Tide gymnast named top female collegiate athlete
Montgomery Advertiser – July 1
Alabama gymnast Kim Jacob was able to accomplish what so many in the Crimson Tide’s storied gymnastics program had never done. On Monday night, she was awarded the Honda Cup as the collegiate female athlete of the year. Jacob, the 2014 NCAA all-around champion and the Honda Award winner for the sport of gymnastics, was one of 12 women from 12 different sports under consideration for the prestigious award that honors the best collegiate NCAA Division I female athlete in the nation over the past academic year. The winner of Alabama’s ninth Honda Award, Jacob is the first Crimson Tide student-athlete to win the Honda Cup.
Tuscaloosa News – July 1
ESPN.com – June 30
University of Alabama names Steven Hood interim vice president for student affairs
Tuscaloosa News – July 1
The University of Alabama has named its student housing director as interim vice president for student affairs. UA President Judy Bonner announced the appointment of Steven Hood on Monday. Hood assumes the role Tuesday. Hood has served as executive director of housing and residential communities at UA since 2011. He supervised the Community Service Center from August 2012 until December 2013. Hood came to UA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He began his career in student affairs as residence life area coordinator at Samford University from 1999-2003. Hood earned a doctorate at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2010, a master’s at Troy University in 2000 and a bachelor’s at the University of West Alabama in 1995. He replaces Mark Nelson, who was named dean of the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences in June and is scheduled to begin the new role Tuesday.
University of Alabama, Muscogee Creeks will study historic sites
Tuscaloosa News – July 1
The University of Alabama and the Muscogee Creek Nation are partnering in an effort to fund research of historic Creek homeland sites. The UA Office of Archaeological Research contracted a partnership with the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma to provide a graduate research assistantship in UA’s department of anthropology with the goal of exploring possible links in the archaeological record from the Tennessee Valley area to the historic Creek archaeological record in Alabama and Georgia. Ted Clay Nelson, the award recipient, will do research in the Southeast, examining artifact collections from various archaeological sites. Nelson will be guided by Ian Brown, chairman of UA’s anthropology department, and Eugene Futato, deputy director of the Office of Archaeological Research.
UA professor weighs in on Hobby Lobby ruling
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – June 30
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that corporations, like Hobby Lobby, can opt out of the part of the new health care law that requires contraceptives to be covered, if those corporations are owned by a small group of people with religious objections to providing the coverage. Paul Horwitz teaches Law and Religion along with a Constitutional Law class at the University of Alabama School of Law. He said he’s been watching the Hobby Lobby case for some time and isn’t surprised by the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the arts and crafts company. “At least where federal law is involved, before the government however unintentionally and whatever good faith can burden someone’s religious exercise it must have an excellent reason and it must have had no other option, but to do so,” he said. Horwitz said the ruling involves a statue and not the First Amendment directly. So other companies looking to opt out of certain sections of the health care law may not be successful. “Some large company that comes along and says well we could just save some money doing this, they’re going to have a tough road ahead,” Horwitz said.
Broadcast report – NBC 13
AL.com – July 1
UA professor comments on ruling
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – June 30
In a five-to-four ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that some companies do have religious rights that exempts them from abiding by a provision in Obamacare requiring them to pay for certain kinds of birth control. The religious objection comes from companies like Hobby Lobby that feel some contraceptives like the “morning-after-pill” amount to abortion. The Hobby Lobby ruling could have an impact on other organizations. But where will the line be drawn on who’s exempt, and who’s not? … Hobby Lobby may not be a religious based store, but the Supreme Court says that’s not a factor in their ruling. UA political science professor Stephen Borrelli says: “Religion is not their primary mission. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court argued they had religious beliefs that were entitled to religious protection.” Birmingham-based TV network EWTN immediately benefitted from the Supreme Court’s ruling after a lower court used the Hobby Lobby decision in their favor. . . . Borrelli says he expects to see more companies and organizations test the judicial system to further test the affordable care act s constitutionality when it comes to religious freedom.
Commentary: The port rail: Sunnis and Shias: Islam’s long struggle
Tuscaloosa News – July 1
This is intended to be a brief overview of why Sunnis and Shias fight in modern Iraq, Iran and Syria. Shias and Sunnis are the two major denominations of the Muslim world. It’s kind of like Catholics and Protestants in Christianity. They too fought, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. Think heretics, witches, torture and burnings at the stake for starters, lest you Christians get too smug as you read about Islam’s divisions. Shias and Sunnis have been at each other’s throats — off and on — since the prophet Muhammad died in A.D. 632 They basically split over who was to rule as caliph, or leader, after Muhammad. The Shias followed a relative of Muhammad’s named Ali bin Abu Talib, while the Sunnis were followers of an elected leader named Abu Bakr. Even Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary over much of the old Turkish Empire that collapsed at the end of World War I, got confused. . . . Larry Clayton is a retired professor of history at the University of Alabama. Readers can contact him at larryclayton7@gmail.com.
Good golly Miss Molly
Bay Area Citizen (The Woodlands, Texas) – July 1
To say Molly Fichtner eats, drinks and breathes softball might be an understatement. Truthfully, though, it doesn’t quite consume all of her time – she did manage to squeeze in enough studying this past year to earn academic All-American honors at the University of Alabama. While Fichtner’s path from Clear Brook High School to Tuscaloosa isn’t necessarily a tear-jerking one, it is a story of perseverance, hard work and the resulting rewards. Fichtner started 50 of 57 games at catcher for the Crimson Tide this past spring, helping lead Alabama to an SEC regular season championship and a berth in the recent College World Series.