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Daily Toreador The

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2011 VOLUME 85 ■ ISSUE 143

Serving the Texas Tech University community since 1925

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Damaged Psyche

Tech student surveys mental well-being after Joplin tornado, aftermath of destruction

PHOTO COURTESY OF JIANJUN LUO

JOPLIN, MO., WAS hit by an EF5 tornado at approximately 5:41 p.m. CDT on Sunday, May 22. The tornado resulted in more than 140 casulties, making it the deadliest tornado to have hit the U.S. since 1947.

BY KASSIDY KETRON STAFF WRITER

After learning of the May 22 tornado in Joplin, Mo., Zhen Cong, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Texas Tech, wanted to give students the opportunity to go to Joplin and survey the psychological state of the victims. “I hope that students will be able to learn how to conduct

research, particularly in some stressful situation and to know more about the effect of disaster,” she said. “So, hopefully will be interested in doing research in this field.” Although Cong didn’t attend the trip she said she did create the survey students would be using. She said the purpose of the survey was to assess the emotional well being of the tornado victims and the type of impact the tor-

nado had on their psychological well being. Kim Corson, a human development and family studies doctoral student at Tech from Houston, chose to volunteer to go on the trip during Memorial Day weekend. When she arrived in Joplin, Corson said she was stunned by the devastation she saw. She said although she had seen footage on TV and pictures

in newspapers it didn’t adequately portray the destruction she witnessed once she got to Joplin. “I mean it’s just, I can’t get the images out of my mind and I didn’t even go through it so I can’t imagine what it would be like to have actually gone through something like that,” Corson said.

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Texas, Perry wrestle with higher education unrest

AUSTIN, (AP) — When barbecue research is second-guessed in Texas, the turmoil in higher education must be getting serious. Responding to soaring tuitions and sagging graduation rates, a conservative policy foundation and Republican Gov. Rick Perry have stirred a tempest on Texas campuses by questioning whether college professors are making good use of their state money and suggesting an assortment of efficiencies. The foundation, for example, is asking whether there’s a need for more critiques of Shakespeare and other esoteric research that doesn’t generate money. Academics and politicians don’t get along in the best of times. But with tuition increasing and budgets tight, the so-called “Seven Breakthrough Solutions,” created by the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, has opened a new debate over the balance between academic freedom and reasonable cost-benefit analysis. The backlash peaked last week at Texas A&M University — Perry’s alma mater — when more than 800 faculty members signed an online petition asking university regents to explain where they stand on the proposals and one professor’s withering rebuke to regents made him a small YouTube star. National education institutions have begun to take notice. “Texas has a prominent place in higher education,” said John Curtis, public policy director of the American Association of University Professors. “But the question popping up is that political perspectives and ideology are

encroaching on individual autonomy. Some of the proposals are pretty radical.” The “solutions” haven’t been implemented on any campus, or even formally proposed. Yet professors see those proposals as undermining academic research, a perception the Texas Public Policy Foundation strenuously rejects. But foundation spokesman David Guenthner added, “You can talk about the double helix on one end of the spectrum, but on the other end of the spectrum you have the professor who does the study on Texas barbecue.” Perry, who has donated proceeds from his Washington-bashing book “Fed Up!” to the think tank, dismissed the controversy as overblown. In an editorial last month, he called university research the “lifeblood of our state’s innovation” and trumpeted the hundreds of millions of dollars the state has put toward technology and cancer research. But he said universities should be more efficient with resources, noting that fewer than three in 10 students graduate in four years. Meanwhile, the average semester cost for students has climbed 72 percent since 2003. Perry broadly endorsed the “seven solutions” at a meeting of state university leaders in 2008, and while he has not publicly pushed for specific measures, Perry has called for more accountability. “These efforts to protect taxpayers and get more results from our schools are not universally welcomed in academia,” he said. “The attitude of some in the university world is that students and taxpayers should send more and more money, and then just butt out.”

LAUNCHING PAD

JOPLIN continued on Page 2 ➤➤

Stage set for high-stakes U.S. TV rights bidding LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — With Dick Ebersol out of the picture, NBC’s multi-billion-dollar grip on the most valuable property in sports faces a serious challenge this week when U.S. networks bid on the next set of Olympic television rights. NBC, the Olympic network in the United States for much of the past two decades, goes up against ESPN/ABC and Fox in a high-stakes auction that could potentially command fees of more than $2 billion for two games and more than $4 billion for four. Network executives will make closed-door presentations and sealed bids to the International Olympic Committee on Monday and Tuesday, the first U.S. broadcast rights contest in eight years. The implications are huge for both sides: The networks and their giant parent companies are weighing massive long-term investments in an uncertain economic climate, and the IOC is

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the rights through next year’s London Olympics. Ebersol was a close partner of the IOC, negotiating several multigames deals that kept the committee’s coffers bulging and ensured the stability of the games in the Olympics’ most important financial market. NBC outbid ESPN and Fox in a $2.2 billion deal in 2003 for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics. “The big question mark is what the disappearance of Dick Ebersol means to an NBC Comcast bid,” Dick Pound, the IOC’s former longtime U.S. TV rights negotiator, told the AP. “That’s got to be troubling for them if they are as serious as they say they are about trying to renew. “I suppose if you’re a conspiracy theorist, you say it’s an opportunity for network ‘X’ to get the games instead of NBC and all of a sudden they’ll hire Dick Ebersol.” Ebersol told the AP when he resigned he would not help another network with its bid in fairness to NBC.

Ebersol’s departure followed what was described as a contract dispute with Comcast, the cable giant which took control of NBC in January. ESPN is controlled by Disney, and Fox by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Although NBC and Comcast say they remain fully committed to the games and the bidding, Ebersol’s absence clearly changes the dynamics of the contest and would seem to give ESPN and Fox greater hope of securing their first Olympics. Carrion, head of the IOC finance commission, said he met with Comcast and NBC executives after Ebersol’s resignation and is convinced they remain determined to retain the rights. “They reiterated that they are extremely interested, and judging from the team they’ve brought here, I take them at their word,” Carrion said. “It’s just way too important for them. I expect them to play to win.”

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hoping for a bumper deal to keep the money flowing from one of its biggest sources of revenue. Up for grabs are the exclusive rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In a new twist, the networks are also free to bid on a four-games package including the 2018 and 2020 Games, whose sites have not yet been selected. “We’ve got a full house and I’m hoping for the best,” Richard Carrion, who heads the IOC’s TV rights negotiations, told The Associated Press on Sunday. The bidding comes less than three weeks after the sudden resignation of Ebersol, the longtime NBC sports chief who dominated the Olympic television scene for the past 20 years and turned the Peacock network into the home of the five-ring festival. NBC has broadcast every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002. It holds

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PHOTO BY SCOTT MACWATTERS/The Daily Toreador

ANTHONY FLEMONS, A junior exercise and sports sciences major from Childress, dunks during a game of basketball at the Robert H. Ewalt Student Recreation Center.

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