Despite threats of heavy rainfall, students gathered with their family and friends under the historic green elms in front of Nassau Hall to celebrate Princeton University’s 263rd Commencement on Tuesday morning.

The ceremony honored 1,175 bachelor’s degree recipients — 1,166 from the graduating Class of 2010 and nine undergraduates from previous classes — and 804 recipients of graduate degrees. Degree candidates were joined by roughly 7,500 family members and friends.

In her remarks, President Shirley Tilghman reminded students of the increasing polarization of politics and the media, urging new graduates to build on the diversity they experienced at Princeton to find new, inclusive ways to solve world problems.

“One aspect of keeping democracy alive and well is seeking common purpose and finding common ground with one another,” she said. “On our campus you have been exposed to a rich smorgasbord of ideas, perspectives and cultures, both inside and outside the classroom. Our goal was not to turn you into walking encyclopedias … Rather, you were asked to acquire learning so that you would have the intellectual foundation to engage with the great ideas and pressing issues of the day.”

Tilghman also noted the importance of preserving intellectual diversity. “We want you to hold strong and well-considered views on a wide variety of issues and to be prepared to articulate those views in debate and defend them to critics,” she explained. “We fully expect that on matters high and low … you will follow in the storied footsteps of generations of Princetonians who have sat on this lawn before you, and hold wildly divergent views.”

Valedictorian David Karp ’10, a mechanical and aerospace engineering major from Berwyn, Pa., spoke on a similar theme, urging students to step outside the boundaries of majors and explore unexpected career options. “We are people first, scholars second and our majors third,” he said. “Our future lives remain a fairly blank sheet of paper, for, while a physics major may have limited options, a person in general does not.”

The traditional Latin salutatorian address was delivered by Marguerite Colson ’10, a history major from New York City, who spoke on managing the balance between tradition and innovation. “Princetonians, as you go forth, see, conquer and imbibe, may you always be faithful to the traditions your success is built upon,” she said. “Remember, though, to make them new and to make them you.”

The University presented honorary degrees to five recipients. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was presented with a doctor of law to a standing ovation from the audience.

“Denied deserved recognition by a discriminatory profession when she graduated at the top of her law school class, she has dedicated her life to vindicating the constitution’s promise of equality under law,” said Class Day keynote speaker and University orator Charles Gibson ’65. Gibson, who is also a member of the University Board of Trustees, presented the candidates for honorary degrees. “Her jurisprudence is a beacon of freedom that illuminates the continuing power of America’s constitutional ideals.”

Oncologist Olufunmilayo Olopade and chemistry professor emeritus Edward Taylor were both presented with an honorary doctor of science. Harvard president and historian Drew Faust and former South African constitutional court justice Albie Sachs each received an honorary doctor of law.

Awards for excellence in secondary school teaching were also presented to four New Jersey teachers: Roy Chambers of Westfield High School, Gregory Devine of Delbarton School, Argine Safari of Pascack Valley High School and Hans Toft of Cape May County Technical High School.

In anticipation of bad weather, the usual order of the ceremony was rearranged and the conferral of degrees immediately followed opening remarks. Though the stormy weather held off, Tilghman advised participants that, in the case of storms, the ceremony would be adjourned.

Several parents, like Orly Nobel, whose daughter Yael Nobel ’10 was one of the graduates, expressed their satisfaction with the commencement exercises and noted, in particular, their appreciation of Tilghman’s remarks.

“We’re all very, very touched — and proud,” Orly Nobel said. “I thought it was very well done. I really was touched by the president’s speech.”

Theresa Metzger, who attended the ceremony with her daughter Sarita Metzger ’10, also said she was moved by the events of the day, noting that the graduation exercises were “four years in the making.”

Recent graduate Daphne Chen ’10 said she was “ambivalent” about graduating, but that the experience was “mostly good.”

“I’m going to miss Princeton a lot; I’m going to miss my friends,” she said. “But [I’m] excited because it’s a new chapter in all our lives.”

Penn State women’s lacrosse coach Suzanne Isidor announced her resignation in a press release issued Wednesday by the Penn State Athletic Department.

The release said Isidor resigned due to personal reasons, but did not specify.

In her 10 years at the head of the women’s lacrosse program Isisdor led the Nittany Lions to 84 wins and two NCAA Tournament appearances.

“It has been my honor and privilege to serve as the head coach at Penn State,” Isidor said in the press release. “Penn State is a special place and I am grateful to have been able to coach not only great players but great people during my tenure. I want to thank Tim Curley and Sue Scheetz for the opportunity to coach at my alma mater and for their constant help and support. I will always cherish the friendships and relationships I have made while in Happy Valley and leave with nothing but fond memories of my time here.”

Isidor is the third Penn State coach to resign this spring, following men’s soccer head coach Barry Gorman and men’s lacrosse coach Glenn Thiel. Creighton coach Bob Warming has been named Gorman’s successor, but Thiel and now Isidor’s spots remain unfilled.

“We are deeply appreciative of Suzanne’s contributions to the women’s lacrosse program and to the department,” Director of Athletics Tim Curley said in the release. “She has served as a tremendous representative of Penn State, embodying the values of the University in an exemplary fashion. We wish her the best of luck.”

As the crowd filed through Yost Ice Arena’s heavy wooden doors and spilled onto State Street, there was a feeling that this night, March 17, 1991 was a turning point.

It was the Michigan hockey team’s first year in the NCAA Tournament since 1977, and it had just won a decisive third game over Cornell to advance to the second round, just one series away from the Frozen Four. After years of mediocrity, Michigan coach Red Berenson had finally brought the program to the national stage.

Some Wolverine fans, and perhaps even some of the red-clad Cornell followers peppered in the masses exiting the building, realized this was a turning point outside the glass as well. They knew that this weekend was the beginning of the revival of the Michigan hockey program on and off the ice.

But they didn’t know that it would evolve into this.

Games at Yost have turned into a non-stop tirade against refs, the opposing team, its fans and, most importantly, its goalie. It starts before the first puck is dropped as fans tell referees to “check the net!” and after the official has done so, to “check it again!.” The opposing player introductions are met with newspaper reading by the student section. And only after that does the crowd get rowdy.

The student section, dotted with celebrities like “the penguin guy” and “the guys dressed as Blues Brothers,” extends the length of the arena, filling up the sections next to and behind both benches. It also spearheads the cheering effort of the 6,000-plus fans in the building, uniting the arena as one in order to tell the refs they suck, the opposing goalie he’s a sieve, and the opposing parents they are ugly — repeatedly.

“The kind of people who go to Yost are the kind of people that want to act like fools,” LSA junior Jamie Fogel said last month. “It’s, ‘I’m going to come and act like an idiot. I’m going to dress like a penguin, I’m going to dress like Thomas the Tank Engine,’ and it’s totally normal to do that.”

And when the game stops, the crowd keeps going. During intermission, the crowd tries to get a lucky seven-year old riding the zamboni to do poses that eventually results in taking his or her shoe off and throwing it on the ice. When the shoe goes flying, it is always met with a thunderous cheer. But that is just a warmup for the second intermission, which is highlighted by a rendition of the Blues Brothers song “Can’t Turn You Loose” and has turned into a group dance for the entire student section.

With the volume, the intermission antics and the raucous multitude of mean-spirited chants comes the fact that these fans are some of the most knowledgeable college hockey fans in the country. The building will get just as loud for a good penalty kill as a goal, and they know a hand pass is legal in the defensive zone.

Most importantly, the fans have shown up game after game ever since that final game of Michigan’s three-game series with Cornell. Their dedication level has led to one of the most significant home-ice advantages in the country — the Wolverines have won 79 percent of their games at Yost since 1991.

“The dedication level, you can just kind of see it,” Engineering sophomore Rob Eckert said in May. “When you’re surrounded by passionate people, it’s hard not to catch on and always want to be there.”

So how did this happen? How did Yost become the most intimidating place to play in America?

Part of the final answer lies within the 3.7 million people who have walked through the Yost doors to support their beloved Wolverines. But it begins almost 40 years before many of today’s fans were even born.

The Children Before the Children

Long before the Children of Yost had the rink vibrating with noise, the arena was housing footballs as the team’s practice facility. The hockey — and the noise — was a few streets down, inside the Weinberg Coliseum (now the Sports Coliseum). It was there where then-coach Vic Heyliger created a simple method to put fans in the seats — win.

Six national championships brought the crowds in and Heyliger’s successor, Al Renfrew, kept the winning method going. By the time a young center from Saskatchewan named Red Berenson pulled the Michigan sweater over his head, supporters would line up all the way down Hill St. to try to be one of the approximately 2,000 lucky fans that squeezed into the building on gameday.

“It was a great environment for us.

It wasn’t just the students, it was the townspeople, it was a little bit of everything,” Berenson said. “Some people now say, ‘what kind of a rink was that?’ Well, we thought it was great.”

Inside that comparatively tiny of a building, the University and the city of Ann Arbor set the precedent for supporting Michigan hockey. It was obviously smaller than Yost, and Berenson admits it wasn’t as organized, but the rules were still the same: Pack the building. Make it loud.

The pep band even showed its early form inside the Coliseum.

“I remember them playing ‘The Victors’ — a lot,” Berenson said after this season. “In a small building, as you can imagine, it’s even louder than it is in (Yost).”

Playing Road Games at Home

The year was 1984, and Michigan was in the middle of the lowest era in the history of the Michigan crowd.

Somewhere between the time Berenson transitioned from Michigan center to Michigan coach, The winning was interrupted. The Wolverines hadn’t finished first in the conference in 20 years and had made exactly one NCAA Tournament appearance in that time. In the five years before Berenson took over, the team had just a .479 winning percentage, and as the team lost, the foundation of support that was laid a few streets down began to erode.

Less than ten years after Michigan moved to Yost Ice Arena in 1973, it played most of its games with the paint-chipped bleachers empty. The atmosphere was non-existent. The high volume of students and townspeople stopped showing up and the band became a collection of students with nothing better to do.

“It was a kind of piecemeal situation, like ‘we have 18 tickets, who wants to come?’ ” John Pasquale, Director of the Michigan Hockey Pep Band, said in May. “So we’ll have six trombones and a flute, two tubas and a bass drum and we’ll kind of get together and just kind of play just for fun.”

The same high ceilings and brick walls that would be ideal for holding in sound and adding to the raucous atmosphere that would arrive years later only contributed to the dire situation of Michigan’s crowd at the time.

“There was nobody in the building,” Berenson said. “It was like being in a big cave.”

But there were games when the potential of Yost could be seen. Twice a year, Yost was rocking — for the other team. When rival Michigan State came to town, so did its supporters.

While the Wolverines and Spartans battled on the Yost ice, the official colors in the stands were Green and White. Inside the building named for one of the greatest figures in Michigan athletics, the sold out crowd donned the other team’s colors and watched its Spartans play their inferior neighbors.

“It was embarrassing,” Berenson said.

From the embarrassment, came action. Berenson wanted the Michigan State fans out of Yost. Michigan needed its own fans, and so the coaching staff began to reach out.

“One of the programs they implemented was to try to block them out,” associate head coach Mel Pearson said. “So they did go up on campus in the Diag and to the faculty and the students to try to get them at least to buy Michigan State tickets, so we wouldn’t have a road game at home.”

It wasn’t just going to the Diag. It was going to the dorms. It was sending players to fraternities and sororities. It was putting brochures in the dorm mailbox of every freshman.

More importantly, it was turning a 12-26-0 record into 22-15-4 and eventually, turning that into 34-10-3. Wearers of the Maize and Blue began to fill the building consistently. By the time Michigan hosted the 1991 NCAA regional, it had enough fans to set a weekend attendance record that still stands to this day.

But the attendance was only the first step in creating a true home-ice advantage.

The Turning Point

The student section, barely extending blue line to blue line behind the benches, had already started the countdown.

No. 3 seed Michigan was up 4-3 on sixth-seeded Cornell as the seconds slowly counted down in the 1991 Regional. The crowd, staring at the approximately 200 Cornell fans situated near center ice on the side opposite of the student section, belted out the numbers. “Five! Four! Three! Two!…”. But the countdown never finished.

Big Red forward Kent Manderville slapped a backhand shot from the top of the circle past freshman goaltender Steve Shields to tie the game.

Cornell then scored on its first trip down the ice in overtime to end the game, but it was the halted countdown that spurred the veteran Big Red crowd.

“I’ve never heard a countdown stop,” William Sangrey, a Cornell graduate student at the time said. “Five, four, three, two, and it stopped. The whole building just stopped.”

The following night, as the first period waned down, the boisterous Cornellians added a new chant to their already versatile repertoire.

“They would go, ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, OHHH!’ to make fun of the crowd reaction,” then-Michigan graduate student Matt Thullen said. “I was like, ‘hey that was actually pretty clever.’ ”

But the Michigan fans were drawn in before that. The personal cheers and cleverness of Cornell clicked with them, and on that weekend in mid-March, the crowd took its first step toward becoming what it is today. In the face of the rowdy Ivy League crowd, it began to defend its building.

“(The Cornell fans) were loud and they got their message across, and I think the fans kind of took it as a challenge,” Thullen said. “We’re the ones with the intimidating building. We’re the home team. We’re not going to let these guys come in and basically do anything (they want).”

But many of the Michigan fans were new to college hockey and didn’t know how to pass the test presented by the Cornell contingent. So, the Wolverine fans took the Big Red’s cheers.

The number and variety of cheers that were taken vary, depending on the memory of each person that was there. Some say that Steve Shields wasn’t the only goalie who had his mother call to tell him he sucked. Others can only remember Cornell goaltender Jim Crozier getting hit with “It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault!” added to the end of Michigan’s already established goal count. But the most important lesson that Big Red crowd taught wasn’t a specific chant — it was the attitude that a college hockey crowd should have.

“I think that the Cornell folks kind of taught us how you can really make a chant that really gets under people’s skin a little bit better,” Thullen said.

And after a 6-4 Michigan win, the decisive game came on a St. Patrick’s Day Sunday in front of Berenson’s first sellout that wasn’t against Michigan State. Michigan rode the crowd to a 9-3 victory.

The winning method had been restored.

The win also ended the three-day fan crash course. The Michigan faithful left for seven months of hibernation, unsure if the atmosphere would take hold without Cornell baiting them. So in the home opener of the 1991-92 season, the crowd faced another test — Michigan State. The fans showed up, and armed with their knowledge from early March, Michigan home games have never been the same.

“The very first series of games, it was packed,” Eric Storhok, a graduate student at the time, said last month. “The student section basically filled the entire end … There was enough students that once somebody came up with a clever cheer, everybody was doing it immediately.”

It was the beginning of the modern era of the Yost crowd, one that has relied on the cheers and ability to adapt that was taught to them by 200 kids from Ithaca, New York. And when the Big Red came back to Yost in 1997, they saw the monster they had created.

“They gave us a hard time about stealing their chants and those of us who were at that game were like, ‘if we could chant ‘thank you,’ we would,” Storhok said.

The Molly Incident

For 24 hours, Molly McGannon was the most hated person in Ann Arbor.

The Michigan crowd had a newfound swagger after Berenson completed the revival on the ice with two national championships, including one that saw Michigan upset heavily favored North Dakota in the 1998 NCAA Regional at Yost. When the regional returned to Ann Arbor in 2002 for the first time since the national championship, the wrath that had evolved in those 10 years since the crowd’s 1991 lesson was on full display.

In the 2001 regional in Grand Rapids, Michigan and St. Cloud State had their first ever meeting. For McGannon, one of the Huskies’ skating cheerleaders, once was enough. But the next year, St. Cloud drew the No. 5 seed, sentenced to play the fourth-seeded Wolverines again, this time in Ann Arbor.

In the week leading up to the game, McGannon made a fatal mistake and made her feelings of the Michigan crowd known.

“The University of Michigan fans are like combining (North Dakota) Sioux fans and Minnesota Gophers fans,” McGannon told the St. Cloud Times a few days before the game. “They’re horrible people. It’s like they’ve never seen hockey cheerleaders.

“Their band was obnoxious, horrible, not very welcoming at all. Now it’s going to be on their home ice, and they’ll be worse.”

For any fan that missed it, The Michigan Daily reprinted a portion of the quote the day of the game. By the time it got around campus, the girl known to Ann Arbor as simply “Molly” was the enemy. When eight o’clock came around that night, the crowd was prepared.

“We’re walking around before the game and there’s a couple of St. Cloud cheerleaders in front of us … I just yell out, ‘Are you Molly?’ ” Tim Williams, a student at the time, said in an interview last month. “These girls turn around, a look of absolute horror on their face. They had no idea how we found out about that.”

Once the cheerleaders stepped out onto the ice, Molly’s words became a self-fulfilling prophecy — the Michigan fans were worse. Dollar bills were waving throughout the student section as the crowd chanted “Jer-sey Chas-ers” to the cheerleaders skating on the ice during warm-ups. If that wasn’t enough, some cheerleaders ventured on to the Michigan side of center ice and six-foot-four, 245 pound sophomore defensemen Mike Komisarek decided to put them in their place. A little tug on the skates of a cheerleader accomplished the goal, as the cheerleader almost fell down, to the mad delight of the already frenzied crowd.

“Then it was kind of on,” Williams said.

Having watched all of this happen was the St. Cloud State mascot, Blizzard, and he decided to take matters into his own hands. His method of choice was to spear freshman defenseman Brandon Rogers with his stick as he skated off the ice, and in doing so, he had the whole Michigan team after him and took away any censorship that was left in the student section. But the Huskies paid for it once the game started.

Junior captain Jed Ortmeyer gave the crowd the blood they were looking for, knocking two St. Cloud players out of the game with clean hits.

“Maybe (it was) a little classless, but we all held two fingers up in the air to do like the goal count after he knocked the second guy out,” Williams said.

The Wolverines scored three first period goals and never looked back, winning the game 4-2. And the crowd never came down from the level it was at in the pregame warm-ups.

“I thought I heard this building the loudest it could go, but for a second in the second period, my head was hurting,” then-freshman forward Milan Gajic said after the game. “It was so loud it was unbelievable. Every time we did something, it erupted.”

The following night, the Wolverines had to win again, this time against top-seeded Denver. And without the benefit of a Molly-type incident to rile up the crowd, it still managed to deliver, helping Michigan to a 5-3 win.

“The next night it was Denver. It was the same thing,” Williams said. “I’ve been told you could hear the crowd from a block away.”

After the regional, Michigan was fined $10,000 for what was only described as “crowd control issues.” Whether it was what is now known as “The Molly Incident” or the profanity laden ‘C-Ya! Chant’ — which has been in the crowd’s arsenal since before the Cornell series, adding the various curses to the end through the years — directed at an opposing player that goes to the penalty box, it wasn’t enough to stop the NCAA from awarding Michigan the regional the following year. Again, the Wolverines upset the No. 1 seed, this time Colorado College, to advance to the Frozen Four.

Berenson is 8-1 in regionals at Yost, with the lone loss coming in the first game against Cornell in 1991.

“I don’t know in any one of those three years (1998, 2002, 2003) if we could have beat that team — the teams we played against — either in a neutral site or definitely in their building,” Pearson said. “But because of the situation, the atmosphere, being in Yost, it really helped us get by those teams.”

Role Reversal

Nineteen years after they were taught how to watch the games, the Michigan crowd is now an integral part of the program’s tradition.

As each class graduates, the next one comes in to uphold the tradition. Steve Shields, Jed Ortmeyer and Louie Caporusso are all linked by Michigan hockey. In a similar fashion, Matt Thullen, Tim Williams and Rob Eckert are linked as well. And Yost is the device through which the two lineages are bonded.

But changes still happen. In an age where a number of CCHA teams have stolen cheers from Michigan, the Yost student section continues to try to differentiate itself and keep moving forward.

As each new class comes, the evolution of the student section continues. Two years ago the opposing team was able to take the puck out of its zone on the power play without any added trouble from the crowd. Now, several thousand call out a high-pitched “wooooop!” as the puck is touched below the blue line.

Throughout the course of a season, several mean-spirited chants pop up in the middle of a game, and are never heard again.

“That’s one of (those) things that’s most fun about hockey games, because you can go there and you’ll start hearing things that you’ve never heard before,” Eckert said. “There’s always room where it’s open, always room where it’s changing and just because (of) the smaller nature of the student section, we do a lot more.”

In two decades, the student section has gone from copying others to relying on its spontaneity to differentiate itself, as it is now the one being copied. The band has gone from a small number of kids playing “just for fun” to a 92-member monstrosity. The fans have gone from not showing up to never leaving. Even through a four-game home losing streak this past season, Michigan’s worst since 1989, attendance averaged 6,800. Official capacity is 6,637.

“It’s always 0-0 and you go in with that mentality (that) the louder I cheer, the better they’re going to do,” Eckert said. “The mentality of the fans (is) we were there and we were there to support the Michigan boys and we’re always going to be there.”

That mentality, one that has been growing with every year of Michigan’s 20-year streak into the NCAA Tournament, was perhaps tested more than ever last season.

Finishing seventh in the CCHA and in jeopardy of halting their NCAA Tournament streak at 19, the Wolverines were forced to play No. 2 seed Michigan State in East Lansing in the second round of the conference tournament. With the Spartan students on spring break, the Children of Yost had tickets widely available to them.

As the Wolverines swept the best-of-three, the section behind the Michigan bench was packed with Maize and Blue.

“When we had all our fans there, it was kind of a slap in the face to them,” junior forward Louie Caporusso said two weeks ago. “It showed how much more we cared, and it really propelled our team to win those games.”

Michigan had finally done to Michigan State what had made Berenson so embarrassed in his early years in Ann Arbor — it had forced the Spartans to play a road game at home.

“It culminated in that,” Berenson said. “We have never had a home-ice advantage at Michigan State in all the years we’ve been here. You can just see there is so much momentum around this program that in a situation this past spring it showed up on the road.”

Early in game one, before the Wolverines pulled the first of four upsets to win the conference tournament and extend their NCAA Tournament streak, the Michigan section used its hallmark of recent years and belted out one of its impromptu cheers. It was a simple, but effective, statement directed at the Spartan student section.

“WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

After that chant, there was one more thing that reminded Berenson of his early days at the helm: silence. It was like a big cave. The revival off the ice had completed.

Democrats are now looking toward the gubernatorial election after state Rep. Scott Conklin was declared the winner of the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, as runner-up Jonathan Saidel declined a recount.

Conklin’s victory came after Saidel – who trailed Conklin by 3,846 votes – decided to not request a recount. His decision saved the state over $500,000, according to a press release from the Governor’s office.

“I salute Jonathan Saidel for making this difficult decision in order to save Pennsylvania’s taxpayers a substantial amount of money,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortas said in the release. “During these historically challenging financial times, every dollar is important to the continuation of programs that serve the public. I thank Mr. Saidel for putting our residents’ interests ahead of his own aspirations.”

The 3,846 vote lead held by Conklin was less than one half of one percent of the total votes cast, a narrow margin that would require an automatic recount if Saidel had not conceded.

Conklin, D-Centre, will join gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato on the Democratic ticket in November as they go against Republican candidates Tom Corbett and Jim Crawley.

Tor Michaels, Conklin campaign spokesperson, said the Conklin campaign is looking forward to working with Onorato in the months leading up to the election in the fall.

“Dan is an excellent candidate and he has great ideas to move our state forward,” Michaels said. “We’re very excited for the opportunity to work with him.”

Dustin Dove, College Democrats chief of staff, said the addition of Conklin to the Democratic ticket would provide a different “flavor” to the campaign for Democrats in November.

“In the fall we’ll have our senate candidate (Sestak) from the eastern part of the state, our governor candidate (Onorato) from the Pittsburgh area and Scott is from the rural area of State College,” Dove (senior-secondary education) said. “I think he brings a lot of balance to the ticket.”

The days of playing games are over for former Saluki three-sport athlete Katie Wagner, but she hopes to remain close to collegiate athletics as the graduate assistant coach of a softball team.

Wagner graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education but she said she is looking to get a job as a graduate assistant for a Division I softball team. She said if she gets an assistantship, she will go for a master’s degree in sports management.

“I am still young and I feel like I would make a great coach,” Wagner said. “I have had many great experiences at SIU and I want to be able to share that knowledge with other softball players and make them better.”

Wagner said if she can’t find a coaching job, she will look to make a career as a teacher. She said she has talked to a few coaches about an assistantship but nothing is official yet.

SIUC softball head coach Kerri Blaylock said there are no assistantships available at Southern for Wagner but believes she will make a successful coach wherever she goes.

“I am very proud of her. She was one of the most competitive players I’ve ever coached,” Blaylock said. “She has great leadership skills and knowledge of the game which will be a great help to her when she becomes a coach.”

Wagner, who participated on SIUC’s softball, basketball and track and field teams, said the transition out of collegiate sports has been different but she has kept busy.

“I have been spending more time with my family which I haven’t been able to do as much in the past five years,” Wagner said. “I have also been taking more time for myself and enjoying the time I have off.”

Wagner said she was blessed to have been able to play collegiate sports and represent SIUC. She said there are aspects about playing collegiate sports that she will always miss.

“I will miss heading out onto the court or field in front of all the Saluki fans as well as the daily interaction with my teammates and coaches,” Wagner said. “My memories of what I did on the court or field will eventually fade but the relationships and bonds that I have with my teammates and coaches will stay with me forever.”

A U. Southern California professor has received a $2,000 Partner University Fund award to develop a new type of male contraceptive drug.

Charles McKenna, who is also the chair of chemistry at the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, hopes to create contraceptive drug for commercial use that affects sperm development. McKenna’s idea was one of 12 proposals selected from among 78.

McKenna, with expertise in chemistry, will work with researchers in France at the Institute for Structural Biology Jean-Pierre Ebel and the Institut Albert Bonniot, benefiting from each other’s knowledge.

Despite the distance between Los Angeles and France, McKenna said to USC News this space would not hinder the research.

“The fact that we’re separated by 6,000 miles is no longer a major factor,” said McKenna. “What’s so exciting about this is that we’ll be engaging in a kind of collaboration that typically would be done with the Department of Biology or the Keck School of Medicine at USC … but these biologists happen to be in Europe.”

Researchers will communicate regularly through video conferencing and visit each other’s institutions.

McKenna recently received the USC Provost’s Prize for Teaching With Technology, which awards faculty for successfully integrating technology into their courses.

McKenna is also fluent in French and has worked previously with researchers in France.

“That to me was a perfect fit for the program,” said Mireille Guyarder, the scientific attache for the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles, to USC News.

McKenna said to USC News he expects the collaboration between his department at USC and the French institutions to help build relations, potentially encouraging future graduate students at USC to train in France, or students in France to come to USC.

“At USC, the general impetus has been to globalize research,” McKenna said to USC News. “The emphasis has been mainly on the Pacific Rim. But there are also great research opportunities in Europe at this time.”

The participating biology students in France will be eligible to partake in the USC chemistry department’s Interdisciplinary Program in Drug Discovery.

The Partner University Fund hopes to support innovative and sustainable partnerships between French and U.S. institutions of research and higher education.

Sponsored by the French American Cultural Exchange Foundation in 2007, the fund receives private donations and contributions from the French government.

McKenna learned about the award last fall during an Egide Foundation-sponsored trip to France. Guyader encouraged McKenna to apply for the award.

Texas Tech U’s Seshadri Ramkumar has created a cotton-carbon fabric that may be used in the cleaning efforts of the April 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ramkumar is an associate professor for the Texas Tech Institute of Environmental and Human Health and has a doctorate in materials, textiles and fiber-sciences.  In April of 2009 he patented Fibertect, a nonwoven cotton material combined with an activated carbon fabric that can be used for oil absorption and hydrocarbon vapor retention.

Although Ramkumar holds the patent, he said he and his graduate students are not the only people working on this technology.

“Many people, even at TTU, are working on cotton booms for oil absorbency,” Ramkumar said. “But Texas Tech University’s patented Fibertect technology with cotton-carbon is unique to TTU.”

Ramkumar said the reason so much research has been done on raw cotton to clean oil is that it has the ability to hold 30 to 40 times its weight in oil.

Roger Haldenby, vice president of operations for Plains Cotton Growers, said Ramkumar’s advancement in research has opened new doors in the cotton industry because there had previously been only a small demand for the type of cotton used in this technology.

“Some of the cotton we grow is low-maturity, it’s called low-micronaire,” said Haldenby, “and all that means is that the cellulose, the little fiber strands of cotton, haven’t matured as much as they are needed to make good, strong yarn and thread.”

Haldenby said these immature strands of cotton are hollow in the middle, allowing them to absorb more oil than mature cotton.

“A very immature fiber is like a tube,” said Haldenby.  “So imagine this little tube, if you put water or oil or something like that in there it’s actually able to absorb it into to the inside of the fiber.  So, low-micronaire, immature fibers are very good for this.”

Russell Lepard is part owner of Lepard Family Partnership, which produces five to six thousand barrels of cotton per year.  He said West Texas is one of the highest producers of low-micronaire cotton because of the warm, dry climate.

“The High Plains of Texas is the largest contiguous cotton growing area in the world,” said Lepard, “and because of our weather there is a lot of low-micronaire cotton produced here.

What makes Fibertect different from other cotton absorption technologies, however, is its combination with carbon.  It is a three-layer design consisting of a top and bottom layer of cotton to absorb oil and a middle layer of carbon that absorbs hydrocarbons and harmful carcinogenic vapors released from the oil.

Ramkumar said his unique use of activated carbon fabric in oil clean-up is extremely beneficial because the toxic vapors could potentially destroy ecosystems and cause cancer in humans if they are not absorbed.

Ramkumar said he and other researchers are simply taking what nature provides and applying it in new ways.

“Mother Nature has given cotton wax to protect it,” said Ramkumar. “The natural wax on the cotton helps to hold the oil together.  So, wax has affinity towards oil, and then the carbon has affinity towards vapor, it holds the vapor.”

Because Fibertect is all-natural, unlike synthetic plastic booms previously used to clean oil spills, it is 100 percent biodegradable and one sheet can be wrung and reused up to five times.

According to www.propublica.org, the only cleaning method currently being used by BP is dispersants, which is an aerial spraying technique.  The dispersant most commonly being used is Corexit EC9500A, which the Environmental Protection Agency has shown to be more toxic and less effective than other methods.

Ramkumar said the problem with Corexit EC9500A, besides the fact that it itself is toxic, is that it simply breaks down the oil into tiny particles which remain in the water and can be harmful to marine life and humans. He said Fibertect eliminates this problem because it absorbs the oil rather than break it down.

Samples of Fibertect have been sent to be BP but no decision has been made on whether or not to use it. Haldenby and Ramkumar said if they do decide to use it, this could be a big step towards a National Research University status for Texas Tech.

At a candlelight vigil in Downtown Oakland on the eve of jury selection in the second-degree murder trial of former BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle, supporters of shooting victim Oscar Grant said they were not happy about the direction the trial has taken so far.

Those gathered announced they would demonstrate at the corner of Broadway and 14th Street when the decision in the trial is announced, and many said if Mehserle walks violence may ensue.

“I think that people will be outraged. I think it will be very similar to the kind of thing we saw in January 2009 before Mehserle was even charged. People were so angry and so upset. I think it will enrage people all over again,” said community activist Leslie Payne.

Payne works with Oakland-based coalition New Year’s Movement for Justice.

Grant’s uncle Cephus Johnson, who flew back to Oakland from Los Angeles to attend the evening vigil in front of the Alameda County Courthouse on 12th Street, expressed concern about how the case was unfolding.

The best outcome would be for Mehersle to go behind bars, Johnson said. He suggested such a verdict would send a message to “police officers all over the United States” that “if they commit murder, they will go to jail.”

But given the low number of police officers to serve jail time for killing civilians — Mehserle is the first law enforcement officer in the state of California to be tried for a murder committed while on duty — Johnson said he is not optimistic.

“The stage is being set for Mehserle to get off,” he said. “I’m not confident that Mehserle will be held accountable. The defense attorney is doing everything he can to create distractions in this case.”

Johnson referred to a hearing he attended Tuesday morning in Los Angeles, where Judge Robert Perry decided to permit defense expert witness Michael Schott to testify regarding his interpretation of videos which could be crucial to the case.

Many community members present echoed Johnson’s fear of an acquittal.

Payne said moving the trial to Los Angeles, which authorities said was done due to concerns over whether Mehserle could get a fair trial in Alameda County, was a first step in Mehserle walking free.

She also said the focus on Grant’s character is inapplicable to the real issue at hand. “That’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “It doesn’t warrant murder.”

Oakland resident Cat Brooks, who performed a spoken word piece for the crowd, said, “If Cephus comes back disappointed then I’m disappointed.”

Brooks said the widely-viewed videotapes of the Grant shooting might have provided false hope for a conviction.

“We have it on tape and so I think there’s an expectation from the community that we’re finally going to get justice; that no longer are you going to kill black and brown and poor people and get away with it. But it may not turn out that way,” she said.

Brooks, who said she watched police brutally beat her father when she was only six years old, said she brought her 4-year-old daughter Jadyn with her to the vigil to teach her to stand up to such injustices.

She also said she feared what would happen in Mehserle is acquitted.

“I don’t think it’s going to pretty in Oakland and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty in L.A. I’m not advocating that, but what do you do with all that anger? What do you do with one more time when they tell you that your life isn’t worth anything and the lives of your babies and you brothers and your sisters don’t matter?”

The Coalition Against Police Executions hosted the event. Opening arguments in the case are scheduled for June 10 in Los Angeles.

Jury selection in the second-degree murder trial of former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot unarmed passenger Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009, began today amidst extraordinary steps to protect the privacy of jurors.

After a brief conversation with the attorneys on pre-trial matters, Judge Robert Perry began the jury selection process by reminding the audience to refrain from showing emotions in court or trying to contact jurors, saying he intended the trial to be a “quiet and dignified search for the truth.”

Jurors were then brought into the courtroom in groups of 50 via a back entrance, to prevent anyone from seeing them enter.

Judge Perry spoke to each group for approximately 15 minutes, introducing the case and informing the potential jurors of their responsibilities, with particular emphasis on the prohibition against jurors doing their own research or reading or viewing media accounts of the case.

The evidence presented in court is subject to legal standards to ensure the fairness of the trial, Perry explained, as he warned jurors that violating this rule would result in a mistrial.

He also explained the unusual measures being taken to prevent the identities of jurors from being revealed during the trial.

Attorneys in the case will not be given the jurors’ names, instead referring to them by badge numbers that the jurors will wear during court sessions.

Jurors will be “partially sequestered” during the trial — meaning that they will be kept in seclusion during breaks, but allowed to go home at night.

“We’re going to serve you lunch!” Perry said, noting this was the first time he had seen that in a judicial career spanning more than 600 trials.

Jurors will be told to park in a “secret location” and will be bused to the courthouse from there by sheriff’s deputies to provide additional privacy.

The extraordinary measures to protect jurors’ identities are being taken to prevent anyone from trying to influence jury members, Perry said.

“There was a great deal of publicity about this case” in the Bay Area, Perry told potential jurors, adding that the trial was moved to Los Angeles “out of concern that there had been so much publicity […] that it would be difficult” to select an impartial jury in Alameda County.

More than half of the 200 jurors brought into the courtroom during the day were excused for one reason or another, most due to the financial hardship of serving on a jury for a trial that is expected to last three to four weeks.

The remainder filled out a jury questionnaire including questions on race relations, which will be reviewed by the attorneys in the case.

Mehserle is white, while Grant was black, and the racial overtones of the case mean that the racial makeup of the jury could well have an influence on the outcome.

“12 white guys — that wouldn’t look good,” said Kenneth Johnson, Grant’s uncle, when asked about how the racial makeup of the jury might affect the trial. “12 black guys — that wouldn’t look good either,” he told the Beat, saying that a racially diverse jury would be the best outcome.

More potential jurors will be brought into the court tomorrow, with the process continuing until the judge’s target of about 100 questionnaires filled out is met.

Jury selection then continues June 8, when jurors who filled out questionnaires will be brought back for questioning by the attorneys. A jury is expected to be in place in time for the scheduled start of arguments on June 10.