SERVING THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN COMMUNITY SINCE 1900 @THEDAILYTEXAN | THEDAILYTEXAN.COM
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
VOLUME 118, ISSUE 100
N E WS
O PI N I O N
S P ORTS
LIFE&ARTS
Visual Arts Center features student artwork in “Untitled” exhibit. PAGE 2
Diversity in CNS Honors benefits programs and students alike. PAGE 4
Longhorns cruise past Kansas State to improve to 11-2 in Big 12 play. PAGE 6
Crazy Carl may be retired, but the man behind the man boobs leaves a lasting legacy. PAGE 8
CITY
Guadalupe, East Riverside to undergo further construction Construction plan projected to cost city $100 million. By Chase Karacostas @chasekaracostas
A
ustin might spend more than $100 million on construction improvements to the heavily student-populated transit corridors Guadalupe Street and East Riverside Drive, according to recommendations released by the city last week. The Proposed Construction Corridor Program is a scaled-down version of the $1.4 billion Corridor Mobility Plan announced in December. The section of Guadalupe Street included in the proposal ranges from 18th to 29th Streets and includes several side streets in between. Construction is estimated to cost $19.8 million.
Improvements:
rena li | the daily texan staff
CRIME
APD arrests infamous Subway robber By Anna Lassmann @annalassmann
Dietra Lashell Lee was arrested on Feb. 8 in connection to multiple Subway robberies in West Campus, according to a tweet by the Austin Police Department. On Feb. 2, a Subway on West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was robbed. This was the third robbery of a Subway restaurant within a span of two weeks. The first Subway robbery occurred Jan. 19 on San Antonio Street and was almost immediately followed by the robbery of the Subway located in Dobie Mall. Following the robbery of the West MLK Subway, APD issued an arrest warrant for Lee. Lee’s arrest affidavit from the MLK robbery said she bought two cookies and then handed the employee a note which said, “I have a gun. Give me the cash in the drawer. I’ll shoot.” The affidavit said the Subway employee gave Lee the cash from the register, which she took along with the cookies and then left. APD officers stopped Lee less than two blocks away from the Subway shortly after. However, when they brought her back to the Subway for identification, the employee did not identify Lee as the suspect, the affidavit said. APD detectives reviewed surveillance video from Subway afterward and found Lee to be the suspect from the robbery, the only difference was she was not carrying the purse she had
SUBWAY page 2
1. Transforming Nueces Street from a one-way into two-way street 2. Repairing up to 4.5 miles of sidewalks 3. Adding more street
lights on Guadalupe and 24th Streets 4. Repurposing two lanes on 24th to create a dedicated bike and center turn lanes 5. Traffic signal improvements at the intersections of Guadalupe and MLK Boulevard, 24th and Dean Keeton Streets Changes to East Riverside will stretch from Interstate 35 to Highway 71 and will have an estimated cost of $84.8 million.
Improvements:
1. Up to four miles of new bike lanes 2. New street lighting 3. Repairing up to 4.5 miles of sidewalks 4. Possible addition of new pedestrian crosswalk signals 5. Up to three miles of pavement reconstruction 6. Up to 14 traffic signal improvements The proposal includes improvements which can be paid for with the Mobility Bond approved by voters in 2016. Out of the $720 million bond, approximately $450 million will be used for improvements to all of the nine major
4.5 miles of new or repaired sidewalks
NEW
street lighting on Guadalupe and 24th Streets “corridors” in the city. “We’re spreading the (funding) around,” said Sara Behunek, communications manager for the Corridor Program Office. “We believe this is the proposal that is going to get us the biggest bang for the buck.” The rest of the $1.4 billion plan will be paid for through state and federal grants the city applies for, along with using private developers to make some of the improvements to areas surrounding their developments, Behunek said. Councilwoman Kathie Tovo, who represents most of West and North Campus,
said she is concerned about restriping Nueces into a two-way street. “(This) would seem to be not a safe choice because it puts more cars in an area that is very pedestrian heavy,” Mayor Pro Tem Tovo said. Student body president Alejandrina Guzman, who has made accessibility in West Campus a major policy goal, said she is glad to see the city plans to fix sidewalks along Guadalupe so they are compliant with the Americans with Disability Act. “It is atrocious,” Guzman said of the current state of the sidewalks. “To me personally, it’s a half and half kind of thing, like ‘Wow, great, we’re doing this,’ and at the same time it’s like, ‘Wow, why did it take until now?’” The City Council will likely vote on the proposal in March. Prior to that, the Corridor Program Office has several public outreach plans to give citizens a chance to provide input. The office will give briefings to seven of the city’s boards and commissions, and anyone can file a request online to have the city present to
GUAD page 2
CITY
UNIVERSITY
Women eat chips in public to protest ‘Lady Doritos’
ESL has no impact on UT admission decison
By Rebecca Stanley @sissyphus_
Austinites licked their fingers and braved the frigid weather on Sunday as they gathered on the south steps of the Texas Capitol to eat chips. In a show of sardonic solidarity, these protesters let it be known their disdain for “Lady Doritos,” a hypothetical line of less messy chips proposed specifically for women by PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, which garnered national attention on social media last week. Lexie Cooper, president of the Austin chapter of the National Organization for Women, organized the event, “A Bunch of Women Eating Chips in Public,” on Facebook as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the idea of feminine chips,
but it quickly garnered attention. Cooper said she saw this as an opportunity to share something valuable. “I thought that since a lot of people ended up wanting to come, we could use this as an opportunity to talk about the different micro-aggressions and the different little things that women and girls encounter everyday in a society that tells us you have to be smaller, you have to be quieter, less messy, less obnoxious,” Cooper said. “There are a lot of double standards that men don’t have to deal with that women do … And I think a lot of women resonate with that, and a lot of people have a good sense of humor.” Architecture graduate student Kathleen Conti said the protest, which drew a crowd of around 25, was about more than just the chips.
“While it may seem sort of silly that we’re protesting chips, it’s (in response to) a larger effort to silence women,” Conti said. “They don’t listen to us when we do the Women’s March, they don’t listen to us when police keep killing black people, but they might listen to us if we protest eating chips because it gets the media’s attention because it’s something silly.” Architecture graduate student Winn Chen said there was a good-humored atmosphere surrounding the attendees, which helped highlight the demonstration’s purpose. “The mood here is that this is all ridiculous,” Chen said. “Let’s treat it with as much seriousness as it deserves but also acknowledge that it’s ridiculous and that we’re out
DORITOS page 2
Admission for ESL students at Texas universities CONDITIONAL ADMISSION NO CONDITIONAL ADMISSION Texas Christian University Texas State University University of North Texas UT Arlington UT San Antonio International applicants apply to US universities
UT Austin International applicants apply to ESL program
Accepted to ESL program
Conditional admission offered, enter ESL program
ESL program completed
Complete ESL classes
Reach minimum TOEFL/IELTS score
Submit university application
ACCEPTED
mallika gandhi | the daily texan staff
By Stephanie Adeline @stephadeline
lacey segars | the daily texan staff UT graduate Kelsey Hitchingham, left, and architecture graduate student Kathleen Conti, with her dog Maggie, gather on the steps of the Capitol yesterday afternoon for the “A Bunch of Women Eating Chips in Public” event protesting “Lady Doritos.”
Manuel Flores entered the UT English as a Second Language program in 2017, aiming to apply to UT’s petroleum engineering graduate program. However, because of UT’s competitive admission, Flores now attends the University of Houston instead. UT requires international students to reach a certain level of English proficiency before they are accepted, because the
University has limited enrollment. Some Texas schools, however, allow conditional admission based on enrollment in ESL classes. “We have many highly qualified international applicants but we have limited space,” said Deana Williams, associate director of international admissions. “If we were an open-ended admission school, where we could admit all the qualified students, there might be more ability to
ESL page 2