UA students’ anti-binge drinking PSA with Shaq to air during BCS Championship
Al.com – Jan. 4
University of Alabama students have more than just football to look forward to on Monday. UA advertising and public relations students created a PSA on the consequences of binge drinking back in April of last year and they had help from a special athlete, former NBA superstar and future hall-of-famer Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq first got involved after the students started a Twitter campaign. It was all part of their student-based anti-binge drinking campaign, LessThanUThink, which started in 2010. Now they are able to get a national audience when their PSA is aired live during the first quarter of the BCS National Championship game, which is sponsored by Bacardi USA. The PSA, which first aired on Oct. 18, 2012, is completely student and faculty-filmed, edited and acted.
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 6
The Oklahoman (via Associated Press) – Jan. 6
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Jan. 6
WAAY-ABC (Huntsville, Ala.) – Jan. 6
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Jan. 4
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Jan. 6
Fighting Irish, Tide fans build urban garden in Miami
CBS 4 (Miami) – Jan. 6
Rivals while their teams are in town for the BCS Championship game, alumni and fans of Notre Dame and the University of Alabama came together with members of the community on Sunday to help build a community garden in Overtown. The project was spearheaded by Roots in the City, a Miami-based organization which promotes community development and beautification in inner-city areas … Working side by side, Fighting Irish and Crimson Tide fans transformed a city lot into rows of raised garden beds and began the planting process. The fruits of their labors will benefit the city’s low-income neighborhoods and homeless population.
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 7
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Jan. 6
WPLG-ABC (Miami) – Jan. 6
Million Dollar Band makes their way to Miami
WTVY-CBS (Dothan) – Jan. 5
The University of Alabama’s Million Dollar Band made a stop today in Dothan on their way to Miami. News 4’s Devon Sellers tells us they’re rooting for a Roll Tide win. Roll Tide 800 miles. Roll Tide 15 hours. Roll Tide that’s what it will take to get the 400-plus members of the University of Alabama’s Million Dollar Band to the BCS National Championship game. “It’s really exciting. We’ve practiced a lot. I’m so excited. It is surreal to get to go to the national championship two years in a row.”
WAFF-NBC (Huntsville) – Jan. 5
Bama fans happy to wave the Alabama flag on ESPN
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Ga.) – Jan. 4
They were there when I turned on SportsCenter Friday morning. I saw them again during a short update on the national championship game hoopla a little bit later. And when I walked to the show’s set myself that afternoon under a sun that felt much hotter than the 82 degrees advertised in the weather report, they were still there. Maybe you saw them, too. No, I’m not talking about those talking heads at the College Gameday desk, broadcasting live from South Beach. I’m talking about the two siblings from Miami, one who attends the University of Alabama, who stood on a two-foot-high wall in the background, holding a Crimson Tide flag for four straight hours to show off their pride on TV. Sounds crazy, right? Not to Taylor and Allison Guzy. Though they said their feet and arms were a little sore from the day’s work, both were still all smiles as they entered the day’s final broadcast, their final hour onscreen.”It’s great,” Taylor, a 19-year-old freshman from Alabama, said of the opportunity to get on TV. “It’s so much fun to be here and see all of the Alabama fans down in Miami.”
UA students can tailgate and watch the game at The Ferg
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Jan. 6
University of Alabama students are invited to a free on-campus viewing party. It kicks off in the Ferguson Center student union theatre at six tomorrow night, just one hour before game time. There will be free food, and the first 250 students get T-shirts.
Raudelunas retrospective starts Monday at UA’s Ferguson Center
Al.com – Jan. 4
The Tuscaloosa-based art collective Raudelunas will hold a retrospective exhibition starting Monday at the Ferguson Center Art Gallery at the University of Alabama. It will feature artifacts from the group’s inception in the 1970s, which reflect Dada- and surrealist-inspired art as well as cutting-edge music, literature, and theater. Presented by Trans/Productions and the University of Alabama, the exhibition will run through Feb. 2 at the gallery, located at the UA student union. It will culminate with a concert at the Ferguson Center Theatre featuring the avant garde stylings of Anne LeBaron, Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, and Craig Nutt, among others, and will present the Alabama debut of the trailer for “Icepick to the Moon,” a documentary about Rev. Fred Lane and Radelunas by Baltimore filmmaker Skizz Cyzyk. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m., following a 5 p.m. closing reception.
Tuscaloosa News – Jan 7
Business Buzz: 1/6
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 7
Grayson Glaze, executive director of the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama, was recently appointed by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta to its Affordable Housing Advisory Council. The council has 15 members from housing and community development organizations who provide guidance to the bank in the areas of home ownership, affordable housing and economic development in the Southeast. Glaze’s three-year term began Jan. 1.
Alabama Museum of Natural History takes visitors back in time
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – Jan. 7
Put on your exploring hats. This morning we head on an odyssey back in time. From artifacts to bones, your children are sure to get a fun-filled education out of this one. Rick Jackson is here looking out for you. Take a journey, into prehistoric time; a period before the existence of mankind. As you enter the staircase of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, you’ll come up close with just that, our natural history. Sitting on the campus of the University of Alabama, the Museum of Natural History is a showcase of fossils and artifacts that you’ve read about in science books, the majority of it collected from right within the state.
Historical Society meeting to highlight Civil War journal
Journal-Advocate (Sterling, Colorado) – Jan. 5
The Logan County Historical Society will resume its monthly meetings on Jan. 15…The speaker for the evening will be LaRose Karr, who will review her great-great-grandfather’s personal account of the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson Cypert kept a journal that was discovered many years after his death and was published, unedited, by the University of Alabama. The name of the book is “Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie.”.
Abortion may be 40 but more babies are celebrating birthdays
Lifenews.com – Jan. 4
According to a report from the Guttmacher Institute in 2008, the abortion rate has fallen 33% since its peak in 1980, its lowest level since 1974. Also according to the Family Research Council, there has been a 50% decrease in abortions among minorities from 1985 to 1999 thanks to “parental involvement” laws. In 2008, there were 36 states with these laws at the time. Dr. Michael New, a professor from the University of Alabama, conducted this study and claims that the teenage abortion rate decreases by over 13% when a state enacts laws in which parental consent or any parental permission is involved.