The Texas Ballet Theater will perform "The Nutcracker," and for every dollar spent on tickets through TCU, supporters will donate $2 to the College of Fine Arts, said the dean of the college.Scott Sullivan, dean of the college of fine arts, said Friends of the TBT is a group of people in the community who support the ballet and it donates funds to encourage people to go to ballets and support the college.

When King Juan Carlos of Spain told Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to "shut up" at a summit this month, many people wanted to buy the monarch a drink.

What prompted the king's outburst at the Ibero-American Summit was Chavez's persistent interruptions of Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as he chided Chavez for calling former Spanish prime minister and free-market advocate Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist."

Well, it is that time of the year again.Yep, a time where Christmas lights go up faster than the start of searches for new football coaches at Baylor and SMU.

You know, a time when people will get a head start on buying whatever Hannah Montana apparel is available, hoping to avoid any confrontation with the Suburban-driving soccer mom on her second Starbucks grande caramel macchiato.

It definitely sounds like Thanksgiving.

If you thought banning books was a thing of the past, think again."Huckleberry Finn" was challenged in the Birdville school district in early November when a teacher wrote words intended to cause emotion on the chalkboard, including the word n-----.

The only black student in the classroom objected.

What should have been an enlightening and thought-provoking discussion instead offended and outraged a student and community members.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders was spot on in his article, "Dealing With That Writer and Word."

At first glance, he looks like a Chinese version of Clark Kent. He is tall, broad-shouldered, but when he removes his thick-rimmed glasses and takes the stage, he has transformed into someone completely different.Instead of superhuman strength, Oscar Seung wields a different kind of power - a power that bursts through his lungs and out his lips to create a baritone sound.

Once, he was Escamillo, a bullfighter who woos the beautiful gypsy "Carmen". Another time, he was Gasparo, an abusive husband who teaches another man to control his wife, in "Rita".

Amid all the chaos known as my life, I found some time to sort through the rather large pile of clothes on my bedroom floor - a pile that could be easily mistaken for a little podunk town just outside of Lubbock.Some of the things I found included a Styx concert stub, my McLovin T-shirt and my "Mighty Ducks" trilogy. There were also some things I didn't want to stumble upon such as my "Beat Texas" T-shirt.

Yikes.

If it couldn't get any worse, I found the movie "Bobby" lying next to the wrinkled purple shirt.

Sigh.

Some things people take for granted: Opening doors, using the restroom or crossing the street. And for people who are able-bodied, these things are easy at TCU.

If you use a wheelchair or are even in a cast or on crutches, routine and ordinary little tasks become an activity to be planned - in some cases, dreaded.

It's not that people mean to be insensitive or uncaring.

But living with a disability is difficult for most able-bodied people to understand.

One Flyin' Frogs cross country runner will test his skills against the best in the nation next week.Sophomore Festus Kigen will be off and running when he hits the course and competes in the NCAA Championships...

Inclusiveness is fast becoming a topic of discussion for the TCU community with seminars and speeches routinely appearing on the campus calendar.In order to continue promoting a united learning environment and diversity, the university has started recruiting Fort Worth Hispanics to join the Horned Frog family.

Census results estimate Fort Worth's population as 33 percent Hispanic. TCU is working to draw in area men and women of Hispanic backgrounds to give them a nearby college home, but the university is falling short on some grounds.