Monday, February 3,2003
Partly Cloudy High 68, Low 49 www.chronicle.duke.edu Vol. 98, No. 90
The Chronicle f I 1
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Not again... The men’s basketball team lost on the road again against the Florida State Seminoles, 75-70. See Sportswrap on page 3
THE INDEPENDENT DAILY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Damaged UConn wins battle of the titans shuttle tiles Huskies jump to huge lead before holding off Blue Devils’ late rally raised heat By NICK CHRISTIE The Chronicle
At a press conference Sunday, NASA officials revealed new information about the space shuttle that was destroyed over Texas.
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By JOHN BRODER
New York Times News Service
HOUSTON Six minutes before the space shuttle Columbia ripped apart, temperatures on the left fuselage spiked sharply by 60 degrees, space agency officials reported Sunday as they detailed a sequence of ominous problems aboard the doomed spacecraft. In a wide-ranging news conference Sunday afternoon, Ron Dittemore, NASA’s shuttle program manager, said there were several indications of an unusual increase in temperatures on the shuttle’s exterior near the wheel well. He said two minutes before the craft broke up, computers detected an increase in drag on the left side, suggesting a rough or missing tile on the shuttle’s protective surface.
Dittemore said the findings did not
necessarily point to the cause of the fatal accident, but did provide potentially important pieces of a complex puzzle. He cautioned that the inquiry was barely 30 hours old and was likely to produce many false leads before it produces a definitive account of the disaster.
See SPACE SHUTTLE on page 12
Undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation since the preOctober, Duke eagerly welcomed defending national champion Connecticut and its NCAA-record 58-game winning streak into its home arena for the first time Saturday night. The game offered the Blue Devils a chance to make a statement confirming their rise from also-ran to national contender. Instead, the Huskies made a statement of their own. UConn rudely greeted the first sellout crowd ever to fill Cameron Indoor Stadium for a women’s game by dominating the opening half of play and taking a 41-20 lead into the halftime break. The Huskies would go on to push their lead to 28 points with 14 minutes remaining before a frenzied Blue Devil comeback cut the lead to just six, 71-65, with 45 seconds left on the clock. The comeback fell short, however. Connecticut triumphed 77-65, the Blue Devils having simply too much ground to make up after the Huskies’ overwhelming first half. “I know our defense is good, but it was better than good in the first half,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “We had a game plan going in, and sometimes plans go awry, but this time the plan worked to perfection.” From the sideline, that plan appeared to include coming into Cameron Indoor Stadium with the in-
ROBERT TAI/THE CHRONICLE
BLUE DEVIL GUARD ALANA BEARD contemplates her team’s loss to traditional powerhouse Connecticut during the post-game press conference.
See UCONN in Sportswrap on page 4
Davies readies to Union names Bigelow new leader head new division By ALEX GARINGER The Chronicle
metric thumb readers instead ofDuke Cards, Paul Davies will be the man who has engineered much of the change in student services—and ensured its profitability. Davies, currently the financial director of Auxiliary Services, will take over leadership of the organization this summer from outgoing associate Paul Davies vice president Joe Pietrantoni. In doing so, he will assume one of the most prominent roles in campus life. From atop his perch he will
The Deuce is loose Sophomore Jonathan “Deuce” Bigelow, was named the next president of the Duke University Union Sunday night. The classics major will succeed senior Jesse Panuccio in May. “I was really pleased with my Union experience over this past year,” said Bigelow, who serves as executive secretary and policy chair of the primary student programming group on campus. “It’s been great being part of such a fantastic organization, and I wanted to try my hand at president.” Bigelow, a soft-spoken Lumberton, N.C., native, has primarily worked on internal Union issues in his current positions, but Panuccio said his successor should fit the role well, bringing a different style and experience to the position. “Jonathan has been gaining over the past year knowledge about the Union and the larger University governance and politics. He has tremendous potential as a leader, both within our Union and externally for
See DAVIES on page 9
See BIGELOW on page 10
By KEVIN LEES The Chronicle
If the Duke University of the future looks more like The Jetsons than Dawsons Creek, with monorails zipping across campus and bio-
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Students react to proposals to revamp Central Campus mjxed f ee |j n g S part |y because of the project’s expected costs and long time frame. See page 3
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JEFF BURLIN/THE CHRONICLE
SOPHOMORE JONATHAN BIGELOW will succeed current Duke University Union president Jesse Panuccio in May.
Freshmen share and celebrate their first-year experiences captured on video during an awards ceremony held in Baldwin Auditorium Sunday night. See page 3
Duke graduate Neil Gupta participated in the World Social Forum, an alternative to the Davos economic forum, in Brazil last month. See page 4