VaccinE Priority

Feb. 1, 2021| The Mercury NEWS

UTD works with UT Southwestern to vaccinate priority populations

Vaccines will not be mandated unless specified by state legislature

FATIMAH AZEEM

Mercury Staff

Although UTD has not received COVID-19 vaccine doses from the state of Texas, the university and UT Southwestern Medical Clinic have been able to work together to vaccinate UTD employees that fall under Phase 1A and Phase 1B vaccine priority.

According to the Texas Department of State Health, individuals prioritized by Phase 1A include healthcare and front-line workers, while those prioritized by Phase 1B include people aged 65 and older or 16 and older with chronic medical conditions.

Along with those populations, Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín said that UT Southwestern has offered to extend their COVID-19 vaccination services to employees in the Student Health Center and police department. Clinicians and clinical students are currently being contacted for vaccinations, and campus SHC and police department workers can expect to be contacted soon.

“That’s all that UT Southwestern is doing right now,” Martín said. “They are only vaccinating those priority populations. The lack of supply and the need to prioritize our healthcare workers and first responders, and then those who are most vulnerable and at highest risk, is really driving the whole distribution system right now.”

In a survey conducted by The Mercury, out of 260 respondents, 91.5% of students said they think UTD should offer COVID-19 vaccinations on campus. 86.9% of students said they would sign up to get vaccinated on campus if a vaccine was offered. Human resources management senior Haley Deininger said she wants to get vaccinated on campus to protect her immunocompromised family and community members.

“I don’t want to be the reason that someone catches COVID-19 and has to end up on a ventilator,” Deininger said. “I really do believe there is a lot of power in vaccinating a younger population because we’re crowded together and we also see a lot of case spikes and a lot of kind of irresponsible behavior at times from kids who are in college.”

When it comes to widespread vaccination on campus this semester, Martín said that it is unlikely that UTD will receive enough COVID-19 vaccine doses directly from the state because UTD does not have an affiliated medical school or hospital to provide them on a large scale. However, students, faculty and staff currently in Phase 1A or 1B may register to receive a vaccination elsewhere, through large vaccine hubs – which don’t require county residence in the county where the hub is located – or local vaccine providers.

JUHI KARNALKAR | MERCURY STAFF

“In terms of the larger university population, we’re kind of in the same boat as everybody else,” Martín said. “We’re kind of waiting for supply to catch up with demand at which point, maybe it’ll make sense for us as an institution to be offering vaccines to students and to employees. It may make more sense just to send everybody to the local CVS to get their vaccine. So, we’re just kind of waiting to see what will happen in terms of the distribution system.”

To help UTD gauge who is still at risk of infection, Martín said in an email announcement that a voluntary vaccine reporting form has been made available for UTD members who have already received a COVID-19 vaccination.

Of the UT system institutions, UT Austin and UT El Paso are the only other schools that have made forms for requesting COVID-19 vaccination available to their campus community. UT Austin Media Manager Veronica Trevino said that since

SEE VACCINE, PAGE 14

MATTHEW WHITE | MERCURY STAFF UTD plans to prevent community spread by periodically selecting 7.5% of campus residents for random testing.

Testing Testing – for COVID-19

Breakdown of COVID testing results on campus at start of semseter

TYLER BURKHARDT

Mercury Staff

As COVID incidence spikes across North Texas to the tune of more than 2000 new cases per day in the DFW metroplex, the results of UTD’s proactive testing program prove encouraging.

Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín, head of the COVID-19 Task Force at UTD, said that while testing capabilities were limited last semester, the process of scaling up last semester’s pilot program with UT Southwestern enabled UTD to instate a free and mandatory testing program for all students staying in University Housing this semester.

“We started last semester with testing our athletes on a regular basis, as well as personnel that were working in our research labs,” Martín said. “Scaling up and learning from that was really what allowed us to have confidence that we could test all of the on-campus residents within the first couple weeks of them returning to campus. And by all accounts, it was a pretty successful effort.”

Martín credits the smoothness of this operation to the administration of the university’s housing staff and to the work of UTD’s UMER emergency medical technicians who were responsible for directly facilitating student administration of the COVID-tests.

Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Matt Grief, who has overseen the actual testing process, reports further on the success of the proactive testing program.

Feb. 1, 2021 | The Mercury NEWS

UTD Moot Court teams make nationals

Team member ranks twelfth orator out of 200 competitors

EMAAN BANGASH

Managing Editor

For the first time in the club’s history, five of UTD’s Moot Court teams advanced to the American Moot Court National Competition this month.

The three-day competition consisted of students from universities across the nation receiving a hypothetical case and using current U.S. case law to argue for one side or another. While the teams didn’t advance within the national tournament, Barbara Kirby, Moot Court coach and director of the Pre-Law Advising Center, said the last time UTD Moot Court went to nationals was in each of the last two years, in which only one team advanced. In addition to the nine total people from UTD that went to nationals this year, out of the 200 competitors, economics sophomore Joy Peng was ranked twelfth orator.

Kirby said that at first, she felt depressed about training virtually since it lacked the connection of in-person interactions. The initial transition to practicing on Zoom and the increased number of newcomers to Moot Court made it difficult overall, Kirby said, until they arranged for an intra-squad scrimmage and invited former Moot Court members to judge practices.

“You know, we get these negatives from the pandemic. But there are also some positives, and one of the positives was that my former team members who are away at law school or doing their gap years could come back and judge online. And I didn’t have to make them get up at 9:00 in the morning and come in on a Saturday to do it.” Kirby said. “We did three rounds just like you would in a tournament. Ashley [Coen] put everyone into breakout rooms just like it would be at the tournament. It was like we knew what we were doing. We had the positive feedback and so we went into the first real tournament just in a really good place.”

Political science senior Sherin George participated in Moot Court before the pandemic and said that the virtual environment allowed her to meet more competitors who were arguing on similar issues as her.

“Now with everything being online, it’s like ‘Hey, does anyone want to jump on a quick FaceTime and talk about this issue? Does anyone want to just like talk about the nerves we have for tomorrow?’” George said. “And those talks would inevitably turn into like ‘How are we doing? How are we feeling and what’s going on in our lives right now?’”

The case for this year involved a First Amendment rights issue, specifically the right to be free from compelled speech, where the petitioner was penalized by the (hypothetical) city “for his refusal to provide a service for hire for a wedding between two people of the same sex.” Teams are made up of two people, both of which address different Constitutional issues. George said this year the competition rules were different in that competitors could not communicate with their partner at all, whereas during the in-person tournaments partners could sit next to one another and discuss notes and rebuttal points.

“So, two partners would compete on the same team technically, but there was no sort of communication or interaction allowed at all during the round,” George said. “That made it harder for you to feel as if you were on a team with someone. What it did mean, though, is that there was a lot more preparation and time spent with each other outside of tournaments because you had to know your partner’s issue.”

For political science junior Anastasia Whittemore, the virtual competition meant less opportunity to network and make friends because competitors would often turn their cameras off after arguing their points.

“Everyone just had their cameras off, and I feel like in-person maybe we could have gotten to network and get to know each other a little more,” Whittemore said. “But here with this online environment we just wait for the judges to get there and afterwards we just sort of turn our cameras off again.”

Kirby said that despite the loss this time, this is not the end game: another possible tournament this spring at SMU and an intra-squad tournament is rapidly approaching. In addition, with several club members returning, Kirby said the team next year is going to be strong.

“Sometimes you have to take disadvantage and turn it into advantage, and so we are trying to forget about all the downside of not being in person and leverage everything we can about being virtual,” Kirby said. “And we did it with moot court; we’re doing it with pre-law.”

BARBARA KIRBY| COURTESY

Nine UTD competitors made it to nationals, hosted virtually this year.