Get Ready For About 48 Aggie Jokes in the Comments

I’d like to tee this up for FB Nation. So, looks like Reveille VII, the attractive lass you see pictured here, is retiring. Texas A&M needs a new mascot. So of course it formed a 16-member search committee. Jump for the full memo that describes what it is they’re looking for in Reveille VIII (spoiler alert: “healthy,” “outgoing,” “not afraid of noise”):

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SMU Kids Know How to Party, Urinate

SMU’s student newspaper is exposing the boorish behavior of some of its students:

One doctor wrote to complain on behalf of a thousand conference attendees. In early April, the group of doctors stayed at the same North Dallas hotel a group of SMU students were also booked at. On all 15 floors, he wrote, SMU students “urinated in hallways,” “came close to physical confrontations with other guests,” kicked in doors and walked in on other guests in their rooms. He also said yelling and profane language went on until dawn.

The odd part about the story is that the revelation comes not in a story in the Daily Campus, but rather in an ad — paid for by a vice president of student affairs.

Why You Think Dallas ISD Stinks: Because You Read the Paper

A very alert FrontBurnervian points us to news of a soon-to-be-released study done by the National School Board Association’s Council of Urban Boards of Education. (Deep breath.) The study’s title: “What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate.” The central finding: if parents rely on newspapers for information, their opinions about school safety, teacher quality, and academic success are less positive than those of parents who get their information from other sources. Why? Here’s an example:

[C]rime stories often linked a victim or criminal to a nearby school, even if the crime did not occur on school grounds or those involved were no longer students.

Surely a decent newspaper would never make such a mistake, right? On April 16, the DMN ran a story about a kid who died most likely from a cheese overdose. The online version came with the headline “‘Cheese’ Heroin Likely Killed 18-year-old Dallas Man.” But the print version ran with this headline: “‘Cheese’ Likely Killed W.T. White Student.”

Thing is, the deceased hadn’t been an active student at White for about 18 months. The paper ran a correction, but I’m sure it did nothing to change the perceptions reinforced by the erroneous headline.

Dallas is Going Wild for Birds

At the risk of receiving another batch of shut-up-about- birds e-mails, I venture forth with this news. On April 23, the president of the National Audubon Society, John Flicker (is that a perfect name or what?), will be in Dallas to break ground on the new Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center. Of course, most of you already know that Dogwood Canyon is where the first sighting of the endangered golden-cheeked warbler in over 35 years was recorded in 2001, so I won’t bore you with too many details. The $7.4 million center will open in spring 2009. In the meantime, the trails that cover over 270 acres on the White Rock Escarpment, just southwest of downtown, are open for exploration. If you hurry you can still catch the flowering dogwood trees.

D Magazine Intern Scores “A-” on Profile of Tim Rogers

Caitlin Myers is one of our capable interns. She’s a journalism student at SMU. When she asked if she could profile me for a student paper, I said sure, as long she didn’t mind my posting it on the blog. Below you’ll find her effort, submitted with a few comments.

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