LIBERTY STUDENT NEWS

A former Liberty University cafeteria worker is facing child pornography charges.  Matthew Tunnell moved from Lynchburg to Alabama recently.  Now he’ll be brought back here to face federal charges of receiving and possessing child porn.

US Attorney John Brownlee says last year Tunnell ordered what he thought were videos with sexually explicit images of young boys.  But the DVDs really came from a bogus company set up by US Postal Inspectors.  Brownlee says around that time, police found more evidence of child pornography at Tunnell’s home here.

Tunnell came to the attention of authorities in 2005 while they were investigating a web-site run by Justin Berry.  Men used to pay Berry as a teenager to perform sexual acts on the internet.  And he has since gained national attention and testified before congress about internet dangers.

Brownlee says Tunnell tried several times to access one of Berry‘s web sites.  Tunnell could get up to 30 years in prison if convicted on both counts.

It’s official. A stretch of U.S. 460 in Lynchburg will be named the Jerry Falwell Parkway. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed legislation this week that was approved by the General Assembly a week ago, designating that the highway from the U.S. 29 intersection to the Monacan Bridge be named for Falwell.

Sponsored by Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, and all members of the Lynchburg delegation, the bill naming the parkway was approved on a 40-0 vote in the Senate and 90-3 in the House, where six members abstained from voting.

LSU’s athletic director search committee opted to keep six of the first batch of applicants under consideration on Friday after weeding out candidates and LU’s AD Jeff Barber is one of them.

The search committee will meet again once another pool of applicants comes in, to review the candidates in greater detail and comparatively.

But wee should expect some pretty good movement in the next 30 days or so as more high-profile candidates wait until late in the process to become applicants so they can stay out of the spotlight for now.

Barber was approved by the search committee with little or no discussion.

Following months of delay, union workers for the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company have voted to accept the bus system’s original contract offer – a move one union rep attributed to “settling.”

Last December, GLTC employees rejected an offer that would put the drivers of the new Liberty University routes on cleaning crews in the summer months. Those drivers, about a dozen in all, had hoped to earn year-round employment behind the wheel.

GLTC’s last union contract expired Aug. 31. The vote to approve the new terms took place Feb. 12, negotiators on both sides confirmed Thursday.

While workers weren’t necessarily “all that happy” with the deal, they settled for what was offered.

Under the new contract, employees will get an 11 percent raise spread out over the next three years. The co-pays and deductibles on their health insurance will also be raised to help offset that expense. LU drivers will have a choice of taking unpaid furlough when the university is not in session or taking a cleaning position.

The terms of the new contract extend into August 2011. GLTC has nearly 70 bus drivers and maintenance workers. Not all of those employees are dues-paying union members, but all are included under the new contract.

Liberty University’s Athletic Director Jeff Barber is one of the early 16 applicants for the LSU Athletic Director job.LSU’s search committee will begin sorting through the applicants at a meeting Friday.