Serving The University Of Texas At Austin Community Since 1900 @thedailytexan | thedailytexan.com
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Volume 120, Issue 94
NEWS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFE&ARTS
PAGE 3
PAGE 4
PAGE 6
PAGE 8
Recent city report finds racial disparities in APD traffic stops last year.
UT needs to promote its ethnic studies programs to all students.
Student-veterans discuss growth and new services in UT’s veteran program.
Texas brings in third-straight Top 10 recruiting class after successful National Signing Day.
CITY
UNIVERSITY
Commission recommends cashless ban for Austin businesses By Hannah Williford @HannahWillifor2
input was considered, such as the page of information and student demands handed out to audience members. “It was difficult to come to a complete consensus on all details, but the working group considered and responded to all input to achieve the event objectives,” Bird said. The page handed out to attendees also contained a large “NO” on one side of the sheet. Huynh said she designed this based on advice from community groups as a way to express disagreement with the administration. “(We wanted) some way to visually voice dissonance and disagreement with whatever the people on stage would say,” Huynh said. “We don’t have to just sit there and listen to administrators and just take what they’re saying.” Islam said she was surprised when
The Human Rights Commission of the city of Austin passed a recommendation Jan. 27 to ban businesses from going cashless. Human rights commissioner Garry Brown put forth a recommendation that said cashless businesses are not accessible to those without a bank account. Brown said he has seen other cities starting to go cashless, and he wants Austin to get ahead of the trend. “(Cashless is) not what we should be doing right now because not everybody has access to a bank account or to a credit card or even a debit card,” Brown said. “Austin is so tech savvy that I want to be able to be proactive on something instead of reactive.” Brown said cities including New York and San Francisco currently have a cashless ban, and he plans to meet with the management of Tiff’s Treats to understand what requiring cash would look like to a business. The recommendation would not affect businesses with five employees or less, giving leeway to people running their own business, Brown said. “We should all be for more inclusive consumerism than preferred customers,” Brown said. “It’s one thing for a car to be thousands of dollars and another thing to walk into a 7-Eleven and you want a pack of gum and you have to use the credit card or a debit card or some sort of card for that. It’s not right, and I think it can be discriminatory.”
F O R U M PAGE 2
C A S H L E S S PAGE 3
eddie gaspar
/ the daily texan file
Students raise papers reading “NO” when they felt the panelist’s answers were unsatisfactory during the Sexual Misconduct Forum held at a Belo auditorium on Jan. 27.
Students frustrated with forum Organizers’ voices ‘overpowered’ by administration in planning sexual misconduct town hall. By Lauren Grobe
@grobe_lauren
tudent members of the Misconduct Working Group said their voices were overpowered and their ideas ignored during meetings to plan a forum about sexual misconduct on campus. The group was formed after months
of student protests against the continued employment of UT faculty found in violation of sexual misconduct policies. One demand of protesters at the time was a town hall on sexual misconduct. That forum was held on Jan. 27. Tasnim Islam, a Misconduct Working Group student member, said she was frustrated with the group while planning the forum. “It was all done with good intentions,” said Islam, a Plan II and women and gender studies sophomore. “But it has been very difficult to feel like the time that we’re spending together is valuable time.” Students and administrators disagreed on the logistics of the forum, such as the size of the venue, the presence of police and how the forum would be moderated, Islam said. “From the very beginning, we fought for the large spaces like the Bass
Concert Hall,” Islam said. “It went from 50 people allowed in a room to 300 (at Belo), which was a small win.” The forum took place in the Belo Auditorium at the Belo Center for New Media, which seats 295 people. There were also two overflow rooms containing at least 30 people in each room. Bass Concert Hall seats 3,000. Student protest organizer Lynn Huynh said there was miscommunication between the administration and the student members about whether there would be police present at the forum. “From the very beginning of us organizing this town hall to literally the day before, we were promised there would be no police,” said Huynh, an advertising and women and gender studies junior. “Student feedback was not taken seriously.” According to a statement from media spokesperson J.B. Bird, student
RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY
UT scientists develop strategy to protect bees
Online nutritional sciences master’s program to start this fall
By Neha Madhira @nehamira14
UT scientists have engineered strains of bacteria that could live in the guts of honey bees and protect them from mites and viruses, according to a UT press release. The strains would also protect honey bees from colony collapse, according to the release. This is a disorder that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency website. “Bees have a microbiome just as humans do, and this microbiome can contribute to bee health,” said Sean Leonard, a cell and molecular biology graduate student. “We started out developing genetic tools for the bacteria that live in the microbiome as a way to understand how they function.” Leonard said his research team then came across the use of double-stranded RNA to impact bee gene function and protect them
against viruses and Varroa mites, which feed on bees. The team activates the bees’ immune systems to help them fight off viral threats, Leonard said. “The way that double-stranded RNA is usually applied is kind of being fed or injected,” Leonard said. “We thought (we could instead) produce it using the bacteria that live inside the bee gut because they are a lot easier to grow. We got some promising results and expanded on that.” Beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honey bee colonies last winter, according to a Bee Informed Partnership survey. This has been the greatest loss since the survey started 13 years ago. “Bee losses are critically important, and they can change each year, but it has been an ongoing problem for years,” Leonard said. “(Bee loss) wasn’t the main motivating factor of this research because we were initially interested in researching how these bacteria interact
The University’s nutritional sciences master’s program will be available on the online course provider platform edX starting this fall. Since 2017, UT’s nutritional sciences master’s program has offered two online degree options: health promotion and disease prevention, and biomedical and functional nutrition, said Sara Sweitzer, nutritional sciences associate professor and director of the online nutritional sciences master’s program. Sweitzer said by offering these courses on the edX platform, the University will have the potential to reach more people. Sweitzer said in the future the program would possibly branch out with other general instruction courses to offer nutrition science information to a wider audience. The University currently has 21 course offerings on the edX
B E E S PAGE 3
O N L I N E PAGE 2
By Nataleah Small @nataleahjoy
rocky higine
/ the daily texan staff