Masked pair causes ruckus
2012 Election results PAGES 4-5
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VOLUME XXXII, NO. 7
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF UTD — WWW.UTDMERCURY.COM
APRIL 16, 2012
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Ron Paul visits DFW Students bring Republican candidate to Metroplex PAUL DANG Mercury Staff
The university’s Youth for Paul group successfully petitioned for presidential candidate Ron Paul to visit DFW, where more than 3,000 steadfast supporters rooted and cheered while he spoke on April 11 at the Will Rogers Memorial Center. Originally envisioned as a town hall meeting hosted on campus, Congressman Paul’s three-day tour through Texas couldn’t stop at UTD due to the lack
Robojelly reaches milestone
of parking and capacity for a rally of its magnitude. The town hall meeting subsequently moved to the auditorium in Fort Worth, where it became packed to capacity with an audience of ardent Paul supporters. “I knew it was going to be big, but it was just a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” said Apostolos Kyprios, EMAC junior and treasurer chair of Youth for Paul, or YFP. While the Ron Paul student group officially became registered with UTD on Feb. 15, only two months ago, it im-
mediately started recruiting members and gaining petition signatures for Paul to come to campus. According to youthforpaul.com, UTD’s chapter currently has the second largest membership in the nation and the largest in Texas with 1,807 members. Kyprios said he remembers how quickly everything came together from scratch. “It was like five of us meeting in a room at the tops of EPPS one Saturday morning and Dr. Eliot, a teacher there,
CHRISTOPHER WANG/STAFF
UTD’s Youth for Paul chapter petitioned to have GOP candidate Ron Paul visit their area to speak, and won. Paul spoke to the group and many other guests April 11 at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Ft. Worth.
and that was the beginning,” he said. “A couple days later we got a charter and we basically had a little more than a month to get all the signatures required to get Ron Paul to be here.”
International Week
Amanda Newman, historical studies junior and the president and founder of YFP, can often be seen wearing Ron Paul
see RON PAUL page 4
Chess team places second JESSICA MELTON Mercury Staff
Researchers at the NanoTech Institute, in collaboration with Virginia Tech, have published a study in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, detailing their creation of a robotic jellyfish called “Robojelly.” Yonas Tadesse, one of the authors of the study and mechanical engineering professor, began work on the Robojelly project as a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech in 2007 with team members. “This is a collaboration project
The chess team tied for second place in the Final Four competition in early April, losing to Texas Tech by half a point. Six players represented UTD at the elite-level collegiate chess tournament in Washington D.C. this year, the same six who remained undefeated at the Pan-American competition in December. FINAL FOUR C h e s s RESULTS coach Rade Milovanovic • Texas Tech: 8.0 - 4.0 said the team’s • UTD: 7.5 - 4.5 loss had some • UMBC: 7.5 - 4.5 drama at• NYU: 1 - 11 tached to it. During the last game of the tournament, many believed UTD would walk away with the winning title, but a few unexpected mistakes kept this from being a reality. “(One player) had a winning position (in the final game),” Milovanovic said. “His opponent was also a very good player and the game ended in draw. If he had won we would have been in first, but Tech is a good team. Even on paper they
see ROBOJELLY page 2
see CHESS page 3
NANOTECH/COURTESY
UTD’s NanoTech department created a robot that mimics the movement of jellyfish.
NanoTech completes jellyfish prototype SHEILA DANG Mercury Staff
AKSHAY HARSHE/PHOTO EDITOR
On-campus diversity showcases its colors ANWESHA BHATACHARJEE Features Editor
T
he university celebrated its 3,500 strong international student population during International Week from April 2 - 6. Nineteen countries participated in this weeklong event organized by the International Student Services Office, as opposed to 16 last year. This year’s ‘Passport to the World,’ an event where students set up booths to showcase their country’s culture and cuisine, had a much higher footfall than last year, according to Lisabeth Lassiter, assistant director at the International Student Services Office, or ISSO. One of the reasons for this increased participation may be an increase in international student presence on campus, she said. In the past few years the international population on
campus has grown steadily as data from the Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis, or OSPA, indicates. This growth contributes to UTD’s Tier One initiative and a large international student population contributes towards research productivity and campus diversity, said President David Daniel in an email. According to growth statistics from OSPA, international enrollment was at an all-time high in fall 2011, constituting 18.6 percent of the total 18,864 students. In comparison, there were only 2,000 international students making up 13.8 percent of all students in 2006. Although the overall increase in the international student numbers was only 5 percent as compared to almost 30 percent in overall student enrollment between fall 2006 and 2011, the composition of the interna-
see I-WEEK page 8
tional student body has undergone significant changes. In 2006, 36 percent of international students were Indian, while only 13 percent were Chinese. Taiwan, Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Turkey, Canada and Kenya made up the remaining eight in the top 10 most represented nations at UTD, respectively. Since then, trends indicate that India, China, Taiwan and Korea have consistently made the top four student bodies in terms of size, while Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Mexico made up the fifth to eighth in various degrees until 2009. In 2010, Vietnam moved up from the ninth largest international student body to the fifth and continued to be so with 102 students in 2011. The Canadian and Pakistani student bodies ceased to be among the 10 largest international