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Volume 94Issue 4

Next Publication:Thursday February 7, 2013

Monday, February 4, 2013

PINE LOG The

The Independent Voice of Stephen F. Austin State University

TUESDAY 46

WEDNESDAY H

Page 6

Ravens pull out Super

Bowl win in Lewis’ last ride

By Jessica GilliganManaging Editor

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend will engage in a public interview with for-mer Nacogdoches Mayor Judy McDonald at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Grand Ballroom. This will be the largest of several events held throughout a week-long visit by Townsend.

Townsend is the oldest daughter of Ethel and the late Robert F. Kennedy. Documentaries about both of her parents were shown for free in the Student Center movie theatre at several times last week.

Throughout the week Townsend will speak to several classes meeting with students, some of whom will get the opportunity to have dinner with her.

The public interview held by McDonald will likely include conversa-tions about volunteerism and public service, poverty and religion’s role in politics. Townsend’s professional and personal experiences give her more than enough credibility to address these topics.

“As a 12-year-old, she lived through the death of her uncle, President

John F. Kennedy, and as a 17-year-old she faced the death of her father, Robert Kennedy,” McDonald said. “Immediately following the death of her uncle, her father sent her a note challenging her as the oldest grand-child to ‘work for your country.’ She accepted that challenge and has worked for social justice, peace and, above all, service to others.”

Townsend is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. The program brings nonacademic professionals to campuses in the United States to share relevant conversations with students and faculty. The program strives to improve connections between the academic and nonacademic per-spectives.

This visit is sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges, a national service organization that advances independent liberal arts colleges and universities by forming collaborations to strengthen pro-grams and foster institutional effectiveness.

Townsend’s interview is open to the public and student body. There is no admission cost, but space is limited.

For more information about the event, call (936) 468-2605. jgilligan@thepinelog.com

By Daniel M. KowalskiSpecial to The Washington Post

A 14-year-old with large brown eyes and tightly cropped hair told me a few weeks ago that voices were telling him to kill people. A day before the Sandy Hook school massacre, he threat-ened to light his house on fire and stab everyone in the family, according to his mother. This boy — whom I'll call Trevor — is a severe case, presenting the early, violent symptoms of schizo-phrenia at an age when the illness often begins to emerge. Untreated, his condition poses a serious danger to himself and those around him.

I am an outpatient therapist, working primarily with children and adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds. Trevor is on Medicaid, yet cuts to Medicaid funding in recent years, here in North Carolina and throughout the country, mean that children like him slip through the cracks. In the best scenarios, cuts to reimbursement rates result in shortened therapy sessions and restrictions on the number of visits clients are allotted; in the worst, practices that serve the poor are going under.

Trevor's coverage provides for mental health care, but most psychiatrists in his area do not accept it because of the low reimbursement rates. Those offices that do have two- to three-month waiting lists. Trevor needs psychiatric care and cannot wait months to get it. Last October, when my concern about Trevor first began to escalate, I made a dozen calls and finally managed to get him in to see a psychiatrist near his home. The doctor, according to Trevor's mother, spent 15 minutes with the boy. He diagnosed Trevor with obsessive compulsive disorder, prescribed no medication and suggested that Trevor continue to see me weekly. From what I know of Trevor, 15 minutes is insufficient to gather the information necessary for a diagnosis.

Trevor's statements to me in December — referred to as homicidal ideation — demanded, both legally and ethically, that I send him to an emergency room. In North Carolina, as in many states, there aren't enough hospital beds to accommodate mentally ill individuals in crisis. Physical maladies and injuries take precedence, and those with mental-health issues often do not get out of a waiting room. Trevor spent five hours at the emergency room, then was sent home with instructions to call the hospital's adolescent mental health team the following day; his mother was unable to reach a member of that team when she

U.S. shouldn’t skimp on mental health funding

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to speak at SFA

By John Cleveland Staff Writer

The NAACP sponsored “Star Search” was held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Student Center Grand Ballroom. The talent show, like many campus events in the upcoming weeks, was centered around the celebration of Black History Month.

The lively ballroom crowd was treat-ed to a hodgepodge of styles throughout the show. The acts included vocalists, rappers, beat-boxers, and poetry and prose readings.

The list of performers included Bianca Rodriguez, Nina Gordon, Kierra Dixon, Courtney Lister, Nick J. White, Cedric Ansley, Victoria Walker, Bernard Ambe, Alexis Finley, Jordan Polk and Whitney Wright.

A three-judge panel recognized Lister as top performer, followed by Dixon in second place and Rodriguez in third. All three were solo vocal acts.

Lister walked onto the stage to a roar from her huge fan-base in the crowd. Her soulful vocals induced a synchro-nized clap-to-the-beat from the audi-ence. Lister, a freshman nursing major at SFA, was humble after the results were announced. She said she hasn’t really thought about her future as a performer.

“I just did it on a whim,” Lister said. “I don’t usually sing for competition. I like to sing at church.”

In between performances the hosts

entertained the crowd with witty comments and reminders of upcom-ing events for Black History Month. Audience members were periodically dragged onto the stage to answer triv-ia questions such as, “Who was the first black woman elected to Congress? (Shirley Chisholm)” and, “When was the NAACP founded? (1909)”

There was even a social media ele-ment to the show, as audience members were encouraged to engage in live tweets with the hashtag #SFAStarSearch. The hosts read aloud some of their favorite tweets as the night went on.

Jessica @WhatTataThinks:“I had a great time working behind

the scenes at #SFAStarSearch; there was a lot of good talent.”

The Star Search was also a pro-motional venue for the NAACP John Morrison GALA Dinner taking place in the Student Center at 7 p.m. Thursday,.Fliers were handed out at the door, and there was a raffle drawing for free tickets to the event during the intermis-sions of the talent show.

The GALA Dinner is designed to bring businesses and organizations together to breathe life into the visions of SFA’s chapter of the NAACP.

For more information about Black History Month events on campus, con-tact the SFA Office of Multicultural Affairs, located on the third floor of the Student Center, Room 3.101. Their num-ber is 936-468-1073.

jcleveland@thepinelog.com

Mental health, page 5

‘Star Search’ highlights talent as part of Black History Month celebration

By Robert McCartney The Washington Post

At age 14, while backpacking up a New Mexico mountain at the Philmont national Boy Scout ranch, I remember having a lively argument with our adult leader over whether the Scouts should admit atheists.

Opinionated and presumptuous even then, I said it was un-American to exclude people on the basis of faith. What about the First Amendment?

The grown-up, a grandfatherly volunteer, said that a private organization like the Scouts had the right to require some religious belief as a condition for membership. So far, the Supreme Court agrees with him.

Early lesson: The promise of equality in U.S. society has limits.

Now a similar dispute is reaching a turning point over the Boy Scouts' prohibition on ad-mitting gays as members or adult leaders. The Scouts' national executive board is expected to vote Wednesday on relaxing the ban.

The outcome isn't certain, but it seems like-ly that the Scouts will empower sponsoring or-ganizations like churches to allow individual Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout dens to admit gays if they choose.

The change would mark a major advance — albeit tardy and incomplete — for tolerance and inclusiveness. It would also be a welcome setback for a 30-year trend in which the Boy Scouts have fallen under excessive influence of conservative supporters and donors, es-pecially in the Mormon and Roman Catholic churches.

Unlike the Girl Scouts, which have explic-itly banned discrimination against gays since 1992, the Boy Scouts have been one of the country's most prominent organizations to officially shun them.

Of course, plenty of gays have been Boy Scouts all along. They just couldn't say so. That put them at odds with the first tenet of the 12-point Scout Law: "A Scout is trustworthy."

A switch to openness also would remind us of the effectiveness of the very American tradition of grass-roots activism on behalf of a worthy cause.

Scouts for Equality, founded by Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, 21, of Iowa City, Iowa, has deliv-ered more than 1.4 million signatures on peti-tions urging acceptance of gays. That group and others successfully pressured such major corporate funders as Intel and UPS to drop their support unless Scouts changed its policy.

"Our sense was that a lot of local leaders saw what was happening and said, 'This is out of step with my values,'" Wahls said. "As President Obama made clear in his Second Inaugural, [gay] rights are civil rights."

The Boy Scouts began shifting toward the religious right in the 1980s partly because of the role of Mormons and Catholics. Those two churches rank first and third, respective-ly, among chartering organizations in num-bers of Scout units and boys sponsored. (The

Washington Post writer: Boy Scouts admitting gay members would mark major advance

Boy Scouts, page 5

Opinion

Opinion

Page 6

Ravens pull out Super

Bowl win in Lewis’ last ride

CMYK

Page Two Monday, February 4, 2013PINE LOGTHE

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The Crime Log

On 01-31-2013, an officer was dispatched to Campus Recreation Building in reference to a theft. The Officer arrived and the complainant advised that someone had broken the hinges on a locked cabinet door and took $45.00 from it. There are no suspects.

On 02-01-2013 while on patrol, an Officer observed a sus-picious person near Hall 16. The officer made contact with the subject and the subject admitted to consuming an alco-holic beverage by a minor. The subject was not intoxicated to a point of being a danger to herself or others and was released. There is one suspect.

By Joel Livsey

Recently I read the opinion piece by Hannah Cole, the editor of the Pine Log, calling for a “civil, serious discus-sion about gun control,” and advocating President Obama’s position on the matter. I found several points where she and I disagree, but also several points of common ground. In the interest of continuing the conversation, I decided to respond. I will address each of Ms. Cole’s arguments in the order in which they were presented.

Cole begins her argument with an explanation that the President is not interested in infringing on the Second Amendment rights of Americans by quoting him saying so. It may come as a surprise to many people, but politicians often say the opposite of what they mean in order to gain public support. Have we forgotten how the now infamous SOPA and PIPA bills were presented as preservation of the freedom of the Internet? Looking back at Mr. Obama’s po-litical history shows his true views on gun control. When running for Illinois State Congress he filled out a general questionnaire for the election in which he stated that he was in favor of a ban on the sale, manufacture and possession of all handguns. His current stated position on the Right to Bear Arms is merely an attempt to shift the window of public opinion toward total gun control by creating a stronger precedent.

Cole then continues by stating that people who respond to gun control efforts with a come-and-take-it attitude just make themselves “sound silly” because a private citizen has little chance of successfully standing against the U.S. armed forces. Before I respond to this argument, I would like to make it known that I am pro-government. I believe that the United States possibly has the most just and free government in the world, and I do not hold conspiracy theorist anti-government views. However, there is a reason that Americans, including me, respond so strongly to the threat of gun control and confiscation pushes from vari-ous government officials. The purpose of the Right to Bear Arms, much like the Rights to Free Speech and Freedom

of the Press, is to guard against the threat of future gov-ernment tyranny. This is an oft-ridiculed argument, but it shouldn’t be, especially in a state still healing from the wounds of Jim Crow, while the peoples of the Middle East fight against the armed forces of their own governments. A common response to this argument, similar to the one Cole uses, is that the U.S. military would be far too powerful for private citizens to resist. My reply is that the United States was founded by private citizens using privately owned guns and cannons to overthrow the most powerful military in the world. Yes, the military no longer uses just “horses and bayonets,” as she says, but neither do civilians. Either way, the difficulty of defending oneself does not annul his/her right to do so. Before going on, let me reiterate that I have a profound respect for the government and military of the United States, but I refuse to be caught up in the hubris of having a stable, free life today. Some future generations may find themselves in a different kind country altogether.

Cole goes on to compare gun homicide statistics between the U.S. and Germany, a country with strict gun control laws. She explains that in 2010, the gun homicide rate in Germany was 0.2 per 100,000, while in the U.S., this rate was much higher, at 3.59 per 100,000. These statistics do not paint a complete picture for several reasons. The first prob-lem I have is that they focus only on gun homicides, rather than homicides in general. Also, at least in America, ho-micide rates include homicides by police against criminals and justifiable homicide, as in self-defense. Furthermore, if the scope is widened to violent crime, in 2007, Great Britain, which banned handguns in the 1990s, was essentially the violent crime capital of Europe, with over 2000 violent crimes per 100,000. America had only 466. All of this un-certainty is why I hate statistics.

The last major argument I disagree with is Cole’s call for a reinstatement of the “assault weapons” ban and ban on “high-capacity” magazines, which expired in 2004. I find this argument to be particularly irksome. Gun control ad-vocates tend to use terms like “assault weapon” and “high-capacity” in much the same way that commercials will use the words “chemical” and “synthetic” to scare people away

from competing products. The category “assault weapon” was fabricated by the writers of the bill which outlawed said firearms in order to make such a ban politically palatable. Guns were called “assault weapons” due to mostly cosmetic features, such as barrel shrouds, which allow the user to hold the barrel without severe burns, adjustable stocks, for different sized people, and pistol grips, for ergonomic use. Lawmakers banned such features because they had a mili-tary style; style being the functional word. The guns that the President wants to ban are “assault weapons” as much as the Hummer H3 is an armored personnel transport. The category “high-capacity” was not a unified term until the federal ban set the cutoff at 10 rounds. A private citizen might want a magazine that exceeds this capacity for any number of reasons, the most important of which is con-fronting multiple assailants. When someone is under at-tack, be it by a mugger, home invaders, or a crazed shooter, the stress tends to reduce accuracy, making each round that much more precious. A ban on such magazines would hardly affect mass shootings anyway, since a determined shooter typically carries multiple magazines, which take less than a second to replace. Reinstating this ban would serve to do nothing but make us more vulnerable and ac-customed to more restrictions on our rights.

Now that I have explained how I disagree with Ms. Cole, I can go on the points where we agree: improving assistance for the mentally ill, training schools and teachers to better deal with the threat of shooters and universal background checks on gun purchases, as long as it does not lead to a national registry of gun owners. I would add gun safety laws to this list, to make sure that people with children or the mentally ill in their homes have weap-ons safely stored. These are ideas that I believe would lead to real progress in fighting mass shootings.

I would like to conclude by saying that I am not a gun nut; I have never discharged a firearm in my life. However, every time gun control season rolls around and the various media become rife with claims that we live in a “wild west hell” as Piers Morgan likes to say, I learn more about how integral to freedom our right to bear arms is, and why we shouldn’t treat a societal influenza by amputating our hands.

By Michael Cavill

This is a letter in response to the Opinions article writ-ten by Hannah Cole from Monday, Jan. 28, 2013.

Seeing as how you are a journalism major, I was not surprised that you had a liberal stance on Barack Hussein Obama’s gun control proposals. However, I would expect a college student to experiment with his/her own ideas instead of simply reiterating what you hear from other lib-eral media sources. I must say that I disagree with you on nearly all of your opinions and found some of them quite offensive.

First, you commented on the fact that people making statements such as “Let them try to take my guns. I dare them.” You said that It was one of the “silliest and most uneducated responses” that you have seen. Let me try to enlighten you on the views and beliefs of these Americans. The second amendment was not put in place to secure our right to hunt or for home protection. It was put in place for us to be able to defend our rights and liberties from a tyrannical government that attempts to strip us of our rights.

You also stated the “if the government decided to take your guns, they have the military power to take your guns.” Let me tell you as a six-year veteran of the US Army

that the military serves the people, not the politicians, and is sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Therefore, the military would never obey such an order.

If you studied the proposed gun ban you would also find that the types of weapons being banned are only cosmeti-cally different than what would be legal firearms. These “military-style assault weapons” also typically only shoot a caliber of .223 while the legal hunting rifles, which can also be purchased in semiautomatic, traditionally shoot much larger calibers, such as the 30-06 or .308. Therefore, the only difference is a rubber pistol grip and smaller rounds.

Furthermore, I would like to add that the Department of Justice’s studies on the previous “assault weapons” ban were found to be ineffective and “failed to reduce the av-erage number of victims per gun murder incident or mul-tiple gunshot wound victims” and that “under it there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and the inju-riousness of gun violence.” I would also like to add that the areas in this country which have the strictest gun control laws, such as Chicago and Washington D.C., have the high-est crime rates in the nation. Common sense tells us that the only people that will be affected by new gun control laws will be the law abiding citizens (because criminals do not obey the laws), and that the only thing that can stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

By Greg SargentThe Washington Post

Sarah Dawn McKinley, a young mother from Oklahoma, was thrust into the national spotlight during last week's Senate hearing on guns when conservatives cited her run-in with intruders as part of their argument against President Barack Obama's gun proposals. On Dec. 31, 2011, McKinley was at home with her 3-month-old when she fought off two male intruders. Using her shotgun, she killed one who was bearing a knife. McKinley's story riveted the hearing.

I spoke with McKinley last week, and what she told me will give a boost to people on both sides of the argument. She does not favor a ban on as-sault weapons, she said, but she supports expanding the background-check system.

"I don't see why anybody would have a problem getting a background check if they have nothing to hide," she said. "I don't see how that's going to completely stop criminals from getting guns, but I do agree with back-ground checks."

McKinley didn't undergo a background check to procure her shotgun, which she said she inherited from her late husband. The Obama proposal outlines allowing exemptions from checks for family members of gun buy-ers.

On the other side, McKinley said she does not favor the assault-weapon ban because it violates people's rights. "I don't agree with them banning any guns," she said. "They are going to start with one, and then they will go to something else. I have no use for an assault weapon. At the same time, I do have the right to decide whether I have one or not." She said anyone should have the right to own assault weapons "as long as they pass a background check."

McKinley echoed the language of conservative activist Gayle Trotter, who told a Senate committee that assault weapons constitute a gender "equal-izer." Her gun had "equaled it up" with her intruders, McKinley told me. That will lend some support to the gun-rights argument, but at the same time McKinley's shotgun — which would not be prohibited by the assault ban — was able to equalize things with her home intruders.

Expanding background checks is the most important proposal on the table — arguably more so than an assault-weapon ban. That McKinley supports it — even though she is widely cited by gun-rights advocates as a

poster woman for their cause, and even as she does not support the assault-weapon ban — shows what a no-brainer this proposal is. She fought off a home invasion with a gun and does not view expanded background checks as a barrier to acquiring weapons for legiti-mate self-defense — or as an infringement on people's rights.

Mother weighs in on gun sale background checks

Senior interior design students will showcase their work in the "Essence of Design" exhibit on display Feb. 9 through March 2 on the second floor of the Ralph W. Steen Library.

Each of the 21 students designed, fabricated and installed a freestanding structure on which to display work. The structures are 8 feet wide, 8 feet long and 7 feet tall and reflect each student's de-sign philosophy and personality, as well as provide a backdrop for each display.

For the first time, digital portfolios of the stu-dents’ work also will be on display during the showcase. The public is invited to attend.

The exhibit achieves multiple objectives in the

interior design curriculum, including readying digital student portfolios for the job-search pro-cess; encouraging student self-assessment; allow-ing students to experience the complete design process, including conceptualization, design de-velopment, fabrication, installation and evalua-tion; communicating the scope of interior design education to the public; and providing a recruit-ment tool for the program.

The opening reception for the exhibit will be held from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 9, in the li-brary. Guided tours may be arranged by contacting Sally Ann Swearingen at (936) 468-2048.

pinelog@thepinelog.com

Senior interior design exhibit opening at SFA

CMYK

Weekly Releases

� Blu Ray/DVD− Alex Cross− Celeste and Jesse Forever− Deadfall− Flight− Here Comes the Boom− Peter Pan [Blu Ray]− Southland: The Complete

Second & Third Season− So Undercover− Tyler Perry’s Madea Gets a

Job� Games

− Dead Space 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

− The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dragonborn [DLC] (PC)

− Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)(3DS)

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ENTERTAINMENTPage Three

By Brian PetersonContributing Writer

Last year, as I was becoming more interested in music journalism, reviewing records and consider-ing pop culture with some level of seriousness, I took it upon myself to listen to as many albums in as many styles as my strenuous 12-hour class schedule would allow.

That effort made room for a lot of music that would not normally receive airtime in my all-too-treasured headphones. Of the obligated listens, I have found myself pondering a surprising pair of albums: Taylor Swift’s “Red” and Ke$ha’s “Warrior.”

My original descent into the “music nerd” demo-graphic began with a mystical experience of sorts, and it thankfully did not involve anything like “Love Story” or “Tik Tok”. It was Radiohead that brought me out of my dogmatic slumber early in my high school years. But before that and the changes in taste that followed, there was a different strain of bands that blasted out of my speakers, and it was propor-tionately closer to Swift and Ke$ha than I sometimes care to admit.

Among the few that I’ll still regularly defend for at least a solid album, you’ll find Sheryl Crow and Sarah McLachlan, both of whom dominated the radio in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, much the way “Die Young” and “22” have for the past year.

Swift and Ke$ha are an interesting pair to find fortune and fame in the choppy waters of pop music. On the surface, it is hard to see why one would embrace the previous class of radio nobility while rejecting the modern equivalent.

This seems especially true of Swift, who finds the middle-ground between Crow and McLachlan in certain respects, combining quasi-country hooks with a diehard penchant for framing her songs around romance at all times. Even her voice splits the two, falling somewhere between the husky, un-trained tones of the female rocker and the classically beautiful soprano so perfectly suited for dog shelter commercials.

For the three full-length albums that preceded “Red,” Swift was like an immeasurably more popu-lar Jewel without the concern for lyrical variety. Her fourth album is an attempt at overcoming the con-stant comparisons to find some individual recogni-tion to go along with the ridiculous sales numbers.

Strangely, that respect has not been hard to get from critics, which makes it a successful record in the objective senses: critical acclaim and sales num-bers.

Artistically though, it reveals more flaws than it obscures, and if anything, she wears her influences more prominently on her sleeve whether it’s U2 on “State of Grace,” Mazzy Star on “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” or even Ke$ha on “I Knew You Were Trouble.” The impact of using these artists’ styles is somewhat dulled by how noticeable they are, like she listened to a single song from each and copied it note for note.

Versatility can be a valuable skill, and she handles the variety of genres capably on “Red,” but her only individual offering are the same played-out roman-tic story lines. They were probably cute at some point, and who am I to argue with the cash figures,

but for me it’s another decidedly average best-seller.

Ke$ha is a different animal stylistically, but if you follow the progression of hip-hop’s influence on the mainstream consciousness and the general trend of chart-toppers, her arrival is just as pre-dictable. With Swift mining the “girl next door” persona, the arena is wide open for an artist that embraces the less innocent teenage sensibilities, and Ke$ha has become pop’s resident “bad girl.” She’s found her niche in the sleazy, the depraved, and the momentary pleasure, which places her somewhere very far from unique in “rock” music’s sordid moral history.

“Warrior,” Ke$ha’s second full-length album, does not bring dog shelters or Lance Armstrong to mind, but its influences are no less obvious, and it’s been similarly successful by finding a style that perfectly complements its themes. If Swift is your companion in heartbreak, Ke$ha is your party-friend and her chosen persona is even farther from reality than romantic fairy tales.

Over the course of an album, what you could believe for a three minute song becomes utterly ridiculous – living like you are “gonna die young” may make sense in the club for a night, but it is the last place I would spend my final months.

By the end, she sounds like a desperate party host trying to up the ante to slow the crowd mov-ing toward exit. With only the smallest possible stylistic variation and even less lyrical diversity, her songs have no leg to stand on when grouped into a collective whole. Even if you grant that she fuses interesting elements together to form a dis-tinctive sound, the excitement of that development quickly fades away.

Swift’s stubborn onslaught of romantic clichés feels like a rich exploration of humanity by com-parison. It may place me firmly out of touch with the general public, but I found “Warrior” to be a thoroughly depressing experience.

No one will deny that these members of pop royalty, past and present, share one of the genre’s most distinctive features: simplicity. The most complicated musical element of any artist I have mentioned is akin to a basic key-change.

Lyrically, the most highbrow concept that comes to mind is Crow’s pseudo-philosophizing about human misery on “If It Makes You Happy.” This alone is not criticism because simplicity can be the more elegant route, especially when the message you are communicating could be garbled within a mess of activity, and particularly for a mass audi-ence in the pop/rock format. The problems arise when your music sounds more like vapid crowd-pleasing than an attempt at art.

Taylor Swift and Ke$ha write memorable melo-dies with an air of professional musicianship, but with the humanity of a computer image. They do not present pieces of their lives to us through po-etry and music: they give us the lowest common denominator of human experience. Their artistic personas are caricatures without the humor and every sound you hear was genetically engineered to sell records, fill stadiums and appease the masses.

REVIEW Swift and Ke$ha present ponderous albums

SFA vocal students earned several honors at the Texoma regional con-ference of the National Association of Teachers of Singing held at the University of North Texas in Denton.

Jacksonville baritone Stephen Hanna placed second in the senior men’s division. Soprano Flora Wall from Humble placed second in junior women’s division, and Spring fresh-man Megan Kurtner, mezzo-sporano, also placed second in the freshmen women’s division.

Earning third place honors were Houston juniors Lyndsay Lymer, mezzo-soprano, in junior women’s division, Cairee Mayfield in junior men’s division, and Emily Rhoades, SFA Music Preparatory student from Lufkin, competing in the high school women’s lower division.

Honorable mentions went to Gilmer graduate student Leslie Laney in the graduate women’s division; to El Paso freshman Juan Garza in the sopho-more men’s division; and to Carterville,

Ill., senior Page Madison in the senior women’s division.

Kurtner studies with Ron Anderson, professor of voice at SFA; Madison studies with Debbie Berry, voice lec-turer; Laney, Lymer and Wall study with Deborah Dalton, associate pro-fessor of voice and opera; Garza and Hanna study with Scott LaGraff, asso-ciate professor of voice; and Mayfield studies with Nita Hudson, voice and opera lecturer.

pinelog@thepinelog.com

Above: Taylor Swift’s album “Red”

Below: Ke$ha’s album “Warrior”

Blu Ray/DVD Alex Cross Celeste and Jesse Forever Deadfall Flight Here Comes the Boom Peter Pan [Blu Ray] Southland: The Complete Second & Third Season So Undercover Tyler Perry’s Madea Gets a Job

Weekly Releases

Video Games

Dead Space 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Dragonborn [DLC] (PC)

Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS)

Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 (Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3)

Mega Man 2 (3DS)

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS3, PS Vita)

Special Forces: Team X (XBLA, PSN)

We Sing: 80s (Wii)

New in Movie Theaters

Bullet to the Head Stand Up Guys Warm Bodies

Compiled by Robert Key

SFA voice students who competed in the Texoma regional conference of the National Association of Teachers of Singing held at the University of North Texas in Denton, along with vocal instructors and professors, are, front row, from left, students Cairee Mayfield, Megan Kurtner, Page Madison, Lindsay Lymer, associate professor Deborah Dalton, and students Juan Garza and Stephen Hanna; and back row, from left, lecturer Nita Hudson, professor Ron Anderson, lecturer Debbie Berry, students Leslie Laney and Flora Wall and associate professor Scott LaGraff.

Vocal students bring home honors from regional competition in Denton

CMYK

Does anyone remember a time when a person could just go on YouTube and look at videos of

cats or people falling for the evolution of dance without having to wait for that 15-second commercial before the video? Or even just going to the movies where the biggest hassle was sitting through the 15 minutes of previews instead of JC Penny’s advertisements, or someone try-ing to sell you a car you don’t need?

Call it nostalgia, or me just being bit-ter, but I miss those days. The days when I could just go to Yahoo! News and see the obviously-not-newsworthy top sto-ries without worrying about an ad jump-ing in my face.

Yeah, ads do that now. They used to stay in their nice square boxes where you could just contently ignore them, but now they move outside the box and get all up in your screen. What’s the deal?

And have you ever noticed that when you’re watching a show on the TV, you have the volume at a good setting when the show is on, but once it cuts to com-mercial the sound “mysteriously” jumps up to an uncomfortably loud volume? Not only is that inconvenient (because then you have to mess with the settings, and it’ll never be as good as it was be-fore) but I’m pretty sure it’s planned.

Oh, but I’m not done. Let me give just another example or two before I get to the point of this. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like whenever I turn on the radio to go somewhere, I get to listen to one, maybe two songs before 15 minutes of commercials that all have an awful jingle in the background where people are obviously singing out of tune start to play. And then there’s Spotify (which I love,) but did you notice that if you turn your volume down on certain commer-cials, it’ll just pause the whole thing?

I’m all for advertising, but I feel like companies need to do it with a little more respect. I don’t want ads jumping in my face or people yelling at me to buy a Sham-Wow. I mean, are manners dead? Maybe if they’d lower the volume a bit and not yell at me, or at least have a good song as background music (really, the ones they have now are dreadful), then maybe I’d consider buying some-thing.

Why can’t it be the Superbowl adver-tisements all year around? Why does it just have to be this time of year? Why are there commercials at a movie the-ater when there’s already previews and the pre-movie ads? They don’t need the money; they’re already charging me an arm and a leg to see Batman in IMAX (completely worth it though.)

And now, Facebook is tailoring the advertisements you see based on what you like. So I get a personalized set of what people are trying to sell me, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. They just need to back off and stop trying to get me to sign up for Chemistry.com and eHarmony (come on Facebook, you’re just like my mother.)

If you look around, you’ll see that advertisements and commercialism are everywhere. There’s posters, fliers, signs, memes, slogans and bad jingles at every turn. There’s always a sponsor or promoted group on social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Next time you watch “The Big Bang Theory,” notice that there’s a hidden agenda behind Sheldon pulling out spe-cifically Purell hand sanitizer.

Bottom line: I guess there’s no way to avoid advertisements. One day I hope to go into a profession that deals with ad-vertising, but I’d like to think that it’ll get better and won’t be so in-your-face about it. I’m not going to stop watching my TV shows or stop watching “Pitch Perfect” for the 10th time (anyone else notice there were Apple products everywhere and “Bulletproof” was played every five minutes?), but I can appreciate the sub-tle product placements and clever ads.

Word to the wise—be careful where you click on the Internet. You never know, one second you could just be try-ing to watch a video and then the next you’ll have someone trying to sell you a wife from overseas.

Emily Jensen is a public relations major and a staff writer for The Pine Log.

Page Four

PINE LOGTHE

Monday, February 4, 2013

OPINIONS

EDITOR HANNAH COLE

MANAGING EDITORJESSICA GILLIGAN

OPINION EDITORTINESHA MIX

SPORTS EDITORJORDAN BOYD

ADVERTISING MANAGER LINDSEY BOTHUM

PHOTO EDITORJENNIFER ROGERS

ENTERTAINMENT EDITORROBERT KEY

COPY EDITORJESSICA LAYFIELD

FEATURES EDITORKASI DICKERSON

Spring 2013 Editorial BoardOpinions

Policy

✓ Write a letter to Grinding the Ax. Follow the guidelines on the left. Sign your name, and your letter will likely appear on this very page.

✓ Or use our website to submit a letter to Grinding the Ax. It’ll save you a trip to the Baker Pattillo Student Center.

✓ Post feedback to our stories online. Hit the “Comments” button at the end of a story, and let us have it. We can take it.

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FEEDBACKOpinions expressed in this section of The Pine Log are those of the individual writer or cartoonist and do not necessarily reflect those of the University, its administrative officers or Board of Regents.

Letters should be typed and should include the student’s hometown, classification, campus identification number and phone number for verification purposes. We reserve the right to edit letters for space, spelling, grammar and potentially libelous material. Letters should not be longer than 300 words. Any letter that does not follow this criteria will not be published.

The ignorance of the average American

Axes down to so many students skipping classes. It’s only the fourth week of classes—get it together.

Axes up to seeing all of the Greek organizations around campus recruiting and those that are going through with the process. Best of luck to you all!

“I love that Nacogdoches is a real college town.” —Lauren Kylberg

“I love the premium athletics that this campus has.” —Christopher Haney

“I love the small-town feel and the family of friends that you have.” —Jennifer Villarreal

Want your fellow Lumberjacks to know what you love about SFA? Send an e-mail to tmix@thepinelog.com and tell us what you value about your University.

What I love about SFA...

STAFF WRITER

ejensen@thepinelog.com

Emily Jensen

“What do you call a per-son who

only speaks English? An American.”

Very recently I was given the opportunity to travel abroad to London alongside many of my fel-low Lumberjack Marching Band peers. While on this trip, I did all the typical tourist things like wearing a camera around my neck nearly every second, always at the ready to take a pic-ture, overdressing for the “cold” weather (which was the same as it is here in Texas), and complaining about the small portions of food that were given to me

every time I went out to a restaurant. While on this trip, I distinctly remember an incident in

which we were called “scumbag Americans.” Although I was slightly offended, I was more confused.

After I returned to the States, I began to do my research as to why we were consistently made fun of and/or mocked. Through my research I watched many videos of Americans and those from other countries, and I slowly began to

piece things together. Then I received a call one day from my cousin, who is currently studying abroad in Rome. I listened to her as she told me a horror story in which she and her friends had been targets of rotten food in a public square and were openly ridiculed.

Furthermore, when the semester began, I enrolled in two specific classes: African literature and world travel and em-pire. With the help of these two classes, I was able to piece together even more bits of information.

So what’s my point? Americans are ignorant. In one of these classes, our first piece talked about tour-

ists and “what not to do” if you don’t wish to be made fun of for being an American. In this piece, there is a line that says, “In London one avoids Westminster Abbey and heads instead for the Earl of Burlington’s eighteenth-century villa at Chiswick.” After I read that line, I could not help but laugh at myself. While on our trip, a few friends and I went to Westminster Abbey and even waited in line for quite a substantial amount of time and then paid the ridiculous prices.

The author continued to mock my actions: “A useful trick is ostentatiously not carrying a camera.” Line after line I was continually appalled, recollecting everything I had done while on my trip.

It also didn’t help when I began reading a book entitled “Things Fall Apart” in my other class. This book, while great, makes the western world look even worse. The book is about African culture and Western expansion. It also discusses the cultural neglecting of Africans. So, after reading this book, I decided to conduct a little experiment.

I randomly asked students to tell me the first things they thought of when I said “Africa.” The most common answers I got were poverty, death, disease and hunger. One answer in particular was “the Book of Mormon.” This answer struck me as the not-so-perfect perfect answer.

For those who haven’t read (or seen) “the Book of Mormon,” it’s about two missionaries who travel to Uganda in attempts to help the people understand religion and parts of Western beliefs. These are some of the reasons why we are blamed for our ignorance. It is the belief of many Westerners that our countries are superior to everyone else’s; the way we live is much better and more socially acceptable than those in the Eastern hemisphere. This is morally, politically and economically unacceptable.

So with all of these things said, it is my hope that after reading this column, someone is more socially aware of Western intolerance, learns of these problems, and helps to eliminate the ignorance of the average American. Yes, I know America has its heavy load of problems, and I’m not necessarily saying we should drop what we’re doing and run over the world to eliminate the problems of others. Just open your eyes and remember that no matter how bad things may seem, it’s more than likely a “first world prob-lem.” There’s always someone out there who has it much worse than you. Be tolerant. Who knows, maybe if we be-come more aware of the things that are happenin g around the world, this stereotype of Americans could deplete.

Tinesha Mix is an English major and the opinion editor for The Pine Log.

tmix@thepinelog.com

OPINION EDITOR

Tinesha Mix

Advertisements defeat purpose and scare listeners away

Axes up to Kathleen Kennedy Tow nsend coming to Nac. It truly is an honor to have such an important figure attend SFA and help students understand history and politics better. Go Jacks!

CMYK

By Daniel M. KowalskiSpecial to The Washington Post

The "line" of people seeking American citizenship or legal status has become an integral part of our immigration debate. In a speech Tuesday, President Barack Obama said that undocumented immigrants should go to "the back of the line" behind those who are going through the process legally. The immigration reform blueprint presented a day earlier by a group of senators contained the same require-ment. But misinformation about this line abounds.

1. There is one line.The federal government has issued more than 1 million

green cards per year, on average, for the past five years. But there are several lines — which one immigrants end up in depends on whether they have a job or family in the United

States. There are four family-based categories for many relatives, called "preferences," and five based on employ-ment. The number of green cards issued through each is limited by country of origin, but there is no cap for "im-mediate relatives" — spouses of U.S. citizens, U.S. citizens' unmarried children under age 21 and parents of adult U.S. citizens over 21.

Immigrants and their lawyers track their "place in line" in the State Department's monthly Visa Bulletin, which lists cut-off dates for each preference and country. For example, the February 2013 bulletin lists EB-1 "priority workers" — superstars in their fields, such as rock stars and neurosurgeons — as "current," meaning they are likely to wait just the four to six months it takes to prepare visa pa-perwork and schedule a consular interview.

2. Anyone can get in line.Most of the nation's 11 million undocumented immi-

grants would love to get in line if they could. They remain without papers because they don't fit into any visa prefer-ence or because the wait is just too long. Without a relative to petition for them under a family-based preference or a job that fits into an employment-based category, there's no

line to enter.Millions of low-wage service, industrial, manufacturing

and construction jobs are filled by unauthorized workers who don't qualify for visas because the Labor Department won't certify a shortage of "U.S. workers" — citizens, green-card holders, refugees and others with work autho-rization — in those occupations. The department claims there are plenty of U.S. workers available, but talk to the owner of a landscaping company who spends thousands of dollars annually on lawyers to secure temporary H-2B visas for gardeners, and she'll tell you that she can't get American workers to apply for the jobs or stick with them. (One could argue that the prevailing wage for landscap-ers — roughly $12 per hour now in Central Texas — is the problem.)

3. Once you are in line, the wait is not too long.In some visa categories, the wait can be decades. If the

line is too long, would-be immigrants might break the law by, for example, sneaking over borders or overstaying student visas. People can't be expected to wait decades for permission to work or live near their loved ones.

The Visa Bulletin provides a rough prediction of how long the wait will be in any given line. However, the fixed number of visas for each preference, plus increasing de-mand, ensure that the lines only get longer. For example, the fourth family-based preference — for brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens — for immigrants from the Philippines is stuck at June 1, 1989. That means that a

Filipino U.S. citizen trying to get her sister legal status would have had to file her petition on or before June 1, 1989, for the petition to be heard today. Based on monthly cal-culations of supply and demand, the visa office moves this cutoff date forward only a few days per month. The waiting period could be 30 years or more for "F-4" Filipinos.

4. If you broke the law, it's only fair that you go to the back of the line.

If the line is relatively short and an immigrant has not lived long in the United States, that might be fair. But if, as Obama has pointed out, an immigrant was brought here illegally as a child, faces a decades-long wait and knows no other country, what's fair about going "home" to a nation she doesn't remember to wait for permission to return?

Our immigration policy runs counter to our national ethos of civil and human rights. Over the past century, we have come to believe that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, faith and sexual orientation — things that cannot be changed or that we cannot demand be changed — is morally wrong. Yet the Immigration and Nationality Act, by setting quotas on how many people can come from certain countries, is another form of discrimination.

5. There's no way to make the line shorter.For more than 100 years, our country had no numerical

visa quotas. Every limit we have put on the number of green cards has been arbitrary, driven by fear more than facts. In 1882, for example, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred almost all Chinese from immigration or naturalization. This shameful, race-based law was not repealed until 1943.

In 1921, Congress enacted the first quotas based on the racist conclusions of the Dillingham Commission Report, limiting admission of immigrants to a fixed percentage of the foreign-born from each country who were already in the United States as of 1910. Later, the date was pushed back to 1890. This formula favored those of British descent and discriminated against Southern and Eastern Europeans. These quotas were not abolished until 1965.

For comprehensive immigration reform to work, Congress will have to substantially increase the number of green cards available each year in every visa preference. This may mean, for example, allowing a one-time surge of visas to wipe out the backlog, then doubling or tripling some quotas. If we keep our system as it is, we will be spending more on fences, drones, border guards, immigra-tion courts and deportation officers.

Kowalski is a senior fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism and the editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin. He practices citizenship and visa law in Austin, Texas at the Fowler Law Firm.

Monday, February 4, 2013 PINE LOGTHE Page Five

SAA Cinema

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February 7, 8, & 10

The rules of Sudoku are simple. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit, as must every column and every 3x3 square. Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.

Look in the next issue for the answers.

Sudoku puzzle sponsored by Student Activities Association

Level of Difficulty:

Medium

SUDOKU

479638215

826915437

531274869

168457392

254391786

397862154

643129578

712586943

985743621

Puzzle by websudoku.com

9

7

1

84

2

9

79

4

6

2

6

8

291

1

8

4

7

6

91

3

1

57

5

4

6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

By Courtney SchmidtContributing Writer

For people who are running low on money, have no ideas yet for Valentine gifts and are stressing about that cute little holiday a n d w o n d e r - i n g w het her or not to get a n y -t h i n g at all, the

C r i m i n a l J u s t i c e Association is here to help.

T h e CJA will be selling Valentine’s Day gifts and to-kens in the Student Center Plaza until Feb. 15 from 9:30 a.m. until 1 p.m.

They will be selling a candy-filled cof- fee mug for $7, a bear with a rose for $5 and suckers with a per- son-alized note for 50¢. They will also decorate your door for $10.

In addition, for $20, the CJA has a package that includes a deco-rated door, abear with a rose and a cof-fee mug with candy.

“We decided on selling Valentines be-cause it’s close to Valentine’s Day, and we want-ed to get a typical holiday to get students in-volved,” sophomore Clay Brown said.

The fundraiser will be helping raise money toward what the organization will do during the semester, including social events (such as bowling) and guest speakers coming to speak from different branches of the justice sys-tem.

In the past the CJA has

had speakers such as a

professor on campus w h o

spoke before he got in-volved with the CJA, and

an investiga- tor for the Nacogdoches P o l i c e Department.

“This se- mester, we will a lso be going to Skyview in R u s k , which is a prison for t h e criminally insane,”

junior Candance Anderson, the secretary

of the organization, said.In addition, they will also

be planning a camping trip to Jasper, Anderson said.

Starting Feb. 5, CJA meetings will be held every other Tuesday at 6 p.m. in

Room 179 in the Ferguson Building. All majors are welcome.

“We would just like for everyone to come out and get involved with us,” Brown said.

For more information about CJA find them on AXES.

CJA offers inexpensive Valentine’s Day gifts sale

Five myths about immigration

called, she told me.For mental health providers in North Carolina, 2013

marks another year of cuts to Medicaid reimbursement rates, which have declined steadily since 2008. States are responsible for a larger portion of mental health services than they are for physical services, which means mental health is hit hard by state budget negotiations. More than $4.3 billion has been slashed from state mental health budgets nationwide since 2009, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. South Carolina, Alabama, Alaska, Illinois and Nevada are among the states that have had the deepest cuts.

The director of our clinic in Southern Pines, N.C., in the center of the state, has told me that this year’s cuts are likely to force us to close. Our facility offers mental-health and substance-abuse counseling to 75 to 100 clients a

week, half of whom are 18 years old or younger. Typically, they are referred to us from child protective services, doc-tor’s offices or the local domestic violence/sexual assault agency.

Where will all this leave Trevor? He lives about 50 min-utes away in a town of several hundred people. His wor-ried mother can barely afford to bring him to our office, and she needs a great deal of encouragement and edu-cation on her son’s condition to continue seeking help. Although we are scheduled for weekly appointments, they come only when they have enough money for gas. I maximize our time by conducting both individual and family sessions when they come, even though Medicaid pays for only 45 minutes and I must keep other clients waiting.

In my professional opinion, Trevor needs to be admit-ted to an inpatient facility for evaluation and monitoring. That’s not an option for the poor in our fractured system. Instead, he’ll wait weeks to learn whether the intensive

in-home therapy I’ve recommended will be granted. That service costs the state more than three times the out-patient treatment option, and it is approved only when outpatient therapy has proved insufficient.

In this country, there is a clear pattern of violence being unleashed on innocent groups by young men who have not received the quality and scope of care that their school administrators, parents and therapists knew they needed. The pattern extends beyond the headline trag-edies and affects many communities.

As my clinic awaits further information on funding cuts, I worry for Trevor and hope that his mom can af-ford gas to bring him to his next appointment. I worry for thousands of kids like Trevor, and hundreds of therapists like me, who see firsthand what’s at stake.

Gallup polling last month found that more than 80 percent of Americans support increased spending for youth mental health programs. In practice, our states are moving in the opposite direction. That cannot continue.

Mental health, from page 1

Methodists, who tend to be more liberal, are second.) It wasn’t always that way. When I was in Scouts in the 1960s, the Boy Scouts endorsed religion, sure, but their approach was light-handed and ecumenical. I'm a Protestant, but my best friend in my Chevy Chase, Md. troop was Jewish. When I lived in a Chicago suburb, our troop had many Christian Scientists.

Jay Mechling, a retired American studies professor at University of California-Davis, who has written a book and other scholarly works on Boy Scouts, said the Scouts originally subscribed to what he called "America's civil religion, a mashup of generic Protestantism and Enlightenment liberalism."

That changed when the culture wars sharpened in the 1980s.The Boy Scouts of America "chose to side with the conservative, orthodox side,"

Mechling said. It became "the youth movement of two large churches, which has been turning the BSA into a religious organization — something never intended by the found-ers and certainly not justified by the history of the BSA," he said.

Under the proposed new approach, conservative churches and civic organizations could continue to bar gays in units they charter. Liberal churches and groups would throw open the closet door.

One drawback is that the Boy Scouts would become self-consciously divided be-tweenpro-gay and anti-gay troops. Would a conservative-sponsored unit be allowed to attend multi-troop Jamborees if the next tent over might shelter a (shudder) homo-sexual?

In that sense, the BSA will reflect and reinforce the same division and insularity that afflict the rest of the country. Consciously or otherwise, troops will be labeled red and blue, like states on an election map.

Eventually, I hope the Boy Scouts will catch up with the Girl Scouts and adopt a na-tional policy of welcoming everyone regardless of sexual orientation or religious adher-ence.

Today, the gays; tomorrow, the atheists. Scouting, and America, march on.

Boy Scouts,from page 1

have no ideas yet for Valentine gifts and are stressing about that cute little holiday a n d w o n d e r - i n g w het her

a n y -t h i n g at all, the

C r i m i n a l J u s t i c e Association is here to help.

T h e CJA will be selling Valentine’s Day gifts and to-kens in the Student Center Plaza until Feb. 15 from 9:30 a.m. until 1 p.m.

They will be selling a candy-filled cof- fee mug for $7, a bear with a rose for $5 and suckers with a per- son-alized note for 50¢. They will also decorate your door for $10.

In addition, for $20, the CJA has a package that includes a deco-rated door, abear with a rose and a cof-fee mug with candy.

“We decided on selling Valentines be-

from different branches of the justice sys-tem.

In the past the CJA has

had speakers such as a

professor on campus w h o

spoke before he got in-volved with the CJA, and

an investiga- tor for the Nacogdoches P o l i c e Department.

“This se- mester, we will a lso be going to Skyview in R u s k , which is a prison for t h e criminally insane,”

junior Candance Anderson, the secretary

of the organization, said.In addition, they will also

be planning a camping trip to Jasper, Anderson said.

Starting Feb. 5, CJA meetings will be held every other Tuesday at 6 p.m. in

Room 179 in the Ferguson Building. All majors are welcome.

“We would just like for everyone to come out

CMYK

Monday, February 4, 2013

PINE LOGTHE

Page SixSPORTS

The SFA Lumberjacks overcame a slug-gish start and got 20 points from Taylor Smith in cruising to a 65-51 win over Lamar on Saturday at the Montagne Center.

SFA (18-2, 9-1 SLC) trailed by as much as nine points in the first half to the Cardinals (2-20, 0-10 SLC) before holding Lamar score-less for more than 10 minutes of game time in building as large as a 19-point lead in the second half.

Smith hit 10 of his 13 shots from the field and had seven rebounds and four blocks, moving past Emmanuel Jackson to take sole possession of SFA’s single-season blocks record, just days after becoming the career leader in SFA’s win at McNeese State.

He got help in the scoring column as Hal Bateman put up a career high 18 points, 14 of which came in the second half. He added five assists in helping the J̀acks complete the first two-game season sweep of the Cardinals for SFA since the 2002-03 season.

SFA managed to pick up the win despite being outrebounded 33-31 by the Cardinals, marking just the third time all season the Jacks have lost the battle on the glass.

Still, the Jacks outscored the Cards 38-26 in the paint and scored 18 points off 13 Lamar turnovers.

Amos Wilson led Lamar with 13 points and Stan Brown finished with 10 rebounds, becoming just the fourth opponent for the Jacks to pull down double figure boards.

The Cardinals came out with much more energy than the first time around in Nacogdoches, hitting five of their first seven shots and leading by as much as nine points in the opening period. But the J̀acks quickly put the clamps on the Lamar offense, hold-ing LU without a field goal for the final 8:03 of the period before eventually taking a 27-24 lead into the break.

Smith scored 10 of SFA’s first 13 points, but also made his presence known on the defensive side with three rejections in the first 20 minutes, moving him past Jackson for the single-season blocks record.

SFA trailed 24-20 with 8:03 to go in the half, but held the Cardinals without a point for the remainder of the half while scor-ing the final seven points. The Jacks then opened the second half with consecutive buckets from Smith and Desmond Haymon to finish off an 11-0 run before a short jump-er from Brown with 18 minutes to go ended the Cardinal drought.

But the Jacks went right back to work,

using an 18-6 run to balloon the lead to as much as 49-30 with 11:35 to play; how-ever, the Cardinals were not done as they chipped away at the lead themselves and eventually drew to as close as eight points with five minutes to play after four straight points from Donley Minor.

Fortunately, that was as close as the Cardinals got as the Jacks went right back to Smith for a layup and then got buckets from Haymon and Bateman to keep the lead at double figures with less than two minutes to go before hitting four foul shots in the final minute to close it out.

SFA returns home on Thursday for a meeting with Central Arkansas before host-ing Oral Roberts on Saturday at the William R. Johnson Coliseum.

The SFA Ladyjacks were unable to over-come a season-high 33 turnovers and the Lamar Lady Cardinals took advantage by forcing overtime and pulling out a 61-55 victory Saturday afternoon at the Montagne Center.

SFA (9-12, 4-6) was led in scoring by soph-omore center Porsha Roberts, who scored 16 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the field and a perfect 6-of-6 at the free throw line. The Ladyjacks also got a season-high 14 points off the bench from senior guard Ashlee Mells, who made 4-of-5 attempts from three-point territory and was also 2-of-2 at the free throw line.

As a team SFA shot just 33 percent from the field but they did manage to make 18-of-21 from the free throw line for an 86% clip. The Ladyjacks also outrebounded Lamar 44-35 and won the bench scoring battle 32-8, marking the 18th time this season they’ve accomplished that feat.

Lamar scored 27 points off the SFA 33 turnovers but managed to shoot just 34 percent from the floor and a staggering 11 percent (2-of-18) from three-point territory.

After scoring just one point and three personal fouls in the first half, Lamar’s Kalis Loyd was able to bounce back to score 18 points in the second half and overtime combined for a game-high 19 points.

SFA looked to be in control of the game when they held a 39-29 lead with just six minutes remaining in regulation but the Lady Cardinals managed to rally and tie the game 44-44 on a Loyd layup with 2:44 left in regulation. After another Loyd layup gave Lamar a 46-44 lead with 1:50 left, the Ladyjacks went inside to Robert for con-secutive scores and a Ladyjacks 48-46 lead with just 42 seconds left.

Following a Lamar miss, Annette Davis was fouled and put to the free throw line where the junior sank to clutch attempts to push the SFA lead to 50-46 with 31 seconds left. Loyd then came right back with two made free throws of her own which was followed by an SFA turnover and layup by Lamar’s Carenn Baylor to tie the game at 50-50 with 12 seconds left. Mells had one last attempt to win the game in regulation but her three-point attempt was short.

In the overtime period Lamar outscored

SFA 11-5 led by five points from Loyd.SFA entered halftime trailing just 16-15

after committing 16 turnovers that led to a 12-2 Lady Cardinals advantage in points off turnovers. Despite their issues on the offen-sive end, the Ladyjacks actually led Lamar 15-8 with four minutes remaining in the opening half but the Lady Cardinals closed on an 8-0 run to take the halftime lead.

Mells led the Ladyjacks in scoring with five points off the bench while Carenn Baylor had six points. Other than the turn-overs, SFA shot just 4-of-19 (21%) from the field in the first 20 minutes while Lamar shot 7-of-30 (23%).

Ladyjacks win over Lamar despite record 33 turnovers

Grant Korbel/ThePine Log Photo

Porsha Roberts, Ladyjack sophomore center, led her team in scoring in their 61-55 win over the Lamar Lady Cardinals.

Grant Korbel/ThePine Log PhotoAntonio Bostic and the SFA Lumberjacks picked up their play midway in the first half to finish off the Lamar Cardinals 65-51 on the road.

Jacks start slow, win 65-51SFA gets 20 points from Smith, Bateman has career-high 18

By Jordan BoydSports Editor

A power outage in the nation’s biggest sporting event served as an interesting in-termission to the plot line of Super Bowl XLVII and for the first time in franchise his-tory, the San Francisco 49ers have lost in the Super Bowl and Jim Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens are crowned Super Bowl XLVII Champions over his younger brother Jim Harbaugh’s talented 49er squad.

The game proved to be an eventful one as the first fake field goal in Super Bowl History, an intentional safety on a punt and a record kickoff return highlighted the special teams show that Baltimore put on during the contest.

All-time great Ray Lewis has been sent off into retirement as a two-time champion and emphatically stamps the end of his Hall of Fame career and a new chapter to the Joe Flacco-led Ravens squad. Flacco received

the Super Bowl MVP ac-colade after the game after throwing for 287 yards and three touch-downs to cap off an 11-0 TD to interception post-season for the Delaware alumni.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh gambled in the second quarter, al-ready up 14-3 with just over 3 minutes left in the second quarter, by electing to go for a fake field goal on 4th and 9 deep in 49ers terri-tory. This move show-cased the creativity of Baltimore’s game plan going into the biggest game of the year.

After an explosive first half by Baltimore and going up 21-6 at halftime, the Ravens’ Jacoby Jones returned a Super Bowl record 108-yard kickoff return for a touchdown to begin the second half and put the Ravens up 28-6. Moments later, half of the lights in the Superdome shut off and the game was delayed for 34 minutes while the players and coaches waited for the issue to be resolved. The break proved to help San Francisco and it seemed that the momentum that Baltimore had retained was washed away by the power outage.

The 49ers ran off 17 unanswered points after the delay and pulled within five at 28-23 with 3:10 left in the third quarter, which was capped off by a David Akers 34-yard field goal. San Francisco, who had trouble against the Ravens defense in the first half, finally converted on big plays --something they couldn’t do to start the contest.

Although their offensive productivity in-creased mightily, Kaepernick and the 49ers had a lot of trouble on third downs, going 2-for-9 in the contest, compared the 9-for-16 the Baltimore Ravens put up for the game.

Colin Kaepernick’s inexperience played a larger factor in this year’s Super Bowl than most would have anticipated. The 49ers burned two critical timeouts in the second half to help the Ravens ice the game with their last possession.

After the gamble that Ravens coach John Harbaugh took with the fake field goal in the second quarter, big brother Harbaugh also played a tactical ploy at the end of the game with 12 seconds left on his own eight. He instructed his punter to take a safety instead of punting the ball off the opposi-tion, burning eight valuable seconds off the clock and only allowing San Francisco to return a punt kickoff which proved to be the 49ers last chance at the win. The kickoff was returned to the 40 yard line before being fumbled out of bounds with time expired.

Ray Lewis, who could be seen on the side-lines weeping in his teammates’ arms, was once again crowned champion of the world, and the Ravens are Super Bowl champtions for the second time in their franchise’s his-tory.

jboyd@thepinelog.com

The Southland Conference announced its annual preseason all-conference teams and polls on Wednesday with Stephen F. Austin picked to finish fourth in both the SID and Coaches’ poll. Meanwhile, juniors Hunter Dozier and Max Lamantia, along with senior Freddy Villalobos and sopho-more Cameron Gann were selected to the preseason all-SLC teams.

The Jacks are picked fourth in the league just a year after finishing one game shy of playing for a berth in an NCAA Regional at the Southland Conference Tournament. SFA finished 26-33 a year ago and finished on a high note, winning five of its last seven games of the year. Each poll was identical in its predictions with reigning SLC champion Sam Houston State picked to repeat with nine first-place votes from the coaches and four from the SIDs.

Southeastern Louisiana was picked second in both polls, earning three first-place votes from the SIDs, while league newcomer Oral Roberts was chosen third with three first-place votes from the SIDs as well. The `Jacks were then followed by Central Arkansas, Lamar, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Lamar, McNeese State, Northwestrn State and Nicholls.

Dozier was an automatic selection to the preseason first team after earning first team all-conference honors as a sopho-more at shortstop in 2012. A preseason all-America choice by multiple selections,

Dozier led SFA in nearly every offensive category a year ago hit .357 a year ago with 10 homers, 37 RBI and a league-best 22 doubles.

Villalobos was a third-team all-confer-ence choice at second base as a junior and was an automatic choice to the preseason second team. The senior from Houston was third on the team last season with a .296 batting average and cranked three homers while driving in 26 runs. He also had a dozen doubles while slugging .408.

Lamantia and Gann were each voted into open slots on the second team after breakout 2012 seasons. A redshirt junior at first base, Lamantia hit .325 last sea-son in 120 at-bats, blasting four homers and driving in 17 runs with nine doubles and a triple in 50 games. He was named to the all-tournament team at the SLC Tournament in San Marcos last season, hitting .462 in four games, including a .692 slugging percentage in those games.

Meanwhile, Gann led the pitching staff with a 7-3 record and 2.62 ERA as a true freshman. He made 17 appearances, in-cluding 11 starts, and tossed consecutive complete games in his first two weekend starts, both on Fridays. He logged 72.0 in-nings, a mark that was third best on the team, striking out 34 and walking just 25 in that span.

The Jacks open up the season on Feb. 15 when it takes on South Alabama in a three-

Preseason baseball polls announced

Courtesy Photo/Huffington PostRay Lewis’ 17-year career was capped off by his second Super Bowl victory as his Baltimore Ravens topped Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 at the Superdome Sunday night. The Ravens defense proved stout at crunch time, stopping Kaepernick at the Baltimore five yardline on 4th and goal.

Ravens crowned Super Bowl XLVII Champions