THE PENDULUM
Eton, North Carolina • Wednesday, February 12, 2014 • Volume 40, Edition 3
tKo ctipl^C Thousands swarm
UCl IIIC OllUIVO icauyi downtownRaleighin
protest for equality
CAROLINE OLNEY I Photo Editor
Despite having 21 freshmen on a roster of 25 players, Elon players and coaches embrace the team’s youth and newness entering their first season of competition.
Eton women’s lacrosse braces for inaugural season of play
Zachary Horner
Senior Reporter
There’s newness in the air surround
ing the Elon University women’s lacrosse
team, and it’s not just because the team
has begun its first season of intercollegiate
competition.
The Phoenix roster of 25 players fea
tures 21 freshmen, but that’s not some
thing that bothers the team or its coaches,
“It doesn’t matter,” said Josh Hexter,
Elon women’s lacrosse head coach. “You
hear coaches say, ‘Well, you know what,
we’re young this year.’ That’s just a built-
in excuse to fail. That’s what it is. We are
who we are.”
The Elon women’s lacrosse team has
opened its inaugural season of play as
members of the Atlantic Sun Conference
and as a Division I sport. A quick glance at
the team’s roster shows youth. The fresh
men are complemented by two seniors and
two sophomores who have never played
Division I athletics — they were on the
club team at Elon — and two coaches, one
taking on his first D-I head coaching job
and another in her first coaching position
ever.
“The newness is ^citing,”,Hexter said.
“I think it’s going to be great. We’re not
worried about the fact that we have 21
freshmen on a 25-person roster. We’re just
getting after it.”
Getting to opening draw
In February 2012, Elon athletic direc
tor Dave Blank told The Pendulum that
the university was looking to add swim
ming, sand volleyball or lacrosse as a wom
en’s sport in an effort to get closer to the
university’s gender equality goal.
See WOMEN'S LACROSSEpagk 24
Michael Bodley
News Editor
After months spent writing their congress
men, banging on doors throughout the capital
and launching a massive social media cam
paign, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 march
ers converged on Raleigh for the “Mass Moral
March” Feb. 8.
More than 50 Elon Universit^^ students
and faculty members joined State NAACP
President William J. Barber Jr., to protest a
series of legislative measures passed since Gov.
Pat McCrory and the Republican state legis
lature was elected last year.
Toddie Peters, coordinator of the Poverty
and Social Justice program, required students
in two of her classes to attend the march with
provided transportation or write a paper on
the movement’s history or themes. Out of a
combined 40 students in both sections, only
seven chose the paper, an attendance rate
Peters said she was slightly surprised by and
quite proud of
“For m.ost of them, they were learning on
the ground,” Peters said. “I’m not sure how
many of them had any background on what
was going on. For the majority of them this
was really sort of learning about what the is
sues were, seeing social justice in action and
applying these issues, these themes to what
we’re talldng about in class.”
Though the North Carolina NAACP
sponsored the march, the protestors who
thronged the downtown streets came largely
firom grassroots sources — student-led co
alitions and democracy initiatives. The N.C.
Student Power Union (NCSPU), founded by
a group of students through the University of
North Carolina school system to combat bud
get cuts and tuition hikes in public education,
sent dozens of activists to the march.
“The General Assembly has done things to
attack groups that make up my generation in
See MORAL MONDAY page 3