Serving The University Of Texas At Austin Community Since 1900 @thedailytexan | thedailytexan.com
Friday, December 6, 2019
Volume 121, Issue 80
NEWS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFE&ARTS
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E+E African American Culture hosts UT’s first Kwanzaa Umoja dinner.
Course Instructor Surveys must include statements that assess student safety.
Student startup teams pitch ideas at technology conference in NYC.
Volleyball puts together sweep of Albany to advance through first round of NCAA playoffs.
UNIVERSITY
TEXAN
UTPD embraces change After changing UTPD’s internal structure last semester, Chief David Carter says the changes have led to better recruiting and increased community engagement.
By Emily Hernandez
@emilylhernandez
semester after the UT Police Department restructured their divisions to improve community engagement through policing practices, UTPD Chief David Carter said the changes are working well. Carter worked over the summer to expand the two traditional police divisions, patrol and investigations, to three divisions, Public Order, Investigations and Analysis, and Community Engagement and Problem-Solving, to build trust with the UT community. “It gives people an opportunity within the department to figure out their interests and where they need to focus,” Carter said. “The challenge for each of them ... is you have a responsibility to find areas of training that fit your division … (and) share that across the division so they all work together, and then take your expertise in whatever that is and present it to our UT community.” Carter said restructuring was shaped by precision policing, which is based on the idea that police departments should work with the larger noncriminal population because public
safety is a shared responsibility between the public and police. The founders of precision policing, William J. Bratton and Jon Murad of the New York Police Department, implemented the practice for NYPD in 2014 after Michael Brown was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri. “Some core principles I talk about in policing (include) recognizing issues of policing reforms, the history of police racial profiling ... and (recognizing) the history of policing and change that so that precision policing is driving us,” Carter said. UTPD began collaborating on a long-term project led by Michael Lauderdale, the Clara Pope Willoughby Centennial Professor, this semester with the Steve Hicks School of Social Work that focuses on building relationships with the UT community through precision policing. “The concept of community policing is for police officers to be agents of building ‘social capital,’ which generally refers to social norms where people look out for each other,” Lauderdale said in an email. “This is in contrast to many police forces I see that will concentrate on social order (managing traffic) or
Update on The Daily Texan verification process By Catherine Marfin @thedailytexan
Last month, the Texan staff was contacted by a spokesperson from the city of Austin with concerns about an article that quoted two city of Austin officials. Both of the city officials told our staff that they had never given an interview to the reporter who wrote it, senior news reporter Sara Johnson. An internal investigation by our staff into those allegations determined that the quotes were fabricated. We let the reporter go and retracted the two articles, which we confirmed contained fabricated quotes. After publishing my initial statement regarding the issue, myself and the Texan staff began the process of verifying the sources in all of Johnson’s published articles. Aside from the two articles we’ve already retracted, Johnson had 37 articles published between February and November 2019, for a total of about 110 quoted sources. Our staff has worked diligently over the last two weeks to contact each of these individuals. In standing by our goal of
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lauren ibanez
/ the daily texan staff
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NATION
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
US government releases debt, earnings data by major
UT Senate introduces one-third of legislation planned in agenda By Neelam Bohra @neelambohratx
emma overholt
By Graysen Golter @graysen_golter
The United States Department of Education released data on student debt and firstyear graduate salary ranges for the first time last month to help students make more informed decisions when it comes to choosing their field of study. “Every student is unique,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a press release. “What they study, as
well as when, where and how they chose to pursue their education will impact their future. That’s why we worked to deliver a product that is customizable and transparent — a tool that provides real information students need to make informed, personalized decisions about their education.” The department released the data as part of a redesign of the online tool College Scorecard, which allows users to research and compare institutions based on factors such as
/ the daily texan staff
programs, costs and admission rates, according to the press release. Eli Mansour, the department’s deputy press secretary, said the department hopes this new information will help better inform schools as they consider how to set prices for their programs. Mansour said in an email that the data shows earnings in different fields of study vary widely. According to the data, UT graduates’ median total H I G H E R PAGE 2
UT Senate of College Councils passed legislation related to two of the six initiatives it planned on introducing this semester, according to its 2019-20 agenda. They passed one resolution in support of expanding the definition of no-contact directives, and another in support of creating a survey for students to provide feedback for Quest, an online learning platform. The four resolutions Senate has not introduced support expanding the philosophy curriculum, creating a virtual counseling service, reducing barriers to orientation for families with less access and creating deadlines for faculty reporting academic dishonesty. Senate vice president Katie Lee said they are currently working on the other resolutions but will wait until next semester to introduce them. “We always set ambitious goals, but this was just a strategy to plan the meeting flow of how we were going to orient our policy planning,” said Lee, a Plan II and Arabic flagship junior. “A lot of those (resolutions) are nearing the finishing of creation.” Senate president Elena Ivanova said the Senate, which meets twice a month, usually
does not pass as much during the fall semester. “The first semester is really having conversations with administrators and setting groundwork,” said Ivanova, a public health, government and Plan II senior. “Once there’s a course of action in place, we take (legislation) to break to work on the items and make them more concise and clear.
We have really shifted the culture of certain Senate legislation, and it’s become a lot more focused on student issues.” ELENA IVANOVA senate president
We end up passing most things (spring) semester.” Ivanova said three joint resolutions, which go through all three legislative student organizations, have passed this semester. One of these joint resolutions introduced the no-contact directive initiative, which allows the Title
IX office to prevent two people from making contact out of concern for student safety. Ivanova said joint resolutions can cause other legislation to take longer to pass. “We have really shifted the culture of certain Senate legislation, and it’s become a lot more focused on student issues,” Ivanova said. “I’ve loved the collaboration we’ve had with Student Government and Graduate Student Assembly this semester because we’ve had to think about issues that are intersectional and how we can pass meaningful legislation.” Ivanova also said the first semester serves as a learning period for new members of Senate. Sameeha Rizvi, a Senate at-large member and public health freshman, was a co-author of a joint resolution asking the University to provide more free menstrual products. Rizvi said this helped her learn how to write legislation faster than others. “You have to write legislation in the most efficient and well-worded way possible,” Rizvi said. “You have to be well-educated on the subject you’re writing about, and it’s hard. There is a lot of bureaucracy around it. I was shocked I was able to do this as a freshman, but I found something I was really U T S E N AT E
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