Mountaineer News Service |

Juggling classes and extra-curriculars

By Joe Mitchin, Ryan Fadus and Dan Ingham MORGANTOWN, W. Va.- At 10:25 a.m., Kevin White ran off the bus, dodging students like he was dodging defenders on the field, hustling for the doors of the Business and Economics building. His Econ 202 test would start in five minutes. One...

Businesses want to keep downtown locally owned

By Joshua Cooper, Hayley Clover and Allyson Parrish MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — If you walk in downtown Morgantown, you will see local store after local store, but corporate restaurants are coming. Concerned that Panera Bread and Sheetz will squeeze out local businesses, Mountain People’s Market Co-op has started a petition to...

Once a Mountaineer, Always a Mountaineer

Pride of West Virginia: Then and Now By: Allyson Parrish, Hayley Clover and Joshua Cooper Dawn West has been a member of the West Virginia University marching band for over 30 years. She’s seen changes from different band uniforms to multiple different band directors. West first joined the band...

Close to 1,000 children available for adoption in West Virginia

By Kristen Basham and Tiet Tran In early October, 15-year-old, Davion Only approached the pulpit at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church and made a public plea to be adopted. In the weeks after his public address, hundreds of families reached out hoping to welcome Only into their home. Only’s story...

Health Insurance Mandatory for WVU Students in 2014-2015 Academic Year

By Michelle Deehan, Joe Nelson and Laken Vita Tyler DeAntonis is a college student with money issues other than textbook fees on his mind. He is part of a distinct statistic. According to The United States Government Accountability Office, 20 percent of college students in the United States between the...

West Virginia Cyclist among those eyeing national cyclo-cross competition

By Josh Ewers Morgantown,W.Va. – On Saturday Nov. 16, White Park, in Morgantown, W.Va., was transformed into a cycling course as hundreds gathered to find out who, among the varied in style racers, competing on equipment ranging from mountain bikes to road bikes, would become the Appalachian Bicycle Riding...

West Virginia’s Urban Deer Hunting Programs provide for the less fortunate

By: Amit Batra, Taylor Eaton and Will Hirsch For years, hunting has been an integral part of the West Virginia community. For hunters around Morgantown, in addition to recreation, hunting offers a way to give back to the community. The Urban Deer Archery Hunt program in West Virginia began in...

Food for thought: Organic farming at WVU

By Dave Marnell and Kayla Marley In the organic farming community, “you are what you eat” isn’t just a saying, it’s a manifesto. “Food choices say a lot about one’s education on life,” said Melvin Krambule, 36, operations trainer at Organically Grown Company in Portland, Ore. Krambule is one of...

Scars of Deerbourne

By Kayla Marley and Dave Marnell For some people, they can never really grow until they lose something they love. In this sense it was the night of Nov. 29, 2012, that Kevin Merrill, a 23-year-old senior at West Virginia University and budding musical artist, found out what really matters....

How Facebook can cost you your dream job

By Brooke Burton, Joshua Young and Stephen Sleeper Brett Phillips knows the hazards of social media all too well. A few years go, he was fired as a residential assistant for WVU’s honors dorm after being tagged on Facebook photos showing him partying with students from his dorm. Yet there...

WVU baseball team shakes up the Big 12

By James Michael Carvelli, Matthew Fouty and Shelby Toompas West Virginia University’s baseball team had spent the better part of the last decade near the bottom of the Big East Conference, and its fans didn’t think things could get any worse. They were wrong: the Mountaineers finished the 2012 season...

Federal ruling on emergency contraception could spark local backlash

By Michael Stahurski, Laura Clark and Kelly Dugan In early April, a federal judge ruled that the emergency contraception known as Plan B can be sold over the counter to anyone. overturning an existing ban on sales of the morning-after pill to girls under the age of 17. This week,...

West Virginia’s problems more than a century in the making

When Liyang Yu graduated from high school in a small town rooted in Southern West Virginia’s coalfields, he only knew one thing about where he was going to college: it wouldn’t be in West Virginia. Yu, a first generation American of Chinese descent, ultimately attended Northwestern University, an elite private...

Man camps from natural gas boom cause headaches for local officials

By: Lydia Nuzum, Carly Runquist, and David Perry Triadelphia, West Virginia – Just outside of Wheeling on a busy stretch of Route 40, rows of RVs and campers line a gravel campground across from a distribution plant. Pick-up trucks parked beside most of the RVs boast identical front plates that...

WVU students chosen to conduct key NASA space experiment

By: Sarah Cordonier, Hunter Homistek A team of West Virginia University engineering students will battle history and microgravity this summer when they represent their school in a national NASA project designed to improve the use of high-powered computers during space travel. The 11 students who are going to NASA this...

Taxi service in Morgantown spinning its wheels

By: Katherine Heath, Jesse Tabit and Brad Eischenseer Greg Olenik, a senior at West Virginia University, often has to wait up to an hour to get a cab back to his Lofts apartment after carousing in the bars downtown. Even though Yellow Cab, the only cab company in Monongalia County,...

Verdict still out on whether Morgantown’s tap water is safe to drink

By: Andrew Kloc, Carly Runquist, Zach Cumberland For years polluted water from coal mines and drilling for natural gas has seeped into the Monongahela River and its tributaries, causing fish to die and making river water unsafe to drink or swim in. While some say the river is making a...

Natural gas industry challenges coal’s dominance in West Virginia

By Omar Ghabra, Laura Clark and Sarah Davis For decades, coal has been king in West Virginia. The coal industry has dominated the state’s economy and its money has bought the acquiescence of generations of politicians at the state and federal level. But with the rise of the natural gas...

Can Morgantown officials ban trucks clogging downtown roads?

By Bryan Popkin, Kelsea Lynch and Stephen Sleeper For years, Morgantown residents have complained about the large trucks that clog traffic downtown as they rumble by on Beechurst Avenue and Walnut Street on their way to deliver coal and gravel to the coal-powered plant on Beechurst or to various construction...

Pageantry in West Virginia is not all Glitz

By Shelby Toompas, Michael Stahurski, Brooke Burton For Louisa Gates, the best part of owning a monogramming shop in Bridgeport was providing the traditional quilt squares for contestants in the Miss West Virginia pageant. The squares, which depict a unique characteristic of each contestant, are sewn into a quilt that symbolizes...

Will Morgantown’s late-night food trucks be rolled out of town?

By Stephanie Aikin, Karissa Blackburn and Joshua Young When Burke Manning and his family opened The Pita Pit on High Street in 2006, he says there was just one street vendor, a guy who sold hot dogs in the same spot for 15 years. Then two years ago, another vendor...

Prescription drug abuse a growing problem at West Virginia University

By Katiann Marshall, Katherine Heath and David Perry Last semester, a student at West Virginia University passed out in class, slamming his head face down in the desk. He was unconscious for two hours. The night before, he and a couple of his friends had snorted Klonopin, a powerful anti-anxiety medication....

Is the indoor tanning craze responsible for West Virginia’s high skin cancer rate?

By Miriah Lee, Rachel Simpkins and Michael Carvelli When Marissa Biller, 18 of Baker, West Virginia, received a phone call from her doctor telling her she had skin cancer, she was stunned. Biller had started tanning at the age of 13 and tanned almost every week until she received her...

WVU to compete in global contest to build solar-powered house

By Sarah Cordonier, Kelly Matava and Hunter Homistek For the first time ever, students from West Virginia University will participate in a prestigious competition among 20 universities worldwide to build a solar-powered house that wins points for being cost-effective, energy efficient and attractive. They will be up against academic powerhouses...

In West Virginia, every dog doesn’t have its day

By Stephanie Aikin, Michael Stahurski, and Sarah Davis Four years ago, Brittni Spedding was driving down a Morgantown road on a rainy summer night when she noticed a skinny dog emerging from the bushes. The dog looked badly malnourished and he was shivering. “I called him into my car,” Spedding...

Air pollution in Morgantown is reaching dangerous levels

By Laura Clark, Kelsea Lynch, and Matthew Fouty If you walk down Beechurst Avenue on a daily basis, you’re taking your life in your hands — and it has nothing to do with getting hit by a car. Your health is being compromised daily by the noxious fumes emitted by...

West Virginia gets F for inadequate tobacco prevention efforts

Tim Creighton started smoking when he was in the second grade after seeing his classmates light up; he felt it would help him fit in. Now a 22-year-old student at West Virginia University, Creighton acknowledges that he is addicted to cigarettes. “When everyone around you smoked and used dip,...

Members of popular Morgantown band make sacrifices now for success later

By: Brad Eichenseer, Kyleigh Razmic and Hunter Homistek Most afternoons, Matt Marion, a recent graduate of West Virginia University, can be found taking orders and tossing dough at the Mountain State Brewing Company in Morgantown. A trained professional in the field of public relations, Marion could earn more money elsewhere,...

Towing operators in Morgantown may be violating state law

By: Brooke Burton, Kirk Auvil, Miriah Lee Benjamin Seebaugh, a senior at West Virginia University, was sitting in his apartment on Pietro Street when he looked out his window to see a tow truck operator about to load his car onto the truck. His car was parked in the building...

Weakened labor unions in West Virginia mean fewer decent-paying jobs

By Lydia Nuzum and Andrew Kloc In January, 10 members of the United Mine Workers of America, including several West Virginia miners, were arrested in St Louis, Mo., following a protest outside of Peabody Energy headquarters. More than 1,000 miners were protesting the possible loss of pension and health care benefits...

Why West Virginia’s rate of gun violence is above the national average

By: David Perry, Sarah Cordonier and Katherine Heath Jeron Hawkins, a 19-year-old Charleston resident, had no idea that bringing a gun into a Morgantown nightclub in September 2011 would cost him his life. Hawkins got into an argument with another man at Karma, a club on High Street, and when...

Making Morgantown a greener community and saving the planet while we’re at it

Every day, rain or snow, Nickolas Hein rides his bike more than 15 miles from his home in the Cheat Lake area to downtown Morgantown. Hein works for Positive Spin, a local nonprofit dedicated to what he calls green transportation: biking, walking, carpooling or taking the bus. He says biking...

Last call for Morgantown’s bar scene

Morgantown — In the early morning hours of September 26th, 2011, an argument over a spilled drink in one of Morgantown’s private clubs turned deadly. Jeron Hawkins, an 18-year-old from Dunbar, West Virginia, shot and killed another young man who had followed him out of Club Karma on High Street...

WVU’s renovation plans for Sunnyside generate outrage

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Najeen Guest, a junior at West Virginia University, had no idea the university planned to raze her house as part of a large-scale renovation of the Sunnyside neighborhood – until she read about the plans on the internet in late October. She is among many students who...

WVU Proves Good Investment in Bad Economy

When Christina Kast graduated from West Virginia University’s School of Journalism in 2008, she had grand dreams of working in television. And she did get several job offers but felt that the salaries weren’t enough to enable her to pay off the thousands in loans she had amassed to...

Controversy over drilling for natural gas reserves sweeps West Virginia

By Sean McNamara, Erika Blatt, Ilyssa Miroshnik Morgantown,WV — When some residents of Morgantown learned that a gas company was drilling for natural gas in a local industrial park last year, they panicked. Would water contaminated with toxic chemicals used in the drilling process leach into natural groundwater sources...

The P-Squad

By Andrew Silva, Jamie McCracken, Megan Hudock After an 8-hour journey and fresh off an upset win against second-ranked Notre Dame, the West Virginia women’s basketball team had finally arrived at the Coliseum. Rather than the darkness and silence usually associated with 2:30 a.m., the Lady Mountaineers stepped of the...

WVU Rifle: Shooting Under the Radar

MORGANTOWN – The Mountaineer, the mascot of West Virginia University, carries a rifle at his side, but it’s the university rifle team that generates the biggest bang around campus. The 14-time national champions are currently ranked No. 1 in the country. They’re also shooting some of the best scores collegiate...

Morgantown’s Budding Marijuana Business

By Conor Griffith, Elizabeth Hurst and James Yaria In Morgantown drug paraphernalia is more accessible than a Happy Meal. The downtown area is filled to the brim with “head shops” that legally sell the accessories to use marijuana, though the vendors officially state that their devices are for tobacco use...

Mountaineer Tailgate Guide and Tips

By: Andrew Silva, Jamie McCracken and Megan Hudock Transportation and Parking Free parking is offered for cars at the Coliseum, with a shuttle service to the stadium provided for a $4 charge. The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is available on Saturday game days from 9:30 until an hour after the...

How WVU’s couch-burning tradition spawned riots

Produced by: Krista Baker, Terry Fletcher, Jonathan Nelson MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – In the hours after West Virginia University’s football team beat the University of Texas Oct. 6, more than 1,000 students filled the streets of Morgantown, toppling a light pole and setting fires to the pole and nearby cars....

Slum landlords make life difficult for WVU students

By: Jane Abenir and Dan Sweeney MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – From the outside, it seems like a normal house a little worse for wear. The paint is dull and chipping a little; the chips create a tree-like texture on the front wall. Inside, wet rust-colored spots are visible on the ceiling...

Poverty and poor health go hand in hand in West Virginia

Morgantown, W.Va.— When Tom Terrarosa, a 21-year-old student at West Virginia University, first began eating on a college student budget, he gained about 60 pounds. He says he found it difficult to eat healthy on a limited budget. “When you go into a grocery store and see Mac and...

Morgantown’s Roads: A gravelly state of affairs

October 28th, 2012 By Ilyssa Miroshnik, Michael Ploger, and Ian Grimley Morgantown Roads Morgantown, W. Va. – Every year, Robert Hayes needs a new set of tires for his car because of the sorry condition of the roads in Morgantown. Hayes, a former West Virginia University student who now works...

Parking frustrations mount at West Virginia University

By Emily Dick, Will O’Neill and Ashley Sturm MORGANTOWN, W.Va.- Searching endlessly for a parking spot is a dilemma we all face at points in our lives. But for faculty, staff and students at West Virginia University, it is a way of life. WVU is home to more than...

Local Stores Promote Local Arts

By Marisa Matyola, Samantha Redd and Curtis Tenney Morgantown, W.Va. — For local artists in Morgantown, finding exposure for their work can be as easy as walking downtown. Several stores and galleries in Morgantown utilize local art to accent their window displays and dramatize their exhibits. Jeannie Kuhn, executive director...

The Battle for Avalon: LARPing in W. Va.

By Conor Griffith, Elizabeth Hurst, and James Yaria On a colorful autumn Saturday, Chris Colland and Crystal Harper arrive at a small clearing along Fine Arts Drive, where they transform into Kael Ravenwind, the warrior, and Catriona Sorcha, the healer. Although Colland, Harper, Ravenwind and Sorcha all hail from different...

Latest entries

Man’s Best Therapist

By Ian Moore, Jeremy Jenkins, William Posey As finals loom, West Virginia University has found a new way to help students relax: a therapy dog named Gretel. Starting this school year, The Carruth Center offers students the opportunity to hang out with Gretel, a 2-year-old labradoodle....

Small businesses face uphill battle in West Virginia

By: Doug Walp, Alex Dye and Morgan Farr Small and local businesses, once a staple of Main Street America, have begun to disappear throughout the state of West Virginia in recent years. In fact, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy reports that West...

WVU students working on Google Glass campus tour application

By Brittany Furbee, Megu Kolanko and Anjelica Trinone In early 2013, Google introduced the world to Google Glass, a new way to experience wireless, hands-free technology in the form of eyewear. Ephraim Pittore was one of the lucky, young revolutionaries to get his hands on...

WVU Slackline Club

By: Wesley Uhler, Jessica Guay, Abu Daud Isa Growing Sport Improves Mind and Body Walking, jumping, and performing tricks on a line of nylon webbing anchored between two trees is the daring and growing sport called slacklining. The dynamic nature of the slackline creates a...

Morgantown organizations promote biking in the city

By: Devin Dye, Joe Cooper, Dan Krotz In 2012, the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) awarded the City of Morgantown the Bronze Level Award for being a Bicycle Friendly Community. Morgantown is the first community to ever receive this honor in the state of West...

Bringing Broadband To All Of West Virginia: A Multifaceted Issue

By: Branford Marks, Caroline Szwed, Brandon Hite. It’s happened to all of us: you come home excited to get caught up on your favorite show on Netflix or turn on your laptop to check your Facebook and you get a pop-up saying no connection. You...

The Other Nightlife

By: Joe Mitchin, Dan Ingham and Ryan Fadus MORGANTOWN, W. Va.- Sitting down at his computer with this friends crowded around him, Roy Keeler, an 18-year old high school student from Westchester, Pa., clicked play on the YouTube video that would determine where he would...

Betty Puskar Breast Cancer Center

By: Wesley Uhler, Jessica Guay, Abu Daud Isa Breast Cancer By the Numbers Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States, except for some kinds of skin cancer. It is also the second leading cause of cancer death. In...

Local entrepreneur aims to make a difference

Local Entrepreneur Aims To Make A Difference By: Brittany Furbee, Megu Kolanko and Anjelica Trinone Justin Chambers is an up and coming entrepreneur from West Virginia who hopes to use his collapsible wind turbine technology to make a difference in the world. Chambers, inventor and...

The State of College Radio

By Ian Moore, Jeremy Jenkins and William Posey As time goes on, people think terrestrial radio will gradually die out. College stations, however, bring a breath of fresh air to the medium. These stations feature students, usually volunteers, who have a passion that many mainstream,...

A Safe Haven

By Nicole Linder, Ashley Hite and Charles Richardson West Virginia University Student Government Association passed a resolution to create a new lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning center on campus. “I think the creation of the center will help demonstrate to the community that WVU...

Service League of Morgantown uses Old Stone House to give back to the community

By: Joe Cooper, Devin Dye and Dan Krotz The Old Stone House at 313 Chestnut St. in Morgantown is the oldest standing stone structure in Monongalia County. It entered the National Register of Historic Sites in 1972, but since 1935, the Service League of...

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