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Face-plant
Revolutionary surgery provides a new
Winning women
Women’s basketball team looks toward
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and better way to help the face-less
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Sundae service
Some great places to take the ‘rents when
they visit Birmingham
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Church
resilient
Face the facts:
You’re exposed
Students under
watchful eye
Gappy Martin
Communitv News Editor
If you have any dirty little
secrets, delete them now.
By posting personal information
on popular Web sites such as MyS-
pace, Facebook and LiveJoumal,
students could be exposing them¬
selves to scrutiny from employers,
graduate schools, admissions
offices and university values coun¬
cils, as well as posing a threat to
their own safety.
“My concern is that students
may be sharing too much informa¬
tion, personal information that
could come back to haunt them
later,” Vice President and Dean of
Students Richard Franklin said.
The Web sites allow students to
create profiles containing anything
from their picture and favorite
movies to their cell phone number.
Director of Career Development
Alice Martin says the professional
world has found ways to login to
sites like Facebook and retrieve
students’ personal information.
“In the fall, accounting majors
have on-campus interviews. This
year, one employer had the inter¬
viewee’s Facebook profile in front
of him during the interview,”
Martin said. “Employers want to
find a fit, and they are accessing
[Facebook] to find it. You need to
ask yourself, is this telling an
employer who I am or is that
somebody that I was before I
decided to mature?”
According to eSchool News
online, seven high schoolers from
Nebraska were suspended for two
weeks when a school staff member
found a MySpace posting that
mentioned the students drinking
alcohol.
In Dover, Del., a newspaper
reporter was fired after someone
alerted his editor to racially offen¬
sive comments he had posted on
his personal blog on MySpace,
eSchool News said.
In the Wall Street Journal
Online, an article described police
at Pennsylvania State University
who used photos on a student
Facebook profile to help them
identify and arrest over 50 students
who rioted on the football field
after their match-up with Ohio
State.
“You think it's only information
between you and your friends, but
somebody else can get access,"
Franklin said.
“It is our concern that [students]
use it and not abuse it.”
“It is uncharted waters,” Matt
Harrison, senior political science
major and president of the Student
Government Association, said.
“Students feel like it is their right
to put up pictures of them drinking
or being irresponsible. But for
someone to think that the informa¬
tion is never going to be used by
someone else is naive "
Though gaining access to Face-
book requires a university e-mail
address, employers are finding
ways around the privacy pact by
having university alurrihi do their
research for them.
“Just think of how many alumni
work at Southern Progress,”
Martin said. “I’m not saying they
are looking, but they could, and
they would have access to the pro¬
files of thousands of local stu¬
dents."
; “In the same way that you
would want to know a lot about the
company where you are applying,”
Franklin said, "they want to know
about you. They do their
See FACEBOOK. page 2
12 Daily Pro has
accounts frozen
Suspected arsonists still at large
Photos by Meg Allred I The Samforo Crimson
Laura Dozier
The Samforo Crimson
Samford students are expressing
concern about the wave of church
arsons in Alabama.
“I’m from a small town in
southern Alabama, and the church
that I go to at home and where my
parents go is a small church with
only about 30 members,” senior
psychology major Carolyn Pritch¬
ett said. “It makes me concerned
about our church because it is a
rural church like the ones that were
burned.”
Beaverton Free Will Baptist
Church in Lamar County burned to
the ground Saturday night, the
10th fire in a string of church burn¬
ings across Alabama in the last
three weeks.
The burnings, which began Feb.
2, have caught the attention of
media networks around the world
and raised questions about the
individuals responsible for the
charred buildings.
“I really sympathize with the
people who have lost a church
because most of those buildings,
like mine, are places of worship
that are hundreds of years old,”
Pritchett said. “It is devastating to
have something that is such an
important part of someone’s life
and such a strong part of a commu¬
nity lost forever.”
Editorial (205) 726-2998 I Business (205) 726-2474
Ttey Harper, a senior church
music major, is the Minister of
Music at Shady Grove Baptist
Church, a quaint, rural worship
community iu Bessemer. “We
were alarmed about the threat at
first,” Harper said. “But we have
people that live close by the
church, and they keep an eye on
the it. So far, it has not affected our
worship.”
Rural Baptist churches were the
arsonists' targets.
“I have had the touching and
challenging task of visiting most
of the churches in Alabama with
buildings damaged or destroyed by
fires seemingly set by arsonists,”
Rick Lance, the executive director
of the Alabama Baptist state board
of missions, said in an online state¬
ment. “Smoke was still smoldering
from the charred debris [that was]
once a place of worship for Baptist
people in local communities.”
For those involved, the next step
is to recover and rebuild, while
authorities continue to seek out
those involved in setting the
churches ablaze.
Authorities suspect the arsonists
are two young men who drive a
dark-colored sport utility vehicle.
No further physical descriptions of
the suspects have been provided,
but the same vehicle was spotted at
several of the:
Baptist Churcb was burned down to its foundation in
-ebruary, along with four other churches in Bibb County.
Police have set up phone lines,
an e-mail address and a post office
box. They hope the arsonists will
contact them. Those who are
believed to have set fire to the 10
churches have not been identified,
and authorities hope to find more
information on the reason for the
fires before more churches are
damaged.
The rural church fires in Alaba¬
ma are similar to the burnings of
«ix churches in Virginia. During
2004 and 2005, the small chapels
near Richmond were set on fire,
but no charges were ever filed.
In an interview with the Rich¬
mond TimesDispatch, the pastor of
a burned church in Richmond said
Alabama. He said in both cases,
police believe the arsonists broke
in and started the fire from the pul-
pit.
Lance encourages the members
of the burned churches in Alabama
to continue in their worship
despite the crimes committed
against their church and their com¬
munity.
“At each church site,” Lance
said, “I encountered a resilient
spirit. The spirit transcended the
immediate challenges facing the
people”
Harper agreed. “We are sympa¬
thetic to those churches,” be said,
“but we know that they will stay
in realizing that a church is
Annie Murphree
The Samford Crimson
A recent FBI investigation of
the popular site 12 Daily Pro has
left involved Samford students
with frozen money and burning
questions.
Over the past several months,
12 Daily Pro has become a catch
phrase around campus. As word
has continued to spread about this
easy-money scheme, an increasing
number of students and some fac¬
ulty members decided to take the
plunge and make an investment on
the Web site, hoping to yield extra
cash for spring break, some new
electronics or savings.
By investing, members transfer
money online from their savings or
checking accounts and are guaran¬
teed, by watching 5 minutes of
pop-up ads a day, to earn a 12 per¬
cent return compounded daily.
After 12 days, a cycle is complete,
and the investor can decide to end
or continue the program.
But recent investigations into the
Web site have users worried the
money they invested, and the return
interest, may never be seen again.
Junior sociology major
Jonathan Loudermilk, who
described himself to The Samford
Crimson in December as the chief
marketing consultant few 12 Daily
Pro, now declines comment about
the controversy surrounding this
Daily Pro has used a payment
provider called StormPay to allow
members to invest and take out
money. After a recent attempt to
gather more information from 12
Daily Pro about how it was mak¬
ing profits and payments to mem¬
bers, StormPay decided to end its
relationship with the autosurf site
- and freeze everyone’s accounts.
“A lot of people have filed for
affidavits with their banks, which
say that they did not authorize Stor¬
mPay to take money from their
accounts,” senior business major
Ian Owens said. “Through this
process, they hope that their -bank
will recover their frozen money.”
“Questions were asked point
blank by StormPay while on a con¬
ference call with [12 Daily Pro’s]
owner and their attorney,” said a
12 Daily Pro representative. “The
requests for information about [12
Daily Pro] were simply denied,
leaving StormPay no choice other
than to report those findings to the
other organizations that required
the information from StormPay.”
Examinations of the internet
company by StormPay and other
outside investigational organiza¬
tions such as the FBI and the states
of North Carolina and Georgia
have led to strong suspicions that
these types of programs are noth¬
ing more than well bidden Ponzi or
to have