STEPPING DOWN
BURN AFTER READING
Columnist Greg Schimmel is tired of the Terps playing below their potential
The Coen brothers look back and let loose
SPORTS | PAGE 14
DIVERSIONS | PAGE 8
THE DIAMONDBACK THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008
99TH YEAR | ISSUE NO. 8
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER
DEVOURING DOLLAR T H E
Poor exchange rates leave some study abroad students on a tight budget
Transit projects hit a roadblock Weak economy delays funding for Route 1 redevelopment, Purple Line BY KEVIN ROBILLARD Senior staff writer
Route 1 redevelopment and the Purple Line were two victims of state-wide transportation cuts yesterday — losing millions of dollars to be allocated next year — as Transportation Secretary John Porcari deferred more than $1.1 billion in transportation projects because of falling tax and fee revenues.
This announcement comes on the heels of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) stating Tuesday that $432 million in cuts would need to be made to the state’s budget to accommodate lower-than-predicted tax revenue. The two announcements are unrelated, as the Transportation Department gets its funding from a different pool of money than the state’s general funds, but both
Please See FUNDING, Page 3
Athletics ramps up green initiatives Nearly one-third of waste from Del. football game recycled, composted BY JEFF AMOROS Senior staff writer
Tailgating before Saturday’s football game against California will transform on-campus parking lots into seas of red. But a new Athletics Department initiative will give Terp fans a chance to go green. Hundreds of recycling bags and composting bins are part of a proBY PATSY MORROW Staff writer
Money can be a major concern for college students. Books, food and Cornerstone happy hours drain bank accounts in the blink of an eye. But as quickly as money disappears in College Park, students studying abroad have had a crash course in financial management while overseas. On a program in London this summer, senior government and politics and operations management major Sarah Wieselthier spent $20 on a generic hamburger but told herself
Activists push for clean energy pledge
Please See ABROAD, Page 3
A recycling bin in Byrd Stadium has separate containers for compost, cans and bottles and trash. JAMES B. HALE/THE DIAMONDBACK
Campus radio broadcasts SGA meetings
TOUCHDOWN TOUCH-UP
Student legislature holds its first full meeting of the year
Staff writer
BY MICHAEL LEMAIRE Staff writer
In gearing up for the Terrapin football team’s big Saturday matchup against No. 23 California, Byrd Stadium’s end zones have a new look. The state flag has replaced the traditional “MARYLAND” and “TERRAPIN.” JACLYN BOROWSKI/THE DIAMONDBACK
In its first full meeting of the year, the SGA unveiled a new medium of transparency through a streaming broadcast of the proceedings on student radio station WMUC 88.1 FM. “I think last year not a lot of people knew what the SGA was about or what we did,” Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs said. “This audio will give students easy access, and people will be able
Please See PLEDGE, Page 2
TOMORROW’S WEATHER:
Please See GREEN, Page 2
not to worry too much because the program was only for three weeks. “I didn’t want to think about it,” Wieselthier said. But students who spend a semester or year abroad have to be a little more proactive about their finances. Senior Spanish major Emily Gordon spent a year in Barcelona, Spain and found herself entering her expenses into an Excel spreadsheet for the year. She was adamant that “food in Spain is cheaper than the U.S., so even with the exchange rate, it wasn’t that bad ... it was just
BY ALLISON STICE Activists will target students throughout the next few months as part of a national nonpartisan movement to make clean energy the biggest priority of the youth vote on Election Day. Groups such as Clean Energy for UMD and Maryland Student Climate Coalition have joined up with the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign, which is aiming for one million youths nationwide to pledge to vote for solutions to the climate crisis and hold leaders accountable, with a goal of more than 7,000 signatures from this university. Activists have been asking students to sign the
gram being developed in part by the Athletics Department as part of the “Feed the Turtle” campaign, a campus-wide push to bring the university to carbon-neutral status, according to Director of Campus Sustainability Scott Lupin. Lupin said the effort to get more fans recycling and composting their
Showers/70s
Please See SGA Page 3
INDEX
NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
FEATURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 CLASSIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
DIVERSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . .7 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
www.diamondbackonline.com