Following Wal-Mart’s decision to raise its starting wage from $7.25 to $9, Baylor economist Dr. Charles North, associate professor of economics, said the company may have acted to improve customer perceptions of the company, in addition to benefitting associates. Executives of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced last month the company’s plans to implement a $9 minimum wage and allow flexibility in scheduling to promote a higher quality of life for associates, according to Doug McMillon, the company’s president and CEO.

Almost 36 percent of undergraduate students at Baylor are minorities, while only 12.3 percent, or 122 out of 990, of faculty members are minorities, according to Baylor Institutional Research and Testing. Despite this low percentage, the faculty minority rate is 4.7 percent, higher and has 61 more minority professors than 10 years ago according to past reports by Baylor. According to Baylor Institutional Research and Testing, female faculty rates in fall 2014 were 38.9 percent, lower than the undergraduate female composition of 58 percent.

Renowned lawyer and prisoners’ rights activist Bryan Stevenson wants Baylor students to change the world. Last night, Stevenson spoke to students about injustice of America’s criminal justice system and his work as the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative at a lecture hosted by the Academy for Leader Development in Waco Hall which has brought six speakers to campus.

Pearland sophomore Mark McComb and Dr. Larry Lehr, senior lecturer of environmental science, took their biodiesel project to the Baylor Science Building’s labs for the first time last week in order to grasp better understanding its abilities. In the next few weeks, Lehr and McComb plan to travel to Abilene Christian University in order to work with the biodiesel reactor alongside another group of scientists to see what they need to improve or change in their own process.

Bitterly admitting defeat, the Republican-controlled Congress sent legislation to President Barack Obama on Tuesday that funds the Department of Homeland Security without any of the immigration-related concessions they demanded for months. Obama promised to sign the bill as soon as he received it, while criticizing Congress for taking “far too long” to pass it.