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Ashlea Draa/Photo Editor

Sips and Strokes for Different Folks

A new business in Auburn is painting the perfect picture for a night out on the town.Sips N Strokes, located on University Drive, allows customers to get creative by participating in a painting lesson and going home with their completed work.As the name implies, customers are invited to bring in a beverage of their choice to enjoy while they paint.Brad Baggett, owner and manager of the Auburn branch of Sips N Strokes, said the painting classes are offered Monday through Saturday."Monday through Wed-nesday the classes are two hours long and cost $25 and from Thursday through Saturday, Sips N Strokes offers three hour classes for $35," Baggett said.The paintings offered during the three-hour classes are slightly more difficult.


The Auburn Plainsman

Tiger Green Power, LLC Run By Auburn Graduate

The energy of the future has arrived in Auburn.Tiger Green Power, LLC is a renewable energy company specializing in providing electricity producing solar water heaters, day-lighting systems, energy conservation techniques, and more, said Robin Price, president and co-founder of Tiger Green Power."It's basically green building," Price said.

The Auburn Plainsman

Charter Communications to Keep WSFA News 12 in Auburn

Charter Communications mistakenly included Auburn in their news release about removing the local channel WSFA news 12 from Chambers County and Lanett."WSFA - NBC will remain on our line-up in the City of Auburn and in Lee County, but not in Chambers County and Lanett," said John Miller, director of communications for Charter Communications.A press release was sent to newspapers and put up on the screen for Charter subscribers to view, Mark Wilder, WSFA director of operations, said."When Charter put out the information to its subscribers, they made a mistake in the wording and included the word Auburn within Chambers County as to the area it was going to be taken off," Wilder said.

The Auburn Plainsman

Corrupted-Files.com Offers a New Type of Homework Excuse

Gone are the days of forged doctor's excuses and computers that crash the day an assignment is due.A new Web site, www.corrupted-files.com, promises to do away with excuses of the past by allowing students to e-mail purposely corrupted files to professors in order to buy time to finish their work.The site, which offers Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents for $3.95, does not identify its Webmaster and states on the home page to keep the site a secret.Joey Burns, a sophomore in supply chain management, said he thinks students who use this site to buy time are cheating."Everybody has to be dealt with on the same time line," Burns said.

The Auburn Plainsman

Auburn Community Gathers for Art Walk

Hula hooping, face painting, dough tossing, scavenger hunting - a mere glimpse of the array of activities and attractions at the 2009 SummerNight downtown art walk held Friday, June 19 on College Street and Magnolia Avenue.Started by the Auburn Arts Association, SummerNight features artists from Auburn and surrounding areas gathered downtown to display and sell paintings, pottery, quilts, jewelry and other artistic wares to students and families of the Auburn community."This is an opportunity for the entire community to support the arts," said Sarah Hand, art specialist and cultural director of the Auburn Parks and Recreation Department.

The Auburn Plainsman

Admissions Office Creates Facebook Page

The Auburn University Admissions department is working to better serve its students by creating a Facebook page where students can ask questions and have them answered by an admissions counselor."The class we're recruiting was born in '92 or '93 and have always had access to the Internet," said Jim Parrish, assistant director at the Office of University Recruitment.

Ashlea Draa/Photo Editor

Cumberland Plastic Systems LLC and Donaldson Company Inc. Add Jobs to Auburn

Two Auburn manufacturers are planning to expand their production and employee base.Cumberland Plastic Systems LLC and Donaldson Company Inc. will be adding additional employees within the next two years.Alison Petersen, human resources representative for Cumberland, said Cumberland plans to hire at least 51 employees over the next two years.Jim Noreault, plant manager for Donaldson, said Donaldson Company plans to hire 25 employees starting in January 2010.Petersen said it is not an immediate physical expansion, but a production expansion where the company will buy new machines and hire more employees to work them."We are a new company, and we've been working hard the past few years to get business," Petersen said.

Austin Nelson/Associate Photo Editor

New Terminal at Auburn-Opelika Robert G. Pitts Airport

Last Thursday was the ground-breaking for a new terminal at the Auburn-Opelika Robert G. Pitts Airport.The airport has been operational since 1930 and has been in need of repair since the 1980s, said Bill Hutto, airport director.He said planning for the new addition started in 2002, but once construction begins, the terminal should be completed within one year."The building is too small to accommodate the demands that we have today in personnel and the people in the community," said Hutto.

The Auburn Plainsman

Scholarships Offer Relief to Economic Woes

With the economy on the fritz and tuition prices on the rise, it is becoming ever more difficult to afford a college education.Fortunately, Auburn University students have available to them a plethora of scholarship opportunities, ranging from general university scholarships to department, freshman and transfer scholarships.Every year Auburn awards approximately 6,000 scholarships through the Office of University Scholarships.In addition to the general scholarships awarded at the university level, Auburn also offers scholarships individually through the departments of each one of the 12 schools and colleges.The money for these scholarships typically comes from donors and the Board of Trustees.Ryan Villarreal, an undeclared sophomore in science and mathematics, thinks the scholarships are a blessing to families who may be suffering because of the rapidly declining economy."There are plenty of ways that Auburn helps it's students," Villareal said.

The Auburn Plainsman

Warhol Exhibit Opens at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art

Most people associate the word "portrait" with a framed painting or photograph of someone standing or sitting in front of a background.Pop artist Andy Warhol, on the other hand, developed a different kind of portrait in his "13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests" shown at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art Thursday night."Warhol was interested in the tension between the image of the person and the actual person," said Scott Bishop-Wagoner, curator of education at JCSM.He produced about 500 screen tests on 100-foot silent film reels between 1964 and 1966, she said.He then arranged them in sets of 13 depending on subject matter and slowed the film speed."Andy Warhol was exploring the repetition of the image and how it, in a sense, loses its identity," Bishop-Wagoner said, "and his screen tests were the opposite -- they helped to show the person's true identity."Warhol invited friends, famous people and strangers to sit in front of the camera for each of the reels in hopes to reveal their true personalities, Bishop-Wagoner said."He believed their real personalities would emerge after being in front of the camera for this period of time," she said.A testament to Warhol's theory, his tests reveal personality traits and mannerisms that could be lost in still photographs.Consider Ann Buchanan, Californian Beat poet: sitting incredibly still, the young brunette with large, brown eyes looks without blinking into the camera.Just before the four-minute film runs out, a tear rolls down her right cheek, then her left.Notice Lou Reed, a radio host and musician: with short, wavy hair and sunglasses, the young man drinks a Coca Cola out of a glass bottle throughout the entire length of film.Watch Jane Hoolzer, an art collector and socialite: while the camera zooms in closely on her face, the blonde with light eyes brushes her teeth and laughs intermittently until the film reel stops rolling.Because the footage has no sound, musicians Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips decided to create unique pieces of music - inspired by the character of the individual on Warhol's films - to accompany each portrait."His work was set to music to contextualize how he used the screen tests for himself," Bishop-Wagoner said.

The Auburn Plainsman

Auburn Board of Trustees Approves Tuition Increase

The Auburn University board of trustees approved in it's meeting Friday an increase in tuition for the following school yearTuition would increase by $186, about 5.7 percent, per semester, which would bring the costs to $3,120, before fees, for in-state students taking 10 to 15 hours.The board also approved one-time budget cuts of approximately $15 million and $15 million in permanent budget reductions.

Ashlea Draa/Photo Editor

Apartments Suffer Economic Sting

With the economy in a state of flux, almost every industry is feeling the effects of the recession.Auburn's real estate market is no exception.Though students will always need places to live, real estate agencies are finding it increasingly hard to entice college students to call their properties home.Even newly built properties like the New Exchange have had to resort to such measures as decreasing their rent and adding incentives to try and attract more renters."We've changed up some of our pricing in buildings where there are lots of vacancies," said Van Northcutt, a manager of Northcutt Realty.Many of these new buildings were built during a time when students outnumbered places to live, but now the opposite is true."Overbuilding is our main problem right now, but I definitely feel like the effects of the economy are coming," said Northcutt.