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Thursday’s two new bill proposals at the Student Senate meeting could prove crucial to student’s comfort during finals.

Senator and Rockwall sophomore Brock Sterry introduced a new bill to student senators that would reform Baylor’s final exam policy if passed and accepted by the university. It will undergo a vote next week. The current policy allows students with three or more finals on the same day to file an appeal with a professor or dean to move one of the finals to a different date. The Final Exam Policy bill proposes that students be permitted to file an appeal if they have three or more tests within 24 hours.

Baylor professes to giving back to the community — and its students are living up to that claim.

Students in the Baylor Interior Design Association will design a collapsible, temporary 400-square-foot dwelling during a national competition sponsored by the Interior Design Educators Council.

The dwelling will be used to aid four-person families that are in need of shelter after a natural disaster has occurred.

For the first time ever, Fright Night, an event sponsored by Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity (FIJI) and Delta Delta Delta Sorority in conjuction with the Baylor Activities Council (BAC) and Student Activities, will be held on Baylor’s campus. Established in 1996, Fright Night is an annual haunted house event held to benefit the Waco Chapter of Young Life, a Christian organization that fosters friendships between adult leaders and children in order to positively impact the lives of the children involved. The haunted house will open its doors at 8 p.m. and remain open until 11 p.m. tonight, with additional times from 8 p.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday. In addition to the haunted house, free hot chocolate will be served and visitors can visit a photo booth, which will also be free. Photo booth services will be provided by CornerBooth.

Some students are spending time on two different campuses this semester as part of The Baylor@MCC Program, a co-enrollment initiative that was implemented this fall.

The program, which allows students who were wait-listed at Baylor the opportunity to attend both Baylor and McLennan Community College, currently has more than 45 students enrolled and expects to grow in the next few years.

Prepare yourself this Halloween for a procession of pint-sized trick-or-treaters like none you’ve encountered before.

If the companies that gamble on offering the right mix of costumes are correct, visitors to your doorstep will include a grisly array of waist-high killer clowns brandishing blood-soaked machetes, deranged convicts and zombie ninjas armed with knives.

President Barack Obama has rallied college students at dozens of campuses, touted his record on student aid and needled Republican challenger Mitt Romney for advising students to “borrow money if you have to from your parents.” Romney counters that despite the flood of federal financial aid unleashed during Obama’s term, college costs and student debt have only grown.

The Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning will host the annual Symposium on Faith and Culture titled “Technology and Human Flourishing,” which will begin at 1 p.m. today in the Bill Daniel Student Center and end Saturday evening. The symposium will be held in the Bill Daniel Student Center and Cashion Academic Building.

Dr. Dave Bridge has taught at Baylor for three years as an assistant professor in the political science department. In 2010, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a doctorate in politics and international relations. Currently, he teaches American politics and a class that focuses on campaigns and elections. Bridge gives his opinion of the state of the presidential race in the second installment of the Lariat’s election Q-and-A series.

An Algerian man whose sentence for plotting to blow up the Los Angeles airport around the turn of the new millennium was thrown out for being too lenient was ordered Wednesday to spend 37 years in prison.

Ahmed Ressam, who had trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, was arrested in December 1999 when a customs agent noticed that he appeared suspicious as he drove off a ferry from Canada onto Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. A resulting search turned up a trunk full of explosives.

Cheerleaders at a Texas public school have jumped headfirst into litigation that could have implications on the division of church and state and the First Amendment as it affects the public school system.

The Kountze High School cheerleaders are suing the school for the First Amendment right to use Bible verses on their run-through banners at football games.

A fourth Texas high-tech startup that received taxpayer dollars through Gov. Rick Perry’s signature economic development fund has filed for bankruptcy in the $194 million portfolio’s biggest bust yet.

The collapse of bioenergy producer Terrabon Inc., which was awarded $2.75 million in 2010 and was backed by large Perry political donors, raises questions about whether the state’s Emerging Technology Fund launched in 2006 could now be worth less than what taxpayers have put into it.

Journalist and nationally recognized author Carlton Stowers spoke Tuesday to several Baylor classes, offering writing advice from his own experiences.

The event was in conjunction with One Book, One Waco, a program of the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce in which a new book is selected each year that community members will read simultaneously.

“One Book, One Waco is a community literacy program that started at Baylor that [the Waco] Chamber took over in 2008,” said Alexis Weaver, director of community development for the chamber.

A paid informant for the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit was under orders to “bait” Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Four top Italian disaster experts quit their posts Tuesday, saying the manslaughter convictions of former colleagues for failing to adequately warn of a deadly 2009 earthquake means they can’t effectively perform their duties.

Despite the cooling temperature, the mosquitoes could still bite.

Richard Duhrkopf, associate professor and chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at Baylor, said the number of positive West Nile virus cases will decrease over time because some mosquitoes will die off due to cooler temperatures. However, the West Nile virus will continue to spread because not all mosquitoes will die from the cooler temperatures.

Religious values and established voting patterns have traditionally been very influential in the way ballots are cast.

The nation saw its first “born-again” Christian president with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976.

President Barack Obama sharply challenged Mitt Romney on foreign policy in their final campaign debate Monday night, accusing him of “wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map.” The Republican coolly responded, “Attacking me is not an agenda” for dealing with a dangerous world.

Attorneys representing around 600 school districts argued Monday that Texas’ school financing system is so “hopelessly broken” that it violates the state Constitution while keeping students from being prepared for the well-paying jobs of tomorrow.

The state countered that, even though the system is flawed, it’s nowhere near a crisis point.

Six lawsuits have been filed on behalf of about two-thirds of school districts, which educate about 75 percent of the state’s roughly 5 million students. They have been rolled into a single case, which opened before state District Judge John Dietz in Austin. The trial is expected to last into January.

Being absent from your chores back home is no excuse to be absent from voting in the 2012 presidential election.

Students who are away from the county they are registered in can still vote in the presidential election by receiving an absentee ballot.

Citizens may also utilize absentee voting if they are sick or disabled, are 65 years old or older on Election Day or are incarcerated.

Leaders from the Republican and Democratic parties of McLennan County will gather tonight for a public discussion of the upcoming election at 8 p.m. in the Brooks Flats Lobby.

The event, “The Choice: A Conversation,” is sponsored by Brooks Flats, Kokernot, Arbors, Fairmont and Gables residential communities.

The session is free and open to faculty, staff and students.

National Geographic Society has chronicled scientific expeditions, explorations, archaeology, wildlife and world cultures for more than 100 years, amassing a collection of 11.5 million photos and original illustrations.

A small selection of that massive archive — 240 pieces spanning from the late 1800s to the present — will be sold at Christie’s in December at an auction expected to bring about $3 million, the first time any of the institution’s collection has been sold.

You don’t have to be a math major to realize the impact of these numbers.

According to The Alumni Factor, an organization that ranks universities based on alumni success and input, Baylor alumni rank as the ninth most conservative in the nation among colleges.

The Alumni Factor is also the name of the organization’s new book and website.

A 20-year-old black woman told police she was set on fire by three men who wrote the initials KKK and a racial slur on her car in northeastern Louisiana.

Louisiana State Police spokeswoman Lt. Julie Lewis says Sharmeka Moffitt was found with burns on more than half of her body when police responded to her 911 call Sunday night.

Moffitt was in critical condition Monday at a hospital. Lewis said the FBI is investigating the attack as a possible hate crime, but that no arrests had been made as of late Monday.

Associated Press SAN MARCOS — Texas State University on Thursday became the latest in a string of universities across the…

The Common Grounds / Taqueria El Crucero taco truck was closed down last Thursday, although Common Grounds owner Blake Baston said the truck is currently looking for a new location to reopen.

A tweet posted to the Common Grounds Twitter feed Monday at 3:08 p.m. apologized to the campus and announced the closing of the truck.

Baylor’s 1909 celebration was likely the first collegiate homecoming event in the United States a distinction that has earned Baylor a spot in an upcoming Smithsonian exhibit.

The exhibit, called “Hometown Teams,” is part of a series of traveling exhibits called “Museum on Main Street,” which will tour small towns across the U.S. from 2014 – 2021.

Residents of Baylor’s campus should shower early Friday if they want hot water.

A planned steam outage will occur from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, affecting multiple locations on campus. The outage will affect domestic hot water and building heat during the installation but will not affect all of campus. Buildings include the Bill Daniel Student Center, Neill Morris Hall, Collins Residence Hall, Mary Gibbs-Jones Family and Consumer Sciences Building, the former AFROTC building, Kokernot Residence Hall, Brooks College and Martin Residence Hall.

A Bangladeshi man who came to the United States to wage jihad was arrested in an elaborate FBI sting on Wednesday after attempting to blow up a fake car bomb outside the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan, authorities said.

Oil has long lived in harmony with farmland and cattle across the Texas landscape, a symbiosis nurtured by generations and built on an unspoken honor code that allowed agriculture to thrive while oil was extracted.

Proud Texans have long welcomed the industry because of the cash it brings to sustain agriculture, but also see its presence as part of their patriotic duty to help wean the United States off “foreign” oil. So the answer to companies that wanted to build pipelines has usually been simple: Yes.