In the Real News...
Concerns about campus life and tuition dominate discussions in the 1990s. Technician becomes news in 1992 when 200 students burn copies of the newspaper in the Brickyard to protest alleged racism in news coverage and student columns. A group of students found a separate newspaper, The Nubian Message, for African American students. Columnists at Technician respond by encouraging racial harmony. The Womens Center and African American Cultural Center open amid debate about the best ways for the student body to interact on subjects of diversity. Other subjects of frequent editorial debate and campus coverage are student loans and the city crackdown on the Brent Road block party that marks the start of the school year. In the late 1990s, reporters focus on the widening gap between the cost of a running university and funding from the General Assembly, fearing widespread budget cuts and tuition hikes.
Inquiry Finds NCSU Bricks the Secret to Higher IQs
April 2, 1990 | Scientists have discovered that long-term exposure bricks may increase intelligence in college students.
A recent study conducted on college students nationwide have shown that students who walk on bricks and inhale large amounts of brick dust from construction sites have significantly higher IQ scores than students who walk on grass and breathe clean air, CDC officials reported.
If the findings are confirmed, N.C. State University students may be the smartest people in the world.
Disclaimer: Don't be fooled! This article was reprinted from Technician's annual spoof edition and doesn't contain a shred of truth. For the real scoop on what's happening at NC State, visit the Technician Web site. As a public forum for student opinion, solely funded by advertising dollars, the Technician is the student newspaper at NC State. In the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006, the Technician won its first national award, a Silver Crown from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, although it had been a finalist for national awards in the past. Individual photographers and designers have also won top national awards, including several first places in the Associated Collegiate Press individual competitions. More information on the accolades of the student newspaper are available here.
“Their IQ scores were definitely higher than students at UNC-Chapel
Hill or U. Va.’s where they have lots of grass and trees,” said
Lee Sian Tist, head researcher for the study.
NCSU officials said the university’s landscape architects were ahead
of their time. “Everyone cracks on us for having such an ugly campus,”
said Chancellor Monteith. “But we have our priorities.”
The CDC study already has come under fire from some scientists, who claim
the higher scores are actually the result of a decreased temptation to go outside
and play.
“Those students look out of their dorm rooms on a sunny spring day,
and what do they see? Bricks. Not grass, not trees, not pretty flowers,”
said Ida Known, a Triangle-area scientist. “Why not stay inside and study?
What are you going to do—play football or baseball out on those bricks?”
©1990, NCSU Student Media
NC State Scientist Finds Cure for Common Cold
April 1, 1996 | I. B. Madd, an N.C. State scientist in sanitation and biohazard sciences (SBS), has found the cure for the common cold.
Madd found it accidentally while eating some of the food for the NCSU Dining
Café’s award-winning lunch menu.
“I was eating the mystery meal while I had a cold,” he said. “Then
my cold miraculously disappeared.”
Disclaimer: Don't be fooled! This article was reprinted from Technician's annual spoof edition and doesn't contain a shred of truth. For the real scoop on what's happening at NC State, visit the Technician Web site. As a public forum for student opinion, solely funded by advertising dollars, the Technician is the student newspaper at NC State. In the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006, the Technician won its first national award, a Silver Crown from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, although it had been a finalist for national awards in the past. Individual photographers and designers have also won top national awards, including several first places in the Associated Collegiate Press individual competitions. More information on the accolades of the student newspaper are available here.
Madd found that the cure was located in the little green specks in the mystery
meal. He said that it is a rare form of mold that grows only in the NCSU Dining
Café’s refrigerators.
A group of SBS researchers are planning to reproduce the mold in the Café’s
refrigerator and grow it to sell in pill form.
Both the Dining Café and Madd will receive a portion of the profits.
Madd hopes the revenue from the sale of the mold will supplement his meager
income as a scientist and professor at NCSU.
“I plan to buy a house with running water with my portion of the money,”
he said.
NCSU students will also benefit from the new medicine once it is administered
through Students’ Wellness Facility.
“NCSU students will be the first to receive the pills,” he said.
“It will be the greatest achievement in NCSU’s history.”
©1996, NCSU Student Media
