Southern Virginia In the News
Seven News Articles In Five Weeks
by: Anna Bowers
In the last five weeks, Southern Virginia University has been featured in seven news articles. It seems that everyone else is now starting to catch on to what we all know: Big things have been and are happening here at Southern Virginia.
On November 1, Jake Barney was featured with his wife, Kirsten, in LDS Living magazine for winning the North American Wife Carrying Championship. Barney is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Southern Virginia. This is the second year he and his wife have entered the national competition in Maine, and the third wife-carrying event in which they’ve competed.
“We did it as a joke initially but we ended up winning in Wyoming,” stated Barney. The couple then took 2nd place their first time entering the National Competition, and wanted to try again, feeling that “we could win this.” Not only did they win, but Jake and Kirsten are now looking to compete in the World competition held in Finland, where the outrageous sport originated.
The Barneys proudly sported Southern Virginia jerseys as they competed. “SVU and my job mean a lot to me. In a way I thought of trying to set an example for the students and athletes that I train, even if it is a funny thing [like wife-carrying].”
On October 10, Professor John Armstrong wrote an op-ed in the Deseret News. The piece was derived from a Facebook post he’d made earlier in the week.
Armstrong, whose areas of expertise include classical politics and ethics in politics, originally wrote a Facebook post about what he saw “as a difference between love of one’s country which is patriotism, and love of one’s nation which is nationalism.” He wrote the post in order to provide clarity on some of his friends’ confusion over how nationalism was criticized in October’s General Conference.
The Head Digital Officer of the Deseret News noticed the post, and requested that Armstrong write an opinion piece for the newspaper.
In regards to Armstrong’s op-ed on Patriotism and Nationalism, Provost Dransfield explained, “It’s not just a random interest, it is very much central to his background, to his research, of his scholarship, and his expertise.” Dransfield agrees that Armstrong is among the very top in the nation in regards to Plato. “As far as the ethics of politics and an ethical approach to politics, Armstrong has really got his hands on that. He is pretty impressive.”
The demand for Dr. Armstrong’s thoughts continued as he was contacted by a radio talk show host on the Wasatch front. Armstrong explained, “[The host]contacted me to interview me for 8 minutes on his radio show the next day.”
With so many innovations happening at Southern Virginia, it is no surprise that the Deseret News wanted to write a feature on President Reed Wilcox.
Morgan Jones, web producer for DeseretNews.com’s faith and family sections, interviewed President Wilcox a month ago while he was in Utah. She was curious about the major growth Southern Virginia has seen.
The November 7 article describes Wilcox’s vision for Southern Virginia, explaining that “SVU has no intention of ever being sponsored or purchased by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Wilcox had hinted at Southern Virginia’s future in a Convocation address on October 27 when he discussed the Academic model of SVU. The vision and idea of Southern Virginia, Wilcox said, “is doing the same thing that Baylor is doing with the Baptist faith, that Notre Dame is doing with the Catholic faith, that Duke does with the Methodist faith. This is an LDS-aligned, private, residential university.”
In her article, Jones elaborates on the LDS-aligned, private, residential university Wilcox describes. She also reports on the impact Wilcox has had in many other areas throughout the University.
On October 16, the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) announced that Southern Virginia would join as a football-only member. The Franklin News Post, which covers Franklin county south of Roanoke, VA, picked up the story.
“SVU happens to be a geographic fit for both school and conference with its Buena Vista campus situated along the Interstate-81 corridor that already features four of the ODAC’s football member schools.
“Already seen as one of the most competitively balanced conferences in Division III football, the ODAC gains further parity via Southern Virginia’s inclusion with nine well-balanced programs vying for the league’s championship hardware and ultimately its automatic qualifier to the national tournament.”
The Franklin News Post article explained that not only is it advantageous for Southern Virginia to participate in the conference, but it is beneficial to the other members as well.
“All nine members have the added advantage of only needing to schedule two non-conference games to complete a full 10-game slate.”
The Deseret News featured Southern Virginia’s ‘Believer’ music video with Alex Boye along with two other famous LDS You-Tubers.
The video with Alex Boye has been receiving plenty of attention. Having steadily increased by 10,000 daily views in its first week, the video is now reaching over 91,000 views. Bruce Olsen, Head of Public Affairs at Southern Virginia, believes that the video has “established a long term reputation of the school.” He continues, “It says to people who are considering the university that it’s a fun place.” Parents and prospective students can see that at Southern Virginia they can “use a lot of [their] talents there and [the students] obviously do interesting, fun things.”
Written by Aleah Ingram on November 3, who is coincidentally a Southern Virginia alum, the article delivers the news of the new music video as well as educates about what Southern Virginia is. The article has received over 1500 likes on Facebook.
A simple post on November 3 to Mormon Life Hacker contained the video and the thought “Alex Boye look[s] like Captain Moroni in this video, right?”
Mormon Life Hacker is a website giving tips on daily living as a Mormon, as well as covering Mormon news. The site has over 5.2k followers.
