Rick Santorum pulled out of the Republican presidential race Monday, April 9, putting Mitt Romney in more than a 30 percent lead over the other two candidates. Romney currently has 42 percent support and has been in a consistent lead since late February, according to Gallup.com

Ron Paul has 10 percent support, with Newt Gingrich tied at 10 percent, according to the most recent data from Gallup.

As of the most recent primaries, on April 3, the Associated Press estimates that Romney has 658 delegates of the 1,144 available. And some pundits are already claiming Romney as the nominee to run against President Obama in the fall.

The November election looks like it will be a close race. According to a poll conducted by Gallup, 49 percent of registered voters said they would vote for Obama, compared with the 45 percent who would vote for Romney.

The next primaries, in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, will take place April 24. The Indiana primary will take place May 8.

Colleges nationwide are seeking to increase enrollment of minority populations through any legal means, according to an article by The New York Times.

Any measure on the part of colleges to enroll students based on race falls under the category of affirmative action. Support for affirmative action is divided, as reported by a 2005 Gallup poll that found only about 50 percent of the population backed it. The report also mentioned that support for affirmative action is stronger among African American and Hispanic populations, whereas non-Hispanic whites and Asian-Americans are more likely to oppose it.

A 2003 decision by the United States Supreme Court set the current national standard, which prohibits public universities from admitting students based on criteria in favor of minority ethnicities.

The Sojourn reported in October that Indiana Wesleyan University’s campus has, in the past four years, seen a 79 percent increase in students who identify themselves with a minority ethnic population.

Jamie Daniel (jr), the diversity coordinator in Martin Hall, said the Intercultural Student Services Office hosts booths on admissions days and multicultural days. Other than that, the ISS office doesn’t have too many events designed around recruiting or admissions. Daniel said she believes that could change but isn’t the current vision of IWU’s diversity office.

“Our goal isn’t to affect admissions directly but to make this a place where students of diversity would come and be understood,” said Daniel.

ISS recently hosted “Breaking Down Walls,” an event designed to help students move past stereotyping into understanding. On April 13, the office will be sponsoring “DiversiTEA” to show how different things can originate from the same source.

Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission fined Indiana Wesleyan University’s TV station, WIWU-TV51, $13,000 for failing to meet the records requirements for informational and educational children’s programming.

The FCC states that all low-frequency Class A stations, like WIWU, must play a certain amount of children’s programming on the station. WIWU played the children’s programming but did not document it correctly, according to Dr. Randall King, director of broadcast media and chairman of the Communication Division at IWU. The FCC notified WIWU’s lawyers about a year ago, but the fine is just now being administered.

“We made a mistake,” King said. “I’m embarrassed on behalf of the station. I’m embarrassed on behalf of what this means for the university. But in the scheme of things, it’s not a disaster, and we’re taking the appropriate steps to respond.”

King said the station is not going to pay the fine without challenging the FCC’s decision.

WIWU was not the only Class A station reprimanded by the FCC this month. RBR.com reported that TV stations WHDO-CA in Orlando, Fla., and WZGS-CA in Raleigh, N.C., were fined as well.

RBR.com also reported that there has been an influx in Class A fines, administered by the FCC. Media lawyer Scott R. Flick said this is the FCC’s way of pushing Class A stations off the air in order to free up more spectrum.

Indiana Wesleyan University media communication students won 10 awards from the Indiana Association of School Broadcasters last month – the highest number of awards ever brought home by IWU media students.

The students won for both TV and radio pieces, and came in second overall in the TV category.

Matt Green (alumnus ‘11) received first place in TV videography for his piece on the Wabash Motocross race, which aired on “Crossroads,” WIWU-51’s magazine program. “Crossroads” also won a first-place award in the TV newsmagazine category for a fall 2011 episode. The episode included stories produced by Green, Jaclyn Heck (sr) and Amanda Johnson (sr).

Chase Evans (sr) also won first place for anchoring “Spectrum News,” IWU’s first win in the TV news anchor category. Spectrum News also won third-place honors for TV newscast.

Second-place awards went to Evans, Heck, Josh Campbell (sr), Russ Clark (alumnus ‘11), Brittney Holmberg (sr), AJ Hoke (sr) and Tim Decker (sr), with a third-place award to Alisha Stevens (alumna ‘11), in a variety of TV and radio categories.

IWU competed against schools such as Ball State University, Valparaiso, Southern Indiana, Goshen and Taylor University.

Heck, who also won an award at last year’s competition, said it’s an honor to compete against schools known for their media departments. She said she hopes IWU’s division will be recognized for its media communication students as well.

Clips from the winning pieces are available to watch at IWUCom.com.