9-17-14

The Oracle WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 I VOL. 52 NO. 14 www.usforacle.com

Inside this Issue

The Index

News.................................................................1 Lifestyle......................................................4 Opinion.......................................................6

classifieds..............................................7 Crossword.........................................7 sports............................................................8

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

USF football losing student support

By Jacob Hoag A S S T .

LI F E STYLE

Centre Gallery exhibit uses changing light. Page 4

Montage

SP O RTS Bulls make changes following Saturday’s blowout. BACK

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S P O R T S

E D I T O R

Though USF Athletics has worked tirelessly to fill Raymond James Stadium, those who attended Saturday’s game against N.C. State could see that not even students are coming out to see the Bulls play football.

When the Bulls burst through the fog of the tunnel and entered the field for Week 3, they saw a season-low 3,615 fans in the student section – a number that only decreased as the Bulls went on to finish the game with a 32-point loss.

According to USF Athletics, fewer students have been coming to the games as the season progresses.

While the Bulls’ season opener had a visibly crowded student section of 6,392 and resulted in victory against Western Carolina, the next game against Maryland had about half the turnout, with 3,965 students.

n See SUPPORT on BACK

Student attendance hit a season low at Saturday’s game against N.C. State, with only 3,615 students according to USF Athletics. ORACLE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU

Students learn Bulls’ market USF undergrads invest university funds for stock trading class. n

By Wesley Higgins N E W S

E D I T O R

Though “The Wolf of Wall Street” makes stock trading look like fun, business students at USF are learning the real world pressures of investing over $300,000 in a realworld setting.

Throughout the school year, the Student Managed Investment Fund will present stocks to finance professionals who may decide to invest in the picks with money raised

by the USF Foundation and the College of Business.

USF Professor Joseph Mohr, former owner of a financial consulting firm, said the class gives students the experience of a first-year market analyst at a professional firm.

“We really stress that we expect our analysts to stop thinking like students and start thinking like professionals,” he said. “Part of this is developing an informed opinion about the market, economy and stocks.”

Students examine news reports and company data to make predictions about different business sectors and the overall economic forecast.

Students then compare notes and analyze all the information to predict what companies the market undervalues.

“If the market has the price

higher than what the stock should be, then you shouldn’t buy it,” Mohr said. “If the market has the price lower than what the stock should be, then you should buy.”

Students learn not only to analyze the behavior of markets with formulas, but how to analyze the behavior of themselves with heuristics.

“We overestimate our own abilities, and we don’t like to change our beliefs,” Mohr said.

According to Mohr, there are cognitive trap doors that investors often fall into, such as overconfidence, risk aversion and conformity.

“We tend to fall in love with stocks and we hold onto them too long,” he said. “We teach you in here not to overestimate the precision of your forecast.”

Mohr said a naive investor is one who invests in companies solely because they like the brand. Students must often consider companies with “scars and warts.”

“Just because it’s a good company, doesn’t mean it’s a good investment,” he said. “If it’s undervalued, that’s where you’re actually going to make money.”

Gerardo Lopez, a senior majoring in finance, said it is this level of critical thinking that makes market analysis the most interesting job in finance.

“You make a lot of money working on Wall Street, but at the same time, it’s like a game,” he said. “You have all these players out there trying to find the best ways to make

n See MARKET on PAGE 3

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T H E O R AC L E

USF professor in the center of immigration crisis

By Russell Nay

C O R R E S P O N D E N T

Anthropology professor Heide Castaneda researched migration patterns at the U.S.-Mexico border this summer.

PHOTO PROVIDED BY HEIDE CASTANEDA

The heated debate over the U.S.-Mexico border crisis has captivated the nation in recent months and one USF professor accidently found herself in the center of the conflict by accident over the summer.

This past summer, USF anthropology professor Heide Castaneda traveled to Texas and Mexico on two research projects that she had been working on since December 2012.

She was initially going to collect data on “mixed status” families near both sides of the U.S. and Mexico border who have legal and undocumented immigrant family members living in the states. Castaneda also planned on talking to immigrants traveling back to Mexico from the U.S. The focus of her work changed drastically, however, when national attention was suddenly brought to a different issue on the border.

“I think even though we’ve been seeing this migration for some time now, people weren’t aware of it,” Castaneda said.

“And so when people became aware of … the fact that these are women and children— sometimes unaccompanied children migrating because they’re fleeing violence—I think that’s what people became immediately interested in.”

After seeing the change in the political debate surrounding the border, Castaneda dropped her research and joined up with researchers from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa and an American colleague from the University of Oregon to begin looking at Central American migration routes within Mexico.

These migration routes are the primary paths that many Central American immigrants currently travel through to reach the U.S., she said. Many emigrate from their native countries in Central America, primarily Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Castaneda said the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has increased in previous years, reflecting the

hostile environments present in many Central American communities.

“There are no opportunities for work, for education or for a future for a lot of the youth,” she said. “They’re not just leaving to find work or economic opportunity. They’re leaving because their other option is being involved in violent criminal gangs or being killed by those gangs.”

This makes the large migration of Central Americans to the U.S. different from most migrations in the sense that it is led by women and children escaping violence and not by men forced from their native countries in an economic downturn.

Castaneda said it is also unique because almost all the Central American migrants have family members in the U.S. Instead of seeking out new opportunities without a concrete destination in mind, as is commonly seen in most migration streams, many are trying to reunite with loved ones across the continent.

“When I was in the border communities in Texas, there were very few Central American migrants,” she said. “In fact, in most of Texas, migrants move on. They cross the border, and once they get to the United States, they’re off to wherever their family members live.”

Castaneda said she also couldn’t find any discernable patterns regarding where Central American migrants end up after they have crossed into the U.S. Instead of congregating in one part of the country, they usually end up traveling all over.

This is mainly because of the U.S.’s historical ties with the societies and governments in Central America, she said. Most of the time, the lives of Central American migrants were heavily impacted by the presence of the U.S. in their native countries.

“It’s not by chance that they come to the United States,” she said.

The journey that Central American migrants take in order to reach their families is often long and arduous, with numerous hazards along the way.

First, migrants must decide which path to the U.S. they can

take, as there are only two different migration streams generally used to reach the U.S from Central America. The safer path, Castaneda said, involves paying a smuggler $7,000$10,000 in order to purchase transportation that leads from the Guatemalan border directly to South Texas.

However, Castaneda found that many migrants cannot afford to pay smugglers thousands of dollars and are essentially forced to travel the path that leads through Sinaloa in Western Mexico to California and Arizona. This requires them to hang precariously onto the tops and sides of freight trains in order to reach Sinaloa, as well as cross the Sonoran Desert, usually by foot, to finish the last leg of their journey.

“When I was down on the border in June they were seeing, in just that one sector of the border patrol where I was located … a thousand unaccompanied children a day cross the border,” she said.

Aside from the risks that they take while traveling to the U.S., Central American migrants also risk how they will be received by the residents of border communities that migrants stay in along their trip.

While the numbers of Central American migrants traveling to the U.S. has greatly increased in the past few months, Castaneda said the Central American

n See CRISIS on PAGE 3

CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS In Tuesday’s issue of The Oracle, a story titled “SG revamps legal services” misattributed quotes to Alex Johnson and Daniel Christopher. All quotes attributed to Johnson should have been attributed to Christopher and vice versa.

Notary services are offered by Johnson and legal aid and representation for parking appeals are offered by Christopher.

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MARKET

Continued from PAGE 1

money, and it’s all about being clever.”

Mohr said the point of the class is that it is possible to beat the market, despite all investors having the same available information. It’s about forming a better opinion and approaching the data creatively.

“The great thing about investments is that everyone has their own philosophy,” Lopez said. “There’s no set way. It’s very open to creativity.”

There are two ways to look at a stock, Mohr said: top-down and bottom-up. A top-up investor looks at the trends and works down to underpriced companies. A bottom-up investor focuses on an individual company before considering larger trends.

Bianca Rodriguez, a senior majoring in finance, said she spends at least 40 hours a week brainstorming and crunching spreadsheets to find undervalued companies in energy and

CRISIS

Continued from PAGE 2

migration crisis is not a new issue. In fact, though President Obama officially labeled the issue a “crisis” earlier this year, the U.S. has experienced children migration from Central American much earlier than that.

“I’ve been doing work on the border for the past year and a half, and there’s been unaccompanied children migrating across the border during that entire time and actually before then,” she said. “It sort of peaked, I think, this spring, and that’s when it started to draw national attention and entered the popular imagination as a crisis.”

This new nationwide attention brought to the Central American migration crisis may also be a significant factor in determining when action is taken, and by whom, in order to begin the crisis’ resolution.

Castaneda is also trying to involve students by bringing them in on her research and working to influence U.S. policy makers and immigration laws.

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T H E O R AC L E

healthcare sectors.

“I’m looking at things that are always in demand,” she said.

Lopez said he is instead looking at what could be in demand in the future, such as defense contractors or cyberdefense companies.

“Increasing conflict geopolitically may lead me to companies that haven’t really been looked at in the past couple of years,” he said.

While everyone dreams of finding the diamond in a coal mine, such as Google or Netflix, professionals must have data to back up the story before presenting it.

“In the business world, it’s not about hunches,” Lopez said. “People are investing billions and they need security.”

In six meetings throughout the school year, the class will pitch stocks to an advisory board to consider and give feedback.

“We tell the advisory board not to be nice and to treat them like real employees,” Mohr said. “We want real feedback like in the real world.”

Students and the advisory board members will then vote Recently, she began working with the Scholar Strategy Network, an organization that distributes policy briefs written to the media and politicians by researchers. The idea is to have politicians inform their positions with research done by academics who have intensely studied the specific issue.

“We try to inform policy makers about what the big picture is … who is being affected and what the impacts are,” she said.

A large portion of U.S. foreign policy that Castaneda said she would like to see changed is the U.S.’s focus on further militarization and securitization in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Instead, she said the U.S. government should pay more attention to the social and economic development in these countries.

“People don’t want to leave their countries,” she said.

“People would much rather stay in their home communities. …

We could talk about short-term solutions, but I think the message, the real message, is how do we create lasting change so that these migration flows are no longer necessary?”

on what stocks, if any, should be bought for the portfolio that has existed since the first class, in 2010.

Students then monitor the stocks until they feel the stocks have become fairly valuable on the market, then the stocks are sold and the cash is eventually reinvested.

Mohr said the portfolio, which includes 16 stocks such as Activision Blizzard and Hershey, has consistently outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500, a stock market index considered the best indicator of the overall U.S. stock market by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The portfolio assets were valued at $234,959 at the start of 2013, $339,732 at the start of 2014 and are currently worth around $360,000.

Assets will stay in the fund for future classes to reinvest.

If the course ceases to exist, Mohr said there would be a discussion about what to do with the assets.

“It’s one thing to read something in the newspaper or in a textbook,” Rodriguez said.

“It’s another to apply in the real world.”

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Lifestyle

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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T H E O R AC L E

ART EXHIBIT PLAYS WITH LIGHT AND DEPTH

By Courtney Combs L I F E S T Y L E

E D I T O R

The main overhead lights in the USF Centre Gallery have been switched off, leaving the room bathed in a fluctuating psychedelic glow. Vibrant neon images projected on a large screen flash and morph and the pictures on the wall seem to shift in the changing rainbow lights.

This is Mark Gonzalez’s kinetic art exposition called “Navigating the Kaleidoscope.”

The exhibit opened Sept. 8 and will continue to fill the Centre Gallery with kaleidoscopic work until its closing reception this Friday at 6 p.m.

The idea for the exhibit came from one of Gonzalez’s childhood memories that he said he hasn’t been able to shake.

“One of my first early visions of seeing depth and color that was really unique and undefined was in a kaleidoscope,” Gonzalez said.

“When you walk around and see my work, a lot of

it is based on the elements of fractal geometry… where things work together, the shapes come together… the lighting actually allows it to create unique representation.”

Gonzalez was born and raised in Tampa. He attended USF in the 80s as a business major and never intended to become an artist.

In 2012, Gonzalez presented at his first Art Basel in Switzerland and plans on attending a third time, this year. He said he is honored to have been able to bring his art back to Tampa and “complete the circle.”

Gonzalez calls the lefthand wall immediately within the gallery’s door the “Rock Wall.” The art displayed there consists of fragments of photographs he took during his time working in the music industry.

“In the post -Napster world, the music industry had all of this change … I was a casualty of that,” Gonzalez said. “I was kind of looking; did I want to get back in the advertising industry; did I want to get

back in the music industry …

I was in Spain and I was in the Guggenheim one day and I was like ‘Wow, you know what, this is what I’m going to do… and within five years I’m going to be at Art Basel.’”

The exhibit is organized into three sections, each covering one of the gallery’s walls.

Adjacent to the “Rock Wall,” Gonzalez has created what he calls the “Surreal Wall,” which consists of pictures he took while abroad, across from that is the “Spiritual Wall.”

Gonzalez said being back in Tampa and interacting with students that have come to see his gallery has been a touching experience.

“Each (student) will come up and tell me their favorite piece or something and that makes me feel good,” Gonzalez said. “They’re feeling it; for me as an artist, if somebody actually feels my work and it makes them happy, then I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

I’m the luckiest artist in the world.”

Mark Gonzalez’s exhibit “Navigating the Kaleidoscope” will be on display in the USF Centre gallery until Friday. ORACLE PHOTO / ADAM MATHIEU

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USF entrepreneurship among best in nation If entrepreneurs are the heart of the U.S. economy, then USF’s entrepreneurship program is getting the blood pumping, according to rankings released Tuesday.

The USF Center for Entrepreneurship graduate program was ranked No. 13 as one of the nation’s best overall entrepreneurship education programs by Entrepreneur magazine and the Princeton Review. This is the eighth consecutive year that the center has ranked in the top 25 nationally.

According to a press release, Michael Fountain, founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, said he believes the center’s success is due to its interdis-

ciplinary approach, such as the Innovative Technology Challenge that allows students to take a product from prototype to commercial product.

“Entrepreneurship is not only about starting a business,” he said. “For students who want to work in the corporate world, our program helps foster the kind of thinking that ‘Intrapreneurs’ — people who think like entrepreneurs but work for traditional businesses — need to thrive,” Fountain said.

Other universities in the top 25 include Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and Syracuse University.

— Staff report

BULLS

the 2011 season and went on to win seven of its last eight games.

“All (fans) understand is what we’ve done in the past and want to get back there as fast as possible,” Taggart said.

“I don’t think this is just a quick fix thing. You have to fix it the right way and build it the right way.”

The Bulls, who were 0-3 at this point last season, have shown spurts of improvement, but are far from being relevant in college football, just yet.

The Bulls will try to improve on their 1-2 record when they take on UConn in their conference opener 8p.m. on Friday at Raymond James Stadium.

Continued from PAGE 8

been, Taggart has been in an eerily similar situation to the one the Bulls find themselves in now.

At Western Kentucky, Taggart took a team that lost 20-straight games prior to his arrival and accomplished the biggest one-season turnaround in Sun Belt history. After posting a 2-10 record in his first season at WKU — much like his first at USF — Taggart led the Hilltoppers to a 7-5 and then a 7-6 season in his final two years with the team.

During the turnaround, WKU lost four games to open

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Opinion

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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Attending college in state gives more bang for the buck

The decision between staying in state and moving out of state for college has crossed every high school senior’s mind at least once, and it is a choice that follows them well into their freshman and sophomore years of college. The ultimate hope for most is to know they haven’t wasted thousands of dollars on a facility that pales in comparison to somewhere they could have gone with better opportunities.

With tuition increasing nearly 80 percent in the last 10 years, according to data from the Department of Labor, it’s no wonder students are going with the better, cheaper option of staying close to home.

While before, the decision to move out of state seemed relatively simple, now the idea of paying out-ofstate tuition and expenses such as room and board is too much for some students to handle. At USF, tuition is more than double for out-

of-state applicants, and the same goes for universities such as FSU, UF and UCF. Putting money aside, choosing to stay in state or deciding to move away each carry their own set of pros and cons that have to be taken into consideration.

Moving out of state can be a problem for students who have never lived in the area where their college is located. It’s more than just the campus — the town and the city become part of a student’s home, an environment they have to live in. This is one of the reasons most decide to attend a local college or at least an institution in their home state: familiarity.

Only 8 percent of students at USF are from out of state.

But if a student is looking for ample opportunities, a new environment and new experiences, out of state is likely to be the better option. Students also gain independence from these experiences away from home, learn to live on their own and tend to step outside their comfort zone.

Some, however, prefer to live at and attend college close by, as the transition from high school to college is already huge. At USF, only 24 percent of students live in college-owned, -operated or -affiliated housing.

Also, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, public universities have

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the University of South Florida’s student newspaper since 1966

Nataly Capote COLU M N I ST

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lower admissions requirements for in-state than for out-of-state applicants, while private universities tend to treat both applicants equally. This again makes local and state institutions favorable over those that are hundreds of miles away.

It seems like the most practical solution to this debate is what many — yet not nearly enough — students do who want to move out of state but don’t want to drown in loan debt: live in the state of the desired college for a year, gain residency, and then attend the school paying in-state tuition.

But one thing to take into account is that, according to an article in U.S. News, enough apparent ties to a student’s home state can cause the institution to reject the applicant simply for trying to manipulate the system. Students have to make clear their intentions to remain in that state.

Those looking to attend college away from home have a lot more than just the tuition cost and environment to worry about. Attending an out-of-state institution is a lifechanging decision. Depending on their goals for themselves and their careers, out-of-state tuition might seem well worth it, but for most it is not.

Nataly Capote is a freshman majoring in mass communications.

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What you said Opinion editor Brandon Shaik asked students what they think about how the domestic violence incident between football player Ray Rice and his wife was handled.

“I’m disappointed by Rice’s wife’s tolerance of his actions.

She should have asserted that her emotional well-being was more important than condoning his actions for the sake of financial security.”

— Jennifer Rives, senior majoring in psychology “I think he deserved to lose his job; he’s a role model for kids. We only saw what the video showed and who knows what kind of violence occurs behind closed doors.” ­ Eman Daas, — undecided freshman

“There’s a fine line between what goes on behind doors and in his personal life, however he did deserve to get fired. No one deserves to be in an abusive relationship.”

— Sara Carol, junior majoring in marketing and international business

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Additional copies are $.50 each and available at the Oracle office (SVC 0002).

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“He poorly represented his team and should have been fired. Punishing him shows that athletes and celebrities are not above the law.”

— Laura Howard, junior majoring in philosophy

Classifieds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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http://www.usforacle.com/classifieds

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BULLS EYE PHOTOS / MEGHAN GARVEY

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Crossword

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Sports

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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Football

Taggart wants tougher offensive line

By Jacob Hoag A S S T .

Coach Willie Taggart has a 3-12 record since taking over USF Football in the winter of 2012. ORACLE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU

SUPPORT

Continued from PAGE 1

This year’s average actual attendance of 19,540 is the lowest since 2006, according to Tampa Sports Authority.

USF is past the glory days of Jim Leavitt, when the Bulls reached a peak of No. 2 in the nation in 2007, and as USF’s record dips to new lows in recent years, so does its student attendance.

According to a national analysis by the Wall Street Journal, USF’s student attendance has sunk 69 percent between 2009, when the 8-5 Bulls averaged 9,100 students per game, and last year, when the 2-10 Bulls averaged 2,784.

“I don’t think during the game we’re really looking over, seeing how many people are in there and how many are not … those things we can’t worry about,” coach Willie Taggart said in response to the low attendance numbers, at Tuesday’s press conference.

Whether it is the team’s recent inability to win, or any number of reasons, students are deciding not to make the trip to Bulls games.

Itay Hashmonay, a sophomore majoring in chemistry, said he used to go to games with friends but now it’s “embarrassing to lose every game.”

Hashmonay said he would rather attend a USF soccer game than a football game.

“Soccer games are a blast,” Hashmonay said. “The team is good, so it’s fun to watch.”

The football team was able to draw in a decent crowd for the opener, but the hope that fans feel has been short lived.

“You look at other schools (such as UF or UCF) compared to ours and they’re packed,” said freshman criminology major Brandon Timmerman. “The first game we have hope, then it’s ruined.”

Some students also cite the distance to the stadium, which is located 11 1/2 miles from campus, as another reason for low attendance. Students either have to drive themselves and pay $1520 for parking or rely on the Bulls Blitz buses provided by USF. This year USF Athletics started new student initiatives to boost attendance such as the Marshall Mayhem pep rally, adding more

S P O R T S

E D I T O R

At his weekly press conference, coach Willie Taggart laid down the identity with which he wants the Bulls to play.

“Physical, tough, you know it’s coming and you can’t do anything about it, but take it,” he said. “We have to develop a physical, tough attitude.”

The Bulls were outplayed and physically outmatched in their 49-17 loss to N.C. State on Saturday and are looking for solutions.

“My expectations for (the offensive line) are a lot higher than that,” Taggart said.

“These guys have the most experience on this team and the most starts and coming into this season we expected that to be the backbone of this football team.”

It all starts with the offensive line, which has been giving sophomore quarterback Mike White little time to set his feet or even find an open receiver.

“There could be a change or two … everyone’s competing and everyone’s got to get better,” offensive coordinator Paul Wulff said. “We didn’t have a particularly good game or two and we need those guys to step up.”

There is no word as to what those changes will be just yet, but without a sturdy offensive line, USF’s offense won’t have much room to grow.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Bulls looked confused and out of sync against N.C. State, something they have recognized from watching film over the weekend.

“There was a lot of mis-

communication,” junior safety Jamie Byrd said. “They were moving the ball pretty fast and I think we came out a little unprepared.”

Taggart said the defense was thinking too much during the game and they just have to play the game.

On a positive note for the Bulls, guard Thor Jozwiak might make his return to action this week. Jozwiak sustained a shoulder and toe injury in the first half of USF’s season opener and has not played since. He practiced in full pads Monday and Tuesday and is expected to play Friday.

Senior wide receiver Andre Davis looks like he will miss at least one more week with the sternum injury that he suffered in Week 1.

As bad as this season has

n See TAGGART on PAGE 5

This year’s average actual attendance of 19,540 is the lowest since 2006, according to Tampa Sports Authority. ORACLE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU Bulls Blitz buses to transport stu- for the students to travel when needs to get better, but it’s also dents to home games and having the team is performing at such a true that the team needs to be motivated to play …,” junior discounted parking for Student low level.

Though a lot of fans have health sciences major Heather Bulls Club members.

“Busing is a pain and parking thrown in the towel for this sea- Kopp said. “I think some people is expensive,” said junior crimi- son, there are still some fans that think it’s a joke. It’s still your said support is just what the team school and you should support nal justice major Amar Mohan. your team.”

The distance from campus to needs right now.

“You can always say the team the stadium seems to be too far