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Show www.utahstatesman.com Logan, Utah Utah State University Students camp out for USU vs. BYU tickets Today is Monday, Dec. I, 2008 Breaking News The USU football team finished the season with a victory over New Mexico State, 47-2. Page 8 Campus News Awards were given to students and others for work advancing diversity. Page 3 STUDENTS CAMPED OUTSIDE T H E doors to theTSC Sunday, in order to be the first students to purchase tickets to the USU vs. BYU game, Saturday.The rivalry game will be held at the EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake,Two thousand student priced tickets are available for purchase starting Monday with a current student ID.The 2,000 student tickets will be on sale for $5. TYLER LARSON photo Features Utah is no longer the reddest state ByARIEKIRK editor in chief A USU student is balancing motherhood and school while her husband serves in. the Army. • Sports The Aggies won two basketball games during the break. Page 8 Opinion "Whatever his logic, the one principle Rose failed to understand is that these rivalry games are critical to basketball in the state of Utah. Let's hope an incident like this doesn't happen again. But, as the song says, every Rose has its thorn." .... r - v - v , ; ^ ^ ^ ' *'T;i&'*; Page 12 USU alumnus Jake Dinsdale said he grew up believing in the stereotypical Republican ideals and while he still identifies with those, this year, he voted for a Democrat. After watching the mismanaged presidency of George W. Bush, the disorderly campaign of John McCain and a misrepresentation of Republican ideals, Dinsdale said he couldn't support the Republican ticket. "Republicans are straying very, very far from what they say they are," he said, adding, "They wrapped themselves in this label." While his friends tell him he's gone "confederate," Dinsdale said he felt President-elect Barack Obama was just the better candidate. Dinsdale did not cross party lines alone, however. He was joined by thousands in Utah and millions of voters across the country. In a state that is historically blood-red, Utah is usually overlooked by Democratic campaigns and rarely visited by national Republican candidates simply because they know it is already in the bag. To Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, however, the state is not lost. "We can't win a state like Utah that hasn't voted Democratic for years, but we can do is give a great candidate an opportunity to win in a place like Utah or Indiana by paving the groundwork and having a long-term business plan for winning elections," Dean said, during a Nov. 5 interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Dean added, "We had an office open in Utah. And we weren't going to win Utah for President Obama, but we thought maybe we would be able to help them. And sure enough, Utah went from being the very most Republican state in the country to maybe the fourth or fifth most, in terms of how much of the vote he got." Dean may have been overly enthusiastic in his prediction but the Democratic Party's efforts in Utah certainly paid off in this election cycle. According to the Associated Press, Utah went from the most Republican state to third, falling behind Wyoming and Montana. Obama received more votes in Utah than Al Gore and John Kerry when they were running for office. And Michael Lyons, assistant political science department head and professor at USU, said that is noteworthy. "Barack Obama did 8 percentage points better than John Kerry," Lyons said. "That is more significant." Lyons said he believes there are a few reasons for this turnout - Obama's appeal, the economic situation and an ever-increasing dislike for Bush. While this reasoning was crucial to a turnout larger than usual for a Democratic presidential candidate in Utah, Lyons said people shouldn't read too much into these numbers. Not yet, at least. The electorate in Utah is changing, but it can only be seen in a generational time frame. Utah turning blue is "inevitable," but Lyons said it will take several years, possibly decades. He said, "That's foreseeable in as little as 10 years or 40 years. Within your lifetime that will happen - 1 can promise you that." Utah voted democratically while it was a poor state but it has become more affluent and it is because of that, in part, that Utah has become a deeper shade of red. Today in History: Once a hall for operettas, pantomime, political meetings and vaudeville, the Folies Bergere in Paris introduces an elaborate revue featuring women in sensational costumes in 1886. Weather Archives and breaking news always ready for- you at Vw^uiShgtatesman.com . * ' •• ."•'".-•-.• • « ' • • / * '••/"• • • " • - . , •'•*"••/. ' j ' V : ••: . - - ' , • .=•-. I CAMERON PETERSON photo illustration But Lyons said defining political affiliation by income is an oversimplification. His prediction of the future hue of Utah is based on population trends, social identities, the evolution of political parties and historical shifts. [1 See BLUE, page 3 Students attend shuttle launch in Florida Almanac High: 44° Low: 30° Skies: Partly cloudy with 40 percent chance of rain showers Tuesday. U T A H HAS GONE from the reddest state to the third behind Montana and Wyoming. USU ENGINEERING STUDENTS attended a NASA shuttle launch in Florida Nov 14. They were invited to witness the launch after taking the grand prize in NASA's Annual University Student Launch Initiative, photo courtesy of JACOB HADERUE By DEBRA HAWKINS news editor USU students were invited to attend the last scheduled night rocket launch in Florida Nov. 14, after winning NASA's Annual University Student Launch Initiative last April. According to information from USU, the students took home five of the seven awards offered at the launch, including the grand prize, which is what gave them the opportunity to fly to Florida for the night launch. "We were three miles away from the launch," instructor Tony Whitmore said. "No one can get any closer because that is considered the lethal blast radius of the shuttle. You are so close that your teeth rattle and the ground shakes like you were in the middle of an earthquake." Shannon Eilers, aerospace engineering doctoral student, said seeing a shuttle blast off at night was an experience he won't soon forget. "It is amazing when the thing goes off, it basically turns night into day," Eilers said. "It is really, really bright, you can feel it in your chest." Whitmore said the students were not only able to watch the shuttle launch but were able to meet several astronauts and were featured as "a sort of subject matter experts" on NASA Pro, an educational series NASA provides. Whitmore said all of the students put in about 25 hours a week on the project that won the competition in April, for a total of more than 1,000 altogether, so it was nice to see the benefits of all of their work. "(The rocket) they made was a very sophisticated design," Whitmore said. "The more we talked to NASA about our rocket, the more they were impressed by it. The students were both grateful and overwhelmed by all of the pomp and circumstance." Seeing the launch of a rocket live helped cement students in their field of choice, Whitmore said. "This was very reinforcing to the students," Whitmore said. "You get a chance to see it is real. It seems like science fiction until you actually get to see it that there really are people up there and they really are going up into space." Eilers said the school is planning on entering the contest again this year. The contest, which challenges students to design and build a rocket to go to exactly one-mile in altitude, has students submit a proposal to contest judges in the fall to see if they can compete in the following spring. -debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu |