The Pine Log

              CMYK
TODAY
H 73 L TUESDAY
79 L 84 L 68
Visit us online at
www.thepinelog.com
Page 4
Inside
The Crime Log
Page 3
Family Fun Day
planned in Nac
Page 3
Walmart and
Tyson caught in
scandal
Page 6
East Texas
garage sale at
SFA
Page 6
Opinions
Page 4
Columns
Jessica Gilligan
talks about our
dependence on
technology
Chi Chi says
goodbye to SFA,
Nac and The
Pine Log
Entertainment
Page 5
‘Pirates! A band of
Misfits’—Review
Dr. Linda Bond
to read Karle Baker
stories
Volume 92
Issue 14
Next Publication:
Thursday April 26, 2012 61
WEDNESDAY
H
Monday, April 30, 2012 PINE LOG The
The Independent Voice of Stephen F. Austin State University
SFA Track
places second
at event
The Pine Log’s Sudoku
Look for this
addictive number
game on page 2
every Monday
and Thursday
Page 8
48
H
By Katelynn Marcum
STAFF WRITER
Local veterans were honored Thursday at a
Salute the Troops benefit concert at The Barn Bar
and Grill.
The new Veterans Resource Center sponsored
the concert to raise money to increase services
offered at their center.
“This show is all about giving back,” Derek
Sholl, country music singer, said. “We’ll play
some songs from the album and songs you’ll
want to sing along to.”
Sholl played an acoustic concert with only two
guitars.
“The concert is not only to welcome our SFA
student veterans,” John Fontenot, VRC coordina-tor,
said, “but also to show veterans in the com-munity
they are cherished, loved and supported
by the town of Nacogdoches.”
Fontenot served as an Army Ranger for two
tours in Bosnia and Iraq. He is a disabled combat
veteran.
Prizes were raffled off between songs at the
concert. They included a customized Budweiser
and American flag Igloo cooler and four free
rounds of golf at Pineywoods Country Club.
The VRC had wanted to raffle a chance to fire
the cannon at a football game this fall. However,
due to regulations, civilians are no longer al-lowed
to fire the ROTC cannon.
Everyone who attended the event was given an
SGA/VRC koozie for their drink.
Gailon Fletcher attended the event with his
wife Connie Fletcher, who previously served in
the Air Force.
“We came to support the veterans and the new
center at SFA,” said Fletcher, who served in the
Air Force.
Gailon Fletcher served from 1956 to 1976. He
was a navigator and a pilot, and was involved in
the Vietnam War. During
the war he flew C-121
Constellation, 0-2 and
0-1 observation aircraft.
However, throughout his
career he flew over 10 dif-ferent
types of aircraft.
Gailon Fletcher grad-uated
from SFA in 1979
with a degree in forestry.
Connie Fletcher served
in the Air Force from 1956
to 1959. She was a flight
traffic specialist.
A flight traffic special-ist
is basically a flight at-tendant,
Connie Fletcher
said. She flew on CF-4,
DC-4 and super constella-tion
aircraft.
Gailon and Connie
Fletcher are members
of the local Veterans of
Foreign Wars post along
with Fontenot.
Budweiser was one
of the sponsors for the
event. Signs were hung on walls of The Barn that
said “Here’s to the Heroes.” The first round of Bud
Light was on the house for veterans.
The VRC had a soft opening March 30. They
hope to have a grand opening and ribbon cutting
in the fall.
The VRC provides services to veterans such as
making appointments, tutoring, career counsel-ing,
mental health services and networking op-portunities.
“We want this to be a place where veterans
can come and relax,” Fontenot said of the VRC
lounge. “Our ultimate goal is to create a veteran
friendly campus and create a culture between
veterans, students and the community.”
Sholl is a former professional baseball player
who turned to country music after receiving a
string of injuries on the field, according to his
website dereksholl.com. He is a strong United
Service Organization Inc. (USO) supporter and
participates in the Country for our Country pro-gram.
This program provides funding to military
families in East Texas for services outside their
military benefits.
kmarcum@thepinelog.com
The Center for a Livable World
at SFA will benefit from guidance
based on the philosophy of one of
the world’s greatest leaders. Arun
Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma
Gandhi, has agreed to serve as a
senior fellow for the center.
Arun Gandhi recently visited the
SFA campus and spoke to students
attending the Omicron Delta Kappa
leadership honor society confer-ence.
Born in 1934 in Durban, South
Africa, Arun is the fifth grandson of
India’s legendary leader, Mohandas
K. “Mahatma” Gandhi. Arun Gandhi
lived with his famous grandfather
for 18 months and continues his
grandfather’s work to foster positive
social change through acts of non-violence.
Dr. Thomas Segady, SFA
sociology professor, said Gandhi’s
affiliation with SFA is a valuable op-portunity
for SFA students.
“Mr. Gandhi said his grandfa-ther’s
mission really would not be
complete until he could come to
the West and share the same kind
of philosophy with others,” Segady
said. “He was impressed with SFA
and the students.”
Dr. Brian Murphy, dean of the
College of Liberal and Applied
Arts at SFA, said senior fellows are
prominent leaders in the field of
sustainability whose involvement is
designed to strengthen the capabili-ties
of the center to conduct cutting-edge
analysis of issues that touch
upon sustainable development.
“The Center for a Livable World
explores the human dimensions of
sustainable development and offers
a vision for the future that empha-sizes
community development, per-sonal
engagement and economic
responsibility,” he said. “The cen-ter
serves as a crossroads for all
viewpoints and promotes dialogue
that leads to practical solutions and
shared values.”
There are commonalities in the
philosophies of sustainability and
nonviolence, Gandhi said.
“Sustainability is an important
part of the philosophy on nonvio-lence,”
Gandhi said. “We do a lot
of violence to nature, not just to
human beings. Any effort we can
make to eliminate that violence
serves to further the mission of our
work.”
Growing up under the discrimi-natory
apartheid laws of South
Africa, Gandhi was beaten by
“white” South Africans for being too
black and by “black” South Africans
for being too white. Although he
was inclined to retaliate, he learned
from his parents and grandparents
that true justice involves transform-
Benefit concert honored local service members
KATELYNN MARCUM/THE PINE LOG
Veterans from the Nacogdoches community and SFA gathered at The Barn for
a benefit concert Thursday for the VRC.
With the addition of a new, re-motely
operated telescope, the SFA
Observatory is continuing to pro-vide
astronomy students access to
stellar technology and out-of-this-world
research opportunities.
The second largest in the Central
time zone, the SFA Observatory is lo-cated
11 miles north of Nacogdoches
and employs a number of telescopes
that vary in size and strength. The
new addition is 16 inches in diam-eter
and eventually will have the
capability to be operated from the
main campus or other research lo-cations.
“Both undergraduate and grad-uate
students also have the op-portunity
to gain experience in
robotics and computer program-ming
through the use of the new
technology,” said Dr. Dan Bruton,
astronomer and professor in the
SFA Department of Physics and
Astronomy. “I want to provide our
advanced undergraduates and se-niors
with state-of-the-art equip-ment
that will allow them to do
graduate- and senior-level projects.”
The new remotely operated tele-scope
will be used primarily for as-teroid
hunting, observing variable
stars and imaging deep sky objects
such as nebulae, star clusters, gal-axies
and supernovae. The obser-vatory’s
41-inch telescope is used
for star research, and an 18-inch
telescope is used to search for minor
planets. (11 asteroids have been dis-covered
at the SFA Observatory.)
Additionally, a 10-inch telescope is
used mostly for training.
The student observatory, the larg-est
teaching observatory in the state
of Texas, provides approximately 825
introductory astronomy students
each year with the opportunity to
view and learn about the wonders of
the sky. A dozen portable 8-inch tele-scopes
and four 6-inch Newtonian
reflectors can be mounted on pedes-tals
for student use.
The research observatory is used
by students and faculty members to
broaden our understanding of the
universe. It is one of the only facili-ties
of its size in the world that per-mits
regular use by advanced un-dergraduate
and graduate students.
The SFA Observatory also offers
free public viewing opportunities,
one each spring, summer and fall.
Hosted by the SFA chapter of the
Society of Physics Students, the
public viewing sessions are listed
on the observatory website.
“Since many SFA students come
from the Houston or Dallas-Fort
Worth areas, the views offered
through these telescopes in the rel-atively
dark skies of East Texas offer
an enjoyable and often unforget-table
experience,” said Dr. Norm
Markworth, observatory director.
SFA graduates who have taken
advantage of the research fa-cilities
available at the observa-tory
are prospering in their field,
Bruton said. Among them is Justin
Parish ’10, assistant director at The
Center for Earth and Space Science
Education at Tyler Junior College,
who attributes much of his success
to time spent at the SFA Observatory
as a student researcher.
“My experience and knowledge
base was made stronger through
this plethora of research, which ul-timately
led to my success in ob-taining
an assistant director posi-tion
at a brand new planetarium,”
said Parish.
For more information about the
SFA Observatory and upcoming
public viewing sessions, visit www.
observatory.sfasu.edu.
PHOTO COURTESY SFA PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The new SFA telescope at the Observatory is giving astronomy students a chance
to use the most up-to-date technology.
New telescope at SFA
provides ‘stellar’ study
Gandhi’s grandson named senior adviser of SFA Center
SUE CORTEZ/THE PINE LOG
Arun Gandhi was named senior adviser
of SFA Center GANDHI CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
Walmart is in
the news
again