THE DAILY COUGAR E!
INSID
TODAY’S WEATHER
Cougars, Longhorns swim for the cure /sports
Walls are ‘muddied’ at UH Blaffer Gallery with ‘electric’ art /LIFE & ARTS
3-day forecast, Page 2
Hi 75 Lo 55
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Issue 89, Volume 74
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www.thedailycougar.com
Board considers adding to system By Patricia Estrada The Daily Cougar
David Shih The Daily Cougar
Students take time Monday to let news of Saturday’s on-campus random act of violence sink in as they break between classes.
UH reacts to violence By James Rincon The Daily Cougar Students who did not already know of Saturday’s tragic campus slaying returned to classes Monday from their weekend migration. Those who knew about the random killing of an unidentified man outside Hofheinz Pavilion already felt the way others would come to feel as they learned the news — unsafe. “They should increase security here. I know they try, but they need to put more police on the roads,” industrial engineering M.S. candidate Benjamin Nsude said.
The University is increasing security, effective Saturday, with a force of 33 patrol officers and 12 administrative members of UH Police committed to amplifying campus security. Seven lieutenants will alternate a patrol shift and all 52 officers will work six days a week. Police Chief Malcolm Davis said UHPD has increased foot and bike patrols to increase visibility of blue uniformed police. Davis said he understands students will be more apt to report any behavior they think is suspicious. Campus police welcome the influx of alerts and hope to return the students
to feeling protected. “There is nothing illegal about being suspicious. The force will watch the suspicious person until they leave or commit a crime,” Davis said. “If I get 100 calls a day, the spike in calls is something I hope will happen.” Still, the shock from such a crime will not easily subside. “This is probably by far one of the worst things I’ve heard about on campus,” theater freshman Melanie Burke said. “To be killed like that — it doesn’t make me feel good about being here. Do I want stay here four see REACTION, page 9
The Board of Regents Academic and Students Success Committee discussed a proposal Friday to open a UH System facility in collaboration with Lone Star College. The proposal suggests a northwest campus will make it easier for commuting students to transfer to a four-year institution and to acquire undergraduate and graduate degrees near their homes. The program, if passed, would be modeled after programs such as UH-Sugarland, UH-Clear Lake and UH-Victoria. Other schools across the state may also plan to extend their systems to the region. “If we don’t do it, somebody else will,” said John Antel, provost and UH System vice chancellor. “We want to be sensitive to potential students in suburbs.” The initiative will serve more than 250,000 students enrolled in regional school districts in the Houston metropolitan area. The proposal is a cooperative program among the Texas State System, Texas State University, Texas A&M and the UH System. The degrees offered by each respective institution will be developed and included in the final proposal to the board in April. If the proposal is accepted,
UH and UH-Downtown will offer undergraduate degrees in business, humanities, social sciences, teacher education, criminal justice and technology to students attending the new facility. Graduate degrees will include educational administration, teaching, human resources development and project management. “We don’t want to put a mediocre product out there,” Antel said. “We want quality over quantity.” The universities plan to reach potential students who find it difficult to commute to UH System campuses. “Students there would prefer to go to Sam Houston (State University) in Huntsville than drive down 290 or more to come here,” Antel said. The program will serve Houston Community College and Lone Star College students who plan to transfer to a four-year university. It will offer courses at closer facilities and provide similar programs to those established at UH-Clear Lake, UH-Victoria and UH-Sugarland. The committee is concerned this program may affect enrollment in programs already established within the UH System, and that if see NORTHWEST, page 3
Group fights HIV stigma By Kelsie Hahn The Daily Cougar The key to overcoming stigma attached to HIV is to break the silence, said organizers of the HIV Anti-Stigma Day at UH. LIVE Consortium, Inc. will sponsor a month-long educational and awareness campaign on campus aimed at HIV education. “This is a very straight, very college-age issue. There’s a lot to do about it. You can totally impact the situation for a good change, but only through discussion and knowledge,” founder Beau Miller said. The campaign will culminate in a day of giveaways, free tests for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, a symposium, health fair and rally March 10 at the University Center, Miller said. One of the most common misconceptions is that HIV only affects homosexuals, he said. Statistics show HIV and AIDS are having an increased effect on heterosexuals, especially blacks, Hispanics and young adults. “If we ignore it, it’s just going to fester more. It’s kind of like (a) stigma, kind of like HIV — they’re both similar.” LIVE Consortium, a new anti-stigma nonprofit organization, hopes this campaign will teach students not only about the disease and its prevention, but also how to support a friend or family member who has been diagnosed. One of the biggest ways to help, Miller said,
is to simply be open and available. “If someone that you know got HIV, could they turn to you? Or it is something where I wouldn’t tell my best friend about this?” he said. “Some things we don’t tell people, and we should.” Second-year pharmacy student Drew Dill said much of the stigma surrounding HIV stems from ignorance of medical advances during the past 30 years. “People still have in their minds what HIV used to be like, like in the ’80s especially during Reagan’s administration. People were dying from it because we didn’t have the right kind of treatments and therapies to address the problem,” he said. “We do now, and people with HIV can live relatively normal lives.” Talking about the issue is an important first step to becoming more informed regarding the disease and undoing the shame people associate with it, Dill said. “I think if the younger generation, our age, college age, can deal with that issue, than the better off we are for the future, for our kids. They don’t have to live with those stigmas,” he said. “It’s a virus, it’s a bug. It’s like the flu. It’s not something someone should be looked down upon for having.” Ultimately, Miller said, the group would like to use the UH anti-stigma campaign to develop strategies that can be used nationally to fight see ANTI-STIGMA, page 3
Sarah Krusleski The Daily Cougar
Professor Robert O’Neil examined First Amendment issues such as protest in his lecture at Rice Univesity on Thursday.
Prof: censorship is ubiquitous By Sarah Krusleski The Daily Cougar Students and faculty occupying college campuses around the country should enjoy a freedom of expression that is nonexistent in the professional world, but every community has its censors. That was the message visiting professor Robert O’Neil stressed in his lecture Thursday in Robert R. Herring Hall at Rice University. “We in the academic community are in some ways freer to speak on campus than elsewhere, while in other respects we are less free,” O’Neil
said. O’Neil teaches constitutional law at the University of Texas. He said that although campuses are home to engaging intellectual discourses, academia has its own forms of censorship. Outside the classroom, students have the right to read any translation of a book they please, but on campus students may suffer for reading Cliff Notes, or the English versions of texts assigned in a foreign language, O’Neil said. see SPEECH, page 3