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Seven A&M student teams envisioned the future of medicine through architectural design concepts.

Innovating telehealth A&M students present future telemedicine facility designs By Nathan Varnell @newsncv The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the need for telemedicine way ahead of schedule, and Texas A&M architecture students are at its cutting edge. Last week, seven teams of environmental design seniors presented a final review of their concepts for telemedicine facilities designed to service a variety of communities and needs. The projects are the product of a semester’s worth of mentorship from professional architects and collaborative research in Professor George Mann’s Architecture-for-Health Studio. Since 1971, the College of Architecture has connected students to professional mentors from HKS Inc., a Dallas-based international design firm of over 1,000 architects and artists responsible for designing famous structures such as the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. “Every student in this class has developed creative, responsive solutions to what is essentially an entirely new building type,” said Ron Skaggs, HKS chairman emeritus. Under the direction of HKS, the students studied the “user journey” in telehealth. The user journey is the experience of both the patient and the provider over the course of contact and care, senior Madison Lesmeister from Round Rock said. Students researched and addressed a wide array of elements along that journey, such as the significant data needs of telehealth, having mixed-use facilities for both virtual and in-person care and how designs can be flexible for the needs of both providers and the regions they serve. “Thinking about how individuals work together, it was important for [my teammate] and TELEHEALTH ON PG. 6

William Nye — THE BATTALION

Communication junior Natalie Parks will be the sixth woman to serve as Texas A&M University’s student body president.

Parks forges new path Natalie Parks aims to bring inclusivity, promote campus initiatives as student body president By Julia Potts @juliaapotts

fter being elected on Feb. 26, Natalie Parks will serve as Texas A&M’s student body president for the 74th session of the Student Government Association, or SGA, and is the sixth woman to fill the role. Parks has been involved in university and student life since she first stepped foot in College Station. From class councils, to Greek Life responsibilities, to numerous roles in student government, Parks said she has learned valuable skills that will guide her in her new position. After serving as the youngest member of former Student Body President Mikey Jaillet’s cabinet as vice president of communication and president of the Class of 2022, Parks said she has a better understanding of the inner workings of student government, as well as the ability to articulate her initiatives in person and on social media. “I think all of those different experiences

and the people that I met and the connections that I made have very much helped me to get to where I am today,” Parks said. “I will always be thankful for all of those things.” Parks’s campaign was based on wellness, inclusion and tradition, with a focus on outreach and visibility. She said she wants SGA to be a resource for people to voice their concerns to help the organization better understand any issues that they are unaware of. Through this, Parks said she can help publicize and make popular issues more known. “I think it’s very special through this role to be able to interact very heavily with those different entities that are doing incredible things through the college councils and the Corps [of Cadets] and Greek life and the cultural councils,” Parks said. Peyton Liebler, Parks’s campaign communications director, said he found her campaign platform very personal, and that her honesty never faltered in any situation. He also said Parks is one of the best people to handle the major transition of returning to in-person classes in the fall. “I’m really excited just to see her process of how Aggieland can return back to what we originally know it and love it for,” Liebler said. Parks said she has spoken with past student body presidents about the job, including women formerly in the role such as Amy Sharp and Anna Wimberly. Outgoing Pres-

ident Eric Mendoza has been a large influence, Parks said. “I’m so thankful for his leadership and watching him grow and excel in this role,” Parks said. “So many people have told me, ‘You have very deep shoes to fill this year.’ I’m very much looking forward to continuing to [lean] on those people.” Mendoza said he is most impressed by the energy Parks puts into every task and her willingness to listen to others, especially those outside of student government. “We have such a large campus with so many perspectives who [are] willing to share those perspectives,” Mendoza said. “Really, the job of student body president is to be a facilitator of all of that, and Natalie gets that.” Parks said she anticipated many challenges when deciding to run for student body president, one of which was being the only woman in the running. “I’ve very much taken a lot of time to self-reflect on that season and all of the hard work and preparation that went into it, and just seeing it pay off and standing at the statue that night at 7 p.m. and then saying my name,” Parks said. As the sixth woman to serve as student body president in the university’s history, Parks said she feels honored to be in the position at this time with so many female PARKS ON PG. 6

Connecting dots, making lasting impressions A&M student’s creative outlet offers safe environment for tattoo seekers By Shelby McVey @shelbyxbreann Art has always been a creative outlet for allied health junior Shim Mi Kadota. After feeling isolated, but wanting to make a difference in the way humans connect with each other, Kadota turned her creativity to stick-and-poke tattoos. Using a needle and ink, Kadota has seen nearly 100 clients come through her apartment, each wanting a unique piece of her art permanently on their bodies. When it became more than just stick-and-poking close friends and social media mutuals, Kadota took her talent to Instagram, creating her business page, Ohayo Pokes, to showcase her art. Outreach on Instagram helped her begin to book more clients. “When I first started stick-and-poking it was really just for fun, and it wasn’t until later that I started tattooing friends and mutual friends that it turned it into something else,” Kadota said. “That is when I really honed in on the idea that it could be something more than just stick-and-poking … that it could mean something bigger.” Using nature as her common theme in most of her pokes, Kadota said her outlet has been an unconventional way for her to see the world. “I would say my style has been really nature based,” Kadota said. “These past couple of years I’ve been pondering the idea of how connected the world really is, how we’re all connected back to nature but also [how] we’re all connected to each other. And that is such a beautiful process. So, through this art, I feel like that is just another connection I get to

via @ohayopokes Instagram, photo by Monique Nguyen

Allied health junior Shim Mi Kadota uses nature as a theme for her DIY tattoo designs.

make.” Although she hasn’t been poking for very long, Kadota said she receives great satisfaction from having clients walk through her door. “Honestly it is such a humbling feeling that another college student or whoever is coming to my apartment [and] is like, ‘Hey, can you give me a tattoo?’” Kadota said. “That is so special, and not everyone can say that. It means a lot to me that they trust me, especially because I’m still new to this and I’m doing my

best and still learning. “I feel like I’ve always used art as a way to cope with life, so it’s always been a really good outlet for me, I’m not really good with my words. I’ve not really been taught how to express my emotions verbally, so art has been a really big influence in my life.” After feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome in a tattoo shop environment, Kadota decided she wanted to alter the toxic tattoo experience to allow for clients to feel safe con-

senting to putting ink permanently on their body. “The tattoo industry is filled with toxic masculinity,” Kadota said. “And a lot of women go to tattoo shops feeling super uncomfortable and just not safe with their tattoo artist. If you look at my page it’s mostly women, the majority of my clients are women, and it just makes me feel like I’m doing something for the industry.” A major characteristic with Ohayo Pokes, Kadota said, is making sure every design she does on her clients is done with intention and consent, especially because normal tattoo shops are known for being intimidating and can influence clients into doing something they may not want to do. “Now with a lot of social injustices being brought to light, that is also happening in the tattoo industry,” Kadota said. “So a lot of people are being called out for not asking for consent, but consent is a really big thing in the tattoo industry because you’re literally inflicting pain onto them with their permission. It is not a light duty, and it is not something that should be taken lightly. When someone is giving you their trust to do that, you need to honor and respect that.” Kadota said a major issue when it comes to DIY tattooing is that it is done unhygienically, which puts people at a major risk of infection. In order to avoid this when her small business began to blow up, Kadota took the initiative to reach out to fellow stick-and-poke artists as a way to shape how she wanted to run her business safely. “I don’t even think that I was stick-andpoking at that time, but I reached out to @dopetoast on Instagram and was like, ‘Hey, I’d love to be an apprentice or even just learn from you,’ and … honestly they’re so super supportive in teaching me how to OHAYO POKES ON PG. 3