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Show Students visit border over Spring Break . . . page 4 A look at Lil lard's career . . . page 6 AT A GLANCE EDITORIAL FEATURES SPORTS CLASSIFIEDS 2 3 4 6 11 VOL 82 ISSUE 85 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2012 WWW.WSUSIGNPOST.COM SignP 0 St WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY Damian Lillard NBA bound By Corie Holmes sports editor I The Signpost PHOTO BY BRYAN BUTTERFIELD I THE SIGNPOST Weber State University basketball player Damian Lillard (right) announces he will forgo his senior year and enter the NBA Draft at a press conference Tuesday with WSU head basketball coach Randy Rahe (left). Tuesday afternoon, Weber State University point guard Damian Lillard announced that he will forgo his senior year and will enter the 2012 NBA Draft. "Everybody knew I was in a position where I could stay at Weber State or enter the draft," Lillard said. "After talking with Coach Rahe and my family and giving it a lot of thought, I have decided to declare myself eligible for the 2012 NBA Draft." Randy Rahe, WSU head basketball coach, said that he is proud of Lillard and all that he has done, and because he is a stand-out person and player, he will stick out through the draft process. "Nothing has been handed to this guy," Rahe said. "He is a self-made player. He is a self-made person. That is why he is going to be successful. I really believe that is what is going to separate him throughout this process." Lillard is projected by many as a lottery pick in this year's draft. WSU has had 15 players selected in the NBA Draft but has never had a first round pick. The Big Sky Conference See NBA page 5 wsu to WSU flag traveled world prepare for earthquake Chief of Police: "It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when." By Cozette Jenkins news editor I The Signpost Weber State University will hold an earthquake preparedness event, Shake Up, Friday night and Saturday afternoon to supplement the statewide Shake Out event on April 17. Friday at 7 p.m., WSU geosciences professors Adolph Yonkee and Michael Hernandez will discuss the Wasatch Fault and the hazards that come with living near a fault line. WSU Chief of Police Dane LeBlanc will speak about the preparations WSU has made for catastrophe response. The Earthquake Preparedness Fair will be held Saturday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m in Lind Lecture Hall. The fair will feature lectures, prizes (including 72 Hour Kits), candy, earthquake simulations, shake tables, booths and more. "In June of last year, we had a Science Saturday for tectonics, or earthquakes, and we just got a lot of questions from parents and a lot of people wanted to know more information," said Sara Yearsley, president of Sigma Gamma Epsilon, a national Earth science honor society. Sigma Gamma Epsilon is sponsoring the Shake Up with WSU's Department of Geosciences. "It was surprising how much people didn't know about the hazards of earthquake, right here," said Amanda Gentry, president of the WSU geology club. "In the next 50 years, there is a 95 percent certainty that there's going to be See Earthquake page 5 By Laurie Reiner news reporter I The Signpost While stationed in Kuwait, Sergeant First Class Carl Hall saw a dining facility with flags hung for each state and territory of the US, as well as many US universities. Hall's daughter is a student at Weber State University, and he said he wanted a WSU flag sent to him. "I thought to myself, what an honor it wouldbe to have aWeberState flagflyingright next to them in that dining facility," Hall said. Trevor Hicks, former Davis campus vice president, said, "One of our service projects at the start of the year, we got all the leaders together, and we wrote on one side at the very top (of the flag), `WSU supports our troops,' and then we all signed it. We had no idea the trip he would take that flag on, the people he would get to take that flag to." Hall came back from Kuwait in December after having the flag for six months. On See Flag page 5 PHOTO BY TYLER BROWN I THE SIGNPOST Sergeant First Class Carl Hall gives Weber State University back the flag the Davis campus sent to him. Gay Holocaust victims remembered By Stephanie Simonson managing editor I The Signpost For the first event in Weber State University's observance of Holocaust Rememb ranceWeek, the Center for Diversity and Unity hosted "Starting with Stonewall: The LGBT Movement in the US." The screening and discussion, however, ended up focusing more on the treatment of LGBT individuals in the Holocaust. Thomas Alberts, WSU's Stop the H8 chair, invited WSU alumnus Jayson Stokes to lead a discussion on the documentary Paragraph 175, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. From 10:30-11:30 a.m., a small group of students watched select parts of the film, intercut with Stokes providing commentary and background information, in the Center for Diversity and Unity. "It's actually kind of interesting to note that the Germans didn't persecute homosexuals in other countries that they conquered nearly as much as they did the homosexuals that were German nationals," said Stokes, who was a member of the Diversity Board and Gay-Straight Alliance at WSU before he graduated last spring. "Because of the threat that they viewed to society, initially a lot of homosexuals in other conquered countries they thought as doing themselves an aid, in a sense, because they undermined that country's population, and on top of that, they don't care. One of the driving forces for the Germans was (increasing their own) population." Lonald Wishom, diversity vice president at WSU, attended the screening. He said what he found most interesting about the documentary was that it showed, although Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code decreed sexual acts between two males as illegal from 1871 to 1994, Berlin was actually something of "a homosexual Eden" before the Holocaust. According to the documentary, the LGBT community enjoyed a very visible scene while it was politically convenient for Adolf Hitler to ignore it. "I think the thing that stood out to me the most was how open-minded Berlin was before . . . how they had openly gay clubs," said Wishom, a junior in political science. ". . . I didn't think that was even really talked about during that time." As his longtime ally, SA Commander Ernst Rohm, was known to be gay, Hitler took the stance that "his private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it conflicts with basic principles of See Holocaust page 10 |