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Rojelio Hernandez was smart - but his scheme to defraud the government wasn't sophisticated. Armed with a library card, a student directory and a computer password, the 27-year-old architecture graduate supported his family and put himself and his friends through Texas Tech with stolen money. Hernandez testified last week that he and more than 30 other students took about $150,000 in federal financial aid for which they were ineligible. "Sure I took it from the government, but it wasn't like I took it from someone off the street," he said during the federal trial that brought Hernandez together with co-conspirators...

BY BETH AARON AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Lubbock police have raised the number of sexual assaults possibly committed by the same suspect to three within the past two weeks. The details and the description of the suspect and the assaults are similar. Each victim was threatened with a weapon and their heads were covered with a hood, police said. Police on Wednesday released information about a third sexual assault that occurred on May 24. A 45-year-old woman told police she was sexually assaulted at 1:30 a.m. after she accepted a ride from a man in a white pickup truck near a convenience store...

Austin City Manager Toby Futrell opened her Tuesday newspaper and saw that economic development glad-handers from Lubbock were in her town, flooding one of the world's most prestigious tech conferences with tote bags stamped with their logo. Futrell declared a marketing emergency. The city has no strategic reserve for a tote bag crisis, so Futrell whipped her staff into a frenzy Wednesday to quickly order 2,000 high-quality tote bags that say "Austin: Live Music Capital of the World." The order, which will cost the city about $2,000, was set to be filled by noon today, when city officials will begin...

BREAKING NEWS: Baylor swept into suit involving SMU, Dallas condo owner By Mike Anderson Tribune-Herald staff writer Monday, February 20, 2006 Baylor University's efforts to keep details of its bid for the George W. Bush Presidential Library from going public just got a little more complicated. The university has received a subpoena from Dallas attorney Gary Vodicka for documents related to its library proposal, Baylor officials confirmed Monday. The subpoena is part of a lawsuit Vodicka has filed against Baylor's top rival in the library selection process, Southern Methodist University. The suit claims SMU violated its legal obligation to residents...

Texas Tech assistant football coach Dave Brown died of an apparent heart attack Tuesday afternoon, an athletic department spokesman confirmed. Brown collapsed while playing basketball at a campus recreation center, media relations director Chris Cook said. Brown coached the defensive secondary for Texas Tech since 2001. He previously coached the secondary for the Seattle Seahawks, for whom he was an All-Pro defensive back. Brown played 16 years in the NFL with Seattle, Pittsburgh and Green Bay and is enshrined in the Seahawks' Ring of Honor.

Laney plans end of distinguished political career BY JOHN REYNOLDS AVALANCHE-JOURNAL State Rep. Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, won't run for re-election next year, closing the curtain on a 33-year legislative career that included a record-tying 10 years as House speaker. He didn't go into specifics Friday on his decision to leave. "I think it was time, there's no particular reason," he said. "There are other things I may want to do with my life." The 62-year-old cotton farmer and grandfather of four has spent more than half his life as a state representative. He was first elected in 1972, knocking...

WASHINGTON - David Miller looked relieved. After weeks of preparing slides, videos and speeches for this moment, the work was finally done - at least for now. In front of President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, advisers Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and even the president's brother Marvin, Miller and 19 West Texas representatives finally had the opportunity on Wednesday morning to make the case about why Texas Tech should be home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. In the 21/2-hour presentation at the prominent Washington hotel The Mayflower, Tech Chancellor David Smith, President Jon Whitmore and others...

This is the first thread for picks of the Top 25 and other selected games for the greatest game in the Nation  If you have any other college football articles or wish to be on the ping list, please ping or FReepmail me. BTW, if you want any specific game listed, please tell me.

NewsChannel 11 has obtained the video the West Texas Coalition sent to the White House in its bid for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. It's the same video that helped Texas Tech advance as one of the four finalists. The video proposal includes interviews from Lubbock, Amarillo and Midland leaders, all urging the president to build his library in Lubbock.....(click for rest of article and video)

"Knight School" will be in session beginning today as the reality show centered on the Texas Tech men's basketball team and head coach Bob Knight begins filming. Rob Lundgren, one of the executive producers of the show, arrived in Lubbock on Friday and said the pre-production process has gone smoother than anticipated. "This has been a fabulous collaboration," Lundgren said. "The people at Texas Tech have been wonderful, everyone at the university. There are a lot of elements that are involved, and we've been in television for a long time and everyone in our crew has said that they've never...

A typical orientation for a first-year Texas Tech student might include the identification cards, campus maps, and traffic and parking speech that were given to Tulane University student athletes - but it's not every day student body president Nathan Nash puts his cell phone number on a dry erase board in a room full of people. At the Marsha Sharp Center for Student Athletes Wednesday, several different departments from around campus sent people to welcome Tulane student athletes, coaches and staff in a quick orientation to Tech. "It's certainly a slam-dunk orientation," said John Anderson, associate director of athletics. "It's...

© 2005 - The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal BY JEFF WALKER ASSOCIATED PRESS Texas Tech students will have the opportunity to go to night school. In this case, though, they'll be going to Knight School. ESPN is expected to announce today that 16 Tech students will be chosen to compete in a reality show called "Knight School" that will be filmed in Lubbock, Tech officials said. The winner, chosen by Tech head coach Bob Knight and his coaching staff, will have an opportunity to join the Red Raiders as a walk-on for the 2006-07 season. Knight said the concept has been talked...

Far from the jungles, the politics and the killing fields of one of the most divisive conflicts in recent history, the leading repository for research on the Vietnam War is housed in a cool, temperature-controlled room in Lubbock. There are rows and rows of acid-free boxes, filled with millions of documents, pictures and artifacts lining a special section of the Texas Tech Southwest Collections storage area. Downstairs, archivists set up in an indoor loading dock catalog more boxes of information. There are manuals given to foreign service officers, brig logs from troop ships, and a new set of prized documents...

Tech reclaims identity with renamed student newspaper, 'Daily Toreador' BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL They realized it last fall during the tense announcement of a prestigious journalism award, editor Joey Brink said. "They started out, 'University Daily'," Brink said. "And then they said, 'Kansas'." Texas Tech University's student newspaper returned to its roots Wednesday, officially changing its masthead to The Daily Toreador on its first summer issue. A group of students and faculty members began pushing for the change last fall, hoping to find a name that could be immediately identified with Texas Tech, Brink said. "The name the University Daily...

All Interested Parties in the TTU Seal Change debacle should contact the following people to voice your disgust over Chancellor Smith and his waste of University time and money on the proposed changes to the University's seal. State Representative Pete Laney Capitol Office Room CAP 3N.05, P.O. Box 2910 Austin, TX 78768 (512) 463-0604 (512) 463-5896 Fax The Honorable Robert Duncan P.O. Box 12068 Capitol Station Austin, Texas 78711 (512) 463-0128 Toll Free (800) 322-9538 State Rep. Carl Isett Capitol Office Room EXT E2.318 P.O. Box 2910 Austin, TX 78768 (512) 463-0676 State Rep. Delwin Jones Capitol Office Room CAP...

Texas Tech will hold more focus groups and talk to more alumni before moving forward on planned changes to the school seal, regents decided Thursday. The system Board of Regents took no formal action endorsing the delay and expressed support for the program, but board Chairman Rick Francis and Regent Windy Sitton told marketing administrators to slow down a major re-branding campaign. (snip) "I feel that when more Tech family has had the opportunity to view this, it will clear up a lot of misinformation that is out there; it will clear up a lot of rumors that are out...

79R16773 KO-D By: Isett H.C.R. No. 192 CONCURRENT RESOLUTION WHEREAS, Founded in 1923, Texas Tech University has a rich heritage, and among its most cherished traditions are the Texas Tech Seal and the Double T symbol; and WHEREAS, Designed by the campus master planner, William Ward Watkin, in 1924, the Texas Tech Seal depicts a lamp, which represents school, a key for home, a book for church, and a star for the state; cotton bolls denote that industry's importance to the region, and the eagle represents this nation; and WHEREAS, The emblem first appeared on Tech diplomas in 1948,...

Bolled over by alums, Tech backs off on new seal BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL The Texas Tech University System will return cotton's likeness to new designs of the school seal, an administrator said Thursday. Associate Vice Chancellor Lynn Denton, the system's head of marketing, said the school will develop new designs of the school seal that include symbols representing cotton. "We've decided that we are going to put cotton plants back into the seal," Denton said. Alumni became alarmed earlier this week after speculation circulated the Internet that the school was downplaying the Double T logo and removing cotton from...

Cotton stripped from Tech seal BY ELLIOTT BLACKBURN AVALANCHE-JOURNAL Texas Tech may face a fight from cotton farming alumni after the school announced Wednesday it would pluck the symbolic tufts of the West Texas crop from the school seal. The changes are part of a broader marketing campaign to be launched early next year that Tech officials hope will improve the university's national reputation. Chancellor David Smith refuted rumors Wednesday that the school was abandoning its past for the marketing effort. A-J File Photo "It is not undoing tradition, it is not undoing pride," Smith said of the changes. "We...

LUBBOCK - • Provocative debate on the Vietnam War's effect on the 2004 election wraps up a three-day conference at Texas Tech. "The Tactical Nuclear Weapons Option in Vietnam" was informative. "Re-education and Its Aftermath" was moving. Then there was "The Vietnam War and the Election Year," as seen and told by former members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and members of the Swift boat Veterans for Truth. This was some academic conference. "Welcome to the steel-cage death match" portion of the 5th Triennial Vietnam Symposium, remarked one panelist. The Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University saved its most...