FEATURES

Gambling leads to Huge payoff for Some
Brooke Garvin | For the Wichitan

Sirens are flashing, bells are ringing, and the slot machine is going nuts! The entire casino is focused on you, and your brand-new money. You have now officially gained the title of "lucky." When the smoke clears, you are $1,500 richer, and a whole lot happier.
In a stroke of genius, you move on from slot machines to bigger and brighter things—the Texas Hold 'em Poker Tournament.  The entry fee is a meager $300.  You are the first person eliminated from the tournament. Ashley Jobe experienced this feeling of extreme loss first-hand.  This scenario is becoming all too familiar with MSU students. Several students have placed their bets in order to fuel the need to win big money. Many are turning to gambling as a way to relax and relieve the stress of school. Several students admit to spendin g a small fortune to feed their need to win big.
Jobe, an education major from Knox City, Texas, hit the $1,500 jackpot on a slot machine at Comanche Red River Casino located in Devol, Okla.  
"I ordinarily gamble about two times a month," says Jobe, grinning.  "I usually take about $200 dollars to gamble with."
Comanche Red River Casino has only slot machines and off-track horse betting. Slot machines do not require any skill.  There are penny, nickel, quarter, and dollar slots.  A single penny and a press of the "spin" button is all that is needed to win big money.
Jobe, 21, decided to enter the Texas Hold 'em Poker Tournament. She wished she hadn't.
"The entry fee was $300.  Out of 400 people, I was the very first person to get eliminated," Jobe says.
According to Metroactive.com, 49 percent of adults who have gambled in the last twelve months admit to losing money. Students have good enough odds to win money about half of the time.
Other students have also been placing bets.  Nathan Jephcott, a kinesiology major from Littlefield, Texas, gambles only once or twice a year. Jephcott has been to Las Vegas twice, but never to Comanche Red River Casino. He does not wish to gamble there because they mostly have slot machines instead of tables that deal card games.
"I sometimes play the quarter and dollar slots, but I prefer to play blackjack," he says.
Jephcott takes $600 to gamble with.  Instead of betting his winnings, he puts them aside to take home. 
"I only play with what I bring.  Once my original $600 is gone, I'm finished," he says.  Overall, Jephcott is ahead of what he has spent gambling by close to $200, plus the enjoyment of coming home a winner.  Although Jephcott has won many times, he has also found himself losing money.
"One time I lost $300 all at once," Jephcott says.  
Marie Hudson, an English major from Irving, Texas, goes gambling about six times a year. 
"I usually spend $30 or $40.  Once I'm done, I leave," Hudson says. 
Hudson, 26, enjoys gambling in Shreveport, La.  Unlike Jephcott, who spends the majority of his time playing blackjack, she prefers to play only the nickel slot machines. The rush of winning is what keeps Hudson going back for more.
"I was in Shreveport, and I won $2,000!" Hudson exclaims. 
Because of her latest winnings, Hudson has definitely won more than she has spent. 
Gambling has infiltrated itself onto MSU, appealing to college students hoping to make easy money.  Whether it be in fantasy football, blackjack, or slot machine, many students love the thrill that only winning can provide.
Ashley Jobe has not let her $300 loss keep her from going back for more. 
"It's just so much fun until you lose," she says.  


Student earns Extra Cash Counting Inmates
Ashley Dennis | For the Wichitan

Iron cells.
Hand cuffs.
Video cameras.
No, these are not the props from some cheesy sex flick. They are everyday items for 24-year-old senior social work major Melinda McLaughlin.
 In addition to being a full-time student, McLaughlin is also a full-time count room clerk at the James V. Allred Unit in Wichita Falls. She helps keep track of the maximum-security facility’s all-male inmate population.
“We deal with every move in this unit,” McLaughlin said. “We’re located in the general population, but the count room is in charge of the whole unit.”
According to McLaughlin, prisoners are grouped by compatibility based on age, race, size and offense. Each inmate is represented by an I.D. tag posted on a large board, which serves as a floor plan of the facility. This particular grouping method offers little guarantee of a harmonious relationship among inmates.
“We have to integrate,” McLaughlin said. “But it all depends on what inmate is feeling feisty. We also move to protect the inmates. If an inmate sends us an internal office communication (IOC) saying something like ‘I’m not getting along with my celly,’ or ‘I have an enemy,’ then we have to move them.”
McLaughlin began her work at Allred 14 months ago after a bowling buddy, also an employee at the Allred Unit, heard she needed a job.
“When I found out I got the job, I was scared and excited at the same time because I didn’t know what to expect,” she said.
Her new position paid $9.16 an hour and was a surprise, to say the least. She suddenly found herself crammed into an office about the size of a Killingsworth dorm room with two other co-workers, working 40 hours a week. The count room staff actually consists of nine employees who rotate in threes between eight-hour shifts.
“I was expecting to have my own office and desk with my own little computer. When I walked in, I was like ‘nine people have to work in here?’”, she recalled with a chuckle. “But everything we need is right here. It feels like home now.”
Working in one of the state’s largest and most notorious correctional facilities has given McLaughlin a bit of a wake-up call from the sheltered life she once knew as the youngest child of her military family.
“We have to be on guard at all times. We’re working around criminals 24/7. I’ve gotten a lot stronger at not trusting as many people,” she said. “It’s kind of scary knowing you’re working with 3,000 murderers and everything else every day.”
 Even more frightening is the fact that neither she nor her fellow co-workers get to carry weapons. There is also no intercom system inside their office. To add to their list of danger, there is the ever-present threat of becoming a victim themselves, such as the case of Rhonda Osborne.
Osborne, 33,  also a count room clerk, was raped and murdered by an inmate at The Connally Unit in Kennedy, Texas last month. The culprit, Gary Laskowki, had been cleaning the office where she was working before he brutally attacked Osborne. He then stuffed her body in a prison storage closet and fatally injured himself.  Laskowski was serving a life sentence for two counts of aggravated assault.  The gruesome murder struck a chord in the hearts of many. McLaughlin recalled the night she and her co-workers heard about the incident.
“That just hit so close to home,” McLaughlin said. “You hear things about guards being hurt all the time, but you never hear about anything happening to clerical staff. The warden from the unit actually called all the prisons in Texas that night to let them know what happened. I guess that’s what made it so scary was because we realized that this can happen at any unit. Plus, I think that was the first time a clerical staff member was killed in any facility here in the state.”
As a result, McLaughlin said she and her co-workers take extra precautionary measures to prevent the possibility of an attack.
“We make sure we keep our door locked at night. Most of the time, we have guards that stand outside the office. If a prisoner is cleaning up we make sure they stay towards the front, and we stay on the opposite side. They’re not allowed to be behind us at all. We have very intense security procedures. We’re not allowed to walk the floor. If you’re not going on a specific thing, you can’t do it. They’re real strict about that here. And we make sure we all walk together at night after our shift; we never leave anyone behind,” she said. 
McLaughlin is set to graduate in May 2005. Although she said she likes what she does at the Allred Unit, she doesn’t see herself working in the penal system for much longer.
“It helps me see what clients I’ll have in the future, as far as low income and educational backgrounds are concerned. I would rather be somewhere else, though. I plan on either working for Child Protective Services (CPS) or the school system. I really want it [my career] to involve children.”  


Senior art Exhibit showcases Student talent
Abigail Carter | Managing Editor

The senior art exhibition’s opening reception is Friday night, Dec. 10, from 8 to 10 p.m. in the Atrium Art Gallery of the Fain Fine Arts center. Both of the featured artists graduate later this month.
Stacy Tompkins, a sculpture major and scholarship recipient, has 14 pieces in the exhibition. She created her unique work out of “everything I can get my hands on basically,” Tompkins said. “I mainly do sculpture and it’s all mixed media.” Her art is about instinctive and uncontrollable energies; some spiritual, some sexual.
Many of Tompkins’ three-dimensional creations, which came together over a span of about three years, involve painting, intricate weaving, knitting, and sewing. After graduation, Tompkins plans to wait a year before continuing on to graduate school, and eventually opening her own gallery, possibly in New York or Pennsylvania.
Brooke Calcote, a jewelry major with a minor in photography, has been working with Polaroid emulsion lifts and transfers since 2002. Calcote, who plans to obtain an internship in the Netherlands following graduation, used her creative and problem-solving instincts to create large images from Polaroids. She has 11 pieces in the exhibition, including lifts and transfers on canvas as well as select jewelry.
The jewelry designs are Calcote’s American interpretation of the regalia adornments of the Akan, a symbol-rich, African culture. The pieces were created with pierce silver-wire weaving and gold and were an on-going process for about a year and a half. The exhibition will run through Jan. 18, 2005.