May 3, 2013

The University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper

friDAY, may 3, 2013 TOMORROW 60S / Sunny

After University Senate vote, o� cials could prosecute students for o -campus violations

By Alex KirshnerSta� writer

The university will soon be able to prosecute students for o -cam-pus violations after the University Senate voted yesterday to expand the jurisdiction of the Code of Student Conduct.

The legislation, which passed 68-18 with four abstentions after a lengthy debate, will now go to university President Wallace Loh’s desk. The change would enable the Office of Student Conduct to in-vestigate cases that impact campus

See grants, Page 2

Conduct code set to expand

By Yasmeen AbutalebSenior sta� writer

Jayson Blair seemed as talented as prospective journalists come.

He was highly a able, often o ering a helping hand in this university’s journal-ism college and eagerly seeking career opportunities. Chris Callahan, then the college’s associate dean, even wrote Blair a glowing recommendation for a Society of Professional Journalists scholarship in 1996, according to a Baltimore Sun article published eight years later.

“I can’t think of a more deserving recipient for your scholarship,” wrote Callahan, who did not respond to The Diamondback’s request for comment.

samantha zwerling, Student Government Association president, oversaw the body’s � nal meeting of the year, when it voted on contentious measures, deciding to preserve freshman representatives. � le photo/the diamondback

By Fola AkinnibiSta� writer

Movies old and new line the shelves of James Glass’ o� ce — they have been a part of his life for as long as he can remember.

Glass remembers hanging out as a child in Los Angeles at the Gordon Theater all day with his father, who was the manager. Now, as a politi-cal philosophy professor, Glass has

Omnibus results in heated debate

DIVERSIONS Out of his suit, Tony Stark shines in satisfying Iron Man 3 p. 6 SHUTTING COLGATE DOWNMen’s lacrosse’s defense looks to sti� e Raiders p. 8ONLINE Read the entire Jayson Blair feature at diamondbackonline.com

See glass, Page 2

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ISSUE NO. 139

103rd Year of Publication

NEWS 2 OPINION 4 FEATURES 5 DIVERSIONS 6 CLASSIFIED 6 SPORTS 8INDEX Submit tips to The Diamondback at [email protected] For breaking news, alerts and more, follow us on Twitter @thedbk © 2013 THE DIAMONDBACK

safety or the university’s operation in University Police’s jurisdiction. The expansion would also serve as a re-source for students who are victims of other students’ misconduct, said Andrea Goodwin, Office of Student Conduct director.

Under the current code, the O� ce of Student Conduct generally can only discipline students for infractions that occur on university property or at school-sponsored events.

At the meeting, several students and faculty members spoke out against the

Blair won the $4,000 in aid, which was hardly the fi rst of his accolades.

He interned at The Boston Globe and The Washington Post and became The Diamondback’s editor in chief. The aspiring journalist left for a job at The New York Times in 1999, fulfill-ing many former professors’ greatest hopes for him.

Blair, who declined several requests for comment, served as a sort of public face for the college, said journalism professor Chris Hanson. The journal-ism college invited the Columbia native back for alumni and fundraising events; his picture sat in a display case, and he was featured in a 2000 recruiting video.

The adulation didn’t last long,

though. After nearly four years at the Times, Blair was found to have fabri-cated and plagiarized at least 36 articles within a six-month span. He resigned on May 1, 2003 — just a decade ago — and left journalism at only 27 years old.

The Blair scandal shook one of the world’s most respected newsrooms. And its aftershocks reverberated all the way back to College Park.

“I think unhappily a lot of people still remember it and associate it with Maryland, and that’s a shame,” said Carl Stepp, a journalism school profes-sor who often spoke with Blair during his time at the university. “He hurt the

SGA votes to keep freshman, transfer reps.

By Sandra MüllerSta� writer

The SGA overhauled its bylaws after hours of debate in its fi nal and longest meeting of the semester be-ginning on Wednesday.

Student Government Association members reviewed seven bills, which included proposals to eliminate the two freshmen representatives and the transfer representative. However, that suggestion met fi erce debate from students who said eliminating the body’s freshman perspective would be detrimental to many students.

“To deny [freshmen] the opportunity to get involved is completely wrong,” said Patrick Ronk, a freshman repre-sentative who amended the legislation to save the positions.

Wednesday’s meeting also included discussions about additional require-ments for executive positions, as well as clearly outlining the SGA’s goals for next year to make the body’s processes easier and more e� cient. That led to intense discussions until 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

Unsurprisingly, the changes that would have impacted the organization

Sustainability fund helps green programs take root By Madeleine ListSta� writer

From rooftop gardens to water bottle-fi lling stations, this university boasts many green initiatives.

Scott Tjaden wanted his project to stand out, though, and to do that, the environmental science and technology graduate student realized he needed to think vertically. Tjaden is working to create a “green wall,” a tall lattice system that supports climbing plants on the southern side of the animal science and

agricultural engineering building, im-proving its energy e� ciency.

Tjaden’s project is one of 16 campus initiatives that received grants from the university’s sustainability council. Using funding from the student sus-tainability fee, the council awarded a total of $252,220 to the student-, faculty- and sta -led projects that seek to help the campus reduce its carbon footprint, said Mark Stewart, sustain-ability o� ce senior project manager.

See omnibus, Page 2

See conduct, Page 3

channeled his love for movies into the class-room with a summer course that looks at a political topic through a cin-ematic lens.

The summer course — now called GVPT 388A: Film and the Study of Politics of Terror in the Family and the State— began in 1972 as one of the first three-week summer courses this university offered, and, much to Glass’ surprise, it quickly gained popularity. While the course’s focus has

Terror through the Glass lensGov. professor uses fi lm to show e� ects of terror on society

james glassPolitical philosophy prof.

evolved over the years from social dis-content to terror, it still draws a wait-list.

“I’d long been interested in film. The idea was to create a unique educa-tional experience,” Glass said. “I never thought it would get this popular.”

Students fl ocked to the class, and at its peak in the ’80s, more than 150 stu-dents were enrolled. Glass was forced to move to Ho Theater to accommo-date the students.

The material, not the professor, is what draws the students into the class, he said.

However, some of Glass’ students

JAYSON BLAIR: 10 YEARS LATER

PART 3 OF 3

See blair, Page 3

out of the scandal, but still in the shadow

A decade removed from the Jayson Blair saga, faculty re� ect on lessons learnedillustration by ben fraternale/the diamondback

2 THE DIAMONDBACK | NEWS | friday, May 3, 2013

james glass, a political philosophy professor, has been teaching a government and politics course that has examined political topics through � lm for nearly 30 years. james levin/the diamondback

would disagree with that state-ment — it’s Glass who brings the material to life, said Yael Nagar, a sophomore government and politics major in Glass’ intro-duction to political theory class. Glass brings interesting perspec-tives into his classes, she said.

“He has all these opinions about human nature and society and how the world is construct-ed,” Nagar said. “It’s really inter-esting to unravel where he gets those ideas.”

Junior government and poli-tics major Matt Lustbader said Glass’ experiences liven up his classroom lectures.

“Professor Glass is a really knowledgeable guy,” he said. “His contribution to the class is really valuable.”

When he began the summer course, Glass used fi lm to teach politics of the family. But as time wore on, he said, students could no longer relate to the family conflicts of the ’70s and ’80s. About four or fi ve years ago, he decided it was time to switch the theme of the course to something more timely. Glass selected terror and terrorism because in a post-9/11 world, it seemed like a rel-evant topic.

Every week, students watch four movies centered on three di� erent themes.

During week one, the focus is terror in and on the self; week two focuses on terror in the com-munity, and week three is cen-tered on state-sponsored terror. Glass mixes popular fi lms such

as Black Swan and Shutter Island with lesser-known fi lms such as City of God and The Grey Zone.

Glass said the fi lms force stu-dents to think about the nature of terror and how it contributes to political violence.

“Students see terror not so much as a set of policy ques-tions — how to prevent terror-ism, how to contain it and so on — but they see terror enacted [in the movies],” Glass said. “They get a sense of the power of ideol-ogy, the power of political belief, that drives individuals to really hurt people.”

An online section of the course has been added, but Glass feels this takes away from the overall experience. He enjoys the community the students build with one other over the three-week period.

“Friendships have developed, we’ve had situations where students have met in the film course,” Glass said. “That has been one of my favorite things.”

Terrorism will likely remain the theme of the course for the foresee-able future — at least until it is no longer a part of the national con-versation, Glass said. It has become a large part of Americans’ lives, and he believes it is here to stay.

“When it happens here, when it happens in Boston, it becomes more of a collective psychologi-cal phenomenon that a� ects ev-erybody,” Glass said. “Watching these two guys being pursued by Boston Police, it was like a movie. It couldn’t have been more dramatic and terrifying at the same time.”

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GLASSFrom PAGE 1

“If applied on a bigger scale, we could see some energy savings,” Tjaden said. “It helps, especially on older buildings, to save energy since we can’t go back and add in-sulation to the walls.”

Stewart has seen improve-ments in green campus initia-tives thanks to the fund.

“[The grants] have done so much to promote sustainability on campus, and to promote it in a way that we’re really hoping to see,” Stewart said. “That is, by encouraging the campus com-munity to think of their own sus-tainability projects and reduce the environmental impacts of their own operations.”

For Tjaden, the grant money has been instrumental in explor-ing new ways to implement green technology, such as his wall.

The plants will keep the building cool by shading the walls during the summer, and when they die in the winter, the walls will absorb the natural sunlight. The green walls could be useful at other locations on the campus, he said, and someday even in cities where space for planting is limited.

“It especially helps to add biodiversity to a certain area, general vegetation and fresher air,” he said.

Any upward-growing plant can be used on a green wall, he said. He recently planted a variety of grapes, passion flowers, red trumpet vines, yellow jasmine

and begonias, and expects the wall to be fully covered by summer 2014.

The green wall project is a bit of a new take on the more well-known green roof. Stamp Student Union received $20,000 from the sustainability fund this year to improve its own green roofs.

Those green roofs were initial-ly installed over the Atrium and Prince George’s Room in 2009 but failed because they did not have proper drainage, said Dan Wray, Stamp’s assistant facilities director. With the help of the sustainabil-ity fund, facilities management, in partnership with the plant sci-ences and landscape architecture departments and a green roofi ng company, are now working to install a new and improved green roof for Stamp, Wray said.

The green roof will help with stormwater reduction by retain-ing rainwater and preventing runo� , Wray said. Additionally, it could improve air quality in the surrounding area and provide insulation for the building.

This green roof will act as a “living lab” for students to monitor its success and further study the new technology, he said.

Even after giving money to 18 promising sustainability projects, the university sustainability council still has $60,000 left over to dis-tribute next year, Stewart said. Each project should build on the univer-sity’s sustainability goals of reduc-ing costs, decreasing environmental impacts and improving health and quality of life, he added.

Other grant projects ranged from installing water bottle-fi ll-ing stations in main buildings and increasing bicycle parking on the

campus, to researching more e£ -cient ways to use renewable energy.

“Some of the projects get at some specific sustainability metrics we have in terms of reduc-ing the energy footprint or water footprint of the campus,” Stewart said. “But I think they address our bigger goal of creating a culture of sustainability on campus. It’s really supporting a more sustain-able community, which is a much harder-to-define idea than the specifi c metrics that we track.”

Zachary Siegel, sophomore computer science and physics major, is one of 14 undergraduate students on the grant-recipient team, QUANTUM SEA, which is researching how covering solar cells in a special film could help solar panels absorb more sunlight and convert energy more e£ ciently.

“We want to show that this

is a viable technology and make solar cells a more viable source of alternative energy,” Siegel said.

If the technology is developed further, it could increase the ef-fi ciency of solar cells by up to 25 percent, he added.

Every funded project brings a new perspective to sustain-ability that benefi ts the campus in a real way, said Karina French, an undergraduate representative on the council.

“We are moving away from projects that are sustainable inherently or just theoretically,” said French, a senior English and geography major. “But looking to fund projects that will improve our campus as a whole and allow for our campus community to be more sustainable.”

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students install a green roof over Stamp Student Union’s Atrium and Prince George’s Room. The roofs will help with stormwater reduction and preventing runo� . photo courtesy of dan wray

grantsFrom PAGE 1

and students on the campus became the most controversial for legislators.

Eliminating the freshman and transfer positions would negatively impact the body’s diversity, said diversity direc-tor Charmaine Wilson-Jones, which she said the SGA can’t a� ord to do.

Chief of sta� Landon Greer, who had contributed to the reform proposals, said the “freshman voice is not pre-vented from being involved.” He added legislative repre-sentatives should not be set along the lines of classes but within residential and aca-demic borders.

Kiese Hansen, an SGA com-mittee member who recently transferred to this university,

OMNIBUSFrom PAGE 1

argued transfer students are un-derrepresented on the campus.

“It is a diverse group, and their perspective needs to be heard,” she said.

Ultimately, Ronk’s amend-ment passed, 23 to 2, preserving the three positions.

Another discussion tackled the appointment of a Residence Hall Association representative to the student fees review com-mittee — a position the RHA has had since 2008.

A bill proposed to strike that position, as proponents argued the seat would give the RHA an unfair share of infl uence compared to other student voices. And while the legislature did not overturn this proposal, the discussion was just as lively as the one before.

RHA President Sasha Azar and President-elect Omer Kaufman advocated keeping the seat, arguing RHA is a highly informed and influential body that can

bring valuable perspective to the committee.

However, the legislature did not approve an amendment to reinstate this part of the bylaws, leaving RHA to seek a student fees review com-mittee seat outside of the SGA.

“This is not a personal attack,” North Hill representative Nina Marks said after the vote. “We still want to collaborate with RHA.”

In a policy shift, the legislative body also passed a resolution to support a ban on hydraulic fracturing — a bill sponsored by freshman representative J.T. Stanley that had been tabled since mid-March.

The legislature ultimately passed the bill with 16 votes in favor, seven opposed and two abstentions.

The omnibus reform included other changes involving a man-datory tabling hour for legisla-tors to improve their outreach to constituents in addition to stricter guidelines for reinforc-

ing the polling system imple-mented this school year.

And while legislators until now had to attend the Terrapin Pride Day lobbying event in An-napolis, the bylaws now state each representative has to attend two lobbying events, at least one of them in Annapolis.

“I think it is viable to have an Annapolis requirement,” said SGA speaker Matthew Popkin.

An amendment by journalism representative Noah Niederhof-fer to not specify the location of either lobbying event failed.

Other pieces of legislation passed included a resolution to condemn DOTS’ “Why I Ride” contest, a bill funding a campus photo spirit display and a resolu-tion to support the creation of an interfaith fund. A bill to co-spon-sor Stamp Student Union’s “Peace Patio” was tabled indefi nitely.

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friday, may 3, 2013 | NEWS | THE DIAMONDBACK 3

college, and he hurt people who had helped him and gone out of their way.”

SLOWING DOWN

When David Cay Johnston began his journalism career in 1968, he tried to absorb as many lessons as possible from more experienced writers.

So when Blair returned to the Times in 1999 for a second, extended internship, the senior reporter — who had joined the Times in 1995 after nearly 30 years in the field — decided to offer the rookie some advice. Johnston saw an opportunity to provide a “cub reporter” the same favor his elders had af-forded him decades earlier.

Blair feigned attention when Johnston spoke with him, John-ston said, but Johnston quickly realized Blair had no interest in improving himself. He was a “lightweight going nowhere,” Johnston said. If a rookie wasn’t listening to someone of John-ston’s stature, the Pulitzer Prize winner said, Blair clearly didn’t understand what it took to become a reporter.

Others in the newsroom often saw Blair stick close to managing editor Gerald Boyd. When Boyd left the newsroom for a cigarette break, Blair often followed with his own pack of cigarettes.

There must be something special about Jayson, many sta� members thought. How else could a beginning reporter cozy up to the No. 2 editor?

One day, midway through Blair’s four-year tenure, Johnston and a colleague spotted Blair and Boyd standing next to each other across the street. Though the reporter and managing editor appeared close, Johnston told his friend to observe their body language.

Boyd clearly didn’t want to be around Blair.

Odds are Boyd wishes he never had been. Once the entire country learned Blair had de-ceived the Times’ top honchos, numerous sta�ers complained about upper management. Within five weeks of Blair’s resignation, executive editor Howell Raines and Boyd left the newsroom after more than 45 combined years at the Times.

But they weren’t the only people Blair betrayed. Profes-sors invested in Blair’s future while he was a student at this university. They wrote recom-mendations and let him help hire prospective faculty members. Such extra support helped him land his prestigious internships at the Globe and the Post, as well as the Times.

“It made us all aware of the vulnerability and fragility of stu-dents,” Stepp said, “and the need not to take anything — including people’s integrity — for granted.”

Perhaps if they had taken more time to get to know Blair, some faculty thought, they would have seen more of the warning signs.

But maybe they simply didn’t want to see the signs, Hanson said. Maybe they allowed the allure of Blair’s promising future — and the ways it could boost the college’s national profile — to obscure their judgment.

“The lesson is you have to be very careful about who you latch on to to promote,” Hanson said. “Once you invest in someone, it might be more di�cult to heed the warning signs.”

‘A UNIQUE PROBLEM’

Journalism college faculty members couldn’t help but feel sick as Blair’s life spiraled out of control.

They saw a Virginia common-wealth’s attorney dispute a Blair story on the Washington-area sniper attacks. They learned Blair had fabricated many of his quotes. And they watched as Blair’s web of lies unraveled on the national stage.

His former mentors struggled to understand how he swindled the Times’ editors. The questions were endless, Hanson said. How could Blair have been capable of such deception? What would happen to the college’s reputation?

“People were both fascinated and embarrassed and wondering how much damage would be inflicted,” Hanson said. “It easily could’ve happened somewhere else.”

Within days of the scandal making national headlines, faculty members removed Blair’s picture from a display case in the journalism building. The once-outstanding student — the one who held so much promise just four years earlier — had become a point of shame.

But before the college could fully move past Blair’s demise, another alumnus was in the thick of yet another scandal.

Less than a year after Blair’s resignation, USA TODAY jour-nalists found reporter Jack Kelley had made up substantial por-tions of at least eight stories, lifted quotes and other material and manipulated an investiga-tion of his work.

Like Blair, Stepp said, Kelley was determined to become a na-tionally recognized name.

“I think every college has had instances of students who have misbehaved,” said Chris Harvey, the journalism college’s intern-ship and career coordinator. “You can’t control a student’s behavior

once they leave your building.”I t wa s ea sy fo r fa c u l ty

members to dismiss Blair as an isolated incident. The Kelley case, though, made outsiders start to question this university. Was it all just too coincidental?

“We were unlucky that the Jack Kelley thing popped up,” Hanson said. “It gave the im-pression to some we had a unique problem.”

MOVING FORWARD

Stepp and Harvey didn’t want Blair to leave school when he was o�ered a reporting position at the

expansion, citing concerns about fairness and indefinite boundaries.

Senator Jessica Cox, a gradu-ate student, worried Goodwin’s authority as director was too far-reaching and the bill’s language too vague.

“It opens up a Pandora’s Box,” she said, calling the bill an “ab-stract, blanket policy.”

To that end, an amendment to the expansion narrowly passed. The initial bill included broader terms about the expansion of the code, such as whether or not a code violation jeopar-dized “health,” “well-being” or another “distinct” university interest, but that set of criteria was limited to include safety and whether university operations are disrupted.

After Goodwin proposed the code’s expansion in October, the Senate’s Student Conduct Com-mittee reviewed her suggestions and added them to the legislation.

The O�ce of Student Conduct and local law enforcement run their prosecution and disci-plinary operations separately, so students — if the violation warrants it — could potentially face punishment twice for the same o�ense if it infringes on the conduct code and the law.

“We’re representatives of the university; we should be held ac-countable on and off campus,” said Josh Ratner, undergraduate senator and the Student Govern-ment Association’s city council liaison. “We’re students here, and we’re students there.”

As is current practice, law enforcement could opt to turn over some cases to the office altogether, Goodwin said. Even serious o�enses, such as sexual assault, could go through her office instead of law enforce-ment, she added.

O�cials sought to allay con-cerns that the expansion of the code would be used to punish

students for standard o�-cam-pus drinking violations, even if the police catch them first.

“This isn’t targeting [stu-dents] for drinking o� campus or underage drinking or little, menial things like that,” Ratner said. “It’s to go after the really bad stu� — the sexual assault, felonies, things that aren’t nec-essarily punishable otherwise.”

The goal was not to put stu-dents under surveillance all the time, said Jason Speck, senate conduct committee chairman.

“The Office of Student Conduct is not going to have people down on Route 1 with clip-boards, checking down the names of everyone who has a red Dixie Cup in their hand,” Speck said.

Goodwin said students caught sneaking into the city’s bars with false identification could poten-tially be punished through the university, though specifics have not been worked out.

I n t h e m o n t h s a h ea d , Goodwin said she would work with students to more clearly define which violations of the code would lead to university sanctions.

Some campus groups have expressed concerns that the expansion of jurisdiction needlessly subjects students to a sort of double jeopardy. The Residence Hall Associa-tion voted to oppose it in late April. And Devin Ellis, a faculty senator, worried it could be used to exert political pres-sure from outsiders to have students punished.

But the expansion is ulti-mately a step forward, said Vincent Novara, who became senate chairman Thursday.

“With the broadness comes a little bit of flexibility that we need in order to be able to enact this policy the right way and interpret it,” he said. “With a little bit of vagueness, some of that will also be to the students’ advantage.”

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conductFrom PAGE 1

blairFrom PAGE 1

Times in spring 1999. He was only a few credits short of graduating.

“The Times will still want you,” Harvey told Blair.

B u t a few m o re c l a s s e s wouldn’t have prevented Blair’s downfall, Hanson said. He could’ve come from any college.

Today, Hanson feels strange using Blair’s story in his journal-ism ethics classes to illustrate the far-reaching consequences of selfish ambitions.

Blair, after all, helped Hanson get his job. The then-senior helped interview Hanson for a tenure-track position in 1999, and he commended Hanson’s knowledge of important plagiarism cases.

“I always tell the story about why I’m so qualified to teach the class,” Hanson said, “because I got the green light from Jayson Blair.”

Blair held prominent positions within the journalism college, and he interned at some of the coun-try’s elite newspapers. But Stepp said that doesn’t mean Blair was ready for one of the world’s tough-est, highest-paced newsrooms.

“It slowed us in pushing people too far too fast,” Stepp said.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Blair helped cover the capture and rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch during the Iraq War, then one of the nation’s most followed stories. He co-wrote a story that ran April 3, 2003, carrying Palestine, W. Va., as its dateline.

“The little brat’s caused a big stir in this county,” Blair quoted Lynch’s father as saying. “As soon as she’s capable, we’re planning one heck of a big shindig.” Blair also wrote that Gregory Lynch got to speak with his daughter that afternoon.

An internal Times investiga-tion, however, later found that Blair likely never visited the town. Lynch family members told the Times they didn’t re-member ever speaking with Blair.

The Lynches never com-plained about the story, the Times reported. They thought the fabricated quotes and de-scription of their home would be a “one-time thing.”

Tom Madigan, who worked with Blair at The Diamondback,

“we all said if he had put half as much energy into being a journalist that he did cheating at journalism, he would’ve been a great onE …He did not have to cut corners to be a good journalist. that’s the saddest part about it.”

CARL STEPPJournalism professor

was dumbfounded when he heard about his former colleague’s cov-erage of the Lynch story.

He knew Blair often lied, Madigan said, because he expe-rienced it firsthand while they were both students. But here was Blair, covering one of the most-watched national stories. And the distrust in the media was so high that the Lynch family didn’t feel compelled to speak up.

“[Jessica Lynch] is one of the most famous people in the world, right?” Madigan said. “And this guy could make up these inter-views and details, never having even met her basically, and the

family didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything.”

Madigan started to question his own career. How could he be in the same profession as this guy? Was this really what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing?

Madigan remained in journal-ism until 2011 before moving to personal finance. He is a board member of Maryland Media Inc., a nonprofit company that is separate from the university and oversees The Diamondback.

Blair’s former Diamondback peers don’t believe he’s truly learned from all that happened 10 years ago. But Blair has grown, he wrote in a 2004 memoir. In the book, Blair details his strug-gles with bipolar disorder and drug addiction to explain his problems at the Times. He now works as a life coach in Virginia.

“If there’s any positive spin to come from this behavior, you’d hope it’s a story you can recall to students as a cautionary tale,” Harvey said. “Don’t kill your career. Don’t bring other people down with you when you decide to implode your career.”

The journalism college has certainly changed since Blair’s days. It’s housed in an entirely new, state-of-the-art building. It is adapting to the digital age. It hangs high-definition television screens, rather than just pictures, on its walls.

But university and journal-ism officials still boast about the notable alumni in the media.

Carl Bernstein helped break open the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. Connie Chung is one of the most re-nowned faces on television as a news anchor with CBS, NBC and CNN. Scott Van Pelt, a host of ESPN’s SportsCenter, is a promi-nent sports personality with a national following.

If Jayson Blair had just geared all of his talent in the right direc-tion, Stepp said, he could have been among them.

“We all said if he had put half as much energy into being a journalist that he did cheat-ing at journalism, he would’ve been a great one,” Stepp said. “He did not have to cut corners to be a good journalist. That’s the saddest part about it.”

This is part three of a three-part feature on Jayson Blair’s rise and fall. Check diamond-backonline.com for the story of Blair’s beginnings at The Dia-mondback and his resignation from the Times.

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Let’s hear it for the leading ladies

JOSH VITALE

It’s no secret students at this univer-sity have a plethora of gripes with DOTS. From obscene parking ticket

prices to ever-changing bus routes, the Department of Transportation Services is not popular on the campus.

So it makes sense that the depart-ment would try to improve its image. Making sure stu-dents appreciate DOTS is clearly one of the organi-zation’s priorities.

In an e� ort to do just that, DOTS has launched a promo-tional contest in the “Why I Ride” cam-paign, o� ering the winner the equiva-lent of a semester of in-state tuition. All it takes for someone to win this award is a two- to three-minute video showing why he or she loves public transporta-tion, bicycling or carpooling.

Ideally, that would kill two birds with one stone for DOTS — students would post all about why they love to ride its buses, and the department would gain a more positive image in students’ eyes because of the sizable winner’s prize.

But the Student Government As-sociation was right to vote Wednes-day to condemn this frivolous use of DOTS funding.

While we aren’t sure the SGA condemning a DOTS decision can e� ect much immediate departmen-tal change, it’s important for DOTS to address students’ and represen-tatives’ concerns. The SGA is sup-posed to represent student interests, so DOTS should think about using the organization as a means of gleaning pertinent information on students’ wants and needs. Then it wouldn’t need marketing initiatives to per-suade students to feel more positively toward the department.

For example, many SGA members cited a number of different reasons DOTS shouldn’t be funding this initiative, giving examples such as weekend shuttles and the Capital Bikeshare program (which in itself may be frivolous) as better uses of the money. There are plenty more produc-

tive uses of this money — which was, in fact, not earmarked specifi cally for its current uses — much to the chagrin of DOTS o� cials, who don’t seem to want to budge on the matter.

Department o� cials said the contest money isn’t from student fees, but

rather leftover money from a $10,000 deal with the Professional Golfers’ Association of America. DOTS made a deal for the campus to serve as an extra parking site for a golf tournament two years ago, but the space ended up being unused and DOTS got to keep the money.

Officials use that fact to justify “Why I Ride,” as well as the

year’s worth of textbooks for Shuttle-UM’s three-millionth rider — ini-tiatives that benefit individuals in the short term rather than the whole community in the long term.

While DOTS Director David Allen believes it’s misguided to condemn the contest, this editorial board dis-agrees. DOTS is making an effort to boost its self-image across the campus, whereas supporting valid, helpful SGA initiatives, such as the grocery store shuttle, could actually benefit students. While Allen said the “Why I Ride” contest encourages students to be more sustainable, all it really does is encourage students to know enough about the positive aspects of the shuttle bus to put to-gether a video. As many professors can surely attest, students can be quite adept at making things up.

What’s truly misguided is the de-partment’s overtly apparent methods of attempting to woo students. But if you take a look at a number of opinion columns, 57 individual complaints about DOTS on WTF UMD — the most of any category — and posts on numerous other outlets where students express anger, you realize: DOTS isn’t going to improve its image by just giving a few students some money. The department needs to take more substantial steps toward actually helping students, rather than just putting on an act.

Riding the coattails of a DOTS funding plan

OUR VIEW

The Department of Transportation Services needs to start initiatives that will make a visibly

positive impact on students, rather than focusing on simple

marketing strategies.

MAY WILDMAN/the diamondback

EDITORIAL CARTOON

I am still very unsure of what I thought journalism would be when I entered this university. I think it was some combination of Mad Men levels of drinking, Woodward and Bernstein levels of secrecy and hats with press cards in them.

Instead, I was presented with a very different picture, one that existed at The Diamondback more than in any of my imagined news-rooms: a media outlet run by women.

Strong women have been a con-stant in my life. Sure, I had a Paw who taught me wood choppin’, fi re makin’ and other noncamping skills.

But at a young age, when I asked where the women were to do the dishes on one fateful Thanksgiving, I was instructed — by multiple angry aunts, cousins and grandmothers — that I would be doing dishes for 70 people. By myself. Women were not to be thought of that way. The end.

I since have realized the idiocy of my younger years and now under-stand the fortune of having three strong women at the helm of The Diamondback during my time there.

I came in as a sophomore copy

editor who didn’t really know what made a good headline or what a lead was. My fi rst day, I saw this tenacious, bilingual woman sitting in the middle of the room. I was both scared to death and in awe.

Marissa Lang, now a courts reporter in Salt Lake City, taught me tenacity. It isn’t good enough to just do something; do it well and do it right, or don’t do it at all.

The first day of the tenure of Ma-rissa’s successor, Lauren Redding, I saw her at Bagel Place. It was a Sunday morning, so everyone was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I said to Lauren, “Are you nervous?” “No,” Lauren said. “I just hope there’s no breaking news.”

Before the night was over, President Obama had announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed and I had been elbowed in the face by a reporter who said I was talking too loud during an interview. And Lauren Redding was welcomed to the show.

During her tenure, I learned about the power of poised confi dence. You needn’t be the loudest person in the room, but you should be the most pas-sionate and well-informed if you hope to succeed. And maybe sometimes the loudest.

And then came this year’s editor, a journalism and microbiology major

Conservatism: The idea of free will, independence, self-reliance, liberty and small government. Those are the basic principles of the Republican Party that, in recent years, have been lost in a clown-fi lled sideshow.

From the likes of Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck to Rick Perry, conserva-tive antics and one-liners have gar-nered so much media attention that the public perceives the Republican Party as a group of fools. But it is not just a few outliers. The whole leader-ship — from the minority leader in the U.S. Senate to the ranking members of the House — is part of the problem. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the party shift from a party with strong principles to a party in shambles.

The media is in part to blame, but the party itself is most to blame for bringing these folks to the forefront. It seems as if the true conservative intel-lectuals and policy molders are hiding somewhere. Where are the respectable leaders and policy architects? Where are the Ronald Reagans, Condoleezza Rices or Jon Huntsmans? It seems the great leaders of the Republican Party aren’t the ones leading. As a result, the clowns get the spotlight.

When I look at the Democrats, I see a diverse range of “political stars,” from President Obama to Hillary Clinton. As a Republican, I may not agree with their principles, but there is something about these politicians that gives o� an aura of likability and principle. It is a party of ideas. These ideas may be wrong, but are nonetheless based on core principles. The ideas Democrats talk about are actually enacted to bring about change. Why can’t we do the same with our core principles?

Embarrassing antics and election

cycle ploys have only deepened these problems. In recent months, Republi-cans have been viewed as gun-toting, NRA ass-kissers. Although, yes, the Re-publican Party has long been a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, this doesn’t mean basic background checks infringe on that right or contra-dict the core principles. It is absurd that Republican senators actually blocked a bill on universal background checks with no explanation two weeks ago. To the 90 percent of Americans who support universal background checks, Republican senators seem out of touch. Once again, the Republicans were the ones hindering any real reform in Congress.

When it comes to health care, the A� ordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — has provisions that will detrimen-tally a� ect small businesses and increase the cost of premiums. But instead of Republicans setting forth a plan to fi x health care, all I hear is “repeal,” “repeal,” “repeal.” OK, repeal it. But then what? You can’t rip a policy to shreds and not o� er a better alternative. Where are the conservative policy architects to come up with a feasible solution? Why hasn’t anything been put forward? Republicans can’t just be a party of “no,” we have to be a party of, “no, and here is the solution.”

Republicans are viewed as a party fi lled with white men clinging to their assault rifl es, with the words “no,” “no,” and “no” spewing out of their mouths. We should be viewed as the party of reasonable change and embodiment of small government principles. Many welcome conservative principles, but the leadership and perception of the Re-publican Party keeps them from voting Republican. Let’s cast these antics aside, put the core values of the conservative party back on the table and bring real reform with ideas — not just rhetoric.

A n d r e w D o i s a s e n i o r biochemistry major. He can be reached at [email protected].

Wallace Loh is nothing if not ap-proachable. Despite overseeing a campus of more than 26,000 under-graduates, the university president routinely works out alongside stu-dents at Eppley Recreation Center and has said he casually chats with about 1,000 students each year.

If only it were that easy to talk to Terrapins athletes.

I spent the past three-and-a-half years as a sta� writer and sports editor at The Diamondback. In that time, I covered Terps teams across nine sports, wrote close to 300 articles and worked with 11 di� erent sports information directors.

The most difficult part of those three-and-a-half years should have been learning the rules of sports such as volleyball, wrestling and field hockey while writing four to fi ve ar-ticles per week and keeping up with classes and homework.

But sometimes, that was the easy part. The toughest aspect of the job was often walking the tightrope between the sports information directors and the athletes they’re in charge of.

SIDs manage media relations. If you want to interview an athlete, talk to a coach or get credentialed to cover a game, they’re the ones you have to go through. They control who you can talk to, when you can talk to them and what you’re allowed to talk about.

In short, SIDs are the gatekeepers. And that’s a responsibility many of them take very seriously.

For the football and men’s basket-ball teams, it’s understandable. Those are college’s most popular sports by a wide margin, and multiple sports-writers, radio hosts and TV crews seek media access to those two Terps teams on a daily basis during those seasons. The university’s athletes are still stu-dents fi rst, so it’s hard to criticize the media relations staff for sheltering them from an endless barrage of media inquiries.

The access control in the school’s nonrevenue sports is much harder to comprehend, though. The Dia-mondback is often the only news outlet covering some of these teams, so it seems those teams would be the ones most excited to garner media attention. Instead, they can be just as difficult to reach as the football and men’s basketball teams.

One time, I was told I wouldn’t be allowed to write a story on a team’s injury woes because it wasn’t some-thing the team wanted to focus on. When I planned to conduct interviews for another sport a few months later, I walked from my South Hill dorm to Comcast Center in the snow only to realize the SID had neglected to tell me practice had been canceled.

I had similar di� culties with other sports, too. After the SID canceled “availability” — which consists of keeping two players and the coach after practice for just fi ve extra minutes so they can fi eld questions from a report-

er — on Thursdays, I was told I would have to get all of my interviews for the week done on Tuesdays.

Those were just some of the prob-lems I ran into. It was nearly impos-sible to talk to teams in a timely manner when breaking news situa-tions occurred, and getting coaches and players on the phone for inter-views after road games was always a high-wire act.

Of course, it wasn’t always a struggle. A handful of the SIDs I’ve worked with have been very helpful in scheduling times for me to talk to players and coaches, and the depart-ment is a lot more accommodating now than it was three years ago. One SID even helped me set up interviews with one athlete’s parents and former high school coaches and teachers in Harrisburg, Pa.

But sometimes, the SIDs simply make things harder than they need to be. I was not asking for players’ cellphone numbers or attempting to call a coach at 10 p.m. on a weeknight to get a few extra quotes. I just wanted to go to practice two days a week and talk to the coach and some players for a few minutes. That was it.

Reporters simply cover the team in the best way they know how. To do that, they need to conduct inter-views. They shouldn’t have to fi ght SIDs to do so.

Josh Vitale is a senior journalism major and a former sports editor of The Diamondback. He can be reached at [email protected].

Media access: Playing by their rules Back to the basics

TYLER WEYANT

AIR YOUR VIEWS

Address your letters or guest columns to Maria Romas and Nadav Karasov at [email protected]. All submissions must be signed. Include your full name, year, major and phone number. Please limit letters to 300 words and guest columns to between 500 and 600 words. Submission of a letter or guest column constitutes an exclusive, worldwide, transferable license to The Diamondback of the

copyright of the material in any media. The Diamondback retains the right to edit submissions for content and length.

4 THE DIAMONDBACK | FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013

Opinion EDITORIAL BOARD

CONTACT US 3150 South Campus Dining Hall | College Park, MD 20742 | [email protected] OR [email protected] PHONE (301) 314-8200

(insane, no?) who showed me the place compassion has in journalism.

Yasmeen Abutaleb has always been there for this student body and for the members of the newspaper’s sta� . Whether it was a personal issue someone was having or a campus crisis, she always showed empathy for those involved — and taught me how the act of reporting reporting on people must always keep the “people” aspect in high esteem.

It was Child of Destiny and Jay-Z cohort Beyoncé who once noted that it is girls who run the world. In journal-ism, however, this is not always the case.

While almost two-thirds of the stu-dents graduating college with journal-ism degrees are women, men make up 60 percent of newspapers’ sta� s and write most editorial pieces.

The things I learned from my three female bosses are just a part of the edu-cation they gave me. But most impor-tantly, I learned this: Women running newsrooms should not be the exception to the rule.

Yasmeen, Lauren and Marissa: Thank you for everything. Journal-ism world: Go get yourself more ladies — and leaders — like them.

Tyler Weyant is a senior journalism major and former managing editor of The Diamondback. He can be reached at [email protected].

ANDREW DO

Mike KingEditor in Chief

DAN APPENFELLER Managing Editor

maria romasOpinion Editor

nadav karasovOpinion Editor

Tyler Weyant Deputy Managing Editor

STAFF EDITORIAL

ACROSS1 Loan arranger5 Pastor’s abode10 Equinox mo.14 Elvis’ middle name 15 Dolphin habitat 16 Chief god of Memphis 17 Upset 18 Wild ducks 19 Neutral color 20 Part of FDR 22 Sent up a satellite 24 “David Copper�eld” wife 26 Bug repellent 27 �rill of excitement 30 Reeks 34 Like Capp’s Abner 35 �umb a ride 38 Winter constellation 39 Here, to Emile Zola 40 Istanbul moolah 42 Part of TNT 43 Rancher’s wear 46 -- de Mayo (Mexican holiday) 48 Munch on 49 Hush-hush 51 Rules by right of authority

53 Boathouse items 55 Bright object 56 Alien enemies of Captain Kirk 60 Pack animals 64 Like prime steak 65 Showy lily 67 “No -- luck!” 68 Genuine 69 Bullet -- 70 Grades 1-12 71 Counting-rhyme start 72 Worked on a quilt 73 Look as if

DOWN 1 Shakespeare nickname 2 Indy champ -- Luyendyk 3 One-time NFL coach Chuck -- 4 Prepares dough 5 Service-station buy (2 wds.) 6 Hole in one 7 Shaquille O’-- 8 Low-cal lunch 9 Happens next 10 Apparition 11 Write on metal 12 Skin an apple 13 �ump 21 Raid the fridge 23 Verne captain

25 Playful trick 27 Paris cops 28 Nouveau -- 29 Of the hipbone 31 Quart, plus 32 Navigation system

33 Grumpy moods 36 Dernier -- 37 -- loose (relaxes) 41 Loch Ness site 44 Arrogantly 45 Lick an envelope

47 Egg-shaped 50 Pamphlets 52 Blanks a tape 54 Pitfall, maybe 56 Red inside 57 Curved molding

58 Average 59 Cabbage dish 61 Backless slipper 62 Feel sore 63 �in wedge 66 Untruth

CROSSWORD HOROSCOPE STELLA WILDER

Born today, you seem immune to the kind of insecurity and self-doubt

that can plague others -- or at least this is the impression you give. You are always putting on a brave front: making deci-sions, demonstrating strength and resolve, and personifying a general tenacity that others may not have. What is true on the surface, however, is not always true beneath -- and in your case you may be hiding an uncertainty that is likely to remain with you throughout your lifetime. It is no general unease, however; it is some-thing very specific that you may well be able to under-stand perfectly in time. You are known for making interesting choices, even if they are not always the best ones. You weigh all possibil-ities with care, and try your best to avoid knee-jerk reac-tions of any kind. This doesn’t mean what you do will always make sense to others, howev-er! Also born on this date are: Christopher Cross, singer; Doug Henning, magician; Frankie Val-li, singer; James Brown, singer; Sugar Ray Robinson, boxer; Bing Crosby, singer and actor; Golda Meir, Israeli leader. To see what is in store for you tomorrow, find your birthday and read the corre-sponding paragraph. Let your birthday star be your daily guide. SATURDAY, MAY 4 TAURUS (April 20-May 20) -- You and someone quite di�erent

© 2013 UNITED FEATURES SYNDICATE

TODAY’S CROSSWORD SPONSORED BY: PREVIOUS DAY’S PUZZLE SOLVED: TODAY’S HOROSCOPE SPONSORED BY:

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from you can actually work very well together today. All it takes is a few simple rules. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) -- You can approach a few serious situations with a more lighthearted attitude than usual -- and win the day when all is said and done. CANCER (June 21-July 22) -- You can say that you’ve “arrived” today in some respects, but in others you may feel that you are still very far from your destination. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) -- Not everyone is likely to fall for your tricks today, and you’ll be inspired to do something that others think is out of character. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) -- Someone who is trying to show you up today will actually be put in his or her place by a third party who proves to be on your side. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) -- A trip down memory lane leaves you a little cold today. You’re likely to realize that where you’re going is better than where you’ve been. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) -- �at which has been holding you back of late is likely to be removed

today, and most things will look much brighter as a result. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) -- Your passions are near the surface today, and you’re likely to reveal something to those around you that mustn’t be taken too seriously. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) -- Any delays today are likely to cause you a great deal of trouble -- even those that bring you a certain amount of enjoyment. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) -- You can reveal to others what you’re made of today without being overly aggressive. Indeed, a quiet, rational approach wins the day. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) -- �e time has come for you to take a stand. You know what is required of you today, and you’re ready to all that -- and more. ARIES (March 21-April 19) -- You don’t want to end the day singing the blues, so be sure to make decisions that come from the heart -- and not from any of the “experts.”

COPYRIGHT 2013UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.

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FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013 | THE DIAMONDBACK 5

Features

6 THE DIAMONDBACK | FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013

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Diversions

A MARVEL TO BEHOLDIn the unexpectedly successful Iron Man 3, the irrepressible Robert Downey Jr. lends a much-needed sense of humor to the increasingly morbid superhero genre

REVIEW | IRON MAN 3

There’s this indescribable zing to Iron Man 3. The jokes pop, the action sizzles and the evil seems that much more ominous. It’s a dish that bares the same texture and smell as any garden-variety franchise sequel. A more cogent dissec-tion under a brighter light may reveal that it’s built on a rotten foundation: fresh meat turned gamy, crusty bread now stale and moldy. Make no mistake, Iron Man 3 is built on rusted rungs. But for some puzzling reason, it is far more than the sum of its parts and perhaps the best Marvel movie since the original Iron Man.

The fact that it’s such a wily delight is especially surprising considering the films that led up to it, specifically The Avengers — a loud, brash, thick-skulled cash cow created simply to get everyone’s favorite superheroes in one room. In Shane Black’s (A.W.O.L) Iron Man 3, however, The Avengers only exists as a shadow, an echo of the past that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) is trying to both reconcile with and completely forget. It’s a strange internal duality, something that eats up our elusive protagonist, yet at the same time makes him more human than ever before.

New York — the location of the final battle in The Avengers that involved aliens, explosions and the near-annihilation of the massive me-tropolis — functions as a melodramatic buzz-word here; every time someone mentions the city or Loki or his Avengers counterparts, Stark has a panic attack. You begin to wonder if this is the film in which Iron Man becomes too press-ing a responsibility for Stark — if after years of

honorable peacekeeping services, his life as a vigilante has finally become too much for his shrapnel-encrusted heart.

The plot is certainly knotty enough to warrant a retirement. Things center on crippled scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, Lawless), whose company, Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), possesses a regenerative treatment for missing limbs called Extremis that has sci-entific promise but is still highly faulty. Yet he begins operating on people anyway, helping them grow back their severed parts but with a serious drawback: The flaw in the formula leads to superhuman strength and heat-generating powers. One of the first experiments with Ex-tremis in a small town in Tennessee causes patients to explode.

Killian approached Stark about his joining the A.I.M. team in 1999 at a New Year’s party — shown in the movie’s boozy opening scene — but Stark, already an innovative corporate rock star by then, turned him down in order to sleep with Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall, Lay the Favorite), the true inventor of Extremis and a future part of Killian’s scientific team. She tells him about the flaw in Extremis, and in a drunken haze the next morning, he leaves her with a written attempt to correct her er-roneous formula. Present-day Killian, still a reluctant admirer of the same man who chided and dismissed him at that fateful party, tries to blackmail Stark into fixing his beguiled science project by kidnapping Stark’s girlfriend, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, Thanks for Sharing), and threatening the president of the United States. Or something like that.

There’s a side plot involving Killian as a terrorist mastermind, but for most of the

movie, we’re led to believe the real villain is an enigmatic man named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley, The Dictator). We meet the Manda-rin, a bearded, bin Laden-esque talking head, through a series of live TV broadcasts. The film’s big twist — also Iron Man 3’s zaniest and best revelation — is the Mandarin’s true identity and connection to Extremis. Spoilers aside, it’s a wacky bait-and-switch decision that takes the piss out of how self-serious superhero movies have become, a welcome regression to frivolity away from the icy, Gothic terrain of Gotham City.

How Black connects the two seemingly dis-parate sources of evil — the Extremis camp and the Mandarin — is messy, though. Killian is too brainy to be fueled by intrinsic evil alone. Apart from his lust for both scientific acclaim

and, apparently, Pepper, we never really know why he turns out so murderous in the end. But his presence as a tried-and-true nerd allows his perpetual quarrel with Stark to be more a battle of wits and intellect than anything. And never before has Stark been this witty.

Iron Man 2 and The Avengers were both clunky misfires because Stark spent too much time in the suit, which, as a result, contrived the reliable Downey Jr. into a lifeless body inside a hollow hunk of metal.

Here, outside the suit with his deadpan personality in tow, he roams free — a manic tinkerer-turned-inventor-turned-lovable hero who only wants to do one simple thing: tell a goddamn joke.

[email protected]

By Dean EssnerSenior sta� writer

SO YOU’RE IRON MAN. You’ve just saved New York from an evil alien army. But do you get a nice vacation to relax and enjoy the view from the house that cost so much? Of course not. Too many explosions to deal with. Always with the explosions. photo courtesy of konbini.com

SLIGHTLY OVERCASTSta� writer Eric Bricker examines the stand-up comedy podcast boom, which threatens to reach the point of diminishing returns in the near future. For more, visit diamondbackonline.com.

ON THEBLOG

friday, may 3, 2013 | sports | The Diamondback 7

10 goals. But Baum, whose point total still leads the team, is at the center of his teammates’ success, dishing a team-high 15 assists to go with his 33 goals.

“He’s still a terrific player,” T illman said. “I just think more people are trying to do more things to stop him, and [Baum’s teammates] are ben-efiting from that.”

Tillman knows from experi-ence how vast an impact Baum can have. In 2011, the coach’s first year in College Park, Baum notched three points as then-No. 17 Colgate upset the then-No. 6 Terps, 10-8. He also tallied seven points in last year’s two-goal victory.

The Terps’ third-year coach isn’t letting his team forget the two losses to the Raiders, either.

“The guys are well aware of it,” Tillman said. “We get another crack at them, and hopefully we can play a little bit better.”

The Terps (9-3) are desper-ate to stop Baum and Colgate (8-6) in their season finale, so they can generate some mo-

mentum for the NCAA tourna-ment. The squad has lost two of its past three games and is in danger of dropping outside the top eight seeds in the NCAA tournament, which would force them to play an opening round game on the road.

But beyond that, the Terps hope to perform well tomor-row to regain any semblance of the form they displayed during a 6-0 start to the season. They have lost three of six games since that blis-tering six-game stretch, and the offense in particular is struggling to produce.

“We just have to start being ourselves again,” attackman Kevin Cooper said. “We have to start going to our strengths and being the players we are.”

Plus, the Terps don’t want to let the Raiders dampen their Senior Day. The Terps’ nine-member senior class, which has been a part of two NCAA championship game appear-ances, will play its final regular season home game in Byrd Stadium tomorrow.

“It’ll definitely be extra moti-vation,“ Cooper, a senior, said. “We’re a class that’s focused.”

The Terps have plenty riding

on the matchup with the Raiders. They’re hoping to send the seniors out as winners, improve or retain their seeding in the NCAA tournament and muster some much-needed confidence.

For the team to accomplish all of that, it’ll need Murray to perform. The Terps’ o�ense has lacked explosiveness in recent weeks and hasn’t scored dou-ble-digit goals in a game since April 5. So if Colgate — which averages just more than 10 goals per game — can find an o�ensive rhythm, the Terps may not be able to keep up.

The onus would then fall on the team’s defense to carry the load. Against Colgate, stop-ping Baum is the key to any defensive scheme. But Murray said he isn’t worried about guarding one of the nation’s top scorers in a crucial game for his team.

In fact, he’s itching to begin the challenge, and he’s confi-dent he can conquer it.

“ I ’ m k i n d o f u s e d t o [Baum’s] style,” Murray said. “I’ve been watching film, so I just got to run with him, and we’ll see what happens.”

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raidersFrom PAGE 8

defender goran murray will be charged with defending Colgate star attackman Peter Baum tomorrow. photo courtesy of chuck liddy/theacc.com

drawing a double play to close out the game.

After Kirkpatrick’s poor outing Tuesday, Szefc said he isn’t sure if the pitcher will make a start this weekend. The Terps have several options to replace him, including left-hander Alex Robinson, who allowed only one

run on six hits with seven strike-outs in seven innings of work against Towson.

But Szefc was clear about one thing.

“If we are going to be suc-cessful,” he said, “we need Brady Kirkpatrick to be good.”

The Terps fear Kirkpatrick’s shoulder injury may prevent him from returning to his 2012 form.

Re ga rd l e ss, t h e j u n i o r right-hander will find a way

to make a di�erence, even if he isn’t on the field.

“I respect him because no matter how he is performing, he’s a very stand-up guy, he’s very mature and he’s able to direct a lot of traffic for our pitching staff and for our players in general,” Szefc said. “I think a lot of guys respect him and look up to him.”

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tigersFrom PAGE 8

RBI record, which Jackson set.Still, Schmeiser said she

doesn’t think about that during games because the Terps have a bigger task at hand — the results this weekend against Virginia Tech will determine their seeding for the ACC tournament.

T h e Te r p s a n d H o k i e s sit fourth and fifth in the s ta n d i n gs, re s p e c t ive ly, and the Terps need a sweep

to capture second place. Because the teams ahead of them have completed their ACC slate, the Terps don’t have to worry about results other than their own.

“We are in control of our own destiny,” Watten said. “We have a chance to take the two spot … if we can go out and play at our level consistently all weekend.”

The Terps have shown they can perform against the best in the conference, winning two games in their last series against North Carolina. They

co u l d n ’t ca p t h e swe e p, however, as the o�ense sud-denly became stagnant in its Game 3 loss.

As the team moves into the postseason, steady perfor-mances will become increas-ingly important. If the Terps can rally behind Schmeiser’s play, they will have a promis-ing outlook.

“It’s right there for us to go out and establish,” Watten said. “We have something to really earn and work for.”

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hokiesFrom PAGE 8

right-hander brady kirkpatrick is “a very stand-up guy,” Terps coach John Szefc said. “He’s very mature.” �le photo/the diamondback

FRIDAY, may 3, 2013

SportsTWEET OF THE DAY

Eric Hayes @Ekhayes5Terps men’s basketball graduate assistant

“Getting a little emotional now that the office is coming to an end...”

BASEBALL

Kirkpatrick’s presence boosts TerpsDespite struggles, right-hander still contributing entering Clemson seriesBy Daniel PopperSta� writer

Brady Kirkpatrick has not had

the season he hoped for.The Terrapins baseball team’s

right-hander compiled a 3.04 ERA last season in nine starts and two relief appearances for former coach Erik Bakich and was poised to be a staple in the 2013 starting rotation.

And while Kirkpatrick has made a start in all 11 weekend series this season for the Terps — who play at Clemson in a three-game series starting Sat-urday — a nagging right shoul-der injury requiring multiple MRIs has hindered his prog-ress. The Eugene, Ore., native

sports a dismal 4.92 ERA and has struggled to pitch deep into games, averaging just more than five innings per start.

That hasn’t stopped him from making an impact, though. Despite his struggles on the field, Kirkpatrick has been a veteran leader for a young Terps pitching staff, which features six true freshmen.

“He’s been around, and he has a lot of experience,” coach John Szefc said. “He’s the kind of guy that can really help our program grow quickly, con-sidering we have a lot of young guys, and he is one of the older guys. He really wants to take a major role in helping young guys develop on the field and o�

the field, and he’s really helped our coaching sta� to do that.”

Kirkpatrick’s teammates also notice his off-the-field contributions.

“He brings a lot to the dugout, and he brings a lot to the team, a lot of energy, a lot of high spirits,” said right fielder Jordan Hagel, one of only three seniors on the roster. “Even though he’s not doing that well, he doesn’t let that a�ect him, and he doesn’t let that a�ect the team. He’s there to help the team, keep us inspired and keep us playing well.”

After Kirkpatrick allowed two earned runs on three hits and two walks in less than two innings against Duke on April 27, Szefc brought him out of

the bullpen for the first time all season in the ninth inning of Tuesday’s 11-3 win over Towson.

“We wanted to get him back on the mound,” Szefc said. “He had a tough outing on Saturday, and when that happens with a pitcher you want to get him back out there so he can kind of get his feel back and get feeling good about himself again.”

B u t t h e s t ra te g y ba c k-fired on the first-year coach. Despite entering the contest with a 10-run lead, Kirkpat-rick struggled. He surrendered two earned runs on three hits and two walks before finally

right-hander brady kirkpatrick has battled shoulder injuries this season and has posteda 4.92 ERA. The Terps open a three-game series at Clemson tomorrow. �le photo/the diamondback

SOFTBALL

Schmeiser paces Terps into ACC finaleSophomore infielder close to notching record-breaking performanceBy Paul Pierre-LouisSta� writer

Laura Watten knows the struggles that typically plague young teams. After all, the Terrapins softball team is one.

The Terps have had to endure sudden adversity during games throughout the season. While the upperclassmen often play a role in galvanizing the young bunch in these moments, the eighth-year coach said, there are also times when the team needs its key un-derclassmen to consistently produce.

Shortstop Lindsey Schmeiser has stepped up at those times, leading the team in batting average, home runs and RBIs. Entering their final regular-season series, against Virginia Tech in Blacks-burg, Va., this weekend, the Terps will look to the freshman to lead again.

“We depend on Lindsey a lot,” Watten said. “It’s been so great to see her grow so much throughout the season.”

Schmeiser’s 55 RBIs are 14 more than catcher Shannon Bustillos’ second-place total, and she’s one away from tying the Terps’ single-season record.

An ankle injury sidelined Schmeiser during the team’s fall season. Upon her return in February, during the Terps’ five-game slide at the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic, she couldn’t get comfortable at the plate.

Though she was struggling, Sch-meiser kept a simple mindset in at-bats.

“When I hit best is when I’m just not thinking about anything,” Schmeiser said. “Just seeing it and hitting it.”

As she found her form o�ensively, the Terps’ bats began to heat up. From

late March to early April, the team only scored fewer than six runs on three oc-casions, winning nine of their 12 games in the process.

Some of her memorable plays have also come on the base paths, including when she took advantage of a passed ball to notch the game-winning run against Florida State.

“ S h e ’s o n e o f o u r b e s t b a s e runners,” Watten said. “She’s fast. She’s strong. She’s going to go up and hit the ball hard.”

Schmeiser’s well-rounded offen-sive talent and competitive demeanor remind Watten of former Terps short-stop Amber Jackson. The comparison is fitting, especially if Schmeiser can surpass the program’s single-season

in�elder Lindsey Schmeiser is one RBI away from tying Amber Jackson’s single-season Terps record of 56. TheTerps travel to Blacksburg, Va., this weekend to play Virginia Tech in the season’s �nal ACC series. �le photo/the diamondback

CLOSING THE ’GATETerps hope to shut down Baum, Colgate o�ense while avoiding

third straight loss to RaidersBy Aaron KasinitzSta� writer

Goran Murray has been extra focused in the Terrapins men’s lacrosse film room this week and a bit more eager to get to practice each day. He’s getting antsy.

The sophomore defender is looking forward to his veteran teammates’ Senior Day tomorrow and hopes to help the No. 7 Terps earn a critical win before NCAA tournament seeding is decided Sunday. But that’s not why this week is so di�erent for the 2012 ACC Freshman of the Year.

It’s because he can’t wait to guard Colgate attackman Peter Baum.

Baum outmatched Murray and fellow defender Michael Ehrhardt a year ago, scoring five goals to lead his Raiders to a 13-11 victory in Hamilton, N.Y. So Murray — who has been assigned to defend Baum man-to-man — gets another opportu-nity at stymieing the reigning Tewaaraton Award winner when Colgate visits College Park tomorrow.

“It’s fun,” Murray said. “I feel like within our defense scheme, that’s like a challenge for me.”

Baum’s numbers have dipped this season, though. After posting a Patriot League-record 97 points in 2012, he has notched just 48 points this year. But Terps coach John Tillman said the Port-land, Ore., native is still among the best players in the nation; he’s simply drawn more attention from opposing defenses.

Attackman Ryan Walsh leads the Raiders in scoring with 35 goals, and five players on the squad have notched at least

Colgate attackman Peter baum (top) scored �ve goals against Terps defender Brian Cooper (left), goalkeeper Niko Amato (center) and defender Michael Ehrhardt (right) in a 13-11 Raiders win last season. �le photos/the diamondback

MEN’S LACROSSE

See raiders, Page 7

See tigers, Page 7

See hokies, Page 7

MORE ON TERRAPIN TRAILKeep up to date with the Terrapins men’s lacrosse, baseball and

softball teams this weekend. For more, visit diamondbackonline.com.ON THEBLOG

May 3, 2013

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