New Buildings at HPU

This year, 545 upperclassmen will move into the new Village at High Point University.

Costing over $30 million, the complex consists of two residential halls, an eating area, a pool and a volleyball court. In each residence hall are mailboxes, a workout area, a business center, equipped with touch screen computers, and study rooms.

The Grille, the new restaurant at the Village, is available for all students and will accept declining balance dollars. The food offered will consist of a pizza stone oven for personal and full sized pizzas, deli sandwiches with meat by the slice and pasta dishes.

Shuttle service is scheduled to run every 15 minutes from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. All other times shuttle riders will need to call the transportation office for service.

The finishing touches are almost complete at the Hayworth University Park as well. Summer renovations include three additional aerators for the newly built ponds, a staircase for the soon to be completed Mulitplex, sitting areas and a fence enclosing the park.

Scheduled to open next year are the Wilson Family School of Commerce and the Qubein School of Communication. Both buildings are planned to be completed in December.

Cozart tapped to lead HPU Baseball

After a resignation, hiring, resignation and a second hiring, High Point has Craig Cozart leading the baseball program.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to take over the program here at High Point University,” Cozart said of his first shot at his own program.

Cozart was interim head coach of University of Central Florida following an in-season firing of the head coach. After a national search UCF passed on him to hire outside of the program. After 16 years at UCF as a player and coach, Cozart was looking elsewhere.

HPU was going through tremendous changes in the baseball program at the same time. On May 21 Sal Bando Jr. resigned. Butch Thompson from Auburn was hired for nine days in June before he resigned to take a position at Mississippi State University.

Athletic director Craig Keilitz then turned to Cozart. High Point felt right to Cozart, “The feeling of community when you step on campus is unlike anywhere else I have been.”

Cozart brought with him two coaches from the UCF staff to help him out. Bryan Peters, with 13 years of coaching experience, was hired with vast experience in hitting and working with infielders along with success recruiting players. The second coach, Rich Wallace, had experience coaching first and third base along with helping the catchers and hitting at UCF.

Daniel Latham was hired as a volunteer assistant. Previously he was a closer for Tulane before playing a year in the Minnesota Twin organization.

The faces will not be the only things different for the Panthers in 2009. “There is going to be a definite change in energy. We are going to play a throwback style of baseball,” Cozart said of his program.

Cozart said of throwback baseball, “We are going to throw strikes, field the ball cleanly and we’ll advance runners offensively. [Fans will] see the rapid development of skills as our players complete their athletic eligibility here.”

The Cozart era begins with hopes of a brighter future. Since 1990 High Point has not had a winning season. Since 1993, when Cozart began at UCF, the program endured only three losing seasons. His record can excite fans of HPU baseball. Cozart says of the fan involvement, “We are going to put a product out on the field that the student body can embrace. We need support to take this program to the next level.”

Cozart has also added a student program called the “Pride” to encourage students to help High Point baseball. Students involved in the Pride will help with day to day operations such as charting practices and games, laundry and other assistance the coaching staff needs. The opportunity is for students not on the team who still want to be part of baseball.

Social Networking woes

            I might have done one the craziest things a college student could do.  No, I didn’t streak down the Promenade after a drunken night.  Also, I did not have my beer goggles on and make out with a random girl.  After months of debating, I have deactivated my Facebook.com account, gasp.

            It seemed like the most logical move for me after I have had drama, been confronted by authority and had nothing productive occurring because of my account.  When my friends discovered the risky move they asked the question that I knew was coming, “What are you going to do?”

            The answer took me days of research on how people lived in the 1990s.  I’ll actually have to live an interpersonal life instead of an intrapersonal.  That means greeting people, asking questions and remembering facts instead of sitting on a computer, by myself to learn information about people.  Didn’t seem too hard in the beginning considering my brother made it through college at the turn of the century without social networking.  He seems fine now with no lasting effects.

            The first week was rough for me.  Someone asked if I knew someone and the answer of course was no.  The person was convinced I did so he tried describing the mystery person.  After 10 seconds (we tried real hard) he said, “Look on Facebook.”

            I discovered I was using Facebook as a crutch to get me through life.  I am terrible with faces and names.  The reason is I never needed to really learn them at first.  After they befriended me on Facebook I could look into their lives and remember that information.  That’s a problem when greeting people is only good so I can remember enough about them to befriend them on Facebook.

            This was going to be a greater challenge than I thought.  This only leads to the questions, “Has Facebook made us less personal than before?”

            My generation has grown up with some of the most changes in 20 years than most generations.  We have grown up with computers becoming part of the world quickly, the “.com” boom, cellular phones, 24 hour news services, communication devices and many more innovations.  We have information at our becking call.  Whenever we want we can get information.  We were old enough to remember life without those, but we are the driving force for all of the innovations as well.

            We have enjoyed learning about Lindsey Lohan’s latest gossip, Obama’s church’s sermon and all other news before the news corporation can even differentiate between the rumors and facts.  We don’t care as long as we know everything the moment it happens.  Now we want to put our own information readily available without considering the consequences.

            It is great to put up pictures of great times like last weekend’s party.  The only problem is last week’s party might lead a business to pass on you for a job in two years.  If you think people aren’t look at Facebook, you are naïve.

            There is a way for businesses to look up information from Facebook that you have “untagged” or tired to delete or hide.  In the privacy terms listed on the site, Facebook admits, “copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content.”  Even untagging yourself doesn’t circumvent the possibility of someone in power looking at your material years from now.

            Two months since deactivating my account I’m ready to reactivate it to permanently delete it.  I have found no benefits to Facebook that I can’t do elsewhere.

I have joined Twitter, which is a networking site where users answer one question, “What are you doing?”

            Through Twitter I have found and “followed” professionals.  Many times they are simply saying, “My [MLB Tampa Bay] Rays are hot right now!”  Other times they may have, “Read my new blog post about newspapers cutting paper jobs but adding Internet jobs.”

            I also have a membership to LinkedIn, a business social networking site.  On LinkedIn you have direct connections.  Then you can look at your direct connections’ connections.  I have seven direct connections on the site.  My seven direct connections have 300 plus of their own connections.  All together, I have a network of 30,900 people that I have access to and they have access to me.  I can have recommendations on the site along with my resume.  Best part, no defamatory information on the site against me.

            I have learned a lot more from using these sites than Facebook.  I joined Facebook my senior year of high school to network.  After failed attempts I’m back to the past socially and using other sites to build a business network.

            Not every weekend needs to be chronicled for me.  Maybe I do need to know when you break up, get back together, then break up again, but I’ll just pass on the opportunity.  Although I also enjoy seeing people making stupid decisions, I’ll just have to hear the stories or witness them myself.  Just remember that Facebook can lower your bar as much as raise it.  Let’s raise the bar together.