News

The Beta Theta Pi campus chapter was suspended during the summer due to charges of under-age drinking, marijuana use and hazing. The fraternity was put on probation years before the suspension, starting with a hazing violation a few years ago and continuing with under-age drinking cases and accusations of drug use. “It wasn’t any one thing, honestly. Ultimately what it came down to was lack of internal culpability,” Moe Stephens, Assistant Director of Student Activities for Greek Life and Leadership, said. “The actions of some members of Beta Theta Phi...

Thanks to a previously overlooked legal technicality, Wal-Mart may be coming to town after all. A California-based developer has submitted plans to build a 150,000 square-foot Wal-Mart supercenter on Union Ave. next door to Target, where the Tacoma Elks Lodge is currently located. Although the Tacoma City Council passed a 6-month moratorium on all big-box retailers on Aug. 30, it did not take effect until it was printed and publicized in accordance with Washington state law.  The developer submitted plans for the Wal-Mart on Aug. 31, the day before the...

After evaluating Puget Sound’s sustainability efforts in the past year, the Sustainability Advisory Committee (SAC) will be using the assessment to create short- and long-term priorities for university sustainability endeavors and goals, according to John Hickey, co-chair of the SAC. The SAC hopes to have the new Center for Health Sciences building be LEED certified. According to www.usgbc.org, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified means that a building has been internationally recognized as a “green” building. Puget Sound currently has two LEED gold certified buildings: the Facilities Services...

It’s finally here: the last Trail issue of the semester. Next week is reading period, the following week we are tested on what we learned during reading period and the week after that—who knows? Some of us will graduate. Some of us will watch our friends graduate. Some of us will watch The Graduate on Instant Netflix and ignore phone calls from our parents asking if we’ve found a job yet. In the beginning of the year, I wrote a short article—what I proudly called “The State of The Trail...

The historic pagoda at Point Defiance, a well-known landmark to park goers, was significantly damaged in a fire on Friday, April 15. It was the second of what turned out to be several suspicious fires at Point Defiance this month. Each of the fires, which all occurred after dark, have been judged arson. There were no witnesses to the fires and no suspects have yet been apprehended. Extra security has since been added to Point Defiance. Despite the short span of time in which each instance of arson was committed,...

Muted controversy turned to uproar earlier this month following the distribution of the most recent edition of The Rattler, a satirical spin-off of the ASUPS’ Tattler newsletter. Criticism of the formerly-anonymous publication focuses on a series of jokes in a section entitled “10 worst pick-up lines” that reference sexual assault. The list included “does this smell like chloroform to you?” And “what, you don’t like roofies? Oh, this is awkward.” The newsletter, which has been published off-and-on for more than a year, was distributed throughout Marshall Hall. It has no...

The Tacoma Police Department established a new unit last week, dedicated to investigating unsolved mysteries, known as cold cases, full-time. Veteran Tacoma Police Detective Gene Miller was assigned to the unit on March 14 to investigate homicides and suspicious missing person cases that were never closed. Miller has begun prioritizing all of the Department’s cold case information and seeking assistance with DNA and other forensic evidence from the Washington State Patrol crime lab. A police investigation is considered “cold” after all possible leads have been exhausted, all evidence has been...

Recently, the Internet news site Inside Higher Ed reported on a new study called the Citation Project. This study analyzed research papers written by first-year students at a variety of different colleges. The Citation Project concluded that college students are not synthesizing their information, that they are not citing or paraphrasing information correctly and that their papers often include too many quotes. Researchers for the study sorted each piece of information found in student papers into four categories: exact copying, “patchwriting” (copying a piece of information with vary limited changes,...