In an effort to increase funding for the Texas Tuition Exchange Grant, 11 students spent the past two days lobbying at the state Capitol in Austin.The TEG gives money to private institutions to use for student financial aid and scholarships.

According to a 2007 report from the Independent Colleges and Universities of Texas, there are 40 independent - nonprofit and tax-exempt - colleges and universities in the state. These institutions award more than 22 percent of all bachelor's degrees in Texas.

Valentine's Day is upon us. It's a day for love and chocolates, flowers and romance, teddy bears, hearts and jewelry.It's also a day for mass marketing and consumerism.

Each year, around Feb. 14, people desperately scramble to pick out the perfect present for the one they adore. According to Hallmark research, more than 180 million cards are exchanged for Valentine's Day (second only to Christmas when about 20 billion cards are exchanged).

Eleanor Roosevelt said absence makes the heart grow fonder, and college students in long-distance relationships hope she was right. According to research conducted at Ohio State University, about 75 percent of students have been, are, or will be in a long-distance relationship at some point in their college career, said Laura Stafford, associate professor at OSU and author of the book "Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships."

Monday started a weeklong book drive for Hurricane Katrina and violence-stricken John McDonogh Senior High School in New Orleans. The TCU five-member chapter of Chi Upsilon Sigma National Sorority, Inc. is sponsoring the book drive that will end Friday, Feb. 16.

Senior Narcely Ruiz, cultural events coordinator for CUS, said her sorority was inspired to hold a book drive after a member at the University of Delaware wrote a letter describing her experience of volunteering at the predominately black high school. The letter was e-mailed to all chapters across the country.

Pending approval from the Faculty Senate, the Student Government Association may soon launch an honor code system, which has been in the works for two years. The SGA Honor Code Task Force, which has...

Countless frail bodies lie stacked together on the concrete surface of a Ugandan bus park - a pile that, if it weren't for the occasional arm twitch, looks more like a field of corpses than a group of frightened children.Before the sun rises, the group wakes, folds its ragged blankets and traipses out of Gulu, Uganda back to their homes. Because with daylight, the children say, comes a shred of safety; it's only in the darkness that they seek refuge from the threat of being kidnapped.

With Valentine's Day nearly upon us, love is in the air - or at least marketers want us to think so. And not everyone is satisfied with the average teddy bear, box of chocolates or display of affection. Some people like to take it to the extreme, ranging from a publicized marriage proposal to attempted murder.As an aspiring psychologist, I'd like to offer a humorous psychoanalysis of the crazed lovers to soothe those who may feel scorned by St. Valentine and to ground those who will be spending the day on cloud nine.

Kids playing soccer in the park, small girls singing their hearts out at beauty pageants and a hopeful mother of three calling into a radio station to win a prize for her children are all manifestations of competition in our world.Our society encourages a little healthy competition to give us something to strive for; however, competition can go from normal to unhealthy when a soccer mom verbally abuses a referee for a bad call, when a pageant princess is chastised by her mother for hitting the wrong pitch or when that mother of three loses her life because of a ridiculous contest.

The university is sitting on a gold mine.Administrators are involved in negotiations with local companies to tap into a pocket of natural gas sitting below campus.

The same situation is occurring across Fort Worth as companies hurry to tap into the Barnett Shale, a natural gas resource that stretches through several Texas counties.

Companies hope to not only purchase mineral rights from the university, they hope to utilize unused space on campus as drilling sites.