The Northerner Print Edition - October 25, 2012

While undocumented residents hoping to at-tend Northern Kentucky University face addition-al financial hurdles, a university official said the school looks to help them with the barriers they face in attending the university.

“What I think you see going across the states, the biggest issue is tuition and obviously these stu-dents don’t qualify for federal aid programs,” said Paul Orscheln, NKU’s associate vice president of enrollment management.

Since 2003, undocumented students at the Uni-versity of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, NKU, technical schools and community colleges have been eligible for instate tuition, according to dreamactivist.org, a website to assist undocu-mented students.

Once a student is identified as an undocument-ed student, paperwork requirements for students decrease and tuition payments must be paid up front. They are not required to complete federal student aid paperwork, since they are not eligible for the program.

Students are still offered deferred tuition pay-ment plans, requiring half of tuition paid imme-diately and the rest paid in the first few months of the semester. NKU’s undocumented students are also eligible for merit-based scholarships.

The university recognizes the cost of college is always a factor for prospective students, said Gail Wells, NKU’s provost.

“We do know with many students, the cost is prohibitive, particularly for students who would ordinarily qualify for Pell Grants, but cannot re-

ceive them, because they cannot be approved at the federal level,” she said. “NKU, the institution, doesn’t play any role in that.”

Orscheln came from Northern Arizona Univer-sity, where there were more undocumented stu-dents but fewer opportunities. Arizona is one of four states with laws forbidding undocumented students from receiving instate tuition rates.

“Especially in those states that do not offer them instate tuition, often times you will lose a quality student who did very well in high school, because they don’t have the means to pay,” Orscheln said.

He said that while working at Northern Arizona, he came across undocumented students who had been in the United States as long as they could remember. For those students, the application process to the university was often the first time these students realized they were not legalized citizens.

Orscheln said there is often an incorrect per-ception that undocumented students are not wel-come in a university system. He said universities want the best students regardless of background.

“If you qualify for admission, we admit you, whether you are an international student, a resi-dent student or an undocumented student,” he said. “Being competitive on the front-end to at-tract quality students, we must make sure we are on the cutting edge of how to do that.”

Undocumented students are viewed no differ-ently than the rest of the population, Wells said.

“These students are just like any other stu-dents at NKU,” she said.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012 | EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 | VALUE: $1.00

Search for new VP of Student Affairs underway

Senior lands job with minor league baseball team

Athletics addresses sports scheduling conflicts

News, p. 3

Arts & Life, p. 10

Sports, p. 11EXC

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Eric CaldwellContributing writer

UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTSworks to helpUNIVersItY

2 | OpEd OCTOBER 25, 2012

The Center of Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group, predicts the 2012 presidential and congressional elections will cost $5.8 billion, the most expensive on record. Understanding where all this money comes from and how it is used is a fundamental part of a democratic system.

In the current political environment, big corpora-tions flood millions of dollars into the presidential campaign expecting to affect policies in their favor. Elected representatives do a better job obstructing each other’s proposals than finding common grounds to solve the people’s biggest problems. Much needed reforms in tax, health care, education, jobs and immi-gration continue to be an issue election after election with no solutions in sight.

The democratic process has been diminished into an ideological dispute between two parties that take turns at being in power and spend most of their time chasing cash from fundraisers.

The January 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citi-zens United v. Federal Election Commission put an end to an attempt to regulate “big money” campaign contributions. After the ruling, new Political Action Committees (Super PACs) were created, allowing cor-porations to pay for political advertisements, which was not permitted before.

Voters that are not well-educated about the candi-dates and their agendas use other cues to choose their

candidates, according to Shauna Reilly, political sci-ence professor at Northern Kentucky University.

“Name recognition, party identification and incum-bency are some of the things voters use when they don’t know their candidates well,” Reilly said.

Super PACs have spent at least $293 million on tele-vision advertisements, according to the Federal Elec-tion Commission. Since the beginning of the presi-dential campaign, two of the most-active Super PACs, Restore Our Future (R) and Priorities USA Action (D), have spent $104.7 million and $34.5 million, respec-tively.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Cen-ter shows that nearly half of the people (46 percent) surveyed didn’t know what a Super PAC refers to.

A Super PAC is different from the regular Political Action Committee (PAC). Although both committees raise and spend money to elect and defeat candidates, PACs can give only $5,000 to a candidate per election and receive up to the same amount of money from any individual per year.

A Super PAC cannot make donations directly to a candidate or a political party but it can raise and ex-pend unlimited amounts of money in television adver-tisements favoring one candidate or another.

The Federal Election Commission, established to en-force campaign finance laws is vague and leaves room for PACs and Super PACs to get away with non-disclo-sure of their donors’ identities. Nonprofit corporation committees can receive money from Super PACs and are not required to disclose their donors.

People have no way to know who is paying for ad-vertisements they hear and see. Corporations are not people. They are legal entities with profit interests. And they have money, a lot of money. Nonprofit corpora-tions are tax-exempt to promote social welfare, what they are doing though, is providing a shady pathway for the wealthy to donate their money and influence election results without showing their faces.

Political campaigns have put the interests of big cor-porations’ donors ahead of anything that could make a difference for 46.2 million people living in poverty in the country today, numbers from the 2011 Census.

To regain the principles of a democracy where the ordinary citizen vote counts, changes in the way dona-tions are made to political campaigns are paramount.

Among Americans aware of the Citizens United rul-ing and its effects in campaign financing, 78 percent said the effects have been negative, Pew’s surveys show.

The Fair Election Now Act is a bipartisan bill that was reintroduced in the Senate and in the House of Representatives in 2011. The bill would allow federal candidates to choose to run for office without relying on large contributions. Candidates would focus on people’s needs instead of allocating their time and en-ergy to attend fundraisers.

The bill could be a solution to a problem affecting the democratic system in our country and Justice Ste-vens in his dissent opinion in Citizens United v. Fed-eral Election Commission wrote, “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members be-lieve laws are being bought and sold.”

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The search for the vice president for student affairs is underway at North-ern Kentucky University. A search committee, appointed by President Geoffrey Mearns, includes nine mem-bers.

Gerard St. Amand, the search com-mittee chair and vice president for university advancement said, “The president and I have stressed we want this to be a thorough and aggressive national search.”

The position was left in an interim status until the hiring of President Mearns. Lisa Rhine has held the position since July 2011 and has confirmed she will be applying for the permanent position.

“The committee has to discern and make the best choice,” Rhine said. “The students and division deserve nothing less. Period. It was true for the president, true here and true with every search. I read the job descrip-tion and I told my husband ‘I love that job description, that sounds pretty cool, I might apply for that.’”

St. Amand stated the position “cov-ers a broad area of responsibility that touches students’ lives outside class in a very direct way.”

“Our division focuses on two things: student success and institutional ef-fectiveness,” Rhine said. “The presi-dent is continuing that with focusing on student success. We all feel that and we all know it starts from the top.”

The committee met for the first time at the end of last week, accord-ing to St. Amand. They have decided on a tentative schedule. He said they plan on beginning to review appli-cations in November, but will con-tinue to accept applications until the position has been filled with the best

candidate.“We look to have finalist candidates

come to campus in the last two weeks of January, my guess is somewhere in the three to five range,” St. Amand said. “They will be folks we believe are the best from the pool up until that point.”

St. Amand stressed that the in-terview process is a two-way street. Candidates will be assessing whether NKU is a good fit for them.

“It’s easy to slip into that mindset that we’re interviewing someone, but it’s happening in both directions,” St. Amand said. “Strong interest doesn’t mean they want to make that move. Their exposure to campus is going to be even more robust with the visit.”

The identity of candidates will remain confidential until they are invited to campus, St. Amand said. He said that candidates are likely employed with other positions of responsibility.

Erik Pederson, junior communica-tion major and president of Student Government Association, was ap-proached by Mearns in consultation with the Dean of Students to nomi-nate a student to be on the search committee.

“Students are his [Mearns’] number one priority and student success is his number one goal,” Pederson said. “I have complete faith in the committee and our student representative on the committee.”

When SGA is trying to pass a reso-lution, the vice president of student affairs is their avenue of moving for-ward with projects, Pederson said.

St. Amand said he hopes to have decided on finalists before the conclu-sion of this fall semester.

To access the search website for the vice president of student affairs, visit www.vpstudentaffairssearch.nku.edu.

Caitlin CentnerStaff writer

Search for VP of Student Affairs begins

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 News | 3

4 | News OCTOBER 25, 2012

Members of Northern Kentucky University’s Student Government Association meandered in and out of various parts of campus, while sev-eral NKU administrators scurried amongst them, as they checked over the campus’s physical features with aim to ensure a safe and convenient student experience on campus.

The scene played out after SGA’s Oct. 22 meeting, when Senator John Jose, head of SGA’s Committee for Campus Improvement and coordi-nator of this Campus Safety Walk, split senate members and accom-panying administrators into three groups. Jose then led his group across the main campus, leaving the other two groups to inspect the areas around Callahan Hall and the areas around on-campus university housing.

According to Jose, this safety walk was an opportunity for senate members and NKU administrators to take a look around campus to-gether, once in the fall and once in the winter, in order to address any issues that could potentially hinder the quality of the student experience at NKU.

Some areas of concern found dur-

ing this year’s campus safety walk included numerous areas of campus that are in need of more lighting for safer travel at night, an area behind the Business and Math, Education

and Psychology buildings that needs improved safety crosswalk features in order to reduce the possibility of potential accidents and an area near the ground level of the Lucas Admin-istration Building that is in need of updating and overall cleanup in or-der to be better utilized by students.

SGA Senator Ashley Hyden thinks that campus involvement, such as this safety walk, is a big factor in SGA’s success at the university. “It allows us to find problems around campus and resolve them in order make campus a better place for stu-dents,” Hyden said.

However, while there were some issues that were found during the walk that did need addressing, NKU junior integrated studies major Ka-maria Batiste believes SGA may be spending too much time looking at the physical aspects of campus. “I appreciate the idea behind what they are doing,” Batiste said. “I am just afraid that they could be spend-

ing their time much more efficiently by focusing on other issues.”

Regardless of the commentary from some students, it was obvious that SGA felt very strongly about the importance of this event. “We [SGA] are the bridge between students and administration. An event such as this will help us bring the two groups together in order to bridge that gap,” Senator Jose said in regards to us-ing the safety walk to identify and convey possible student needs to ad-ministrative figures.

Besides investigating areas for improvement around campus, SGA was also at work this week during their regularly scheduled meeting where they passed, unanimously, their resolution recommending the implementation of town hall style meetings.

Other resolutions were also in the works by SGA and are set to be read before the senate in the group’s up-coming meetings.

Kevin SchultzStaff writer

Student senate holds biannual safety walkSGA and admins. cover campus ground to find, address concerns

Dir. of Business Operations Andy Meeks (center) reviewed safety issues on campus and discussed how they can be addressed with a group of SGA senators. The Campus Safety Walk took place on Monday afternoon after the senate’s weekly meeting and covered the entire campus.

Photo by Samantha Hayden

Senator Jesse Wynne (L) and President Erik Pederson (R) talk with Asst. Vice President of Admin. and Finance Ken Ramey about safety concerns during the senate’s biannual Campus Safety Walk.

Photo by Samantha Hayden

What started out as a single question written on a portable whiteboard three years ago has grown into a live open dialogue about current events between students, instructors and guest speakers at Northern Kentucky University.

Bringing the questions posted on the Democracy Square board to life, Democracy Square LIVE! is a program sponsored by the Scripps Howard Cen-ter for Civic Engagement for students and faculty to connect and trigger active discussions involving current topics in the news. Discussion topics this se-mester will center around issues involving the presi-dential campaign, such as centrist women, presiden-tial leadership and campaign ad analysis.

“[Democracy Square Live] is a way to enhance whatever is being taught in the classroom and con-nect it with current events and public policy,” said Mark Neikirk, director of the Scripps Howard Cen-

ter for Civic Engagement. “One of the cool things is sometimes the students who come are from different classes taught by the same professor…The chance to interact with other students that don’t normally in-teract in the classroom can strengthen the learning.”

In this place for free speech, students openly com-pared “legitimate rape” to “surprise sex” and even commented on why the word vagina should not be considered a “dirty word.” Students are given the freedom to voice their opinions and challenge each other to facilitate deeper debate.

“I think that it is super important that college stu-dents let their voices be heard because we have a lot of power behind us,” said Kelsie Brown, a sopho-more secondary education major who attended the discussion. “We are creative, intelligent, outgoing and driven, but unless we actually get involved and let our voices and votes be heard all of that intelli-gence and creativity will be all for not if we don’t take a more active role in political decisions.”

Each event offers students an outlet to engage

in unrestricted speech with well-informed faculty hosts. The second discussion of the semester host-ed by professors Mary Bucklin and Shauna Reilly focused on the topic of centrist women in the 2012 election. Keeping the subject of women in mind, students were asked to examine issues such as Rep. Todd Akin’s legitimate rape comment and Rush Limbaugh labeling a female law student a slut.

“I think discussion is so important because we don’t see other people’s perspectives until someone tells us,” Bucklin said. “I think listening to other peo-ple is a way of learning, and I think we, as citizens in a democracy, need to learn as much as we can.”

Stemming from the Newspaper Readership Pro-gram, the goal of Democracy Square LIVE! is to de-velop more civically engaged students through open dialogue concerning issues raised in articles from The New York Times, USA Today and Associated Press. The Newspaper Readership Program supplies NKU with daily copies of the participating newspa-pers for free.

Maggie PundStaff writer

Open forums offer free speech opportunities

Logo courtesy of Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 News | 5

With the ongoing progression of the technological world, the question stands on whether or not utiliz-ing technology in the classroom is a distraction to students.

Northern Kentucky University, for example, has implemented various forms of innovative technology with the emergence of Griffin Hall over the past year and a half. The Digitorium houses a big-screen display system that is comprised of hundreds of smaller screens, something that has been a forefront to the promotion of Griffin Hall due to its distinctiveness among the nation’s universities.

Chris Cole, director of marketing and communica-tions at NKU, said he believes the technology now available to undergraduate students will promote further academic achievement.

“Students now have access to the type of state-of-the-art instrumentation normally only available to graduate students,” Cole said. “Having this access will obviously provide skills and experience that will help students compete for the best internships and co-ops while at NKU and the best jobs after graduation.”

Communication students, particularly those in-volved with informatics, have been drawn to assets in Griffin Hall like the Digitorium and are finding them helpful when collaborating with professors. The LEAD Commission, which took a general poll on the rela-tionship between education and technology, found that many educators feel they still need more training to conduct classes using new technology.

Cole said the communication professors at NKU are readily able to collaborate with students in the class-room more so now than before the emergence of Grif-fin Hall. With classes that assist in the development of new teaching techniques, based on what Griffin

Hall now holds, professors can present information in ways that have not been used before, such as polling students on course information through text messag-ing and computer software.

One of the most recent techniques being used in classrooms throughout Griffin Hall is the use of the Avid Isis. Students, as well as professors, can save documents, folders, video footage and more to the base while simultaneously allowing other people to view and share their work.

Many students feel this will promote not only more

efficiency with their work in and out of the classroom but a willingness to stay on campus to complete their work. While Shelia Cotten, a professor at the Univer-sity of Alabama at Birmingham, said in an article she believes that college students fail to multitask (using technology) in a learning environment, NKU student Matt Hepner said using technology and traditional teaching styles in the classroom will help students greatly.

“Being more technologically up to date can give students a reason to use these things campus has to offer. If the technology on campus is more up to date than the technology in their homes, then it’s obviously an incentive to use what campus has to offer,” he said. “It only becomes a distraction when people get caught up in all of the cool things they can do with this technology.”

According to Margery Rosen, a writer for Scholastic, heavy use of “screen-time,” as many parents call the excessive use of technology, while multitasking will lead the brain to filter out the information it feels is irrelevant.

Rosen said in an article that the brain is much like a computer. Even if a person believes they can handle multiple screens completing tasks, the brain can only handle one at a time. Many people are under the impression that this will hinder student performance in a normal classroom atmosphere.

NKU is not your average university, however. A freshman student, Jessica Finen, said that even her family on the other end of the country is raving about how the school is rising on the college map.

“No one understands why a small community-based school is thriving like it is. You hear something going on there like a movie night in the new building, Griffin Hall, and you want to get involved,” she said. “It makes you want to go there and see what all of the techy stuff is like because this isn’t really available at most schools.”

6 | NEWS OCTOBER 25, 2012

Tech. changing typical classroom atmosphere

Erin PierceContributing writer

Photos by Samantha HaydenL to R: Professor John Gibson and students Jake Motz and Tori Lentz work in one of the Griffn Hall technology labs.

Griffin Hall amenities make technology readily available to students

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INSTALLATIONGEOffREy S. MEARNS

2012

PHOTO BY: TIMOTHY SOFRANKO

Dreamers Welcome

WELCOMEPRESIDENT MEARNS

www.nku.edu

#norsenation

2 | CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations

Geoffrey S. Mearns was born the fifth of nine children in August 1959 in Charlottesville, Va. His mother, Patricia Mearns, who passed away in August, was the beloved two-term mayor of Shaker Heights between 1992 and 2000. His father Ted is a former faculty member at Northwestern and Case Western Reserve University, as well as dean of the law school at the University of Cincinnati and an associate dean of law at the University of Virginia. Of the nine children in the family, five have law degrees.

“We don’t have rebels,” Ted Mearns jokes. He remembers Geoff as a highly optimistic child. “Geoff was happy, posi-tive – all things were possible. A little bit romantic...Just enjoying the imagination and looking ahead – Geoff had a lot of that. He had a lot of not looking at the downsides of things.”

“My father is my best friend,” Geoff says. “People don’t always view their par-ents that way, but because my father was a professor and he was in academics, he was around. I remember him reading, prepar-ing, grading. He was home for dinner every night; he was at all of my cross-country and track meets. My parents treat people the way I hope my kids treat people, which is no matter what your title or position, you show everyone the same level of courtesy and respect. It wasn’t until I got a little bit older that I better understood what it meant to my father.”

It could hardly have meant more. Geoff ’s father was teaching constitutional law at UVA when the Kennedy admin-istration hired him to assess the prog-ress of desegregation that had taken place in Virginia since the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. The Board of Education. Years later, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Ted Mearns was put to work setting up desegregation guidelines for public schools.

It was after attending Walnut Hills in Cincinnati in the early 1970s that Geoff began to grasp the gravity and importance of his father’s work. Precipitating the fam-ily’s move to Cleveland in the mid-1970s, the Mearnses were receiving what Ted

calls “very ugly” anonymous hate mail and threatening phone calls.

It was all a lot for a young Geoff to process. “That was an interesting time,” he says, “He showed me copies of the letters he had received that had to be turned over to the FBI. When you are 15 or 16 or 17, you understand that this is not something trivial. It’s not a joke.”

Geoff Mearns graduated from Yale University in 1981 with a B.A. in English, a degree he quickly employed as a teacher at a private college prep school in Morristown, N.J. But ask him about this time in his life and he’ll tell you: the job, while wonderful, also afforded him time to pursue his main goal during this period: contending in the 1984 Olympic trials.

The plan was to attend law school in the fall of 1984 – after, he hoped, racing in the summer trials. In 1982, the year he met his future wife, Jennifer, Geoff completed his first-ever marathon in 2 hours 16 min-utes, averaging less than 5 minutes and 12 seconds per mile. In 1983 he qualified for the Olympic trials with a time of 2:17. But a few months later a stress fracture in his heel dashed his Olympic dreams for good.

Mearns graduated Order of the Coif from UVA’s law school in 1987. He and Jennifer married the following year, just before Geoff accepted a job as an assistant attorney for the United States Department of Justice. There is enough tension and drama in the cases Mearns prosecuted with the DOJ to satisfy true-crime readers for a long, long time.

Mearns began his career with the DOJ in the Eastern District of New York – the heartland of organized crime, as he calls it.

In 1990, members and henchmen of the Gambino crime family – including mob boss John Gotti and Thomas “Tommy” Gambino, the mobster son of the infa-mous Carlo Gambino – were arrested in New York City on charges that included racketeering, extortion and murder. Mearns’ mentor at the DOJ, John Gleeson, was able to convince John Gotti’s right-hand man, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, to testify as a government witness against members of his own mafia syndicate. That included Tommy Gambino, whom Mearns successfully convicted May 11, 1993.

Fewer than two years later Janet Reno enlisted him as a special prosecutor for the worst act of domestic terrorism the country has ever seen. On April 19, 1995, at 9:02 a.m., the blast outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killed 168 and injured more than 800. After the Timothy McVeigh conviction, Mearns rep-resented the United States in the case against McVeigh’s accomplice, Terry Nichols.

With cases like these and the cases Mearns took at private firms such as Baker & Hostetler and Thompson Hine, it’s little wonder he was tapped to be the dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at CSU in 2005. Mearns is widely credited with raising the passage rates of graduates on the Ohio bar exam as well as increasing dona-tions from alumni and law firms. Of his tenure as provost that started in early 2010, numerous colleagues spoke of how Mearns greatly improved the relationship between faculty and the university administration.

“Geoff has a way of making every-one feel at ease immediately,” said Michael Schwartz, the widely popular former presi-dent of CSU. “That has been his leadership style: listen carefully, reason with people and then decide the course to take and go there. He was instinctively a very good leader. You might say that you disagreed with him;

you could never say that you hadn’t been respectfully heard.”

President Mearns will have to steadily navigate a number of complex realities fac-ing public higher education. “I know that in Kentucky as in many other states, state sup-port for public higher education has been declining,” Mearns says. “Not necessarily as the result of any legislative policy but just as a result of fiscal reality. One of the challenges is to persuade the legislature and others that Northern Kentucky University is a worthwhile investment, that their invest-ment in this institution is so important to the future economic vitality of this region and to the Commonwealth.”

At the same time, technology is chang-ing education in ways unimaginable until recent years, and steering an “up-close-and-personal” university like NKU will be a delicate operation. “This is an institution where faculty know their students,” Mearns says. “They know their names, and the students feel that the faculty are personally invested in their success. I think that for this institution the challenge is to maintain that personal educational experience but use technology to enhance that experience as opposed to getting in the way of it.”

Brent Donaldson is editor of NKU’s alumni publication,

By Brent Donaldson

T H E D y N A M I C L I f E O f P R E S I D E N T

GEOffREy MEARNS


Geoffrey Mearns was announced as NKU’s fifth president on April 17, 2012. Mearns re-placed Dr. James C. Votruba on Aug. 1. Dr. Votruba had served as president since 1997.


PRESIDENTMEARNS!

Welcome

Welcome President Mearns

College of InformaticsOpportunity that Matters

4 | CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations | 5

The formal installation of Geoffrey S. Mearns as the fifth president of Northern Kentucky University will take place inside The Bank of Kentucky Center on Friday, Oct. 26 at 2 p.m.

The installation ceremony represents the official transfer of leadership responsibilities to Mearns, symbolized by the presentation of the president’s medallion and the administration of the oath of office.

The president’s medallion bears the seal of Northern Kentucky University and symbolizes the authority and responsibility of the office of presi-dent. It is worn at all official university functions and is passed on to each president.

Cast in brilliant bronze, the medallion is three inches in diameter. On the front appears “Northern Kentucky University 1968” – the date of the school’s charter. The medallion hangs on a gold chain, studded with 12 gold discs engraved with the seal of the university.

The ceremony will include a processional of delegates from sister institutions from across the nation, NKU faculty and students, and a platform party of dignitaries.

All members of the NKU community are cor-dially invited to attend and celebrate this historic event in the life of the university. The doors to The Bank of Kentucky Center will open at 1:15 p.m.

A prelude concert will begin at 1:30 p.m., featur-ing the combined NKU Symphonic Winds, NKU Philharmonic Orchestra and award-winning NKU Chamber Choir.

The official installation will begin at 2 p.m. Kentucky Lt. Governor Jerry Abramson will deliver remarks prior to a performance of Brant Karrick’s “Unbridled Spirit!: A Kentucky Fanfare.”

The Honorable John Gleeson will deliver the installation address. Gleeson is a judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The Honorable Boyce F. Martin, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, will administer the oath of office. Mearns clerked for Judge Martin while he attended law school at the University of Virginia.

A public reception will immediately follow the installation in the W. Frank Steely Library at approximately 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served under tents on the outdoor patio between Greaves Concert Hall and Steely Library.

Guests are also invited to visit the Kentucky Impressions: Paul Sawyier Original Works exhibit in the Schlachter University Archives on the library’s first floor and in the Eva G. Farris Reading Room on the library’s second floor.

No RSVP is required for either event.

yOUR CHANCE TO BE PART Of HISTORyMEARNS PRESIDENTIAL INSTALLATION SET fOR OCT. 26

HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING

Friday, Oct. 262 p.m. - Installation | The Bank of Kentucky Center

4 p.m. - Installation Reception | W. Frank Steely Library

Saturday, Oct. 279 a.m. – Mearns 2-Mile Fun Run/Walk | Registration in The Bank

of Kentucky Center

NKU PRESIDENTIAL INSTALLATION EVENTS

Northern Kentucky University President Geoffrey Mearns has hit the ground running, and now you have a chance to lace up and join him. Mearns will lead a two-mile campus fun run and walk Saturday, Oct. 27 at 9 a.m. beginning in front of The Bank of Kentucky Center.

The free event, which is being coor-dinated by NKU Wellness, is part of pres-idential installation activities that include the official installation ceremony inside The Bank of Kentucky Center Friday, Oct. 26 at 2 p.m. and a public reception following the installation under a tent between Steely Library and the Fine Arts Center at approximately 4 p.m.

The Mearns 2-Mile Fun Run/Walk coincides with an NKU Black and Gold open house event, so participants are encouraged to wear black and gold during

the 2-mile trek around campus.“This will be a very informal and fun

chance for the campus community to get to know President Mearns and our cam-pus a little better,” said Karen Campbell, NKU wellness director. “Whether you are a weekend warrior who logs miles every single day or you prefer a slower pace, this promises to be a fun, low-stress and family-friendly way to meet new friends, celebrate the arrival of our new leader and get a little exercise in the process.”

An avid runner who competed at Yale University, Mearns qualified for the 1984 Olympic trials with a marathon time of 2:17 (an average pace of about 5 min-utes and 13 seconds per mile). While he probably won’t set that pace on Oct. 27, he said he’s looking forward to the event.

“You tend to see your surroundings

in a whole new way when you’re running,” Mearns said. “I’m eager to get out into the campus and explore. And it will be good to meet more members of our campus community in a fun and relaxing setting.”

Registration for the event begins at 8:15 a.m. inside The Bank of Kentucky Center. Guests are encouraged to park in Lot O, which is adjacent to the NKU Soccer Stadium. The event will feature light refreshments donated by Meijer, and a free T-shirt will be given to the first 100 who register. Participants will also be entered into a raffle for prizes from Bob Roncker’s Running Spot, Peak Performance Sports Therapy and NKU Athletics.

In case of inclement weather, the event will move into The Bank of Kentucky Center and take place on the

MEARNS 2-MILE fUN RUN/WALK

DATE: SATURDAy, OCT. 27TIME: REGISTRATION BEGINS AT 8:15 A.M.LOCATION: THE BANK Of KENTUCKy CENTERT-SHIRT: fREE TO fIRST 100 REGISTRATIONS

President Mearns will be officially installed as NKU’s fifth presi-dent on Oct. 26, at 2 p.m. in The Bank of Kentucky Center. The campus community is encouraged to attend.


6 | CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations | 7

Below: Mearns introduces his family to a capacity Greaves Concert Hall in April. (L to R): Wife, Jennifer; daughters Bridget, Christina, Clare and Molly; son Geoffrey Jr.

Right Middle: President Mearns tours campus with his family. (L to R):, Bridget, President Mearns). Below: President Mearns joined President James Votruba and Victor E. Viking on the field at Great American Ball Park for a ceremonial first pitch during NKU Night last April.

To Left: The Mearns family tours the College of Health Professions Simulation Lab.

PHOTOS BY: TIMOTHY SOFRANKO

Middle Left: Mearns with daughter Molly. Bottom Left: President Mearns and NKU Board of Regents Chair Terry Mann discuss the publicannouncement of his hiring.

Top Left: Mearns chats with NKU regent and alumnus Richard A. Boehne, chief executive officer for The E.W. Scripps Company.

Top Right: President Mearns and President Voturba share a laugh after Votruba threw the ceremonial first pitch to Mearns at NKU Night at Great American Ball Park April 2

Above: Mearns conducts interviews with members of the local media following his April acceptance of the NKU presidency.

There are a lot of ways to describe Northern Kentucky University President Geoffrey Mearns. He’s a former litigator who helped prosecute one of the Oklahoma City bombing defendants. He’s a former provost and law school dean. He’s an avid runner who once qualified for the Olympic trials in the marathon.

But above all else, Mearns is a family man. He and wife, Jennifer, have five children – Bridget, Christina, Clare, and twins Geoffrey Jr. and Molly – who keep them running from the time their alarm goes off in the morning (usually at 5:45 a.m.) until track practice is over in the evening.

Geoff met Jennifer in June of 1982, but it wasn’t until months later that they actually talked. He says if cell phones had existed back then, the two likely would have never gotten together.

“I had agreed to come to New York City on this par-ticular night in November to have a drink with her,” he said. Earlier in the day he and his roommate drove to Philadelphia to watch the Army/Navy football game. “The game was from noon to 3, and we had a great time. I decided, why am I going to go back to New York to see this woman I have never really

met?”He decided just to stay in Philadelphia and have fun with

his friends. “So I’m at a payphone trying to call the person who arranged this…and I keep calling, and he didn’t have an answering machine, and I can’t get hold of him. So I’m there thinking, should I just stand them up and not go or should I get in my car and drive all the way back to New York to see

this woman who didn’t even give me 10 seconds of her time?”Mearns tried half a dozen times to reach them to no avail.

“I finally said, ‘OK, that’s not the right thing. I have to go.’ So I drove up.”

The two had been dating for about a year and a half when he was accepted into law school at the University of Virginia. “I said look, I’m going down to Charlottesville. It’s a beautiful place. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll get married. She said no thanks – maybe sometime later, but I’m going to stay in Manhattan. It was more like, ‘It’s not you; it’s the timing.’”

During his second year at Virginia, Mearns accepted a prestigious federal appellate court clerkship in Louisville. “So I said...why don’t we get married the summer after I graduate and you can come live in Louisville with me? She said, once again, no, not yet.”

Jennifer would visit Geoff in Louisville and he would spend a lot of time visiting her. Things were going well, so he decided to try again. “So while I was clerking I proposed for a third time, and the third time was a charm.” He proposed on her birthday in Louisville after running a marathon that morn-

Geoffrey Mearns wasn’t searching for a new challenge when his telephone rang last year and the recruiter on the other end of the line told him about a presidential opening at Northern Kentucky University.

Mearns was perfectly content as pro-vost of Cleveland State University, and though in the back of his mind Mearns knew he might be interested being presi-dent somewhere, someday, the timing just didn’t feel right.

But he listened politely as he heard about an institution and a community on the rise. Intrigued at least enough to search the Internet, Mearns found that NKU seemed oddly familiar. With a mission and size similar to CSU, and situated in a community where he’d spent some of his formative teenage years, there was at least enough of a connection to keep the con-versation going.

Mearns had follow-up discussions thinking at worst it would be good to get experience navigating a presidential search process. But he had no desire to uproot his family and, besides, there was still work to do in Cleveland. Each step along the way, though, he became more impressed with what NKU was accomplishing. And his resistance began to weaken.

NKU Regent Marty Butler, who was

chairing the search and screening commit-tee, asked if he would speak with President James Votruba about the opportunity. After a two-hour telephone conversation, Mearns was ready to continue with the process.

“It was a combination of Marty’s persistence and the president’s presenta-tion,” Mearns said. “Really not persuasion, but...getting confirmation about what an extraordinary opportunity it was, what an outstanding institution it was, how profes-sionally rewarding it had been for him and his family when they were in a situation similar 15 years ago, and how well man-aged the institution was – how well posi-tioned it was and how genuine the people were. It wasn’t a sales job.”

Mearns decided to remain a finalist. He and his wife, Jennifer, had a two-day interview April 9-10, where he met with numerous campus and community con-stituencies.

Many of the faculty and students who met with Mearns said he was a good lis-tener. That’s a skill he attributes to his legal background. “I spent my career analyzing cases in order to prepare them and try to persuade people,” he said. “You learn to communicate. And for me the foundation of communication is good listening. You

help to mold and shape the presentation, but it begins with asking questions.”

Another quality he credits to his legal background is an appreciation for process. After all, litigation is a series of steps that must be followed precisely. And in the end, that appreciation helped him decide to accept the offer to become NKU’s fifth president. “[Votruba] explained the extraordinarily thoughtful way he and the board had approached the whole transi-tion,” Mearns said. “It made me feel a high degree of confidence that I could be suc-

cessful. None of us want to go into these positions and fail. And it made me very comfortable that the university was so well run and so well prepared for this transi-tion; whoever got it was likely to succeed.”

But just in case, Mearns, took the opportunity to remind a standing-room-only crowd at the April 17 announcement of his hiring that he was only a small part of a larger process. After publicly recogniz-ing the members of the search commit-tee for their tireless service, he jokingly told them, “Our fates are forever linked

BEHIND THE SCENES Of THE NKU PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH

THE COURTSHIP Of jENNIfER THIRD TIME WAS A CHARM fOR PRESIDENT


President Mearns proposed to his wife, Jennifer, three times before she finally said yes. The two were married in 1988.


The Mearns family shares a moment behind the scenes before taking the Greaves Concert Hall stage for the April 17 public announcement of his hiring.


W E L C O M E P R E S I D E N T M E A R N S

The college of

Education and

Human Services

is pleased

to welcome

President MearnsCOLLEGE OF

Education & Human Services


Welcome

VICTOR E. VIKING and NORSE ATHLETICS WELCOME PRESIDENT MEARNS


“Before I can truly lead, I must learn and I must listen.” That is the message Geoff Mearns delivered to a concert hall filled with Northern Kentucky University faculty, staff and students in April. Only an hour before, the NKU Board of Regents had voted to name him the university’s fifth president.

Mearns has spent much of his time since that day meeting with staff and faculty, assessing the university’s strengths and areas of needed improvement and engaging with the community.

Charting a course for NKU’s future is a step-by-step process. And according to Craig Boise, who worked with Mearns both at the business law firm Thompson Hine and later as dean of the Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Mearns should feel right at home.

“He is a master of protocol,” Boise said. “If there’s a decision that needs to be made: Which constituent needs to be consulted? Whose opinion needs to be part of the process? Where do you vet the idea? At the same time, he doesn’t allow the process to subsume decision making, and that’s what you want – somebody who’s not paralyzed by the process.”

It’s been his style all along. “He leaves things better off than he finds them,” his father, Ted, said. “He meets everything that’s com-ing at him. He’s got that litigator’s gift of never being surprised by a question because you’re prepared. That’s an asset.”

That last point could prove vital. Mearns will have to steadily navigate a number of complex realities facing public higher educa-tion. “I know that in Kentucky as in many other states, state support

for public higher education has been declining,” Mearns said. “Not necessarily as the result of any legislative policy but just as a result of fiscal reality.

“One of the challenges is to persuade the legislature and others that Northern Kentucky University is a worthwhile investment, that their investment in this institution is so important to the future eco-nomic vitality of this region and to the commonwealth.”

In the meantime, the listening and learning continues. Mearns announced at his first convocation in August that he would be con-ducting a survey of students, faculty, staff, alumni and community to assist in the learning process.

Last month, he distributed the survey and created a special email account to ensure that he, personally, received the responses. No vetting, no filters. He said hundreds have already been received, including many student responses.

Mearns also is conducting what he’s calling a listening tour of about 25 meetings with various campus and community constituent groups – colleges, administrative divisions and various other stake-holders. He’ll host a second open session for students on Nov. 9, 9:30-10:30 a.m. in the University Center’s Otto Budig Theater. Two additional open sessions are scheduled for Nov. 16 – at 9:30 a.m. and at 2 p.m. in Student Union room 104.

In January, Mearns will discuss the next strategic planning pro-cess with the Board of Regents. That process will chart a course for NKU through 2019.

But first, there is more learning and listening to do.

LEARNING, LISTENING AND LEADING: MEARNS SETS STAGE fOR NEW STRATEGIC PLANNING

The 2012 Mearns Survey What are you most proud of about NKU? What are the distinctive attributes of our university? What are the most important issues or concerns that you have about our future? What are the opportunities that we should take advantage of ? What advice do you have for me as the new president of NKU?

Responses can be submitted via email to [email protected].

President Mearns is conducting a listening tour this fall, meeting with faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members. He is also soliciting surveys that will help guide the university’s next strategic planning process.


WELCOME PRESIDENT MEARNSfrom the

STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION

The Alumni Council and Alumni Programs sta� would like to welcome President Mearns and the Mearns family to the NKU community!


GRADUATE PROGRAMS

COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

SCRIPPS HOWARD CENTER FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

CENTER FOR APPLIED ECOLOGY

RESEARCH GRANTS AND CONTRACTS

KENTUCKY CAMPUS COMPACT

welcome

PRESIDENT MEARNS!12 | CommerCial supplement provided by nku marketing & CommuniCations

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 Arts & Life | 7

Students rocked from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to raise money for the National Kidney Foundation and NKU sorority Phi Sigma Sigma.

Photos by Emily Lindeau

Music playing outside Griffin Hall could be heard around campus, drawing students over to see what the excitement was all about. Phi Sigma Sigma held their annual Rock-a-Thon on Oct. 23 as part of the Phi Sigma Sigma Gauntlet Philanthropy Week.

“The Rock-a-Thon was started on our campus, and it is now practiced by Phi Sigs all over the na-tion. We get pledged to rock in rocking chairs all day long so we can raise money for our philanthropy,” Erin Edwards, sophomore middle grades, special education, social studies major, said. “Basically, we rock in rocking chairs to simulate what people who are on dialysis go through.”

The women of Phi Sig rock for the cause because a portion of the proceeds go to the National Kidney Foundation, according to senior public relations major Kellie Peyton. When the philanthropy was chosen in the

‘70s, she said, kidney-related diseases were the leading cause of death in women.

Members from every Greek chapter on campus, as well as some other organiza-tions, stopped by yesterday to rock and help raise awareness for kidney disease. With a penny war going on all week, a Dine to Donate at Raniero’s Pizzeria event earlier this week and more, Phi Sig hopes to raise $5,000 in support of their foundation.

“One of our core values is leader-ship through ser-vice, and while this isn’t a service thing, it’s raising money for some-thing that serves the greater good,

so it’s really important to us,” Edwards con-cluded.

“This is what a sorority is about,” Peyton said. “It’s about serving your community, having a sisterhood and making a differ-ence.”

Phi Sigma Sigma will be raising money for their philanthropy all week. For more infor-mation, or to donate, contact any member of the Phi Sig sorority.

Brooke GinnStaff writer

- Kellie Peyton

“ This is what a sorority is about,”

Rock-a-Thon fundraises for kidney research

ROCK OUTFOR A REASON

Sisters

8 | Arts & Life OCTOBER 25, 2012

Every year, a substantial amount of Northern Ken-tucky University’s incoming freshmen class have unde-clared majors, causing career exploration to be a priority for University Connect and Persist, Office of First-Year Programs, Norse Advising Center and UNV 101 classes.

Today, the Office of First-Year Programs will host the annual Major/Minor Fair. Approximately 40 majors and minors NKU offers will be featured. Advisors and academic department faculty will offer additional as-sistance and support to students.

“The Office of First-Year Programs does such an amazing job providing students with the necessary tools, services and support in order for them to be prepared to enter their career field,” said Peg Adams, director of University Connect and Persist.

The Office of First-Year Programs collaborated with NKU’s University Connect and Persist to enhance the fair’s experience. UCAP’s focus is to create a culture that values and supports success networks for students, Adams said.

UCAP defines “success networks” as a proactive relationship students have with faculty, staff and/or advisors that will be a guide as students begin their

professional lives. “UCAP’s vision of encouraging and teaching students

to develop success networks is that when students ex-perience a setback or are in need of advice, they can tap into their network and remain on their path of profes-sional success,” Adams said.

UCAP has collaborated with UNV 101 professors to inform students of the importance of developing success networks.

Jeanne Pettit, associate director of the Office of First-Year Programs, is involved with the UNV 101 course curriculum that about half of the freshmen class enroll in. Pettit has worked hard on publicizing the Major/Mi-nor fair to UNV 101 students and many of the professors are requiring their students to attend the fair.

“UCAP, as well as the other academic departments that are participating in the fair, offers fun ways for students to get engaged with faculty. We want to help students feel more comfortable and to be able to start building their success networks,” Adams said.

Senior Mollie Smith was a teacher’s assistant last semester for a UNV 101 class.

“The UNV 101 curriculum is perfect for undeclared students because it can really help to give them a sense of direction if they’re unsure what area they want to go

into,” Smith said. The Major/Minor fair will be in the Student Union

ballroom from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tools and resources will be provided to students, allowing them to identify and connect their values, skills and interests with a career choice.

Kaity GalanosContributing writer

Upcoming fair to help decide majors, minors

Many students may be wondering how they can find a little more time to be involved with the community and to work on gathering some of the skills that will benefit them later in life. Northern Kentucky University’s Lead-ership University is here to help.

This campus organization, founded in 2010, is designed to encourage students to participate in community service, and also to assist them with learning valuable life skills by offering them a variety of educational work-shops they can attend.

In order to successfully complete Leadership University’s program, stu-dents must put in a minimum of three hours of community service through-out the year and attend at least eight workshops.

Tiffany Mayse, director of Leader-

ship University, said the program seems to be well received by students who take part in it. “We started out with about 50 students involved with the program in the first year we did it,” she said. “Now, we have almost 200 participants. So it’s safe to say we’ve definitely been growing in popularity.”

The program aims to offer students a more comprehensive schedule of speakers and events on campus, Mayse said. The workshops help them “hone in on professional skills,” and provide them with insight on how to succeed after college, she said. Some of the workshops students can attend are In-terviewing Techniques, Resumes and Cover Letters, Co-Op Search Strategies and Taking Charge of Your Time.

Workshops are offered at various times, so students are able to find some that are convenient for them, regardless of class schedules. Par-ticipants in Leadership University are

welcome to attend more than just their required eight workshops if they wish.

Shonna Barnes, a former participant in Leadership University, said that she found the topics of the workshops to be very beneficial for students who are preparing to soon go off into the professional world. “The resume build-ing workshop was probably the most useful,” she said. “I think a lot of the workshops like that one highlight why we’re here in college in the first place, and they help us to figure out how to take the next step after graduation.”

As for community service, there are plenty of opportunities for students to get involved with events on campus. Diversity Week, International Educa-tion Week and Business Week offer ways for students to accumulate com-munity service hours. Students can also go off campus to find volunteer opportunities that count toward the Leadership University program.

Julia Fleischer, a former member of Leadership University, said require-ments of the program are fairly easy to achieve.

“You have so many workshops and community service opportunities to choose from, all offered at so many different times, so the program really shouldn’t be that time consuming or that difficult for anyone to complete,” she said. “Plus, it’s worth it. You learn about such a wide array of topics, from working with other students, to figur-ing out how to better manage your time.”

Students who finish the Leader-ship University program are awarded with a certificate of completion and are given a special cord to wear dur-ing graduation. For more informa-tion, visit Leadership University on Orgsync, or contact Tiffany Mayse at [email protected].

Danielle RobertsContributing writer

Student org. makes it easy to get involved

The annual Major/Minor Fair will take place today for students to talk with faculty about the making the right education decision.

Photo courtesy of Mei Mei Burr

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 Arts & Life | 9

Though Northern Kentucky University students spent their fall break in many different ways, some had the opportunity to meet the New York Times bestselling author, John Green.

Green traveled to the Public Library of Cincinnati to kick off Teen Read Week in his own special way by expressing the importance of literacy, encourag-ing those over 18 to vote, answering life’s questions and speaking about his books. According to Diane Smiley, the Youth Services and Programming Coor-dinator at the library, an estimated 1,200 fans were in attendance.

“I find [teenagers] really interesting, because they’re doing a lot of important things for the first time,” Green said. “They’re falling in love for the first time, they’re experiencing grief for the first time and they’re almost always for the first time grap-pling, in a sovereign way, with the big questions of our species...In my experience, if you treat teenagers as if they aren’t stupid, they won’t disappoint you.”

NKU student Kelsie Brown, sophomore secondary English education major, said, “John Green is an

adult voice for our generation, because he takes us seriously. He sees our merit, wants us to get in-volved. He’s not just a popular culture icon.”

Green’s entrance to the literary world began in 2005 with the release of his first novel “Looking For Alaska” and he has since written and released three other novels, “Paper Towns,” “An Abundance of Katherines” and “The Fault In Our Stars;” he has also collaborated with various authors to release “Let It Snow” and “Will Grayson, Will Grayson.”

Sophomore social work major Rachel Mullins said, “He relates a lot, because he’s been there and he’s already been through it. When things get rough, and we become all melodramatic and what not, it’s not the end of the world.”

“I just remember that there’s bad things that hap-pen, but there’s always positives, too, and not to let one outweigh the other,” said Mullins, reflecting on what Green has taught her.

Upon being asked why we suffer, Green gave a very touching conclusion to his speech: “Even though we all suffer, even though we will all have terrible pain that we have to live with in our lives, there is also going to be moments of great fulfillment and great feeling of connection. There’s a lot of hope

in that,” Green said. “I am very, very grateful, that even though we suffer, and I don’t want to diminish it, even though there is terrible pain in the world, for now, for today, we are very lucky to be observers of the universe.”

After his speech, he answered questions from the audience, then proceeded to sign books for those in attendance, taking the time to talk with each person who came through the line. “As teens came through the signing line, it was apparent, even in the very brief interactions they had with John, that his books have touched so many of them personally,” said Smiley.

“It helps put into perspective, especially if you’re an aspiring author, or you’re taking philosophy classes, or you’re taking sociology classes,” Brown said. “He’s this award-winning author, who is mak-ing money off of this, off of doing what he loves. He’s an inspiration that no matter what we should just keep doing what we love to do and eventually we’ll make it.”

As John Green would say, “Don’t forget to be awe-some, nerdfighters.”

Author visits Cincy, encourages votingBrooke GinnStaff writer

10 | Arts & Life OCTOBER 25, 2012

WHATTo dothis weekend...

Have a chance to get off campus this

weekend? Check out the nightlife and

events happening in Cincinnati and

Northern Kentucky.

Rocktober on the SquareOct. 26, 5-8 p.m.Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine Streets, CincinnatiWith music by Snidely Whiplash, enjoy a celebration

of fall beers, entertainment and a chance to win Ben-gals tickets. Beer selection includes Widmer Brothers OKTO, Guinness, Goose Island’s Harvest Ale, Bud Light and Sam Adam’s Octoberfest.

Price: FreeMore info: www.myfountainsquare.com/event/4eg-

rocktober/2012-10-26/

moe. at Taft TheatreOct. 26, 8 p.m.Taft Theatre, 317 E. Fifth St., Cincinnatimoe., a jam band formed in 1989, will take the Taft

Theatre stage Friday night to perform their psychedelic rock hits. One of the band’s guitarists described moe.’s music as an “amalgamation of a wide variety of the his-tory of rock, all regurgitated and recycled through the eyes, ears, hands, whatever of the guys in our band.”

Price: $35 general admission ticketsMore info: www.moe.org

Comedian Steve Trevino at the Funny Bone Comedy Club

Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m.Funny Bone Comedy Club at Newport on the Levee, 1

Levee Way, Newport, Ky.Comedian Steve Trevino, recently featured at the

Laugh Out Loud Comedy Festival at the California The-atre of the Performing Arts and on Showtime, is bring-ing the laughs to Newport on the Levee this weekend. His show runs Thursday through Sunday night.

Price: $15-17 for ticketsMore info: www.stevetrevino.com

Alice (in wonderland) balletOct. 28, 2 p.m.Cincinnati Music Hall, 1241 Elm St., Cincinnati The Cincinnati Ballet’s regional premiere of Alice (in

wonderland) opens tonight and runs through Sunday. The Washington Ballet’s choreographer Septime Webre choreographed the piece.

Price: $31-82More info: www.cballet.org/performances/1213/alice

A sports business major at Northern Kentucky University needs a few things to graduate and become successful in his or her career: a ready-to-go attitude, on the feet thinking, a great sales pitch and leadership. Interning somewhere related to sports is required for anyone who goes through the sports business program at NKU and wants to leave with a degree in hand.

One student in particular, Drew Pifer, a senior at NKU, holds all of the qualities that a student may need to be successful in the real world once graduating with a sports business degree.

Not only that, but he had an internship with the Florence Freedom, home of the minor league baseball team in Northern Kentucky, and has now turned that opportunity into a job.

Pifer is a double major in both sports business and finance. He started his internship near the end of April, and is now the Season Ticket Sales Executive and the Director of Baseball Operations. He is also the presi-dent of NKU’s Sports Business Club.

“I got involved in the Sports Business Club because I love sports, I want to be in the sports world,” Pifer said. “But more than that, I thought it was a lot of fun. I wanted to make it more organized than what is was and help other students with the same process.”

The Sports Business Club meets twice a month and also takes trips to see some of the bigger realms of sports. The club has gone to Cincinnati Reds, Cincin-nati Cyclones and University of Cincinnati games, toured different facilities and, of course, supports the Norse as much as they can.

“One of the club’s purposes is to get the [sports

business] majors together and even pre-majors,” said Joe Cobbs, assistant professor of sports business. “I think it’s an avenue outside of the classroom to bring industry experience. We try to do a lot of that in the classroom but certainly you can never get too much of that as a student.”

When Pifer began with the Florence Freedom, he was making spreadsheets and doing what Josh Ander-son, general manager of the team, wanted him to do.

According to Pifer, when someone called he would take care of what they needed. He enjoys his current position, but wants to move on to bigger and better things in the future.

“I’ll be here right after I graduate; I want to see how much I can really help build this place by getting people in the seats,” Pifer said. “I don’t see myself here in five years, probably somewhere else not in Cincin-nati.”

The sports business program at NKU is one of the reasons Pifer decided to come here after leaving Ashland University during his sophomore year. Ac-cording to Pifer, he was interested because the school had a business college and classes he could take for his major.

Since the major required an internship, Pifer said he was drawn to the Florence Freedom because of his love of baseball. He has played baseball his entire life, including a year and a half at Ashland. After he began interning, he was the only one picked out of 20 interns to begin working full time for the Freedom.

“His dedication in the internship was probably the number one thing that got him his position there now,” Cobbs said.

Pifer credited being able to handle this full-time job and being a student to only having one class this semester. Pifer also thoroughly enjoys his co-workers

and that attributes to why he likes it at the Freedom so much.

“Drew is fearless; he’s not afraid of people telling him no,” Anderson said. “He believes in the process and keeps trying if people turn him down. I can help develop everything else, that’s all he needs.”

Brook CliffordStaff writer

Student Andrew Pifer (pictured) recently turned his job as an intern into a full-time job with the Florence Freedom.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Gardner

Student lands job before graduationThe Northern Kentucky Univer-

sity men’s basketball team starts the 2012-13 season on Nov. 14, but the first test was to get the schedule final-ized and completed.

The transition to Division I made scheduling more difficult this year for the team. One circumstance that made it difficult was the timing of the announcement.

“It made it really difficult as the announcement came so late and you usually work on a schedule a year in advance,” said assistant coach Kevin Schappell. “You want to be proactive and get it done as soon as possible.”

There are nine out-of-conference games this year, all on the road. The first home game for the Norse is not until Jan. 5, when NKU hosts Atlantic Sun Conference opponent, University of South Carolina Upstate.

“In D-II we were the big fish in a small pond,” Schappell said. “We have such a nice facility that we didn’t have to go on the road. It was easier because people wanted to come here to play us. Now everybody has a nice facility and everybody wants to play home games.”

According to Schappell, the 2013-14 schedule is almost complete, as the finishing touches are being made.

He said fans can expect at least four out-of-conference home games next season.

Another difficulty the team faced had to do with the team’s status as a non-counter team. According to Ath-letic Director Scott Eaton, in the first year of reclassification to Division I, NKU was considered a non-counter team, which is the same as if they were not a Division I institution.

“This puts us in a very difficult situ-ation,” Eaton said. “Many schools, especially mid-major conferences, have a limit of the number of games a team can play against non-counter

schools.”Unlike most non-counter schools,

NKU had a ratings percentage index (RPI), which Eaton said helped in the scheduling process. RPI is a ranking system that is an important criteria used by the NCAA selection commit-tee when determining which at-large teams make the NCAA Tournament.

The reason the team has a RPI is that they are a member of the Atlantic Sun Conference and have a full con-ference schedule as well as a complete schedule. According to Eaton, play-ing a team without a RPI would help in the win column but not add any

points to the school’s RPI.Schappell said the main goal this

season was to get a complete schedule. In order to have a complete schedule, a team has to have a minimum of 25 games and the Norse ended up with 27 scheduled games this season.

The Norse will start the season in San Diego playing in the National Urea Cycle Disorders Foundation, playing four games in five days. The first game is against the University of San Diego on Nov. 14, and the Norse will also play Tulsa, Siena and Cal State Northridge in the tournament.

The Norse will play Ohio State Uni-versity on Dec. 1, and Texas Tech Uni-versity on Dec. 4.

The Norse will play the University of San Francisco on March 14, end-ing the season with a non-conference game, something that is atypical in college basketball.

“We are not eligible for the Atlan-tic Sun or the NCAA Tournament so we are treating that game like a col-lege football bowl game,” Schappell said. “We get to go out there and play a team when our season should be over. We wanted to add a game in late because of that.”

San Francisco is a member of the West Coast Conference, which has one of the first conference tourna-ments, so they will be facing the Norse after their conference tournament.

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 Sports | 11

Northern Kentucky’s roller derby team, the Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls, hosted their first post-season tournament a few teams short at the Bank of Kentucky Center on Oct. 20. Although the Black-n-Bluegrass Blackouts skated away champi-ons of the 2012 Roller Derby Unbridled Tourna-ment, only four of the seven teams invited were there to compete.

The tournament was originally supposed to fea-ture all of the roller derby teams in Kentucky, ac-cording to Black-n-Bluegrass jammer Debbie “Neva Shakeababy” Scheibley.

“It sort of fell through because some of the teams backed out,” Sheibley said. “Next year we will know how to organize it better.”

The event included the Black-n-Bluegrass Black-outs and the Black-n-Bluegrass Shiners; the Roll-ergirls of Central Kentucky, based out of Lexing-

ton; and the Vette City Rollergirls, out of Bowling Green. Louisville’s Derby City Rollergirls and Pa-ducah’s Radioactive City Roller Girls, were among the teams not present.

Tournament brackets began at 11 a.m., but the championship bout did not start until 8:45 p.m. Over the course of the day, six bouts were played between the four teams, with Vette City up against the Blackouts for the championship win. Even the announcer commented, “We’ve all been here since this morning and there is still fight left in every sin-gle person.”

Vette City kept up during the first period of the championship bout, but the Blackouts’ defense would not give them a chance to get ahead. Even after Vette City caught a break to gain some points when the Blackouts’ jammer went to the penalty box and Vette City got an opportunity for a power jam, the Blackouts’ blockers did not let Vette City’s jammer through the pack. The score was 91-53 at halftime.

During the second period, the Blackouts came back with some extra steam. The jammers worked together with a tight defense and pulled ahead even more, with the final score 188-92.

The Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls sported gray throwback jerseys for the final event of the season, many featuring the skaters’ original skate names. According to Scheibley, whose jersey and panties featured her original skate name “Miso Sori,” it was something different and fun to do for the tourna-ment.

The Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls have spent their first season at the Bank of Kentucky Center working to build up their fan base in their new home. “This was our first outing as a league in a tour,” blocker Amanda “Mama Crass” Wilson ex-plained. “I think it turned out relatively well. I can’t wait to see what happens next year.”

Though the schedule has not been confirmed, the 2013 season will begin in May.

Freshman guard Todd Johnson drove past teammates during the Black N Gold Madness scrimmage game on Oct. 18. Johnson, out of Elkhart, Ind., will begin his first season at NKU.

Photo by Kody Kahle

John MinorContributing writer

Molly TrueContributing writer

First year of transition made scheduling difficult

Black-n-Bluegrass Blackouts win championship

EDITION 50, ISSUE 9 Sports | 12

The Norse held its first “Black N Gold Mad-ness” event on Oct. 18, to introduce both the men’s and women’s basketball teams. Fans had the chance to see the squads in action for the first time this year in a scrimmage game. In addition, there were fan giveaways, a dunk contest and a 3-point shootout that fans participated in. The dance team and cheerleading team performed for the crowd.

The event also held an exclusive meeting for season ticketholders to have a chance to ask ques-tions to men’s head coach Dave Bezold and wom-en’s head coach Dawn Plitzuweit.

Stephen WilderSports editor

Phot

os b

y Ko

dy K

ahle

Norse hosts first Black N Gold Madness for fansBasketball season begins with dancing, contests and scrimmage

The Northerner Print Edition - October 25, 2012

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