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STUDENT LIFE
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS SINCE 1878 VOLUME 128, NO. 57
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2007
ResLife moves housing petition system online BY PUNEET KOLLIPARA STAFF REPORTER The Office of Residential Life has revamped the housing petition system this year. Instead of using pencil and paper, all students applying for housing with ResLife must petition for rooms online using WebSTAC. According Assistant Director of Residential Life, Rhonda Kiely, who is in charge of room assignments, the new system was implemented not only for the technological benefit, but also to make the process of selecting housing more convenient.
“We’re trying to give a little bit more flexibility back to the students,” said Kiely. Lottery numbers for room selection will become available on Thursday, February 22 in a new section in WebSTAC’s menu under the header “Campus Housing.” Additionally, this section will include the online petition creation system. To create a petition, each group of potential roommates must designate a contact person, who is responsible for fi lling out the online form, ranking housing options and formally inviting the roommates to the petition by enter-
ing their email addresses into a special field in the form. In order for these email addresses to be made available to the housing process, all students must type in a confi rmation word at the top of the main petition page to allow their email addresses to be used in the housing process. This is because, according to Kiely, roommates can be added to the petition only by typing in their email addresses into a field in the form. The online form also provides a field to add any special requests, comments and personal options that students may have regarding their hous-
‘Thank You for Smoking’ author hits Assmebly Series BY ELIZABETH LEWIS STAFF REPORTER Christopher Buckley, a famed American political satirist who has written several pieces for The New Yorker, several respected novels and has served as a former managing editor for Esquire magazine, is speaking at the Assembly Series today at 11:00 a.m. What Buckley is perhaps most known for, though, is Thank You for Smoking: The Novel, which was adapted into a Golden Globe nominated and critically acclaimed film in 2006 starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Katie Holmes and Cameron Bright. The movie, about a satirical look at the tobacco industry, grossed $24 million in the U.S. box office. Hannah Sharp, a sophomore, thought the movie was quite entertaining and dealt well with irony. “[The movie] did a good job with satire and irony. It pointed out the negatives and the complete lack of morals [the main character] had in
promoting a product,” she said. Richard Chapman, a senior lecturer in screenwriting who has written for shows and movies such as Simon and Simon, My Fellow Americans and Live from Baghdad, helped to write one of the first drafts for the movie Thank You for Smoking. Consequently, he has known Buckley since the first days when he and his partner wrote the first draft of the script back in 1995. After reading Buckley’s novel in preparation for writing the screenplay, Chapman was impressed and said that it was the most fun he had ever had while adapting a screenplay. “His writing was so sharp, funny, knowing, and intelligent that it was a dream assignment to adapt the first draft of that novel,” said Chapman. “We naturally warmed up to the material right away because it dealt with the politics of marketing, lobbyists and many issues that were ripe for satirical treatment,” he said.
ing preferences. Upon completing the form, the contact person must click a button to formally create the petition. Once the petition is created, invited roommates will receive an email asking them to confi rm or deny the invitation in WebSTAC. After all roommates have agreed, the petition must be submitted to ResLife within a range of dates specific to the round in which the students are applying. Making the transition to an online housing petition system allowed ResLife to add new features to streamline the process. According to Kiely, one such feature allows students
In fact, the way the book was written was so ripe for the cinema that Chapman was able to take a lot of the dialogue from the book word for word. “The dialogue is very savvy and hits the mark for a screenwriter. [This was] an advantage in adaptation because you could take the actual dialogue and edit it down to fit the economical needs of the screenplay,” he said. This kept the movie fairly close to the book, which does not always happen when a novel is adapted into a movie. Though Jason Reitman’s screenplay was the one finally used when the movie was released in 2006, Chapman was pleased with the finished product and remarked that the movie, which was originally slated to be a big-budget studio vehicle, had been changed into a smart, hightoned intelligent comedy on a smaller-scale budget. “The movie is interest-
See BUCKLEY, page 2
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Dr. John Gleaves is building reactors he invented himself in
his basement. They are helping lead the search for new industrial catalysts. The reactors, known as Temporal Analysis of Products or
ELLA BRANDON | STUDENT LIFE
Graduate student Xiaolin Zheng works on a Tap 2 Reactor System in Professor John Gleabes’ lab in Urbauer Hall on Monday, Feb. 19.
Beads and scarfs = Mardi Gras The cold St. Louis weather didn’t lend itself to typical Mardi Gras festivities. Staff columnist Altin Sila looks at how the snow put a chill on this year’s celebration. Forum, Page 5
TAP reactors, help determine the efficiency of new catalysts. Finding new catalysts has always been important to science and industry and is at the cutting edge of new energy technologies. “We are consuming 80 million barrels of oil a year. Even if there’s no increase in consumption, we’ll run out in 40 years. Gasoline, fibers, plastic, pharmaceuticals, paints and fertilizers are all in some way derivative of oil. What will we do then?” said Gleaves. “We can take coal and biomass and turn it into products. You convert it into synthesis gas [carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas], with which you can make anything you want to make. But to do that, you need catalysts.” According to Gleaves, the TAP reactors are fairly simple conceptually. A tiny amount of materials are pulsed into the top, react in the reactor vessel, a tiny inch-long centimeter-wide cylinder, and the products come out at the bottom and are sam-
was that a lot of students would only mark one or two things. So that forced us to have to choose their order for them,” said Kiely. “Now the student has to fi ll it all out because if they didn’t, they’re going to get an error message.” Another feature notifies students if they have been dropped from the petition. For example, if the contact person deletes the petition, all students invited to that petition will receive an email notifying them about the deletion. Kiely noted that all petitions must be fi lled out completely,
See HOUSING, page 2
GETTING DOWN AT MARDI GRAS
DAVID BRODY | STUDENT LIFE
A man dances down the parade route behind a Hell’s Angels float during the Mardi Gras parade in downtown St. Louis on Tuesday, Feb. 20. The parade lasted about an hour and drew a crowd of more than 10,000 spectators.
An unusual experiment: prof builds experimental reactors in his basement BY SCOTT FABRICANT
to make modifications to their petitions online any time before the fi nal petition must be submitted. “We had a lot of people who wanted to come in and change things,” said Kiely. “And now they have a little more flexibility in doing that.” Also, when ranking residence halls in order of preference, students must now provide a rank for all the available options in a certain round instead of ranking only their top few choices. This, according to Kiely, takes a lot of the guesswork out of the process for ResLife. “What would happen before
pled by a detector, a mass spectrometer. The whole reaction takes place in a vacuum, only one billionth as much pressure as the atmosphere. Gleaves invented the TAP reactor at Monsanto, a biotechnology corporation, before becoming a professor at Washington University. There are now around twenty TAP reactors around the world. Since the original creation, he’s refined his reactors into the TAP-2 and TAP-3 models. Gleaves’ company, Mithra Technologies, builds one or two reactors a year. They take around 6-8 months to build and cost $300,000 to 400,000 each. The first TAP-3 production model will be delivered to BASF, a chemical company, next week. Gleaves brought fresh perspective into his work at Monsanto, which allowed him to develop the TAP reactor. “You get trained in one area and thrust into a new area. You see the new area with a different
See REACTOR, page 2
Soccer, basketball two-timer Senior Jenny Southworth has represented the Bears both on the soccer field and the basketball court. How does she do it? Sports, Page 6
Center Court soon to receive make over BY DAVID SONG STAFF REPORTER A number of planned changes to the Center Court dining center and to the Washington University food services are slated to take effect this semester. According to Student Union Senator and Chair of the Senate Food Committee Steven Hollander, Center Court’s larger dining room will see placement of a television and chairs overlooking the swamp. “One of the changes,” said Hollander, “is going to be a bigscreen television and comfy couches like those in Holmes Lounge. That way, people can have dinner and watch television together for events like the Super Bowl.” Hollander noted that because of the relatively low traffic at the far end of Center Court, near northwest Wohl, the new television and chairs
INSIDE: Forum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Cadenza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Sudoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
will be placed in that portion of the room. “The chairs won’t take up that much space. There’s already a lot of dead space over there.” Students will be able to eat at stools facing the window that overlooks the South 40. At dinnertime, traffic and lines are usually greater in Bear’s Den than in Center Court; part of the intended purpose behind this change, suggested Hollander, was to encourage students eating alone on some nights to still go to Center Court. “The other change is bar stools, tall chairs, and tables where the windows are facing the Swamp. That way, you can sit and look outside while you’re eating. A lot of people were intimidated by eating alone; we want to increase the
See CENTER COURT, page 3
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