The Reporter

wed oct-04 http:// ?i *"- f *"*■* .stetson.edu AA^A A..^ T^.. ^! .,.'.^?S.^.^A^'.'lT;'ASj&tf^A issue < volume . ...'.-... ..i^—.— .T.T2A....- 'ir.-ii.ir.ALeS—A-s,.j..^,.A.;..^:,.t,-A-A>-i.'. i....... stover Theatre suffers damages to interior Emily Hall burglars luring storm Historical landsea destroyed __ "■*« *v .:"» *■ » ^a\ \P>iSSI& ,1 , J«fc'. ' -1?, »r; * w^U; 4.*- va.*c -A!*&»rt , AA --^ 4 - ** W> KELLY KLAUBER / THE REPORTER Hurricane Frances leaves her mark across the campus, leaving the roads littered with both debris and tree branches. It took 933 hours of manual labor to clean up the effects. Students report thefts from Emily during hurricane Liz Erlenbach NEWS EDITOR Several students reported thefts from their rooms in residence halls after students evacuated campus for Hurricane Frances, according to Public Safety. Members of the soccer team discovered the thefts on Sept. 13 at about 11:30 in the morning, when they returned to campus after the evacuation, said Jim Hess, director of Public Safety. "[They] returned from an away game, and some players discovered thefts in their room, items that had been hidden from sight on coaches urging, laptops and CDs," said Hess. When the rest of student residents returned on Sept. 14, they discovered more thefts. Dan Milillo, a junior sociology major, returned to campus at approximately 10:00 a.m. on the 14th to find 20 to 25 DVDs and three to five CDs missing from his dorm. "I had a towel draped over the shelf built into my desk... it was thrown off onto the floor," Milillo said, which alerted him that someone had See THEFTS, 3A University loses power for eight -day '9 incurs damages to bum and! trees AmyRigdon NEWS WRITER Hurricane Frances struck the university—like much of the state of Florida—with ferocity unknown in the university's recent history. Roughly the size of the state of Texas, Frances was the largest and slowest-moving storm to ever hit Central Florida, which caused significant damage to the university. "It was pretty devastating when you would just look out across campus and to see tree after tree after tree damaged. There were just thousands of little broken limbs everywhere; the ground was just littered. In some areas you couldn't even see the lawn; it was so littered with little nestlings of trees that had been clipped off during the storm," said David Rigsby, manager of grounds and senior assistant for special projects, who was on campus everyday of the cleanup. "Frances is the worst storm without a doubt that I've dealt with." Campus was evacuated Thursday, Sept. 2, early enough so that students could safely travel to alternative locations. "The timing is critical because you do not want to send people out into the storm to travel and yet we knew that if we had the kind of impact that a category-3 hurricane can have, it would be so severe that our services would not be so sufficient to support students. And as it turns out, it was certainly the right decision," said Jim Beasley, chief operating officer and vice president of administration, who chairs the Emergency Management Team. A few students who could not secure housing during the storm remained on campus and spent Saturday and Sunday nights, Sept. 4 and 5, in the Edmunds center with Beasley and two members from the Residential Life staff. "It was really a lot of waiting frankly," said Beasley in reference to the time between the evacuation and the landfall of the storm. "We closed school Wednesday night [Sept. 1] at 10:00 p.m. We, were prepared to move into the Edmunds Center Thursday, but we decided not to do that because Frances stalled off the south of the coast...so Thursday and Friday were days, at least for the students, of waiting." During those days of waiting, Facilities Management prepared campus for Frances by putting sandbags in places prone to flooding, securing residential halls, tying down the satellite dishes atop DuPont-Ball Library, and shutting down the fire alarm and air conditioning systems so that they would not be damaged. "Residential Life staff went through all [dormitory] rooms on Thursday [Sept. 2] to make sure that all students had left, and we saw some rooms with paint tarps covering everything. In a few rooms, people had cleared out 99 percent of their belongings, while other rooms looked like the hurricane had already gone through," said Michelle Espinosa, dean of students. After the hurricane, custodial staff reentered all the room to check for damage and discard rotting garbage and food left behind in refrigerators. "[Custodial staff] pulled out a lot of food from student refrigerators—like two dumpsters full...and cleaned them. We had a shipment of baking soda come in, and they placed containers in refrigerators," said Espinosa. See FRANCES, 3A Wednesday's Forecast: , j*r\ Isolated thunderstorms. i\ j hign o3, ^ - Low 68 {f Forecast on page 6A CALENDAR 3B CROSSWORD 2B CRYPTOGRAM 2B ELECTION 1A HISTORY 2B HOROSCOPE 2B LIFE IB LETTERS TO EDITOR 4 A MAD CAMPUS 4A MOVIE LISTINGS NEWS NEWSMAKERS OPINIONS RUMINATIONS REVIEWS SPORTS THE FINISH LINE WEATHER FORECAST 3B 2A 3A 4A 2B 3B 1C 2C 6a Kerry visits Orlando John Kerry and John Edwards meet up at TD Waterhouse. STORY 2A fir. Balding arrives Dennis Haskins speaks to students. STORY 1B