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W E ’ R E T H E R E W H E N YO U C A N ’ T B E
THURSDAY
SEPTEMBER 15,2016
B AY L O R L A R I AT. C O M
Students help uncover tombs in Italy KAYLA FARR Reporter
Roundup File Photo
QUALITY TIME A Baylor student and her family spend time at Family Weekend, an event for students and their families to reconnect in the middle of the fall semester. The annual event will take place this weekend. Students will be able to share their Baylor experience with their family members.
Fun for the Family Family Weekend offers a time of reconnection TALIYAH CLARK Reporter Baylor Chamber of Commerce will host its annual Family Weekend on Friday and Saturday as the university welcomes hundreds of students’ families. Started in 1960, Family Weekend was originally a single day where parents could explore and learn about the university with their students. Years later, the day was extended to a full weekend that features a talent show, a parentstudent on-campus dinner, an opportunity for parents to meet their students’ professors and many other fun events across campus. Planning and preparing for Family Weekend begins early in the spring and continues until the week of the event. Family Weekend chair and chamberwoman Mansfield junior Casey Sparkman sees the event as a great way for parents to connect to the
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university. “My favorite part of Family Weekend is seeing Baylor families who may have not been to Baylor before get to see the atmosphere and the community of Baylor,” Sparkman said. “As the coordinator for the event, I also enjoy working closely with senior-level administrators. They have so much love for the university, and it’s cool to see how their ideas for the event can shape the university.”
Sparkman said the event is not only beneficial to families, but also to new students. “The former Family Weekend chair once told me that students decide whether they are staying or going within the first six weeks, so having Family Weekend within the first six weeks of school can reiterate that Baylor has a lot to offer,” Sparkman said. For Celina freshman Kathryn Wimmer, this weekend will be a chance
Roundup File Photo
RECONNECT A Baylor student and her family spend time in conversation on the Baylor campus.
arts & life Movie review: War Dogs offers a “grownup” action-packed comedy. pg. 5
sports Baylor golf tees off Saturday for the 2016 season. pg. 6
Vol.117 No. 11
ITALY >> Page 4
East Waco Library completes renovations MORGAN PETTIS Staff Writer
Golf cart controversy: The bike lane is for bikes, not golf carts. pg. 2
for her to check in with her family and to introduce them to her friends as well as to show them to her life at Baylor. “I think Family Weekend is important because, coming into college, it’s kind of scary and hard to leave your family, so it’s great to have an opportunity where your family can come see how you are doing and how you are adjusting, and they get to meet all your friends,” Wimmer said. This year, Family Weekend will be featuring a new event. Friday night, students and their families will be able to see the football team take on the Rice Owls on the big screen in McLane Stadium. There will be food trucks near the RG3 statue and food vouchers will be available for the families and students. Anyone interested in getting involved in family weekend can visit www. baylor.edu/familyweekend to see the events planned for the weekend.
This past summer, the anthropology department assisted in an excavation in Italy as part of a study abroad. This new program allowed students to participate in primary research in the field. Nineteen students went on a five-week study abroad trip to Lazio, Italy to uncover over 400 tombs, said Dr. Colleen Zori, a lecturer of anthropology. “They played a huge role in the way that we do the work there,” Zori said. “We developed new forms for recording information, and students would come back and tell us what worked.” Austin junior Leah Walsh said students were able to jump right in on the first day at the site. “The first day we went out, they handed us a walkietalkie and a GPS unit and told us, ‘Here is your area, go find tombs, bye!’” Walsh said. “We had never worked like that before, and it was a ‘figure it out as you go’ thing. It was crazy because we looked at each other like, ‘What?’” Students uncovered many artifacts in their dig such as a small bowl, horseshoe nails and a very long, thin arrow used for penetrating armor. Zori said she found dice to be one of the most interesting things they uncovered during their excavation. “We found them in an area called La Rocca, meaning ‘the rock,’” Zori said. “They were darling. They are bone dice and about two centimeters across. They are just the same as the dice we use today. It’s interesting because you can sort of think about the guards with their weapons, and they would play dice when they got bored. They used them to keep themselves busy and gamble, maybe.” Austin senior Lama Zakzok said the experience was enlightening, and she enjoyed being out in the field. “As I look back, the field school really pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to explore in ways I never would have on my own,” Zakzok said. “Even the people that were on the trip with me, we all grew extremely close in such a short span of time due to the extreme situations we had to tackle together. In many ways, it paralleled the experiences of my freshman year; it was a new setting with unfamiliar people and a constant flow of knowledge occurring between distinct minds.” The experience in Italy and being able to earn six credit hours over the summer made it an indispensable opportunity, Walsh said. “So many cool things happened every day,” Walsh said. “I think my favorite moment was when I was digging in the trench on the plateau and we were finding all of these arch stones. I thought I had found another one, and then I realized that it was a threshold. And I dusted it off from one end to the other end, and it was a doorway. That was cool because I was able to figure that out for myself without having to ask my professor.” After working hard during the week, students traveled
In April 2015, East Waco Library closed its doors for renovation. The East Waco Library, located at Elm Avenue will re-open Saturday at 10 a.m. “East Waco was in desperate need of tender loving care,” said Essy Day, director of library services. “We decided to renovate to make it more modern.” After over a year of renovating, the East Waco library is ready for the public to enjoy. The renovated library will not only be more spacious, but also will include more amenities than it formerly offered. It will now have a quiet, enclosed computer room for the community to use and will offer free Wi-Fi and outlets on tables in the computer lab for those who bring their own laptops. “There is also a dedicated teen space with computers, outlets and a ton of books for teens,” Day said. The renovation also includes an enlarged children’s department. “I am really excited for the library to open up because it’s such
a calm environment and it’s a great place to see so many of the people of Waco,” Loomis, CA sophomore Grace Edwards said. “If it’s anything like the other Waco libraries, it’s so amazing to see all of the children who live in Waco walk into the building and watch their faces light up at the children’s section.” The renovated library will cater to the community and students with the inclusion of a large meeting room with a kitchen and a few study rooms. “With Baylor students, it’s always hard to find a quiet place to study,” Day said. Rather than tearing down the old building, the library chose to renovate in order to preserve the mural outside. The mural was painted by the community a few years ago as a way to portray local pride and bring the Waco community together. Many of the colors used in the mural have been carried into the interior of the library as a way to show appreciation towards the community for the mural. “I’m excited for the library to open. It looks so cool, and I love how colorful it’s going to be,” said Dallas sophomore Stephanie Sullivan. The renovation also allowed the library to update their stock of books.
Jessica Hubble | Lariat Photographer
BOOK WORMS The newly renovated East Waco Library, located at 901 Elm Ave., drew inspiration from this mural on the outside of the building. The building will officially re-open Saturday at 10 a.m.
“The library spent the past year finding new books. It is practically an entire new collection of books” Day said. The library will hold its reopening at 10 a.m. this Saturday. As the library was closed for over a year, Day is excited to open it back
up to the public and anticipates the community’s return to the East Waco Library. “We’re expecting a large turnout because we’re grilling hot dogs. A lot of people who have waited a long time will come out to see the new renovation,” Day said. © 2016 Baylor University