UA In the News — Oct. 5

UA In the News — Oct. 5

The twisted motivations of a mass killer
San Francisco Chronicle – Oct. 4
As investigators look for a motive in the massacre of 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, one thing is clear to criminologist Adam Lankford: The shooter knew an attack of this magnitude would draw worldwide attention to him. The pursuit of fame — or infamy — through mass murder has emerged as a factor in numerous mass shootings since two teens predicted on videotape that killing their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 would win them respect and that movie directors would vie to tell their story.
KDSK (St. Louis, Missouri) – Oct. 4
KTVD (Denver, Colorado) – Oct. 4

Experts to Media: Stop Naming Mass Shooters
Newser – Oct. 4
After a mass shooting, their names and faces are plastered on every news site, the front page of every newspaper, and every cable news channel. But more than 140 experts—professors, scholars, law-enforcement professionals, and more—say it’s time for the media to stop identifying these killers, Newsweek reports … Adam Lankford, a professor of criminology at the University of Alabama, was one of the drafters of the letter. He cites research that shows many mass shooters are motivated by fame and that killers who admit to seeking celebrity kill twice as many people.
Kumparan – Oct. 4

Big leap for school libraries
District Administration – Oct. 5
Steven Yates has a message for would-be school librarians. “If you’re coming to this because you like to read and you want to manage a collection of books, then you showed up about 30 years too late to the profession,” says Yates, a former high school librarian who teaches in the school library media certification program at the University of Alabama.

NOPD, city officials discuss ‘active shooter’ preparedness
New Orleans Advocate – Oct. 4
In the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, in which 59 people were killed and hundreds more injured, authorities in New Orleans gathered Wednesday to discuss the city’s own preparedness in the event of a mass-casualty scenario … Adam Lankford, a criminology professor at the University of Alabama, said New Orleans could present a tempting target for a certain type of attacker. “The concern for New Orleans is the same kind of concern you have with the shooting (in Las Vegas), the Boston marathon bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing … that attackers who are more broadly angry at humanity or angry at America could target people in New Orleans just because it’s a large crowd and a soft target,” he said.

Anti-vaccine opinions increasing on Twitter — and 5 states are the hot spots
Yahoo! – Oct. 4
Along with being the unofficial home of White House statements and the place to find out what’s trending, Twitter is a hot spot for anti-vaccine opinions — with the number of tweets on the topic growing, and those from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania leading the pack, according to the findings of a new study out of the University of Colorado Boulder … For the study, published in the October issue of Social Science and Medicine, Vargo and co-author Theodore Tomeny, an autism researcher at University of Alabama, created an algorithm to examine more than a half-million tweets from around the country between 2009 and 2015.

Music sculpture unveiled for city entrance
Florence Times Daily – Oct. 5
A trumpeter will greet motorists crossing O’Neal Bridge into the city next year. The 20-foot aluminum abstract sculpture will depict a jazz/blues musician in the birthplace of W.C. Handy, Father of the Blues. It is part of an area-wide acknowledgement of the role of music in the Shoals. The City Council this week approved a $35,000 contract with the University of Alabama for art professor Craig Wedderspoon to create the sculpture.

In Iceland Stream, Possible Glimpse of Warming Future
Environmental News Network – Oct. 4
When a normally cold stream in Iceland was warmed, the make-up of life inside changed as larger organisms thrived while smaller ones struggled, according to two papers published by researchers from The University of Alabama.

UA Early College offers Leap Program
WVUA (Live Interview) – Oct. 4
Joining me now are Jennifer Hayes and Lindsey Porter from the University of Alabama’s Early College, and they are here to tell us how local high-schoolers can take classes here at the University and receive college credit for them while still in high school.

Ted Cruz, asked if he’s interacting with Texans, says he’s done 17 ‘town halls’ in 2017
Houston Chronicle (Texas) – Oct. 4
He’s not Waldo. But could it be that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas doesn’t get personally grilled by constituents very often? Cruz, a Republican poised to seek re-election in 2018, hardly has a reputation of avoiding attention. After all, he ran for president shortly after making waves in Washington and held on as the last viable Republican alternate to Donald Trump … But University of Alabama political scientist Joe Smith commented: “Employees know that their employer has arranged for and endorsed the visit, and that therefore assertive questions are not welcome.”

Free Speech on the College Campus
Hamilton – Oct. 4
On Oct. 3, several distinguished scholars in the field of free speech jurisprudence gathered to discuss the implications of free speech restrictions at both the national and college campus levels. They included Rodney Smolla, dean of Widener University Delaware Law School; Bryan Fair, Thomas E. Skinner Professor at the University of Alabama Law School and Southern Poverty Law Center Board of Directors member; and Ari Cohn, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Government Chair and Professor Robert Martin moderated the discussion.

Exploring privacy, free expression issues
Macomb County Legal News (Michigan) – Oct. 5
Is one person’s secret another person’s news? The answer lies at the heart of a debate that reaches into courtrooms, newsrooms, and political chambers around the world. The discussion continued recently at the University of Michigan Law School where legal scholars, policy makers, and journalists joined students and faculty at “International Perspectives on Privacy and Free Expression: Concepts, Conflicts, Consequences.” … “That is the $60,000 question,” said University of Alabama School of Law Prof. Ronald Krotoszynski. “The answer is a deeply unsatisfying ‘yes.’”

As Confederate statues come down, what about Columbus?
Montgomery Advertiser – Oct. 4
Kris Lane can’t shake the image of Christopher Columbus covered in blood. Red fluid — all of it fake — ran down the famed explorer’s statue in downtown Denver after Native American activists emptied their buckets on Columbus Day 1989. Lane, a professor of Latin American history at Tulane University, lived in Denver then. One option is adding statues, said Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of Alabama who studies historical memory.

Inclusive campus breakfast feeds students, fosters discussion
Crimson White – Oct. 5
While some members of The University of the Alabama community entered their first classes or rolled out of bed, a group of about 50 students and employees met to discuss how to make the University a more inclusive place—and to eat breakfast while doing it.

Students to fund and build Habitat home for tornado victim
Crimson White – Oct. 4
After the April 27, 2011 tornado tore through Tuscaloosa, the damaged buildings and homes became a sea of blue tarps, trying to protect what remained of the many homes that were in the tornado’s path. Six years later, much of the city has been rebuilt, but one of those tarps still serves as one Tuscaloosa woman’s makeshift roof.

Schoolyard Roots takes class out to the garden
Crimson White – Oct. 4
When Eric Courchesne moved from Austin, Texas to Tuscaloosa four years ago, he scoured the local non-profit scene to find the most compelling organization doing what he felt was the most important work. He found it, he said, in an organization that was then called Druid City Garden Project, now Schoolyard Roots … Schoolyard Roots also works with The University of Alabama, partnering with the Honors College for a service learning class called “Let’s Grow” where students learn about the Schoolyard Roots curriculum and volunteer with after-school programs led by the organization focusing on teaching elementary students entrepreneurial ideas.

Career center provides rental professional clothing to students
Crimson White – Oct. 4
Just last week, one UA student did not have the professional attire needed for an interview on campus, so he stopped by the Crimson Career Closet located in the Career Center. The attendees gave him a complete suit to rent for free, and when he returned to drop the items off, he told the Career Center staff that he got the internship he was interviewing for.
Local student earns degree from Alabama
The Sylva Herald (North Carolina) – Oct. 4
Peyton Robert Barrell of Cashiers earned a bachelor of science degree in commerce business administration from the University of Alabama.

Health Matters: Getting ready to travel
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Oct. 4
It takes a lot of work and planning to go on an exotic trip someplace maybe elsewhere in the world. And, you know, we often don’t think about the possibility of health related risk when we go on trips like that.

Fairhope, county join partnership for entrepreneurial hub
Lagniappe – Oct. 4
The city is pursuing $20,000 in grant money to help start a business incubator in Fairhope with the assistance of the University of Alabama, the Baldwin Economic Development Alliance and BBVA Compass Bank. “We will be the first location in the state for their Technology Village program,” BEDA Director Lee Lawson told the City Council last month. “This program was launched in South Carolina by Clemson University. It went out to non-university smaller areas within South Carolina and gave them the full resources of a four-year research university to create an entrepreneurial development center. “That’s exactly what the University of Alabama is proposing with this initiative in Fairhope and for this organization.”

Female Lawyers Are Interrupted More Frequently
Pacific Standard – Oct. 4
The United States Supreme Court is back in session, and this term it will rule on a number of important issues, including partisan gerrymanderingof election districts. While it’s impossible to predict which way the decisions will go, one thing can be said with near-certainty: Female attorneys arguing before the justices will be treated less deferentially than their male counterparts. In a recently published study, University of Alabama scholars Dana Pattonand Joseph Smith analyzed the transcripts of 3,583 oral arguments presented to the court over more than three decades. They found “female lawyers are interrupted earlier and more often, allowed to speak for less time between interruptions, and subjected to more and longer speeches by the justices compared to male lawyers.”

Contemporary Feminism: Disabilities
The Carolinian – Oct. 4
On  Sept. 29, a group of students bustled into EUC Kirkland as Dr. Nirmala Erevelles, a Professor Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Alabama, read excerpts from her scholarly article titled “Thinking Relationally Through Transnational Materialist Feminist Disability Studies.” To the right of her was Dr. Theri A. Pickens, a scholar as well as a creative writer. The focus of the article read by Erevelles is to give foundation to the Transnational Materialist Feminist Disability Studies field of study. Her research areas include transnational feminism and disability studies as well as post colonialism.