Approving a budget that includes several multi-million dollar projects for USF, Gov. Rick Scott signed the 2014-15 state budget Monday, marking significant gains for higher education.

Among other projects, next year’s budget will include $5 million in recurring funds for the Florida Center for Cybersecurity at USF, $15 million for the construction of the USF Health Heart Institute, $10 million for the construction of the USF St. Pete College of Business and $5 million to replace the outdated facilities of the Morsani College of Medicine.

USF Assistant Vice President for Government Relations Mark Walsh said the university is grateful for the approved budget, as it includes all the projects requested at the start of the legislative session.

“Previously, the economy caused cuts to all government funding across the board,” Walsh said. “…We sustained some cuts in the past few years, but over the past two years (legislators) restored our budget and then some… This is the highest amount we’ve ever had.”

In the past, such as in 2012, Scott approved a budget that reduced funding to the State University System by $300 million. Now, the $77 billion budget includes the highest amount for higher education since the recession, Walsh said.

According to Walsh, USF could potentially receive the most funding in the state as the approved budget includes $200 million granted to the State University System through the Board of Governor’s Performance Funding Model, which rewards universities on metrics such as graduation and retention rates.

USF tied with UCF in receiving the most performance funding in the state last year, earning $2.6 million on a list of three metrics, out-performing schools such as the University of Florida and Florida State.

The new budget will also allocate $1.4 million in recurring funds to USF Sarasota-Manatee’s STEM programs, a more than 10 percent increase from last year’s state funding for the campus, as well as $1.25 million to both the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute and the Florida Institute of Oceanography at the USF College of Marine Science.

Additionally, the governor and Legislature passed bills to allow in-state tuition for veterans, regardless of how long they have been in Florida, and students who are undocumented immigrants, as long as they previously attended a state high school for at least three years.

Kareem Canty verbally committed to play for the USF men’s basketball team May 13, but the point guard has now changed his mind and will transfer to Auburn, where he had originally committed. 

The freshman has three years of eligibility left, but will have to sit out a year after playing at Marshall in his first season. 

He averaged 16.3 points and 5.5 assists per game last season and would have been a source of depth for the Bulls, who will have two senior starting guards.

USF confirmed Wednesday that Canty is no longer with the team, opening up a scholarship for coach Orlando Antigua to use for the upcoming season. 

Antigua was not available for comment.

–Staff Report

As the AAC announced this week that the conference will be split up into two East versus West style divisions starting in 2015, fans took to social media to gripe about being placed in a division with a 2013 BCS Bowl winner along with two other teams that won at least nine games last season. 

While USF will play in the East along with UCF, UConn, Cincinnati, East Carolina and Temple, rather than looking at the division as a difficult place to be, Bulls fans should be thankful for the opportunity to play in such a division. If there is any hope for USF to achieve a national ranking or play in a respectable bowl game, they will have to defeat tough opponents.

Each division will include six teams. The addition of Navy next season allows for these even divisions because it will mark the 12th school in the conference. Based on 2013 standings, this division will hold the remaining top two teams from the AAC (UCF and Cincinnati) along with East Carolina, who finished second in the East division of Conference USA. 

On the other hand, the West does not appear nearly as formidable. Houston looks as though it will be the team to beat in the West, having compiled an 8-5 record in 2013. 

Barring a dramatic shift of talent, being placed in the East division is putting teams with high aspirations in a must-win scenario every week. For the Bulls, continually playing teams that will potentially be ranked, such as UCF and Cincinnati, will not only put them in the national spotlight and provide exposure, but it will also give the Bulls a chance to win games that could earn them national recognition. 

Playing in the East with its higher strength of schedule, USF will benefit with better potential for attracting more fans and the chance to succeed in a difficult division. If the Bulls happen to win enough games to qualify for a bowl, they would likely draw a more respectable bowl game as well as a better crowd than if they were playing in the West.

Something that is potentially in the Bulls’ future is moving up into a better conference. By playing in the most difficult division in their league, USF will have the opportunity to move on to another conference such as the Big 12. 

While it is a shame that the USF-UCF rivalry will never be seen in an AAC Championship game under this alignment, both teams will be guaranteed to play each other every season. This will continue the rivalry for years to come and will be season-long as both teams compete for spots in the standings as well as on the field. 

In the short term, this will likely hurt the Bulls’ record and chances at winning the AAC. But when USF begins to catch up to the rest of the teams in the East division, there is more opportunity for them to make their case for national recognition and conference realignment with this new structure.

Nearly two weeks after the Bulls finished their subpar season, USF Director of Athletics Mark Harlan named Mark Kingston as the new coach for the baseball team.

“There was a tremendous amount of interest in our baseball head coaching position from across the country, and Mark clearly rose to the top,” Harlan said in a press release. “He is one of the best young coaches in collegiate baseball today and has a tremendous background of competing and winning at the highest level.”

Under former coach Lelo Prado, the Bulls went 27-31 this season and have yet to qualify for regionals in the NCAA Tournament, but Kingston’s 18 years of coaching experience may change that. 

Kingston, a 1995 graduate of the University of North Carolina, has led nine teams to NCAA Tournament berths as an assistant and head coach. He’s been in four NCAA Super Regionals, two College World Series and has won a national championship.

For the past five years, Kingston was head coach at Illinois State, where he improved the program, finishing with a 173-102 record, and led the Redbirds to three Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship games and one conference tournament title. 

That conference tournament title was claimed his first year as the Redbirds’ head coach in 2010, when he finished the season 32-24, having the most wins for a first-year coach at ISU. In 2013, the Redbirds went 39-19, winning the most games in program history.

Prior to ISU, Kingston spent seven years at Tulane as a recruiting coordinator and an associate head coach, during which time he worked with seven players who became All-Americans. 

The Green Wave averaged nearly 42 wins each year with Kingston on staff and, in 2005, he helped the team go to the College World Series. 

Before working at Tulane, Kingston spent two years at Miami, where he helped the Hurricanes claim the 2001 College World Series title as the No. 1 overall seed.

Kingston also went to Omaha in 1989 when he was a freshman at the University of North Carolina. As a junior, he received the Trippe Bourne Most Dedicated Player award for his leadership before being named a team captain his senior season.

Kingston was drafted in 1992 by the Milwaukee Brewers and played professionally with Milwaukee and Chicago Cubs organizations for five years.

Recently, members of the Louisiana Legislature struck down a bill that would have allowed anonymous surveys given in public schools to ask students about their sexual behavior.

Choosing to omit questions about sexual activity comes from state legislators, with state Rep. Lenar Whitney believing teens who read questions about sex will be “desensitized,” as mentioned in an article by New Orleans’ Times-Picayune. 

Most students remember taking a survey in high school that asked about their daily lives. These surveys, which are conducted by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), ask questions that range from how often students wear helmets to the number of times students have carried guns.

Knowing the surveys are full of questions asking about suicide, heroin and alcohol shows how unclear the logic is for the Legislature’s concern. Surely students will not want to try heroin when they finish the survey, so it’s ridiculous to think asking about sexual activity will be what pushes teens to have sex. 

Plenty of songs and movies already expose teens to sex. Certainly a survey taken in a fluorescent-lit room won’t be what has them running to the bedroom. 

Despite what legislators in Louisiana may believe, the surveys conducted by YRBSS are not meant to encourage students to try new things. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, which hosts the YRBSS survey, the goal is to figure out what teens are doing and try to discover possible improvements schools and communities could use to combat problems they face. 

Not allowing the YRBSS to gather information on the sexual practices of students will only harm them. Without these questions, students will continue not to be heard and possible improvements to the state’s sex education curriculum are prevented. More troubling is how avoiding the topic in the survey ignores how often protected sex happens and at what age students are having sex. 

Classrooms that do offer sex education, since it is not mandatory in Louisiana, must teach abstinence outside of marriage as a standard. This expectation alone shows how outdated Louisiana is in its approach to sex education. 

Louisiana legislators are disconnected from reality if they think censoring surveys will affect teens having sex. They should instead just accept teens will do so, as 71 percent will have had sex by age 19, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

According to CDC reports, Louisiana had some of the highest rates of HIV infection in the country in 2010 and has among the 10 highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country, according to the Times-Picayune. If there is a state that needs to get information from teens on what they do behind closed doors, it’s this one. 

Instead of brushing the topic of sex under the rug, there should be initiatives to address it and inform teens about safe sex, especially since the CDC released a report in April revealing 80 percent of teens between 15 and 17 years old are having sex before taking part in sex education. 

Ultimately, teens will have sex, and information should be gathered in order to understand how to help them practice safe sex and not feel it is too taboo to discuss. 

Adam Mathieu is a junior majoring in studio art.

USF defensive line coach Eric Mathies was arrested at 3:40 a.m. Saturday for driving under the influence after he was pulled over for driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone. 

He was stopped on Hyde Park Avenue and refused a breathalyzer test, according to the Hillsborough County police report. The coach’s bond was set at $500 and he was released the day of the arrest. 

Going into his second year with the Bulls, Mathies aided the Bulls in posting 7.6 tackles for loss per game last season, which raised the Bulls to 12th place in the FBS.

USF has not released an official statement on the arrest.

After a 12-hour day at her clinical, senior nursing student Payton Beavers was preparing for the third annual Clearwater Super Natural Championships, where she hoped to participate in her first weightlifting competition.

Despite having trained for two years, she realized she couldn’t stand back up as she grasped the barbell to perform a dead lift.

“I just left, I was embarrassed,” Beavers said. “Which is kind of silly because I studied a lot on proper form and I wasn’t even picking up the weight.”

The diagnosis by her doctor was grim: a ruptured disk in her spine. Her doctor recommended she stay away from the sport that Beavers said helped her gain more confidence in her body image.

“I just flat out told him, ‘you’re kidding me,’” she said. “There’s no way I’m not going to (lift weights).”

During her recovery time, she had no other choice but to stop lifting. Having worked for months to slim down for the bikini event, she lost all the progress she’d made due to her difficulty moving around. 

Five months later, Beavers is back in shape and now four weeks out from participating in her second chance at a first competition, the NPC Mid Florida Classic in Orlando.

Beavers began weightlifting two years ago as a way to manage body image issues she’d had in high school and to add “another level of activity,” having previously been involved in her school’s track and cheerleading. 

“Women compare themselves to others and will bash them,” Beavers said.  “They are so into social media, newspapers, magazines and having to be rail thin. I feel like women are beautiful no matter what, so giving them motivation to have curves and be healthy, that, to me, is moving. That’s what gets me through the day. That’s what makes me happy.”

Her weightlifting teammate, Kayla Jindra, who was the Bikini Class B winner of the 2014 NPC Europa Show of Champions, became aware of Beavers’ body image issues as the pair trained together.

Jindra and Beavers started sharing the same coach to prepare for the bikini category after Beavers’ then trainer introduced the two women to help get Beavers into the competition world.

“I’m not a competitive person,” Beavers said. “I’m that person who wants to motivate other people to get better. I feel like showing somebody that you can be a better you, instead of being lazy and making certain decisions, you can make that choice to be a better person. Whether that be in school, your job or weightlifting. To me, it motives me to see other people try.”

The bikini competition she’ll be participating in will feature over 30 women displaying the results of their work in the gym, divided by height and the overall title. 

While she feels nervous about competing, she also said she is excited about finally getting her first chance on stage.

This mentality of bettering oneself is a quality that Jindra saw develop in Beavers as she started weightlifting.

“I feel like everything in general has made her stronger,” Jindra said.  “Starting out, she broke out of her shell.  Getting injured and getting back into (weightlifting), it’s like every portion has made her a stronger person and gave her that mentality to fight and keep pushing.”

Beavers’ passion includes helping people, especially women, become active and healthy, something she became voluntarily involved in as she defined her physique. 

“It’s kind of crazy I’m going to step onstage pretty much naked in a small bikini and have people judge my physique and appearance,” Beavers said.  “It’s kind of going against everything I’m so passionate about.”

Beavers plans to continue living the weightlifting lifestyle regardless of her first competition’s results, and will determine whether to enter more contests after her trip to Orlando.

She also hopes to become a nurse and obtain her sports medicine license to continue helping train people in the gym.

“Women feel like they can’t go into the gym, they have to go straight upstairs and do cardio,” Beavers said. “I’ve taught a lot of girls in our area how to do weightlifting and not be scared of the guys who are grunting and acting like they are lifting so heavy. I want to teach women they can do the same thing. They can be just as powerful as a man.”

On a stormy weekend that caused several thunder and rain delays, only two of the 11 USF track and field competitors ended up advancing to the NCAA Championships. 

Sophomore Matthew O’Neal advanced by placing third in the triple jump event Friday evening with a distance of 52-10. 

“Mentally, I just focus on the task at hand and I don’t really make it bigger than it really is,” O’Neal said. “I just think of it as another triple jump, which I’ve been doing all year long.”

The sophomore has already made his mark as a Bull in only two seasons. He holds the school record for the Outdoor Triple Jump and he is the 2014 AAC Champion in the event. 

O’Neal’s success is something that even older teammates said they appreciate. 

Senior Shane Lewis said even though he’s leaving the team, he’s still going to stick around and help train the athletes, particularly O’Neal, who he said shows the most potential.  

Lewis was unable to advance in the triple jump Friday, ending his career as a Bull. This year, he became the first ever men’s indoor All-American in USF history. He is also second in the USF record books in the Triple Jump, trailing only O’Neal. 

While this weekend was a stepping stone to the next round for O’Neal and senior Courtney Anderson, who advanced in the high jump, it was a learning experience for some, such as freshman hurdler Christopher Grinley.

In his first season with the Bulls, Grinley holds the third best indoor hurdles record at USF and qualified for third team all-conference honors. Friday evening, he finished fifth in his event, which was just two places shy of qualifying for the NCAA Championships. 

“I knew I had to PR to qualify for the next round and I didn’t,” Grinley said. 

But rather than being deterred by his finish, the freshman said this will motivate him to prepare better and work harder for next season. 

“On the preparation side, I would have done a lot different,” Grinley said. “I think my preparation could have been a lot better.”

Grinley has big plans for his future with the Bulls, which includes setting school records and winning a national championship. 

“At the end of college, I definitely want to win a national title,” Grinley said. “School records are in the future for me. I just want to be the best and that’s a pretty ambitious goal, I think.”

But Grinley isn’t the only person on the team with high hopes for the future. Even though Lewis’s time with the Bulls is done, he’s shooting for the Olympics. 

“I’m going to keep training and I’m looking towards 2016 and Rio,” Lewis said. “The mark to qualify is 65 feet. I haven’t reached that yet, but I’m on the peak and it’s something that is attainable for me.”

The NCAA Track and Field Championships begin June 11 and last until June 14 in Eugene, Oregon.

The issue of sexual assaults on college campuses has become so prevalent across the country that the White House has begun taking actions to address the issue in recent months.

The Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault was established in January to “provide schools with additional tools to combat sexual assault on their campuses,” according to an official statement.

For administrators and victim advocates at USF, the issue of sexual assault hits close to home after a man violently conducted a series of home invasions and sexual batteries last year, sparking Dean of Students Michael Freeman to create a safety committee dedicated to protecting students around campus.

On Sept. 5, 24-year-old Chris Bates entered a Cambridge Woods apartment where he bound four men in duct tape and raped four female USF students. That same evening, Bates entered another apartment near campus where he threatened a group of nearly 30 at gunpoint. 

Many students living near campus awoke the next morning to news of the attacks and alerts from police.

Bates was killed in a police shootout the next day.

Since the White House outreach, Freeman said the safety committee has talked to management at surrounding apartment complexes about violence prevention and what to do in the event of an assault.

The dean’s safety committee is made up of USF students, officers from University Police, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department and County Code Enforcement. 

“It was really kind of (USF President Judy Genshaft’s) urging, it brought to mind how many students we have living adjacent to the campus, which is significantly more than we have living on campus,” Freeman said.

Freeman said a safety brochure is in the works to inform students of precautions they should take when off campus and to offer resources for victims.  These packets will be handed out to all freshmen, as well as distributed to residents at various off campus apartments.

“Our thought was to develop a group to begin looking at off campus,” Freeman said. “For example, the apartments that our students frequent, and what kind of safety they have, what kind of information the students get.” 

The committee is also working with management at student apartment complexes to make sure safety measures up to code, including fixing lighting and putting in sidewalks so students will not have to walk in risky areas. 

“We’ve looked at the roadways, lighting, landscape, all of this in partnership with Hillsborough County public officials,” Freeman said. “There are all kinds of issues they’ve cleaned up for us.” 

The committee has asked county police to focus on 42nd and 46th streets, where the majority of USF student residents live. 

The White House task force also suggested an increase in transparency of universities’ treatment of sexual assault on campus.  

Freeman said this is in line with the White House task force’s new goals to fully identify the scope of safety concerns on university campuses and determine how to not only help prevent campus sexual assault, but also how to best respond when a student is a victim of assault. 

One in five women on college campuses will be victimized by sexual assault, according to the White House Report. There were three reported sexual assaults on the USF campus in 2013 and five in 2012.  

The White House task force said the presence of a confidential platform where a victim can go without fear of their identity being revealed is important. Confidentiality is one of the main factors that contribute to a victim not coming forward for help after being sexually victimized, according to the task force.

Nanci Newton, the director of Victim Advocacy and Violence Prevention at USF, said Victim Advocacy is one of the three confidential resources on campus, the other two being the Counseling Center and Student Health Services.  

“We cannot tell anyone without your written permission,” Newton said. “It’s very safe to talk to us.”

A “comprehensive” sexual misconduct policy addressing how to handle a student accused of sexual assault was also recommended. 

The White House also announced it will investigate 55 universities suspected of violating Title IX, a federal law that prohibits unequal treatment of students based on sex. The investigation will focus on how the universities treated sexual assault and sexual harassment claims. 

“Colleges and universities need to face the facts about sexual assault,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement. “No more turning a blind eye or pretending it doesn’t exist.”

The AAC released the schedule of conference games for the upcoming 2014-15 season Wednesday, showing the additions of East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa along with the departure of Louisville. 

Each team of the conference, which now contains 11 teams, will face eight opponents twice (one home and one away) and two opponents once. USF will face Cincinnati and Memphis only once. 

Along with announcing the conference schedule, the AAC also released the schedule for the AAC Tournament next spring. The XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut will host the tournament between March 12 and March 15. 

— Staff report

USF student-athletes are not only working on their performance on the field, but also in the classroom earning USF Athletics national recognition.

Among those receiving recognition is the football team, a group that once risked sanctions by the NCAA in 2008 when its Academic Progress Rate (APR) score was five points above the 925 minimum, but is now ranked among the top 25 Division I-A APR teams with a 973.

Junior tight end Sean Price said football coach Willie Taggart’s commitment to success in the classroom helped him gain opportunities off the field in his pursuit of his career in the pharmacology field in addition to racking up 8.8 yards per reception on the field.

Those opportunities include an internship with a pharmacy center and shadowing a physician assistant at USF.

His chances to explore a career off the field are ones Price did not expect to be presented with by playing football.

“When the opportunity did come, it was something I felt I should take hold of, push toward it, and keep pushing,” he said.  “Opportunities like this come, but I’m so thankful my adviser and the rest of the staff gave me these opportunities to pursue.”

“(Taggart) helped make academics a part of the culture, not just football,” Price said.  “He wanted us to be a well-rounded team.”

Associate Athletics Director for Academics Jason Linders said the APR score increase is a collaborative team effort by coaches, student-athletes and the academic services offered to them.

The football team’s two-part approach to promoting academic success begins with study-related tools. Linders said academic support services provide student-athletes with “structured, objective-based” study halls and tutoring.

These services help the retention rate and academic eligibility of student-athletes receiving financial aid for athletics, the two criteria of which APR points are assigned.  The points are then totaled and calculated through an equation.

The APR, created in 2004 by the NCAA to measure academic performance for student-athletes receiving scholarships, also recognizes teams earning a perfect score of 1,000 such as USF’s tennis teams.

“Bringing in (recruits) that care about doing well in school makes it easier to create a culture within the team where the guys care about school and really want to do well in classes,” USF men’s tennis coach Matt Hill said.

While Hill has an academic adviser assigned to the team to manage academic performance, his emphasis on academics during recruiting also includes a team approach to setting academic goals.

Once his recruits become student-athletes and the season starts, he creates a goal sheet.Included among the team’s goals, Hill said, is to win a national championship and have a team GPA of 3.5.

The reward for reaching the academic goal includes going out for dinner as a team.

“We just set really high standards for ourselves,” Hill said.  “From my experience working with these guys, if you set a really high standard, you are either going to obtain that standard or get pretty close to it.”

These standards, and the 1,000 perfect score, earned the team a Public Recognition Award by the NCAA.

“We want (USF tennis players) to be the best they can be potential-wise on the court and off the court,” Hill said.  “So when they look back, they really feel like they gave everything they could.”

With a full roster for the upcoming basketball season, coach Orlando Antigua is shifting his focus from recruitment to conditioning. Not only will the Bulls have a different roster, but according to Antigua, they will have a different style of play to complement the new players. 

Last year, the Bulls averaged 63.5 points per game and used most of the shot clock while creating their offense. This season, Antigua plans to push the offense to another level. 

“The kids that we recruited are long and athletic, the kind of kids the staff and I like to recruit,” Antigua said. “We’re going to try and play as fast as we can. Everybody says they want to play like that, but we have to get into that kind of shape first.”

The goal of playing fast and pushing the offense is to score more than the Bulls have in previous seasons. Antigua is already aiming to improve the offense by 10 to 15 points a game in the first season.  

“We want to score in the high 70s, 80s if we can,” Antigua said. “But we have to defend and get up and down and be in great shape.”

Antigua recruited players with this new offense in mind, targeting well-rounded, athletic players who could play multiple positions and score. Antigua believes these players will help the Bulls be multi-dimensional on offense and allow them to play a run-and-gun type of game plan. 

“It’s really hard when you’re flying up and down the court, and it may seem like a little bit of chaos, but it’s designed chaos,” Antigua said. “Changing from defense to offense, everyone will be running and attacking and that’s where we want to take the program.”

Training and conditioning has already started for the Bulls, as the NCAA allows teams to work out for two hours a week on the court at this point in the season. Antigua said getting in shape for this style of play is the most difficult aspect because it requires extra dedication to stamina and conditioning. 

“This is the time of the year where you start to impose the staff’s will on them and that is the foundation of what it is to come,” Antigua said.

But with the benefits of new players, there also comes the impact of losing six players who transferred out of the program. Despite the losses, Antigua said it doesn’t bother him that players left. 

“It’s part of what happens,” Antigua said. “Some of the kids had an opportunity to work with us and they got a taste of how we work and some of them might not have wanted that challenge.”

With the new staff focusing so much on improved conditioning and an up-tempo style of play, Antigua said he needs players who want to be here. 

A player speculated to possibly transfer before the upcoming season was senior point guard Anthony Collins, who is coming off a season in which he was injured for all but eight games. He is still trying to acquire a medical redshirt for last season to gain an additional year of eligibility. Collins still has pain in his knee, but Antigua believes he should be ready for the season opener. 

“Anthony’s done a great job, he’s been dealing with a little pain in his knee,” Antigua said. “He’s pushing through it, his conditioning is getting better. We’re glad that he’s going to stay around.”

This week, Mike Malone and Dom Lombardi were added to the staff. Malone will serve as the team’s strength and conditioning coach while Lombardi will work as the video coordinator.

“We were able to recruit Mike Malone, who worked with me at Kentucky,” Antigua said. “He understands the expectations, work capacity, and demand that we put on our guys, physically and athletically, so it’s an easy fit.”

Antigua also worked alongside Lombardi on both the Kentucky and the Dominican National teams.

With all the changes to the roster and coaching staff, Antigua admitted there will be challenges ahead. However, he said he welcomes challenges as opportunities to learn and grow as a person and coach. 

“You’re realistic about the challenge in front of you,” Antigua said. “We want to achieve success as quickly as we can.”

Heading into the AAC Championship in Clearwater last week, USF had lost six of its past seven games and was in need of a quick turnaround to have success in the championship. 

The Bulls needed some luck after Rutgers run-ruled them in Game 1 of the tournament. They found their inspiration the next day at the beach in the form of a dead rat.

Some players now claim the rat helped the team upset the No. 13 Cardinals by giving some motivation and luck to the team.

“We were swimming around and all of the sudden, this thing started floating toward us,” sophomore pitcher Jimmy Herget said. “Turns out, it was this big ‘ole rat.”

Another USF pitcher, Jordan Strittmatter, picked up the rat by the tip of its tail and put it in a Gatorade bottle, adopting it as the team’s mascot.

“Greg, our strength trainer, was talking to us about how the football team had some type of turkey at their training camp,” Herget said. “We decided, ‘Hey, why don’t we just get him, throw him in this Gatorade bottle, fill it up with water and call him Ralph our Rally Rat?’”

That night, the rotting rodent roomed with Herget and Tommy Peterson, sitting on the nightstand between the two pitchers. The next day, Ralph even had his own seat on the bus ride to Bright House Field. 

Ralph gave the Bulls the spark they needed, as they beat first-seeded Louisville, 2-1, behind Herget’s performance. The right-hander tossed 106 pitches for a complete game, walking two and striking out six.

Though Herget pitched a gem, the team treated Ralph like the MVP. After the win that kept USF in championship contention, the Bulls lifted the rat in celebration as if it had won the game for them.

“It was just a joke that we all rallied around,” junior shortstop Kyle Teaf said. “It was all in good fun.”

Ralph the Rally Rat, as named by junior pitcher Casey Mulholland on Twitter, turned out to be a one-time use for USF, however.

Ralph’s luck extended until the ninth inning of Game 3. Memphis walked off for a 2-1 win, eliminating the Bulls from championship contention. 

“We kind of got a little angry with Ralph after the Memphis game, so we abandoned him,” Herget said. “We left him in the dugout, and it just so happened that it was Houston’s dugout and they ended up winning. I think Ralph definitely helped them.”

The superstitions surrounding Ralph lived another day, as Houston claimed the AAC Championship by defeating Louisville, 10-4, Sunday.

After leading the AAC in wins (29), ERA (1.35), strikeouts (299) and opposing batting average (.144), senior pitcher Sara Nevins earned her spot as an All-American for the third consecutive season. 

“Being named in any sport to an NCAA All-American team is special,” coach Ken Eriksen said in a press release. “Two times is definitely a wow and three times tells you that this young lady is one of the best to play any sport at USF.”

Nevins is the first player in USF softball history to become a three-time All-American. She leaves the Bulls holding the most career wins (101) in the program’s history. 

— Staff report

Two married USF alumni are nourishing the need of their community, one a minister, the other building a community garden from scratch.

Natalia Dengler grows gardens of zucchini, sweet potatoes and cabbages while her husband Jonathan directs a ministry dedicated to feeding the hungry. 

The couple said they hope to cultivate an “oasis” of hospitality in Tampa. 

“We’re working to build bridges between food that would otherwise go wasted and people who would otherwise go hungry,” Jonathan said. 

Natalia, director of Tampa Eden Project, installs gardens across Tampa in “food deserts,” neighborhoods without access to fresh food.  

Over the last seven years, she has installed over 40 gardens and currently maintains 16 of them.

“There’s a lot of poverty in this city,” Natalia said. “(Fresh food) might be too expensive, or it might not be available … I believe everybody should have equal access.”

Natalia teaches children how to pick herbs and gives them seeds to take home and start their own garden.  She said gardening eases the minds of the troubled, and often works with juvenile delinquents. 

Jonathan, director of The Well, offers a place of respite for the hungry, with much of the food provided by Tampa Eden Project. 

“(Tampa is) a city that’s been very inhospitable to the poor,” Jonathan said. “Especially those who are living on the streets.”

The Well is open weekdays for breakfast and lunch, and Jonathan said he has over 300 visitors a week.

Located on the intersection of Florida Avenue and Floribraska, Jonathan said The Well was established as a place for people on the streets to get out of the sun, take a nap, eat a meal or drink a cup of coffee.

Both collaborate with the Tampa Underground Network, a web of Christian ministries, to feed the needy in impoverished neighborhoods.

“It’s a vision of what I’d call the Kingdom of God,” Jonathan said. “It’s all these people together just being beautiful with one another and that to me is a real work of art.”

After graduating from USF, Jonathan started attending church and eventually went with a van to distribute blankets and socks to the homeless. 

“They went to these crazy corners and dark alleys of a city I didn’t even know existed,” he said. “I found this man that was an amazingly beautiful person in a dark alley that smelled like piss.” 

He said was “haunted” by the experience.

“I’ve come home to a bed with a blanket, a pillow, a shower, air-conditioner and all these things we take for granted,” Jonathan said. “I don’t feel good — I feel like crap.”

Jonathan shared this experience with his wife and they began volunteering at Metropolitan Ministries. 

“We realized this could be an entire calling for our life,” he said. “Tampa had so many poor people in the cracks and crevices of a city that needed a friend.”

Little by little, Natalia and Jonathan dedicated more time to the community. They hosted banquets to feed those couldn’t afford food and open mics to entertain those who couldn’t afford movie tickets. 

Eventually, Natalia and Jonathan started Tampa Eden Project and The Well, respectively. 

Today, they are about to get their “babies” to overlap by growing a garden at The Well for visitors to work on. 

“We want to invite people into the garden and into what I believe is a healing relationship with the earth,” he said. 

Kevin Vanlare, a homeless person who has visited The Well for more than a year, said it was a blessing for those without a home.

 “They can come, relax, have coffee in the morning, lunch at noon,” he said. “They can sit and conversate with the guys and girls.”

But Vanlare received more out of The Well than relaxation, conversation and food. 

The ministry found him a job and gave him a bike to get there.

“I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened actually,” Vanlare said. “It gives me peace of mind.”

A suspect reported for conning USF students into withdrawing funds was arrested last Thursday.

Guecoba Dow, 30, was apprehended after University Police (UP) stopped her vehicle at the intersection of USF Palm Drive and Fletcher Avenue. 

The vehicle was pulled over after a license plate scan revealed an outstanding warrant. The passenger in the vehicle was a USF student who had just completed a transaction at an ATM machine, as requested by Dow under false pretenses.    

As with two previous reports, Dow approached the student claiming to need help cashing a check. Dow then asked to use the student’s account to deposit the fraudulent check and withdraw the supposed amount, resulting in a loss for the victim. 

According to a UP press release, police confirmed Friday the check given to the student was fraudulent.

UP charged Dow with felonies for grand theft, two counts of possession of a counterfeit payment instrument and two counts of scheme to defraud, as well as a misdemeanor for petit theft. 

As of Wednesday, Dow remains incarcerated in Hillsborough County Jail with a bond of $62,500. 

— Staff report

Today’s homeless could be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs if a USF committee has its way. 

Rebecca Campbell, a doctoral anthropology student and graduate sociology instructor, said she and two peers from the university formed the Homeless Entrepreneurship Committee to advise Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) on developing entrepreneurial ventures aimed at self-sustainment.

“We’re giving a potential for a bigger reality,” Campbell said. “These people want the chance. They want the training to get back on their feet, so they can run a business.”

Members from HHH presented business ideas to the HEC in February at the first meeting. One pitch was a service that would pick up an impounded car and store it until the owner could gather the fee, saving them from pricier long-term impoundment.

However, Campbell said the committee thought a mobile check cashing service was the “soundest” venture. The service would run out of an armored, decommissioned snack truck retrofitted with a teller window, and would act as delivery for cashing government, personal and payroll checks.

Adolphus Parker, president of HHH, said there is reason to be optimistic after the last four meetings.

“Things are moving along well through the development stage,” he said. “The committee has been helpful in putting together a business plan.”

Parker said projects like this are vital to the life of the shelter, as it receives no government funding. 

“We’re about individuals taking responsibility,” he said. “We’re empowering individuals to not only do good for themselves, but to also do good for others.”

Entrepreneurship is in line with HHH’s tagline of “empowerment at its core,” Parker said.  The staff of HHH, most of whom got out of homelessness, provide skill training and transportation to job interviews.

“Typically, no one else would give them a chance,” Parker said.

Campbell said she gave HHH a chance when asked a year ago to be a member of their developmental committee, after two years of visiting the shelter with her cultural anthropology students.

“I thought it would be a good chance to expose them to a reality that many college students will not experience,” she said. “I think the majority of students may not know what it’s like to have daily struggles for shelter.”

Most homeless people would rather be self-reliant and learn skills themselves than accept handouts, Campbell said, and many are educated people who maintained employment until a major event beyond their control happened. 

“A person will be living from paycheck to paycheck, and then you get really sick or someone in your family dies,” she said. “The majority of people I’ve dealt with are very intelligent.”

Campbell said one person she met used to work in the health care industry, but couldn’t get back in after taking time off to take care of his gravely ill girlfriend in a wheelchair. Among others she met were people with master’s degrees and a former Microsoft worker.

She said another prejudice was that homeless are “crazy,” “dirty” and “druggies.”

“Certainly there are some homeless people who have substance abuse problems, just as there are people who are not homeless who have substance abuse problems,” she said. “That’s not the majority, or at least the majority I’ve dealt with.”

Another myth is the homeless who panhandle make more than the average person, Campbell said. 

“Some people think (panhandlers) own a Lexus parked around the corner, and if they open their wallet all this money will come out,” she said. “Maybe a small portion asking for money are dishonest, but in my research, I find it’s mostly not the case.”

Though HHH still needs some help raising capital, they are not merely looking for handouts, Campbell said.  

“The goal of the committee is not to take care of HHH, but to empower the organization to be self-sustaining,” she said. 

Once the business model is complete, HHH hopes to reinvest the profit into future projects and into improving the shelter, Parker said. 

Campbell said the business plan is projected to be complete in three months and will be submitted to USF’s Small Business Development Center, where small business loans will be recommended.