By: Andrew Krammer

NCAA legislation to approve the use of multiyear student-athlete scholarships happened so fast that very few schools took the first step to distribute them.

The University of Minnesota athletics department awarded only nine multiyear scholarships in 2012-13, the first year the NCAA has allowed them.

Gophers officials were not made available to comment but released a statement.

“The University of Minnesota has a long history of honoring annual scholarships and ensuring student-athletes maintain their aid as long as they maintain required academic, team and university behavioral standards,” the statement read.

Big Ten programs Illinois, Ohio State and Michigan State offered many more multiyear scholarships than Minnesota, according to a report by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Illinois mostly replaced single-year offers with multiyear offers.

Illini associate athletics director for compliance Ryan Squire told the Minnesota Daily that the timing of the legislation, combined with Illinois’ philosophy, led to the decision.

“We had to make some quick decisions,” he said. “We had a signing day like the following week [in October 2011, when the legislation was approved].”

Illinois awarded 192 multiyear scholarships, dwarfing the next school on the list — Florida, which awarded 60.

Communication from the Big Ten offices also led Squire and Illinois to believe that most Big Ten schools would act as they did and award many multiyear offers.

“Given the slow adoption of it, it seems like we might be an outlier,” Squire said.

For the Gophers, three athletes in women’s track and field led the pack in multiyear scholarships.

No athletes in Gophers revenue sports received the extended offers, with women’s soccer, men’s tennis, men’s golf and women’s hockey each nabbing one or two of them.

“The University has offered multiyear scholarships in the past when appropriate to the specific student-athlete situation,” the Gophers’ statement read.

Inside the conference, the Buckeyes handed out 47 multiyear scholarships while the Spartans awarded 30, according to the Chronicle.

Illinois’ decision to offer so many more was about helping change the perception that student-athletes are taken advantage of, Squire said.

“It hopefully provides a little bit more security for them,” Squire said.

He said multiyear scholarships are part of a larger image issue the NCAA is currently battling.

“I think it’s wise for us to continue the route we’re going,” Squire said. “But who knows where we’ll be in five years.”

By: Tyler Gieseke

For years, theater arts senior Andrew Buckholtz has only had to report the income of one of his two dads on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

In the past, students with same-sex or unmarried parents who lived together weren’t required to report the income of both parents — potentially qualifying them for more aid.

But next year, that will change.

Beginning with the 2014-15 FAFSA, dependent students with same-sex or unmarried parents who live together will need to report income and other information from both parents.

The change is meant to more accurately reflect the financial picture of all households. Although the modification isn’t expected to apply to many students, those affected could receive less aid when more income is reported.

“I can see how — since more and more states are approving marriage equality — that this should change,” Buckholtz said, adding that a majority of states should do so before the FAFSA is changed.

A bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota is currently under debate in the state’s Legislature. If passed, Minnesota would be the 12th state to legally recognize gay marriage.

Initially, Buckholtz said, one of his dads was upset that only one parent was recognized on the FAFSA, because it seemed like another way the government wouldn’t recognize their partnership.

But Buckholtz said his family recognized he could potentially receive more aid by reporting only one parent’s information.

“This was … a way to get something out of the state,” he said.

Previous versions of the FAFSA weren’t representative of a student’s financial situation when only one parent was reported, said Ginny Dodds, manager of Minnesota state financial aid programs.

“The other parent was kind of ignored,” she said.

Even if a student’s parents were in a state-recognized same-sex marriage, she said the student would still only need to report one parent’s information because same-sex marriage isn’t recognized under federal law.

The revision, announced last week by the U.S. Department of Education, is meant to distribute aid more accurately to those who need it and “provide an inclusive form that reflects the diversity of American families,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a news release.

“What this change does is that it puts families of same-sex or unmarried parents on the same footing as married parents living with their children,” said Kris Wright, director of the University’s Office of Student Finance, in an email.

For most affected students, reporting more income will lower the amount of need-based aid they receive, according to a letter to higher education institutions from the Department of Education.

If both parents have relatively low incomes, Dodds said the student’s aid might not be affected or could actually increase, if a small amount of income must support a now-larger household.

Buckholtz said he doesn’t expect a large change in his aid amount.

The change is expected to affect a small percentage of students overall, according to the Department of Education’s letter.

“I don’t know a whole lot of other people who have same-sex parents,” Buckholtz said.

About 80 percent of FAFSA applicants won’t be affected by the change because they’re either independent students or dependent students with married parents. A large portion of the remainder includes students who also won’t be affected, because they have parents who aren’t married but live separately.

Students with divorced parents or parents who were never married won’t be affected by the change, Dodds said, but will continue to report information for the parent they lived with the most in the past year.

By: Samuel Gordon

Gophers junior ace Tom Windle’s slider is so good, sometimes Kurt Schlangen has trouble catching it.

“It’s unhittable. When he throws his best one, it’s filthy,” said Schlangen, the Gophers’ senior catcher. “It’s a touch pitch to catch sometimes.”

The slider, which Windle refers to as his “out pitch,” has caught the eye of Major League Baseball scouts. He’s projected to be selected in the first three rounds of the 2013 MLB draft.

 The pitch has also helped him become one of the best arms in the Big Ten. Windle is 6-2 with a 1.82 ERA — second best in the conference among starters — in 11 starts this season.

He’s thrown four complete games, and his 69 strikeouts also rank second in the Big Ten.

Windle flashed brilliance as a freshman in 2011 and was one of Minnesota’s top relievers.

He was slated to move into the rotation for the 2012 season, but a nagging arm injury kept him in the bullpen.

It wasn’t until last summer, playing in the prestigious Cape Cod League, that Windle finally flourished as a starter.

“The competition I was playing with, even on my own team, helped a lot,” Windle said. “[I was] able to grow with some of the top players in the country.”

Windle started seven games in the league for the Brewster Whitecaps and finished the summer 3-2 with a 2.52 ERA.

Scouts took notice, and Windle said they’d watch him pitch on a regular basis, though he was never approached by any.

A dominant March cemented Windle’s status as a big-league prospect.

In that month, Windle threw the program’s first no-hitter since 1993 and tossed three complete games.

Pro scouts flocked to the Metrodome to watch Windle pitch against projected top-10 pick Sean Manaea of Indiana State on March 15. Both starters dominated en route to a complete game, but Manaea allowed one fewer run and got the win.

Windle knows he’s being eyed as a draft pick, but he said he doesn’t think about it much.

“It’s obviously something that’s coming up, but right now on the [Gophers], that’s what’s important,” he said.

The draft process is nothing new for Windle.

After a dominant senior season at Osseo High School, Windle was selected by the Chicago White Sox in the 28th round of the 2010 MLB Draft.

Windle said the White Sox never offered him a contract, and he continued his career at Minnesota, where pitching coach Todd Oakes has overseen his development.

“He’s steadily got a little bit better each year,” Oakes said. “To have him in our rotation this third year is crucial to our pitching staff.”

Oakes said Windle came into the program as a pretty mature and responsible kid with a strong foundation.

“It’s been more of a polish job, polishing up on the little things,” Oakes said.

One of those little things was the development of a changeup to complement Windle’s slider and fastball.

As a reliever, Windle only needed the slider and fastball. The changeup has been reliable for him as a starter, and Windle called it “a nice add to my repertoire.”

Windle’s bag of pitches starts with his fastball. He consistently throws it in the low-90s, and it’s topped out at 94 mph this season.

Then comes the slider.

“He’s got what I call a swing-and-miss slider,” Oakes said. “Some guys got more of a pitch-to-contact breaking ball.”

Windle’s slider breaks away from left-handed hitters and down and in against righties.

“If they can have a breaking ball that’s effective against right-handed hitters, that’s key,” Oakes said. “That pitch separates him.”

Schlangen said it’s easy to call a game when Windle is on the mound.

“He can throw any of his pitches for strikes,” Schlangen said. “His stuff is so good, sometimes it feels like it doesn’t matter what the situation is. You can call any pitch.”

The Gophers will rely on Windle’s pitches for the remainder of the season. They sit atop the Big Ten standings with two series to play, and Windle has set the tone all year with strong outings on Fridays.

“He’s given us a chance in just about every game he’s pitched on Friday,” Minnesota head coach John Anderson said. “We’ve won every series in the league. He’s a factor in that.”

By: Meritte Dahl

Tommy Winter and Julio bonded over sports when they met in February.

The University of Minnesota junior meets the seventh-grader after school twice a week to participate in group activities with other youth as part of the Athletes Committed to Educating Students mentoring program.

Winter said he and Julio have a great relationship, but new numbers show their matchup is a bit of a commodity in the mentoring world.

The Mentoring Partnership of Minnesota found a significant gender gap in mentoring in the state.

Almost twice as many mentors are female than are male, and 29 percent of male youth wait more than a year before being matched with a mentor, according to the study released this year. That’s compared to 5 percent of females.

MPM Executive Director Joellen Gonder-Spacek said there’s a need for more male mentors.

“Men might not feel as competent stepping into a relational role,” she said.

MPM is planning to address the gender gap by reaching out to the University and communicating with men where they hang out, like at football games and barber shops, Gonder-Spacek said. She said they’ll ask current male mentors to talk about mentoring.

Gonder-Spacek said she plans to ask University President Eric Kaler about creating a University-wide mentoring strategy to recruit mentors.

Winter said he hasn’t noticed the gender gap, but said ACES needs more volunteers.

“The more volunteers you get, the more kids you can help,” he said.

Winter learned about the program through a public speaking course that offered volunteering as an alternative to a final exam.

Winter said he likely wouldn’t have joined ACES if the program hadn’t visited his class, and he’ll continue mentoring after the class ends next week.

The sports management student and other mentors play sports with students at Linwood Monroe Arts Plus school in St. Paul and help them with homework, he said.

“You just get the camaraderie with them all day,” he said.

Winter was surprised by how fun mentoring is, he said.

About 70 percent of the programs that took part in the MPM study said a lack of mentors was one of the top three reasons youth are put on a waiting list.

When boys come from single-parent families or don’t have many male figures in their life, a male mentor is often requested, Gonder-Spacek said.

Big Brothers Big Sisters requires youth and mentors to be the same gender.

Kinesiology junior Joe Crosariol said he and his “little brother” have met at Pratt Community School once a week since last fall.

He said they play sports and talk about their week, keeping most of the discussion on the fourth-grader.

Crosariol said the program has helped him learn how to better interact with children.

“I feel like girls are more accepting to the idea of being a role model,” Crosariol said, adding that men may not be ready for that.

Being a “big brother” is a serious role, Crosariol said, “but if you think about it simply, it’s just being a friend.”

Mentor and MPM employee Nicki Patnaude works with Free Arts Minnesota, a weekly program that leads art projects for youth with the Boys and Girls Clubs in St. Paul.

“I see the gender gap every time,” Patnaude said. She said about 70 percent of the mentees are boys.

Patnaude’s team of four women sometimes struggles to relate to the boys they mentor, she said.

Men may be less likely to mentor because they might not fully understand what’s expected of them in that role, Patnaude said.

“It’s really so simple, easy, it doesn’t take much time,” she said.

There are almost 41,000 mentors and more than 196,000 mentees statewide, according to MPM.

Youth are often mentored to keep them engaged in school, Gonder-Spacek said, but it can also affect mental health, she said.

Youth who were mentored for 13 months reported fewer depressive symptoms than youth who didn’t have a mentor, according to a study released this year by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.

“I’m able to be there for my ‘little,’ to be a steady person in her life,” BBBS mentor Morgan Aghjian said.

The family social science sophomore’s “little sister” is 7-year-old Kaylie.

When they make arts and crafts, Aghjian said, Kaylie always wants to trade projects, “so she has mine and I have hers.”

She said she wants to continue mentoring Kaylie while she attends the University.

“After being so close with someone,” Aghjian said, “you don’t want to leave them.”

By: Nate Gotlieb

The Gophers football team added a quality opponent to its 2014 and 2015 schedules Tuesday, nearly seven months after inciting public scrutiny for backing out of a home-and-home series with North Carolina.

Athletics director Norwood Teague announced Tuesday that the Gophers will play a home-and-home series with Texas Christian University in 2014 and 2015.

“It was time to add a stronger team into the mix for ’14 and ’15,” Teague said.

The addition effectively recoups the $800,000 the Gophers are paying to cancel their North Carolina series in 2013 and 2014. Teague said TCU will pay Minnesota $500,000 for the 2014 game in Texas, but Minnesota won’t have to pay TCU anything to host the Horned Frogs in 2015.

The 2015 TCU game will replace a home game against South Dakota State University, a Football Championship Subdivision school.

The Gophers would have had to pay SDSU $400,000 to play that game. The fee for the Gophers to cancel the game — also $400,000 — was waived because TCU and South Dakota State agreed to play in 2015.

The Gophers canceled the North Carolina series in October, prompting backlash from fans and media. Critics of the decision questioned the strength of the Gophers’ nonconference schedule, which has featured an FCS opponent four years in a row.

TCU went 7-6 last season, its first in the Big 12 Conference, after years of dominating inferior opponents in the Mountain West Conference. The Horned Frogs lost just 10 games from 2007-11 and competed in two Bowl Championship Series bowl games.

Gophers head coach Jerry Kill had previously expressed concern about playing a nonconference BCS opponent early in the team’s rebuilding process. Kill, entering his third season at Minnesota, had advocated for removing North Carolina from the schedule.

Teague said Kill was “on board” with Tuesday’s move.

“On board means he’s with us and ready to go and knows we’re playing the game and is ready to move forward,” Teague said.

The Gophers won’t play a nonconference BCS opponent in 2013. Before Tuesday, the Gophers were the only Big Ten team not to have a BCS opponent on their nonconference schedule for 2014 or 2015.

The 2014 game will fill an empty date on Minnesota’s schedule.

By: Marion Renault

If Twitter is about what’s happening now, and Facebook is about connecting with family and friends, then Pinterest is about stuff, a new University of Minnesota study suggests.

The website, which functions as a cyber “pin board” where users can “pin” and organize online photos, was the focus of a study by computer science professor Loren Terveen and Georgia Institute of Technology’s Eric Gilbert.

The two, along with a pair of graduate students, began gathering information on the social media site last summer and presented their paper last week in Paris.

This was one of the first academic studies of Pinterest, said graduate student researcher Shuo Chang, and the findings revealed that the site — which reached 10 million users faster than any other social networking site — has characteristics and a user base that could be valuable to advertisers.

“We thought it would be interesting because it was very fast-growing,” Terveen said. “It was interestingly different from other sites in that there was this focus on objects … and [was] heavily dominated by female users.”

After examining more than 200,000 pins, the researchers discovered the language of Pinterest differs from social media counterparts like Twitter.

While other social media users tend to use words like “now,” “today” and “LOL,” Pinterest uses words that focus on things, like “use,” “look,” “want” and “need.”

“Twitter seemed to be about socializing, conversation and here’s what I’m doing now,” Terveen said. “Pinterest was much more about things that I want to do or things that I want to try.”

Despite being a social media site, Chang said Pinterest users are more focused on posting new content than interacting.

“There is not much social activity on the site,” he said. “People are more interested in re-pinning a picture that they like.”

Those findings, Terveen said, suggest Pinterest is evolving into a “culture of almost new domesticity,” which could be useful if tapped into by marketers.

“If people are curating collections of things,” he said, “that’s a great opportunity to sell those things to them.”

Through images and text, the users create a cumulative profile of interests — a gold mine for advertisers and marketers.

“Deciding the purchase behavior and taste of each user is going to be valuable information,” Chang said. “That’s why retailers are interested.”

Journalism assistant professor Shayla Thiel-Stern said the visual element of Pinterest will be both advantageous for advertisers and a hurdle.

“[Advertisers on Facebook] try and market based on words,” she said. “Pinterest is really visual —so this is sort of new terrain for a lot of companies.”

Terveen and his team have already begun a second round of research on the site, which will focus on the different categories on Pinterest. He said he hopes to begin analyzing this second set of data in the next couple of weeks.

By: Marion Renault

Entering Dinkytown’s the Book House is like entering a maze.

Follow the bend of ceiling-high bookshelves and there’s a corner table with a book on hair in African art and another one with 3-D landscapes of Israel.

In the next winding stretch of literature, plastic lawn chairs are waiting to be used, and books on everything from botany to Marxism are waiting to be read.

Soon, the Book House and its estimated 60,000 volumes will be packed up and moved to a new home in Prospect Park.

After 37 years of business, the used book store will need to relocate for a new student housing project developed by the Opus Group to take its place.

According to owner Kristen Eide-Tollefson, lawyers from the development company told the Book House it would have 10 days and $2,500 to move out when they take possession of the property.

“We are going to have to move before we even know if they’re going to get their permit,” she said. “It’s a predicament.”

Matt Rauenhorst of Opus said the company will need to wait until the city approves its plans before it can move tenants out. He declined to comment on any agreements with the Book House.

Opus hasn’t begun looking to fill the retail on the ground floor of the project yet, he said.

“We still haven’t gone out and started soliciting for those retail spaces at this point,” he said. “We don’t want to be too far out in front of it.”

University alumna Kirsten Wisniewski said she distinctly remembers her first trip to the Book House.

“I remember thinking this was the strangest but coolest store,” she said. “… To me it was such a staple of campus life — I’m sad that future students aren’t going to get that.”

Employee Kevin Sell said he and others at the store have been searching for a new location in Dinkytown to no avail for the past two months.

“If we stay in Dinkytown, we have to go to a lower level and a smaller space, and that’s something that is not our favorite option,” Eide-Tollefson said.

She said she was also interested in a vacant storefront on 14th Avenue but was dismayed when she discovered the apartment complex across the street was planning to use it as a rental office.

“They’re not just doing their project, they’re taking retail space, and we need to relocate,” she said. “So that was hard to deal with.”

Instead, Sell said the business is in the process of signing a lease with a storefront along University Avenue just past Stadium Village.

That new location, he said, is likely to be a permanent one.

“The prices that they’re asking right now for this [current] building are just exorbitant — double what we pay now,” he said. “We can’t afford that.”

Soon, employees will begin to pack away the thousands of books, all while making sure they can keep their online sales through Amazon during their move.

Employee Ryan Hinderaker said maintaining online sales is essential, since they account for close to half of the store’s business.

Beginning that process so early, Sell said, is a disappointing but necessary next step.

“A month would be difficult but doable,” he said. “10 days is completely unrealistic.”

Hinderaker said the move itself could be beneficial to the business by allowing it to reorganize its inventory.

It could also be a chance to grow in other ways, he said, while maintaining the business’

traditions.

“You have to look at it as an opportunity to do things differently,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of stuff moved and changed, but a lot of it, even more, will be the same.”

Wisniewski said she’ll probably visit less frequently with the new location; other students too, she said, are less likely to travel farther to get to the store.

“I think it’s going to have to start a new loyalty … and rebuild

clientele,” she said.

Sell said after the recent months of uncertainty since the Opus project was proposed, it might be time for the store, its employees and its customers to look forward.

“We’ve been living in uncertainty for three months … it’s kind of a frustrating way to work and live,” he said. “Part of us is excited for the future — starting at a new location may be just what we need.”

By: Joelle Stangler, University student

Let me open by saying I made a point to save this letter until after Spring Jam. As someone who owns all of Mat Kearney’s CDs, I was not one of the hundreds of angry posts on the Student Unions and Activities’ Facebook page in an uproar over the decision. SUA was put in a difficult situation and made the best of it with the resources it had. However, what did put me in an uproar was its lack of good public relations in dealing with the masses. Here’s what it should have done leading up to Spring Jam.

First, as soon as SUA knew it couldn’t get Macklemore, it should have established its scapegoat. Instead of defending why it didn’t get Macklemore for Spring Jam, SUA could have bought the best seats for Macklemore’s concert at the Minnesota State Fair this summer and sold them to students at a reduced cost. Or, if SUA was strategic, it would’ve held on to them until Spring Jam and given them away at the Kearney concert.

Next, SUA should have utilized its social media better and minimized the backlash it would inevitably receive. Rather than announcing the headliner in video format on its Facebook page, SUA should have made it a Facebook event. The video can be shared, moving it to the top of a friend’s news feed. With a video, comments appear quickly and allow for people to incessantly “like” comments with similar sentiments. The comments then lose their meaning and become a game of who can hate on the lineup in the most creative way. In an event, it is far easier to pin posts so they are hidden, or delete them from the timeline. In addition, if you share the event, you are not sharing the hundreds of comments that go with it. As it stands, should someone want to share the post in a positive light, they are forced to include all the negative comments with it. SUA set itself up for rapid and easily accessible criticism.

Finally, after the initial backlash, SUA should have swallowed its pride and made up for the mistake. SUA volunteers or employees should have hopped on Twitter and Facebook, asked who students wanted to see for the homecoming concert and moved on. Part of damage control is ensuring the so-called damage doesn’t happen again.

That being said, the weekend was one SUA should be proud of, and it should be commended on the time, effort and creativity it put into a weekend the entire student body could enjoy in one way or another.

By: Susan Eckstein, University student

One of the best parts about college is supporting our Gophers sport teams. I have had season tickets to Gophers football and hockey for the past three years.

What better way to show school spirit than wearing your favorite Gophers jersey and cheering them on? Unfortunately, politicians in St. Paul are not as supportive of this as we are. The proposed budget in the Legislature includes a 13 percent tax increase on licensed, sports-related products in Minnesota.

This huge tax increase would apply to any team registered with the NCAA. That means that the price of all of our Gophers merchandise would increase.

Doesn’t the Legislature understand that college students are the last demographic they should try and increase revenue from? This tax doesn’t end there, though. It would apply to any Minnesota Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves or Wild gear.

With baseball season in full swing, the last thing we need is a price increase on any Twins merchandise.

Perhaps the worst part about this tax, other than making it more expensive to support our sports teams, is where the revenue will go. The Legislature is proposing spending $300,000 on a boat-landing bathroom, $300,000 on a bee habitat, $100,000 on a tree museum and $840,000 on exotic, overseas trips for artists, to name a few parts of the recent omnibus bills. Oh, and on top of all this, they also want to increase their own annual salary by 35 percent.

This needs to be stopped. College students should not be forced to foot the bill for all of this. Please join me in calling local representatives and telling them to remove this tax from the omnibus tax bill!

By: Adeel Ahmad, University student

While the motives behind the Boston bombings are unclear, it is important to remember that killing innocent lives has no justification. As an American Muslim, I find in the Quran (5:33): “Whoever killed a person … it shall be as if he had killed all of mankind.” While the culprits claim to be Muslim, it is clear that they lacked the proper guidance that would have illuminated this Quranic verse.

As a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, I am grateful to have such guidance. Led by Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community champions the separation of mosque and state, while condemning all forms of terrorism. His Holiness is making a historical visit to the U.S. later this month. We invite all Americans to join us in rejecting violence and uniting to serve humanity.