Feb. 10, 2020
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THE MERCURY
UTDMERCURY.COM
FINDING YOUR
voice
Deaf America's Got Talent finalist rehearses, performs with UTD choir MADISON YORK Opinion Editor
For singer and songwriter Mandy Harvey, all her music holds a special, personal meaning for her — not in the least because she can’t hear it. As an up-and-coming vocal and music education major at Colorado State University, the future was looking bright for Harvey in late 2006. Then her life turned upside-down; a connective tissue disorder — Ehlers-Danlos syndrome — caused her to lose her residual hearing. No longer could she hear the notes of the music she so loved; no longer could she hear her own voice. “You know, there would have been nothing I could have said (to myself at that time) that would have taken away the pain, or made any sense of the situation,” Harvey said. “The only way to really get through trauma is time and a lot of hard work.” At first, Harvey said, the going was slow. After leaving
Colorado State, she withdrew into herself. Eventually, she said, she realized that she was responsible for moving herself forward, instead of waiting for the world to change her situation for her. “The biggest thing that I decided to do in moving forward was celebrate the little victories — and sometimes that was waking up in the morning,” Harvey said. “Or taking a step outside and looking at the sun even if I was pissed off and I went right back inside. I made a step that I didn’t make yesterday. And so that was a victory.” Fast forward to 2017. By that time, Harvey had released three albums, and was preparing to audition for America’s Got Talent, NBC’s acclaimed reality TV show and talent competition. The AGT judges were so stunned by Harvey’s audition that she received Simon Cowell’s golden buzzer, catapulting her to the live shows later in the competition. Out of all the contestants, Harvey placed fourth overall.
→ SEE HARVEY,
PAGE 10 BHAVAN MEHTA | MERCURY STAFF
ALESANDRA BELL | MERCURY STAFF
New coronavirus not major threat to students
JONATHAN PALANT | COURTESY
UTD's choir performed alongside other choir and orchestra groups in Ciudad, Juarez in January.
UTD choir holds concert at U.S.-Mexico border Performance promotes healing through music following 2019 El Paso shooting CALIS LIM
Mercury Staff
Standing shoulder to shoulder, singing out the last few notes of “Let There Be Peace On Earth,” the singers varying in their ages, backgrounds, languages and nationalities conveyed a message of unity and support. From Jan. 18-19, Jonathan Palant — director of UTD’s choir and Dallas’ Credo Community — organized “Reconnecting Through Art” festivals in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico on the first day and El Paso, Texas on the second. As a result of months of planning alongside a contact in Mexico, Palant was able to bring around 40 UTD students and Dallas’ Credo Community Choir. Palant came up with the idea after a gunman from Allen killed 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso on Aug. 3 of last year. When he first heard word of the shooting that night, Palant was at a play that addressed immigration issues
at the border. “The only thing I knew to do was to bring music to the border to promote healing,” Palant said. “It wasn’t about the music, it was about the music as a conduit to bring people together in peace.” UTD’s choir and Dallas’s Credo Community Choir sang alongside Ciudad Juárez’s Esperanza Azteca Youth Orchestra and Chorus, ensembles from the University of Texas at El Paso and renowned opera singer Frederica von Stade. “The goal was to bring communities together that otherwise wouldn’t have come together, and we did that through music and art,” Palant said. “Those from Mexico, those from South Texas, those from North Texas. The goal was never about a big audience; it was to support the El Paso community and say that we don’t want the community to be remembered because of a shooting, we want the community to be thought of as coming together through art.” This form of art, in music, has various
meanings to the students who volunteered and had to fund themselves to go on the trip. Visual and performing arts senior Benjamin Wise said that art is a universal language. “We went to El Paso and people who spoke Spanish and people who didn’t speak Spanish still had this moment of coming together and bonding over the music that they shared,” Wise said. “It’s a way of showing empathy without necessarily being able to directly communicate with someone.” In addition to performing to the community, the UTD choir went as a large group to a local homeless shelter to do community service for a few hours. “That was more of a corporeal, here’s a thing we can do,” Solvay Linde, an ATEC and computer science sophomore said. “We can help you make sandwiches for people and sort things, but just being there, I think, the unity we provided just
→ SEE CHOIR,
PAGE 10
CINDY FOLEFACK Editor-in-Chief
Recent reports estimate over 34,000 cases of coronavirus worldwide, with 0.0003% of those cases in the U.S. Despite the low case rate, media coverage of the virus has sparked nationwide concern. Coronavirus refers to a family of viruses usually found in animals that are also responsible for the common cold. The latest strain, 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019 nCoV, made the jump from an animal carrier to a human host in December in Wuhan, China. The first case was reported Dec. 1 and has led to 723 deaths, giving it a fatality rate of approximately two percent. This makes 2019 nCoV less than half as deadly as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, a different strain of coronavirus that first appeared in 2002. Associate professor of biology John Burr said that the 2019 nCoV’s genome has a unique feature that makes it less harmful than originally thought. “It turns out the coronavirus genome is quite large. The coronavirus RNA polymerase can actually do what DNA polymerase does,” Burr said. “If it makes a mistake, it can be detected and go back and correct it and then continue on again.” Polymerases are enzymes used to replicate genetic information. RNA polymer-
ases are error-prone, which means they make errors during replication which lead to mutations that can make viruses more deadly. Unlike most RNA polymerases, the 2019 nCoV’s polymerase has an editing function, minimizing mutations and decreasing the chances of the virus becoming more deadly. The 2019 nCoV is believed to have spread from Wuhan’s food markets and originated from a bat. While bats aren’t commonly eaten in Wuhan, they are known carriers of disease and can spread diseases to other animals, which are eventually consumed. Burr said that viruses typically use a host’s immune system to eventually kill them. “It's often not so much that a virus that kills you, but your own immune system kills you. It's called a cytokine storm,” he said. “Some viruses, especially the 1917 Spanish flu that killed so many people, really superactivated the immune system and it was the inflammatory response of the immune system, all those cytokines that actually was lethal. So, I suspect that's gonna turn out to be true for coronaviruses.” Bats have a natural ability to suppress the inflammatory response normally activated by viruses, which is why they’re such good hosts. They allow the virus to
→ SEE CORONAVIRUS,
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