Kickin’ Around a New Name: Minnesota soccer plays the name game…and loses

Editor's note: The President of the Minnesota United FC, Nick Rogers, responded to this post and his comments are below. 

About a month ago, the Minnesota Stars* decided that it was time to re-brand themselves after the then-league-owned team was purchased by former UnitedHealth CEO, William McGuire.  Like naming a child, choosing a name for a professional sports team is a rare occurrence that provides the owners/parents the opportunity to provide the team/child with the opportunity to be successful while also acknowledging familiar surroundings and family ties.  The Tampa Bay Devil Rays recently determined that supporting the underworld’s patriarch was not good for business and decided to drop “Devil” from the team’s moniker.  The New Orleans Hornets, after moving from Charlotte to New Orleans (and then to and from Oklahoma), will begin anew as the Pelicans next season.**

CATHOLICS VOTE NO

Minnesota always has been home and always will be home. We’re damn proud of our lakes, high school hockey, Prince, and Paul Wellstone. We were the first state to answer Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers at the start of the Civil War and we have one of the best social safety nets in the country. But in one week we could also become the 31^st state to rewrite its constitution to ban same-sex marriage.*

*This is civil marriage – a legal contract recognized by the state that privileges two parties to state-recognized benefits – not the sacramental union in the Church (which also happens to be recognized by the state). This is an important distinction.

We’re also proud to call ourselves Catholics. It is a beautiful Faith and the Church does some wonderful work from advocacy on Capitol Hill to feeding the homeless at the Dorothy Day Center. Nevertheless, the Minnesota Catholic Church and its exceptional support of the amendment to ban gay marriage are major reasons that the vote Tuesday remains too close to call. It would be a tragedy if Minnesota votes yes – not just for the LGBT community, but for our state, and for our Church. 

Evaluating the Educational Impact of the National School Lunch Program

My absence from Eleanor Ave. for the last couple months can be explained in one word: thesis. Although, technically, it is a “professional paper,” calling it a thesis avoids lots of additional explanation.  No matter what you call it, they both involve lots of words and lots of time.

Because my EA postings ceased as a result of this large collection of words, I decided that I should post the final document. 

Brief summary:  The National School Lunch Program (commonly referred to as “free/reduced lunch") provides millions of meals to low income school children every day.   The students eligible for free and reduced lunches achieve at almost one standard deviation below their peers on math and reading test scores.  In this paper I ask: do low income children receive any cognitive benefits from receiving a free or low cost meal at school?    In previous research, the answer has been “no, not really, except for select demographics on certain tests.”  Many results even indicated that participation led to lower test scores.  What these researchers did not consider is if, without out the NSLP, eligible students would receive a meal anyway – from their parents, a sibling, a neighbor, or a food shelf.  For this reason, my paper looks at low income children who also have “low food security” – essentially an index of hunger.  For these children, participation in the NSLP free lunch program appears to lead to positive, statistically significant improvements in tests scores, but particularly reading scores.  However, there remain some null and negative results which are likely attributable to the nature of the survey questions.  Additionally, the paper provides recommendations for policymakers and future research on this topic.

For more details about these topics, the history of the program, and methods/models for evaluating the NSLP, check out the full paper.

Special thanks to my advisers, the Humphrey School, and the many others that helped with the editing, support, and encouragement that made this paper possible.

Students Becoming More Than College Rankings

Last week, the Vice President and Dean of Admissions at Claremont McKenna College announced that he had falsified SAT data submitted to college ranking organizations.  Ouch.  How would it feel to be a recently admitted CMC* and find out that your SAT scores weren’t good enough to send in to US News and World Reports?

*I am just going to assume that this is their abbreviation…because up until this scandal, I had never heard of CMC.  I guess that is an upside of this: people around the country now know about the school.

 In addition to their lack of confidence, CMC also has an integrity problem.  Having a lying director of admissions encouraging students to apply does not exactly scream “come here and you will graduate with integrity.”  However, there’s a broader problem, too.

Picking a Fight with the NHL

I never played hockey.

Alright, so after getting that nearly blasphemous-for-a-Minnesotan statement out of the way it is important to understand that sometimes it takes an outsider to provide necessary insight. Especially for a bold question like:

Why does the NHL allow – even encourage – fighting?

Notes on "The State of the Union"

While we were watching President Obama’s state of the union address Tuesday, a couple passages jumped out at us. Here they are, along with our thoughts (please hold your applause until the end):

Confessions of a Country Music Convert

If you’re reading this, you've probably heard of country music. I have too.  But, until a year ago, I had only heard of it…and then I started to listen to it.  The decision to start listening to country music was not mine , but exclusively attributable to my brother and sister telling me that from this moment on, “Patrick all of the presets in the cars will be country...even if it means button 5 and 6* are both tuned to K102.

Iowa Caucuses: Don't Forget to Take Your Gopiac

Last week, I was driving on the road out of the promised land – some refer to it as “Interstate 35” - through northern Iowa. It was the weekend before the Republican Iowa Caucuses, but because of some stellar luck, I got a sneak preview of the results. Out of all of the GOP presidential candidate bumper stickers I saw, most were for Rep. Ron Paul. The others, well....OK I only saw two...and they were both supporting Paul.

With this knowledge, I did pretty well in predicting the winner. Or, at least the third place finisher.

Creighton Soccer, College Cup, and a Few Good Reasons to Watch

December in college soccer is baseball’s October.  Creighton men’s soccer has played into December several times since the program restarted in 1990.  However, before last weekend, only once had the team hosted a game in December.  In that sweet sixteen game in 2007, the Bluejay’s season ended after a goal was nullified because Chris Shuler is too tall, his stride too stunning, and his headers too immaculate.

Last weekend, the Bluejays welcomed South Florida to Morrison Stadium for an elite eight game.  After Creighton’s home city became Snowmaha, and the field was incapacitated by several inches of snow (in Minnesota we call this a Paul Bunyan dandruff dusting), the game was postponed to Sunday.  Unfortunately for the Bulls, their south Florida warmth wasn’t enough postpone elimination when MAC Hermann (for football people, read: Heisman) candidate Ethan Finley’s scored the winning goal in OT winning goal.  

So, they Jays are on to the Final Four for the fourth time.  Why should you care?

I am the 15%...Who Voted

There are Occupy Wallstreeters that are concerned about the 99%.  Well, I’m concerned about the 85% - the percentage of people that didn’t vote in Tuesday’s local election

Elections in my house are commonly referred to the Super Bowl – and not because both highlight people with a horrendous tendency to commit sexual misconduct (see: Cain, Herman; Clinton, Bill; Roethlisberger, Ben; and Favre, Brett).  However, on Tuesday the local election results were not the top story on WCCO’s 10 o’clock new…or the second or third.  It took until about 10 minutes into the newscast for Frank and Amelia to report that it was Election Day.

The Springsteen Draft

Ed Note: This post is based on a draft conducted between Joe and Patrick over 20 days in July. For ten rounds, Patrick would pick a song followed by Joe. At the end, the song lists were compared by an impartial expert and Patrick was declared the winner. What follows is those picks and the authors' commentary. Special thanks to Christine Duda for being that impartial expert.
Go ahead and pick your own winner in the poll on our sidebar.

Round 1
Patrick Carter: Badlands
Joey Labuz: Rosalita

JL: Gotta admit, this was a Mario Williams-scale surprise for me. The very first pick in the draft with so many songs to choose from and Carter takes...the song I had always though of as The Promised Land’s little brother. It’s a good song, and the crowd is certainly rocking, I just don’t think any song set in South Dakota can hold a candle to Rosie.
PC: There are two reasons that this version of Badlands was the first pick: its an instrumental jam session and the fans in Barcelona.  Ok, so most versions of Badlands are jam sessions, but the crowd in this video is amazing.  Howabout that version of “Rosie”? Wow.  Speaking of fans, I wise I were at this concert: Bruce and the boys playing follow the leader and hide-and-go-seek while playing - incredible.

Boo Bishop-Bashing Board. Hooray Church!

In the Minnesota Daily last week, the Editorial Board presented quite an appalling proposal.  Their piece suggested that people of faith – specifically Minnesota’s Roman Catholic Bishops and Minnesota Catholics – do not have a right to express their beliefs in the public arena.

According to the the article, because the Minnesota Bishops are on the wrong side of the pending gay marriage amendment, they should not be able to persuade state legislators and lead advocacy campaigns.  This is a flawed argument because the right to participate in these activities is not dependent on where one stands – otherwise public discourse would be futile.

Vikings Week? Weak.

It’s Vikings Week in Minnesota!

Why not NSC Stars Week? They are in the NASL championship (yes, I did have to look that up) this weekend. Or how about  Minnesota Lynx Week? They won the championship a couple of weeks ago.  Or even Nebraska Week?  There will be legions of Cornhuskers flocking to Minnesota this weekend for the UMN-UN football game.  And Nebraska will probably have the largest win of any team playing in the state this weekend, so why embrace a pro-tourism ethic and call it Nebraska Week?