INSIDE
Editor defends journalism degree
PAGE 4
The DC’s player of the week
PAGE 5
Must-try foods at Trinity Groves
PAGE 6
Songs you need to know :Vol. 6
PAGE 2
friDAY
MARCH 27, 2015 FRIday High 72, Low 48 SATURday High 81, Low 55
VOLUME 100 ISSUE 72 FIRST COPY FREE, ADDITIONAL COPIES 50 CENTS
CELEBRATING 100 YEARS 1915 - 2015
NEWS Briefs World LONDON— Back-to-back live televised interviews of Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition leader Ed Miliband were billed as the unofficial campaign kickoff six weeks before Britain’s general election. MONTABAUR, Germany—Andreas Lubitz appeared thrilled to have landed a pilot’s job with Germanwings. French prosecutors said Lubitz, copilot of Flight 9525, “intentionally” crashed the jet into the side of a mountain Tuesday.
On-campus sexual assault case closed under Title IX, still an open criminal investigation LAUREN AGUIRRE Editor-in-Chief @laurencaguirre Less than three months after SMU announced a voluntary resolution agreement on Title IX procedures with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in December 2014, the alleged victim in a Sept. 17, 2014 on-campus sexual assault is crying foul on the University’s handling of her case. The subsequent investigation and Title IX hearing and appeals process found the alleged assailant – or “respondent” as he is referred to in university hearings – a male first-year, not at fault. This final determination was handed down Feb. 12. It is not The Daily Campus’ policy to publish the names of victims in a sexual
assault case. For the purposes of this article, the alleged victim will be referred to with the pseudonym “Jane Smith.” Title IX, a part of the Federal Education Amendments of 1972, protects individuals from “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities which receive Federal financial assistance.” Investigations and reports of sexual assault crimes on college campuses fall under this umbrella. According to Jane Smith, the night of the Sept. 17 assault began with a casual text-message conversation between her and her alleged assailant. Smith said she was invited to his room in Crum Commons around 1 a.m. and accepted the invitation. She says her memory of the night is incomplete and fuzzy, but she remembers the alleged assailant serving her alcohol.
Smith gave The Daily Campus a copy of her complaint filed with the SMU Office of Institutional Access and Equity – the office charged with handling Title IX investigations. In that report, Smith stated she remembers kissing him, taking off her clothes and being touched intimately after pushing the male student’s hand away. “I think I might have been drugged because I didn’t have that much to drink, but I was slurring my words and felt very much out if it,” Smith said in a recent interview. Smith told The Daily Campus she reported the incident to SMU police the next day around 3 p.m. after discovering prominent, large bruises on her neck in the shape of thumb and palm marks. Smith said prior to reporting the incident, she tried to cover the bruises with concealer
and wore a scarf that day to attend class. “I knew that it wasn’t okay what he did but I felt like it wasn’t valid because I didn’t remember fighting back or screaming,” Smith said. “People tend to think that rape has to be a certain way or else it isn’t legitimate or all that bad.” An SMU Aware email concerning the assault was sent out to students, faculty and staff the same day the incident was reported. Under the Clery Act, SMU is required to “issue timely warnings about... crimes which pose a serious or ongoing threat to students and employees.” Smith said she immediately felt uncomfortable with the SMU Aware alert. “He [the respondent] could figure out from the email what it was about,” she said.
TITLE IX page 3
innovation
National NEW YORK— An apparent gas explosion leveled an apartment building, partially destroyed another and launched rubble and shards of glass across streets in Manhattan’s East Village on Thursday, injuring at least a dozen people. Smoke could be seen and smelled for miles. VALLEJO, Calif. — The strange case of a California woman who disappeared for two days grew stranger with her uncle and a lawyer for her boyfriend insisting she was kidnapped while police said it was a hoax. Attorney Dan Russo said his client Aaron Quinn was abducted early by at least two kidnappers.
Texas AUSTIN— The Texas Legislature completed its first contentious debate over school voucher plans that supporters say promote freemarket efficiency but critics argue it drains funding from the state’s public education system. A series of proposals championed by powerful Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick would let families get state funding to remove their children from struggling public schools and send them to private schools.
Courtesy of SMU
Sam Hubbard, Renita Thapa and Raz Friman show off the design for Out & About during the Big iDeas Demo Day.
Big iDeas winners receive $5,000 startup grants brooke moore Contributing Writer brooke@smu.edu Four student teams won SMU’s annual Big iDeas Business Plan Competition for 2015 on Jan. 30, earning $5,000 startup grants for their innovative projects. Three of the four teams are creating smartphone applications that can improve users’ lifestyles, while one is developing a unique clothing line that benefits education and underprivileged children in the U.S. Big iDeas is an undergraduate research program that provides financial support for SMU students who submit proposals that solve key issues facing the Dallas and metropolitan area. “When determining the winners, a lot of it is based on the judges’ personal experiences with business,” one of the judges,Tami Cannizzaro, said. “What’s going to fly in the real world?” Following the competition, the winners were granted nine months to move forward with their business plans. In October they will announce their developments to the judges. “Since we’re giving these students money, they have to go out and do something with their ideas,” Cannizzaro said. One thing the groups have in common is their ability to communicate successfully within their team and harmoniously execute business ideas. “The success depends on how well you work with others and your team members,” senior Irisa Ona, who won for the Helpple app, said. “If you really work well together, you can overcome
anything.” Out & About Juniors Renita Thapa, Sam Hubbard and Raz Friman won the competition for developing an app called Out & About that promotes local businesses and organizations by offering fun things to do and places to visit in the local area. “My friends and I used to sit on the couch and do nothing when we couldn’t agree on things,” Thapa, the founder and principle investigator of Out & About, said. “We didn’t know what was happening in our community, and that was frustrating, so we wanted to figure out a way to explore Dallas.” The app focuses on user preferences, Thapa explained. The Out & About team suggests activities and places in your community, and you choose which suggestions you’re interested in. From there, you put them in an organized schedule and send the schedule to your friends. Your friends can edit it, and once everyone agrees, it’s time to go out and explore your community. It’s hard coming up with fun things to do, and when you do come up with them, they’re not always personalized, said Thapa. This app will change that. “We aren’t going to suggest sky diving if you’re afraid of heights,” Thapa said. “If you want a Moroccan-themed night, we’ll send you to a belly dancing class.” Beyond US Clothing Beyond US Clothing is a for-profit clothing company that partners with charities that focus on underprivileged children and education in the U.S. It offers unique T-shirt designs for each partnership and donates a portion of the sales to
the charities. The founders of Beyond US Clothing, juniors Hunter Rice and JP Buxbaum, originally entered and won the competition two years ago. “By this point, we have a solid strategy on how we want to move forward, so we felt comfortable reentering the competition,” Buxbaum said. The students have been spending the last year and a half getting in contact with different businesses, Rice explained. For example, a business will come to them asking for 500 shirts of a certain design, and Beyond US Clothing will sell the shirts to the company at wholesale. This puts the Beyond US Clothing team in a better financial position so that they’re able to put more money into inventory and marketing. The two students started the company because they both enjoy being philanthropic and doing good for their community, in addition to their interest in clothing and fashion, Rice said. “The T-shirts are made from really nice materials, so they’re high-quality and fashionable,” Rice said. “We’re trying to create a trend.” Beyond US Clothing currently teams up with The Boys and Girls Club and United Way, but they plan to partner with many more charities in the near future, Buxbuam said. The Helpple team is focusing on building its presence on college campuses before expanding to outside communities. The app will be geo-fenced in the college’s campus, and you will have to enter a school login in order to use it. “This app is very community-centered,”
Ona, the designer and researcher for Helpple, said. “We believe it will be a nice channel to build community within the campus.” In addition to it building community, it’s easy money for college students, and it gets things done, Ona said. The two parties come to their own agreement on pay. Ona has some advice for other SMU students with big ideas: “Don’t let the fear of failure keep you from trying,” Ona said. “This may not work, but at least we tried.” Biolum Sciences Biolum Sciences is an imaging system for smartphones that works to detect the presence and severity of asthma in chronic patients, reducing the current 40 percent of misdiagnosis of the disease in the U.S. “We all grew up with asthma and know first hand how frustrating it is to go through the long and painful process of diagnosing and treating asthma,” Miguel Quimbar, sophomore and Biolum Sciences’ CTO, said. Quimbar spoke for his team members, Jack Reynolds (senior) and Edward Allegra (junior). “When we came across the idea, we recognized how big of an impact our device could have on the daily life of an asthmatic.” While growing up, there was no way to monitor his airway inflammation, Quimbar said. By the time he realized he needed an inhaler, he was already experiencing the symptoms of an asthma attack. “Having our device would have
BIG IDEAS page 3