, when the military integrated the troops.
“Some of the older guys who were there in the audience were actual-ly in the military as Buffalo Soldiers,” Searles said. “The Buffalo Soldiers were organized in 1866. They weren’t really disbanded until about 1953 dur-ing the Korean War.”
One of those retired soldiers in attendance at the demonstration was Trooper Harold Cole. Searles said the Greater Atlanta Buffalo Soldiers want-ed to honor Cole’s service.
The name “Buffalo Soldiers” was coined by the American Indians living
in the areas where the original troops served. Searles said the coarse texture of the soldiers’ hair reminded the In-dians of the fur of the buffaloes in the region.
“The black soldiers did a myriad of things in the American West and had very good reputations,” Searles said. “Very low desertion, very low drunkenness and quite often soldiers stayed there sometimes 10, 15, 20 or more years.”
Chris Harrison, a sophomore history major, petted one of the horses while talking with a reenac-tor after the demonstration. He said even though he couldn’t make it to the video presentation, he was glad to watch the riders on horseback.
“I found it very informative,” Harrison said. “I like the historical aspect of it as well as the people that continue to carry on the legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers.”
The Buffalo Soldiers are one of many examples in American his-tory of the multiculturalism of our society, Searles said. He said their memory should be preserved.
“I think it’s important for us, as individual citizens of a country, to realize that we have been from the very beginning a multiracial, mul-tiethnic society,” Searles said. “It didn’t become that way 20 years ago or 40 years ago but from the very be-ginning when folks first came here.”
There are three Buffalo Sol-diers buried in the cemetery on the campus of Georgia Regents who died during the Spanish-American War. Searles said they were sent to Cuba under the assumption that blacks were immune to yellow fever. Those soldiers are Milledge Mills, Hugh Pollard and W.C. Brown.
By MINDY WADLEYstaff writer
THE BELL RINGER PAGE 3
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Buffalo SoldiersReenactors trot onto Summerville campus in honor of Black History Month
trying to make a quick buck, but it’s against the law.”
These scams are just a reflection of a report made by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that states incidents of identity theft have been rising in recent years.
In its most recent report on identity theft, the BJS reported 8.6 million United States households had at least one person 12 years old or older who was victimized by identity theft in 2010. These thefts resulted in these households as a whole experiencing $13.3 billion in direct financial losses. The number of thefts grew 33 percent from 2005 where 6.4 million house-holds were victimized.
One of the reasons that identity theft may
be growing is its overall ease. McBride said identity theft has become easier for potential thieves because people are putting more per-sonal information online than they should.
“Don’t put your information out there,” he said when asked how students can best protect themselves from identity thieves. “I think too much information is on Facebook and (other) websites. It is so easy to get the information off websites. Don’t help them; they already can ob-tain it. It’s just so easy. The computer age is here now and anybody can almost hack anything.”
He also said students can best protect them-selves from identity theft by contacting Public Safety whenever they have any questions about making purchases online or through businesses like Craigslist, saying that most identity thefts students experience can be avoided if they just asked Public Safety officers.
free food, he said. “School colors,” he said. “I’m not sure what
the advertising said because I’m not involved in the advertising, but students were supposed to wear school colors. The whole purpose of the event was to promote school spirit.”
King said she had no reason to believe the shade mattered and also noted the ambiguity spread by word of mouth.
“(My friend) said all you had to do is wear blue,” said Karleigh King, a senior communi-cations studies major. “She didn’t say anything about the color, what shade or that it had to be GRU related.”
Bryan Hayes, a junior communications studies major, said he was there when his friend was turned away despite wearing a navy blue
jacket. Smedley again turned the student away saying the shade was too dark to merit free food, Hayes said. After his friend unzipped his jacket to reveal a blue t-shirt, Hayes said he was shocked that his friend was allowed access.
“It was the same color blue as his jacket,” he said. “Not only that, (his jacket) was the same color blue as everyone running the event.”
Despite this experience, however, Hayes said he wouldn’t mind participating in the event as long as some clarity accompanies the adver-tisements.
“To be honest, I would make it more inclu-sive,” he said. “If you are going to make it ex-clusive, just say it. Say it has to be GRU attire or blue jeans don’t count, make sure it’s this shade of blue. Just clarify.”
BlueCONTINUED from PAGE 1
TheftCONTINUED from PAGE 1
Green Team on campus promotes environmental responsibility By FATIMA FASHERstaff writer
JACQUELYN PABON I STAFF
Student Jasmine Jackson was arrested on charges of fraud and identity theft after stealing and making hundreds of dollars in purchases with a friend’s debit card information.
PHOTOS BY MINDY WADLEY
(above) Cowboy Mike looks on and explains the military maneuvers demonstrated by the horseback reenactors
at the Buffalo Soldiers presentation Monday, Feb. 18. (right) A group of horseback reenactors
demonstrates the many different military maneuvers utilized by the historical Buffalo Soldiers at a demonstration.
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PAGE 4 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013
OPINIONSeditorial
Letters to the editor must be accompanied by the author’s email address. All columns and letters to the editor are the opinion of the author. The views expressed in the opinion section do not necessarily express those of
The Bell Ringer, a designated public forum. Anything submitted to The Bell Ringer is open to be edited or rejected. However, The Bell Ringer staff gives all opinions a fair chance to be heard. All letters will be
edited for grammar and style. If you would like to contribute a column or a letter to
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editorial policy
Almost everyday we hear people referring to the biased media. But our question at The Bell Ringer is what do you consider media?
Newspapers obviously fit the bill and some straight news television stations do too, but what about blogs, radio and the omnipresent internet? Many of these have all the markings of news providers – they cover popular, timely social and political issues, they get quotes from powerful and influential people, and they present their information to the public as neutral, unbiased reporting.
But they don’t have to inform their readers that their coverage is ethically questionable. They don’t have to get multiple points of view of the stories. And, perhaps most importantly, they don’t have to tell the public if they verified the accuracy of their information before putting it out there for the entire world to see.
Because of modern technology, it’s become much easier for the average Joe to start a website or blog, claiming to be a full-fledged journalist. But the truth is real journalists go to universities to
learn the ins and outs of being a responsible member of the mass media. They learn the laws pertaining to their career field, the ethical guidelines that surround the profession and the way to write a balanced article. Granted, not all journalists abide by the standards, but that can be said of any profession.
Although some individuals mistakenly believe that newspapers are becoming less relevant in today’s society, the truth is they are needed now more than ever. In contrast to these burgeoning alternative media sources, newspaper editors do
fact-check their stories because they have to maintain their reputations whereas the writers of blogs and websites don’t, especially if they publish their work anonymously.
There is no significant way to hold those authors accountable for what they say, and there are no real repercussions if the published information is flawed. Effectively, they can say whatever they want without fear of reprisal.
Newspapers, on the other hand, have people counting on their stories to contain the latest, most accurate information, and as a result editors aren’t willing
to let less-than-quality work be published. If a journalist publishes inaccurate information, that writer is sanctioned – by the public and by his boss. His name and his credibility is permanently tied to his published works, and because of that immense pressure, he makes sure what he writes is accurate.
We at The Bell Ringer hold ourselves to the same standard as professional writers. We want to feature accurate, timely articles that are pertinent to life on and off both the Summerville and Health Sciences campuses in the Augusta, Ga., area because we know that’s the service students need us to provide.
We are the voice of Georgia Regents University, one of the few publications created specifically with the students in mind. We hold ourselves to a high standard because we believe that quality is what the students want and what the students deserve.
It is our duty to speak for Georgia Regents students and to protect their interests in whatever ways we can.
We definitely do not take that responsibility lightly.
Mislabeled ‘media’ gets a bad reputation
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WHAT DOYOU THINK
Dear Kristin,
My boyfriend recently asked me to participate in a sexual act involving him, myself and another woman. I’m not very keen on the idea, but I want to make him happy. What should I do?
- Fake Fiona
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Late-February means so long New Year’s resolution
It’s the same story year after year: All through January, gyms are packed, health foods are fly-ing off the shelves
and cigarette smoking declines. People all over the world bury them-
selves in the pursuit of betterment. Then, February arrives, and it’s bye-bye New Year’s resolution.
I don’t generally make New Year’s res-olutions, at least not earnestly. Occasion-ally, I’ll make a half-hearted effort to start drinking more water or lose a few pounds. In 2011, I resolved to familiarize myself as much with Lord of the Rings as I already was with Star Wars and Harry Potter. That was one resolution I actually kept.
Sadly, though, I’ve already started slipping up on my resolution for this year, which I thought I was really committed to. I had decided that I was going to start be-ing on time.
Anyone who knows me can attest that being late is an intrinsic part of who I am. Ever since kindergarten, I have been a slowpoke, a quality I seem to have passed down genetically to my daughter, who is now in kindergarten. And for some reason, no matter how much I try to hurry, get-ting places on time has always been a real struggle for me.
But this year, I decided that was all going to change. I recently got hired at a television news station, a job which I could easily see transitioning into a career when I graduate from Georgia Regents Univer-sity next May. And speaking of Georgia
Regents, this semester I have classes daily with a professor who has always expressed an overt disdain for tardiness. So, I decided this would be the perfect time in my life to finally kick the bad habit of being habitu-ally late.
At first it was going great. I made it through six full weeks of the new year without being late to work or school. But then, as with all resolutions, I began to slack off right around Valentine’s Day, giv-ing in to the urge to hit that snooze button just one more time; taking a few too many minutes in the shower to lather, rinse and repeat; or stopping by the JSAC for Star-bucks on my way to class, even when I only have five minutes.
I know I shouldn’t be too hard on my-self; everyone breaks their New Year’s res-olutions around this time of the year, right? I think it stems from our society’s collec-tively truncated attention span. By Febru-ary, most people simply can’t remember what it was that was so urgently important to them back in December of the previous year.
Perhaps I should take a leaf out of my sister’s book. She has never broken a New Year’s resolution, choosing such foolproof goals as making as many “that’s what she said” jokes as humanly possible or drinking every day to build her alcohol tolerance, rather than the more traditional choices.
Then again, maybe I’m at a point in life when self-improvement resolutions would be the wiser choice.
So even though it isn’t the “new year” any longer, I’m resolving to double my ef-forts to stop being late all the time. I just hope that with persistence, I can finally change from a person who is always late to someone who is always on time -- or maybe even early.
MINDY WADLEYstaff [email protected]
Dear reader,Your dilemma is
one that many cou-ples face. When a lull occurs in the sex department of a re-
lationship, most men immediately jump to their rawest, most scandalous fantasy: the threesome. And some of them just get ballsy enough to ask for it. As women, when the intimacy fades, it takes more of an emotion-al toll. For men, it is a lot simpler.
You must remember, as cliché as it may be, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We don’t have a lot in common on how we view sex. The mentality for a man is that it is just sex. Women, for the most part, put a lot more thought into it, at least when it comes to relationships.
There are a couple of things to consider if having a threesome is really something you feel like you would be willing to do. One, how will it affect your relationship in the long run? Two, is this a decision you’d be willing to live with for the rest of your life? And three, would you really want to see your boyfriend performing sexual acts on another woman?
There is a lot involved in a threesome. Think about how awkward sex can be with two people. You add in another person on top of that and things can get really com-
plicated. There are no instructions, none that I’d be willing to give anyway, when it comes to multiple people in the bedroom. The thought alone gives me anxiety. There are too many people that have to be pleased while also considering your own pleasure. I feel like I would end up leaving more frus-trated than I was when I got there.
Let’s be honest, there is a certain time in most people’s lives where they want to explore their sexuality, but I don’t know that the best time to do that is while you are committed to someone. I personally feel like that opens the door to a lot of issues. I’m sure there are people who allow that sort of playful activity into their relationship and it works out for them, but polyamorous relationships are not for everyone.
You are obviously having doubts, and that is a big indicator that you should not go through with something to this magni-tude. If you want to liven up your sex life, start with something with less involvement of other people. If your sex life is good and your boyfriend is wanting to add another person in bed, then maybe there are more issues there than just him wanting a three-some.
Ultimately, it is your decision, one that you will have to deal with and one that you have to deem suitable for your relationship. Don’t be pressured into something that you aren’t willing to do.
But if you do go through with it, keep this one thing in mind: There is no I in three-some.
KRISTIN HAWKINSstaff [email protected]
ASK KRISTINHave any questions or concerns that you just
can’t figure out? Write a letter and someone will give you advice, but we give no guarantees you’ll
like it.
THE BELL RINGER PAGE 5
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Happening on
No Top Ramen life for me
My student loan debt will not get the best of me.
I came to col-lege for a reason, and that reason is a
higher education that will catapult me to a better place in life.
My student loan debt does concern me, but at the same time I have to look at the bigger picture. For me, the bigger picture is my future - for the kids I plan on having later in life, for my mother who has sacrificed endlessly and has been nothing but a complete support sys-tem to help me through college, and for my entire family to see its first college graduate walk across a stage.
Last month, when I had a little down-time, I read this article by Brian Mc-Bride, the associate producer for CNN International, and in the article he dis-cussed how he paid off $26,500 of debt in less than two years by skipping meals and eating protein bars or drinking En-sure shakes. In the article, he also said he went to bed hungry and left the heater during the winter and the air conditioner in the summer months off so he could save money to put towards his debt.
While I say kudos to him, I will not make that my future after graduation. I already know how it feels to go to bed hungry but not by choice, and I can’t un-derstand why someone who had the op-tion of not doing so, chose to do so.
I vowed to not go back to that life anymore, and one way I make sure of that is by gaining a higher education.
Living that way is not something that I can bear. That’s why I’m in college. If that reason racks me up a ton of debt, then that’s the price I will pay for a col-lege education and I won’t complain.
The sacrifices put toward my edu-cation from all of my family led me to where I am today. In December, it will all pay off when I can look at my diplo-ma and think of all the time, energy and work I put into becoming a college grad-uate. I’ll also think of the people who’ve helped me along the way.
Sure, my student loan debt is going to be there in the back of my mind, but I’m definitely not going to stress out about it. I understand the ramifications if you miss payments and all the other things that can happen, but I’m very aware of what I got myself into.
For me, the point of getting a higher education isn’t to go on a Top Ramen feast or to be penny pinching on the dol-lar menu while aggressively budgeting down to my last cent. It’s to gain more knowledge to take you into a field where you don’t have just a job but a career. What was the hard work for if you’re go-ing to stress out every five minutes about your debt after you graduate?
I understand why McBride did what he did because he didn’t want the burden of debt to be cowering over him at all times, but that life isn’t for me.
I’ll take my debt along with my di-ploma, and I’ll lead the life that a ton of Americans live now.
KEREYIA BUTLERstaff [email protected]
Proper instruction, not medication, is the answer
It bothers me that a kid’s childhood can be taken away at such an early age.
Teachers, as well as some parents, no
longer feel like putting up with all of the en-ergy produced by children. Before a child has even made it to first grade, teachers are having them “diagnosed” with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and attention deficit disorder. Then, children are put on some type of medication to calm them down.
I feel as though some teachers and par-ents are using this medication instead of a firm hand.
I don’t mean physically spanking -- or abusing a child as some would see it -- but instead of taking control of the situation and showing the child who is in charge, teachers and parents are looking for other methods. To put it plainly, they are looking for an easy way out.
What they are failing to understand is children will be children. They are loud, en-ergetic and often have short attention spans but didn’t we all at their age? They are not adults; they have to be taught how to pay attention. It is not something that happens overnight; it takes time and patience. Yet, instead of being willing to take the time with these children and teaching them how to harness all of this energy and look for other
productive outlets, they look for a quick fix.They have decided that the easiest way
to solve this problem is to dope kids on medication, leaving them with a shell of the energetic child they had before.
It really is sad to see how much a child’s personality can change due to medication. Many children lose so much of their per-sonality, as well as their energy, when they begin to take these medications. We have enough adults in the world already. We need to let these kids live out their childhood. Regardless of whether they have a medical disorder, they will become dependent on the medication over the years.
I feel as though these children shouldn’t be put on medication until they are at least in middle school. Give them time to enjoy their childhood and experience it to the full-est before having it stripped away. I don’t think that there are not children with these medical issues; I just feel as though the chil-dren need more time to develop before we start feeding them prescription drugs. The parents, as well as teachers, need to step up to the plate and take time with these chil-dren and realize there are other solutions besides medication.
The world has gotten so used to having a quick fix to every problem and sometimes that isn’t the solution. Especially when it comes to your children. If you look for a quick solution now, what will you do as they get older, the problems grow and a quick fix is no longer the option? If they would just take the time now, it would make a word of difference in the child as it grows up.
NIKKI SKINNERstaff [email protected]
Nurture the Savannah River
The Savannah River is home to us all.
Growing up in a single-parent house-hold where my mom
worked most of the time, I hardly had any restrictions as to what I could do. My in-trinsic behavior was to go outside. I was an animal protector and a field runner, and I ab-solutely loved getting close to nature.
I was that kid with a muddy face, walk-ing around with no shoes on. I never had a pet, but I never went a day without touching animals. As I got older, however, I became more focused in school and stop going out-doors. My long-forgotten love for nature slowly comes back to me whenever I see the running Savannah River.
Unlike the secluded city I used to live in, Augusta, Ga., is particularly invested its river.
This beautiful river runs 300 miles be-tween Georgia and South Carolina and is home to thousands of animals. The Savan-nah River was here long before civilization, has provided essential drinking water and was used for importing and exporting goods from Augusta to Savannah, Ga.
Walking down the River Walk, built with red bricks, this river reflects the beauty
of the city but also its ugliness. I would witness a group of smokers
carelessly throwing cigarette butts on the ground. Drinkers would leave shattered bot-tles, and even little kids tossed their candy bar wrappers aside. The most ridiculous thing I have witnessed were the mountains of tires, the urban waste along the riverbed and, most disturbing, garbage in the water. It amazes me how people take nature for granted.
One day nature will stop putting up with us or, rather, nature will be unable to put up with us.
Recently, I started an internship with Savannah Riverkeeper, or SRK. This orga-nization inspired my passion for nature once again. SRK, founded in 2001, is a nonprofit organization that serves as the guardian of the Savannah River. This organization is composed of devoted volunteers, wildlife enthusiasts, tree huggers, animal protectors and many who valued the power of nature; I am one of them.
SRK sponsors countless activities to bring people to the river and create aware-ness about protecting the environment. The activities provide opportunities to clean up the river through an event that occurs twice a year, Rivers Alive. Through this event, volunteers have removed 25 tons of trash in the river. Other fundraising activities, such as Paddlefest, provide opportunities for people to athletically engage in the river.
SI-LONG [email protected]
“@iSmile_youFrown I was involved as much as i could be but there isn’t much school spirit at GRU.”
@BellRinger_News How involved are YOU during homecoming week?
Travel: It’s not so scary
I was about to embark on the best four weeks of my life, arriving at my destination via At-lanta with a brief
layover in Paris.I had everything ready to go. It was
all packed and accounted for. It was only then I let myself get scared.
I was going on a study abroad trip in Rome. I was not afraid of the study abroad class, the professor, flying or even trying to speak Italian; I was afraid of the last two weeks of the trip in which I would be in a foreign country, so very far from home, all on my own.
I had decided long before my depar-ture date that I would extend my flight and spend two weeks traversing through Rome on my own. In typical procrasti-nating fashion, I did not have a clue what I was going to do or where I was going to stay. In a blind, unorganized panic I called my dad.
“Hey Dad, sorry to wake you so ear-ly. I just have a quick question,” I said. I continued, “If I go missing while I’m in Rome, you’ll be like Liam Nieson when his daughter got kidnapped in that movie and come find me, right? Then beat the unholy mess out of whoever kidnapped me, right?”
I was relying on my dad’s military training for the “beating the unholy mess out of the kidnappers” part.
My dad groggily responded, “Jamie, who is Liam Nieson?”
I was literally all on my own in a country where I did not speak the first language, and I did not know a soul there. That was the scary part. For the first time in my life, I had no safety net. I was accountable for my own safety and wellbeing.
I am here to write this column, so obviously I survived. I actually thrived on everywhere I got to go, everything I got to see, and through everyone I got to meet. Without much further ado, here is my advice for the individuals who find themselves without the angelic help of Liam Neison when they travel alone overseas. My advice is simple: Stay in
youth hostels.Yes, youth hostels get a lot of nega-
tive attention when terrible things like abductions and alcohol poisonings hap-pen within their walls. These few hostels give other magnificent youth hostels a bad name.
Every hostel that I stayed in while I was in Europe was clean; the staff was friendly and mostly British, Australian or American. There were always new peo-ple at the bar or new roommates coming in to socialize with and plan adventures with.
Like a regular hotel, you check in around 2 p.m. Usually there is an attrac-tive slew of girls who work for the hostel that handle check-in, for obvious rea-sons. You decide beforehand how many people you’d be willing to share a room with. In most hostels, the more people in a room, the cheaper the price of the room per night. So you make a reserva-tion for whatever room you want and the attractive girl hands you a room key and a locker key.
You go up to your room and meet your new roommates. Everyone speaks some level of English.
You lock up your belongings in the locker, take the key with you and go do whatever you want with your new friends.
The great thing about youth hostels is that they are all over Europe, and ev-eryone knows they’re a good time. You have to be between the ages of 18 and 30 at most of them.
They are the greatest investment of your stay in Europe because everyone is interested to know who you are and where you are from. You will meet some of your best friends at hostels. Please be-lieve me: Hostels are worth it.
My only other advice about traveling solo is to be as smart as you can. If you are in a situation that does not feel right, get out of it. Ask for help. Know when you need directions and ask someone. Even if it is a game of pointing at the map and playing charades when that person’s English isn’t as good as you’d hoped it would be. As long as you are smart and observant of your surroundings, you’ll have the time of your life.
So get out there and travel. I believe in you. You won’t even need Liam Nei-son.
JAMIE LOWEstaff [email protected]
ROOM FOR RENT• 1/4 MILES FROM GRU• $237.50 RENT/MONTH WITH ONE
MONTH’S RENT DEPOSIT UPON MOVING IN
• $400 PER MONTH AFTER BILLS• 2,500 SQ. FT• HARDWOOD FLOORS• WALKING DISTANCE TO SHOPS
ON MONTE SANO AVENUE AND CENTRAL AVENUE
CONTACT: [email protected] (706) 877 - 7581
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013PAGE 6
ARTS & LIFEwww.asubellringer.com
Chaplain Betty Love is used to having a hectic schedule dur-ing the beginning of the year.
Love’s Wedding Chapel & Heal-ing Center has been a cornerstone on Wrightsboro Road for more than 14 years. Originally named Love & Light Healing Center, it was designed as a hyp-nosis center to aid those who desired to give up smoking and pursue weight loss. Love had much success in her new busi-ness; however, questions remained, she said.
“People kept asking me, ‘Well, you are a reverend, why don’t you do wed-dings?’” Love said. “Georgia had a three-day waiting period and a blood test; I was sending everybody to North Augusta or Aiken. I didn’t want to deal with all that.”
Eventually, she said, curiosity got the best of her, so she called the probate court to inquire about what was needed in the state of Georgia to obtain a marriage license. Love found out then that Georgia had recently changed its laws concerning marriage procedures.
Love said the new law states that there are only two items now needed to obtain a marriage license in Georgia: a
$35 license fee and an ID. “Shoot, I just stuck out my sign, and
I found out the chaplains at Fort Gordon (were) sending me people, and the ball started rolling,” she said.
In 2011, Love reported hosting 11 weddings Sunday, Nov. 11, Veteran’s Day. Love said weddings started taking up most of her time.
She said she placed the hypnosis to the side for a while to take on the mission of aiding couples in unification in front of God, family and friends.
So it was of no surprise that Love officiated five weddings on Valentine’s Day. She said her first wedding on was aired on NBC’s 26 and covered by Jay Jefferies at 6:45 a.m. The union was be-tween Trish and Johnathan Watts.
Later that morning, she conducted another wedding at 9 a.m. The wedding started off with a dedication to the wom-en and men of the armed forces by cit-ing a speech given by Colin Powell to the troops in England. After that the bubbly reverend turned on her incredible charm, which made the wedding light, fun and memorable for all in attendance.
The wedding ceremonies only tend to take 15 to 20 minutes. The couple also has the choice to have the wedding within Love’s facilities. Love said she in-
Smoke Free
Bars in downtown Augusta, Ga., have recently decided
to change the scene by taking smoking out of their venues.
Although the city has held hearings on whether to keep smoking in public locations, Au-gusta officials decided it was a decision that business owners were allowed to make for them-selves, said Coco Rubio, the co-owner of Sky City and Soul Bar. In Soul Bar, smoking is still al-lowed inside while Sky City has decided to go non-smoking.
The option to remove smok-ing from Sky City was more of a business decision due to the complaints that had been accu-mulating over time about peo-ple not wanting to visit a venue
where they were subjected to smoke surrounding them, Rubio said.
“We feel like Sky City is a live music venue more than it is just a regular bar and with that in mind, we thought it would be better to make it non-smoking,” he said.
“We’ve had lots of people asking if we could go non-smok-ing because then they would go to more concerts. A lot of people seem to not want to come out to see a show and have to deal with people all around them smoking, so we thought it might be good to try it out.”
Another local bar that went along with taking smoking out of their location was Joe’s Under-ground Café after its new owner, Jeremy LaFontaine, took over.
“We really don’t have venti-lation down here, and it was par-ticularly bad,” LaFontaine said.
“You would come down here and smell like an ashtray. It
wasn’t even like just cigarettes – you would just smell terrible the rest of the day or the evening, and I don’t think people enjoy that. People want to be able to go to a bar and have a couple of drinks and not have to worry about taking a shower before they go to bed or before they do anything else.”
Other than the smell of the actual venue, taking smoking out has added other positive aspects for Joe’s, LaFontaine said.
“We’ve had several people say that when they get take out that they’re happy because the napkins don’t smell like smoke anymore and the pickles don’t taste like smoke,” he said. “The quality of the food is better.”
Some customers argue that having a cigarette vending ma-chine in the bar is a contradic-tion, said Allen Jones, a local to the Augusta area.
“I visited Joe’s for the first time ever this month and was an-
noyed when I went to the back and spent money on a pack of cigarettes in the bar but couldn’t smoke them,” he said. “I almost lit it in the bar until someone I was with told me they read a sign outside saying it wasn’t allowed. On top of that, I either had the choice to climb back up the stair-well to smoke or to stand in front of the door where two other guys already were.”
With the complaints in mind, Joe’s is making accommodations for those who smoke and don’t feel welcome, the owner said.
“I’m going to look into may-be doing some temporary fenc-ing and maybe put a couple of high-top tables out there,” La-Fontaine said. “I don’t want the smokers to feel like they’re get-ting pushed around, and I want everybody to feel welcome at all times.”
Another option that LaFon-taine has for those who smoke is to bring in smokeless cigarettes
in order to allow the option of smoking at the bar in a healthier way.
Sky City has also decided that it wants to make circum-stances for smokers better, Ru-bio said.
“We have portable ashtrays that people can use to throw away their cigarette butts,” he said. “We might even put some benches out front where you can sit and smoke if you want to. Just to have a little outdoor area where you can smoke.”
The people who don’t light up are finding it better for them when they go out.
“I don’t care if people choose to smoke, but I would rather not have it affect me be-ing able to have a good time out, and I certainly don’t have a good time if I’m choking or stinking from smoke,” said Joshua Cole, a junior public relations major.
By MEGAN STEWARTstaff writer
Downtown bars enforce non-smoking policy to encourage more clientele
Going to the chapel of love The effort behind [email protected]
By FATIMA FRASHERstaff writer
Homecoming week at Geor-gia Regents University, a weeklong event leading up to
the crowning of homecoming king and queen, has more than just a week’s worth of time and effort put into the production of the events.
Planning for homecoming starts the prior fall semester with a committee of 10 to 15 people made up of students, faculty and staff, said Dean Smedley, the assistant director for the Office of Stu-dent Life and Engagement at Georgia Regents.
“The committee basically brings up what happened the year before and brings up the schedule,” Smedley said. “We then decide if we want to do the same thing or to do something different.”
There are committee meetings held every other week up until the semester of homecoming and then every week after-wards, said Jessica Haskins, the assistant director for programs and the homecom-ing chair for the Office of Student Life and Engagement.
“We do a very similar set of events every year,” Haskins said. “So, it’s just realigning the days, the times, making
sure that everything is appropriate, mak-ing sure there is space available and ev-erything that goes along with that. Then we start to find sponsorship, doing our contracts and all the things for the dif-ferent events.”
This year’s homecoming was planned to have two new events: Wear Blue Get Food that was hosted on Mon-day, Feb. 18, which was an event where everyone who had the school color on got free food in the Jaguar Student Activities Center breezeway, and the Sidewalk Spirit Contest that was going to be hosted Tuesday, Feb. 19, but was cancelled due to rain, which would have been a contest to help build points for Pass the Paw, a competition involving student organizations that earn points throughout the week of homecoming in hopes of winning a $200 check for their organization, Haskins said.
The rest of the week’s events con-sisted of Car Chalking Friday, Feb. 15, during which the candidates and orga-nizations involved in the Pass the Paw competition brought cars for spirit dec-orating by Washington Hall; a Dance Marathon Kickoff hosted Monday, Feb. 18, in the JSAC Ballroom, where the candidates for homecoming were in-troduced; Jag-A-Lympics Wednesday,
By MEGAN STEWARTstaff writer
see CHAPEL on PAGE 8
PHOTOS BY MEGAN STEWART
see HOMECOMING on PAGE 8
THE BELL RINGER PAGE 7
www.asubellringer.com
Downtown bars enforce non-smoking policy to encourage more clientele
The Juried Student Art Show is a long-standing tradition
at the Summerville campus. The purpose of the
show is to give Georgia Re-gents University students the hands-on experience of being in a competitive art show, said Alan MacTaggart, the chair of the Art Department. It is an honor to be chosen to be in it, he added.
Different judges come with different tastes and understandings. All judges would value work that shows a certain kind of mastery of the media and the content of the media, MacTaggart said. Wim Roefs was the jury for the show and is also the owner of If Art Gallery in Columbia, S.C.
“I’ve been asked to cri-tique at different schools as well, Valdosta State Uni-versity and Lakeside High School,” MacTaggart said. “Students need to get tough skin about their work. It’s a very competitive place, and we want students to develop tough skin to accept rejec-tion.”
The juror makes three jury awards, actual cash awards to what he believes is appealing. Students received a check upon receiving this award, he said. The other scholarship is decided by the full-time art faculty.
The Juried Art Show co-incided with the open house, which displays artwork in the hallway. Each art instructor had a wall to hang up students work, MacTaggart said. All of Washington Hall was covered in artwork. There was also a reception in the dome room across from the gallery, which was open and free to the pub-lic.
Mary Byrd, of Evans, Ga., said she is interested in art and art education and has supported many art scholar-ships for a number of years, MacTaggart said.
“Because of her support,
we decided to change the name of the gallery to Mary S. Byrd from New Space gal-lery,” MacTaggart said.
During the award cer-emony Thursday, Jennifer Onofrio, a professor of pho-tography; Janice Whiting, a professor of painting; Doro-thy Eckmann, the education director at the Gertrude Her-bert Institute of Art; and Kev-in Grogan, the director and curator of the Morris Museum of Art, announced the winners of the awards and scholar-ships.
“Every year I am excited to hear what the juror has se-lected for the show,” Onofrio said. “This is my favorite day of the year. Our juror did a wonderful job (and) the stu-dents (did) amazing.”
Grogan echoed Onofrio, saying he believed in the quality of the exhibition and the efforts of the students.
“I believe it to be the best student show I’ve ever seen in the Byrd Gallery,” he said. “This year, there was a much larger proportion of 3-dimen-sional work. The ceramics were particularly interesting. Everyone who earned a place in the show is to be compli-mented.”
The installation of the exhibition was well-suited to the work, Grogan said. There was a rich vein of imagination that informed all of the work, and it wasn’t dependent on a single, identifiable source. The quality of the materials, technique and execution were outstanding all throughout.
“The awardees are reflec-tive of the whole,” he said. “The crowd at the awards ceremony was spirited, good-humored, mutually support-ive, as art students tend to be, and uplifting. In short, a good time was had by all.”
Nina Daniel, a senior ma-joring in fine arts with a con-centration in photography and printmaking, had her photog-raphy works selected to be in the art show.
“I participate it because it’s good to put on resume and was curious to see if the juror liked my work enough to put it in a show,” she said. “I got three photographs in. I was so excited!”
Daniel said she learns that it is important to always put yourself out there and take a chance. The worst that can happen is the juror says no.
“Just go for it!” she said. “Try it out! It’s free, easy, and a good experience if you want to have your own show one day.”
Brooke Mays, a fresh-man art major, 3-dimensional work, “Clarissa,” had her se-lected to be featured in the show. It was made in her first art class at Georgia Regents and strongly featured natural materials and texture.
“I was (at) first apprehen-sive, but I know I don’t want to miss this opportunity,” she said. “I am glad that I decided to participate.”
By SI-LONG CHENwebmaster
Justin Edwards, a senior art major, screenprints T-shirts for the open house before the Juried Student Art Show in order to raise money for art supplies for the department.
NIKKI SKINNER | CONTRIBUTOR
Juried Art Show WinnersStudents get artsy
Shannon Smith, a senior art major, embraces Janice Whiting, an art professor, after receiving a scholarship at the art show.NIKKI SKINNER | CONTRIBUTOR
The Philip Morsberger Purchase Award Rosalind Avrett, “Body Analysis”
The Juror’s Awards 1st place- Chelsea Stetz, “Untitled” 2nd place- Hannah Schelb, “More than Medicine” 3rd place- Kathleen Brewton, “Untitled”
Eugenia Comer Scholarship Nicole Arnold
Samuel J. and Sarah Singal ScholarshipShannon Smith
Jim Rosen Award Sara Mays
Katherine Reese Pamplin and Nathan Bindler ScholarshipsJasmine Cruz, Justin Edwards, Jessica Herold, Heather Howard and John Lause.
The Morris Award of ExcellenceEmily Eubanks, “The Trickster”Nicole Arnold, “Friendly Dog”
The Morris Museum Honorable Mention Nick Atkins, “Plant ASU”Kathleen Brewton, “Black Sheep”Heather Howard, “Aged Pops”Amanda Lynn Joyce, “One Big Happy Family”Eleanor Schehl, “Watercolor Self-Portrait”Laura Umphrey, “Gallus Domesticus”
see HOMECOMING on PAGE 8
We believe. That is the theme for homecoming week this year, but do the students really believe?
Many students are still upset about the name change and the merger between what were Au-gusta State University and Georgia Health Sci-ences University, but this isn’t getting the Geor-gia Regents University Homecoming board members down.
According to Leza Witherington, an ad-ministrative assistant and a member of the homecoming board, the members of the board planned on having a homecoming that is memo-rable in itself for reasons other than being the first homecoming for the new university.
“It’s about consolidation and inclusion to make students feel like this is their event,” Witherington said. “We are trying to incorpo-rate students on the medical side as much as possible.”
In order to incorporate the students from the Health Sciences campus, Witherington said that the homecoming board changed some of the rules and made it so that students didn’t have to be part of an organization to be nominated, and it also encouraged graduate students to run.
“Our homecoming is about athletics, stu-dents and trying to give everyone the best time they can get,” Witherington said.
Dixie Wells, a junior music major, said most students she has talked to are skeptical about the whole thing because they think that it isn’t going to be the same.
“Overall, there is going to be a little bit less spirit amongst the people because I think every-one’s a little disheartened by the consolidation and the merger,” Wells said.
Although there are students that are dis-heartened by the merger, there are students that
do believe in the new university and the change. Haely Chadwick, a junior communications ma-jor, ran for homecoming queen and said she is one of those students.
“I am more excited that this is for GRU,” Chadwick said. “I would love to be able to go down in history as GRU’s first homecoming queen. I think with the transition everything is new and exciting and has full opportunity.”
With this new start and plenty of opportu-
nity, the board members decided to move some of the events around so that they could be held at both campus locations. The lip syncing competi-tion, for example, was held in the gym on the Health Sciences campus. It is things like this that the board members have changed in order to try and incorporate both sides of the new university.
“Homecoming for what was GHSU is very different from the homecoming at the formerly known ASU,” Witherington said. “Their home-coming is about alumni, and they have very few student-centered events.”
The students aren’t the only ones that the board members are trying to incorporate during this event. What was GHSU also has its own homecoming event so the members had to fig-ure out a way to handle that along with when to schedule the event.
“That was the other thing that made it more difficult,” Witherington said. “You can’t really join together two events that are more than a month apart and the dates were already set for this year long before consolidation ever hap-pened so it’s not like we can just say, ‘Oh yeah, forget basketball season. We will just move ours to April.’”
Witherington said the members of the homecoming board plan on honoring the home-coming for what was GHSU but because of the set dates this event will take place sometime in April and will focus more on the alumni.
Haely Chadwick (left), a junior communications studies major and homecoming queen candidate, paints a banner in preparation for Homecoming in the gym at Christenberry Fieldhouse with a friend.
REBECCA PERBETSKY | STAFF
By REBECCA PERBETSKYstaff writer
Homecoming week attempts to unite all campuses
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013PAGE 8
www.asubellringer.com
By MEGAN STEWARTstaff writer
Theater: classic to modernNow that the merg-
er is finalized, one professor
continues his dual role at both universities.
Before the merger took place, Steven Weiss, an as-sociate professor and clinical assistant professor at Georgia Regents University, said he was juggling teaching class-es at Georgia Health Science University while also being a full-time professor at Au-gusta State University.
“Since 2003, I have been working down in the College of Medicine,” Weiss said. “(I have been working) as a small group facilitator and lecturer for what is called the Essentials of Clinical Medi-cine Program for first- and second-year med students.”
For years, Weiss said he volunteered his teaching services for free because he found the subject of medi-cine interesting and wanted to learn about medicine and develop his background in medical ethics. In 2005, he started serving on the hospi-tal ethics committee, which does patient consults and deals with difficult ethi-cal issues that come up in a hospital. Later, Weiss said he joined the Human Assur-ance Committee where the committee review research protocols involving human subjects.
Although Weiss said he enjoyed the experience of the Human Assurance Commit-tee, it came with stiff stipula-tions.
“We would meet ev-ery other week, and those meetings (would) last 3 to 5 hours,” Weiss said. “On the
weekends, I would read a stack of research protocols 6- inches high. It wore me out.”
Weiss said he has been able to find shadowing posi-tions for students where they can attach themselves to a physician and get to see be-hind the scenes activities of the hospital and clinic. This semester, Weiss said two stu-dents from the Augusta State campus are doing internships at the Health Sciences cam-pus.
Adrian Bullard, a senior sociology major at Geor-gia Regents, said he heard about the internship while in Weiss’s Intro to Philosophy class and jumped at the op-portunity. Bullard said he is interning at Patient Family Center Care and does patient rounding. While Bullard said he does not want to be a doc-tor, he is enjoying the knowl-edge he is gaining.
“The experience is good,” Bullard said. “You are able to network different people in the hospital. I want
to go into the medical field as a mental health social worker, and it allows you to get familiar with the hospital procedures.”
Julie Kane, a sophomore communications major at Georgia Regents, said her in-ternship is right on the path for her future career. Kane said she is working in pasto-ral care and wants to eventu-ally go to divinity school and become an ordained min-ister. Kane said she enjoys working with people in the hospital who definitely need someone to be positive for them. Kane said the experi-ence has been wonderful, despite only being there two months so far.
Weiss said he is teach-ing bioethics with Reynolds Jarvis, an associate profes-sor of internal medicine and psychiatry at the Health Sci-ences campus, at the Sum-merville campus. Jarvis said he and Weiss have been col-laborating for six or seven years and has enjoyed every
minute of it.“We have certain simi-
larities,” Jarvis said. “Al-though I am a physician, I still have interest in philoso-phy, theology and the arts. That has certainly helped us work together.”
Weiss said he is very ex-cited about the opportunities the merger of Augusta State and Georgia Health Sciences will bring for faculty and students. Weiss said hopes to get more applied ethics in-ternships for students at the Summerville campus.
Weiss also said he wants to develop a joint MA and MD program with the Col-lege of Medicine where stu-dents could get their MAs in Medical Humanities while working on their MD. In the long run, Weiss said what will determine the success of the merger is how much ef-fort and investment we make of the opportunity and how the two institutions merge together.
Merger brings ethics to campusBy KARL FRAZIER correspondent
The hot new bar in town may offer wine, but that’s not its speciality.
Fix Blow Dry Bar in Surrey Center is one of a growing nation-wide trend of salons that do not offer the full range of services of traditional salons, such as color and haircuts, instead focusing on shampooing, blow drying and styling clients’ hair. Elaine Redd, a manager at Fix, said that cus-tomers come in and choose from a few basic services.
“It’s a lot easier for someone else to do it than yourself,” Redd said. “It’s definitely a different look and an experience, and what you couldn’t normally do to your-self on every other day.”
The owners of Fix, Nata-lie Lee and Adair Pennington, opened the business Wednesday, Jan. 2. Lee said the salon has been staying busy as word has gotten around about its unique of-ferings.
“It’s a new concept in town to have a blow dry bar,” Lee said. “But we’ve already got some regular clients that are coming in once a week. Lots of return cus-tomers and new people, new faces each day.”
The services include a basic fix, which is the signature service including a shampoo, blow dry and basic style. A quick fix in-
cludes the same minus the sham-poo. And a fix it up rounds out the style menu, which entails a dry hair up-do. Redd said clients’ needs range from everyday styles to celebrations.
“We also throw bridal parties and little girls’ birthday parties and stuff like that,” Redd said. “We’ve had some special occa-sions and then some that basically just wear a blow-out for a week or so, so they just come in here and let us do it.”
A first-time client of Fix, Au-gusta native Lindsey Dickson, said she came to the blow dry bar
to have her hair styled for a spe-cial event, a concert, but that she would definitely return.
“It’s been great!” Dickson said. “It’s easy, and it’s just relax-ing and fun. It’s the perfect way to unwind.”
The process of unwinding be-gins as customers enter the salon’s inviting atmosphere. Upbeat mu-sic plays in the background while clients sip glasses of complimen-tary champagne as they relax amidst the simplistic modern dé-cor. The hardwood floors and one accent wall in a soft lavender hue are contrasted by an odd combi-
nation of fluorescent light fixtures and chandeliers, which put out a softer, warmer light as the stylists use their brushes, blow dryers and curling irons to make the beauty magic happen. Emi-Jay hair ac-cessories and Amika products are available for customers to pur-chase.
“When we opened, we want-ed to make sure that it was a very clean, open and fun atmosphere,” Lee said. “We’ve got televisions where when you’re having your hair fixed, we’ve got chick flicks on and fun music playing. So far when people come in, they always
say that it’s a real happy place to be. We did want that sense of community in here. We wanted it to be relaxing but fun.”
The blow dry bar’s ambience is rounded out by a staff of five stylists, all licensed cosmetolo-gists, each of whom has his own unique style. Redd, who worked at Sports Cuts prior to Fix, said the uniqueness of the salon is part of what drew her to work there.
“It’s a different atmosphere,” Redd said. “I did men’s hair cutting for two years, and I just wanted to take a dabble in wom-en’s hair.”
Lee and Pennington decided to open the business with no prior experience in cosmetology. Lee said they both worked in Sur-rey Center retail locations before choosing to launch the new enter-prise.
“We knew we wanted to be in Surrey Center,” Lee said. “There was no question about that. We didn’t look for anything else.”
The salon has already attract-ed some regular clients despite its relatively recent opening day. Lindsey Settles, who was having her hair blow dried and curled, said she has been to the salon weekly for an entire month.
“My house is close, so I just come in on Fridays and get my hair curled,” Settles said. “Ev-eryone is really friendly. I get my hair washed, blow dried out, get some curls, drink some wine and hang out.”
By MINDY WADLEYstaff writer
New bar in Surrey serves up fresh hairstyles instead of cocktails
Steven Weiss and Reynolds Jarvis, co-professors of a BioEthics class, chat before their 10 a.m. lecture at the Summerville campus.KARL FRAZIER | CONTRIBUTOR
forms the bride and groom that it is up to them, regardless of their denomination or preference of religion or lack thereof. How-ever, she does reference God in all of her services.
The second couple of the morning, Quar-an and Donald Green, looked appropriately fes-tive in red and black. The bride in a stunning red cocktail dress and the groom in a black suit with his red and black bowtie smiled happily at each other while they gathered to take pictures before the service.
“Valentine’s Day has always been my dream day,” said Quar-an Green. “We thought (that)
we’ll do it the sooner the better. We love each other so we chose Valentine’s Day.”
The couple was introduced to Love through mutual friends Carol and Kenneth Gibson, who were also married by the rever-end five years earlier, Love said.
“Marriage is a two-way street,” Carol Gibson said. “As long as you stick together every-thing will go good together.”
At the end of pronouncing the Greens as man and wife, Love concluded with her catch phrase: “How ‘bout them Daw-gs?”
ChapelCONTINUED from PAGE 6
Shelby Frank, a stylist at Fix Blow Dry Bar, dries and styles customer Lindsey Settles’ hair for its set price of $28 without cutting her hair.MINDEY WADLEY | STAFF
HomecomingCONTINUED from PAGE 6
Feb. 20, which was in the JSAC sports field where there was a relay competition between orga-nizations; Jaguar Jam Thursday, Feb. 21, which was a tailgate and bonfire that had a performance by the local band Funk You in the Fieldhouse; the Lip-Sync Showcase in the Wellness Cen-ter on the Health Sciences Cam-pus; and, finally, the homecom-ing basketball game Saturday, Feb. 23, between Augusta State University and Francis Marion University at the Christienberry Fieldhouse, Smedley said.
“For the overall student body, the most popular event is probably the tailgate and bonfire Jaguar Jam,” Haskins said. “Last year, we had 400 people attend it
in its first year. This year we are expecting 600 to 700 people.”
During the entire week of homecoming, students were able to donate two canned goods, ei-ther at the Jaguar Jam event at one of the designated donation areas, in order to get a button for free admission to the tailgate and bonfire or they could pay a $5 entrance fee. Donation locations were at the office of Student Life and Engagement in JSAC, the Department of Communica-tions and Professional Writing in Allgood Hall and Greenblatt Library on the Health Sciences campus.
Although homecoming week leads up to big events for the stu-dent body, they should make the
week more focused for the stu-dents, said Dominique Tucker, a junior majoring in psychol-ogy and political science and the vice president of the Black Stu-dent Union.
“The email telling students to vote doesn’t really engage them,” he said. “I would just like to see new creative things to in-volve the students more because as you can see there isn’t really any hype with the students.”
Tucker said that the week should be bringing more excite-ment within the students but in-stead it’s more oriented to the administrators.
The art behind film has been lost.With digital film, the people be-
hind the scenes at a movie theater have no art in the work they do.
Although a majority of my cinematography experience has definitely been with digital film and I do find it significantly easier to control and add to, when I see someone using an actual roll of film I can definitely respect the hard work and art behind it.
It is a lot of work to develop, cut and edit film, however, aside from the actual person who takes the film or edits it; there is art in displaying it and the theater where it is displayed.
In the bigwig theaters today such as Regal or AMC, everything has gone to digital and the idea of the control room is nearly obsolete.
One job that is overlooked is the work that projectionists used to put into their jobs and I feel that their ethic should be shown some spotlight.
First of all, the control rooms were extremely cramped and the projectionists would have to be very cautious of fires occurring due to the high flammability of film. They would practically be the only ones who could fit in the rooms, and I can only imagine how stuffy they could become. On top of that, paying intense attention to the film’s ending and beginning and actually being able to switch the reels without causing a pause in the movie is not only an art form but also an ability to relieve burdens from the viewers.
Projectionists would be proud and love the work they did, at least the ones who were more passionate about film than a paycheck.
Another aspect of theaters that you lose when you walk into one today is the idea of decor. Many of the theaters have turned to a more modern look and generally have similarities between them.
There used to be ornate decorations that would catch the people’s eyes as they walked in. However, the art aspect of the architecture has also declined. Decorations and architecture would compliment one another; instead it is plain and filled with neon lights and high-resolution food displays behind the concession desk.
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ACROSS1. The Life Sciences _____________ Award, a $3,000,000 award to innovating scientists, is funded in part by Mark Zuckerburg.
3. The first double-amputee athlete to compete in the Olympics allegedly murdered his girlfriend.
7. ___________ retriever is still the most popular dog in America, according to Today.com.
8. On Friday, Feb. 15, this object from space injured more than 1,000 people in Russia when it
impacted the earth.9. An ensemble that contains four singers or instruments
10. The name of the popular wildlife and bird-watching club.
11. ___________ Joe’s, an underground bar off Broad Street that has no windows, recently banned smoking
12. Defined as a useless ornament or accessory
13. A city in Morocco that became well known after the
romantic 1942 movie titled after it.
DOWN1. _______Soldiers re-enactors were recently performing on campus.
2. “______________ Surrender,” a 25-feet-tall statue in San Diego Port, brings the famous World War II photo of a sailor kissing a nurse to life.
4. A new English pub on Broad Street that opened earlier this year
5. An environmental club on campus that promote sustainable and healthy ecosystems
6. Another name for the photos taken by the subject and have become a plague of social media
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Theater: classic to modern
New bar in Surrey serves up fresh hairstyles instead of cocktails
Short and swift!Natalie Wille, a senior for the Lady
Jaguars’ golf team, said she has been working hard to perfect her swing, and that fine-tuning paid off in a big way last week.
Wille was named a medalist at Mich-igan State’s Central District Invitational after she shot an even-par 72 during the final round of the tournament, making it the second win of her college career. The first was during her freshman year when she won the Low Country Intercollegiate at Moss Creek Country Club.
“I did very well,” Wille said. “I felt like I was playing very solid and didn’t make a lot of mistakes. I was hitting the ball very well. I felt very solid.”
Kory Thompson, the head coach of the women’s golf team, said she was im-pressed with Wille’s performance.
“Natalie played great,” Thompson said. “And I’m really excited for her be-cause she beat some of the top ranked
players in the country.” With Wille’s help, the Lady Jags
placed eighth overall at the Invitational, one week after a fourth-place finish at UFC Challenge earlier this month. Wille has been a catalyst behind the team’s sol-id month of golf, Thompson said.
“If we could have a team of eight with all Natalies, it would be great,” she said. “She works hard, motivates the other girls. She’s an all-around great person.”
Wille makes sure her skills stay sharp by brushing up on the golf course six times a week, usually by herself, on the weekends and by practicing hard during the offseason, she said.
“I’ll get home in December, and I’ll probably have to practice indoors,” Wille said. “I try to make the bigger technical
changes in the winter. That’s the time you try to build (on your skills).”
Willie has been playing golf since she was 9 years old and competing since she was 13, but now she said she hopes that perfecting her swing for future com-petitions and tournaments will help her continue to do well as a competitor.
“I’m going to keep on seeing my swing coach,” Wille said. “I just started working with my swing coach over here, and it’s been real good obviously because I got good results and keep working on my swing and keeping it on track and working hard on my short game.”
Stephanie Bennett, one of Wille’s teammates, said Wille serves as a great leader to the other Lady Jags.
The Lady Jaguars’ basketball team has been a frequent visitor to the winner’s circle this season.
In his third year, head coach Nate Teymer has his basketball team off to the best start in school history.
“The biggest difference is the play-ers,” Teymer said. “I feel that we’ve brought in some good kids that will work and are coachable.”
When Teymer first arrived on cam-pus, he inherited a program that went 1-26 in its previous season and needed to go through a multi-year rebuilding process, he said.
The change in head coaches was a necessary act because losing was some-thing the program wasn’t used to, Teymer said.
“Augusta State in the past has had 20-win seasons and Elite Eight teams, but they just had a little dip for two years,” he said.
In December 2009, Augusta State’s di-rector of athletics, Clint Bryant, installed himself as head coach in the middle of the season because the team was not getting the job done, he said.
“I didn’t think the program was mov-ing in the direction we wanted it to go in,” Bryant said. “It wasn’t so much about wins and losses but that there just wasn’t the type of commitment and quality of coaching you need at this level.”
When he hired Teymer, Bryant said he
knew he had the right man for the job. The head coach was named the NAIA Division I Women’s Coach of the Year in 2009-10 and built a nationally competitive team at Southern Polytechnic State.
The players noticed the passion in their head coach and how he went the ex-tra mile in order to have his team prepared for game day, senior guard Eryka Menzies
said.“He is willing to put in late hours
watching film, dissecting other team’s game plans and presenting them to us,” Menzies said.
Teymer said the beginnings of the rebuilding process were tough. The chal-lenge was having an entire team that
All team sports are unique, but on every ros-ter there are backups.
It’s the ultimate sacrifice to put the team ahead of self, and a number of college athletes do it every day. Only the best high school ath-letes reach the Division I or II level, but rarely does a freshman come in and immediately im-pact a team right away, said head men’s basket-ball coach Dip Metress.
“Usually your backup players are your younger guys, and they just don’t know how to maintain the intensity of the college level when they get here,” he said.
Almost all student athletes come out of high school as one of the best on their teams, and the transition from being a major asset to playing a smaller role requires adaptation, said freshman forward Michael Graham.
“It’s different, but eventually you adjust,” he said.
Players who don’t start right away have to understand that it’s because the person in front of them is better, Metress said.
“They have to work on their weaknesses and don’t sit on the bench and worry about why they’re not playing,” he said. “Just be thankful the opportunity comes and take advantage of it.”
Redshirt freshman Trevor Foreman, a walk-on, has embraced the opportunity to play for the men’s basketball team and pushes the starting guards every day in practice, he said.
Foreman said he came into the program fully aware that there would be no handouts and everything had to be earned.
“I knew I would have to work extra hard to translate how I played in high school to the col-legiate level,” he said.
The main roles for the redshirt freshman are to compete every day and simulate the most re-alistic game scenario for his teammates, he said.
A number of injuries and off the court is-sues have plagued the basketball team this year, Metress said. As a result, the starting lineup has varied throughout the season and a lot of players are getting a chance to prove themselves.
“Ryan Weems didn’t start the first two or three games of the year, and he’s our leading scorer now,” he said.
Foreman said whenever his number is called, he will be ready to step in.
“I’ll be ready,” he said. “We have no choice. Everybody has to step up.”
However, on the baseball diamond, certain aspects of the game are totally different, said head baseball coach Chris Cooper.
“In basketball, if you’re the starting point guard you might only play the first two minutes of the game and then the backup comes in for five minutes,” he said. “But in baseball it’s un-certain how much a backup will play.”
For certain positions, like pitcher, the com-petition for a starting spot is intense. There are five starters and two or three long relieve pitch-ers, and the rest are one-inning guys, Cooper said.
There are 19 pitchers on the team and unlike in most sports, experience does not dictate who will start. Instead, Cooper said, the coaches are looking for the guy with the hot hand.
“I have five seniors that are relievers and then a mix of younger guys,” he said. “I don’t go into each season worrying about how old you are; it’s about how good you can pitch. This year our starting pitchers thus far have been two ju-niors, a sophomore and a senior.”
For the most part, relievers compete among themselves in order to be the first guy called whenever needed, Cooper said.
With so many pitchers to compete against, relievers can only do all they can to stand out, right-hander Dalton Reed said.
“We have a pretty heavy upperclassmen roster, so being a freshman, it’s tough competing against seniors who have been here four or five years,” he said.
The ways Reed contributes to the team are by making sure his teammates practice drills correctly and helping them with their mechan-ics, he said.
After signing with the Jaguars, Reed said he did not expect to start right away.
“The competitor in me wanted to start, but I knew that my first year out here I would prob-ably be just a backup guy,” he said.
Similar to other young athletes, the transi-tion from starter to backup was an unfamiliar experience for him.
“In high school you’re the big dog and ev-eryone knows you, but then you get here you’re just a little fish in a big pond,” Reed said. “Going from being the top dog to someone who barely has a role was a big-time transition.”
In order to rise up the depth chart and be-come a starter someday, Reed said he gives his all every day.
“To increase my chances of starting I just work hard, do everything 100 percent, so hope-fully the coaches will think I’m the guy for the job,” he said.
PAGE 10 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2013
SPORTS
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By JORDAN WILLIAMSstaff writer
Lady Jags claw back to the top
By JORDAN WILLIAMSstaff writer
Backups find ways to help teams win
BREA BOUTWELL | CONTRIBUTORThird-year Augusta State head women’s basketball coach Nate Teymer, who has led the Lady Jaguars to a 19-5 record and first-place standing in the Peach Belt Conference’s East Division in 2012-13, offers instruction to forward Brianna Sims during a practice at Christenberry Fieldhouse in Augusta, Ga.
Soon to be a college graduate, softball player Laura Brown has led the Jaguars through milestones in the team’s history.
Brown, a 22-year-old senior and kinesiol-ogy major from Evans, Ga., will reach the end of her playing career for the Jags in May. Cur-rently a captain, she arrived at Augusta State during her sophomore year, starting out as a pitcher before transitioning to becoming a full-time outfielder.
Before enrolling in the university in 2010, Brown attended Evans High School where she said she pitched and played third base. During her time there, she was named the team’s best defensive player.
“She’s been a starter for us the past couple years,” said Melissa Mullins, Augusta State’s head softball coach and the assistant athletic di-rector for student athletes services. “She came as a pitcher and a second baseman and we tran-sitioned her to the outfield, and she’s worked really hard there and has been a consistent player in the outfield for us.”
Brown said that, in part, she decided to play at Augusta State to continue playing with one of her close friends, Kacee Camp, who graduated last year.
“Kacee and I both traveled throughout high school together,” Brown said. “She came here, and I looked up to her and eventually came here. We were such close friends and then that friendship remained throughout col-lege.”
Brown has experienced numerous mile-stones during her college career, including going to the NCAA Regionals twice. Ath-letic media relations director Joey Warren said Brown has been playing during an upswing in the program’s history, noting that Augusta State
has advanced to the Southeast Regionals four of the last five years. Last year, the team was a 1-0 game away from going to the Super Re-gionals, losing to North Georgia.
“Considering where our program came from, that’s a pretty big deal,” Warren said.
“We had not had any sustained success, and all of the sudden we had this run. She hadn’t been here the whole time, but she’s been on the last two teams.”
Mullins said Brown started off the year with a bang.
“She’s just doing a great job at the plate for us,” Mullins said. “I think a lot of Laura; she has a great personality.”
Warren, who praised Brown’s work ethic, also added that her contribution to the team has been notable considering she is one of the few local players on the softball team.
Mullins said that while she wants all of the players to do well, she is especially glad when local players can do well for the team.
Brown has helped lead a very callow Au-gusta State roster that has experienced some growing pains in the season’s opening weeks, Warren said.
“I know they’re counting on her to do more this year, and that’s tough because we’re so young,” Warren said. “She’s played a lot but hasn’t hit until this year.”
As a veteran on the team, Brown has seen a lot of teammates come and go. Last year, sev-en players graduated from the team. So, this year, she said is working with more new and younger players.
“It’s definitely different,” she said. “Hav-ing an older group all throughout has definitely been a transition. We have a bunch of young ones now. I’m just trying to get them to buy in to what’s going on and understand and make the transition to college.”
She said she is also shifting her gaze to-ward what is next in her career, planning to de-vote more time to her goals outside of softball.
“I’ll be done with softball,” Brown said. “The plan right now is to get into physical ther-apy school.”
Brown a leader for youthful softball teamBy RYAN MCLAYstaff writer
“I felt like I was playing very solid and I didn’t make a lot of mistakes. I was hitting the ball very well.”
- Augusta State senior golfer Natalie Wille
Wille records winat Michigan State
By KEREYIA BUTLERstaff writer
RYAN MCCLAY | STAFFSenior outfielder and former pitcher Laura Brown chases down a ball in left field while practicing at Jaguar Field during the 2013 campaign.
see WILLE on PAGE 11
With the basketball season com-ing to a close, the Augusta State hoops programs are preparing to wave goodbye to six seniors.
Five of those players are on the women’s team, and head coach Nate Teymer said each one has been in-strumental to the Lady Jaguars’ dra-matic improvement over the last two years.
“I’m going to remember them as the group that got this women’s basketball program headed back in the right direc-tion,” he said.
F o r w a r d Laci Schreiber, out of Tecumseh, Kan., transferred to Augusta State in 2011 from Kansas City Community College. During her ju-nior season with the Lady Jags, Sch-reiber started every game. She aver-aged 27.6 minutes a game, which was the second highest on the team. She contributed an average of 7.4 points and 7.2 rebounds a night and had four double-doubles.
As a senior, Schreiber has start-ed in every game and is averaging 4.6 points and 5.3 rebounds a game on the season.
Forward Tiffany Jaecks, from Houston, joined the program the same year as Schreiber from Iowa Western Community College. This season, Jaecks has every game and
averaged 7 points and 5.4 rebounds a contest.
A third member of the 2011 re-cruiting class, Brittany White, a ki-nesiology major from Marietta, Ga., transferred from Teymer’s former team - Southern Polytechnic State - where she was named SSAC All-Freshman team selection.
In 2012-13, White has averaged 7.5 points, 3.8 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 3.7 steals a game. White said she plans to coach basketball at the col-legiate level after graduation.
“I don’t really have family here, so I’ve become real close to my teammates,” she said. “We’re more
like a family. It feels good to say I play for Augusta State and the fans show a lot of love here.”
Taylor Ayers, a sociology ma-jor, played high school basketball at Lucy C. Laney in Augusta, Ga. Af-ter her senior year in 2009, she was named player of the year and MVP while helping her team become re-gion champions. Ayers spent her first three years in college at Virginia Tech.
Ayers has played every game this season and is averaging 11.5 points and 6.8 rebounds a game. She said returning home for her senior season has been a positive experi-
ence.“There’s a family atmosphere,
and everyone has the same goal of winning and playing ball and having fun,” she said.
Tracy Aifuwa hails from Dacu-la, Ga., and has spent her entire col-lege career as a Lady Jag. She played 10 games in her first year and started five of the 11 games she was in as a sophomore. Aifuwa averaged 3.9 rebounds and 3.5 points that season.
This season, Aifuwa has only appeared in three games but said she has thoroughly enjoyed watching the program’s progression.
“From my freshman year in ’09
to where we are now in 2013 is a big change, and I’m happy to be a part of that change,” she said.
Like Aifuwa, Eryka Men-zies, a communication major from Chatsworth, Calif., who transferred from Mercer in 2010, has seen the program come a long way during her time with the Lady Jags. With the team on the cusp of earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament, Menzies will go out on a high note, as she said this will be her final season playing basketball competitively.
“Maybe one day when I have kids, I’ll coach their games at the park or something,” she said. “But
this is it for me. I’ll be hanging the shoes up after the season’s over.”
The senior members Lady Jags all agreed that while they haven’t individually mentored the younger players on the team, they have set examples for each other on and off the court. They all noted how much the community has meant to them and that they will miss it, and one another, after graduation.
The men’s team, on the other hand, will be bidding farewell to only one player after this season.
Forward Travis Keels, a com-munications major from Chester-field, Va., has played all four years
of his collegiate career as an Au-gusta State Jag-uar. He joined the program when it was competing for national cham-pionships and
has taken over a leadership role this season as the Jags have been faced with heavy adversity on and off the court. Head coach Dip Metress laud-ed the way Keels has handled the team’s topsy-turvy ride.
“He’s been a great representa-tive to our program,” head coach Dip Metress said. “I’ve tremendous-ly enjoyed coaching him.”
THE BELL RINGER PAGE 11
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By FARRELL BROWNstaff writer
Senior hoops players leave mark
The men’s basketball team’s season hasn’t quite gone according to plan, but it’s not ready to throw in the towel.
“Sometimes life throws curve-balls at you and you got to deal with it,” assistant coach Dee Howard said. “Depending on how you deal with it (determines) how far a pro-gram will go.”
After starting off at 6-0, the Jags currently have an overall re-cord of 13-11 and a Peach Belt Conference record of 8-9. This year will be the first time the team has finished the regular season with 15 or fewer wins since 2006. Heavy personnel losses have been a big reason for the team’s slide, forward Devon Wright-Nelson said.
“Everybody is working hard,” he said. “But it’s not just the people on the bench. We don’t have much depth to go to. That’s pretty much the biggest thing. We’re just under-sized.”
Head coach Dip Metress agreed with Wright-Nelson’s assessment.
“We need about three or four guys that are 6-foot-6 and above,” Metress said. “We have one that’s a redshirt with K.J. Sherrill.”
Augusta State has lost four players from its roster this season. The team at one point was only dressing nine people for practice, including redshirted players and as-sistant coaches, Metress said.
The players who have re-mained on the roster form a close-knit group, Wright-Nelson said.
“With the struggles that we have to overcome, it has brought the team a lot closer together,” he said. “So that’s the plus of having struggles.”
One of the team’s biggest prob-lems over the season was players having to learn new, more expand-ed roles. Metress said the team has had to play through more in-game mistakes than usual. Players used to coming off the bench to fulfill a par-ticular purpose are also now getting more time in the games than they are used to.
The team’s philosophy and playing style has also changed to include controlling the tempo of the games, cutting down possessions
and playing slower into the game plan, Metress said.
Howard named point guard D’Angelo Boyce and forward Tra-vis Keels as the vocal leaders of the locker room. He added that Wright-Nelson, Devonte Thomas and Ryan Weems are leaders by example with their high level of play.
Thomas echoed Howard’s sen-timents.
“(Boyce) has stepped up a lot getting more assists and scoring,” said Thomas. “He’s been more ag-gressive with the ball in his hands. Ryan’s stepped up tremendously. He’s been a little more assertive not only on the offensive side but on the defensive side. Devon’s stepped up with a bad ankle. His ankle’s still bad, but he’s still playing on it.”
Freshman Michael Graham is another player Thomas said has made the most of his recent oppor-tunity.
Without much depth on the bench, the key players from the team have had to play well without the luxury of having backup play-ers to fall back on. Weems is the team’s leading scorer 16.3 points a game, Boyce has 163 assists on the
year and Wright-Nelson has pulled down 160 rebounds.
Howard said his team is cur-rently focused on trying to nail down a spot in the Peach Belt Tour-nament.
“Once we get in the conference tournament, anything can happen from there,” Howard said. “We’re focused on the task at hand right now.”
The team has already began the process of scouting players for the next season but is not yet allowed to recruit new players, according to the coaching staff. Metress also added he has already started thinking of new strategies and game plans to implement next year but his focus
is still on the current season.The Jags’ next game will be
Wednesday against USC Aiken at 7:30 p.m. in Aiken, S.C.
By FARRELL BROWNstaff writer
Struggling Jags still have some fight
CONTRIBUTED BY JAMES KITCHENSKevin Blue, a competitor in the CSRA’s Flatline Pro Wrestling circuit, pins an opponent during a February brawl at Patriots Park in Evans, Ga., where next months March of Champions event will take place. Look in the next issue of The Bell Ringer, in stands March 12, for coverage of this tournament.
LOCAL WRESTLINGFlatline Pro Wrestling brings thrills to city
“She is very supportive, and she’s someone we can all really look up to because she’s doing so well in golf right now,” Ben-nett said.
Bennett and Wille have been teammates for almost two years, and Bennett said Wille carries herself well on and off the course.
“She’s very controlled, and she doesn’t ever get upset (on the course),” Bennett said. “At least she doesn’t express it on the course. She just always seems like she just stays in a positive kind of mental state when she’s playing. She never really gets discouraged (off the course). She’s really nice and really, really friendly. Every-body gets along with her really well.”
Willie is taking the com-petition by storm and the way things are going she will only continue to get better, Thomp-son said.
“With four events left, I’m hoping she can get another win,” Thompson said. “I see big things in Natalie’s future.”
Wille said after she gradu-ates in December she plans on going back home to Sweden where she will try to play golf professionally qualify for the European Tour.
bought into his message and un-derstood the level of work ethic needed to win. Teymer accom-plished these tasks through re-cruiting and bringing in the right players for his program.
Outside of changes in coach-es and players, Bryant thinks that what stands out about this year’s team is how well it plays together.
“From the outside looking in, it just seems like they have tremendous team chemistry,” he said. “Every night there could be somebody different contributing in.”
Menzies agreed that the players’ familiarity with one another has been a difference-maker.
“My first year here it was a brand-new program,” she said. “The coach was brand new and everybody was still getting ac-climated to each other. Last year, we had probably six or seven new players, but this year we only have two new players who fit right in and everybody just works really well together.”
Even after its top scorer Jemimah Ashby fell victim to a knee injury last month, the team continued to rack up wins and play at a high level, Bryant said.
After the Lady Jaguars earned a spot in the top 25 ear-lier this season, Teymer told his players they were still the same team as before. The programs
that hang their hats on being na-tionally ranked are those who quickly fall out of the rankings, he said.
The Lady Jags dropped out of the rankings last week but can play their way back into the polls with a strong finish. Senior forward Tiffany Jaecks said a lot of pressure to maintain a lofty ranking exists.
“You want to keep your spot,” she said. “So I guess there’s that little bit of pressure that you don’t want to lose, you can’t lose or if you do lose you know you’re not going to be ranked anymore.”
Immediately after earning a No. 24 ranking in the country, the Lady Jags were put to the test against some of the best teams in the Peach Belt Conference. The team suffered back-to-back losses against top-10 opponents in USC Aiken and Clayton State earlier this month, but Jaecks said she believes the team has grown from those losses.
In order to remain serious contenders, the players constant-ly push each other every day in practice, Jaecks sad.
“At this point in the year, coach says there are teams that will fall apart because it’s such a long season or there are teams that come together,” she said.
CONTINUED from PAGE 10
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Wille
Lady Jags
“Once we get in the conference tournament, anything can happen.”
- Augusta State assistant coach Dee Howard
“I’m going to remember them as the group that got this women’s basketball program headed back in the right
direction.”- Augusta State head coach Nate Teymer
BREA BOUTWELL | CONTRIBUTORSenior Travis Keels puts up a shot over two Francis Marion defenders during a 69-67 Augusta State win Saturday.
It was going to take more than just a busted chin and 11 stitches to keep Kim Smock out of a bout.
It was 2009, and the Soul City Sirens had made the short trip to Co-lumbia, S.C., to take on its rival, the Richland County Regulators, in the season opener.
Smock, who was a jammer with the Sirens at the time, rounded a turn when a Regulator by the name of “Truck Stop” collided with her at full speed. Failing to regain control over her body and land properly, Smock’s chin met the track, absorbing the full impact of the block.
But she wasn’t done yet. After speaking with the medics about the severity of the injury, she convinced them to wrap her up so she could fin-ish the bout.
“What they did is they got this gauze and they wrapped it around like it was a toothache or something, and I just went back out and skated,” Smock said. “I think I got 25 or 26 points in the jam. I think they were just afraid of the blood.”
Upon re-entering the bout, Smock scored the winning point.
Though she has since hung up her competition skates, her 26-point performance stood unbroken for many seasons after.
The Sirens renewed their rivalry when they hosted the Regulators Sunday at Red Wing Rollerway. And while the injuries may sound grue-some, head coach Jason Craig said they just add to the excitement sur-rounding the bout.
“There is a 10-foot buffer be-tween you and the game,” he said. “There is no wall between you and them. If you come around a curve and someone hits you, you slide and you slide right into the fans. You can catch a baseball at a baseball game, but there’s not that many sports where you can catch a player.”
The players, Craig said, can come from just about any background imaginable, though not from the back-ground he anticipated when the team was formed five years ago.
“We have teachers, accountants, a librarian, a photographer and we’ve even got one girl who is some sort of nuclear chemist over at Plant Vogtle,”
Craig said. “It’s all over the place. We thought you’d go downtown, go into Firehouse (Bar), go into Soul Bar, clear them out and bring them up here to play and watch roller derby. We wouldn’t even be here if that’s what we were depending on.”
Betsy Hart, a 28-year-old nuclear chemist at Plant Vogtle, said the deci-sion to lace up her skates and join the team became an easy one after learn-ing that she could train as she went. After watching the Sirens for a year, she made her move.
“It seemed like a lot of fun,” said the third-year power blocker. “A bunch of women playing a full contact sport, it just seemed like a great thing to do. This is all women, and it em-powers women, so of course I wanted to do it.”
The sport has seen a steady rise in popularity over the years, Craig said. The Sirens, who are nearing the end of their status as an apprentice-level team with the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, have been able to travel further to play more skilled teams each year. Once it obtains member status, the team will be able to compete for a spot in WFTDA’s na-
tional rankings. But for Craig, nothing beats com-
peting in front of a home crowd. “We’ve got a good core of prob-
ably 350 fans that all I have to do is remind them that we are having a bout and they’ll be here,” Craig said.
The Sirens’ 2013 schedule fea-
tures seven home bouts and six away contests. Home bouts, played on Sun-days, will take place at Red Ring Roll-erway on Washington Road.
The result between the Sirens and Regulators was not final at press time.
Homecoming and Senior Night were a mixed bag of emotions for the Augusta State basketball teams, as the women’s team was feeling peachy and the men’s team was working hard to recover from this season’s losses.
The Lady Jaguars recorded a 55-40 win over Francis Marion to move to 19-5 on the season and remain tied with USC Aiken atop the Peach Belt Conference’s East Division.
Guard Brittany White and for-wards Taylor Ayers and Tiffany Jaecks were key in Saturday’s win. White registered 6 assists and 5 steals in her final game at Christenberry Fieldhouse.
“The senior game is always emo-tional because you want to get out on the court and do your best for your last game,” White said. “Once we got over our nerves, we were able to play well and win.”
The win over the Patriots also marked the final home game for Ayers, Jaecks, Eryka Menzies, Tracy Aifuwa and Laci Schreiber.
After the victory, Nate Teymer, the Lady Jaguars’ head coach, re-flected on the team’s successful sea-son to date while looking ahead to the remainder of the schedule.
“Our goals had to be realistic and attainable,” Teymer said. “(Getting to the Peach Belt Conference Tourna-ment was) realistic and attainable. We know what we have to do to achieve those goals.”
Teymer was also quick to com-ment on the performance of his senior
players, not just for their contributions to the win over Francis Marion but for what they’ve meant to the program.
“I’m very proud of the senior this season,” Teymer said. “They should be proud that they’ve left this program going in the right direction.”
Following the Lady Jags’ win and the emotional Senior Day festivi-ties, the men’s basketball team took the floor.
The lone senior for the men’s basketball team this year is forward Travis Keels.
After suffering five home defeats and nine Peach Belt losses this season, the Jags were looking for a redemp-tive win, and they got it thanks to big performances from sophomore guard D’Angelo Boyce, who had 9 assists.
The Jags opened up a 32-16 half-time lead but were forced to hang on late, as the Patriots scored 51 second-half points before falling short, 69-67.
“The second half of the game we were sluggish and fatigued,” Boyce said. “We were able to come back for a win.”
The team is hesitant to comment about its postseason prospects. It’s fallen from last season’s standing con-siderably but still has a good chance to reach the Peach Belt Conference Tournament.
“We’re fourth in the (division) right now,” Boyce said. “It was re-ally good that we won this game. We need to win the next two games to get a seat.”
The Jags’ final two regular-season games in the Peach Belt are against USC Aiken and Flagler, both teams that defeated Augusta State ear-lier this season. The games are sched-uled for Wednesday and Sunday.
“We’re getting ready for USC Aiken starting on Monday,” Thomas said. “We’re going to go out and play to win.”
Dip Metress, the head coach of the Augusta State men’s basketball team, sported a No. 44 jersey under his suit jacket for the special home-coming game and was hopeful for a home win in forward Travis Keels’ final contest at Christenberry.
“It’s been a tough last year,” Me-tress said. “The guys have hung in there, especially because of Travis’s leadership.”
In the last home game playing under the name Augusta State, the basketball teams were well represent-ed, Ayers said.
“We had pride in ourselves and our defense,” she said. “We just had to make sure we played well.”
JACQUELYN PABON | STAFF
Members of the Soul City Sirens wait for jammers from another team to break through the blockers during a December invitational at Red Wing Rollerway in Augusta, Ga.
BREA BOUTWELL | CONTRIBUTORCarl Long, a former professional baseball player who broke the Carolina League’s color barrier, interacts with a young fan during the opening
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Roller derby team storms Augusta
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BREA BOUTWELL | CONTRIBUTOR
Jaguars’ head men’s basketball coach Dip Metress chastises his team during a second-half timeout in Augusta State’s 69-67 win over Francis Marion Saturday.
Feb. 27 at USC Aiken (Aiken, S.C.)
March 2 at Flagler (St. Augustine, Fla.)
March 7-10 at Peach Belt Conference Tournament (Columbus, Ga.)
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