VOLUME 121, ISSUE 45 | TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2019
“Is the disability that bad?”
joshua guenther
/ the daily texan staff
English lecturer Travis Lau has scoliosis, a condition that causes him back pain and brain fog. He recently began the process of seeking accommodations at UT. By Trinady Joslin @trinady05 t confirmed everything English lecturer Travis Lau believed about academia, yet he struggled to hide the shock on his face as the question echoed
through his mind. “Is the disability that bad?” It was completely illegal, completely inappropriate but, he said in recalling the event from several years ago, entirely unsurprising. Providing personal anecdotes might help the hiring committee understand how his scoliosis impacts his life, but Lau said those anecdotes could also be detrimental to his chances at receiving the position if they misinterpreted his openness as an inability to do the job. Lau stared back at the committee members before him and answered the question the Americans with Disabilities Act bars employers from asking. “I was like, ‘I think it’s really evident from my materials and the research I have that I’m continuing to work all the
time,’” Lau said. Lau, now a postdoctoral teaching fellow at UT, said while this specific instance didn’t occur during his interview at UT, situations like these happen frequently – though many aren’t as blunt. Lau said the fault does not fall solely on academic institutions, which are a product of their societies and may boost stigmas as a result. But because of this, disabled scholars are sometimes hesitant to ask for accommodations, Lau and other UT professors said. And when they do, the system can be difficult to navigate. Disclosing a disability to superiors
Lau has scoliosis, a condition resulting in a curved spine, which causes him back pain on a daily basis and brain fog, a symptom that makes it hard to think or focus at times. During graduate school, Lau was advised by mentors not to disclose it. “It was often talked about as best practices or advice,” Lau said. “It was never like, ‘Oh, your disability is a problem.’ Mentors framed it as, ‘Oh, it might
be misunderstood.’” Now, the advice comes from colleagues, most of whom tell him disclosure can be dangerous and fear it will mark him as needy. While Lau said he understands their recommendationsmmaremmwell-intentioned, they remind him of how unwilling people are to fight to change the system. “Rather than say we should havemmpeople identifying more often and forcing selection committees to deal with it, it’s often like, ‘It’s a s----- market already. So, don’t give them any other reasons to eliminate you as a candidate,’” Lau said. DISABILITY
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UNIVERSITY
CITY
Faculty council proposes new majors
Texas black field crickets swarm campus, Austin
By Lauren Grobe @grobe_lauren
UT’s Faculty Council passed plans Tuesday to add new majors to the School of Information and the College of Liberal Arts’ Black Studies program. The bachelor of arts in race, indigeneity and migration and the bachelors of art and science in informatics will be added to the 20202022 academic catalogue. The former will add to the many undergraduate liberal arts majors, and the informatics major will be the first undergraduate major in the School of Information. Religious studies professor Jennifer Graber and Eric Tang, director of the Center for Asian American Studies, presented the proposal for the bachelor of arts in race, indigeneity and migration. Graber said the major was created to answer a growing demand for more specialized areas of
ethnic studies. “Our classes are consistently full,” Graber said. “There’s a lot of student demand, so much demand, actually, it can be hard to … provide as many classes as students would sign up for.” Tang, an African and African Diaspora Studies associate professor, said the University is a major hub for ethnic studies and has the ability to act as a leader in this field. “We are essentially the headquarters, if you will, for race and ethnic studies and gender and sexuality studies in the region,” Tang said. The race, indigeneity and migration major will have five tracks and consist of 30 hours of coursework, including three signature courses, Tang said. One of them will be a teaching race, indigeneity and migration track. “There’s a labor shortage,” Tang said. “There’s not enough qualified teachers to teach these courses, so this would be an opportunity for
students to get their certification (and) get teaching a secondary level right away.” Graber said students interested in Native American and indigenous studies will benefit from the degree plan, as the subject is currently offered only as a certificate and a graduate portfolio program. “This would allow the students who would like to do more than what is offered in the certificate to be a part of a broader intellectual program,” Graber said. The new informatics major will also provide a new opportunity to undergraduates, as the School of Information only has an undergraduate minor and a masters and undergraduate certificate program available at this time. Information professor Kenneth Fleischmann said informatics, the study of processing information and data, is a growing field in Austin. “We have been growing so quickly in the tech sector in terms of number of jobs that
UT hasn’t been able to keep up,” Fleischmann said. The University’s School of Information ranked number five on U.S. News’ top 10 information schools in the United States in 2017, but the University is also the only one of the 10 that does not currently offer an undergraduate program, Fleischmann said. “Our enrollments have been going up dramatically over this period of time,” Fleischmann said. “We offer (an undergraduate) minor, and we feel the time is right for us to offer a major.” Fleischmann said the major will likely interest potential computer science students who struggle to get into popular and selective computer science courses. “We’ve wanted a long time for the School of Information to play a more active role in coding and programming education,” Fleischmann said. “This will probably be taking more stress off of (the computer science department).”
By Neha Madhira @nehamira14
Along with cooler temperatures, the fall season is bringing swarms of crickets to the UT campus. Alexander Wild, UT curator of entomology, said this mass emergence of crickets occurs annually but is more noticeable every few years after a wet spring brings a lot of plant growth. “These are Texas field crickets, and they are normally around throughout the year,” Wild said. “But when they get a year where there is a lot for them to eat and warm temperatures for them to develop, then we see a lot more of them.” Maria Pereira, arts and entertainment technology sophomore, said she always sees hundreds of crickets while walking to class or on a run, but she is not bothered by them
because she knows this is a seasonal phenomenon. “Normally, I go running in the mornings on the track, and I remember one cricket jumped up on my leg,” Pereira said. “It’s very uncomfortable and sometimes makes me (not) want to go running near the turf, but it’s also normal to see them for a little bit every year when the seasons change.” Mike Merchant, Texas A&M Agriculture & Life Sciences professor and extension urban entomologist, said he doesn’t know of another state that experiences larger swarms of crickets than Texas. “The Texas black field cricket is a species unique to this state, and we have swarms like this every year,” Merchant said. “There hasn’t been much research done into why we have more crickets some years than others, C R I C K E T S PAGE 2