F R I D A Y OCT. 3, 2003 Vol. 125, No.17
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STUDENT LIFE T H E I N D E P E N D E N T N E W S PA P E R O F WA S H I N G T O N U N I V E R S I T Y I N S T. L O U I S S I N C E 1 8 7 8
INSIDE Students’ flights home canceled YO LA TENGO
American Airlines to cut flights Nov. 1 to ease financial woes
American will also cut back its use of larger jets for departing flights, meaning fewer seats will be available, likely increasing ticket cost. As the press release stated, “American will gain needed efficiency by reducing the number of flights,” with St. Louis becoming “a smaller hub that will primarily cater to the people who live, work, or do business there.” Financial troubles seem to be to blame. “Our hub in St. Louis has not been profitable,” said Julia Bishop- Cross, a regional spokesperson for the airline. “American needed to adjust its schedule accordingly.” The airline industry has been continually troubled by the ongoing economic recession and the decrease in air travel that followed the September 11 attacks. According to a report by St. Louis Channel 5 (KDSK), American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey reported that “since September 11, the St. Louis hub has been the worst performing hub financially” for the airline.
By Kelly Donahue q Contributing Reporter
Jess Minnen takes a detailed look at Yo La Tengo’s recent Pageant gig. Also inside: previews of upcoming concerts from AFI and Cursive, a review of classical guitar master Francesc de Paula Soler, and our always fabulous health/sex column, Making WUpee.
Many Washington University students planning to fly home on American Airlines this Thanksgiving could be affected by impending changes in the airline’s flight schedule. Beginning Nov. 1, a total of 210 American Airlines flights that routinely depart from the St. Louis Lambert Airport will be cut from the airline’s schedule, said a July press release from the airline. The most affected flights will be those flying to nearby cities like Louisville and Kansas City. The flight reductions mean that American Airlines will now fly to 26 fewer destinations, and the B & D concourses at Lambert Airport will be shut down.
See FLIGHTS, page 4
Law school opposes JAG recruitment
PAGE 5 A DAY IN THE LIFE: UAA JOCK
By Troy Rumans q Contributing Reporter
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an athlete at a Division III institution? Cross country runner Renee Hires explains why Division III athletes put in so much time and hard work for so little glory as she outlines a day in the life of a Washington University athlete.
PAGE 12 STUDENT SNAPSHOT
Q:
Do you think social norming will work to curb drinking at Washington University?
I’m easily A: A.inflAbsolutely, uenced by the magic of advertising, especially the kind with vague statistics. B. Maybe. They should at least give it a shot. I’m tired of cleaning up my roommate’s vomit. C. No. Why waste money on social norming campaigns when you could be spending that money on beer?
See RECRUITMENT, page 3
Researchers from Washington University help lauch a research balloon in the Antarctic. The balloon will carry various science projects designed by K-12 students into the atmosphere as part of Project Aria, the brainchild of professor Keith Bennett.
Project Aria takes off By Derek Dohler q Contributing Reporter The lines are cut, and the balloon leaps skyward, rippling and shimmering in the cold Antarctic wind. Already big, it will soon grow larger than a football field as it climbs to over 130,000 feet in the sky. Although it holds complex and sensitive electronic equipment for studying cosmic rays, it also carries a somewhat more mundane cargo: dozens of small experiments designed not by graduate students or professors, but by elementary and middle school students. The TIGER mission, as this is called, is just one of many projects which compose Project Aria, a program founded and run by Keith Bennett, a professor of computer science at Washington University. “I was looking for a way to impact both undergraduate and K-12 students,” said Bennett. “The goal is to get K-12 students to see space as something they can impact.” Project Aria began in 1998 as “Project X,” Bennett’s project for getting back into the space field. The current name came about as Bennett was listening to opera. “[The word] ‘aria’ hit me as representing what I was
In vitro may cause birth defects, study finds Assisted reproductive technology faces scientific scrutiny By Brandon Pierce q Contributing Reporter Recent research suggests that using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to facilitate pregnancy may increase the newborn’s susceptibility to Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS), a rare developmental disorder. Scientists from the Washington University School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine concluded that conception with IVF is six times as common among children with BWS as in the general population. This result ex-
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INDEX pages 5-6 pages 7-8 page 9 page 11-12
See ARIA, page 4
LAUREN SCOTT
D. I don’t care, but does this mean they will have to change the name of Anheuser-Busch Law School to the School Where Cool Kids Don’t Drink?
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trying to get across,” said Bennett. Since it was started, Aria has allowed over 3,000 K-12 students to fly their own experiments, whether on the space shuttle or one of Aria’s high altitude balloon projects, TIGER and the Aria High-Altitude Balloon program (AHAB). Aria’s shuttle program is on hold due to the Columbia accident, in which the space shuttle Columbia broke up on Feb. 1, 2003, while reentering the earth’s atmosphere. Not all of Aria’s projects, however, are geared toward pre-college students. “It’s important that students get involved in multidisciplinary activities,” said Bennett. “I encourage all students to get involved, not just engineering students.” “I got involved as a freshman because I thought the class was interesting in the course descriptions,” said sophomore Cash Carr, “and as it turned out, not only was the class interesting, but I was actually—as a freshman— was able to participate in the design and construction of AHAB…Project Aria’s high altitude ballooning program. Many students, though, are not even aware that the
“In recent years, no issue has so challenged this and other law schools’ commitment to nondiscrimination,” said Joel Seligman, dean of the School of Law. The issue that Seligman speaks of is the presence of military recruiters on college campuses. In past years, universities have barred recr u iters from their premises due to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexual soldiers. A recent lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Joel Seligman the Solomon Amendment, a law passed in 1995 that withholds funds provided by certain public agencies from colleges that don’t allow military recruiters on campus, is being debated on the grounds of its potential discrimination and due to concerns of governmental intervention. “To assert that gays and lesbians in the military offends community standards is to yield to prejudice,” said Seligman. The lawsuit was filed by the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the Society of American Law Teachers and numerous other law schools, professors and students. Until the fall of 2000, Washington University did not allow recruiters on campus due to the military’s stance on homosexuals within its ranks. Some schools that prohibited recruiters from coming onto their campuses, however, have suffered severe consequences. Seligman said that those schools that did not comply with the military’s wishes to recruit on campus could have federal funding withheld by the government for the entire university. The main conflict, said Seligman, is that the core values of the School of Law clash with this law. “This law school, by tradition and accreditation standards, has a commitment
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pands the small but growing body of evidence that links IVF and birth defects. IVF is a widely accepted and highly prevalent reproductive alternative for couples who, for biological reasons, cannot conceive a child of their own. Eggs are inseminated and fertilized in a laboratory, and later implanted in the mother’s uterus. BWS is a rare disorder, with the cause believed to be genetic. Infants born with BWS suffer from overgrowth of various tissues and inherit an inflated risk of tumors and early-childhood cancer. Michael DeBaun, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and a physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, was the principle investigator involved with the BWS/IVF study. “At this point, we simply have a
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strong association between BWS and IVF,” said DeBaun. DeBaun and his colleagues from Johns Hopkins emphasized that the clinical applications for their findings are still vague. Their research is quite compelling, but still preliminary, and should serve only to stimulate this new area of medical research, not to influence anyone’s decisions concerning reproduction. “We need additional data to verify our findings, and, if confirmed, to understand why there is an association,” said DeBaun. Currently, less than one percent of babies born in the United States are conceived via reproductive-assisted technologies. However, in DeBaun’s registry of BWS cases, about five percent of the affected children
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See IN VITRO, page 3
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