Tag: U of M

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive, Tigers at Target, and the McRib

Wheels down

The first COVID-19 vaccines arrived here Sunday. FedEX Corp. captured this historic moment in a tweet that could not have come soon enough.

Positive 2020?

University of Memphis president Dr. David Rudd tweeted a bold statement last week. “One thing got much better in 2020.”

McRib Vaccine

E. Parkway McDonalds is still going strong on Twitter even though the restaurant there is not (it closed years ago). The account captured this gross but weirdly accurate moment in time last week as the mysterious McRib sandwich reappeared.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Avenue Coffee Announces Closure

CREDIT: Avenue Coffee/Facebook

Avenue Coffee/Facebook

After six years in business, the U of M area coffee shop announced on Facebook Friday that it would close on Sunday, April 19th.

The shop — a quiet study spot for college students and a go-to pick-me-up for Normal Station residents — operated as a nonprofit. The “coffee shop with a cause” donated a portion of each month’s proceeds to a variety of social justice organizations.

Late last month, the shop created a GoFundMe campaign to help cover expenses and barista pay as business decreased dramatically due to COVID-19 closings, including a shutdown of its dine-in business and shuttering of the nearby U of M campus. The campaign had not yet reached $1,000 as of publication of this article. Avenue has recently been open for curbside/to-go service only.

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News News Blog

U of M to Launch Commercial Aviation Program This Fall

CREDIT: CIT

CIT

Crew Training International instructor working with students

The University of Memphis will begin training pilots this fall with a new commercial aviation program.

The university is partnering with Millington’s Crew Training International (CTI) Professional Flight Training to offer a Bachelor of Science in Commercial Aviation degree.

David Rudd, U of M president said the Commercial Aviation program is meant to prepare students for 21st-century jobs and better position them for opportunities at companies like Fedex Express.

“There will be ample demand for qualified, well-trained pilots in the coming decades, and this program and partnership will help U of M students become top candidates for these careers,” Rudd said.

Students in the program will receive 61 credit hours of professional aviation training, and 59 hours of classroom instruction including courses in business and management. The degree is meant to prepare graduates for careers in corporate and general aviation, other aviation-related businesses, airport operations, and government regulation of aviation.

With a bachelor’s degree in aviation, a graduate’s required number of flight hours to become a commercial pilot decreases by 500.

The program also gives veterans an opportunity to use post-9/11 benefits for flight training costs, now that the U of M is partnering with CTI. Additionally, high school students in the Aviation Study program at T-STEM Academy East High School are expected to “naturally and locally progress into the U of M’s program.”

This will create an “exciting local path that has a global impact,” Jim Bowman, senior vice president of flight operations for Fedex said.

The program will be “uniquely positioned” to support the needs of the local community and address the “looming” pilot shortage. The U of M reports that more than 42 percent of active U.S. airline pilots will retire over the next 10 years. Boeing estimates that in the next 20 years, North American airlines need 117,000 new pilots.

Bowman said as the aviation industry evolves, aviators have to be more tech savvy and better prepared academically than before.

“I’m excited that the University of Memphis is now part of the path to a successful career in the aviation industry, and I congratulate the university’s leadership for having the foresight to create this program,” Bowman said.

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Editorial Opinion

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Last weekend, the University of Memphis, through the aegis of its department of journalism and its law school, conducted the second annual Law School for Journalists, in which members of the local news media took part in various role reversals along with participating lawyers and judges. As we said last year, the event should become a tradition, and it seems well on its way to becoming one.

A special treat of the proceedings was Saturday’s luncheon address to participants by one of the lions of journalism, former Nashville Tennessean publisher John Seigenthaler who, appropriately for this occasion of looking from one side of the fence to the other, had also logged serious time in government as an adviser to attorney general Robert Kennedy.

But it was as a journalist that Seigen-thaler spoke to the mixed assembly at the U of M-area Holiday Inn. It was a case of a veteran and traditionalist looking both backward and forward at the same time. The legendary publisher made every effort to update his sense of his craft, focusing — as everyone in journalism must increasingly do — on the newer electronic art of online journalism that has begun to supersede even broadcasting as a staple of communication.

Seigenthaler spoke of journalism’s “self-inflicted wounds,” one of which was perpetrated against himself — an egregiously libelous caricature of him as a potential assassin that was posted for some months on the Wikipedia Web site before being corrected. Seigenthaler also reviewed the case of The New York Times‘ erstwhile fabricator Jayson Blair and those of several other recent frauds perpetrated within the journalistic mainstream.

Beyond these outright misrepresentations, however, Seigenthaler noted an even greater danger: that of willful ignorance, of not knowing how the diverse and complex modern world actually works.

To some degree, the presence in journalism of ever greater numbers of women and minorities has begun to remedy that situation — though Seigenthaler, citing the unexpected lessons of Katrina, believes that the intersection of race with poverty is one corner of reality that has never been investigated properly.

His most surprising caveat: that at a time when resurgent varieties of Islam have begun to dominate the map of world history, Western journalism — and the American brand in particular — is way behind the curve in understanding that religion and its motivations. Seigenthaler’s solution? More newsroom hirings of Muslims. Only through such an osmosis could we close so potentially lethal a gap in our mutual understanding.


The Lesson of Walter Reed

And speaking of wounds: Even through all the Anna Nicole Smith brouhaha, most Americans have begun to learn something from their media of the abominable conditions awaiting the legions of maimed veterans of duty in Iraq who are returning home for medical treatment and rehab — in proportions far exceeding those of any other American war.

Mold, filth, improper and insufficient protocols, red tape, and neglect — all this and worse confront our veterans at the hands of this benefits-cutting administration that would shame the political opposition with the slogan “Support Our Troops,” then shames itself by failing to do so in the most elementary sense.

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Cover Feature News

Damn the Torpedoes!

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Harold Byrd, suited up to the nines, his mane of gone-white hair crowning his tanned, smiling face, is being hit on by two matrons who recognize him from the Bank of Bartlett commercials which he, the bank’s president, is spokesman for. The three of them are standing in line at Piccadilly cafeteria on Poplar near Highland, waiting to pay their lunch checks.

“Oh, he looks just like he does on television,” coos one of the women, while the other nods with what is either real or mock mournfulness. “And his wife came and took him away from us! Isn’t that a shame?”

At 56, Byrd is unmarried, but he does not correct this misapprehension. He merely keeps the smile on — the characteristically toothy one which, together with his quite evident fitness, a product of daily runs and workouts, makes him look younger than his age — and says, “Thank you.”

Later, as he is leaving the restaurant, Byrd observes, with evident sincerity, “They made my day.” And just in case his companion might have missed it, he notes with a wink the greeting he got from another, younger woman.

All this attention and well-wishing has to be a welcome consolation for Byrd, given the predicament he now finds himself in: Horatio at the Gate against what he sees as Mayor Willie Herenton’s expensive and ill-conceived scheme to develop the Fairgrounds, with a brand-new football stadium as the pièce de résistance.

Justin Fox Burks

Byrd is on a mission to demonstrate that a better solution is at hand, one long overdue — namely, the long-deferred construction of a quality football stadium on campus at the University of Memphis, one which he says would cost no more than $100 million, as against the vaguely calculated sums, ranging from $125 million upwards, associated with the mayor’s plan.

Byrd is more than just another citizen with an opinion. He is a member of the university’s Board of Visitors, he is a former president of its Alumni Association, and he was the first president of the Tiger Scholarship Fund. More than all of that, Byrd — the holder himself of undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Memphis — has been, for decades now, one of the best-known public faces associated with university causes, athletic and otherwise.

His annual bank-sponsored pre-game buffets, held at the Fairgrounds before every Tiger home opener, draw huge crowds, teeming with the high and mighty and hoi polloi alike. He is either the host or the featured speaker at literally scores of university-related occasions each year, and there is no such thing as a fund-raising campaign for the university in which he does not figure largely.

Byrd’s prominence on the University of Memphis booster scene rivals that of athletic director R.C. Johnson or U of M president Shirley Raines and precedes the coming of either.

It must be painful, Byrd’s companion suggests, as they head for an on-campus tour of the site Byrd favors for a new stadium, that he now finds himself somewhat at loggerheads with both of these figures.

He agrees. He expresses what sounds like sincere regret that he doesn’t have the kind of impressively remote bearing that he associates with a variety of other civic figures — cases in point being Michael Rose, the longtime local entrepreneur and new chairman of First Tennessee Bank, and Otis Sanford, editorial director of The Commercial Appeal.

“I wish I could play my cards closer to the vest,” he laments. “I guess I’m too Clintonesque. I tell everybody everything!”

Byrd admits, “I may make people nervous,” but, as he says, by way of reminding both himself and his companion, “I think people are still talking to me, I think people still like me.”

Byrd is doubtless correct in that assumption, though there is no doubting that he does, in fact, “make people nervous” — and will continue to, so long as Athletic Director Johnson maintains his public stance of support for a Fairgrounds stadium (one, however, as Byrd notes, that has undergone some modification of late) and President Raines keeps her cautious distance from any particular proposal.

Harold Byrd’s diagram of his preferred site for an on-campus football stadium at the University of Memphis. All facilities are shown as they currently exist except for the stadium itself, which would occupy an expanse now filled by four dormitories all due for demolition, according to U of M officials.

At a recent meeting of the university Board of Visitors, Byrd laid out his vision for an on-campus arena — specifying no less than five acceptable sites.

Site Number One, which Byrd prefers, is a terrain adjoining Zach Curlin Drive on the eastern fringe of the university’s main campus. It would stretch from an open parkland in the vicinity of the Ned R. McWherter Library on the north down to the area of the old University Fieldhouse on the south. As Byrd notes, four dormitory buildings which now occupy the land are shortly to be razed.

“There’s our Grove!” he says excitedly of the available open expanse near the library — evoking the pre-game gatherings of fans on the campus of the University of Mississippi before games at the school’s on-campus Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Site Number Two, “which I like almost as much,” Byrd says, is a roomy area along Southern Avenue south of the university’s main administration buildings. Adjacent to an existing athletic complex and athletic dorms, the area consists mainly of parking lots right now.

Site Number Three is the large area that stretches from Patterson west to Highland and northward to Central. “The university owns most of the houses in this area,” says Byrd, and a tour of the zone indicates that, just as he says, most of the edifices, some now used as fraternity houses, many rented out to students, have seen their better days.

Site Number Four is the area just north of Central, partially university-owned, partially requiring some eminent-domain clearance. “I think that one would be more complicated,” Byrd says, though he notes that other university figures, who for the moment are keeping their own counsel, are more keen on it.

And Site Number Five, lastly, is the relatively sprawling area of the university’s South Campus, bordered on the north by Park Avenue. “That wouldn’t be as good as one located directly on the main campus, where most of the students are, but even it would be better by far than the Liberty Bowl.”

Byrd’s enthusiasm for the on-campus sites — especially for the Zach Curlin Drive alternative — is somewhat contagious, but when he made two elaborate presentations recently, one to a meeting of the Board of Visitors, another to an alumni group, there were few among his hearers who were willing to put themselves on the line as being in agreement with him.

“But you wouldn’t believe how many people came up to me afterward and said they thought I had the right idea,” Byrd says. He provides a list of influential people, both on and off campus. “I have no right to speak in their name,” he says, but they are likely to concur.

The first two contacted are much as advertised. Lawyer Jim Strickland, a member of the university alumni group who has launched a campaign for the City Council, is almost as keen on the Zach Curlin site as Byrd is, and Jim Phillips, president of the biometric firm Luminetx, takes time out from a meeting of his board to extol Byrd’s thinking in general terms.

At a recent gathering, prominent developer Henry Turley and University of Memphis professor David Acey were in conversation and were asked what they thought of Byrd’s proposals. “He’s passionate!” Turley exclaimed appreciatively, but the developer, who has interests of his own in the university, wondered where the money would come from. Acey’s concern had to do with space.

Justin Fox Burks

Apprised of this, Byrd noted that the same objections might apply, to greater or lesser degree, to the Fairgrounds site, and he insisted that better solutions were at hand at the university once people began to join him in thinking in that direction. Only a dearth of leadership has kept that from happening so far, Byrd says.

Byrd expresses admiration for both Herenton and his Shelby County mayoral counterpart, A C Wharton, though he finds the former figure a bit imperious and the latter one inclined to be more a “moderator” than a leader per se. He still hopes that both can be converted to a vision something like his own for a regeneration of the university campus that becomes the springboard for progress in the community at large.

“Every other university in the state has on-campus football and basketball sites,” Byrd notes, and he reels off a list of universities in the nation that have in the last few years constructed such facilities: “Louisville, Connecticut, Missouri, Central Florida, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Minnesota, Gonzaga … Those are just a few. There have to be 20 or more of them. Have we done it right or has everybody else done it wrong?”

It is the experience of the University of Louisville, in particular, that most animates Byrd. As he points out, that school had, until a generation ago, been primarily an urban-based commuter school with an athletic reputation in basketball. As Memphis fans well know, in fact, the Louisville Cardinals were the basketball Tigers’ chief rivals until recently — when they left Conference-USA for richer pickings in the more prestigious Big East conference, where the Cardinals now figure as a power in both basketball and football.

And there, Byrd contends, but for the aforesaid lack of vision on the part of university and civic officials, would have gone the Tigers and their supporters and the larger community served by the university. As Byrd sees it, Louisville launched its Great Leap Forward in 1992 when Howard Schellenberger became football coach and declared that his goal was for Louisville to play for a national championship.

“For $63 million — that’s all — they built a 40,000-seat stadium on campus. It replaced an old one several miles away, kind of like the Liberty Bowl. They’ve just made a quantum leap, and now they do contend for the national championship!”

How much would it cost for the University of Memphis to build a facility that might lead to the same result? Byrd reflects. “As a banker, I contend that we could build a first-rate collegiate stadium seating something like 50,000 people on campus for $100 million.” He contrasts that figure to estimates as high as $150 million for the facility Mayor Herenton envisions for the Fairgrounds.

And how would an on-campus stadium be financed?

Obligingly, Byrd does the arithmetic. There will be so much for naming rights (à la Louisville’s Papa John’s Stadium or, for that matter, FedExForum). So much from student fees. (“They’re building a new $45 million University Center right now on the basis of a modest increase in student tuition,” Byrd says. “Don’t you think students would be totally excited to walk to an on-campus facility? And our fees would still be the lowest in the state.”) So much from signage and from sale of suites and from organized fund-raising campaigns of the sort Byrd is a seasoned veteran of.

The problem, as Byrd sees it, is that the university has historically let itself get sidetracked from the clear and evident duty of completing its on-campus presence, which is what the fact of self-contained athletic facilities would amount to. Memphis’ state-supported university, he notes again, is the only facility in Tennessee so deprived.

With some chagrin, he acknowledges that he himself, both as chairman of the Shelby County delegation during his service as a state representative in the 1970s and later as an active university booster, acceded to the series of athletic structures and arenas built elsewhere — the Liberty Bowl (then known as Memorial Stadium) and the Mid-South Coliseum in the mid-’60s and, more reluctantly, the Pyramid downtown.

“Downtown was always the only other location for putting a first-class facility, where there was an infrastructure in place that could profit from it, but the Pyramid was NBA-unacceptable from the inception, and I told them so.”

Byrd sighs. “The leaders of government at that time were fearful of the taxpayers and more worried about that rather than building the facility like it should have been built. The result was that it ended up costing us more rather than less.”

And the irony, Byrd says, is that the university was then, as it would be now under Herenton’s proposed Fairgrounds development, the prime source of revenue support for all these city facilities — up to as much as 90 percent, and 50 percent even for FedExForum, which is totally under the control of the NBA’s Grizzlies.

“Flying into Memphis, you notice the Pyramid, the Liberty Bowl, and the Coliseum,” says Byrd. “They represent over $500 million in today’s dollars if you had to replace those facilities, and they’re all about to be either mothballed or destroyed. They’re not in imminent danger of encountering footballs or basketballs — they’re in danger of the wrecking ball! They must not have been in the right place to begin with if they need to be torn down now.”

Why, then, repeat that error by rebuilding something else new and shiny and expensive, but doomed to obsolescence, at the Fairgrounds? Byrd recalls city councilman Dedrick Brittenum saying, in a discussion about the proposed new venues, that whatever went in at the Fairgrounds should be built to last 30 or 40 years.

“Thirty or 40 years! That’s no time at all. What we need is to create a traditional site — like Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee. That goes all the way back to the 1920s!”

Byrd recalls that the old University Fieldhouse, adjacent to his preferred site for a stadium on the eastern edge of the U of M campus, once served as an on-site facility for Tiger basketball games during the period in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the university was coming of age as a national power in that sport. “What if they’d kept on going and expanded it and built a state-of-the-art facility there?”

He acknowledges having signed off as a state legislator on construction of both the Mid-South Coliseum as a replacement for the fieldhouse and the Liberty Bowl.

“If we’d put them in the right place, on campus, 20 million people would have visited that campus in the years since 1965. What would be the effect of having 20 million on the University of Memphis campus during that time?”

He ticks off several imagined consequences — increased donations, an enlarged study body, a developed social-fraternity infrastructure, a better-paid and more prestigious faculty. In short, a big-league university instead of the perpetually hand-to-mouth institution that is the University of Memphis today.

“We’ve got wonderful programs there. A speech and hearing center, a new school of music, a beautiful library.” He lists several other glories of the university, all, he contends, hidden more or less under a bushel. “When I talk to my fellow members of the Board of Visitors or the other university groups I belong to, I ask them, how many times have you actually visited the university when it wasn’t in the line of duty? It’s almost always very seldom or never.”

Byrd is realistic. He knows it’s too late to create a basketball arena on campus. FedExForum, which, as he sees it, has its own virtues, will serve that purpose. But football is another matter. Not only would it have enormous impact on the university itself with eight football dates a year, including the annual Southern Heritage Classic and Liberty Bowl events, plus innumerable concerts. “As a state facility, the stadium would be exempt from all those restrictions the Grizzlies put on other facilities,” he says. “Altogether, we should attract a million people the first year alone.”

As for the surrounding community, says Byrd, “The mayor talks about using tax-increment financing to redevelop the area around the Fairgrounds. Why not use it instead to build up the area around the university? The only thing that’s been built around the Fairgrounds in recent years is Will’s Barbecue, and it closed years ago. There are lots of existing businesses in the university area. They’ve paid their dues, and they deserve the support this would give.”

Like someone reluctantly confiding a secret, Byrd says, “Most people think the university is operating on a plan, but they’re not. They don’t have the kind of Teddy Roosevelt, damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead outlook that we had under Sonny Humphreys [university president during its major expansion era in the 1950s and 1960s]. We’ve had a dearth of leadership. R.C. and President Raines are waiting on Herenton. They should have their own vision, to get everybody together … .”

He takes a breath and continues:

“If that were allowed to happen, it would be amazing.”

Harold Byrd makes it clear that he is prepared to damn the torpedoes and go full-speed ahead and to keep on recommending, and seeking, that kind of amazement. And, sooner or later, he fully expects to have some serious company in that endeavor.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Visitation Rights

CREDIT: Jennifer Nickert | Dreamstime.com

For University of Memphis students, living on campus may not be much different from living at home.

A long-standing residence-hall policy dictates that guests of the opposite sex must leave the dorms by midnight during the week and 2 a.m. on weekends. But the U of M’s Student Government Association (SGA) is considering dorm life without set visiting hours.

“You have 22-year-olds who are pretty much adults, and then someone tells them that they have to have somebody out of their house by midnight,” says Ken Taylor, SGA’s speaker pro tem and sponsor of the resolution. “They don’t like that.”

Under the current visitation policy, guests of the opposite sex must present an ID at the dorm’s front desk. When the guest is ready to leave, the resident must walk him or her back to the front desk to check out.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions about us trying to control people’s behaviors,” says Danny Armitage, associate dean of students. “But we’re just trying to create a place where students can come to sleep, study, and socialize while maintaining a sense of privacy, safety, and security.”

As the only SGA member to vote against the visitation resolution, Seth Guess agrees.

“I don’t think all-night co-ed parties are conducive to a healthy environment,” says Guess, a sophomore who does not live on campus. “It hurts students who want to study.”

However, some students don’t feel that having a boyfriend or girlfriend stay overnight compromises dorm safety or constitutes a party.

SGA’s resolution would establish a committee to research how dorm visitation is handled at other schools, including whether it affects pregnancy or retention rates.

“If we see that other schools had pregnancy rates rise 50 percent and the retention rates drop 70 percent, we’re not going to support 24-hour visitation,” says Taylor.

The group doesn’t have the authority to change school policy. But if the SGA decides to support the policy change, it will present its findings to the U of M administration.

If the administration also supports the change, it will then submit a request to the Tennessee Board of Regents, the state body that governs public universities.

Though the SGA is investigating more relaxed rules, the school’s Residence Life office has been researching making the rules stricter.

“A lot of universities, to improve security, have moved to same-sex visitation,” says Armitage. “At Ole Miss, even if you want to bring someone of the same sex in, you have to check that person into your space.”

But at a resident meeting last week, about 65 percent of attendees were against changing to a same-sex visitation policy.

“We encourage students to make these kinds of decisions because they’re the people living there,” says Armitage. “But you can’t just go out and ask students if they want 24-hour visitation. Most would say yes. But then when you ask if they’re okay with a roommate having guests 24 hours, well, that’s the challenge we get into.”

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Tough Enough?

I’m still trying to figure out the 2006-07 Memphis Tigers. Having won nine straight games (through Saturday’s victory over Southern Miss), the Tigers appear to be running away with a second consecutive Conference USA championship. But that’s part of the catch, isn’t it? They’re running away with, well, the C-USA championship.

Sorry, but such title runs don’t capture the attention of SportsCenter. What will this team have to offer come March? Who is the go-to player in crunch time? (What would you have said a year ago about the answer to that question being Jeremy Hunt? Hunt took over the Southern Miss game and essentially won it by himself.) Can Coach John Calipari toughen his young squad in ways C-USA competition cannot?

The answers to these questions await as winter winds gradually give way to spring’s thaw. But with nine regular-season games left to play, here are a few lessons we have learned.

• Reclamation Rules! Among the new slogans I’ve heard Calipari preach this season is, “It’s about the path, not the prize.” If such is the case, the paths taken by Hunt and Kareem Cooper have been as winding — and rocky — as a backwoods ski trail. A season ago, Hunt was “permanently” suspended for a pair of assaults that had the sharp-shooting swingman appearing at 201 Poplar. As for Cooper, the sophomore center was suspended for the first eight games this season for transgressions away from the basketball court. Were it not for his teammates making a public appeal, Cooper may well have played his last game as a Tiger.

Cutting to the present, Hunt is the team’s second-leading scorer (13.9 points per game) and one of the top sixth men in the country. Cooper has embraced the role of Joey Dorsey’s backup and played so well that highly touted freshman Pierre Niles has been a casualty of limited minutes. Cooper’s soft hands — particularly evident on his lefty hook shot — complement the fearsome play of Dorsey and create matchup problems for Memphis opponents that can’t go as large off the bench.

• Rebounding Wins. Duh. There have been but four games this season in which the Tigers were out-rebounded — against Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Arizona, and Southern Miss. Three losses and a game Memphis should have lost. The Tigers are easy to brand as “small,” considering the number of guards (six) they have in their nine-man rotation. But Dorsey has averaged just under 10 boards a game, Robert Dozier is pulling down almost six per contest, and Chris Douglas-Roberts is one of the best rebounding guards ever to wear a Tiger uniform. Add Cooper to the mix (more than five rebounds a game off the bench), and you have a team that can clean glass with the best of them. Well, at least the best C-USA has to offer (that qualifier, once again).

• Guards, Guards, Guards. (Might be a nice rewrite for Mötley Crüe.) Douglas-Roberts, Hunt, Antonio Anderson, Andre Allen, Willie Kemp, and Doneal Mack: six push-it-up playmakers crammed into a total of 200 player minutes per game. While it may have fans checking the scoreboard to remember who’s in and who’s out, Calipari is enjoying the luxury of substituting immediately for any ball-handler who isn’t getting the job done at either end of the floor. With their top scorer (Douglas-Roberts) forced to the bench with an ankle injury early in the January 16th UAB game, Calipari utilized Mack for 20 minutes and got seven points and three assists out of the exchange.

“I told Chris,” said a smiling Calipari after the game, “you better be worried about your position right now, if that kid plays like that.”

Through Saturday’s win, Kemp, Allen, and Anderson have combined for 190 assists and only 100 turnovers. For some perspective, consider that last season, Darius Washington — the team’s starting point guard — had 110 assists and 111 turnovers. It’s the kind of efficiency that lets a coaching staff sleep well at night. And the kind of team play that helps a fan keep hope in his hip pocket, however many other questions remain to be answered.

Categories
News The Fly-By

A Matter of Force

“I’m going to try to convince you. … It’s a very strange universe that you live in. It only seems reasonable,” says Mike Ospeck cryptically.

The biophysicist and University of Memphis professor is speaking about the “mysterious uncertainty principle,” an idea that says there are parts of the universe that cannot ever be completely known. But Ospeck and his colleagues at the university’s annual Physics Day are trying to make one small part of the universe known — the U of M’s physics department, to be exact — to some 200 area high school students and teachers.

Each year, students from a variety of schools across the city, including White Station, Craigmont, MUS, and Hutchison, hear short lectures, see demonstrations, and tour the campus’ science facilities during the free seminar.

Joan Schmelz, a physics professor and astronomer at the U of M, kicks off the day with a discussion of black holes — a phenomenon that she says has wide appeal among students. It was Schmelz who first suggested the idea for Physics Day over 10 years ago. Her pitch for the program was successful, and the rest is history.

“Part of it is a recruitment effort for the department,” Schmelz says of Physics Day. “Part of it is outreach to bring more civics to the community.”

The event is tailored to students who might be interested in a physics career path but does not exclude students with their eyes on engineering or related fields. Every year, Schmelz gets feedback from teachers to increase the availability of the program to as many students as possible. This year, every seat in the Manning Hall lecture room is full.

John Hanneken, an associate professor of physics, tries to answer a very real-world question: “What can you do with a physics degree?” Dispelling the perceptions that all physicists are geniuses or that they always become teachers, Hanneken cites a survey that says a student’s success in medical school can be predicted according to how well they do in their undergraduate physics classes. He also points out that physicists ranked 15th for highest incomes on a 2001 Occupational Employment Statistics Survey.

At the end of the day, physics professor Robert Marchini leaves students with more than their college career to ponder. Using several well-known principles, he gives students a glimpse at how basic physics is used by magicians to fool audiences.

“Both magic and science are systematic ways of learning about nature and controlling nature,” Marchini says.

For one of his tricks, Marchini selects a female volunteer. As the students scramble out of their seats to get a closer look, Marchini reveals a bed of nails. After his volunteer has touched one of the nails, assuring the other students of its sharpness, Marchini cautiously lays down on the bed. A tense moment or two passes, but Marchini shows no sign of discomfort. When he asks the girl to stand on his chest, her reluctance is clear — though she does as instructed, much to the delight of the audience.

When Marchini stands up, the audience can see the individual impressions of nails on his back, but the skin has not been broken. Marchini’s demonstration proves the principle of force per unit area: When weight is distributed over many nails, the force exerted on a single nail is dramatically reduced. “I contend that we live in a society that believes more in magic than it does in science,” Marchini says. “All I’m asking of all of you is to maintain a healthy skepticism.”

By the end of the day, students have learned about black holes and biophysics, pyschokinesis and astronomy, and how an interest in those areas might just pull them toward a career.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Old Pagan Songs

Simply said, the period between now and mid-January is as good a time as any for the serious theaterhound to experiment a bit and check out the emerging talent on stage at Rhodes College and the University of Memphis. Both theater departments have been doing exciting, precocious, nearly professional work of late, though neither seems to have their very best foot forward at the moment.

Rhodes’ McCoy Theatre production of Dancing at Lughnasa is only missing one thing: maturity. Although the young actors — aided by Rhodes alum Pete Montgomery — do excellent, credible work, this particular piece screams out for actors with a bit more water under the bridge.

Brian Friel’s semi-autobiographical memory play may be a poetical account of life in Northern Ireland during the 1930s, but its plot and characters resonate strongly with the most celebrated literature of the American South. Just as William Faulkner created his Yoknapatawpha County and peopled it with Southern Gothic archetypes, Friel has conjured up the hardscrabble landscapes of Ballybeg and filled them with hand-me-down characters direct from John Millington Synge. Dancing at Lughnasa is a fractured tale of fractured lives witnessed through the eyes of a child who, raised by a gaggle of poor spinster sisters, is both privy to and sheltered from the heartbreak all around him.

“If you knew your prayers as well as you know those old pagan songs,” says Kate, a pious Christian scold to Maggie, her most lighthearted sister. This throwaway line is the thesis around which Dancing at Lughnasa is built. It’s a play about resonance and about people who are desperately seeking the dark, primitive place where the distinctions between the sacred and secular fall away; where lives may be led in a more natural state.

The play’s various subplots include Uncle Jack, a Christian missionary in Africa who assimilated with his tribe, went native, was deemed physically and mentally unstable, and shipped back to Ireland. There’s sister Chris, falling back in love with the charmingly superstitious father of her bastard son. Simple, fragile Rose bursts with unfulfilled sexual desire, while she and the industrious Aggie eke out a living knitting one pair of gloves after another. All of these characters are captured onstage at Rhodes, though not as vibrantly as they might have been with an older, more experienced cast. Nevertheless, when Alicia Queen (Maggie) streaks her face with flour and goes shrieking out of the house to dance, we’re offered a sneak peek at the play’s full potential.

Director Jerre Dye has done consistently excellent work with Voices of the South, but his approach to Dancing at Lughnasa seems a bit overly reverent to the material. Although the play’s lilting narration makes it overly precious at times, this is a show that crescendos with a group of women dancing like witches around the mutilated carcass of a chicken. There’s plenty of room to cut loose.

Through November 19th

If dying is easy and comedy is hard, then farce is damn near impossible and the chances of dying on stage are sky-high. If you’re doing a metafarce all about the trials and tribulations of staging a farce, the odds against success increase exponentially. The U of M’s ambitious staging of Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy Noises Off never quite falls down, and that may very well be the problem.

Director Stephen Hancock is an aficionado of fast-paced, door-slamming, slapstick tomfoolery, and he’s packed plenty of it into his latest endeavor. But Noises Off isn’t just about getting stuck to a plate of sardines or being caught in your knickers, it’s also about the impossible personalities one encounters in the theater, and in the end, personality is where this production comes up short.

Michael J.P. Framer is an absolute joy as the terrified and tyrannical director Lloyd Dallas, and Hancock has discovered every ounce of comic potential in the character of Brooke (“the worst actress in the world”) Ashton, alternately played by Ann Marie Gideon and Jade E. Hobbs. It seems as though the rest of the cast was on the verge of breaking through but — like the characters they play — were distracted by the accents, the words, the doors, the sardines. You get the picture.

Through November 18th

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Encore Performance?

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The number 16 has become rather sacred in the world of college basketball. If your team reaches the second week of the NCAA tournament in March — the Sweet Sixteen — you can count the season a success. With that spirit in mind, here are 16 questions to be answered in the months ahead by the 2006-07 University of Memphis basketball program.

• What kind of carryover can we expect from last season’s 33-4 performance? How about zippo? Nada. The old goose-egg factor. The U of M enjoyed its finest season in more than a decade in 2005-06, but the style and flavor of this year’s team could hardly be more different. With the departure of three stars, the team has lost 53 percent of last year’s scoring. Rodney Carney (an All-American), Shawne Williams (C-USA’s Freshman of the Year), and Darius Washington were John Calipari’s first three options on offense a year ago, leaving Chris Douglas-Roberts as the top veteran scoring threat on this year’s team. Add to all this a freshman point guard — Bolivar’s Willie Kemp — establishing a tempo to his liking, and you have some growing pains certain to bite before conference play begins in January. So raise the C-USA championship banner from a year ago, toast the Elite Eight appearance one last time. And move on to a new season and new team.

• Is the U of M a renegade program? Before you get hot and bothered over such a question even being raised, consider some variables: The national media loves a whipping boy in college basketball. The ingredients for such a program are the following: a highly paid, high-profile coach, plus consistent dominance in a mid-level conference, with a mixture of one-and-done — or two-and-done — stars leaving school early. (See UNLV in the 1980s, Cincinnati in the 1990s.) Now, the big difference between previous whipping boys and Calipari’s program is that the U of M has kept itself off the NCAA sanctions list. With the return of Jeremy Hunt (by every definition to this point, a renegade player), the Tiger program needs to aim high — on and off the court — to avoid this label. The suspension of Kareem Cooper before the season’s opening tip sure doesn’t help matters.

• What does the return of Jeremy Hunt mean for the U of M program? To begin with, it means a new definition of the word “permanent” (as in “permanently dismissed”). It means the Tigers will suit up a player whose case involving the assault of his former girlfriend won’t be dismissed — permanently — until just before the Conference USA tournament opens in Memphis. It also means the Tigers will have a graduate coming off their bench, Hunt having earned his degree in August. (More than former stars Antonio Burks or Rodney Carney can claim.) Yes, Hunt is a renegade seeking redemption, and he might receive his share of boos at FedExForum. Just how much he contributes to the success of this year’s team will depend on how healthy he is — a major variable for Hunt — and just how forgiving his coach and teammates prove to be.

Larry Kuzniewski

Sophomore guard Chris Douglas-Roberts

• Why isn’t Darius Washington still a Memphis Tiger? Put your ear to the ground on this one and you’ll get answers as varied as the dribble-drives Washington utilized over his two seasons at FedExForum: bad advice from his father; bad advice from Calipari; pro ambitions with more hubris than substance; the need — as a new father — for a source of income, any source of income. Washington is going to be a sad footnote to the Calipari era of Memphis basketball. Perhaps he was expendable with the arrival of Kemp. But what price will Washington (and his family) pay for this divorce?

• Who will be the leader of the 2006-07 team? Washington’s departure will leave more of an intangible void than it will on the floor. Rodney Carney was a brilliant four-year star, but he was as quiet as a church mouse after the opening tip. Shawne Williams, alas, might have grown into a leader, but he’ll have to do that now as an Indiana Pacer. Sophomore guard Antonio Anderson has the demeanor of a floor leader, if not the position for it. Look for Andre Allen to point the way for this year’s squad, even if he’s coming off the bench for the precocious Kemp. Emotion counts for a lot in college hoops. Washington, as all of Tiger Nation remembers so well, wore emotion like Superman’s cape. When chests need punching this winter, the fist will likely be that of Andre Allen.

• What is John Calipari’s agenda? All those North Carolina State rumors last spring certainly didn’t hurt the sale tag for Conference USA’s highest profile. Entering his seventh year in charge of the Memphis program, Calipari has six 20-win seasons, an NIT championship, an NCAA regional final, two conference players of the year, and four conference freshmen of the year under his belt. So what’s left to prove? Calipari’s been given everything he’s asked for at the U of M, so it’s easy to understand a comfort zone, even as far from his native Northeast as the 47-year-old coach may be. And with the Final Four within sniffing distance just last spring, Calipari’s mission of making Memphis a “national program” is being realized. The U of M will not be John Calipari’s last coaching job. But for now, if it ain’t broke …

• Who might surprise us on this year’s team? Regardless of their prep credentials, freshmen are unknown variables, so we’ll scratch Kemp, Hashim Bailey, and Pierre Niles off this list. But keep an eye on Robert Dozier. Among the five ballyhooed freshmen who arrived on campus a year ago, Dozier brought the least fanfare. But he developed into a major contributor off the bench with his rebounding skills and — considering his size — nice offensive touch. He’s the kind of player who will never be your star of the game, but when you check the stat sheet, it’s 12 points and eight rebounds, one night after another. It’s not unreasonable to consider Dozier an all-conference candidate.

• Which player can the Tigers not win without? Joey Dorsey. A true center is the rarest commodity in college basketball today: a player with size and strength, a shot blocker on defense, more comfortable with his back to the basket on offense. That’s Joey Dorsey, folks, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t aspire for all-conference honors this season. Late last season, after a win over a game UTEP team at home, Calipari said the following: “You’ve got to learn to play when guys are bumping and grinding, if you really want to do something unique. Every team we play is going to get rougher and more desperate.” If there is such a thing as a Calipari mantra, “Play Tough” is it. No one will provide more toughness for the 2006-07 squad than their 6’9″, 260-pound junior from Baltimore.

Larry Kuzniewski

Sophomore guard Antonio Anderson

• Does Memphis own the C-USA Freshman of the Year trophy? You might say that, just don’t be looking for any Four-Year Player of the Year hardware. Dajuan Wagner in 2002. Sean Banks in ’04. Darius Washington in ’05. Shawne Williams last season. (We hardly knew ye!) Kemp will be among the leading contenders for the league’s rookie-of-the-year honors, but here’s hoping he becomes the first such honoree under Calipari to enjoy a Senior Night.

• Will immaturity catch up with this year’s team? Some would say it has already. Incidents involving Dorsey and Bailey have already made headlines and raised eyebrows. When Anderson and Douglas-Roberts stepped forward and defied convention by pointing fingers at the transgressors — and away from the “good guys” on the team — you had to wonder about the cohesion of this young squad. When sophomores are the vocal leaders before the season’s first tip-off, how much maturity can be expected?

• Do the Grizzlies help or hurt the Tiger program? Having shared an arena (two, actually) for five years now, this is a matter still worthy of debate. It goes without saying that good basketball — on any level, including the local prep hotbeds — benefits any group that sells basketball tickets. So the Grizzlies bringing the finest pro players to town has only heightened Memphis’ reputation as a basketball-crazed city. On the other hand, when you’re budgeting your discretionary income and it comes down to the Grizzlies and Spurs on a Tuesday night or the Tigers and UTEP on a Thursday, unless your loyalty to the city’s flagship university runs out your ears, you’re heading for the NBA game. All of which places a premium on, yes, the coach of the U of M program. If you doubt Calipari sells tickets, you’re probably still convinced the Mighty Miss flows north. And it’s why the U of M has met each and every one of Coach Cal’s salary demands … so far.

• Why is Tony Barbee laughing? Only 36 years old, the new head coach at UTEP suddenly has a springboard to what should be a long and successful coaching career. Having played for Calipari at UMass and served as an assistant at the U of M for six years, Barbee has a grasp on the Cal way of doing things and in some respects is ahead of where Calipari was at this stage of his career. (UTEP has a higher historical profile than UMass did upon Calipari’s arrival in 1988.) One of the most heartfelt handshakes of the season will come on March 1st, when the Tigers visit El Paso.

• Which home games should not be missed? Ole Miss (December 9th) and Cincinnati (January 4th) are sure to draw big crowds to FedExForum, but if I’m buying the tickets, it’s a pair of late-February conference showdowns that get my attention: February 22nd vs. Rice and February 25th vs. Houston. Within a four-day period, you’ll be able to see all five preseason all-conference players in action: Dorsey and Douglas-Roberts for the home team, the Cougars’ Oliver Lafayette and Lanny Smith, and the preseason player of the year, Rice’s Morris Almond. Along with UAB, these are also two of three teams in C-USA that might challenge Memphis for the league title.

• What do Zach Curlin and Dana Kirk have to do with this season? With 25 wins, Calipari will move past Kirk (158) and Curlin (172) for second in Tiger basketball history. Over his six seasons in Memphis, Calipari has averaged just under 25 wins a year. (Larry Finch remains at the top of the list with 220 wins.)

• Who’s next in the 1,000-point club? In each of the last four seasons, at least one Tiger scored his 1,000th career point. Entering the 2006-07 campaign, the closest active Tiger is Jeremy Hunt with 625 points. Unless Hunt averages more than 12 points a game, look for this streak to come to an end.

• How deep into March will this team play? With the number of variables introduced each and every season, forecasting the NCAA basketball tournament in November is a Herculean gambit. But here’s where I see this year’s Tiger team coming up short: fight or flight. We tend to forget that the magical run Memphis made last year actually began with the team’s unlikely run to the C-USA tournament championship game in 2005 (the epic loss to Final Four-bound Louisville, when Washington missed his free throws at game’s end). Players like Washington, Carney, and Dorsey entered last season with a competitive edge toughened by heartbreak. Add the best freshman class Calipari has recruited and you had a concoction for greatness, at least on the scale measured by C-USA. With the defections of Washington and Williams and off-court distractions already part of the story for 2006-07, the Tigers are playing uphill before Thanksgiving. Veteran leadership is a must for a lengthy dance in March. Don’t expect this year’s club to reach that fabled second weekend.