WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2017 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2017 STUDENT MEDIA | @THEBATTONLINE
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Education at a cost Students in debt talk about adapting to financial strife By EmmaLee Newman @Emmy_Lee014
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typical student faces many challenges during college — deadlines, exams and time management, just to name a few. But one of the challenges that many college students face beyond their time on campus is debt. Academic debt is a reality that 45 percent of students at Texas A&M face each year, according to the A&M Financial Aid Center. Although lower than the national percent of undergraduates that use loans — 68 percent — a student at A&M will take out an average of $23,000. Kaylie Fontenot, Class of 2014, is currently $40,000 in debt. Taking out a loan interfered with her plans to go to veterinarian school, so now Fontenot works for the university as a document imaging specialist for the Admissions De-
partment because of the lack of job availability for her degree. “It was stressful knowing that I was in debt and getting into debt because basically I pay for everything with my student loans so my mom helped me with rent and other than that I worked. None of my tuition was paid for so I wouldn’t say it was good, definitely not good now,” Fontenot said. “Once I graduated it became more stressful because you have to start paying within six months of graduating, so I knew trying to find a job quickly so I could start making significant payments was important.” Brendon Newman, Class of 2012, took out his first loan for all his expenses because it was his first experience with loans. He was $45,000 in debt and has $35,000 left four years later. To pay his loans it cost him half of his monthly rent, which is 25 percent of his paycheck from his starting salary. Newman said it was a difficult adult lesson to learn. STUDENT DEBT ON PG. 3
Morgan Engel — THE BATTALION
Excitement about Electromagnetic Drive may be premature, according to Texas A&M experts
CONSTRUCTION
By Alex Sein @AlexandrSein A recent NASA paper suggests a device that propels objects by shooting microwaves into a closed metal cavity may actually work — but a lot of scientists are still not convinced. Ever since the initial claims of a working Electromagnetic Drive surfaced in 2001, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding this “impossible drive.” The main problem is that it seems to violate Newton’s Third Law of Motion — it produces thrust, but there is no equal and opposite force that accompanies the thrust. According to Adonios Karpetis, associate professor of aerospace engineering, its violation of Newton’s Third Law may only be the beginning of the drive’s problems. “When the power is turned off, the force goes to zero exponentially, or, you know, slowly, and that is an indication of thermal response,” Karpetis said. “It’s an indication of heat being dissipated by radiation, or even by conduction or convection when they’re outside the oven,
PROVIDED
A rendering of the Cain Hotel located next to the MSC. For an enlarged version, see page 2.
Alex Sein — THE BATTALION
A&M professors are speculating on the physics of the EM Drive, which has the potential to move objects around, including satellites in outer space like the one shown above.
so there may be thermal effects that they’re not accounting for.” At the scales the NASA experiment was conducted, thermal error can be a considerable issue. Karpetis said the only
conclusive way to prove that the drive works is to scale it up beyond the point of thermal error having any effect. But according to Nicholas Suntzeff, physics and astronomy
professor, that may not be necessary. “If this thing violates the third law of Newton, something that’s been around for a long time and
103 officers from area stand as security detail during ceremony By Tyler Snell @Tyler_Snell2
COURTESY: The National Guard
At Donald Trump’s inauguration, police officers from the Brazos Valley served as part of the security detail.
Sgt. Blaine Krauter of the College Station Police Department organized the group of officers from his department who traveled to Washington, and said the officers were warned of potential problems with the crowd. “We were warned on this one that there could be a chance of more violence,” Krauter said. “The way they have it laid out, it would have taken a lot of work for [the protesters] to get to the parade route, and that’s the whole reason why we are there
By Tyler Snell @Tyler_Snell2
EM DRIVE ON PG. 2
Brazos police attend Trump inauguration A piece of Brazos County was present in Washington, D.C. Friday during President Donald Trump’s inauguration — 103 police officers. Each year, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department calls for officers across the country to provide extra security during the presidential inauguration. Brazos County area officers have participated for the past three inaugurations. Of the 103 who attended, 24 were from the Bryan Police Department, 16 from the College Station Police Department, nine from the Texas A&M University Police Department, two from the Brenham Police Department and 25 deputies from the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office. “It gives us the opportunity to shed a positive light on the city of Bryan where people there have never heard of it,” said Kelly McKethan, Bryan Police Department public information officer. “I got a couple of Facebook posts from the people [the officers] interacted with and [they] said, ‘The officers of Bryan Police Department were very nice and courteous. We really enjoyed visiting with them.’”
Cain Hotel construction enters its vertical phase
— to secure the route.” Krauter, who served at former President George Bush’s second inauguration and former President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, said officers consider the service a privilege. “It’s an honor to be able to attend something as significant as this,” Krauter said. “Hours are long, but you are standing POLICE ON PG. 3
A&M’s newest addition — a 20,000-plus square foot convention center and 250room hotel next to the MSC — is now in its vertical phase of construction. The project is expected to open in August 2018 and will feature a 600-seat ballroom, instructional rooms and a full-service restaurant and bar. Project manager Mike Matula said the main challenge with the project will be balancing the design and construction teams because this project is a design-build project, meaning the construction has started despite not all design features being finished. “We have not finished 100 percent yet on the design of the building, yet we are already building the building,” Matula said. “Keeping the design packages on schedule is pretty important and managing the design team as well as the construction work.” Phillip Ray, vice chancellor for Business Affairs, said a main push for the project came as a result of seeing other Southeastern Conference and other non-SEC schools building similar facilities. “We’re just lacking,” Ray said. “As Aggies, we don’t like to be second field to anyone, so we want to provide our students with the same type of services, recruitment, national exposure, seminars and conferences that other students are getting.” The hotel and conference center will be run by the company Benchmark, which also operates other hotels and conference centers at universities across the country. “It is a project that we have contemplated being a part of in College Station for 20 years,” said Alex Cabanas, CEO of Benchmark and A&M Class of ‘98. “My father, who started the company, pulled out a letter from 1988 of a CAIN HOTEL ON PG. 2
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The Battalion | 1.25.17
Stephanie Aiple to forgo senior season Every Wednesday 1/2 Price Original Burgers From 5pm to 10pm Every Thursday All Pints are $2.50 11907 FM 2154 Rd. #101 College Station, TX 77845 979-693-5577 Wed thru Mon 11am to 12am Closed on Tuesdays www.fatburgergrill.com
AGGIELAND PHOTOS!
Specialties Photography will be set up to have your FREE portrait taken for Texas A&M University’s 2017 Aggieland yearbook.
By Heath Clary @Heath_Clary Texas A&M junior setter Stephanie Aiple will forgo her senior season of volleyball due to chronic back pain she has suffered since high school, the university announced Tuesday. Aiple, who was named the team’s co-MVP in 2016, leaves A&M as one of the most decorated players in program history. “I love playing volleyball, and I am so glad I decided to play for Texas A&M,” Aiple said. “It was all worth it for me because I was so happy and loved what I was doing, but I was in so much pain, and I just can’t put myself through another year of hurting so much. It was a really tough decision because volleyball has been a part of my family for so many years, but after long conversations we decided as a family that it was best for me and my body to not play anymore.” Aiple served as the team’s setter for each of her three seasons on campus and compiled 3,413 assists, fifth-most in school history. The Round Rock native was honored as the SEC Player of the Year in 2015 and played a pivotal role in leading the Aggies to their first SEC championship. “On behalf of Texas A&M volleyball, we want to thank Stephanie for
FILE
the three years in which she shared her amazing talent with us,” said head coach Laurie Corbelli. “We wish her well in all her future endeavors and hope that everything she dreams for comes true.” Aiple is a recreation, park and tourism sciences major and wants to be an event coordinator after she graduates in May 2018. “I want to thank my parents and all
my friends, whether they were friends in volleyball or friends outside of volleyball, who consistently supported me,” Aiple concluded. “I also want to thank all my coaches, from my club coach when I was 11 years old to my college coaches, Laurie Corbelli and John [Corbelli], Steve [Greene] and Trevor [Johnson]. They made my experience so awesome here at Texas A&M.”
ALL CLASSES: 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Monday - Thursday in the Sanders Corp Museum Library Feb. 6th - 9th & Feb. 13th - 16th Should any student be unable to make the specified times on campus they can contact Specialties directly to set up a complimentary in-studio appointment at 979-696-9898. Any graduating seniors who wish to set up a cap/gown photo will need to contact the studio at 979-696-9898. Cap/Gown sessions cost $21.95.
batt THE
The IndependenT STudenT VoIce of TexaS a&M SInce 1893
Mark Doré, Editor Editor inin Chief Chief Sam King, Aimee Breaux, Managing Editor Jennifer Reiley, Asst. Managing Editor Katy Stapp, Managing Editor Lindsey Gawlik, News Editor Chevall Editor SamanthaPryce, King,Co-News Asst. News Editor Megan Rodriguez, Co-News Katy Stapp, Asst. News Editor Editor Angel Franco,SciCo-Sports John Rangel, Tech EditorEditor
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Maya Hiatt, Page Designer Heath Clary, Co-Sports Editor Josh McCormack, Life and Arts Editor Taylor Chojecki, Page Designer Grace Neumann, Page Designer Leah Kappayil, Photo Chief
The BaTTalion is published daily, Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and Tuesday and Thursday during the summer session (except University holidays and exam periods) at Texas A&M University, College Station, daily, TX 77843. in Suite L400 THE BATTALION is published MondayOffices throughare Thursday during theoffallthe and Memorial Studentand Center. spring semesters Tuesday and Thursday during the summer session (except holidays news and department exam periods)is managed at Texas byA&M University, News: University The Battalion students at College Station, TX 77843. Offices are in Suite L400 of the Memorial Student Center. Texas A&M University in Student Media, a unit of the Division of Student Affairs. Newsroom phone: 979-845-3315; E-mail: editor@thebatt.com; News: The Battalion news department is managed by students at Texas A&M website:inhttp://www.thebatt.com. University Student Media, a unit of the Division of Student Affairs. Newsroom Advertising: Publication of advertising doeswebsite: not imply sponsorship or phone: 979-845-3315; E-mail: editor@thebatt.com; http://www.thebatt.com. endorsement by The Battalion. For campus, local, and national display Publication of advertising does advertising, not imply call sponsorship Advertising: advertising, call 979-845-2687. For classified 979-845-or endorsement TheareBattalion. campus, local,through and national display 0569. Officebyhours 8 a.m. toFor 5 p.m. Monday Friday. Email: advertising call 979-845-2687. For classified advertising, call 979-845-0569. battads@thebatt.com. Office hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Email: battads@thebatt.com. Subscriptions: A part of the University Advancement Fee entitles each Texas A&M student to pick up a single copy of The A part of the University Advancement FeeBattalion. entitles eachFirst Texascopy A&M Subscriptions: free, additional $1. of The Battalion. First copy free, additional copies $1. student to pick up acopies single copy
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Construction on Cain Hotel is underway and the hotel is projected to open in August of 2018.
CAIN HOTEL CONTINUED project that someone was working on in College Station, and I brought the actual typewritten letter to [the first] meeting to show how long it’s been since we have wanted to do something in College Station.” The original idea for the project start-
POLICE CONTINUED shoulder to shoulder with your brothers from all over the country and work this event.” The Texas A&M University Police Department participated in its fourth inauguration ceremony this year. Lt. Ed Costello said the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department needs
ed when R. Bowen Loftin was president of A&M. The only hold-up in the project was funding until a public-private partnership was formed which raised more than $150 million in bonds and would not spend Texas A&M funds. “It becomes a gathering place,” Cabanas said. “It really is going to be a great environment to welcome our guests and be able to put them on campus and have a great hotel and restaurant and confer-
ence center environment to enjoy.” Ray said once completed, the center will provide an even better way for students to interact with corporations and different groups that will use the facilities. “It’s just a tremendous location to serve our students and the potential conferences and national seminars,” Ray said. “Those types of things are the things we need to be doing more of.”
officers from all over to provide such a large security presence. “During the inauguration, there is a lot of security presence that is required in the capital,” Costello said. “We have large crowds and people coming from all over the country, if not the world, to witness the inauguration.” McKethan participated in the 2009 inauguration and said it was a once in
a lifetime event that she was glad to be a part of. “It’s probably something I will never get to do again,” McKethan said. “When you get [to Washington] and see all the other officers there, you realize how little of a part you are playing and you see thousands of other officers from different parts of the United States.”
EM DRIVE CONTINUED
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works really well, then you gotta think now this is, it can’t be right,” Suntzeff said. “The idea of this machine is like sitting in your car and pushing on the windshield and expecting your car to go forward.” The NASA scientists proposed a solution to this — pilot wave theory. Created in 1927 by Louis de Broglie and popularized by David Bohm in 1952. It states that every particle in the universe is guided along its path by a wave that controls everything the particle does. Conveniently, this theory also necessitates a fluid-like vacuum that can transfer momentum. According to Jeremy Holt, professor of physics and astronomy, something like this is possible with matter-antimatter pairs of particles. “We think that there is some underlying medium or field, and then everything we actually observe are really just excitations of those fields,” Holt said. “And so whenever you try to excite the vacuum, you can only do so by creating sort of equal and opposite excitations, like whenever you try to create
a particle, out of this field, you leave a hole, and that hole is its antiparticle.” Drawing on this theory, it seems possible that the microwaves from the device could be causing a similar effect and thereby transferring their momentum to the particle-antiparticle pairs created within the device. However, there is reason to think otherwise. According to Suntzeff, not only is this momentum transfer impossible, but pilot wave theory in its entirety is flawed. “Einstein believed that there were hidden variables in quantum mechanics, that quantum mechanics, that reality is not just a probability but there’s actually something fundamentally, a particle underneath it all,” Suntzeff said. “He proposed a way of looking at it, someone named John Bell came along and showed that you could. Then when experimentalists went out and did the statistics they found, indeed, Bell’s Theorem was violated, and it was not consistent with hidden variables.” While the experiment revealed very little about the cause of the strange phenomenon, there is, according to Suntzeff, always a chance that something like this could work.
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The Battalion | 1.25.17
45% 68%
of current A&M students are in debt
Sophomore forward DJ Hogg is averaging 13.1 points per game this season.
of current college students are in debt nationwide
Morgan Engel — THE BATTALION
A&M heads to Ole Miss in search of win streak After regaining its bearings and garnering a win versus Georgia after two straight losses, Texas A&M travels to Oxford, Mississippi in search of starting a winning streak Wednesday against Ole Miss. Both teams’ goal of making the NCAA Tournament remains extremely slim. A&M sits at the bottom of the SEC in 12th place only ahead of LSU and Missouri who are a combined 1-12 in conference play. Ole Miss is tied for eighth with a below .500, 3-4 SEC record. To have a shot at the NCAA Tournament both teams will have to make a drastic turnaround and win nearly every game remaining on the schedule. A&M head coach Billy Kennedy said he and the players know how important every game left on the schedule is and that he has confidence in his team’s ability to win. “We haven’t been consistent in anything we’ve done this year but I think our guys know they can win every game,” Kennedy said. “It’s about going out and executing every day. We’ll see — these next two games won’t be easy. Ole Miss is fighting for their lives like every other team at this part of the year.” The Aggies (10-8, 2-5 SEC) are coming off a dra-
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matic 13-point comeback win over Georgia which gave them their second SEC victory of the season. The Rebels (10-7, 3-4 SEC) are coming off a 75-71 win away to Missouri and have posted a strong 10-4 record at home. Junior point guard DeAndre Burnett has done a nice job of replacing Stefan Moody, last year’s starting point guard and leading scorer. Burnett leads Ole Miss in scoring and assists with 17.8 points per game and 3.1 assists per outing. Burnett has been dealing with a high-ankle sprain but will be available against A&M. Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy shared with reporters Monday what he believes the team needs to do to win and said he’s had to make personnel changes due to injuries. “We have to be realistic,” Kennedy said. “We need to score in the mid 70s to give ourselves a chance to win high-level games, and we didn’t do that the first two games [against Georgia and South Carolina]. We responded well against Tennessee and Missouri but we’re continuing to tweak what we’re doing offensively just based on available bodies.” Burnett is just one of four players who average double figures. Senior Sebastian Diaz out of Madrid leads the rest of the pack averaging a double-double
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is the average student loan at A&M SOURCE: Texas A&M Financial Aid Center
STUDENT DEBT CONTINUED “I lived off of the dollar menu a lot of times and basically bought the cheap version of everything and tried not to spend money,” Newman said. “Maybe why I’m in such deep debt is because I didn’t let it affect me socially. You have to find a balance between having a life and being responsible and college is a tough time to learn that.” Experiencing debt for the first time for families can be difficult, but debt also offers benefits that are unobtainable without a loan. First generation Aggie Cynthia Tomaselli, English sophomore, is $8,000 in debt and said although debt can be stressful, she was thankful she got to go to college. “I think it gives people the opportunity to go to college, even though I wish that there were other ways that we could go about debt,” Tomaselli said. “It gives people like me, whose family can’t afford to send her to a university, the opportunity to go without having to worry about the financial stressors at the moment.” The Money Education Center, located on the first floor of the Pavilion, provides information lessons on financial literacy, responsible borrowing, the 13 payment options for
loans and other financial aspects. Delisa Falks, assistant vice president of Scholarships and Financial Aid at A&M, said students can benefit significantly from educating themselves financially. “I believe that student loans are not considered bad debt because you are getting an education, and yes, you need to pay the student loans back, but what a student needs to do is borrow wisely and they only need to take out the amount of loans that they need to pay their educational cost,” Falks said. “When we look at our Money Education Center what we’re trying to do is to help students form good habits while in school to use when they’re out of school, and we know that financially students can be stressed because we aren’t just talking student loan debt, but credit card debt, too.” Tomaselli said students concerned about their debt can find more information on the Money Education Center’s website. “If you really want to be successful it’ll be okay to take out a loan,” Tomaselli said. “It’s not the end of the world and you’ll find a way to pay it off. It takes perseverance and dedication and it takes understanding that sometimes you don’t get the privilege of college, but in the end it’ll pay off.”
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with 15.4 points and 11.2 rebounds per outing. Guards Terence Davis and Cullen Neal are scoring 12.5 and 10.2 points per game. The Aggies have four players of their own averaging double figures: The trio of sophomores Tyler Davis (13.4), D.J. Hogg (13.1), Admon Gilder (12) as well as freshman phenom Robert Williams (11.9) who had a career high 18 points against Georgia. Davis, the team leader in scoring and rebounding, said he needs to continue to improve and that he hasn’t played his best basketball until the win over Georgia. His goal is to beat Ole Miss and start a long winning streak to “get things rolling.” “I’m an all around guy,” Davis said Tuesday before the team’s flight. “I feel like I can get better at everything but being consistent. As far as on the offense end goes and even at times on defense. But I’m really locked in right now and my confidence is up. Last game was the most confident I played with the ball all year.” Tip-off is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in Oxford at Ole Miss’ new court, the Pavilion. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2.
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The Battalion | 1.25.17
Student Research Week prep begins March competition is expecting 1,200 participants to enter By Emily Bost @EmmyBost Two months in advance, committee members for the nation’s largest student-run university research symposium are already hard at work preparing for the competition. Student Research Week, or SRW, creates a venue for students from every discipline to present their findings in a three-day competition. The competition takes place in March, and this year will mark its 20th anniversary. SRW committee members, in collaboration with the Graduate and Professional Student Council, are expecting to host 1,200 competitors. “Being number one in your class and having a very high GPA are both good things, but there’s no point of that if a student cannot sit down and think creatively,” said Feyi Olalotiti-Lawal, petroleum engineering graduate student and SRW judge coordinator. “That’s something that research does. It helps you ask critical questions. It helps you question standard knowledge.” Yashwant Prakash, Bush School graduate student and SRW director, said the 20th year of SRW has brought about new challenges and goals for the SRW Committee to address in their efforts to produce a high-impact learning and enjoyable research experience for all people involved. “Inclusivity” is this year’s running theme, set with the intent to unify students from all academic levels and disciplines in the university. “Not all research is STEM-focused,” Prakash said. “Not all research looks like a
Capstone Project. Not all research looks like a finished dissertation. There are different forms of research. Different disciplines have different kinds of research and … we need to make sure that we are able to get everybody on board and provide an opportunity so that all types of research can be presented.” According to Venkata Pavan Tej Deevi, Mays graduate student and SRW technology coordinator, there were 800 competitors last year consisting of undergraduate and graduate students who participated in either oral or poster presentations. This year, SRW is expecting 1,200 competitors, and an increase from the 500 judges and few hundred volunteers from the year prior. “We are requesting that all the colleges not only encourage their students to participate, but also encourage their faculty members to participate as judges and graduate students can judge undergraduates, staff members can judge undergraduates, as long as they have a degree a level above [participants],” Prakash said. “For graduate students, it’s an opportunity to not only compete, but also judge another scholarly work done by an undergraduate.” Cutting operational costs through recycling, sparking interdisciplinary conversations, increasing program quality and growing participation are among the SRW Committee’s top priorities for 2017, Deevi said. “We are planning to advertise this year’s motive on the website, so maybe in that way, we can promote eco-friendliness among the participants and through the TAMU campus,” Deevi said. Along with the process of expanding the program, the 2017 SRW Committee, consisting of nine coordinators, one director and one faculty advisor, is rebranding their website and marketing strategies by practicing recycling, conservation and environmentally friendly
Cassie Stricker — THE BATTALION
Students discuss plans to finalize logo for Student Research Week.
methods. “We are trying to get a permanent logo for SRW so that our marketing material will remain the same,” Prakash said. “Our banners, posters and yard signs that we are purchasing, we are making sure that we are printing generic information that will be applicable for future years so that they could be reused.” With the combination of the SRW Committee’s efforts and the support of several ac-
ademic and non-academic departments on campus, SRW 2017 will provide participants with the opportunity to acquire presentation, research and people skills, said Olalotiti-Lawal. “[SRW] is a valuable tool in meeting the university’s mission of academic research and service excellence,” Prakash said. “As a tier-one research university, we are very proud of this program.”
New organization fights misconceptions about minority groups By Rachel Knight @Reknight18
Cassie Stricker — THE BATTALION
The goal of Teaching Everyone African American Culture and History is to celebrate diversity.
A new organization on campus has developed a mission to combat misconceptions of minorities and to make minority students feel more welcome. TEAACH, or Teaching Everyone African American Culture and History, is an organization which aims to teach everyone about the history and current cultures of minority groups as well as mentor high school minority students to prepare them for college. It is the vision of philosophy sophomore Krystal Parks, who was inspired to make a difference for minorities on campus when she noticed a lack of minority groups on campus tours. The organization began at the beginning of the spring 2017 semester. “I know I’m attending a predominantly white university, so I have to be aware that [racial uniformity is] going to happen,” Parks said. “But then I realized in the number of whites that are on campus or in general that go to A&M how many of them actually know about our history? It’s only a small percentage of us, so do they actually know who we are and what we do outside the stereotypes they have learned about?” Shortly after Parks noticed campus tours are predominantly white, in February of 2016,
some visiting high school students from Dallas were reportedly victims of racial slurs on campus. This incident drove Parks to take action and start TEAACH. “At the time I was taking hip-hop philosophy, so I was learning a lot about race and about social constructs and stuff like that,” Parks said. “I just really felt like I needed to do something. I felt like it was wrong for me to just sit there with the feeling that I had and not do anything with it.” TEAACH will meet every Tuesday for an hour and 10 minutes to provide students with a safe place to talk about their feelings, perceptions and concerns about race. The meetings will typically start with a short lecture and will then open up to a group discussion. Paige Williams is the TEAACH treasurer, and said she hopes the creation of TEAACH will bring awareness to differences in how minorities are treated. “I’m hoping that people will learn how we are treated, in a sense, differently,” Williams said. “We are becoming a statistic. We get looked at differently as a whole, and I just don’t think it’s right. People think, ‘Oh, black girl coming in late, typical.’ We have to try harder to prove that we can do this, too. We can graduate from this school, too.” Topics discussed at meetings will include the history of African Americans at Texas A&M, how African Americans feel when
asked if someone can touch their hair and perceptions of light skin versus dark skin in every culture. While the topics are centrally focused on African American culture, TEAACH secretary Daiza Burleson said she hopes the topics can apply to all groups. “I want people who are different to know it’s okay to be different,” Burleson said. “We are all different because we all have different backgrounds and cultures and skin tones, but it is important to know that there is value in being who you are.” TEAACH will also conduct a service project in which TEAACH members serve as mentors to students in underserved high schools. Burleson said the service project is just as important as the discussions hosted by TEAACH. “It means a lot to me because I’ve been through what they are going through,” Burleson said. “It’s important that they know they do matter.” According to parks, the officers of TEAACH hope to have a successful first semester with the organization and want everyone to feel welcome. “There are no qualifications,” Parks said. “It’s open for everyone. What I want to hold back from is making people think that because African American is in the name that’s the only people that can come and join us.”