Retention was on the minds of the Faculty Senate, Staff Assembly, Student Government Association and TCU administrators Tuesday night at the Joint Assembly.Retention has risen from 71 percent in 1990 to 84 percent in 2004, Catherine Coghlan, assistant director of institutional research, said.

Unmet expectations were a part of why students did not return to TCU, said Kim Appel, Brown-Lupton Student Center activities coordinator.

Every school has a sales pitch, she said, and when students get to school, their experience is different than the pitch.

Nowell Donovan, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said he wants to make sure student-athletes are treated with the same fairness as any other student, receiving an "academic experience of great quality."Because of recent coverage of violations in the track and field program, Donovan sent out a letter to all faculty members Tuesday stating the expectations of the relationship between student-athletes and the faculty.

"If we want to make TCU a standout university, we need to make our scholar athletes stand out, too," he said.

The Horned Frogs dropped their first two Mountain West Conference games at Utah and Brigham Young last weekend, 1-0 and 4-0 respectively, but head coach Dan Abdalla said he felt his team posted an impressive performance on its first road trip of the season."We were impressive in the second half against Utah and gave ourselves a chance to win," Abdalla said. "We didn't play to our best potential at BYU, and they came out to play maybe their best game. We just need to go watch the video and try and improve, but they were a great team, and they'll go a long way."

It's true. Those pennies really do add up.Residence halls across campus participated in a donation drive to raise money for hurricane victims and received approximately $2,050.

Barbara Hawkins, associate director of Residential Services, said the amount included $921.67 in loose change and other donations in the form of paper money and checks.

Resident assistants from every hall set up donation cans in each wing so residents could make contributions.

A student-activist group is mounting a campaign to pressure TCU to serve 100 percent fair-trade coffee across the university from department offices to dining services.Later this month, Frogs for Fair Trade plans to deliver a petition of more than 360 names to Chancellor Victor Boschini and will write letters asking him to make TCU a 100 percent fair-trade campus, said Sean Blackwell, a sophomore criminal justice major.

Nature has been very unkind to human populations lately. Some would claim even more than usual.The past year has seen blanket media coverage of major disasters like the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

Major disasters are rare, so there will be more coverage when the unthinkable does happen. Even then, other examples of extensive devastation will not find their way into the news or will receive less coverage because they don't have a high enough body count or are too far away.

The TCU defense forced seven turnovers Saturday en route to a 28-14 victory over the Wyoming Cowboys, putting the Horned Frogs in sole possession of first place in the Mountain West Conference and back into The Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since the second week of the season.All seven turnovers came courtesy of Wyoming quarterback Corey Bramlet, who lost three fumbles and threw four interceptions. The Cowboys saw three critical fourth-quarter drives end in turnovers, sealing the win for a Horned Frog offense that had a consistently short field to work from.