Alan Liu | Student Life

Students and members of the community stage a counter-protest to Westboro Baptist Church on Monday outside Clayton High School.

The counter-protesters, including a number of Washington University students, held signs, sang songs and chanted messages of support to protest the five-member picketing efforts of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.

Westboro Baptist Church is nationally known for its extreme picketing techniques and strong stance against homosexuality.

Though administrators at Clayton High School are not sure why the group chose to target the school, principal Louise Losos said that the school’s visible Gay-Straight Alliance might have been a contributing factor.

“We don’t know for certain because they aren’t always as forthcoming as perhaps we would like,” Losos said. “[However,] they were in Indianapolis for the Super Bowl, so I think we were on their radar and on their way home.”

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church did not return phone calls or emails on Wednesday.

Alan Liu | Student Life

Seniors Brad Valtman and Micajah Dudley are some of the Washington University students at the counter protest.

The school, working with the Clayton Police Department, set up space both for the Westboro Baptist Church members’ to protest and for the community members to counter-protest.

“We worked with our student leaders to create a positive counter-demonstration…celebrating who we are as a school and celebrating our students,” Losos said.

Washington University students learned about the counter-protest through Facebook as well as through department and club emails.

University students cited a desire to support the students of Clayton High School as reason for getting involved in the direct action.

“It shows unity and just support for the Gay-Straight Alliance,” freshman Rachel Hoffman said. “[I heard about it from] a girl from Clayton High School. It inspired me to come, how much passion she had for the event.”

Other students cited their dislike for the Westboro Baptist Church as reason for getting involved.

“[The Westboro cause] is definitely something that I’m very, very opposed to. I wanted to come out for the students of this community because I want to show them that majority of Americans don’t hold this opinion,” freshman Ryan Hoffman said.

“I wanted to get involved in a protest because I’ve never done it, and this seemed like a great cause to show support for because [Westboro Baptist Church is] also just so delusional,” senior Brad Valtman said.

Students also said that the potential effects of the negative messages pushed them to get involved in a positive counter-protest.

“These are kids just trying to go to school. To say such hateful and hurtful things to a group of youth…that’s one of my biggest problems with it,” junior Micajah Dudley said.

“It seems like it’s spurned by hate on their side. It felt like it was important that we just come to just support…younger people who go to school here who might be directly affected. To have people in the community come to show support can prevent a lot of damage,” junior Will Rogers said.

Losos said that the counter-protest gave a positive spin to the Westboro protest.

“I think the students felt very good about what they had created and the response they got. We’re not going to let [the protest] disrupt our day,” Losos said. “[There was an] outpouring of love from all angles. I think the kids felt really good about Monday morning.”

Courtesy of Gym Class Heroes

Rap-rock band Gym Class Heroes (above) will be headlining this year’s WUStock.

Though Gym Class Heroes first joined together in upstate New York in the late ’90s, it wasn’t until 2004 that the band found its current form. Now, the rap-rock group consists of McCoy, McGinley, lead guitarist Disashi Lumumba–Kasongo and bass guitarist Eric Roberts. Gym Class Heroes consistently break genre barriers by combining hip-hop, R&B, rap and funk into one cohesive sound.

Gym Class Heroes released their first major-label album, “The Papercut Chronicles,” in 2005. After two more studio releases, the band decided to take a break, allowing McCoy to pursue a solo career. After a few top-notch collaborations with stars like Bruno Mars on “Billionaire,” McCoy rejoined his band in 2011. They released hit “Stereo Hearts” with Adam Levine last summer and dropped their most recent album, “The Papercut Chronicles II,” in October of 2011.

CS40 uses a somewhat complicated method to decide whom to bring to WUStock. Sophomore Bailey Breems, CS40 Swamp Committee chair, described the process: The committee “narrowed it down to 10 [bands], based on availability, budget, and reviews of the bands.” After that, the [Swamp] Committee narrowed it down to five choices, which were then offered in a student vote.

The students came out strong for Gym Class Heroes, who won the vote by more than five percentage points.

Last year, CS40 brought in indie duo Matt & Kim as the headliners, and the event was a huge success. Will this year’s event have such a good turnout?

“We do hope that WUStock will continue to grow every year,” Breems said. “It’s a relatively new event.”

Whether or not 2012’s WUStock will top last year’s show, Gym Class Heroes will bring amazing energy to the Swamp when they come to visit. Student bands will also perform at WUStock, and the full lineup will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The ranking was based on factors including financial aid and academics. It was compiled using official university data and results from student surveys.

Director of Student Financial Services, William Witbrodt, says that the ranking is a reflection on how students feel about the University.

“For one thing I know that the financial aid office is as responsive as it can be to students. We provide excellent service and we would never let a student leave the University because of finances. When the Princeton Review folks interviewed the students on our campus I know that played a large part in the ranking,” Witbrodt said.

University officials say that the school’s academic programs also make it a best value for students.

“We offer a wide variety of academic programs here, so for students who choose to come here we offer a lot of flexibility and I think that certainly adds value. We are an institution where we are able to offer a lot of variety and diversity but we are also a place where you can get into classes that are small enough to interact with a faculty member in that specific discipline,” Assistant Vice Chancellor Rob Wild said.

Some students say that the University’s price tag and academics combine to make it a good value.

“I think for the same amount of money, you get a lot more here. When I visited other colleges of the same caliber, I thought that Wash. U. provided a lot better campuses, dorms, and food [...] As a pre-med [student], when I want to do research I could just ask a professor or he will point me at the right direction. I don’t know about other [majors], but it’s definitely a lot better for pre-meds to be here,” junior Phil Chen said.

Other students say that the school’s value comes in more abstract form.

“I think Wash. U. does it’s best to make it worth it. I think the intellectual capital is priceless. So in that sense I think it’s worth it,” sophomore Bailey Breems said.

Wild agrees with this sentiment.

“We always have felt that Washington University is a great investment for anyone who chooses to attend here as a student. The value has to do with the students feeling like they have gotten a good return on their investment here,” he said.

Eric Elias, who graduated with a degree in finance in 2007, took part in the competition in his senior year, but ran into technical issues that kept his group from being successful. This year, he was a member of SoMoLend—a peer-to-peer lending website that was one of the three teams to win this year’s start-up competition sponsored by the University’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The prize was a $50,000 investment from the center.

The site, which Elias’ team is pitching to different regional investors over coming weeks, aims to link lending institutions to local businesses.

“It’s kind of like micro-lending, but for communities,” explained Ken Harrington, director of the Skandalaris Center. “It allows people to potentially form those relationships in a local economy … it serves a function that we’ve lost with the institutionalization of banks.”

The win in this year’s competition allowed SoMoLend to hire Elias as a full-time team member, as its director of product management.

“It was a $50,000 award, and we basically turned over that award to make a hire,” said SoMoLend Founder and CEO Candace Klein. “So we now have a full time employee committed to improving our technology and maximizing our customer experience.”

This year was the first time that three different teams won the competition, with the Skandalaris Center awarding more than $150,000, about double the normal amount. Harrington said many students took part in the competition, including one student team that won a $5,000 cash prize.

“I suspect probably 50% [of the participants] were students,” he said. “A lot of the teams are supported by students.”

Although the business is based in Cincinnati, Elias said it will continue to have a hold in the St. Louis community.

“I think our product development is going to happen in Cincinnati but the company and the platform we’re building will continue expanding, including working with St. Louis area investors as well as lending institutions,” he said.

Elias’ involvement in the St. Louis entrepreneurial community has included lecturing at the Nexus Leadership Program and serving as a mentor at the recent StartUp Weekend St. Louis, where individuals and teams met downtown to develop novel web-based or mobile applications in groups.

Junior Stan Rosenthal, a member of the Washington University Technology Entrepreneurs (WUTE) who worked with Elias over the weekend to develop an application to contact Congress-people through Twitter, said Elias has come to speak with the group and is continuing to stay in contact.

“We had an event last week where we had three alumni fly in to talk about their start-up—Schoology—so Eric came to that,” Rosenthal said. “We’re planning on continuing on our StartUp Weekend project [and] he’ll definitely keep in the loop with WUTE events.”

WUSTL Photo

Professor Murray Weidenbaum, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of economics said the nation’s precarious economic climate continues to be a major concern, even as the nation’s finances gradually begin to recover.

Weidenbaum, who served as assistant secretary of the treasury from 1969 to 1971 under the Nixon administration, and as chairman of the council of economic advisers from 1981 to 1982 during the Reagan administration, is often considered the architect of Reaganomics.

“This must be the slowest economic recovery in modern times. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a recovery this slow,” he said. “At an annual rate of 2 percent to 3 percent a year…that’s not a strong recovery after a recession.”

While Weidenbaum said most economists agree that the U.S. has successfully averted a double-dip recession and opened the possibility for recovery, he noted there are still major problems to be worked on.

He said that both short- and long-term solutions are necessary to combat the nation’s ever-increasing deficit.

“In the long run, it is clear that we have an unsustainable economy,” Weidenbaum said. “In the short term, there is need for additional stimulus.”

He said the partisanship in American politics is majorly hindering this needed long-term recovery.

“The problem is, there is no common ground between the conservatives and the liberals in this election,” Weidenbaum said. “There seems to be little political pressure to adopt [practical] responses toward the economy.”

Although he served as an economics advisor for two Republican presidents, Weidenbaum does not express his preference over one party or the other.

“As an economist, I can’t say who’s right. It’s a problem of personal values. But any increase in taxes will not stimulate the economy,” he said. “There is no increase in taxes that is going to speed up the economy.”

And he says longterm tax cuts have caused a rift between Democrats and Republicans.

“The so-called Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Both parties believe that most tax cuts should be extended, but there is disagreement over whether people at the top bracket [should keep their tax cuts],“ Weidenbaum said.

According to Wiedenbaum, the economic system needs to undergo an overhaul and special privileges need to be cut out of the tax system.

He has mixed feelings about the Obama administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy.

“It’s an uneven record. I think the large stimulus bill did help, but it’s disillusioning when you read the details of the bill,” he said. “A lot of the spending went to special interests, which diluted the economic recovery.”

But he believes the burst of rapid regulation created in haste will create unexpected problems in the future.

“There are many uncertainties as to what the regulations are going to do,” he said. “I am not sure if we are increasing the amount of uncertainty or not.”

He thinks the regulations will serve as deterrents for American business investments.

“There are hundreds of regulations that have to be addressed under the Dodd-Frank Act, the healthcare reform the environmental regulations and the tax laws,” he said. “There is great caution from the business community on how they should invest.”

About 40 students gathered in the Danforth University Center on Monday evening to celebrate Green Action’s kickoff of Renew WashU, a new initiative to get the University to switch over to renewable energy.

Students attending the event took part in interactive arts activities, and listened to speakers, including one from the Sierra Club.

Green Action co-president Claire Christensen said that the group started the Renew WashU initiative in response to a new University task force aimed at discussing renewable energy.

“We want the campus to use 100 percent renewable energy in the future,” Christensen said.

These energy choices would include wind and solar energy.

Christensen said that although this number might be difficult to reach, the University does have the ability to achieve the goal.

Sustainability Director Phil Valko said that the University taskforce is still in the planning stages, but that it’s main goal will be to create a renewable energy plan for the University.

But, even with the new University task force supported by student involvement, not all students think it is feasible for the University to switch to 100 percent renewable energy.

“I don’t know if it’s possible to have everything be renewable. Not 100 percent, but maybe close to it, like 50 percent,” freshman Mari Price said.

Some students doubt that the group will meet its goal, because sustainability is not a top priority for many students.

“Even though the campus is going green I think there is a lot that can’t be done. People aren’t going to want to pay for a renewable campus when there are other things that are probably more necessary,” junior Alyssa Stein said.

Others said that the cost of making the switch may be prohibitive.

“That would require a lot of infrastructure changes and probably would not be cost effective,” senior Ali Hruschka said.

According to Valko, although the goal may be difficult to reach, it does provide a good incentive.

“I think it’s a big bold goal. It’s going to take an awful lot to achieve a goal like that. I think it’s important for us to be setting big goals but we’re in a short time frame,” Valko said.

Still, Christensen is optimistic about the University’s ability to become more sustainable.

“We want to work with the administration so that it is not just words but actual actions. We know that 100 percent is a lot, but we think Washington University has the capacity and the obligation to do it,” she said.

Black Anthology is an annual student production that explores important issues pertinent to the African-American culture through drama, poetry, dance and music.

This year’s show focused on remembering the tumultuous 1960s that propelled social change through protests and activism. University students nationwide protested unequal treatment and demanded an increase in black students, faculty, and the creation of African-American studies departments.

Senior Diamond Skinner, who directed the show, drew inspiration from the black community at Washington University for this year’s theme.

“I just felt that over the years, black students at Wash. U. started to take their education for granted without really paying homage to the people who within our parents’ generation did all these things so that we can have all these amazing educational opportunities,” Skinner said. “Also, once we started working on the script, the passing of Dean McLeod brought on a whole new meaning to the show because his legacy in everything he did for black students and faculty lives on in each and everyone of us.”

Jonathan Fenderson, a postdoctoral fellow in African and African-American studies at the University, led a pre-show discussion on Saturday. He discussed the continuing struggle for racial equality around the world, and stressed the importance of maintaining open communication about racial issues between students and the administration.

“People like to avoid talking about race by saying we are a post-racial society, but that is far from the truth,” Fenderson said. “Diversity is not a destination, but an ongoing project that needs engagement from both sides, the administration and the students.”

Sophomore Elissabeth Martin liked that this year’s theme was rooted in historical events and addressed some of the current struggles students face, including decreased funding for minority initiative projects.

“Last year’s show was more focused on the dynamics of the black community, but this year’s concept is deeper, more universal,” Martin said.

Held during Black History Month, Black Anthology’s main purpose is to educate people about the rich history of African-American culture while confronting controversial issues such as racism, self-identity and human rights.

For senior Sruti Chivukula, attending the show was her way of supporting not only her friends who performed, but also for a greater social cause.

“Black Anthology is one of the few cultural shows on campus that’s not just purely dance and music,” Chivukula said. “It’s about people and learning about the issues that are affecting us today.”

Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars rover Curiosity, the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission is pictured here. This image, taken on June 29, 2010, shows Curiosity with its mobility system—wheels and suspension—in place after installation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Ray Arvidson, a professor in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, will be assisting both operationally, to help the new Curiosity rover route the safest path along Martian terrains, as well as scientifically, to study the soils found.

Arvidson was one of 29 individuals selected for the position at the Mars Science Laboratory, out of a total applicant pool of 150. His proposal suggested the rover should be used to observe terramechanics, or study the soil on the planet.

“My role will be to use Curiosity as a virtual instrument to simulate drives across terrains traversed and to be traversed by the rover,” Arvidson wrote in an email to Student Life. “This will help the engineers plan drives that are safe and will also allow me to retrieve soil properties of relevance to understanding Martian geological history.”

Curiosity, which launched Nov. 26 of last year, is scheduled to land on Mars in August. While previous rovers have explored for water, the new mission is geared toward searching for potentially habitable regions of the planet.

Third-year graduate student Abigail Fraeman, who is also involved in the project, said although the rover still has many months before its scheduled landing date, there is much work to be done in order to prepare it.

“This work will be useful for figuring out how best to drive Curiosity, including how to avoid any potential rover sand-traps,” she said. “Unfortunately, you can’t just dig out a rover stuck on Mars, so guiding Curiosity to safe terrains will be incredibly important to ensure the vehicle stays mobile and able to drive to the most interesting targets.”

Planning the rover’s route will involve predicting the surface terrain and how the rover will operate on it. That will mean studying data taken by instruments on satellites orbiting the red planet, as well as the data that will be collected by the rover itself.

Arvidson conducted similar research on both of his previous rover projects—Spirit and Opportunity.

“Our department is well known across the world for Mars research,” Douglas Wiens, chairman of the University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said. “The new project will strengthen our reputation and fund graduate students to carry out their thesis work on Mars.”

Arvidson’s team will be using a computer model of the rover to simulate Curiosity’s actual travels across the surface of the planet. The team will search for the least perilous route for the rover to take across Mars.

The team will also archive the data collected from the rover’s instruments from the department’s NASA Planetary Data System Geosciences Node.

The information will also be released to the public, free of charge.

“The work is important scientifically because it will give us an understanding of the soil properties at Curiosity’s landing site in Gale Crater,” Fraeman said. “It will provide additional insight into the mechanics of driving vehicles on other planets.”

Students received an email alerting them of the change to the Dean’s List criteria from Dirk Killen, an associate dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at the beginning of the semester.

“You will be cited on the Dean’s List if you meet the following academic standards: completion of a minimum of 14 units of graded work while achieving a grade point average of 3.6 during that semester” read the email from Dean Killen.

The GPA requirement for the Dean’s List was previously set at a 3.5, meaning that students will now have to earn a 0.1 higher GPA in order to meet the qualifications.

According to Killen, students have questioned whether College Honors, which in the past have been linked with Dean’s List, would also be affected by the change.

College Honors will not change for the class of 2012, 2013 or 2014. If there is a change, it will only take effect for the classes of 2015 and after. The deans have not yet taken up this question,” Killen wrote in an email to Student Life.

Some students are against the changes to the Dean’s List requirements.

“I think it’s kind of ridiculous” junior Anwesha Majumder said. “We have such high standards as it is that raising them makes them that much more inaccessible.”

Others think the change is reasonable, and even beneficial for students and the University.

“I approve of it. I think it will make Wash. U. more competitive when compared to other schools” sophomore Jonathan Winstone said. “It’ll make it more valuable and meaningful to be on the Dean’s List if it’s harder to obtain.”

The changes will make the requirements to be on the Dean’s List in the College of Arts & Sciences the same as they are in the John M. Olin School of Business and the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

“Business and Engineering raised their Dean’s List requirements to 3.6 a number of years ago, and Arts & Sciences is now in line with a standard that better reflects current student achievement, which has been continually rising,” Killen wrote in an email to Student Life.

“A 0.1-higher GPA is manageable and I hope it can be used as a chance for students to challenge themselves to go a little farther” junior Dan Pasque said. “But if [the administration] did something else within that same trend and continued raising it, students would have a good reason to do something about it.”

The change in the criteria will go into effect for the spring 2012 semester, and the Dean’s List will be announced in June 2012.

Olivier Douliery | Abaca Press | MCT

An inside Acela Express car is seen Washington, D.C., July 11, 2011. Amtrak has struggled for survival nearly every year since its first trains rolled out on May 1, 1971.

The railroad, which is currently under construction, should be complete sometime in 2014, according to officials involved in the project.

Planners said the project is especially significant for Washington University students, as a large portion of them call Chicago and its surrounding areas home.

They hope the train, which should travel at a maximum of 110 miles per hour, will help promote cooperation between the two cities.

In June 2009, following President Barack Obama’s call for improved high-speed rail travel nationwide, the Federal Railroad Administration launched the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

In January of the following year, Illinois was chosen as one of the states that would benefit from the project, and was allocated $1.2 billion in federal funding to introduce high-speed rail service by 2014.

Students have been a focus of the planning process.

“Students are the one of the important markets we want to reach with this project,” said Miriam Gutierrez, section chief of Rail Program Planning at the Illinois Department of Transportation. “This generation is big on trains, and there will be Amtrak student discounts.”

Gutierrez said that the project managers are currently working out ticket prices that are reasonable but will still help pay for new features the trains will offer passengers, such as Wi-Fi access and improved food services.

“Right now we’re trying to figure out how much we can raise ticket prices so that we won’t lose ridership,” Gutierrez said. “But they won’t go up super high, just because it’s so easy to jump on a plane instead.”

Washington University students who live in the Chicago area are currently faced with the decision between a 60-minute flight and a 5 1/2 hour train ride.

Sophomore Neha Nair said the high-speed rail will make traveling between school and home easier for her.

“I would definitely use the train for busy times like Thanksgiving” Nair said. “In order to get a reasonably priced flight, you have to book it really far in advance, which can be difficult to do early in the semester.”

“If I didn’t have my car and the tickets were cheap enough, I’d definitely take the train, especially since I’d be able to avoid the airport hassle” junior Claire Chaney said.

Gutierrez added that the project managers have to take the environmental impacts of the construction into account. The Illinois Department of Transportation worked with the Federal Railroad Administration to submit an Environmental Impact Statement for the project. Public meetings will be held over the remainder of the year to review the environmental clearance document and ensure that it will be environmentally safe to build a second railroad track through the St. Louis-Chicago corridor.