Skipper

Emily Hopkins / Intern The Eagle Point turbines near Apogee Stadium are currently producing and distributing energy at a rate of about 125,000 kilowatts a year, significantly more than UNT System Facilities expected. The estimated amount of yearly energy production is 450,000 kilowatts between the three community sized turbines. “We fully expect this time of year for it to be ahead of schedule,†UNT Director of System Facilities Don Lynch said. “Spring was the windy time of year.†Although the turbines have exceeded estimates, Lynch stressed that wind energy is not consistent and can’t be relied upon to always be [...] View the full article

Staff Reports Brief UNT's Denton campus could become smoke-free as early as Jan. 1, 2013, according to an email sent to the community by President V. Lane Rawlins Monday morning. Rawlins said in the e-mail that the decision comes after UNT administration conducted a “statistically valid surveys of students and employees. The details of the tobacco-free policy will be worked out over the summer and fall with input from the community. The university has been debating a smoke-free campus for the past year — last fall, UNT's Student Government Association failed to pass a smoking ban referendum. "UNT is a [...] View the full article

Austin Schubert / Staff Writer - The UNT Athletic Department addressed the impact of the university's acceptance of an invitation to join Conference USA in a press conference Friday afternoon, expressing excitement about what the move will do for UNT. "It's a big day for us," UNT President V. Lane Rawlins said. "It's not something unexpected. The right things in life happen when you do the right things and we've been doing the right things." The move to Conference USA helps elevate theuniversity's athletic program to a higher level, UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal said. "I always believed that [...] View the full article

Austin Schubert / Staff Writer - UNT took the next step in enhancing its athletics program when it received and accepted an invitation to join Conference USA this morning. The Mean Green will remain in the Sun Belt Conference until July 1, 2013, when the move to Conference USA will take effect. "This is validation that the progress we have made in our athletic programs in conjunction with our university’s academic reputation has made us a suitable fit for the high standards of Conference USA,” UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal said in a press release. “Conference USA provides a great [...] View the full article

Tyler Owens / Staff Writer Ten days after his hiring as the UNTwomen's basketball head coach, Mike Petersen named his first assistant coach. Georgetown assistant coach and former Texas Christian standout Ashley Davis will return to her Texas roots and join the Mean Green women's basketball team's coaching staff next season. "I am delighted to welcome Ashley Davis to the Mean Green women's basketball family," Petersen said in a press release. "Ashley brings a wealth of experience at the highest level of collegiate women's basketball and will immediately have a positive impact on our program. "Originally from San [...] View the full article

Holly Harvey / Senior Staff Writer - Denton mayoral candidates Mark Burroughs, Neil Durrance and Donna Woodfork answered questions Tuesday night to about 60 people at Milestone Celebrations on issues such as candidate residency, gas well drilling, food trucks and a possible convention center. The debate came before early voting begins April 30-May 8 and Election Day on May 12. Registered Denton residents can vote at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, the North Branch Library, North Lakes Recreation Center and the Denia Recreation Center. Durrance said he would focus his platform on more accountable politics. "It's time to [...] View the full article

This isn’t exactly a subject of earth-shattering importance, but given that we’re coming out of the Easter weekend and things are slow, it’s caught our attention. Today, Trent Johnson is LSU’s former head basketball coach. Johnson resigned yesterday, leaving a smoking hole where the Tiger hoops program at one point used to be, and he’ll be officially installed as the new head coach at TCU this afternoon. Johnson’s tenure in Baton Rouge opened in impressive fashion, riding four players left over from John Brady’s tenure who eventually went on to play professionally to a 27-8 record and an SEC Coach of the Year award. But after that, Johnson went down the tubes; in the last three years he was 39-56, and 12-36 in conference play. That’s the worst three-year performance for LSU since 1996-99, when in the final year of Dale Brown and the first two years of John Brady, amid a massive NCAA probation the program was 31-54 and 9-39 in conference. LSU might as well be on probation now, because now that center Justin Hamilton has announced he’s turning pro LSU is in position to have only eight scholarship players for next year. The Tigers only had 11 players on scholarship last year, and they’re graduating three seniors. Johnson signed only one player, River Ridge John Curtis guard Malik Morgan (who’s rated the No. 75 player in the country by Rivals.com), in the fall and had no recruits committed for the spring signing period which starts on Wednesday. Which is why it seems a bit ironic that ever since the Trent Johnson-to-TCU rumors went into full-bloom mode over the weekend the name which is continuously being thrown around is Johnny Jones. Jones, our readers might remember, was a player for LSU in the early to mid 1980′s and an assistant to Dale Brown for the last 12 years the latter was the head coach. He’s currently the head coach at the University of North Texas, where he’s had middling success – in 11 seasons Jones is 190-146, including a 91-88 record in Sun Belt Conference play, and two NCAA Tournament appearances. Jones is also the assistant coach accused of being the “bag man” for Brown in the Lester Earl recruiting violations debacle in 1996, which ultimately led to the school being hit with one of the cruelest sets of NCAA sanctions ever handed down. It’s hard to imagine an assistant coach who puts a program on probation ultimately riding a .565 winning percentage at a Sun Belt university would be sold as a savior at a prominent place like LSU, but that’s precisely what we’re getting now. View full article

Column The widespread debate surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin has recently evolved into media discussion of American racial issues. This exploration and increase of public knowledge on current racial challenges is largely commendable. However, it is a sad fact that such vast discussions give those with far more chilling views an opportunity to blend their thoughts into the background. The latest and arguably most heinous case involves John Derbyshire, a British-American known largely for writing in the respected journal of American conservatism, National Review. However, Derbyshire chose to bury his latest article in Takiâs Magazine, a far more obscure [...] View the full article

Brett Medeiros / Senior Staff Writer -- Reigning Sun Belt Conference Freshman of the Year Tony Mitchell announced he would return to UNT for his sophomore season at the Mean Green Basketball Banquet on Monday. In his first season on the men's basketball team, Mitchell led the team with 14.7 points, 10.3 rebounds and three blocks per game in 23 games. "Tony is truly a rare commodity. He's one of those guys that don't come along very often" head coach Johnny Jones said. "As a player, when we go play our opponents, their attendance level goes up just because of [...] View the full article

Ben Peyton / Intern The UNT Student Government Association met with Warren Burggren, UNT provost and vice president for academic affairs, and appointed one senator during its meeting Wednesday night. President V. Lane Rawlins was originally scheduled to speak to the SGA but was unable to attend. Burggren spoke instead and discussed the future of UNT. "We are in the middle of taking off," Burggren said. "In 2020, I bet this will be a fundamentally better university, and you will have had something to do with it." Burggren assured the SGA that the tuition students pay is well worth the [...] View the full article

Valerie Gonzalez / Assigning Editor After four months of considering a move to at-will employment, UNT Chancellor Lee Jackson announced an adoption of the policy in a staff-wide email sent out March 20. The adoption of the at-will policy will allow institutions of the UNT System to fire staff employees for any reason that is not illegal­­ –– which federal and state laws describe as age, race, sex, disability, religion and national origin. “Effective June 1, all current and future employees within the UNT System, except faculty and individuals under contract, serve at-will,†Jackson wrote in the email. While the [...] View the full article

http://recruiting.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=8&c=1&nid=5680350 http://www.maxpreps.com/athletes/heZlRO1oXkqRPAiRCx8pFA/football-fall-11/profile-carlos-thompson.htm

Tyler Owens / Staff Writer ---The No. 51 Mean Green tennis team is having one of its most successful seasons in recent history and has set itself up to be the No. 1 seed in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament. The team is now 11-5 and 4-0 in conference play and has won six of its last seven matches. The Mean Green earned the highest Intercollegiate Tennis Ranking in team history when it broke in at No. 61 in mid-February. From there, the team continued to rise and made it up to No. 40 by March. Since then, [...] View the full article

Josh Friemel / Staff Writer -- When she got to UNT in 2010, senior infielder Maddelyn Fraley transitioned from a college of about 3,000 to a university with more than 33,000 students. "The first semester [at UNT], I was so overwhelmed. It was horrible", she said. "It was a very eye-opening change that took me a while to get used to." Fraley got into softball when she was four years old, playing pitcher, first basemen and an outfielder. For her entire collegiate career at both the junior college and Division-I level, Fraley has thrived in softball by being able to [...] View the full article

Zach Claussen / Staff Writer -- Mean Green athletic teams have performed well recently on the field, but their performance in the classroom has also seen improvement. In the past 10 years, the graduation rate for UNT student-athletes has increased from 32 percent to 71 percent, according to UNT Athletic Director Rick Villarreal. That statistic took a blow two months ago when two UNT men's basketball players, freshmen guards Chris Jones and Jordan Williams, ranked No. 24 and No. 6 high school prospects in Texas, respectively, were deemed academically ineligible for the remainder of the season. The issues led to [...] View the full article

Josh Friemel / Staff Writer -- UNT sophomore divers Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Taylor came up short in their quest to become the first members of the Mean Green swimming and diving team to qualify for the NCAA Championships last week. The pair competed in Iowa City, Iowa, last Thursday for the Zone D Diving Meet, which determines which divers advance to the NCAA Championships. Neither diver got past the preliminary stages of the meet. Both Taylor and Johnson competed in the one-meter and three-meter diving events, failing to place in the top half in either event. Of the 38 [...] View the full article

I'd like to propose a new system for teaching drivers education. Young teens should have absolutely no exposure to how a car works or to the laws of the road until they're fifteen, with the exception of go-carts. At that point, they should be given a driving course for exactly one semester, at the end of which they'd be given their licenses whether they're ready or not. "That's ridiculous! Where on earth would you get such an idea?" you may ask. Well, anonymous reader, I based my proposal on our current system of civics education. Under the current system, [...] View the full article

Nicole Balderas / Senior Staff Writer Members of the Texas State Employee Union spoke to a small group of students, staff and faculty outside the Hurley Administration Building on Wednesday about the dangers of an at-will employment policy. Texas is an at-will state, which allows employers to demote or fire someone with or without cause, with the exception of violating discrimination acts. However, UNT's current "for cause" policy allows employees to be terminated only with a given reason and after going through listed steps, according to UNT Policy No. 1.7.1. UNT began considering changes to the current employment policy [...] View the full article

Tyler Owens / Staff Writer – This season has been one for the record books for the Mean Green tennis team. Not only has it won six of its last seven matches and is currently 8-4 and 3-0 in conference play but it has also knocked off three ranked opponents this season, including a win over TCU for the first time in school history. The Mean Green also soared 20 spots to No. 40 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings Tuesday. This marks the highest that the team has been ranked in program history. Two players, senior Nadia Lee [...] View the full article

Ryne Gannoe / Intern The Mean Green swimming and diving team was in first place after day one of the Sun Belt Swimming & Diving Championship in Rockwall, but by the end of the four-day event, UNT found itself in third place for the fourth consecutive year. The Denver men's and women's teams each won the conference championship for the second consecutive year. UNT head coach Joe Dykstra and the swim team could not be reached for comment. The Mean Green finished with 667 points, while Denver and Western Kentucky finished with 820.5 and 704.5, respectively. Beyond the team's [...] View the full article

Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth are both moving to new athletic conferences where they will lag far behind some of the schools they'll face in terms of athletics expenditures. TCU has the largest expense in 2010-2011 of three at $56,245,071, according to the database. The Horned Frogs spent $22,608,182 on their highly successful football team. The largest athletic expenditure in the Big 12 was UT Austin at $125,978,117 -- which happened to be the largest of any university in the nation. SMU, which has gone to successive bowl games under coach June Jones, had expenses of $37,471,381, much less than the University of Louisville's $83.7 million -- tops among its new Big East foes. SMU spent $12,569,957 on football. UNT had an athletics expense of $22,417,616, while the University of Denver had the largest expense in the Sun Belt Conference at $24,629,517. UNT spent $6,824,909 on its football program. Click here to read more: http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2012/02/smu-tcu-and-unt-what-do-they-spend.html

After years of trying, the University of Memphis made it into the Big East. The Tigers will join some former conference rivals as well as some Conference USA defectors in the 2013-14 season. How do those schools — with so much conference history — stack up to each other by the numbers? Athletic department expenses can be an indicator of the level of commitment to competing at the highest level in college athletics. MBJ has created a sortable database (below) of Division 1 college athletic departments based on Equality in Athletics data from the U.S. Department of Education. Data can be sorted by clicking any of the tabs at the top of the database; more detailed information on each university’s athletic department is available by clicking on the ‘View Details’ link to the right of each university’s information. Click here to view entire article

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will make an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action. A challenge from a white student, Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court’s first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor. View the full article

I am torn on ULM -- they do a pretty good job competing with their limited funds and frankly, they were there when we needed them to keep the Sun Belt afloat. That said, I think Benson should take this opportunity to raise the bar higher and I think he will.

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