Brown and White Vol. 115 No. 34

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 115 no 34 friday february 22 2008 all the lehigh news first fraternity rush numbers highest in two years by meg grant â–  fraternity presidents credit higher bid numbers on improved recruitment practices participants in fraternity rush increased this year compared to the past two years according to the 2008 fraternity and sorority statistics from the fra ternity sorority affairs office cory nolan 08 recruitment chairman of inter fraternity council recruitment said according to the fraternity and sorority statistics in the 2006-2007 year only 228 bids were signed amongst lehigh's 20 chapters on feb 15 nolan said 287 male freshmen signed bids in 18 chapters he said the numbers for this year's rush however have yet to be finalized these numbers do not include kappa alpha psi or sigma alpha mv fraternities nolan said he said kappa alpha psi a non-residential chapter does not turn in its recruitment num bers until a later date and sigma alpha mv is not currently able to have a pledge class be cause of its current suspension rush numbers in 2008 are the highest since 2006 when 293 men signed bids the increase in fraternity rush this year is positively correlated with the opinion among fraternity brothers of an increased enforcement of rules president of sigma phi epsilon marc sweet 09 said police changed the atmosphere of rush this semester it's not about who can throw the biggest party anymore sweet said it's steroids gain attention across country campus by katy jacobson baseball fans nationwide were shocked by the findings of the december 2007 mitchell report which linked 89 major league baseball players to the use of per formance-enhancing drugs ac cording to the new york times dean of athletics joseph ster rett said it is clear there is a prob lem and the focus should be on finding a solution the news about all the pro fessional athletes using perfor mance enhancements is highly disappointing and blemishes the entire sports world sterrett said sterrett said lehigh supports the ncaa's policy banning per formance-enhancing drugs and provides all athletes with an edu cational program to make sure they have an understanding and commitment toward the policy the mitchell report was put together by former senator george mitchell of maine and includes about 400 pages of inter views and 115,000 pages of docu b&w photo by christopher chew merits providing evidence against the players a large portion of the tes timony came from new york yankees personal trainer brian mcnamee who admitted to distributing performance-enhanc ing drugs while working with roger clemens andy pettite and chuck knoblauch according to the report since then yankees pitcher andy pettite admitted to using as steroid use dominates national headlines lehigh athletics officials say steroid use has not been a problem at lehigh students gain muscle the old-fashioned way at taylor gymnasium organization tracks student downloads by greg alvarez students who illegally download movies and songs could now face consequences under the motion picture as sociation of america's new standards by sorting through pro grams such as bit torrent or kazaa investigators can obtain the ip addresses of people who have illegally downloaded movies said mpaa represen tative seth oster in a jan 22 press release the mpaa has issued sub poenas to universities through out the country seeking the names of the students with cer tain ip addresses oster said a 2007 study conducted by the mpaa reported that college students are respon sible for nearly 15 percent of the industry's domestic losses through movie piracy account ing for almost 250 million according to the press release because college students only represent 3 percent of the u.s population their piracy activities are highly dispropor tionate to those of the rest of the country the mpaa said bruce taggart vice provost of the library and technology services office said he does not believe movie piracy is a widespread problem at lehigh lehigh does not scan content being sent through file-sharing programs only bandwidth size he said unlike other universities lehigh has not banned peer to-peer software although the programs can be used for illegal downloading they also offer valuable educational ben efits taggart said to help police lehigh's net work lts monitors bandwidth traffic he said each internet port is given a generous amount of band width taggart said if this amount is exceeded during a certain time frame the user of the port will be placed in what is called the penalty box internet speed of the port will be reduced to dial-up speed for a set time pe riod as a punishment he said repeat violations get sent to the student affairs office for further review he said taggart said lts has spo ken with student leadership groups such as the student senate in an effort to reiterate intellectual property rights and copyright laws someday it might be your work that someone is illegally downloading and distributing taggart said if an activity is illegal we will follow it up to the letter of the law lts will also fully cooper ate with any mpaa and re cording industry association of america subpoenas taggart said scan camperson 11 said see bids page 5 see piracy page 5 see steroids page 4 comfort bfl^jki women's basketball check online for comes first / faces rival leopards breaking news page 7 l page 16 thebrownandwhite.com