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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
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UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY
Senate met at Vela’s house prior to standoff
Efficiency plan to be revised after public input
By Jordan Rudner @jrud
Hours before graduate public affairs student Gene Vela, a member of the Senate of College Councils’ Leadership Team, was involved in an armed standoff with police officers, the Senate’s Executive Board convened at his house for a scheduled meeting. Though multiple board
members referred The Daily Texan to the Senate’s faculty sponsor, Dean of Students Soncia Reagins-Lilly, for comment, Reagins-Lilly denied any knowledge of the meeting in a statement. Reagins-Lilly said she was unavailable for an interview. “We are unaware of any Senate of College Councils organizational or business activity scheduled on the evening in
question,” Reagins-Lilly said in a statement. “Our priority in this matter remains the safety and well-being of our students.” Senate President Andrew Clark said Senate board meetings are regularly scheduled events and are occasionally held off campus, as the board meeting was on Nov. 10. “We meet every Sunday at 7 p.m., whether it be
Leadership Team or the Executive Board of Senate,” Clark said. “We meet every single Sunday, and sometimes we do meet off campus, but I don’t know how often.” Clark said Reagins-Lilly would provide information and said despite the board meeting at Vela’s house, the standoff is not a Senate issue. “Gene was a member of Senate and obviously was a
contributor to the organization, but beyond that, this is something that’s kind of transcended the scope of Senate,” Clark said. “So that’s why it’s Dean Lilly’s responsibility. In any student conduct related matters, or legal things, it’s Dean Lilly’s role to take on.” On Nov. 10, Austin Police Department officers
A&M went to the SEC,” Holmes said. “It’s a Texas tradition, and we have to make sure that it continues on.” Kimmel said the weather is expected to change Tuesday morning, and Austin should not expect any ice in
HEX page 2
SERVICES page 2
SENATE page 2
Weather forces Hex Rally cancellation By Wynne Davis @wynneellen
Amy Zhang / Daily Texan Staff
Students walk by the McCombs School of Business on a rainy Monday afternoon.
Conference last season, Texas played Texas Christian University in 2012 and will play Texas Tech University on Thursday. Senior geography lecturer Troy Kimmel said the current weather Austin is experiencing came in early on Friday morning. The cold air
arrived first and the upper air systems arrived after and combined to create the cold, moist environment. Rain gauges at Camp Mabry have recorded approximately 2.74 inches of rain since last Thursday at midnight. The lowest temperatures have been around 36 degrees.
Journalism junior Eleanor Holmes said she understood why the Texas Exes canceled the event, but she still wanted to carry out the tradition started in 1941. “I think it’s important that the student body [makes sure] the Hex Rally, and these traditions didn’t die when
@madlinbmek
The UT Shared Services Plan will be revised to address public concerns collected at campus dialogue sessions regarding job security, funding and restructuring. The plan is a list of recommendations intended to reduce University costs. The plan outlines the elimination of 500 jobs in order to combine services in the areas of finance, information technology, human resources and procurement into one centralized office. Currently, those services are provided through individual units within varying colleges and departments, according to Kevin Hegarty, executive vice president and chief financial officer and chair of the Shared Services Steering Committee. University officials predict the bulk of these jobs will be eliminated through staff reductions — in what they hope will mostly be regular attrition — and retirements. The steering committee hosted a variety of dialogue sessions throughout the past few months to present a detailed overview of the plan and address questions and concerns raised by those in attendance. The campus dialogue will end later this month, following two small scale meetings with IT governance groups, UT spokesman Kevin Almasy said. Christopher Adams, manager of the department of geological sciences, said he thinks the time allotted for campus discussion should be extended to accommodate the drastic change outlined in the plan. “We don’t always have a lot
CAMPUS
The Texas Exes canceled the annual Hex Rally on Monday because of inclement weather and the effects of the rain on all the participants and electrical equipment involved. “You got a lot of equipment out there that the rain was likely to effect — it wasn’t the cold,” said Tim Taliaferro, vice president of communications and digital strategy for the Texas Exes. “You’ve got Longhorn Network that’s going to be out there to do the show, and they’ve got equipment, and the band’s going to be out there. … Bevo wasn’t going to be able to be there.” The tradition began in 1941 after a local fortune teller advised the Longhorns to burn red candles to perform a “hex” on Texas A&M University, which was ranked No. 2 going into the Thanksgiving Day game. Texas won the game 23-0 in College Station. Since then, the rally has only ever been canceled once before — in 1999 out of respect for 12 Texas A&M students who died after the Aggie Bonfire famously collapsed during Thanksgiving week. After Texas A&M moved to the Southeastern
By Madlin Mekelburg
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
UT to unveil new supercomputer By Leslie Zhang A new supercomputer at UT will transform numbers into pictures, an intuitive way of sharing information. Beginning in January 2014, students and faculty will have access to a supercomputer called “Maverick,” which specializes in visualization and data analysis. The Texas Advanced Computing Center recently announced Maverick will replace its current counterpart, “Longhorn.” “This will be a whole new system with … [a] faster processor, significantly more memory for each processor and top of the line graphic processing cards,” said Niall Gaffney, the center’s director of data intensive computing.
Gaffney said in the research process, visualization is essential to reveal patterns and trends in data that scientists may otherwise have missed. “Visualization can show you things you weren’t explaining, which is important when you’re doing research,” Gaffney said. “I call that the ‘aha’ process. You look at something and say, ‘Oh that’s funny.’ Often the only way you find things is looking at things differently than the way you normally look at them.” Computer science senior Bo Chean said transforming data into pictures, Maverick’s specialty, makes analyzing information easier. “When you have words and numbers, there’s an extra step your brain has to go through,” Chean said.
“Pictures are more intuitive.” In the past, supercomputers at UT have been funded by the National Science Foundation, which has required they be available for scientists across the country. Because funding for Maverick came from the O’Donnell Foundation — which is run by Peter and Edith O’Donnell, a pair of wealthy donors who have given to UT and the center in the past — Gaffney said the center would be able to reserve more of Maverick’s use for students and faculty at UT. “This is a system not being funded by National Science Foundation, so we’re running this for the folks we will be working with,” Gaffney said. “About 50 percent [of its use] will be reserved for people here in the
NEWS
OPINION
Code Compliance department cites safety violations. PAGE 3 UT’s Energy Institute looks at energy in social policy. PAGE 3
@ylesliezhang
Sam Ortega / Daily Texan Staff
Dan Stanzione, deputy director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, demonstrates a part of the Stampede supercomputer, the sixth fastest computer in the world.
UT system.” Data mining in social media has recently been a source of large amounts of data, and scientists and statisticians are beginning
to explore its applications, Gaffney said. “You could use this information real time from social media sites to do things very powerfully you
wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Gaffney said. “We want to push forward on that from the data mining
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REASON TO PARTY
UT not that diverse for black male students. PAGE 4
David Ash’s season officially comes to an end. PAGE 6
The pumpkin spice trend takes over local shops. PAGE 8
Horns Up, Horns Down: ZBT doesn’t get the issue. PAGE 4
Texas basketball loses for first time this season. PAGE 6
Billie Joe Armstrong collaborates with Norah Jones. PAGE 8
From Thanksgiving football to an NBA player dating a musician, check out the Sports tab during the day. dailytexanonline.com
COMPUTER page 2
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