The Times-Delphic

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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER FOR DRAKE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1884

THE TIMES-DELPHIC DES MOINES, IOWA | THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011 | VOL. 129, NO. 33 | WWW.TIMESDELPHIC.COM

Van Hoeck edges out Laurent for VP student life

MATT VAN HOECK (left and bottom right) reacts as his win in the election for vice president of student life is announced. Van Hoeck received four more votes than opponent Amanda Laurent in Monday’s run-off election. CARLY STEIG (bottom left) waits to hear the results.

by Sean Walsh

Staff Writer sean.walsh@drake.edu

Sophomore Matthew Van Hoeck won the vice president of student life position by just four votes according to the election results announced shortly after midnight Tuesday morning. Van Hoeck captured 481 votes, or 50.2 percent, while his opponent Amanda Laurent received 477 votes, or 49.8 percent. Junior Jessie Hill, co-chair of the Election

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CONNOR MCCOURTNEY | photo editor

Commission, said she has seen many close elections. “It just proves that all candidates are campaigning hard,” Hill said. Van Hoeck is looking forward to his new position and said that he developed a lot of ideas throughout the campaign. “It was a lot of work overall and I’ve really learned about myself quite a bit,” Van Hoeck said.

Van Hoeck and Laurent, both current senators this year, were the top two vote-getters in the three-way race last week. But they campaigned in a run-off election this week after neither captured the 50 percent plus one vote requirement set by the Election Commission for Student Senate officer elections the first time around. “It was a really good race,” Laurent said. “It’s hard to get the turnout for the run-off, and I think Matt will do a great job.” There was a total of 958 votes cast in the

run-off election, down from the nearly 1,200 that voted in last week’s election. Election Commission Chair Alex Bergman said that the election ran smoothly, with the exception of only a few campaign complaints overseen by the committee. Van Hoeck will join the other two executive officers, elected last week, as leaders of next year’s Senate. Junior Greg Larson was elected student body president and sophomore Jessica Hamilton won the vice president of student activities position.

Thank you for not smoking by Cambria Pardner

Staff Writer cambria.pardner@drake.edu

The recent sleet, rain and snow persuade most students and faculty to remain within the warmth of campus buildings. But for some, a few daily ventures out into the cold is common place. Even though Drake University has been a smoke-free campus since July 1, 2008, it’s still hard for some students on campus to kick the addiction, and it’s difficult for any observer to miss the piles of cigarette butts gathering in gutters beneath the melting piles of snow. Most college students today have grown up in an era where they are well informed of the dangers of smoking, yet some continue the habit. Senior Jacob Myhre said he smokes four to five cigarettes a day. He also added that he has a strong desire to quit smoking. “I’ve always been an athletic guy, and cigarettes are kind of harmful to that and also, I don’t want to want [a cigarette] all the time.” Jacob is far from alone in this habit. According to livestrong.com, “about 13.8 percent of college students smoked cigarettes in the 30 days before they were surveyed and another 15 percent smoked cigarettes before that, according to the American College Health Association’s survey. Males are more likely to have smoked cigarettes than females — 31.3 to 27.3 percent.” Even the increasing price of cigarettes is not enough of a deterrent for some smokers. As quoted in a Daily Finance article ran on July 8 of last year, Randall Kuhn, director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School, said that “people often downgrade brands [when tobacco prices rise]. Cigarette companies are usually prepared with a lower brand, in case you need to downgrade.” Similarly, the rising cost of cigarettes has not had a drastic change on Myhre’s behavior. “My health is more important to me than any type of price, but the rising price of cigarettes has not changed my behavior,” Myhre said. “It’s more of something you complain about while you smoke.” One thing that has affected all people who smoke at Drake is the smoking ban. When the ban was instituted in 2008, it prohibited anyone from smoking on any Drake University property by Iowa law. Senior Danielle Ford does not smoke but she said, “I feel that new laws prohibiting smoking in certain places go a long way towards limiting the amount of smokers overall.” Debra De Laet, global public health professor and professor of politics and international relations, said that even though more public places are now smoke-free, she thinks that there are more people smoking now than in her generation. She said that anti-tobacco campaigns were huge while she was in college, but students were mostly “social smokers.” They went out to bars

FOREVER GREEN: by Matt Nelson

Relays Editor matthew.nelson@drake.edu

Sally Fischer is green to the extreme. The Drake senior intends to undergo a green burial when she dies, a process that places the body into a wooden or biodegradable casket rather than a cement burial vault. Fischer became interested in green burials while writing a research paper on the contamination of ground water. “I believe that once you die, your body is simply a body,” Sally Fischer said in an e-mail interview to The Times-Delphic. “It isn’t a person anymore.” A traditional funeral is usually a combination of a visitation and a funeral ceremony, followed by a casket placed into a concrete burial vault. The burial vault practice began shortly

inside

CONNOR MCCOURTNEY | photo editor

ON DRAKE’S CAMPUS, signs like this one remind students, faculty and visitors that a ban instituted in 2008 prohibits smoking cigarettes on any university property. to have cigarettes and now that many buildings and campuses are smokefree like Drake, people who do smoke are now more visible because they must go out onto public streets to have a smoke. However, it is important to note the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that as of 2009, 49.1 percent of adults who smoked had a GED diploma, and 33.6 percent of adults who smoked had between 9 and 11 years of education. Conversely, only 11.1 percent of adults who smoked in 2009 had an undergraduate college degree, and 5.6 percent of adult smokers held a graduate degree. From these statistics, one could gather that college students are less likely to smoke than those who do not go on to pursue higher education. Furthermore, since more people are getting college degrees now than in the past, there is a lot of hope for the future. According to a Bloomberg Business article posted on Nov. 21, 2005,

SEE SMOKING, PAGE 2

How the eco-friendly can plan for the afterlife

after World War II. Blair Overton, funeral director for Overton Family Funeral Homes in Des Moines, said that these concrete vaults can weigh up to 3,000 pounds. “[Burial vaults] serve two purposes,” Overton said. “One is to protect the casket. Many people view the vault as what protects mom or dad… it’s what protects my person I buried there, my loved ones.” The second, more practical function of the vault is to protect the surface of the cemetery from depressions that form when a biodegradable casket breaks down, possibly creating a washboard effect. “One of the arguments I make a lot with people about the cemetery is that is really is a nature preserve,” Overton said. “If you go through town and you see a big green space with trees and things in nature, a lot of times it is a cemetery.”

SEE BURIALS, PAGE 2

NEWS

OPINIONS

FEATURES

SPORTS

How to be ecofriendly, even in death

Who’ the best underrated rock band?

An abroad update from sophomore Megan Stein

Drake women’s basketball team ready for MVC tournament

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