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Wednesday, April 1, 2015
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SYSTEM
Grand jury calls for Hall’s removal By Jordan Rudner @jrud
A grand jury investigating UT System Regent Wallace Hall declined to indict him for possible violations of student privacy laws but issued a report calling for his removal from office. A Special Investigation unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office asked the grand jury in October to consider whether there was probable cause to indict Hall for violating student privacy, failing to disclose material information on his original regent application or exceeding
his role as regent with massive open records requests to the University. Although the grand jury declined to indict Hall, they did take the unusual step of issuing a public report condemning Hall’s actions. “Based on the information we reviewed, we are appalled at the Regent’s unaccountable and abusive behavior,” according to the report issued Tuesday morning. Over the course of the last several years, Hall filed requests for more than 800,000 pages of documents as part of personal
investigations he launched into UT administrative practices. University administrators said the documents cost more than $1 million to prepare. The report condemned Hall’s conduct when making these requests. “Hall never divulged what purpose or goal he had padlocked in his mind before launching this immense barrage of records requests, rapid firing them in a fashion seemingly intended to deteriorate the systems in place,” the report said. “Based on the size of the
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Texas House discusses $210 billion state budget @ellydearman
Xintong Guo | Daily Texan file photo
UT System Regent Wallace Hall was not indicted for possible violations of student privacy laws. The grand jury investigating him issued a public report condemning his actions.
McRaven shoots down campus carry By Josh Willis @joshwillis35
UT System Chancellor William McRaven spoke in depth about his stance against campus carry at a conference Tuesday. McRaven, a retired fourstar admiral in the U.S. Navy, said campus carry has little support from the UT System universities. “I’m a big second amendment guy, you know; I’m a strong supporter,” McRaven said. “But my position today — I’m an educator. As I look across the students and the faculty and the administrators and the staff and their concerns that they have voiced to me about this creating an unsafe environment with more guns on campus, it’s hard for me to support campus carry when I see their concerns.” Bridget Guien, economics freshman and communications director for College Republicans, said campus carry has the potential to protect students. “Campus carry will improve
Ellyn Snider | Daily Texan Staff
UT System Chancellor William McRaven spoke about campus carry at a conference Tuesday morning. Despite his military background and support of the second amendment, McRaven does not support campus carry.
POLICE
STATE
By Eleanor Dearman
CAMPUS
MCRAVEN page 2
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The Texas House of Representatives started its discussion of an approximately $210 billion budget Tuesday. At print time, the discussion over HB 1, which lays out the House’s proposed state budget, was over eight hours long, and legislators had discussed roughly 100 of the more than 350 filed amendments. The House had not yet reached a discussion on article three, containing higher education budget information. Rep. John Otto (R-Dayton), appropriations chair, said he and the subcommittee chairs reviewed every amendment in preparation for the floor discussion. “There are amendments, obviously, that we will oppose, and we will state why we oppose them [or] move to table,” Otto said. “There are amendments here we will accept. There are amendments here where we will tell members we’re going to let the will of the House speak.” At the bill’s second reading, legislators discussed public education, border security, the wage gap and abstinence education, among other topics. The discussion started with debate over a public education amendment that Otto filed. The amendment, which ultimately passed, would give public schools $800 million in funding, contingent on the passage of HB 1759. HB 1759 would disperse
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CAMPUS
APD tickets minors at RoundUp Campus water use increases By Wynne Davis
By Samantha Ketterer said. “We have to bring in the
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Despite a recent sound ordinance in West Campus, more tickets were issued for underage drinking than for noise complaints during RoundUp last weekend. Officers of the Public Assembly Code Enforcement (PACE) team, which works to reduce City Code violations, issued 68 tickets for minors in possession of alcohol and two tickets for violation of the City’s noise ordinance that restricts outside music to 75 decibels, according to APD Sgt. Alfred Trejo. “In the past, we may have let noise complaints slide because we’re focusing more on underage drinking,” Trejo said. Trejo, who represents APD on the PACE team, said the team went to approximately
@sam_kett
Lauren Ussery | Daily Texan Staff
Austin-Travis County EMS responds to an emergency situation during a RoundUp event Saturday night.
12 parties in West Campus and shut down three of them. “The parties that are getting shut down are not so much related to the noise ordinance, but that when the police are showing up, no one’s complying, or they’re overcrowding their parties,” Trejo said. “They
weren’t controlling the number of the people the fire marshal originally told them they could have.” Chemical engineering freshman Drishti Wadhwa attended RoundUp for the first time as
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Each minute, almost 13,000 gallons of water pump through pipes at one of four chilling stations on campus. This is just a fraction of the approximately 700 million gallons of water the University uses yearly. The Weaver Power Plant, which single-handedly provides power and air conditioning to campus, uses over half of that amount. Power plant manager Clay Looney said overall water usage in the power plant, which operates campus cooling towers and chiller systems, is only going to increase as the campus expands. “We’re not like a neighborhood where you can say, ‘Oh, we’re only going to water the lawns on Tuesdays and Saturdays,’ or something,” Looney
water to satisfy the needs of this campus, and I think everybody understands that.” The campus chiller systems and cooling towers alone made up roughly one-third of the University’s total water usage in 2012–2013. The chilling stations work to send chilled water to the towers, where the water is evaporated to cool equipment that air conditions campus. “It’s a pretty effective way to cool things off, but you do need to keep making up fresh incoming water to keep that process going,” Looney said. In a separate “chilling process,” the plant sends chilled water through tunnels to more than 160 campus buildings, where it is received and used as a cooling medium. Because of the ongoing drought in Central Texas, Austin City
Name: 3626/House Ads; Width: 60p0; Depth: 2 in; Color: Process color, 3626/House Ads; Ad Number: 3626
COOLING TOWER WATER BREAKUP IN 2014 265 million gallons: Domestic and irrigation water. 59 million gallons: Reclaimed and treated sewage water. Over 47 million gallons: Recovered water, and excess water gathered on campus.
Council set a goal of reducing water use to 140 gallons per capita per day by 2020. As a result, the University has worked to conserve water in many different aspects, largely through irrigation techniques, according to Mark Jordan, Water Conservation Program Coordinator for the City of Austin
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