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THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2014
VOLUME 107 • ISSUE 135
Student fights deportations
SPORTS - A6
FORMER UA PARA-ATHLETE FINDS HER WAY
BY JORDAN FOWLER The Daily Wildcat
When UA student Cynthia Diaz’s mother was placed in detention, it compelled her to undertake a hunger strike to fight for her mother’s freedom. Diaz, a freshman studying Latin American studies and pre-public health, said her mother was deported in May 2011. She had immigrated without legal permission, and when she tried to return to the U.S. this past March during a movement called “Bring Them Home,” she
SPORTS - A6
UA BASEBALL LOOKS TO STAY HOT IN USC
was detained by the U.S. government. Diaz said she has made many efforts to bring her mother home, the most recent of which involved her participation in a hunger strike outside of the White House in Washington, D.C. Starting last Tuesday, Diaz, along with two other people whose family members had been detained, went six days without eating to protest these detentions and to get the attention of President Barack Obama and the national government, according to Diaz.
“One of our main messages was that I have to put my body at risk … to get the attention to get my mother home,” Diaz said. “By day six, I was already fatigued and really weak.” Diaz said that for the six days of the strike, she only had water and electrolytes but no real food. The hardest part, Diaz said, were the flashbacks to food she kept having. “I also had a very sensitive nose, so I was smelling all kinds of food,”
PROTEST, A2
COURTESY OF CYNTHIA DIAZ
CYNTHIA DIAZ, a Latin American studies and pre-public health freshman, went on a hunger strike outside the White House in Washington, D.C., to protest her mother’s deportation.
CARRYING A TUNE
SCIENCE - A10
BY LAUREN NIDAY
The Daily Wildcat
A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP LEADS TO BETTER MEMORY
OPINIONS - A4
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JOMO WILLIAMS rides down the UA Mall playing a flute for students on Wednesday afternoon. Williams said he believes that music can make the UA campus enjoyable. “The happier we are, the better we do,” Williams said.
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WEATHER HI
91 64
SUNNY
Uber changes student transit
LOW
Ocean View, Del. 49 / 41 Squid Cove, Canada 42 / 32 Turtle Pond, Jamaica 85 / 70
QUOTE TO NOTE
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As much as I like dystopian futures where the rich dominate the masses, I am far from excited by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling.” OPINIONS — 4
Vets golf tourney to raise funds
Companies such as Uber and Lyft are changing the way students get around Tucson. Some UA students said they prefer the convenience of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft to traditional cab services. “Being able to pull up an app on my phone and get a ride in a few seconds is a lot quicker, more convenient and cheaper than any other cab service I’ve taken,” said Barak Greenblatt, a retail and consumer sciences senior. UberX launched in Tucson in October 2013. Steve Thompson, general manager of Uber Arizona, said he has seen amazing success for the company in Tucson. A majority of Uber rides take place around the UA campus, according to Thompson, but the company also has a huge number of users throughout the Tucson community, especially downtown. Uber requires the users to download an app onto their smartphones, which allow them to request a car to come pick them up. The Uber app also has a map that shows how close the Uber car is to arriving. “Not having to carry cash, being able to track your driver and use your mobile phone are all parts of the efficiency and reliability of Uber,” Thompson said. The app automatically charges the user’s credit card for the cost of the ride, so there is no exchange of money between driver and rider.
UBER, A3
SCIENCE
Biosphere brings ocean life to desert
BY BRITTNY MEJIA
BY MARK ARMAO
Students and supporters will be raising money for veterans on the back nine on Saturday. Campus veteran organizations will host a golf tournament for the fourth year in a row to raise funds for veteran programs and scholarships. The event, held by the VETS office, the VETS Club and the UA Alumni Association Veterans Alumni Club, will begin at 12:30 p.m. at the Hilton El Conquistador Country Club and will end with an awards dinner recognizing the winners. Typically, the tournament raises between $3,000 and $6,000 each year, which helps fund veterans’ organizations, among other things. “Without the fundraising that we hold, we wouldn’t be able to continue some of the activities and programs that we have,” said Natasha Crawford, chair of the UAAA Veterans Alumni Club. “We encourage everybody to just come out.” There are already about 20 teams signed up for the tournament, a mix
A hermit crab skitters across the rocks at the foot of a spiny cactus. On the shoreline, the waning tide has revealed a series of pools occupied by urchins and starfish. Out on the water, a shimmering fish lunges for an easy meal. But this isn’t Rocky Point or Cabo San Lucas — it’s Arizona. The desert sea is the vision of Rafe Sagarin, program manager for the Biosphere 2 Ocean. Once home to the only living coral reef in Arizona, the massive aquarium at Biosphere 2 has been relatively dormant since Columbia University stopped performing research at the facility in 2003. Despite its neglected state, Sagarin said he is confident that the ocean will flourish as a part of the UA, which acquired Biosphere 2 in 2011. “There’s not a lot of life in [the ocean] right now, so my
The Daily Wildcat
The Daily Wildcat
VETS, A3
MARK ARMAO/THE DAILY WILDCAT
RAFE SAGARIN, program manager for the Bioshphere 2 Ocean, outlines his plans to revamp the 700,000-gallon aquarium. The project will entail the reconstruction of the model ocean to resemble the Gulf of California.
idea is to reimagine it and reconstruct it as a model of the Gulf of California, which is our closest ocean,” he said. As opposed to the Caribbean model, the new ocean will highlight the connections between the sea and the Sonoran Desert, which Sagarin
called the “richest and most interesting” in the world. “This desert that surrounds us is that rich because it’s so close to the Sea of Cortez,” he said, “which feeds all the moisture for the monsoon rains.”
BIOSPHERE 2, A10