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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2018
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119,
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NEWS
OPINION
LIFE&ARTS
SPORTS
Students struggle to find time in between classes for UHS’ flu shot clinics. PA G E 2
Professors need to learn the correct pronunciations of their students’ names. PA G E 4
‘Big Mouth’s’ latest season adds humor to the mentality of puberty. PA G E 8
Herman talks Ehlinger, handling success before contest against Baylor. PA G E 6
CAMPUS
STATE
esports: the new way to play
Registered to vote for midterms yet? Today is last opportunity. By Sami Sparber @samisparber
Today is the last day to register to vote in the 2018 Texas midterms. Texas set a new voter registration record of 15.6 million people ahead of the upcoming election, said Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos last week. Bruce Elfant, Travis County’s voter registrar, said 92.6 percent of all eligible citizens in the county were registered in 2016, and the county is on track to break that record this year. “We expect we will exceed 93 percent this year,” Elfant said. “With all this voter activity going on, it feels more like a presidential election year than a gubernatorial election year.” Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research at UT’s Texas Politics Project, said several factors contribute to increased interest in voter registration. “The national environment is … relentless in focusing people on politics and (focusing) on politics for longer,” Blank said. “In addition, Texas has a high-profile Senate race between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz that’s drawing a lot of local and national attention.” Blank said the number of competitive races for seats in the federal and state legislature is also influencing voter enthusiasm in Texas. “The fact that Democrats have nominated candidates
Competitive video games join intramural sports at Rec Center. By Nicole Stuessy @nicolestuessy
jeb milling
tudents looking to get involved in intramural sports can now do so without breaking a sweat. This semester, UT RecSports will host intramural esports, or competitive video gaming, for the first time. The first tournament is Oct. 29-30 and will hold a maximum of 30 players in Gregory Gym, according to Joseph Wise, assistant director of intramural sports. “We thought it would be a great way to reach students that we may not get an opportunity to interact with during the other sports we offer,” Wise said in an email. “For our first event, we will not offer different skill levels. The event will be totally open to anyone that wants to participate.” Wise said they chose Madden NFL
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19 for this tournament, and each player will play as an individual for their chosen NFL team. “This game has stood the test of time and continues to be a fan favorite,” Wise said. “In the future, we are open to exploring other games, but we wanted to start with a classic sports game.” RecSports will enforce rules for the event such as timing, team selections and level of difficulty, and will staff the event with their Intramural Sports Student Staff, Wise said. Wise said RecSports consulted members of the student organization Longhorn Gaming while setting up the tournament. “We wanted to ensure that our efforts would intrigue the gaming community and meet their expectations,” Wise said. “(Longhorn Gaming) gave us some great feedback, and we decided to
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CITY
CAMPUS
Mayoral candidate Morrison supports affordable housing, traffic solutions
KUT exchanges paid overtime for time off
By Raga Justin
By Katie Balevic
@ragajus
@KatelynBalevic
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of profiles on the candidates running for Austin mayor. In the three years since her term as an Austin City Council member ended in 2014, Laura Morrison said she became convinced the City of Austin was heading in the wrong direction. “The kind of leadership that we need is much more community focused, much more people-first instead of special-interest focused, much more ‘Let’s bring the community to the table and find some real solutions as opposed to lots of talk and no action,’” Morrison said. Morrison is one of six candidates running for mayor against incumbent Steve Adler. Her platform focuses on improving affordability and mobility, issues she said students and other Austinites are most worried about. “Everywhere I go, cross-town, people are anxious,” Morrison
copyright laura morrison, and reproduced with permission Austin has only had one female mayor before, said Laura Morrison, but she’s hoping to change that by challenging incumbent mayor Steve Adler this fall.
said. “This is an anxious town … It’s so much more expensive, they don’t see progress being made on traffic and mobility, they’re stuck in traffic. Local businesses are having to close and people are having to leave … They’re just not sure if this is their city, if they’re gonna be part of the future.”
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Morrison said she is also concerned with transparency. She said handling Austin’s bid for Amazon’s headquarters behind closed doors is creating frustration and distrust with residents. “We need to restore trust in City Hall,” Morrison said. “People are feeling written off and not listened to. And they feel like
the dialogue is not civil; you’re either a winner or a loser … There aren’t productive processes to bring people together.” There has only been one female mayor in Austin’s history, Morrison said. She said
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A draft of new overtime payment policies at KUT, Austin’s NPR station on campus, has drawn criticism from KUT reporters who said their work would not be fairly compensated under the new policies. The policies, which were announced Oct. 1 and are not yet finalized, would log overtime as vacation hours rather than paying it out to employees as salary, KUT reporter Claire McInerny said in a string of tweets. “Reporters who work over 40 hours a week almost every week now are losing a huge chunk of compensation,” McInerny tweeted last Tuesday. “(The University) will only pay money for extreme breaking news situations.” McInerny said she has earned overtime in the past for covering events on weekends and meeting
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sources several miles away from her home. “Journalism happens all the time, on the schedule of other people,” McInerny tweeted. “So it was pretty rad that @KUT, a department within UT Austin compensated us for that.” However, the amount KUT pays for overtime costs has taken a sharp increase in recent years, and changes have to be made in order for KUT to remain a self-funded organization, said Kathleen Mabley, director of marketing and communications at the Moody College of Communication. “Last year, overtime costs within KUT were up more than 40 percent over the prior year’s overtime costs,” Mabley said in an email. “The changes in overtime policy being considered by KUT are intended to both to save money within their budget and
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