News in Brief: Thresher finishes third; Jones reelections; New college presidents

3/12/09 7:00pm

Thresher takes third in convention

The Rice Thresher was honored at the Associated Collegiate Press's Convention in San Diego, Calif., over spring break. The Thresher was awarded third place in the "Best of Show" category for best four-year weekly tabloid.

This is the fifth year in a row that the Thresher has won a "Best of Show" award from the ACP. Last year, the Thresher won sixth place. In both 2005 and 2007, the paper took home first.

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Students attending the convention were invited to submit one issue of their newspaper from the current school year for the contest. Entries were judged on "general excellence."

The Thresher submitted its Jan. 30, 2009, issue, featuring a tour of the north college construction sites, a review of the Rice Gallery exhibit "Emergency Response Studio" and a profile of Damon Stoudamire, former men's basketball director of player development.

Director of Student Publications Valerie Prilop joined four Thresher editors - Hanszen College junior Catherine Bratic (News), Wiess College junior Lauren Schoeffler (Photography), Wiess sophomore Natalie Clericuzio (Sports) and Wiess sophomore Joe Dwyer (Arts and Entertainment) - in attending the convention.

Almost 900 students represented 130 colleges at the convention. In addition to the presentation of awards, the four-day event featured student-led panels, workshops and speakers designed to help college newspapers adapt to changing demands from their readers.

- Catherine Bratic

Jones calls for reelections

Jones College called special elections a week after their initial Cabinet elections because the polls were not open as long as what was required by the constitution, Jones president Andrew McDermott said.

Although the constitution requires the polls to be open for seven hours, they were open for less than three hours, an anonymous Jones Cabinet member said. Less than half of Jones voted in this election, and after the polls closed all three contested positions were within 20 votes. The results of this election were announced and approved at Cabinet the same day.

"The following week, a few people started complaining because their certain candidate didn't win, so they were trying to exploit the system," the Cabinet member said. "They found the loophole of complaining about the election violating the constitution and got more voting to happen."

This is the only time a special election has been called for Jones. In the special elections, anyone who had not voted was given one day to email the Election Coordinators with their vote. The original election results and the special election results were compiled to get new totals. The special election did not change the results, but it did substantially narrow the gaps between the winners and losers of the three contested cabinet positions.

To date, no measures have been taken to prevent a similar situation in the future, although McDermott said he did not foresee this happening again.

"I'm hoping there will be [future measures] because it was a pretty lame thing that happened," the Cabinet member said.

- Jocelyn Wright

New presidents

The new presidents for the nine colleges are: Kathy Kellert for Baker, Kyle Clark for Will Rice, Erol Bakkalbasi for Hanszen, Alex Bonnel for Wiess, Andrew McDermott for Jones, Jackie Ammons for Brown , Erin Finn for Lovett, Sam Wang for Sid Richardson, Sean McBeath for Martel.

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