LIFE & ARTS • PAGE 3
Medieval Fair characters sound off The Daily’s Janna Gentry and Conor O’Brien set out Saturday to find the most interesting characters at the Medieval Fair of Norman.
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Tar creek project short on funds OU research team limited to quarterly visits to region’s only passive water treatment system director says HILLARY MCLAIN The Oklahoma Daily
A lack of funding has forced an OU research team to scale back its work on passive watertreatment systems in northeastern Oklahoma at the Tar Creek Superfund site. The team is led by professor Robert Nairn,
OU Center for Restoration of Ecosystems and Watersheds director, and has already used a $6-million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to design and build the treatment system. The system was completed in 2008, and the group returned to the site monthly for more research and maintenance, Nairn said. Nairn’s team now visits the site four times a year. Quarterly visitation is possible only through the use of systems implemented to
automatically collect samples and data from the site, Nairn said. “It isn’t as good; it doesn’t give us all the same information, but it gives us something,” he said. The system utilizes no fossil fuels — just gravity — to purify water through the use of natural means similar to filtration through compost, Nairn said. SEE RESEARCH PAGE 2
Election board sets CAC runoff Because of conflicting runoff guidelines, upcoming election will set new rules KATHLEEN EVANS The Oklahoma Daily
SERVICE EVENT SEES BIG TURNOUT
ASHLEY WEST/THE DAILY
Thousands of students, faculty and staff gather on the North Oval before heading out to volunteer at various job sites around the Oklahoma City area during Campus Activities Council’s Big Event. OU President David Boren addressed students at the event’s opening ceremony.
Big Event draws record volunteers Volunteers perform a variety of tasks at more than 150 sites throughout Oklahoma RACHAEL CERVENKA The Oklahoma Daily
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ore than 5,400 students, faculty and staff gathered Saturday on the North Oval before spending the day serving local communities. OU President David Boren gave a speech at the Big Event’s opening ceremony before participants left campus to begin work at more than 150 work sites. “A lot of people ask me, what is the real Sooner magic? This is the real Sooner magic,” Boren said. “It’s caring about other people.” Among the volunteers on the North Oval, a group of 10 seniors, who said they were unaffiliated with any student club or organization, stood together waiting to disperse to their work site.
The group called themselves Dudes Hanging With Dudes, and members said they were just a group of friends who wanted to lend a hand. Will Haskell, business senior and group leader, said the name came about as an inside joke. Last year was the first time they signed up as a group. However, several members said they had participated in the Big Event with other organizations during each of their four years on campus. Group members decided they wanted to spend their Saturday volunteering rather than relaxing and sleeping, zoology senior Andrew Vienot said. Following the opening ceremony, Dudes Hanging With Dudes headed to a local non-profit organization, Bethesda Inc., a childhood sexual abuse therapy center. Bethesda Inc. Executive Director Kay Christiansen said the SEE VOLUNTEERS PAGE 2
The Campus Activities Council chair runoff election will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday after the spring election board chairwoman sought an opinion from UOSA’s General Counsel because of ambiguous election rules. The UOSA Code Annotated and Constitution are vague on runoff election procedures, causing confusion on how and when the runoff election should take place, Election Board Chairwoman Natalie Jester said. After voting ended Tuesday and Wednesday, no CAC chair candidate received a majority of the vote, which is required by the UOSA Constitution for election. This means a runoff election between the top two candidates must occur. Candidates Greg Emde and Melissa Mock each received about 36 percent of the vote and will participate in the runoff. Public relations junior Bridgitte Castorino will not participate after receiving approximately 27 percent of the vote. “The Code says that we should have an automatic electronic runoff, which would mean [last] Wednesday after everyone voted,” Jester said. “That would have ranked the three people running and then go to the second-place ranking and then narrowed it down automatically.” However, after this process was used in the 2010 spring election, the UOSA Superior Court decided this method was not appropriate because students were not properly informed to rank each candidate, according to Daily archives. Because of the confusion, Je s t e r a n d U O S A G e n e r a l Counsel Chair Amber Siddiqui have had to interpret the laws and determine the best way to conduct the election. General Counsel saw the two options as creating a special election, which would take about three weeks, or to have a runoff within one week, which the Constitution outlines for the presidential election, according to the Counsel’s official opinion. To vote, students can visit the official polling site at the top of South Oval by Bizzell Memorial Librar y or go to elections. ou.edu.
OU freshmen organize video to bring comedian to campus Students will enter video in contest for episode of Tosh.0 to be filmed at OU CARMEN FORMAN The Oklahoma Daily
Two OU students are organizing an effort to bring the host of a cable television Internet clip show to campus. Daniel Tosh, host of Comedy Central’s “Tosh.0,” bases his show on poking fun at clips gathered from the Internet. Tosh has been to OU before, when he performed a stand-up comedy show in 2008 in the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Meacham Auditorium. Now University College freshmen Zach Pennington and Max Boyd are determined to
get Tosh back by entering a contest for a show’s episode to be filmed on a college campus. Pennington and Boyd said they are Tosh fans, and Boyd heard about the contest on the show. Boyd said they contacted 200 people on Facebook to see if they would be interested in helping. There are now 1,600 confirmed guests for the event, Boyd said. “We had no idea it would get this big this fast,” Pennington said. Boyd said he has spoken with one of the production assistants of “Tosh.0” about the rules of the contest. There aren’t any time limits for the video and the film has to be turned in by the end of April, Boyd said. Pennington and Boyd have completed four minutes of a planned 10-minute video.
A LOOK AT WHAT’S ON Visit the news section to read about how broken equipment prevented the grand finale of a music student’s recital performance
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“The big part of the video we have done so far is pictures of everything on campus: people, sports, parties and the Bizzell Silent Rave,” Boyd said. The duo have at least 30 people willing to compete in a cinnamon challenge. Boyd said the challenge, in which a person eats a spoonful of cinnamon without drinking any water, was featured on an episode of “Tosh.0.” “A lot of the other videos [from other colleges] so far are just one or two people saying he should go to their school,” Boyd said. “There’s nothing as complete or as elaborate as what we are trying to do.” Pennington and Boyd said it hasn’t been announced how the winner of the contest will be chosen, but they think Tosh’s crew will look at the videos sent in.
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Daniel Tosh
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