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STUDENT LIFE
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS SINCE 1878 VOLUME 129, NO. 3
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2007
Graduate student slain in summer tragedy
Campus card expands to oncampus stores BY PUNEET KOLLIPARA SENIOR STAFF REPORTER
DAVID HARTSTEIN | STUDENT LIFE
A memorial to Emmalee Terrell sits amidst students at work Tuesday afternoon in the law school’s Students Commons area.
BY PERRY STEIN CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Remembered by friends as genuine, charismatic and optimistic, 2007 Washington University graduate Emmalee Terrell was found dead along with her boyfriend on Monday, August 8. Terrell was to attend the University’s law school this fall. Terrell and her boyfriend of about two years, Bobby Capone, were discovered inside his home in St. John, Mo. According to Captain J.R Morris, assistant chief of the St. John Police Department, the investigation of this apparent murder-suicide is almost closed. Although the exact details of the incident have not been released, Morris said that the detectives have reached a solid conclusion of
what actually occurred. “It’s a real tragedy,” said Morris. “I feel pretty comfortable to say that this was the result of a domestic issue that took place earlier that day.” Terrell’s friends now remember her for all her good qualities. “In all my experience with undergraduates I don’t think I met anyone who gave off the same vibes as she did,” said Erica Jones, a fi rst year law student at the University who met Terrell before their freshman year at the Freshman Summer Academic Program [FSAP]. “I never saw her have a bad day. She was always smiling. She would never emphasize the negative.” There is a temporary memorial set up in Terrell’s memory in the law school’s
Student Commons room that will be displayed through this week. Here, students can learn more about the scholarship and leave her and her family messages in a memory book. “I never saw her in a bad mood,” said Brandon Arrey, a fi rst year law student at Washington University who also met Terrell at FSAP. “She was always upbeat.” Despite her tragic death, her friends will always remember Terrell for her positive outlook on life. “She was a very attractive person who lit up the room when she walked in,” said Anthony Grice, a friend who worked with her at the law fi rm Blackwell Sanders this summer. “She had an immediate impact when she met people.”
In memory of their daughter, Terrell’s parents established the Emmalee Terrell Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship will be awarded to a law student and will help promote diversity within the school. According to Law School Associate Director of Development Christine Karsh, who is organizing the funding for the scholarship along with Vice President of the Black Law Student Association Deanna Atchley, the scholarship will be officially announced in November and will most likely be available for a student for the 2008-09 school year. Donations to the Emmalee Terrell Memorial Scholarship can be mailed to Washington University School of Law, attention Christine Karsh.
The Washington University student ID card’s campus card account underwent an expansion this summer and now offers several new services to students. The campus card account, which was created last year to allow students to pay for laundry, vending items and printing with their ID cards, now permits students to use their ID’s to pay for items purchased at the University Bookstore, Bear Necessities, the Edison Theatre Box Office and the 560 Building. According to Paul Schimmele, assistant to the director of operations at Dining Services and a chair of the Campus Card Steering Committee (CCSC), aside from some minor technical glitches and laundry machine malfunctions, the initial expansion of the ID card and the creation of a campus card account in the fall of 2006 was a resounding success. “What we wanted to do, and the big part of our mission, was to improve campus life and that’s where we’ve really made our difference,” said Schimmele. “For the most part I’d say it was a tremendously successful program.” According to Schimmele, students now do more loads of laundry and buy more vending items than ever before, largely because of the convenience factor of not having to carry coins. At the Danforth Campus Bookstore, students have slowly begun to catch on to the new campus card feature. “A lot of people intending to pay with traditional means…are still doing so,” said Rodney Jones, assistant store director. “But we are trying to get the word out to everyone in the most efficient way possible.” Though Jones did not provide any numbers, he did say that the campus card has
been successful in the bookstore so far. “Since we’ve been letting people know, they’ve been activating their cards and it’s been working really well,” said Jones. “From talking to students, they’re very happy that they can use the card in the store.” Students agree with Jones, especially because of the card’s convenience for emergency and incidental expenses. “I think that it’s good. It makes it so that you don’t have to carry as much money around,” said Jim Stevens, a sophomore majoring in computer science and engineering. “I could just put money on it and then just in case I needed something and I didn’t have cash with me, I could use it.” “I think that it will be really useful to not have to carry cash and just be able to use it pretty much everywhere on campus,” said Sophie Cohen, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. “I think the bookstore will definitely be really nice, because I know there are some times when I’m on campus and I don’t have any money and want to get something quickly.” The campus card account expanded to include West Campus in the fall of 2006 and North Campus in January 2007. In late July 2007, two locations at the School of Medicine—the Lobby Ferrall Learning and Teaching Center and the Sea Shell Café in the McDonnell Science Building—also started to accept the campus card. According to Schimmele, the CCSC is considering the addition of non-food items at Bear Mart to the list of items that can be purchased with the campus card account. Currently, those items can only be purchased with cash and not with meal plans. He did not provide an exact date
See CARDS, page 3
Abortion in Missouri may be restricted to St. Louis BY ANDREA WINTER NEWS EDITOR Under a new state law, St. Louis could become the only place in the state of Missouri where abortions will be performed. The law, Missouri House Bill 1055, which was passed last spring, requires that the Planned Parenthoods in Columbia and Kansas City, Mo. halt their abortion services until costly renovations are made. Since the centers do not have the funding to make these changes, the only abortion facilities to remain open in the state would be in St. Louis. The new law was supposed to go into effect yesterday, but on Monday Federal U.S. District Judge Ortie Smith
temporarily blocked the law’s enforcement until a hearing takes place on September 10. The Planned Parenthoods of Kansas and Mid-Missouri fi led a federal lawsuit last week in an attempt to strike down the new law arguing that the law infringes on the reproductive rights of women. “We believe very strongly that the legislation has nothing to do with protecting women’s health and safety but has everything to do with limiting access to abortion,” said Alison Gee, the vice president of public policy of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region. The new law requires an increase in the regulation of abortion facilities, but Planned Parenthood contends
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that the new requirements for an “ambulatory surgical center” are “medically unnecessary” to the health of women. The Missouri legislature, the majority of which is prolife, maintains that the law is necessary to ensure the safety of abortions. The prospect of this new law going into effect has been on minds of some Washington University students. “Basically it’s just a sneaky way to make abortions unavailable to most of the state,” said Saskia Shuman, a recent graduate from the class of 2007. Shuman traveled to Jefferson City last year to lobby against the bill before it was passed. She pointed out that if abortions are only performed
in St. Louis, it would create undue hardship for many women who do not have the money or time to travel up to six hours for an abortion. One student organization, Students for Choice, plans to directly address this issue next week. Senior Liz Hague, the co-president of Students for Choice, said that her club will have information sheets and letters available at the student Activities Fair for students to contact representatives. “My hope is that a judge will look at it and say that this is an undue burden,” said Shuman. “Hopefully that’s pretty obvious, but you don’t know. It’s Missouri, so you never know.” The majority of Washington University students are
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not from Missouri. As a result, many students are reluctant to get involved with Missouri state politics. Hague said that it can be difficult for her to get club members engaged in these types of issues because the fi ght for reproductive rights has moved from the national level to the state level. “It’s often difficult to get students to care about in Missouri,” she said. Ariella Kahn-Lang, a senior from Boston, Mass., said that she was concerned about this new law even though she did not know that much about it. “Even though I know it’s not going to affect our lives that much because we live in St. Louis and most of us are not from Missouri, I still
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think it’s an important issue because it affects women throughout the state,” she said. Although this law specifically pertains to abortion facilities in Missouri, Gee stressed that this law should not be a concern not only to women in Missouri but all women. “Supporters of these restrictions want to cloak them with health and safety concerns yet these requirements do nothing to make what is already a safe procedure safer,” she said. “It’s part of a pretty concerted effort to shut down abortion clinics. They fi gure that they cannot turn down Row, so if they close individual providers then we might have the right to an abortion but nowhere to go for one.”
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