April 05, 2021 | The Mercury
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NEWS/LIFE & ARTS SAFEDISH
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 are continuinge to work on adding data for new cities, Bottum said, it’s a time-consuming process made more difficult by the fact that inspection data isn’t standardized., Bottum said. “Our expansion plans are dependent on if we can find other places that are easy to fetch,” Bottum said. “A lot of counties and a lot of municipalities in
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 sion,” Shatz said. “Each semester, however, we have many students that we work with to submit additional information, retake a test score or do other things to make their application more marketable.” If a student wants their denial to be reconsidered, Shatz said they should
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so hard because I have to do it entirely through words when a hug speaks a million words. Sometimes that’s all that’s necessary to make someone feel better,” Govu said. “But hey, I can’t hug someone through a phone screen. There’s
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for people to have a voice, but they also have these strong opinions and they’re looking to make changes and to make waves as we move forward.” Oropallo said that the fact that the SJAFF is virtual is an advantage: since people are more likely to view content on a website than to attend an event on campus, the works will likely have greater visibility. Students have been excited for the festival, and Oropallo said that she is
this country do not have easily formatted data sets to access programmatically.” Jiang said that the biggest challenge in the creation of the app was writing data scrapers that could automatically read data from each city. Because the data publication method differs greatly across municipalities, they often have to write completely new code for different areas. For example, North Richland Hills publishes scores in a PDF that’s
not computer- readable, while Arlington has a database that’s in a completely different format, Jiang said. The Park Cities area of Dallas, meanwhile, doesn’t have any kind of digitized records. “If you want all the health reports, you have to file a public information request and pay a bunch of money,” Jiang said. “Even in DFW, it’s very hard to get full coverage of everything.” Jiang said that user response is difficult to measure, since people tend to
use SafeDish just once or twice to check scores on restaurants they frequent. Because users don’t reopen the app once they have the information they need, the user retention rate is low. “Our app is more of a tool than something that’s supposed to suck you in, like Facebook, that constantly refreshes with new content,” Jiang said. “I don’t see how we could have refreshing content considering we’re limited by the data the city provides.”
Jiang said that, ultimately, SafeDish can help people be more informed about what’s happening in the background to keep communities safe and healthy. “Your local government does a lot of things for every aspect of environmental and public health that you just don’t know because 99% of the time, it goes smoothly,” Jiang said. “I think that if people have access to that data, they can make a lot more informed choices about day-to-day things.”
first talk to the MBA program about the decision and then the school’s graduate program dean. If necessary, students can contact the graduate dean of the university if they are still unsatisfied. “Very few, if any students ever appeal beyond the program,” Shatz said. “The program does a terrific job of guiding the student to another degree program that might better suit their profile or they will tell them realistically if they
can improve upon their own application to the MBA program.” With medical school rejections, Doyen Rainey, director of Health Professions Advising Center, said that he’s never heard of a successful appeal. He said it’s a more realistic – and more common – option for students to reapply to medical school the next year. “If they do things to improve their application during that year, their
reapplication receives a completely fresh read,” Rainey said. “HPAC always recommends that applicants work with their pre-health advisor to improve their applications during the two semesters they’re waiting on med school acceptances.” Appealing rejections is more common in law school, though. Director of Pre-law Advising Center Barbara Kirby said that appealing a law school
rejection typically requires reporting a change in status such as a higher LSAT score or a GPA improvement. “I have found that law school admissions staff are always willing to talk to a student about what they can do to improve their application if they want to reapply in the next cycle,” Kirby said. “So, I tell my students not to hesitate to reach out to get feedback about why their application was rejected.”
only so much I can do.” The lack of traditional interaction has also limited relationship development, especially when a relationship can only grow through deepening emotional connection. However, Ybarra said, this could be a good thing. “Relationships don’t jump as
fast; you really get to know the person before we ever make that leap to be in-person,” Ybarra said. “With traditional long-distance relationships, it just means we need to make the commitment of the time and money to be able to travel somewhere. Now, I need to take a risk and a leap of faith to interact
with you in some sort of way. So before people choose to do that, there’s that kind of buildup of that trust in the relationship that has to happen.” Govu said that while long-distance relationships often get labeled as impossible, heading in with a positive mindset is key.
“Understand that there are certain parts that make long-distance tricky, but there are good parts to it too,” Goyu said. “It just really comes down to communication and working with each other to find a system and being understanding that there’s no really easy way to do this.”
happy with the level of contributor interest, especially for it being the first event of its kind. “A lot of students [used] this as the impetus, as the drive to complete a project, and it was really rewarding to not only help inspire people to do something, but also to work with them and offer some mentorship along the way,” Oropallo said. When ATEC senior Jonavon Ignont heard that ATEC administration was considering how to better engage with students on social jus-
tice issues, he decided to reach out to share his perspective as a Black student and ended up getting involved in the creation of the SJAFF. He created a documentary entitled “College Students on Black Lives Matter,” which combines material from three interviews with footage from racial justice protests. “I think the best thing I can do during this time, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, is to amplify the voices of others,” Ignont said. “That’s what sparked the creation of the short documentary and
for me the creative process.” Ignont said that the creative process was a good learning experience; he wants to eventually be a film producer, and this was the first documentary he’s ever created. In addition, he said he enjoyed the opportunity to hear people’s stories and bring them to the forefront. “It goes to show that we as young people can express our voices in an intelligent manner,” Ignont said. “I believe the great thing about this festival is that you really get to understand the motivations of people
who create the projects and what their views on the world are and what circumstances are behind their thoughts and beliefs.” Going forward, Ignont said that he hopes that ATEC administration will continue to organize events like the SJAFF that allow students’ perspectives to be heard. “I believe that this shouldn’t be a one-and-done thing, because it’s important to continue to have people’s voices be shared and also helps people really get the point of what this is all about,” Ignont said.
