Women's basketball drops neck-to-neck game

Comets return to the courts with losses against #23 Hardin-Simmons and McMurry War Hawks

ANDRÉ AVERION Mercury Staff

February 4th: Loss against #23 Hardin-Simmons 48-67.

The Comets’ five-game win streak came to a halt on Feb 4 with a defeat against Hardin-Simmons University. This is the second time the Comets have lost to the Cowgirls, who are currently undefeated in this season of the American Southwest Conference (ASC).

In a rematch against McMurry, the Comets barely dropped a close game. This is the first time the Comets have lost against the War Hawks this season, which dropped the Comets from fourth place standing in the ASC to fifth place.

The Comets and War Hawks went back and forth, tying seven times throughout the game and exchanging leading scores 13 times. The Comets scored a season best of 46.4% attempted field goals and tied for the season low of 50% for free throws.

Shirley spent most of his life playing and coaching soccer in the United States and in his home country of Scotland. With years of experience under his belt, including time spent playing major league soccer with Sporting Kansas City, Shirley hopes his advanced knowledge of the game will help him lead the young, promising women’s team. However, with almost every player from the 2022 season returning for fall 2023, Shirley said they might struggle to balance the strengths of returning players with the new players of next year’s freshman class.

Head Coach Joe Shotland said he saw this as a learning experience for the team to improve.

“It’s always tough, you know,” Shotland said. “Obviously you want to win in home court, but I thought we learned today, I thought we got some good action.”

The women's team was holding on to the second place in ASC standing, but this recent game dropped them to fourth, as they scored only 27.8% of attempted field goals and a season low of 0% for 3-pointers. The Comets’ offensive maintained a lead in both halves, with a peak lead numbering at 22 points.

STEPHEN SHIRLEY

Freshman center Kyra Samuels — typi- cally a defensive player — was the top scorer of the game, with 11 points consisting of four field goals and five free throws, complemented by two blocks and a career best of seven rebounds. Her offensive play led her to break seven personal records. Junior guard Kaylee Boykin, who scored 10 points, made a personal best with eight rebounds.

Sophomore Trystan Clark, who scored eight points and made four rebounds, made a seasonal best in attempted field goals amounting to 10.

February 7th: Loss against McMurry 65-68.

“With Kansas, I didn’t get to play much,” Shirley said. “So, as a coach, that gives me the perspective that I’ve been the best player on my team and also probably surplus to the requirements. I think it helps me deal with players because … I’ve been in every situation they’ve been in, so when you’re dealing with them, you kind of have that empathy no matter what position they’re in.”

Shirley said the transition to head coach felt natural since he spent the last two years as an assistant for the men’s team under coach Jason Hirsch. Going into the 2023 season, Shirley said he intends to bring changes to

Senior guard Lauren Fulenwider broke two personal records with 31 minutes played and five assists, while also providing for her team with 12 points consisting of four field goals and four three pointers. Fulenwider was the top scorer of the game. Senior guard Jordan Maxwell broke a personal record for 3-pointers and achieved her first double-double, scoring 10 points and 10 assists. Junior Blythe William and senior Diane Hurst both contributed 11 points with Williams providing another five rebounds.

“We’re going to learn from it,” Shotland said. “Nobody likes losing, but it’s always about how you respond, right?”

Men's tennis team recovers from snowstorm with crushing win

The UTD men’s tennis team started the 2023 ASC season strong with a win against the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor on Feb. 4 at an away game. The Comets led the doubles 2-1 and ended the singles 5-1, totaling to a 7-2 victory against the Crusaders at the Yvonne Li Tennis Center. Tennis Coach Bryan Whitt said he chose the lineup for the current team in the fall semester when the players had challenge matches against each other.

“The rule is [that] the lineup has to be determined by order of ability,” Whitt said. “So you have to have your best player at one, your second best player at two, and so on down to six. Doubles is the same thing, although it's a little trickier. It's tennis, still, but it's a different skill set. So you have to do that with doubles as well and just kind of pairing up which two players fit together.”

The early February snowstorm halted the men’s tennis team from practicing in the weeks leading up to the game. However, players were able to work out at home from Monday to Thursday and played on the campus courts on Friday.

“The courts had a little bit of moisture on them and ice around still that kind of hadn’t melted yet, but we were able to practice a little bit on Friday,” Whitt said. “The good news is the opposing team didn't have many practice days either. So we didn't kind of go in cold. We

-sion focused on whether UTD would lose money from students paying lower overall tuition fees. After review from the Office of Finances and Budgets and the undergraduate committee, it was brought back for review in the November 2022 faculty meeting with approval from the Office of the Provost. Jessica Murphy, dean of undergraduate education and associate professor of literature, has already begun working to ensure this policy benefits the students currently enrolled.

“It will have a positive effect on students,” Murphy said. “I think that it can help them, especially in majors that do not already require 51 upper division hours as part of the major requirements. I think it can help them graduate faster. It can help them get additional potentially 2000 level work that helps them succeed in their major as their free elective. So they just have a little bit more freedom in the curriculum for those majors.”

This policy update will be a revision in the first 40 pages of the UTD catalog, which list the academic policies that apply to all seven schools. This will automatically apply to all current and future students. Mur-

AI CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 and providing more one on one interactions will diminish students’ ability to generate automated answers while also expanding curriculum.

“It’ll make assignments a little richer, maybe a little deeper [and] require more thought and critical thinking,” Ashmore said.

UTD has said that the use of ChatGPT or any similar AI programs in lieu of genuine student work will be considered plagiarism and a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.

Specifically labeled under academic dishonesty, the disciplinary committee plans to treat first time offenders with a warning and a zero on the assignment, with further punishments to be assessed when they occur. Shaquelle Massey, director of the office of community standards and

JIM CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 that has since been developed over.

“The history of race relations and the history of Dallas has been built over, has been paved over, and when we get to actually know this real history, we can begin to see the layers of our city’s history and better understand why we are where we are today,” Stewart said. “Because we don't live in a racial utopia in the city of Dallas, and you know there is a reason behind that. If we try to hide that history, if we try to pave it over, then we’re doing ourselves a disservice to try to understand where we are today.”

The graduate students and Stewart spent the second half of their course creating and installing the exhibit with the help of AHT’s financial resources and counseling Old City Park for information on the Shotgun House. They spent a vast amount of time choosing which artifacts and panels to include in this exhibit and how to cater to the public sphere. The decision-making process was implemented in a collaborative manner, giving students a role in opening an original history exhibit.

“We all ended up with a much better knowledge of what it means to be a practicing public historian, which means being able to do handson history with the public that I, and now my students, are very passionate

BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 build out and make available for everyone.”

Vazhekatt said being both a CEO and student results in lot of overtime work. Combined with being on the soccer team, his professional and education commitments usually mean Vazhekatt’s work-life balance is put in a compromising situation. He manages all this by making sure to schedule his classes and work obligations on designated days of the week.

“It’s been consistency, right from the beginning, if I kind of lacked a little consistency at any point then then that’s when the motivation and sort of the trajectory starts to slow down,” Vazhekatt said. “But because I’m consistent, and the people that I phy has already written a memo to include students graduating in the spring and summer of 2023. While all UTD schools are impacted by this change, NSM and ECS are particularly impacted by this change, as they contain the most majors that had a minimum graduation requirement of 51 upper-division credit hours. In particular, according to the academic senate, students were having trouble fulfilling all of their class requirements with little room to experience other electives or graduate within four years. Amy Walker, associate dean of ECS, believes this will help reverse that issue and welcome new students.

“Now I think we have an opportunity,” Amy Walker said, “I think it opens up possibilities for some students who want to double major, [and] I think there are some possibilities … to make it easier for our transfer students.”

The policy was changed for three reasons tat affect student graduation and academic success. One complaint that the academic senate received is that students could not graduate in the four year requirement, especially if they had failed or withdrawn from certain classes.

Secondly, the Academic Senate conduct, wants to take an educational approach to the discussion of AI technology and student misuse.

“The way that I relate to students cheating is essentially [an] umbrella,” Massey said. “There are different forms of cheating or different stems as I will put it. And so the stems could be plagiarism, fabrication, collaboration, collusion — but cheating is essentially that catch-all. So, using Al would be subject to our academic integrity policy, and it would be in the form of cheating.”

OpenAI presented the latest classifier on Jan. 31 to help educators distinguish between human and machine-generated essays. However, this classifier is only accurate 26% of the time.

While educators and disciplinary committees precariously prepare for the wave of students who will be us- about,” said Stewart The exhibit caters to the Shotgun House’s floorplan, telling the story of the house’s role in the former working-class neighborhood and more broadly explaining Black Dallas residents’ history. The exhibit starts with an introduction summarizing three rooms that present history chronologically. The first room focuses on the 1870s to the 1910s, the second room details the 1920s to the 1930s and the last room shows the 1940s to the present. Beyond this, there is a breakdown of history beginning with explaining the house, the neighborhood and Dallas as a whole. The exhibit also discusses the future of this threatened architecture style.

“It has been a target of developers and gentrification that has really wiped it away from much of the cities landscape,” Stewart said. “But there are people who are really making sure that we preserve and record the history of these houses…”

The exhibit pays homage to these forgotten communities and strives to deliver the historical significance of Dallas’ background as it relates to the Black community.

“I'll tell you one thing my students told me that they learned and that they walked away from doing this exhibit,” Stewart said. “So many of us walk through Dallas and we don’t know the history around us, and work with are also consistent, and we all motivate each other, that’s been the number one trait that's like pretty much bolstered us to continue to build out this product and help our users.”

UTD has supplemented Vazhekatt’s design ideas, offering him a new perspective on entrepreneurship as a student and providing insight on technical aspects of his business.

Vazhekatt correlates learning experiences on the soccer field and in his courses to his role in the start-up.

“I stopped to be a leader on the field and doing that has also enabled me to be a leader of this company,” Vazhekatt said. “I’m a computer science student, and I’m building this product. I’m actually programming the product, right. So, a lot of the stuff that I learned identified that students were unable to minor or double major effectively. The average number of credit hours for undergraduate students requires 120 hours to graduate, translating to roughly 15 credit hours a semester. For students in NSM or ECS, for example, a single major could require up to 128 hours. Double majors would have to balance a minimum of 157 hours. As a result, double major students would have to take 19 to 20 credit hours a semester while managing professional, extracurricular and personal responsibilities.

Finally, transfer students were deterred from joining UTD since other similar ranked schools to UTD had a 45 credit hour requirement. The academic senate recognized that UTD was losing potential community college students or international students because of the high demand credits.

“I think this [lowered requirement] definitely provides added flexibility to students,” Prakash said. “It opens up about six to eight hours to do other electives or minors or things of that sort, so that definitely does increase flexibility and helps every student tailor their learning to their interests.” ing resources like ChatGPT for their essays and reports, AI’s use is not completely in opposition to education. It may open a transitional period for new methods of education in the future.

“We don’t know how artificial intelligence is going to develop and mature,” Ashmore said. “I suspect it’s going to become very sophisticated, and it will become a learning tool. That's what a calculator is: it’s a learning tool. You want to get to the concepts and the theories in math to be able to apply them and use them in new and unique ways. You don't want to be held up by the arithmetic of mathematics. Let's use that information. Let's apply it. Let's synthesize it. Let's evaluate it and maybe create something new with it. And that's what we do at university.” more than that, there’s a history that we can't see. You don't look around you and realize that for nearly a century, this was part of Black Dallas, that this was a thriving black community that was then decimated by what the local government and what developers wanted, mostly for white Dallas sites.”

“It has been a target of developers and gentrification that has really wiped it away from much of the cities landscape,” Stewart said. “But there are people who are really making sure that we preserve and record the history of these houses...”

The exhibit pays homage to these forgotten communities and strives to deliver the historicalsignificance of Dallas’ background as it relates to the Black community.

“I'll tell you one thing my students told me that they learned and that they walked away fromdoing this exhibit,” Stewart said. “So many of us walk through Dallas and we don’t know the history around us, and more than that, there’s a history that we can't see. You don't look around you and realize that for nearly a century, this was part of Black Dallas, that this was a thriving black community that was then decimated by what the local government and what developers wanted, mostly for white Dallas sites.” in class and different classes that I'm taking are supplementing the work that I’m doing with Routora …”

Vazhekatt is taking his company further by announcing plans to design a mobile app with his associates. He wants to push boundaries to make driving trips more efficient for people, while also utilizing and engaging in college life. Vazhekatt aims to maximize the potential of Routora’s purpose and mission.

“In the end, if we can save our users time spent on the road and money spent on gas as well as reduce our carbon footprint, that is what accomplishes our mission. And if we can continue to do that, then I see a bright future ahead of us,” Vazhekatt said.