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South By Southwest is an annual conference which merges, arts, entertainment and innovation held in Austin.
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Biomedical engineering freshman Abdelrahman Elagami leads a passionate chant amongst a crowd of several hundred people Monday night in Rudder Plaza.
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“Refugees are welcome here”
need and I think that that’s kind of what we’re supposed to do for people is just open our hands and feet for them and be there for people when they need. The goal was for people of all ethnicities to feel welcome, not only on campus but in the entire country, said Ali Eldouh, biomedical engineering junior and vice president of TAMU Muslim Student Association. “The whole culture of Texas A&M, the whole reputation it has it that it is PROTEST ON PG. 2
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By Meredith McCown @Meredithrhoads
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Brian Okosun — THE BATTALION
The Bryan-College Station community appeared by the hundreds Monday evening to voice their support for immigrants in the US and abroad affected by President Donald Trump’s executive order.
more than 100 people confirmed their attendance. After four more hours, the number had already risen to 250. Chapman said she hopes the protest will make members of the Muslim community feel welcomed despite the executive action. “I would want it to be to where people can walk down the street and we can smile at people no matter what they’re wearing, no matter how they talk, no matter whether or not they have an accent or not,” Chapman said. “I want us to open our doors to people who are in
By Josh Hopkins @texasjoshua1 Aggies will flock to Austin in March, not to show their prowess on the field or on the court as in the days of old, but instead to demonstrate Aggie innovation on a global stage. Last week Texas A&M announced the school will be hosting five days of events at this year’s South By Southwest Conference (SXSW). The A&M events pull from research and projects all across the college including a chemistry road show, an interactive data display and a project combining art and technology. Texas A&M University President Michael Young said in the announcement that the university’s attendance at SXSW will give students and faculty the opportunity to participate on a global stage. “Our presence during the interactive portion of SXSW places our university among Fortune 500 corporations that can recruit our students, visionary leaders who can grow our already-strong Aggie network and global connections that can further enhance our Texas A&M brand,” Young said. Amy Smith, senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer for A&M, said the university decided to go during SXSW’s interactive week with the hope of reaching more companies. “It’s kind of gotten the reputation as being a hippie event over the years, in reality it has arts and entertainment, and it also has companies and government and universities that are doing cutting edge research and innovation,” Smith said. “And it’s become a place where 200,000 people will be going through and seeing these [exhibits] and those people will be ambassadors that will go back to other parts of the United States them to go back talking about our tier one institution and how excellent it is.” Rodney Boehm, director of Aggies Invent and associate engineering professor, said Aggies Invent will participate at SXSW. Boehm said Aggies Invent is an intensive design competition in which students construct a prototype to solve a need in the world. “We’ve established some need statements, things that we say need to be developed,” Boehm said. “It’s everything from trying to figure out how to detect infant dehydration or to understand how to detect different kinds of pneumonia, to be able to do vibration analysis of various kinds of pieces of equipment to identify maintenance issues, or it could be an idea that comes completely from students that we haven’t even thought of yet.
Hundreds march in protest of Trump’s new Immigration Ban
olding signs that read things like, “Ban ignorance not immigrants” and shouting chants like, “Love, not hate makes America great,” hundreds of students, faculty, children and community members gathered on campus Monday night to protest President Donald Trump’s Immigration Ban. The Immigration Ban, Trump’s latest executive action, bars Syrian refugees from entering the United States indefinitely and blocks citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from traveling to the United States for 90 days. Of the thousands of people in the United States affected by the ban, roughly 200 of them are A&M students. With news spread by the Facebook page “Protest for the Muslim Student Body and College Station Members,” the crowd flooded Rudder Plaza with the goal of promoting unity within the student body and marched to Evans Library. The Facebook page was created by cinematography freshman Mallory Chapman. Chapman originally made the Facebook page expecting a small group of people to join her in the protest. Within just an hour of the page being posted,
Texas A&M to host 5 days of events at SXSW Festival
Students, professor weigh in after Trump’s first week By Chevall Pryce @ChevallP From suspending the Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days to commencing the Dakota Access pipeline construction, President Donald Trump’s first week has been busy and met with mixed reactions around the country. Within one week the president has brought more than a dozen changes to the United States in terms of national security, immigration policy and global trade. All of these actions have been implemented by executive orders and presidential memoranda, in some cases circumventing congress and traditional governmental decision making. Although he doesn’t expect the wall along the United States-Mexico border to be built before the end of Trump’s
presidency, David Isenhour, chairman of TAMU College Republicans and petroleum engineering junior, predicts border security will reach a more technological, protective state. Isenhour also said suspending the visa program as well as blocking entry to citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days was a good move toward reforming immigration policies. “Do I see a day where we do open our visa program back up to those nations? Yeah, I hope it’s in the near future. There are a lot of good people who are trying to escape violence and to experience the American dream just like our forefathers did,” Isenhour said. Many students on campus are affected by the most recent executive order, as well as their family and friends. According to the
university enrollment profile for fall 2016, more than 200 students are from the countries affected by the ban. Lucas Fernandez, chemical engineering junior and president of Texas Aggie Democrats, said the ban is unacceptable. Fernandez said people who left their country of origin for serious reasons or students visiting home were blindsided. “I think the immigration ban is absolutely ridiculous. You have people that are professionals, professors, students and workers who are stuck in other countries right now. They have jobs,” Fernandez said. “They left on a green card thinking, ‘I’m a resident so I should be fine,’ and now they’re stuck over there.” TRUMP ON PG. 4
Jacob Martindale, @Papa_Duck17— THE BATTALION