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Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900
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Monday, November 14, 2016
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CITY
Students protest election results By Paul Cobler @paulcobler
International relations sophomore Amina Amdeen marched through downtown Austin, protesting the election of Donald Trump with about 300 other people Sunday night, but when several of her fellow protesters destroyed the sign of a Trump supporter, she intervened. Amdeen jumped between the protesters and the Trump supporter, Joseph Weid-
knecht, screaming at them to leave him alone before police detained at least six people. “They circled around him like they were going to attack him,” Amdeen said. “This is not what we stand for. This man didn’t say anything. He didn’t say he hated us. He didn’t say he meant us harm, and they tore up his sign.” Weidknecht, an Austin citizen, said Amdeen’s actions made him emotional. “I came out here for a peaceful protest to show that there were two sides to the
movement, pro-Trump and anti-Trump,” Weidknecht said. “To see that someone was actually willing to get in between the violent and the nonviolent and try to protect me and my rights, while at the same time expressing her own, deeply affects me. I could cry.” The protest marked the third time in five days that people gathered in downtown Austin objecting to Trump’s election. Students
Zoe Fu | Daily Texan Staff
PROTEST page 3
Anti-Trump protesters cross the Brazos and 9th Street intersection during their march through downtown Sunday night.
Event raises awareness of visual impairment @brittanywagner_
Mary Pistorius | Daily Texan Staff
Students stumbled their way through a pitch black room, feeling their way along the backs of chairs to find a seat at the crowded dinner table. For just under two hours Thursday night, these students got a taste of what it’s like to be blind. The disABILITY Advocacy Student Coalition hosted its biannual Dinner in the Dark in the Student Services Building. About 70 students shared a meal and listened to personal stories from four people living with visual disabilities — in complete darkness. Ce’Nandra Franklin, communication sciences disorders audiology senior, is the social and recruitment chair of the Coalition, the student organization affiliated with UT Services for Students with Disabilities. Franklin said the goal of the organization is to make UT students more aware of disability and advocate for others. “We focus on the large letter ‘A’ in ability,” Franklin said. “It’s our focus on what is the human spectrum of what people are able to do, and how can we not only learn from that, but also how can we let other people know about our own experiences.” While attendees clumsily ate a spaghetti dinner using only their senses of smell and taste to identify it, the floor was opened for a Q&A session with the four guest speakers, who traveled from McAllen to educate the group. Salvador Villa is a McAllen high school senior and has
Eric Ibey, a visiting Canadian, stops by the bake sale for diversity to voice what diversity means to him on Friday on the West Mall. The bake sale, hosted by the Diversity and Inclusion Agency of Student Government, was a reaction to the YCT bake sale.
DINNER page 3
Bake sale promotes campus diversity By Will Clark @_willclark_
BAKE SALE page 3
CAMPUS
By Brittany Wagner
CAMPUS
Students held a bake sale for all genders and races Friday on the West Mall as a response to the Young Conservatives of Texas event two weeks ago which protested the University’s affirmative action policy. The Diversity and Inclusion Agency, a division of Student Government, held the event where organizers provided a free cookie or brownie after passersby wrote what diversity meant to them on a poster board. On Oct. 26, YCT hosted an “affirmative action bake sale” that received national media coverage for its representation of affirmative action. The group determined prices for their baked goods based on ethnicity and gender to protest how the policy considers race in its admission process. Agency Director Karla Chavez, an international
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BIOLOGY
CAMPUS
Student lectures on little leaping lemurs
Anarchist student group challenges UDems’ stance
By Julianne Hodges
Integrative biology graduate student Amanda Perofsky gave a talk about lemurs Thursday night at the Brackenridge Field Lab.
@JayHodges2018
On Thursday at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, integrative biology graduate student Amanda Perofsky gave a talk about the diverse world of lemurs and some of the challenges they face. There are over 100 different species of lemurs, all of which are only found in Madagascar. During her talk, part of the Science Under the Stars lecture series, Perofsky explained her work: she researches how social structures of the Verreaux’s sifaka lemur can influence the species’ gut microbiome. Perofsky’s work focuses on grooming as a way to transmit these gut microbes. The Verreaux’s sifaka lemurs she studies live in small social groups and groom each other not only to remove parasites, but also as an important social
Emmanuel Briseño Daily Texan Staff
function. By studying the bacteria in fecal samples and the behavior of the lemurs, Perofsky found that different social groups — even within a small area — have different microbiome compositions. She also found that the amount of grooming between lemurs increased the similarity of their microbiomes.
“Lemurs’ social relationships influence bacteria transmission and gut microbial communities,” she said. “It’s really important to study this in lemurs, most of the time people are focused on monkeys and apes, so it’s really important to learn about evolution through studying lemurs.”
Perofsky said when she began graduate school, she wanted to do research that combined computational and field work with molecular studies. “I decided that wildlife disease ecology would be an ideal field for me to enter
LEMURS page 2
By Sarah Philips @sarahphilips23
The Students for a Stateless Society criticized University Democrats for their actions during the affirmative action bake sale hosted by the Young Conservatives of Texas on Oct. 26 in an open letter this week, saying encouraging students of color to vote at the protest was not helpful to the protesters. The letter was posted on the organization’s website and said the actions of UDems at the protest sought to normalize the actions and consequences of the bake sale, which many students of color found to be inherently racist. “Voting at that minute would have and has done nothing to respond to a
local and immediate act of racism,” the letter said. “To vote alone would mean to tolerate intolerance and welcome it back onto our campus. Clearly the University Democrats don’t mind if that is what’s at stake, because in their Facebook post responding to the event they claimed that what was ‘really at stake’ was the election.” The S4SS said students of color were just “badges” for UDems and said the calls of UDems members to “go vote” during the protest is indicative of prioritization of elections over the needs of students of color. UDems President Ashley Alcantara said the letter was the first time anyone had voiced this concern to the
ANARCHISTS page 2
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