Partly Cloudy with a 30% chance of rain HIGH LOW 85 66
Get to know Lady Vol volleyball player DeeDee Harrison
PAGE 10 T H E
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Issue 15
E D I T O R I A L L Y
S T U D E N T
PUBLISHED SINCE 1906
PAGE 8
http://dailybeacon.utk.edu
Vol. 115
I N D E P E N D E N T
Kanye remorseful of Taylor Swift incident on Twitter
N E W S P A P E R
O F
T H E
U N I V E R S I T Y
O F
T E N N E S S E E
Legislative internships offer valued experience Donesha Aldridge Staff Writer For students interested in Tennessee legislature, the Tennessee State Legislative Intern Program and the UT National Alumni Associate Legislative Internship Program both offer hands-on, in-depth experience with several perks. David Folz, professor and Baker Faculty Associate in UT’s Department of Political Science, is the campus coordinator for both programs. “Without exception, the students who have participated in the program have described it as the single most valuable experience of their time at UT,” he said. Last spring semester, five UT students were selected to complete the internship: Daviesha Moore, public health graduate; RuthAnne Waldrop, undecided sophomore; Reid Witcher, junior in political science; Carey Smith, senior in political science; and Matthew Kothe, senior in arts and sciences. Folz said the program is very beneficial to those who want to pursue a career in law or political science. According to Folz, each intern receives a stipend of $1400 per month, totaling $7,000 for five months. Interns also receive an extra $350 for relocation and reimbursement for one round trip each month from Nashville to UT. “Many interns have described their time on Capitol Hill as the experience of a lifetime and would gladly do it again even if they did not receive academic credit or compensation,” Folz said. Smith said her favorite aspect of the internship was having the opportunity to learn directly from Tennessee leaders. “Working in Nashville provided a dynamic atmosphere for learning about state government and current issues,” Smith said. “This experience really went beyond making coffee and copies. Students had a real opportunity to do research, reports, constituent services and a variety of other meaningful tasks.” Applicants for the Tennessee State Internship Program must be at least a junior for the spring semester with good academic standing of at least a 3.0 GPA. Students must also be eligible to vote and enrolled in degree programs of political science, public administration, law, history, social work, economics, sociology, journalism or another closely related field of study. Those interested in applying for the UT National Alumni Internship Program can be enrolled in any degree program at UT, and no minimum GPA is required to apply. Folz said students are expected to have general knowledge and familiarity with American government and have a desire to learn more about it. “In many respects, UT interns serve as student ambassadors for the University of Tennessee on Capitol Hill and therefore should possess the character traits and work habits that reflect well on the university,” Folz said. Folz said some of the main duties of the interns in the past have included attending weekly meetings, touring sites and facilities, such as the maximum-security prison and the State Capitol. Folz said each student is assigned to a legislative office to work with members of the Knox County delegation. Students can receive an application for the programs online at http://web.utk.edu/~polisci/legintern.html. All applications are due Oct. 8. An interest meeting to learn more about the two internship programs will be on Sept. 17 at 3:30 p.m. in room 220 of the UC. For additional information contact David Folz at dfolz@utk.edu or 865-974-0802.
Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon
The Tennessee State Legislative Intern Program allows students to obtain handson experience while working in Nashville. An interest meeting will be held on Sept. 17 at 3:30 p.m. in UC 220.
Pharmacy robberies continue to rise Associated Press
Ashley Bowen • The Daily Beacon
Beta Alpha Psi hosts Meet the Firms, an event that allowed students to network with accounting professionals. Maggie Bates, graduate student in Masters of Accountancy program, is seen talking to a representative from one of the firms.
Gun battle rocks Nigerian prison Associated Press BAUCHI, Nigeria— Gunmen launched a massive attack Tuesday night against a northern Nigerian prison holding suspected members of a radical Muslim sect, authorities said. The attack on the federal prison near Bauchi appeared to be an effort to break into the facility, which is holding members of the Boko Haram sect, said Maigari Kana, a spokesman for the state governor. However, Kana said he did not know who was responsible for the attack, which had gunfire echoing through nearby pastures and hills in the rural state. The Bauchi state police commissioner said police planned
to dispatch more officers to the area, but declined to comment further. Adamu Abubakar, a Red Cross official, said heavy gunfire could be heard throughout the city. “Definitely now, I’m not going anywhere,” Abubakar told The Associated Press by telephone. “The situation is not safe.” Boko Haram — which means “Western education is sacrilege” in Hausa — has campaigned for the implementation of strict Shariah law. Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is divided between the Christiandominated south and the Muslim-held north. A dozen states across Nigeria’s north already have Shariah law in place, though the area remains
under the control of secular state governments. Boko Haram sect members rioted and attacked police stations and private homes in July 2009, triggering a violent police crackdown. Many of those arrested in the wake of the attacks last year are being held in the Bauchi prison pending trial. In recent months, rumors about the group rearming have spread throughout northern Nigeria. A video recording released in late June showed a Boko Haram leader calling for new violence as the one-year anniversary of their attack neared. Meanwhile, police believe motorcycle-riding members of the sect are killing policemen in the region.
GLENPOOL, Okla. — Less than a couple months after Nick Curtin opened a pharmacy in suburban Tulsa in 2008, the store was burglarized twice in one week. And just last year a masked man robbed him at gunpoint, making off with 1,800 pills. Curtin admits it could easily happen again and there’s not much he can do to stop it. “It’s one of those things; there's only so many things you can do,” he said. Across the country, pharmacy robberies are on the rise, partly because of the increasing demand for prescription drugs, according to law enforcement officers and industry officials. Prescription painkillers rank second behind marijuana as the country’s most common illegal drug problem, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. There are no official numbers on how many pharmacies are robbed each year nationwide. The federal government does not track them and states vary in how they classify the crimes: some are logged as break-ins, others as drug thefts. But federal drug officials, drug companies, pharmacies, state authorities and local police departments nationwide all say they’ve noticed an increase in recent years. “It’s not surprising that pharmacies have become the object of crime, given the popularity of prescription drugs,” said Barbara Carreno, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman. “Communities must take this threat as seriously as the threat posed by street drugs like heroin and cocaine.” Robbers hold up pharmacies in upscale neighborhoods and those full of blight. Stores sitting just off highways and nestled in towns small and large have also been hit. The most valuable pills are the heavy painkillers that on the street can go for up to $60 a tablet. “It’s just unfortunate that people who have become addicted to drugs, they know where they can get a source of a reliable high,” Curtin said. In Ohio, officials say the problem is mainly armed robbery of pharmacies. There were 32 in 2007 and that more than doubled to 68 in 2008, according to state records. In Oklahoma, only one pharmacy reported an armed robbery in 2007, but that shot to 12 in 2008. Last year, there were 19. Burglaries went from 31 in 2007 to 42 in 2008. In 2009, the tally was 51, according to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control. “There isn’t any doubt we’ve seen a spike in the past five years or so in pharmacy break-ins,” said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the bureau.
Missouri has also seen more drug thefts at pharmacies in the past few years, said Mike Boeger, administrator of the Missouri Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs. In 2007, the state received 518 drug theft reports; in 2008, it logged 606. Then in 2009, the number dipped to 490, but through August of this year, Missouri has received 360 reports, and Boeger said that would put the state back on track to have well over 500 by the year's end. In many of those cases, the employees are the thieves, Boeger said. One girl stole more than 49,000 doses of the painkiller hydrocodone before getting caught. “They’re stealing us blind every day,” Boeger said. “Hundreds of thousands of doses.” One high-profile pharmacy case was in Oklahoma last year in which a pharmacist Jerome Ersland pulled a gun on two robbers. Ersland shot one, a 16-year-old boy, in the head, and chased the other away. He returned to the store and pumped five more bullets into the teenager, which the coroner said were the fatal shots. Ersland’s awaiting trial for first-degree murder and he says he acted in self-defense. More common incidents are like the one in Missoula, Mont. where a woman demanded all the oxycontin and oxycodone in the store and made off with 1,900 pills worth about $35,000 on the street; or the teenager in Boynton Beach, Fla., who ordered six people to the ground at gunpoint and fled with more than 1,500 painkillers. The increase of robberies has some employees locking up powerful narcotics like oxycodone in safes, installing security cameras and using trickery — one pharmacist in suburban Oklahoma City filled bottles labeled ‘hydrocodone’ with M&Ms — to thwart drug-seeking burglars. “Pharmacies just typically haven’t had to deal with this,” says Rick Zenuch, director of law enforcement liaison and education at Purdue Pharma L.P. “I don’t think we want to get to the point where we see teller-style windows.” Law enforcement officials say there’s not much they can do to prevent the robberies and they don't have the extra staffing to step up patrols of pharmacies. Larger drugstore chains such as CVS and Walgreen Co. say they have programs in place to protect employees and customers. They wouldn’t elaborate, though Walgreen recently upgraded its surveillance system to digital to have clearer images. Curtin, the pharmacist in suburban Tulsa, says he’s more jittery because he has been hit three times, but the looming threat isn’t enough to drive him out of town. “I’m trained to help people,” he says. “I really can’t stop doing that.”