Feb. 24, 2020
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the pregnant scholar
THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM
Exhibit honors Holocaust liberators
An inside look at parenting students
Ackerman Center display features accounts from Texan WWII soldiers
MADISON YORK Opinion Editor
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
The daily pressures of college can often feel like too much to handle, and for some students, college life coincides with the stress of parenting. Zoey Hoggatt, a second year graduate student in ATEC animation, begins her Mondays at 4:30 a.m. She has enough time to dress and have a cup of coffee before it’s time to get her 18-monthold son, Jace, ready for the day. After dropping Jace off at her mother’s house, Hoggatt heads to her teaching assistant position at 8:30 a.m., then to her office hours at noon, back home for some homework, lunch and a few chores, and finally back to campus in time for her evening class. Hoggatt said she is very
lucky to have her partner and her family nearby to help balance taking care of Jace with school and work. “I’m working on a group project, and unfortunately I can’t meet at night because I’m putting my son to bed,” Hoggatt said. “I had to explain to them, like, my partner has to work, my mom needs a break — that’s my scheduled time to be with my son.” Hoggatt isn’t alone in being a student and parent. According to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, which pulls data straight from the U.S. Department of Education, student-parents make up 12% of the student body at four-year public universities. As of spring 2020, UTD has 29,543 under-
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CINDY FOLEFACK | MERCURY STAFF
SAMANTHA LOPEZ | MERCURY STAFF
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The banners will be on display outside the Ackerman Center until March 12. AYESHA ASAD Mercury Staff
In a hallway just outside the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies lies an array of banners featuring 21 individuals: the Texas servicemen who liberated concentration camps in the aftermath of World War II. This is “The Texas Liberator: Witness to the Holocaust,” an exhibition curated by The Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission and is part of the Texas Liberator Project. The exhibit, originally created at Texas Tech University, is located on the fourth floor of the Erik Jonsson Academic Center and will remain there until March 12. From March 7-10, it will be moved to the Alumni Center for the Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. The banners depict an introduction of the American perspective of World War II and the rise of Nazism, then into firsthand accounts of Texan soldiers who witnessed the Nazi concentration camps. Each account is detailed and deeply personal, a diary of individuals who could not forget what they saw. Nils Roemer, interim dean of the School of Arts & Humanities and director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, said that the exhibit was brought to UTD in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was on Jan. 27. Along the hallway, the tall blackand-white banners are lined up in rows, carefully placed in niches. The banners illustrating the history of the Holocaust and a map of the concentration camps are situated on the left side, while the liberators’ accounts and quotes are written on banners occupying the right side. Roemer said that placing the exhibition in a public hallway, rather than a gallery, invites students who might never have visited a gallery to still come across the exhibit.
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Professor offers free pantry in office to combat food insecurity CINDY FOLEFACK Editor-in-Chief
After finding out that over 40% of college students face food insecurity, one professor took matters into her own hands, building a makeshift pantry in her office for students. Senior lecturer of Brain and Behavioral Sciences Gayle Schwark gained attention for her food pantry on Feb. 10 when she sent an email to her students letting them know it was available to them. One student shared the email on Twitter, where it received over 60,000 likes and a GoFundMe raised nearly $300 for the pantry. Schwark opened the pantry last fall, and now runs it using donations and her own money. “I was in the middle of rearranging my office and stuff and I was like, ‘You know what would be a great use of this bookshelf instead of books that nobody's ever gonna read? How about I put some food on the shelf,’” she said. “The next day, I’d gone to the grocery store and just picked up a bunch of stuff and bought some baskets and that was kind of how it happened.” Although campus resources such as the Comet Cupboard offer assistance to students, Schwark said she wanted to decrease the stigma surrounding food insecurity. “I think there shouldn't be a stigma … I don't think anybody should feel any less than proud to be saying, ‘Hey, I'm spending my money on going to college, so sometimes I need some help,’” she said. “There's nothing wrong with that. I just thought if
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
Schwark was rearranging her office last semester when she decided to use her bookshelf space as a makeshift pantry.
I can at least tell them there's no need to explain, just come on in, grab something and go, then hopefully the students who maybe don't feel comfortable utilizing other resources might use this one.” The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that foodinsecure college students were more likely to have lower grades but were
more active participants in the labor force. Their 2019 survey found that less than 10% of food-insecure students used a campus food pantry. Schwark said that an act of kindness from a stranger, along with current statistics on food insecurity, are what prompted her to open the pantry. She said that at the time, she was working at an accounting firm when a client
came in to pick up payroll for his employees. During their interaction, she complimented the employees at his restaurant. Schwark said that her compliment prompted the client to hand her a stack of coupons for free meals. “This was the day after I had just eaten the last of the food in my house.
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Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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THE MERCURY UTDMERCURY.COM Volume XXXIX No. 45
NEWS
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Editor-in-Chief Cindy Folefack
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Feb. 11 • A school bus hit the left rear bumper of a vehicle and left a note at 800 West Campbell Road. The owner of the vehicle reported the incident at 2:38 p.m. Feb. 14 • Unidentified persons damaged a Starship delivery robot by removing its wheel at Residence Hall Southwest at approximately 11:30 p.m. Feb. 17 • At 12:03 a.m. an officer responded to a call about suspicious persons near Residence Hall Northwest and arrested two males. Feb. 19 • A student reported a stolen iPhone at the Student Union food court at 12:05 p.m.
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Contributors Hadley Archer Ayesha Asad Alesandra Bell Sophie Boutouis Jenna Cherrey Bianca Del Rio Astrid Hernandez Ellis Blake Hidalgo Ruhma Khan Roshan Khichi Calis Lim Snipta Mallick Esther Mathew Elizabeth Nguyen Ben Nguyen Louise Nillas Cecilia Romero Quinn Sherer Sarah Streety Pavan Tauh
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Mailing Address 800 West Campbell Road, SU 24 Richardson, TX 75080-0688 Newsroom Student Union, Student Media Suite SU 1.601 The Mercury is published on Mondays, at two-week intervals during the long term of The University of Texas at Dallas, except holidays and exam periods, and once every four weeks during the summer term. Advertising is accepted by The Mercury on the basis that there is no discrimination by the advertiser in the offering of goods or services to any person, on any basis prohibited by applicable law. The publication of advertising in The Mercury does not constitute an endorsement of products or services by the newspaper, or the UTD administration. Opinions expressed in The Mercury are those of the editor, the editorial board or the writer of the article. They are not necessarily the view of the UTD administration, the Board of Regents or the Student Media Operating Board. Readers are welcome to collect one (1) free copy of The Mercury from any campus stand. Additional copies are available for purchase at 25 cents each in the Student Media Suite (SU 1.601). The Mercury’s editors retain the right to refuse or edit any submission based on libel, malice, spelling, grammar and style, and violations of Section 54.23 (f) (1-6) of UTD policy. Copyright © 2019, The University of Texas at Dallas. All articles, photographs and graphic assets, whether in print or online, may not be reproduced or republished in part or in whole without express written permission.
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Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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NEWS
Putting pen to paper: Note-taking habits Students discuss different strategies to take notes during lecture including color coding, paraphrasing
PAVAN TAUH | MERCURY STAFF
In a survey by The Mercury, 54% of respondents said they took notes on everything during class including what the professor says and the content on the PowerPoint and board. EMAAN BANGASH Managing Editor
There is a myriad of ways to take notes during a lecture, some of which students carry over from their high school experiences and some that they learn while attending college. Survey results reveal that, despite recent studies showing otherwise, UTD students favor written notes over typing out their notes electronically. In a survey of 102 students conducted by The Mercury, 23% of respondents said they took notes on an electronic device such as a phone or laptop. As previously referenced in a previous Mercury article, there is evidence to suggest taking notes on a laptop does not affect information retention. In a 2014 study published in Psychological Science, the authors wrote that although more notes are good, people who type out their notes tend to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than trying to process the information given, which they claim is detrimental to learning. In the survey, 54% of respondents said they took notes on everything during class including what the professor said and the
content presented via PowerPoint or on the board. International political economy senior Alyssa Aman writes down both what the professor says and her own interpretation of the material in her notes. She handwrites her notes using colored pens which she said helps make the information stick in her brain, and said typing out notes didn’t help her do that. “Each color is like a different part. One color would be the topic and then another color will be the subtopic, and then another color would be all that information within that subtopic,” Aman said. “Then along with whatever the professor says, whatever's written on with the PowerPoints, I would write down everything in my own words and divide it. Like, let's say they said one thing or they showed one thing, after I finished writing that I'll write a semicolon and then write it in my own words.” Senior lecturer of the Honors College Eva LaDow requires her students to write out their notes during class to force them to get the most salient pieces of information down, which she said is how students took notes when she attended university,
graduating in 2004. “I don't do it to be cruel or not to acknowledge the technology of the modern era,” LaDow said. “I want students to be focused on the class, just not distracted by technology.” There are students, however, who don’t take notes because it doesn’t benefit them or they don’t feel the need to. In the survey, 7% of respondents said they did not take notes. For project-based classes or classes that deal with a few important concepts, note-taking becomes less necessary. Psychology senior Vartika Varshney said she doesn’t take notes for her business administration minor classes, and she seldom sees other students taking notes either. She said the material they work with involves more rote memorization and intuition than application, and that professors usually will post the slides for students to use. “I know my first couple of JSOM classes, I did take more notes just because I wasn't sure of the difficulty level at first. Then after that I realized … you don't
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ALESANDRA BELL| MERCURY STAFF
According to the survey, 33% of students have a specific way of taking notes.
What is literature research like?
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
Close reading is one method of analyzing literature, only requiring the text. ANJALI VENNA News Editor
Leather-bound books and dusty archives are classic images of what research in the humanities may look like. However, what are examples of research in subjects such as literature and poetry? Jessica Murphy, dean of undergraduate education and associate professor of literary studies, researches English literature from the mid-sixteenth to late-seventeenth century. Her first book, “Virtuous Necessity,” studies women’s conduct manuals from the early modern era. “I have a certain methodology which takes historical texts as cultural texts,” Murphy said. “I was trained in new historicism and cultural materialism, and that means I never read a text and then make meaning out of it by itself. I am always going to also want to know what’s going on historically at that moment.”
For example, while she was studying “The Faerie Queene,” a poem by Edmund Spenser, Murphy noted that a character had multiple strange symptoms, and she realized that the symptoms matched a disease called greensickness, which was mentioned in medical texts of the time period. “I was able to then take that disease and read it back onto the text, so I can say ‘Oh wait a minute, if she's suffering from this and this illness has social and cultural meaning in the time the poem was written in, then we can read that meaning as a layer on top of what we’re already reading,’” she said. On the other hand, there are other methods to study text. One such approach is close reading. “Close reading was developed in response to the G.I. Bill because you suddenly had people coming to college who had not had a classical education, and
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ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR
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LIFE&ARTS
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
Game review: ‘Legends of Runeterra’ Digital card game set in same universe as ‘League of Legends’
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
Computer science freshman Karthik Mohan played as an all-rounder in the Singaporean national cricket team.
ASTRID HERNANDEZ | MERCURY STAFF
BEN NGUYEN Mercury Staff
Riot Games is finally evolving from Riot Game and creating a game besides “League of Legends.” They announced two new projects, one of which is the recently released “Legends of Runeterra.” Riot Games representatives said that they want to make a card game that improves upon others on the market, so how does “Legends of Runeterra” stack up to games like “Hearthstone” and “Magic: The Gathering?” “Legends of Runeterra” is a new digital card game created by Riot Games, revealed alongside “Project A” during “League of Legends’” 10-year anniversary celebration last year. Its mechanics play out similarly to an altered hybrid of both “Hearthstone” and “Magic: The Gathering,” and while it’s currently in a beta state, anyone can play it right now. It’s free to play with in-game purchases, but the monetization is unique in several ways, which is tied to the game’s unique progression system. But how does it play? It combines “Hearthstone’s” mechanics of card health staying constant and max mana increasing on each turn, with Magic’s mechanics of choosing blockers against attackers, mixed with Riot’s new mechanics. Unique to “Legends of Runeterra” include the attack token, Champion level-ups, and the lack of true phases. In “Legends of Runeterra,” the game progresses round by round. Each round, one player gets the attack token, meaning that they go first and can declare an attack on the enemy’s nexus. Turns go back and forth during a round, and players can summon units or cast spells during their turn, once per turn. After an attack is declared, the defending player can choose cards to block, and once the round ends, the attack token goes to the other player. There isn’t a battle phase that happens at
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from cricket to comet Former player for Singapore's national cricket team continues to play leisurely at UTD RUHMA KHAN Mercury Staff
Computer science freshman Karthik Mohan is just like any other student, except for one major difference. At the age of 14, he represented Singapore as a cricket player on the national stage. Mohan played for the team’s under-19 division and said he was introduced to the game while on vacation in India. “I was born in India, and everyone there usually plays cricket in their free time, and how I picked it up was my uncle introduced me to the game (when I was) around 4 years old,” Mohan said. Mohan said he would usually play with his cousins and began to play more competitively when he returned to Singapore and played for his school’s team. “When I was 13 or 14 years old, one of my high school coaches was an ex-National League player,” Mohan said. “He recommended that I should try out for the trials. I went for the trials and then from there, they just picked me.” Mohan said his family and friends were encouraging of his decision to pursue cricket and that their support made it easier to balance his academics and the sport. “My family was a bit hesitant because they were wondering how I was going to be able to cope, my studies and cricket together,” he said. “Then as time went by, I was able to get a good balance of everything. Without the help of my family and friends it would have been hard.” Mohan, who played as an all-rounder in the national team, also played for his school, Raffles Institution. Mohan said the transition from playing on a school team to playing on the national team was over-
whelming due to the pressures and expectations placed on players. “Usually when you play in school teams, the expectations of you are not really that high,” he said. “They just want you to give your best, but when it comes to the national team you have to perform because it's for your country, so the level of competition is really hard.” He continued to play for his school’s cricket team while training for the national team and said that it was challenging to balance training with academics and leisure time. “I used to train every day. Then, because of my training ... I didn't have time to study. My academics took a hit,” Mohan said. “Once you're involved in something for so long, you tend to sacrifice other stuff such as family time and going out with friends. You have to sacrifice; you have to learn how to manage your time properly.” Having friends from his school who also played on the national team and were going through the same experience made the transition easier, Mohan said. “It was a lot of people going through the same thing, having the same experience of having the pressure to play for the national team and the school team and perform well in both and study at the same time,” Mohan said. “It was certainly hard for us, but the fact that we all knew that we had each other's backs was something that helped us fight through the hard times.” Playing cricket on the national level, Mohan said, forced him and his teammates to constantly push themselves to exceed expectations. “When people realize that you're in the national team, they set a certain level of
expectations for you. Knowing that those expectations existed motivated us to make sure we were always fulfilling or exceeding those expectations,” he said. “It was a challenge but it was certainly something fun that I enjoyed doing because I learned a lot from those experiences.” Players for the national team came from schools around Singapore, including schools that Mohan had played against at the high schol level. Mohan said the experience of becoming teammates with his rivals and learning to play together was one of his favorite memories of playing for the national team. “When you’re younger, you see your opponents as someone you don’t like. But then, as you spend more time (together), then you realize everyone is going through the same thing as you and everyone wants to win,” he said. “Everyone is on the same team as you. So you put aside those differences and you come together as a team, which is a really enriching experience.” The decision to stop playing for the national team was difficult, Mohan said, but he had known that he had always wanted to study overseas and that it would be difficult to pursue both at the same time. “My coaches knew that I had the potential to be a really good player. But I (made) the decision considering the future. It was a difficult decision to make, but I do not regret the decision,” he said. “Cricket is more of a passion in the sense that it’s something I always did in my free time, I couldn't really consider it as a future.”” Playing cricket at the national level, Mohan said, has given him a good work ethic
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Unafraid to speak out International political economy senior often stands up during lecture to share opinions EMAAN BANGASH Managing Editor
College lectures usually involve sitting and listening, taking notes and maybe scrolling through your Twitter feed. Other than an occasional question or comment, the class experience is relatively the same routine every time. Ronald Chan, an international political economy senior seldom takes notes during lecture, and said he prefers to listen, as taking notes gets tiring. He wears different variations of a Zhongshan, a type of Chinese tunic, nearly every day. When prompted to answer a question, Chan speaks in an assertive, loud voice and will either stand up or sit up on the desk to address the class. He said he started doing this last semester during clinical associate professor Karl Ho’s Politics of China class, and said it was to appear as if he is speaking from a position of strength. “I'm a theatrical person.” Chan said. “I've always had that confidence. And it’s … only that day I turned it up to 11.” An avid reader of history, philosophy
and culture, Chan said he’s had a love for these topics since elementary school when he lived in Hong Kong. He spends his time studying political leaders of the past such as Mao Zedong, Vladmir Lenin and Fidel Castro, and said he admires them for their charisma. “Since time immemorial I've had an obsession with history, with biographies, with leaders. It just came to me naturally,” Chan said. “I see (the leaders) as role models … I have a tendency to view them as game changers of the world.” Chan said he finds the current way that topics such as history, politics, law and culture is taught reflects a more Eurocentric perspective, and that there exists an official narrative which, he said, isn’t the most truthful. “I do have classes that talk about that quite a lot, but they don’t intend to study a lot on colonialism,” Chan said. “And they don't intend to talk a lot on the real destructive role of colonialism and neocolonialism has played throughout the past centuries. I’m not famously controversial but the things I say, they can get controversial because they step outside the main-
stream narrative.” Irina Vakulenko, senior lecturer of Geospatial Information Sciences, offers a variety of different discussion opportunities, some of which involve role playing or potentially difficult to solve topics, in her classes. She said Chan seldom conforms to others in class, and tends to speak his mind in an assertive, forceful way. “He’s quite a character. He’s not inhibited by the opinions of others around him. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but he helps to stir,” Vakulenko said. “I wouldn't say that he particularly interjects more than other students. He's a good smart kid. He’s not indifferent and he wants to make a difference.” Despite his presence in class, Chan said he doesn’t get any negative feedback from students or professors about his conduct aside from professors letting him know of their tight schedules during lecture. “I don't get negative feedback, but even if I do, so what?” Chan said. “I've stopped caring about what people think. Not just what they think about me, but also what they think about what I think.”
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
Internatioal political economy senior Ronald Chan dons a Chinese Zhongshan daily.
SPORTS
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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STEPPING UP Softball team sets sights on championship, welcomes new players
ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF
The UTD softball team was unable to train as a team during the fall due to NCAA regulations, but were able to fit in about 12-18 hours of practice per week since January. ELLIS BLAKE HIDALGO Mercury Staff
The UTD softball season is in full swing after the team’s first conference match against Hardin-Simmons. With three conference games under their belt and six more in the near future, the players have their sights set on the ASC Championship Tournament. The Comets trained for three weeks before their season began, practicing between 12-18 hours per week. Head softball coach James Kling said maintaining a similar practice routine would help bring order to the team. “My philosophy as a coach is that you try to create a culture, and you try to create the same things to do so that the girls are used to the practice, to the
regimen that we go through,” Kling said. “So you're not changing it up every once in a while just to throw some new things in there. But for the most part I try to keep everything the same so that they know what to expect. They know, going into the practice, what we'll be doing and they're able to work hard at it.” Due to NCAA regulations, the Comets, as well as all other teams in their division, weren’t allowed to practice as a team in the fall. With such a long stretch of time being unavailable for official practice, Kling said it was important to see his seniors step up and encourage the team to practice on their own outside of the official schedule. “I don't name captains on my team because I want everybody to be a group
and I don't want there to be a few people up here that are captains, but I expect my seniors to lead by example,” Kling said. “(I expect them to) verbally lead outside the softball field, to make sure that the underclassmen are understanding the ways that it needs to be done at UTD.” Senior utility Jessica Vlasek had a batting average of 0.317 last season along with a fielding percentage of 0.991. She hit a season high of 13 assists playing against Howard-Payne in March last year and recently got an RBI double at a Feb. 9 match against Centenary, helping secure the team’s first win of the season. With important players graduating every year, she said every player needs to be ready to fill positions in which they may be inexperienced. “It's hard to fill anyone else’s shoes.
I think we have a lot of us who have struggled with that, especially since we lost players and people having to play positions that they're not necessarily comfortable with,” Vlasek said. “Even if you haven't played that position, you just kind of have to step up and try it and let the rest of your teammates know that you might be doing something you've never done before and it's going to be okay.” At this time last season, the team had a 3-3 overall record with a 2-3 conference record. They went on to finish the season 17-21 overall and 12-14 for conference games. The team currently has a 3-8 overall record with 1-2 for conference games, but they’ll have a chance to turn things around in the coming weeks. The season began with
a 1-3 weekend against Centenary and MHB, but Vlasek said the team was optimistic, taking the games in stride as a learning experience for everyone. Seeing the team play another team for the first time, she said they were excited to see players step up. “We have some little girls on our team — and I say little but I mean short and little girls under 110 pounds — they are absolute ballers and that definitely shocked me,” Vlasek said. “Sports are interesting in (that) it doesn't really sometimes matter about physicality and look. You can come out here and play your own game.” The opening weekends were close matches, with each of the Comets’
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Defending champions Women's tennis to play against ASC East competitors Ozarks in March CALIS LIM
Mercury Staff
ESTHER MATHEW | MERCURY STAFF
The women's tennis team wasn't able to practice as much due to poor weather conditions in the past month.
The UTD women’s tennis team season is only a small part into their season and has many games ahead of them, but with the prospect of being repeat conference champs, the end of the season couldn’t come sooner enough. The team played against Southeastern Oklahoma on Feb. 7, where they lost 6-3, and Collin College on Feb. 8, which was an exhibition match. Their upcoming game on March 1 against fellow ASC East conference competitors, the Ozarks, will be important for rankings in the postseason. Every match against a team that’s not in the division has the sole purpose of getting us ready to play the ASC East teams, said Bryan Whitt, coach of the women’s and men’s tennis teams. “Ultimately our first goal is to win the East division, (and our) second goal is to win the conference overall and repeat, since we are the conference champs for men and women,” he said. “We would like to keep that going.” Whitt has been a coach at UTD since 2004 and has played tennis for 40 years. Yet for him, every season is different, this season included. “Being defending champs changes the
dynamic of everything,” Whitt said. “We were voted preseason number one, for men and women, to win the East. So that adds a little bit of pressure, adds a little bit of expectation that we might have had, but nobody else had necessarily for us in years past. So it’ll be interesting to see how our teams handle that.” One player who already is aware of this pressure is junior Laila Kamel, who transferred from UT Austin to UTD this past semester. Although she had played club tennis previously, this is her first season officially playing for a college team. “Expectations are set pretty high for us to compete well during conference,” she said. “Everyone knows that and is aspiring towards that. I think our goal is just maintaining the good team dynamic we have going on right now, keeping up with that.” As a student athlete, each player has had to find a good balance between school, work and sports, which takes time to figure out. Regardless, the players enjoy their game, which is why they keep playing after all these years, Kamel said. “Even being able to be on the team is a privilege, really, to have that time to put towards it,” Kamel said. With only two games under their belt and a large part of their practices cancelled
due to the bad weather, the women’s team has not been able to be on the courts as much as they would like, Whitt said. Senior Kathy Joseph said she has bittersweet feelings about playing for her last year. “I love competing,” Joseph said. “Every game, you can use a different strategy. I love playing different people and seeing how different people play the same game differently. With tennis, even if you’ve lost a few games, you’re still in the match. You can come back at any point, so I love how exciting it is in that the game is never over until the last point.” Last season, Joseph won 12 out of 14 singles matches and won all doubles matches alongside senior Sindhu Ravula. Joseph previously played for Champlain Valley Union High School in Vermont, where she won the State Individual Tennis Championships three years in a row and nearly reached a 50-game winning streak. Although the team has the group goal of defending their conference champion title, athletes still maintain individual goals. Joseph, for example, is aiming to make it to nationals with her doubles partner junior Samantha Wong. At the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Regionals last fall, the duo was undefeated up until the finals, where they lost 6-4, 6-2 to Trinity.
→ SEE TENNIS,
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SAMANTHA LOPEZ | MERCURY STAFF
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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“I feel like tennis is an individual sport, because you go out there, you have to focus on your match first and try to win your own match,” Joseph said. “But then you focus on supporting the team. Really when you win your match, you're not doing it for yourself, because your team has to win together.” Wong transferred from the University of Arkansas where she
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a specific time, as the attack happens on whatever turn it is declared, and all cards can be played before and after the attack, if the player has enough mana. When either player’s nexus (representation of their health) is destroyed, the game ends, averaging about 20 minutes for each game. Champions are unique cards that come with level-up conditions and unique abilities, which become central to how a deck is built and played. For example, a player can build a deck around Yasuo, whose level up condition is focused around stunning and recalling enemies, by putting as many cards that stun and recall into the deck as is viable. Stun or recall enough enemies, and Yasuo levels up, gaining health and attack as well as empowering his ability. This allows him to attack any enemy when they are stunned or recalled, giving him free attacks. Every champion in the game has their own level conditions and abilities, creating multiple viable decks and win conditions, which is impressive since “Legends of Runeterra” doesn’t have as many card sets as its competitors. This is one of my favorite aspects of the game, since it also gives you enough free cards
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and self-discipline that has transferred over into other aspects of his life. “I wasn't the fastest person, I wasn't the strongest person or I wasn't the fittest person. But I always made sure I worked the hardest in the team,” he said. “That helped me set an example,
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really have to take as many notes. Sometimes I'll write a couple things down, but it's like more things that I want to remember because all the content is usually there. The professor's PowerPoints and stuff, they already have all the things that you need to know on there.” The Student Success Center teaches students how to be successful in their courses, including improving their note taking methods through strategies such as mind-mapping, organizing and paraphrasing. Success center peer leader and biology junior Aliya
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losses having come out to a difference of one to two points. Besides showing them where they needed to improve, senior outfielder Elizabeth Brann said that the matches gave the team the confidence to succeed throughout the rest of the season. “If anything, I think that propels us, gives us a little confidence that we can play with people that are really good and we are a good team in ourselves,” Brann said. “We are young. We are new. I think we have eight new people on our team, so it gives them confidence too that we can play with anybody. We were one hit away every single game though to winning each game.” Since winning the ASC championship in 2017, the team faced the challenge of changing their head coach on a yearly basis. Now entering his second year with UTD, head coach James Kling said returning would be important to bringing stability
NEWS
played Division II tennis, so she’s used to the rigor of preparation. “We’re trying to practice every day; the weather doesn’t necessarily permit it,” Wong said. “But we’ve been practicing and training with weights, to try to keep us in shape.” During practices the team as a whole requires discipline, but during matches the coach lets the players figure out their own strategies to beat their opponent, Wong said. The team currently has no wins and one loss, as opposed to
having one win and no losses at the same time last season. That being said, it’s still early in the season; regardless of how the team’s next couple of matches go, there is still plenty of time for the players to adjust and prepare for the postseason. “In this business, you get a pretty quick answer on whether you’re doing it right or not,” Whitt said. “You win or lose and you get to work and improve towards changing those results, to some degree.”
to start experimenting with most of the champions in the game from the very start. Compared to other card games, both digital and physical, cards are more easily obtained without buying booster packs. In fact, it is literally impossible to buy booster packs: the only monetization gameplay-wise is directly buying cards. And not only is gambling essentially removed from the equation, there’s a limited stock of cards players can buy at one time, reducing the pay-to-win aspect of a game where owning the right cards for a meta deck can be all that’s necessary to win. The fastest way to earn cards is legitimately playing the game, which can only take about four hours to be able to choose common and rare cards. Players can choose a region, which is a playstyle for a deck, to earn cards for, and can change that region at any time, meaning that with dedicated playtime, a player can earn more cards than they can buy. While the capsules players earn by playing are functionally booster packs, they will always contain cards for the region the player has selected, and duplicates convert to currency that can be used to create cards if not enough wildcards are earned. It’s easy for players to create a deck that they want to play
given about three hours of playtime. Not only is the progression system friendly for players’ wallets, it also is much more rewarding than random booster packs or loot boxes, because it gives milestones to work towards. It works as a positive feedback loop: playing more gets more cards that players want, which lets players try out new decks and strategies, incentivizing more play. While I might be biased as a “League of Legends” player, “Legends of Runeterra” offers plenty to card game players, from an interesting gameplay loop that allows for great outplays, to a playerfriendly monetization system that gives creative freedom to players wanting to craft their perfect deck. Even though it is likely the meta will be solved quickly in the beginning with its lack of cards compared to older card games, with Riot’s support, “Legends of Runeterra” can evolve into an even greater experience. As it stands right now, “Legends of Runeterra” is a great digital card game to compete with “Hearthstone” and either play a casual game or competitive binge. While a meta will most likely settle in by the time this article publishes, there’s no reason to not hop in and experiment with decks in Riot’s new card game experience.
not just in cricket, but in the sense that when it comes to studies I was trying to do the same thing.” Mohan said he continues to play cricket as a student at UTD, joining a team of students who play every weekend. He said his advice to others who wish to play for their national team is to work hard and that it is not impossible. “When you play for your coun-
try, (it) requires a lot of sacrifice and patience. It’s really hard to manage everything. The thing is, people might think it's not possible,” Mohan said. “But if you have the passion for the game and the willingness and the pride for your country, anyone can play for their national team in the sport they're interested in. If you’re willing to put in the work you can definitely make it.”
Arni said that most students who come into the center have very basic note-taking methods and write everything the professor says down without understanding it. She said some of the strategies peer leaders teach incoming students is learning to paraphrase and synthesize information rather than writing everything down word for word. “Their notes are normally just very basic … and just not very organized, like a bullet point and other bullet point, another bullet point,” Arni said. “Notes that won't help you understand or learn the information later and that's just very repetitive or
just very long and wordy is not very helpful.” She said she doesn’t advise against using laptops to type out notes and that she recognizes that both methods have their benefits, although she personally prefers writing her notes. She said the most important thing is to paraphrase and think about what is being said during the lecture before writing it down, although the strategies and needs to write notes down differ for each type of class. “It really is trial and error to a certain extent because you really just need to try and see what works for you,” she said.
to the team. “I think they're getting used to the way that I do things… so I think things have settled down some. I think they understand,” Kling said. “We want to win that conference championship. We want to get to the national tournament. But early on, we've got to find out where we're at as a team. So, consistency is the key. It creates a good culture and it lets them know exactly where they stand” Coach Kling’s second year at UTD marks the first return of a head coach to the Comets since the departure of Rich Wieligman following the team’s 2017 win. Despite the difficulty of learning each new coaches’ style, Brann said it had taught them to adapt to and work with all kinds of people. “Going in, we thought it was going to be consistent. Our freshman year coach, we thought was going to stay with us throughout, and that didn't happen and we kind of had to adapt,” Brann said. “Every year kind of seems like a tryout. Ev-
ery year you have to prove yourself to a different coach, and so this year, having the second year with Kling, we know what he's going to expect. We know how to play the way he wants us to play and stuff like that. So the communication is a little bit better just because now we understand where he's coming from and he understands where we're coming from.” The players will face Howard Payne in their upcoming conference games, a team they beat 8-1 at last season’s ASC Championship tournament. With their first conference game behind them, senior utility Kynsee Gesch said focusing on the fundamentals would help the team succeed. “It's fun to make the big plays,” Gesch said. “But we have to focus on the fundamentals because everyone has the abilities to make the big plays on this team, so they go for them, but just focusing on those fundamentals will get us everywhere we need.”
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close reading was one way to give those students access to the text because you didn’t need to know anything else,” Murphy said. “You just needed to be reading the text.” Another methodology is a theoretical approach in which the researcher reads the texts and applies the ideas of a theorist to make sense of that text. The first step in creating a theory is reading many texts and theories, Murphy said. Then a researcher will compare the texts, and if they still have a question that isn’t answered, it could be a start for a new way of thinking that current theories don’t sufficiently explain. “It’s an iterative process because each time you’re building on something else. Sometimes I’ll have students who think of it as having missed something in the past, but I don’t know that we as literature people see it that way. Every text has the potential for infinite meanings,” Murphy said. “In my personal opinion, a good theory can help you go ‘Oh’ about a text. A not good theory would make you either say ‘Well duh’ or ‘I don’t know why that matters.’” When comparing research in the hard sciences and literature, Murphy said one similarity is that both look at an object of study and researchers try to make sense of it and then use it to understand other things in the world as well.
“I will read a text…a bunch of times, (making) notes as I read it,” Murphy said. “I’m doing sensemaking of the text. Trying to get at what's in there, what’s going on, does this look like something I’ve seen before?” Underneath the umbrella of literature is the discipline of creative writing. Nomi Stone, assistant professor of creative writing, is a poet and anthropologist, and combines those two subjects in her work. Her first two books are inspired by her anthropology research for which she spent two years doing field work in military training camps around America. “The project entailed being on the ground interviewing a lot of people, which is called ethnographic research,” she said. “I interviewed military personnel and role-players from the middle east as they acted out these different roles within war.” These sites were made to look like middle eastern villages, where soldiers can rehearse war before they are deployed. Stone approached her project with questions, but tried to stay as open as possible so as not to overdirect the study. “In this book, I was researching militarism and violence and also the impact of the lives of those who are conscripted within these spaces, the repercussions of working in these spaces, and what would it mean to be a person used as a military technology,” Stone said. The methodology used in anthropology is qualitative rather
than quantitative, so researchers engage with memory and people’s impressions in their own subjective lens. Stone’s two disciplines provide different approaches to reaching a conclusion. “I write in two different ways, both anthropological essays and poems,” Stone said. “In the poems I am more interested in doubt and questions. I feel less urgency and give more room for the reader to form their own conclusions. In anthropology, it's through a lot of slow observation and that allows you to come to a point of critique that feels true to you.” Stone said many different books and poems use some kind of research. “Especially if you're going to use metaphors in your poem, for example, if you want to use glaciers to talk about the heart, you have to really understand how glaciers themselves work so you might do a deep dive into the science so you might research that in books, on the internet, or ask scientists,” Stone said. In addition to writing and publishing poems, Stone reads essays and articles in the field. Articles researching poetry may cover questions of craft such as manipulating sound and syntax. “Syntax, which is the relationship between the sentence and the line as it unfolds in a poem, is a really important dimension because it helps you control the release of revelation the poem so there might be essays about how to think about syntax,” Stone said.
COMICS I BE LIKE THAT SOMETIMES
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
7
O&B: CATSPLAY
SARAH STREETY | MERCURY STAFF
YOU DON'T SCARE ME
LOUISE NILLAS | MERCURY STAFF
JENNA CHERREY | MERCURY STAFF
CHONKY BIRD
WATER BABIE
QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF
DON'T THINK I HAVE THE ANSWERS ’CAUSE I DON'T
BIANCA DEL RIO | MERCURY STAFF
OH LOOK! A RABBIT!
ACTIVITY
CECILIA ROMERO | MERCURY STAFF
ELIZABETH NGUYEN | MERCURY STAFF
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OPINION
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
Exercise HIITS the spot Short workouts are key to a healthy college lifestyle SOPHIE BOUTOUIS Mercury Staff
Between going to class, completing assignments and participating in clubs, college students have a lot on their plates. With so little time, spending hours at the gym to keep tabs on our health simply isn’t possible. But before you decide to quit exercising altogether to save time, I’d like to introduce you to the fitness scene’s leading trend: high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. Completely free and able to burn over 100 calories in just 10 minutes, HIIT workouts are the perfect solution for college students seeking to squeeze some exercise into their hectic schedules. We’ve all been told to study smarter, not harder. The same concept applies to HIIT: exercising as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time. HIIT workouts feature short bursts of intense exercise followed by rest periods. The actual activities being performed can range from running and jumping to biking or lifting, so it’s really just a matter of personal preference. A typical routine might consist of doing cardio-intensive exercises like high knees, jumping jacks or burpees for 20-40 seconds then resting for 1015 seconds, alternating between activ-
CHIAMAKA MGBOJI | MERCURY STAFF
ity and recovery for a total of 10 minutes. The exact amount of time you spend exercising and resting depends on your skill level and how intensely you’re seeking to workout, though. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, the high-intensity intervals are performed from 80 to 95% of your maximum heart rate, and the recovery periods are 40 to 50%. Your hard work in the intense intervals is rewarded with a comparable amount of rest. Despite how short the routines last, a study from McMaster University found that HIIT workouts can yield similar gains in cardiovascular fitness as compared to lengthier, more traditional cardio routines. In the experiment, people who performed a HIIT workout three times a week for 12 weeks improved just as much as those who did traditional 50-minute cardio sessions three times a week. Most strikingly though, HIIT’s popularity can mainly be attributed to what’s called the afterburn effect. Since highly intense workouts require you to consume more oxygen, there’s a greater need for the body to repair muscle, remove lactic acid and replenish itself with oxygen and ATP postworkout. Essentially, what this means is that you can still burn calories shortly after your workout by bingewatching “Black Mirror” (or doing your homework like a good student).
HIIT can also be done without any equipment in the comfort of your own home. A yoga mat may make it more comfortable, but as long as you have access to a routine on YouTube, you’re pretty much all set. Even though some fitness experts advise novices to avoid HIIT due to its strenuous nature, it’s been my experience that there are tons of beginnerfriendly routines out there. Everyone has to start from somewhere — it’s just a matter of knowing your limits. It’s also important to note that HIIT shouldn’t be considered a remedy for a bad diet, but rather a supplement to a good one. Clean eating is a precondition to being able to work out effectively, so typical college student meals like sugary cereal and packaged ramen noodles probably aren’t going to cut it. However, such physically demanding exercise isn’t meant to be done every day, but rather alternated with days of rest or less intense activity. It’s been my experience that doing HIIT 3-4 times a week and spending the other days either walking or resting is plenty satisfying. Like everything in life, the key is to find balance, so staying within your limits is essential. While at first glance the whole 10-minute workout idea sounds like one typical of an infomercial, HIIT can help even the busiest of college students HIIT their day off on the right note.
Big comet is watching you Why surveillance technology on college campuses is counterproductive SNIPTA MALLICK
Mercury Staff Imagine if UTD administrators tracked your every move while on campus. From collecting your location data when attending class or logging how long you are in your room, how would you feel if university officials could access this data to conduct risk assessments on your behavior? Clearly, these intrusive surveillance measures seem like an egregious violation of student privacy; however, thousands of schools around the nation, such as Depaul and Syracuse University, have implemented invasive tracking measures to collect data on students’ class attendance, academic performance, mental health and more. Although administrators seem to have good intentions with implementing these technologies to keep students accountable, they create unnecessary penalties for students, inaccurate risk assessments of student mental health and perpetuate a dangerous norm of allowing surveillance technology to infringe on our fundamental right to privacy. Applications like SpotterEDU and
Degree Analytics track the location data of students either by using bluetooth beacons or logging network signals that smartphones constantly connect to. These applications are marketed under the ideas of “helping students succeed” and taking a “reactive to proactive” approach to helping students graduate. This rationale can appear perfectly well-intentioned, but it is worth questioning the ethics and effectiveness of these measures. Students have actually been disadvantaged by these devices and have been unfairly marked absent while in class or late when they were on time. Furthermore, innocuous deviations in student behavior can flag university officials about students and create unnecessary apprehension for both parties. The micromanagement of adult students by university officials creates a dangerous culture of accepting that university officials have the right to track our every move. Class attendance and identifying at-risk students are both important. But taking advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to collect data on every aspect of a student’s life — in order to make potentially unfounded conclusions about their capabilities to succeed or their mental
health — is not ethical. Rather than encouraging freedom on campus, students involved in anonymous protests or demonstrations can be quickly tracked down by external companies and punished—suppressing future student activism. In the event of a data breach, private student information can fall in the hands of malicious actors who could use this information to target specific students or certain populations of students. The introduction of these technologies is a cop-out. It is an excuse for university officials to not allocate funding towards hiring counselors that will accurately assess the mental health status of a student, and it is an excuse for faculty members to not critically evaluate the quality of their instruction and instead rely on invasive software to increase class attendance. Universities like DePaul and Syracuse should take alternative measures such as expanding mental health resources, evaluating attendance policies and course content, identifying the reasons why students are not attending class and taking comprehensive and holistic measures to ensure that students graduate on time — rather than creating a mini-surveillance state on our college campuses.
BEN NGUYEN Mercury Staff
Ready player one Single-player games are becoming an endangered species
The last decade has arguably been marked by the explosion of online gaming among gamers. With streaming, esports, content creation and plenty of multiplayer video games, it can seem like the single-player games of yore have fallen by the wayside despite various triple A and indie successes. But while great single-player experiences are still being released, the rise of microtransactions and other in-game purchases make the prospect of future self-contained single player games grim. It can be easy to overlook single-player releases with the oft-marketed multiplayer scene, but there have been more than a few exceptional ones in 2019, and more coming soon in 2020. The influence of “Dark Souls’” is still being felt, with some of the best single player games of 2019 including “Jedi: Fallen Order” and “Sekiro Shadows Dies Twice,” as well as Nintendo’s regular franchises making entrances with “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” and “Super Mario Odyssey.” “Doom Eternal” and “Starfield” look to be promising future releases that might redeem Bethesda after “Fallout 76,” and Obsidian has already outdone Bethesda with “The Outer Worlds” in 2019. These games are all self-contained experiences with little to no
QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF
microtransactions, great gameplay and good replay-value due to either well-designed levels or an open world that’s populated with things to do and discover. For the game developer, the problem with making single-player games isn’t quality; it’s revenue potential. Nowadays, multiplayer games’ main source of revenue isn’t from units sold, it’s from in-game purchases, otherwise known as microtransactions. For example, Activision-Blizzard reported approximately $2 billion in net revenue from product sales, and about another $4 billion in microtransactions, subscriptions, licensing and other miscellaneous revenues. If you look at the net bookings in their quarterly financial report, microtransactions make up an additional $3 billion compared to $6 billion in product sales and subscriptions. Microtransactions can make about as much money as an additional game. For single-player games, microtransactions are much more difficult to include. Tradition dictates that everything in a single player game be unlockable via in-game play, giving few opportunities for in-game purchases. In multiplayer games, however, microtransactions can be the main source of revenue. Just look at “League of Legends.” It’s free to download, but the potential player can buy various cosmetic skins and in-game currency, to the point that the player might end up spending more on cosmetic items than an
entire other game. As an example, I spent $40 on “Hades,” an entertaining rogue-like from single-player game developers Supergiant Games. I have currently spent $200 on League of Legends cosmetics, five times the amount that I spent on Hades, for about the same amount of game time recently, as Hades is a roguelike game built on replayability. So, what gives? As the evidence for microtransactions’ greater financial potential grows year by year, will single-player games finally die out? Not necessarily. The evergrowing indie scene manages to make dozens if not hundreds of unique single-player experiences every year, with some examples including the previously reviewed “Disco Elysium” and Metroid-Vania title “Timespinner.” The triple A gaming industry seems to have not given up on single-player games yet, as the previously mentioned “Jedi: Fallen Order” managed to be the fastest selling digital launch of a Star Wars game, even though it was published by a company notorious for creating “always online” experiences filled with microtransactions. Ultimately, there isn’t much to be done about the profitability of in-game purchases. But as consumers, we should continue to support great single-player experiences when we find them, so that games that aren’t battle royales or COD clones get financial support, continuing to prove to the industry that single player games are viable.
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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OPINION
More (super)power to you Why ‘Birds of Prey’ revolutionizes the female superhero
HADLEY ARCHER
Mercury Staff
CECILIA ROMERO | MERCURY STAFF
“Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)” received an audience and critic rating of almost 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and was deemed “the funniest comic book film since the first ‘Deadpool’ from 2016” by New York Post film critic Johnny Oleksinski. The new film was well received by critics despite being the lowest grossing film within its franchise on opening weekend. With a mostly female cast — led by Margot Robbie as protagonist Harley Quinn — audiences witness how the women find strength among themselves. On the surface, this film has themes of feminine empowerment and the courage to overcome the oppression of the masculine counterpart. Even so, is “Birds of Prey” a genuine chick-flick to watch with the girls, or is it an exploitation of the female body in order to please the male audience? To truly grasp what’s going on in “Birds of Prey,” let’s look into previous superhero movies. While there are numerous films adapted from DC and Marvel comics, only a couple of them center themselves around female heroes. The films that most likely sound familiar are “Catwoman” and “Elektra,” and neither of them did well in the critical sense. In those movies, the female characters are put into tight outfits that emphasize the female figure. The women cast into these roles typically have an hourglass shape, as opposed to a “pear” or “apple” body type. This extreme emphasis of female attributes, though appealing to the male audience, could not outweigh the awful special effects or story writing. Film critic Scott Mendelson went so far as to say that these types of films are what killed off the notion of a female led superhero movie for just over a decade.
Next came the current superhero franchises many are invested in today, known as the DC Extended Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those started up with the releases of “Man of Steel” and “Iron Man,” respectively. In these new series, movies released with a plot centered around a female character include “Wonder Woman,” “Captain Marvel” and “Birds of Prey,” all of which received generally high praise amongst critics. In terms of apparent sexualization of these women, the eye is still drawn to the chest due to costume design — the star on Captain Marvel’s outfit, the “W” on Wonder Woman’s outfit — but they’re toned down more than previous designs and cover more skin. In order to get a sense of how current female superhero films work, let’s take a look at the recently hatched “Birds of Prey.” On the surface, the film’s storyline is about female empowerment. Harley and her friends were wronged by men, and they team up to fight the bad men in the film. It’s a great way to appeal to the female audience, but does the film actually have an active presence of women? This can be indicated by the Bechdel test, which — in order for a film to “pass” — must feature at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. “Birds of Prey” does in fact feature more than two women who talk to each other. It’s the third part of the requirement that causes the film to barely pass the Bechdel test. The women talk about men for a good amount of the film, though it’s mostly because the people they fight are all men. However, it doesn’t prevent them from sporting dramatic and exciting outfits and showing off their fighting skills. With that, the film is able to provide the female audience a set of dynamic characters to watch. While this film gives the female superhero fanatics something to watch, this film also needs to appeal to its male audience. It does so by providing
the two main elements most men gravitate toward: violence and a sexy body. By doing this, the movie feeds into the feminist theory of the “male gaze.” This is just a simple way of saying the film depicts women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male audience. That might explain the naked women on the walls of Roman’s office, as well as a couple of costume gags Harley pulls in the final fight scene. Even so, this film doesn’t necessarily feed into the male gaze for the entire runtime. In addition to playing the lead role, Margot Robbie both pitched and produced this film. There’s a clear difference in Harley’s character from “Suicide Squad” to “Birds of Prey.” There’s her dependency on the Joker, which changed once they broke up and gave her a freedom she never thought she wanted. There’s also her infamous “Suicide Squad” outfit. Her “Daddy’s Little Monster” shirt with 20 or so holes, along with her shorts that barely even counted as shorts, both of which Robbie was uncomfortable with. Transitioning into her life of independence, Harley begins with a crop and actual shorts. At the end of “Birds of Prey,” she’s wearing a tank top with overall-type pants. By putting two and two together, there’s a clear correlation between her outfits and how far she’s ventured into her newfound independence. In essence, “Birds of Prey” is a story of female empowerment that follows the protagonist in her transition from Joker’s girl to “Harley freaking Quinn,” as she says in the trailers. It’s a huge step from previous female led superhero films. The DCEU and MCU are undergoing a transition from sexualized superheroes to ones that have a clear character arc. If audiences can support the transition of these franchises, one where there will be more heroines, we would eventually see an equal amount of supermen and super-ladies. This could essentially lead into a more inclusive universe, where virtually anyone could be a superhero.
I DON'T NEED RELATIONSHIPS THEY DISAPPOINT ME
EMAAN BANGASH| MANAGING EDITOR
COMET COMMENTS
How do you take notes?
Comets and Craters UTD scientists receive grant
“I usually have a notebook and pen with me, and when the teacher speaks important points, I write it down.”
Arjit Yadav Computer Science Graduate
“I use my laptop.”
Dimple Wadhwa Child and Learning Development Senior
“I type my notes up on my laptop, usually on Google Drive or PowerPoint.”
Faiza Zaman Information Technology and Systems Senior
Two UTD scientists received $1.8 billion dollars of grant money from Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas for their research on lung and kidney cancers.
Parked car found on staircase On Feb. 19, a parked car was found on a staircase outside of the Science Learning Center.
Feb. 24, 2020 | The Mercury
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“We tend to go for things … that we're interested in. And I think it’s part of your educational experience on campus to be challenged and confronted also with things that you didn’t look for,” he said. “It’s not a fancy place, and it’s kind of a little weird to see it in that way, but I think it’s in many ways perfect because it gets much more attention where it is right now than if I would have put it into some fancy museum somewhere.” Roemer said he wanted to have the exhibit because often, people think of the Holocaust as an event that happened long ago and far away, but realizing that many local Texans were involved in liberating camps brings it closer to home. “We work together with the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission that had also sponsored this project, and the woman who had organized it — Aliza Wong — we had invited her last year as a guest speaker to come to one of our conferences,” Roemer said. “We then thought, well this is really an exhibit that we would like to have.” Wong, associate dean of the Honors College at Texas Tech University, said that she and Pete Berkowitz, the former chair of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, wanted to create a project with the Texas Liberators’ oral histories that would impact the younger generation. “We started off with an app and I gathered a team from five different colleges. As we started working with the students, we just started to get more and more excited about the project,” she said. “Beyond building the app, we thought, well, why don't we make a book? So we wrote a book and then … we said, well, we really need a website because without the website, there aren’t the educational resources. And then we thought to ourselves, wouldn't this be a beautiful museum exhibit.” One of the banners in the exhibit highlights a man named Raymond Stewart Watson, who recalled his experience walking through Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp in Germany.
NEWS
“I went through (Buchenwald). They had a lot of steel doors and stuff. You can see from some of the pictures we have that they stacked the bodies. They were just stacking up. They’d have them facing one direction on the first layer … And they were — I couldn’t count how many people that were just — just dead,” the quote reads. “Every one of them were skin and bones. It was awful. I mean the odor was bad, and well, you just didn’t think a human could treat humans like that.” Wong said that when she teaches the Holocaust and the liberation period to her students, she reminds them that many of the young men who fought in the war and liberated the camps were only 18 years old, just like them. “Some of them had never left the state of Texas. And all of a sudden, they enlist (or) they are drafted, and they are sent in trains to New York and Louisiana, places they've never been, never imagined that they would go,” Wong said. “Next thing you know, they’re on a big … boat and are crossing the Atlantic ocean, and the doors open, and they’re landing on the shores of Normandy and fighting their way through the battle … then all of a sudden, there they are in Dachau.” True to form, plenty of the banners depict pictures of young men posing in military uniforms. Their youthful faces contrast starkly with their accounts of the concentration camps. Roemer said that he hopes that the exhibit gives students a different perspective and that this exhibit relates to many students who come from different countries and have been very close to other forms of violence. “I'm teaching a class on refugees. When we initially asked the students to introduce themselves, out of the 40 or so students that are in class, over 10 of them said that they themselves or their families had been refugees,” he said. “Those college kids that went to liberate the camps became the witnesses to atrocities, and many of us are in those positions as well … If we don't want to be tormented by those memories individually, we need
to find ways where we don’t just celebrate our diversity on campus but where we … think about ourselves, not just as common students, but also as individuals who came from other places and that some of these places were places of violence of sorts.” The app for the project can be accessed through the project’s website, texasliberators.org. It features a first-person perspective that allows students to experience the end of World War II in Europe and the work of the Allied Liberators releasing prisoners and victims from Nazi concentration camps. The app’s narrative is inspired by the liberators’ testimonies and is a chronicle depicting the liberation of Dachau. Users will confront difficulties faced by the liberators in their own words. Wong said that she worked with computer scientists, Holocaust scholars and a Ph.D. student to create something that was interactive while respecting the history and the story. “That’s where really came together as a group with historians, archivists, Holocaust scholars coders and graphic designers to say, ‘Okay, so how do we make this historically accurate?’” Wong said. “So on the app, Dachau is actually created to scale. We actually sent one of our graphic designers to Dachau to actually go into the archives, take a look at the blueprints and try to understand everything from the foliage to … what did the barracks look like. We went back to old aerial photos of what were the words that were printed on the rooftops of one of the buildings.” Roemer said that even when we try to forget something bad in our lives, in a way, everything stays with us — that’s how our memories work. “Here you have these — I mean look at these pictures of these older men … they are now grandfathers, right? And when you hear all of a sudden how they talk about something that happened so long ago, you still see in their faces how painful these memories are,” Roemer said. “You get to understand more, in many ways, (that) the history never quite ends.”
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It happened in that moment to be that I was either going to eat or I wasn't going to eat and he just gave me enough food to last me like two weeks probably,” she said. “To him it was just like, ‘Hey, I got these in my pocket, here you go,’ no big deal kind of thing. But to me it was the difference between eating and not eating. And so I kind of felt like now that I'm in a position where I can try and do something similar for people who need it, I would like to be able to do that.” Once Schwark found out her email to students had gone viral, she had mixed feelings. “I don't feel like I should be getting praise for this because there's so many people who are doing so much more than I'm doing and those are the people who deserve to be in the spotlight,” she said. “The amount of positivity that's come from this has been incredible. There
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graduate and graduate students. That means, based on the IWPR statistic, about 3,545 UTD students are pursuing their education while being mothers and fathers. Jacqueline Prince, assistant director at the Galerstein Gender Center and director of the pregnant and parenting initiative, said the trouble is identifying who exactly UTD’s parenting population is if those students don’t reach out. “We can pull data that’s nonidentifiable, just raw data from financial aid information if people have claimed dependents,” Prince said. “But that’s really it; we really have no other way.” Prince said the circumstances are similar for the newest, often most vulnerable kind of student-parents: pregnant students. Finding oncampus support during their pregnancy, Prince said, can be a frightening labyrinth for new mothers. “There are student development theories out there that prove that when a student has a sense of belonging, we see higher rates of success, higher rates of retention and completion of college. We see people thrive when they belong,” Prince said. “If you are a pregnant student and you are navigating a campus that just feels really big and you don’t know where to go, and you’re going into the places that
the attention worth it, I think.” Schwark said she’s been redirecting those offering donations to the Comet Cupboard, which is located MC1.604 in the basement of McDermott Library. The Cupboard offers non-perishable food and personal care
items free of charge to currently enrolled students. Students are allowed to take one to four items per visit and are also welcome to volunteer using the application on their website. The site also features a list of needed items such as canned food, dried pasta and boxed milk. Student organizations can also sign up to host food drives for the Cupboard through their site. Online donations can be made at giving.utdallas.edu/CometCupboard. Schwark said that her generosity isn’t unique, especially at UTD. “The university is full of people like me. There isn't a single person I know that, if a student walked into their office and in any way indicated to them that they were unable to afford food, (wouldn’t) take their own personal lunches and say, ‘Here, eat this.’ Everybody would do this,” she said. “I think that's what I wish more students would realize is that the whole faculty, all the staff, everybody cares about the students to the same degree, if not even more than I do.”
are like ‘Sorry, we don’t do that,’ or ‘I don’t know,’ you feel more and more that you don’t belong in that place, because they don’t know what to do with you.” Currently, Prince said, what is available in terms of resources is a lot of online information, which can be found on the Gender Center website. As for other support, there are the LilyPad Lactation Rooms, on-campus childcare and in-class accommodations for pregnant students upon special request from the dean of students. Less than a mile off campus is the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center, which provides many free resources — like prenatal care and support, diapers and other baby supplies — to pregnant and parenting students. However, these resources aren’t always easy to navigate, Prince said. On-campus child care ages and hours are limited: the Child Care Center in the Student Union only accepts children ages four to 11, operates from 3:30 – 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday and charges $6 per night. What’s more, Prince said, most student-parents may not know where to turn for help. Even Hoggatt said she’d never heard of any child care services besides the child development program at the Callier Center, and that she wishes the university was more transparent about available services. “There’s sort of a stigma against parents,” Hoggatt said. “We sort of face the ‘Whatever you got going on
at home, this is your deadline, you got to get it done, no excuses’ kind of thing — and I completely understand that from the professor’s point of view. But sometimes there could be a little bit more leniency.” While Title IX protects against sex discrimination in the classroom — which would naturally include pregnant students — Prince said that many of these same students may not be aware of their rights. Although professors are provided with a template syllabus insert regarding resources for pregnant students, Prince said, it is not a requirement for them to include it. Financial pressures on student-parents are understandably stifling: according to IWPR, median debt among studentparents is 2.5 times higher than non-parents. Yet, in spite of all these obstacles, IWPR found that student-parents have, on average, higher GPAs than non-parents. Hoggatt added that even with the challenges of being a grad student, TA and parent, leading a student-parent lifestyle is far from impossible. “It’s tough. It takes a lot of motivation to get it done. There are days where I do not want to come, because I am completely worn out,” Hoggatt said. “But if you’re wanting to have children, or you have children and you’re a bit afraid to step into the academic world — whether undergrad or grad — it is definitely doable.”
are so many people who want to help and who want to make a difference. People have emailed me who said, ‘You've inspired me to do this’ and ‘I want to do the same thing’ and stuff like that. That part of it has made all
GAYLE SCHWARK