The Mercury 08 17 20

THE MERCURY

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

"JSOM online fees: what are they, and what do they apply to?" page 4

"How will athletics work in the fall?" page 10

“How Boba shops have thrived during quarantine” page 15

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3-9

NEWS 15-18

Blotter

3

JSOM fee, Title IX

4

Boba, phishing

15

Instructing in person

5

16

Virtual Intern, UTeach

domestic abuse, aylay

6

meet your candidates

17

BLM

7

AMA, dance clubs

18

Immigration, Recycling, Projects

8

Disabilities, Online Greek

9

life & arts

19-21

opinion police oversight

10 11 1212-1 13

2

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

sports comics news cont'd

22-24

19

Tik Tok

20

esports

21

news cont'd

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

3

NEWS

UTD PD Blotter THE MERCURY UTDMERCURY.COM Volume XL No. 46

Editor-in-Chief Madison York

June 23 • Officers responded to Residence Hall North for a disturbance call at 8:45 p.m.

They dispersed five subjects involved in a fight, and the group of people who left before officers arrived filed an offense report.

A

editor@utdmercury.com July 9 (972) 883-2294

Managing Editor Emaan Bangash managingeditor @utdmercury.com (972) 883-2287

Copy Editor Sophie Boutouis copyeditor @utdmercury.com

A student was scammed by an individual claiming to be the Captain of the Washington DC Police at 5:58 p.m in Phase 4. They lost $200.

B

July 19 A golf cart was found in Lot J, reported at 3:04 a.m. Video footage showed an unknown male driving the cart and then getting into a vehicle in Lot J.

C

July 26 Officer made contact with two students and one unaffiliated person yelling in UV graphics @utdmercury.com Phase 9. Two citations were issued for Consumption of Alcohol by Minor, Photo Editor Anna Phengsakmueang reported at 12:42 a.m.

A

D

Graphics Editor Louise Nillas

photo@utdmercury.com

News Editor Anjali Venna news@utdmercury.com

Life & Arts Editor Ayesha Asad life@utdmercury.com

Web Editor Shannen Barrameda

B

Aug. 1 Three unknown males pushed a golf cart 15 feet at Berkner Hall. They attempted to start it, but were unable to, reported at 12:42 a.m.

LEGEND

E

D

E C

VEHICULAR INCIDENT

web@utdmercury.com

Outreach Editor Samantha Lopez

THEFT

media@utdmercury.com

Opinion Editor Ben Nguyen

DRUGS & ALCOHOL

opinioneditor @utdmercury.com

Video Editor Bryan Grimaldi

OTHER

video@utdmercury.com

MAP: UTD | COURTESY

Contributors Aleena Hassan Media Adviser Nandika Mansingka Chad Thomas Ellis Blake Hidalgo chadthomas@utdallas.edu Patricia Mathu (972) 883-2286 Mrunmayi Sathaye Mailing Address Andrew Barlass 800 West Campbell Road, SU 24 Snipta Mallick Richardson, TX Keerthi Srilakshmidaran 75080-0688 Roshan Khichi Elizabeth Nguyen Alesandra Bell Astrid Hernandez Charlie Chang Quinn Sherer Bianca Del Rio

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 © 2020, 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.

The Mercury is a proud member of both the Associated Collegiate Press and the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association.

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

4

NEWS

JSOM student petitions removal of certain online class fees Dean Hasan Pirkul addresses petition, clarifies fees ALEENA HASSAN Mercury Staff

A UTD student started an online petition criticizing the university for charging distance learning fees for certain courses in JSOM. Business analytics graduate student Shreyas Chaturvedi created a petition on July 22 titled, “Refund students paying an extra $960 for online classes at UTD.” As of August 14, 5,315 people have signed it.

“The University of Texas at Dallas is charging its students an additional $80 per credit hour for all OW (0W1) online classes,” Chaturvedi wrote.

“There is no legitimate reason why students are being expected to pay such an exorbitant amount to UT-D, which is already Texas’ most expensive public university, beating much older institutions like UT Austin and A&M quite easily.”

0W1 is the designation for classes within the Global Leadership MBA program (GLEMBA),

which is completely online. Full-time students taking 0W1 classes would only be charged an extra $960 if they were taking those classes exclusively .

The fee for the program has been in place for years, said JSOM Dean Hasan Pirkul, and the 0W1 classes are ranked number six among online MBA programs in the nation.

“From day one, 22 years ago when we established this program, we passed the learning fee so that we can design and offer these courses,” Pirkul said. “Its classes are specially designed in an asynchronous mode. We follow a very strict protocol in designing these classes.”

Furthermore, Pirkul said that the online-only 0W1 classes are electives, and classes that were originally in-person but moved online are not subject to the fees.

“This fall, we have 835 sections of classes (in JSOM). 90 sections will be charged the fee and the remaining will not be charged. This is less than 11% of our sections,” Pirkul said. “Secondly, most of these

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG| PHOTO EDITOR

Pirkul said that the fees only apply to a small number of elective courses.

90 sections that are offered online also have a regular section where the fee is not charged. Typically, we offer our required classes in five sections, and only one of them will be online so that students have plenty of choice. There are 18 sections that are offered online only (with the fee).”

Since the program enrolls students from across the globe, the classes are asynchronous. Students

who are not in the program, like Chaturvedi, can still take the courses. Chaturvedi said his experience with 0W1 classes was not the nationally-ranked experience they are touted to be.

“The reason why this is so problematic and the reason why I find this to be just completely unjust

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SEE JSOM, PAGE 23

Petition protesting Title IX changes garners over 2000 signatures Scope of petition increased to include multiple UT System schools, calls for seven points of change ANJALI VENNA News Editor

UTD’S chapter of the political organization Deeds Not Words is petitioning against the Department of Education’s changes to how Title IX is enforced on college campuses.

In 2017, the Department of Education withdrew Obama-era sexual harassment policies under Title IX. One year later, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos released a new proposal, featuring specific changes. The draft was open for public comment, receiving over 124,000 responses, and in May 2020, Devos issued the final rule, which carries the force of law unlike the previous administration’s policies, which were only guidelines.

“Too many students have lost access to their education because their school inadequately responded when a student filed a complaint of sexual harassment or sexual assault,” Devos said in a press release. “This new regulation requires schools to act in meaningful ways to support survivors of sexual misconduct, without sacrificing important safeguards to

ensure a fair and transparent process. We can and must continue to fight sexual misconduct in our nation’s schools, and this rule makes certain that fight continues.”

While the regulations described in the rule are legally binding, they describe the minimum actions universities and K-12 schools must take to comply with Title IX. This benchmark is where the demands in the Deeds Not Words petition focuses on.

Neuroscience junior Lydia Grant, the Title IX director for Deeds Not Words, said its petition is asking UTD to implement guidelines in a way that is least harmful to survivors of sexual assault. Specif-ically, the organization calls upon UTD to commit to seven policies. The petition was modeled after a sample letter created by the political advocacy group Know Your IX. “For starters, there’s the sixty day timeline that drags people through a lengthy investigation, and even now it’s not like a hard timeline. It’s not like your investigation just drops at 60 days, it can still get dragged past that, it’s just that without that guideline, investigation could take absolutely forev-

PAULINA HRUSKOCI| COURTESY

Neuroscience junior Lydia Grant is the Title IX director for the UTD chapter of Deeds Not Words.

er,” Grant said. “Another change is, Devos took away a lot of the Obama era guidance on the LGBTQ rights and we want UTD to continue to follow those guidelines.”

The Department of Education withdrew Obamaera policies under Title IX protecting transgender students in 2017.

In addition to those two points, the petition states five other demands. First, it calls to maintain using the preponderance of evidence standard. This means that if there is a greater than 50 percent chance that the claim of sexual assault is true, it is considered proof of the assault. It was required by Obama-era

guidelines, and was criticized for being an unfair practice that threatened due process. The May 2020 policy allows colleges to instead use the standard of clear and convincing evidence, meaning the proof must be highly and substantially more likely to be true than untrue.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of Know Your IX and other political advocacy groups following the release of the rule, opposed this change.

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SEE TITLE IX, PAGE 4

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

5

NEWS

Instructing Face to Face Professors cite class participation, lecture style as reasons in opting for in-person instruction modalities ANJALI VENNA News Editor

While many classes have switched to an online format this fall, some professors have chosen in-person modalities — such as hybrid and HyFlex — for the benefit of their students.

In a survey conducted by the Academic Senate in early June, 52% of faculty said they preferred an online delivery mode, 18% favored the hybrid modality and 23% favored in-person instruction.

Factors that affected course delivery preference included student health, class size and the ability to social distance.

Visiting assistant professor Pedro Gonzales is teaching two fall 2020 classes in the hybrid format: humans rights & human security, and survey on Latin-American history. He said his students responded differently to the shift to virtual classes this past spring.

“Early in the pandemic phase of the spring semester when I was teaching online, I realized some of my students were not doing well in the transition to online. But in-person they were really good. On the other hand, I noticed that some of the students who were not so engaged in participation in-person were doing really good online, like posting a lot of comments and some did videos,” Gonzales said. “Having

that in mind, I decided to go hybrid because I know that not all the students learn in the same way and some students will require me to be in the classroom while others can feel more comfortable speaking and working online. So I want to provide that spectrum of possibilities for everyone.”

Both Gonzales’ classes currently have about 18 students. In the hybrid mode, Gonzales said the class would meet once a week. However, the specifics of when and how has not been decided yet.

“I decided to do the hybrid format for my classes before this new wave of contagions in the DFW area. I have certain anxieties, but I know that we have a community at UTD and some students are counting on professors to be present at the school,” Gonzales said. “I work for the Ackerman Center and we have a strong community around us in terms of the students who follow us. I don’t want to let them down in that regard, so that’s why I chose to do the hybrid.”

Some changes Gonzales made to his course include decreasing the amount of reading and increasing online participation. He also changed certain materials that were not accessible at the McDermott library and provided PDF versions of those texts.

David Murchison, clinical professor of biology, is teaching three courses in-person this fall. His oral histology & embryology class currently has 36 stu-

ALESANDRA BELL| MERCURY STAFF

dents; his medical histology class, 30 students; and his Collegium V honors seminar course, 15 students.

“I try to integrate some of the clinical aspects of dentistry and medicine into my classes,” Murchison said. “In person, I use a very large blown up screen to show details of histology, the study of tissues, so the small details of those are what we’re looking at. So I find it easy to point to those.”

Social distancing in large lecture halls, mask requirements and self-monitoring for symptoms make face-to-face doable, Murchison said. His professional background in the military and dentistry influenced his perspective on teaching in person.

“I had a 33-year military career. I’ve dressed in chemical and biological warfare gear, I’ve worn gas masks for hours on end,” Murchison said. “And I’m a dentist so I’ve been wearing a mask since I graduated from dental school, so wearing a mask is not a problem for me.”

Ashley Barnes, assistant professor of literature, is teaching a close reading course, and graduate course on 19th century American literature in the HyFlex format. The former class has 18 students, while the latter has 13.

“I wanted to have at least the possibility for some in-person classroom live discussion that could be conducted in a way that is in line with public health guidelines,” Barnes said.

“This seemed like a way to have, at least on a rotating basis, half of the students one week, half another week or a third rotating through at a time, to offer the option for getting that live in person experience.”

Paul Diehl, director of the center for teaching and learning, said the university purchased cameras that will be installed in classrooms where there will

be any kind of face-to-face interaction. Additionally, the center created a mini training course to help professors transition to teaching online. It consists of eight to 10 modules covering various topics such as preparing prior to the start of the semester, dealing with the HyFlex model and converting class activities to a virtual format. Every instructor was given access to this course.

“For lectures, one of the things we recommend is that they be much shorter and chunked. If a class is an hour and 15 minutes and it’s primarily a lecture course, we tell people you don’t want to talk for 75 minutes and have students watch that all together,” Diehl said. “What you may do is break it down into manageable chunks where you have a short lecture, for example, in five or 10 minutes on a key concept or idea. Then you might ask them to do an exercise or certain kind of readings and then you would go to the next concept or idea that students need to learn.”

Another virtual teaching strategy deals with how to create exams for an online format. Instead of multiple choice, Diehl said faculty could design tests that have application questions, and students use the internet to find real world problems and apply them on the exam.

Barnes used a resource from this mini course to learn how to record and deliver lectures and conduct meetings via Microsoft Teams. Since she did not teach a course this past spring when classes went online, Barnes said it was helpful.

“I hope all of the students this fall find some way to feel a sense of investment and feel like they belong in the process of learning and that they find a way to get excited about learning regardless of how and where and exactly when they do that,” Barnes said.

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

6

NEWS MRUNMAYI SATHAYE Mercury Staff

The virtual intern Students adapt to changes in internships, find virtual networking opportunities ASTRID HERNANDEZ | MERCURY STAFF

The onset of the novel coronavirus caused many summer internships to be truncated, cancelled altogether or shifted online. In response, students and faculty have focused on learning digital skills.

As COVID-19 cases rise this summer, the number of internship opportunities for students has dropped, with about 16% of employers having rescinded internship opportunities. Computer science sophomore Alex Cantu Soto is currently in a virtual Facebook internship which was originally supposed to be based in-person in California. Soto said the first three weeks were a structured program for learning within online groups and meetings with the manager.

“After that it was more independent, where some days you have a meeting in the morning and some days you don’t, and you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want to do,” Soto said. “You still have to complete your tasks, but you manage your time however you want, and then you have to update your manager on what you did that day through a text message.”

Director of JSOM career management center Tom Kim said the most difficult aspect of online internships is that students do not get to be inside an office area to get a detailed view of the environment.

Instead of internships, companies are now leaning toward leadership development programs.

“What they’ll do is they’ll bring in their managers to talk about what they do during the day, what

products they’re working on and what projects they’re working on,” Kim said. “It’s kind of like a job shadowing virtually and less of the actual work inside of the company. We’re seeing a lot more of those types of leadership programs versus the paid internships where you’re actually going to go in there and you’re going to work on a project.”

ECS internship coordinator Kori Farley said that companies will be flexible when referring to the expectation that jobs will have in regard to internship background.

“Everybody’s going through this together,” Farley said. “It’s not something that’s just affecting students, so hopefully they will be pretty lenient in the future and say, ‘Oh, well, I noticed you didn’t have any work or work experience for summer 2020, but maybe you did take some online classes or maybe you were working on a personal project during that time to fill your time during that.’ I don’t expect them to be too severe about that.”

In a calendar year, ECS typically holds one intern fair per fall and spring semester. Farley said in light of COVID-19, these fairs will not be in-person, but the department is currently trying to figure out a way to hold them virtually. They also offer virtual workshops every week.

“We are encouraging students to email us with any questions that they might have and just let us know how they’re doing in their internship, how we can support them,” Farley said. “We’re

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SEE VIRTUAL INTERN, PAGE 13

You teach eTeach Transition to online instruction methods leaves UTeach graduates with uncertainty ALEENA HASSAN Mercury Staff

Students training to be teachers through the UTeach Dallas program face increased uncertainty in their prospective career after the pandemic hit.

UTeach Dallas certifies students pursuing STEM degrees to be secondary mathematics and science teachers in Texas. Yeeun Jon graduated in May 2020 with a major in mathematics and is one of the 26 spring 2020 graduates of UTeach. She will work at West Mesquite High as an Algebra I teacher in the fall. The journey to get there was not without struggles, she said.

“We were told to apply in the March-April time.

That’s when the pandemic happened, at the same time. I was scared that I wouldn’t get a job,” Jon

said. “I was working full time as a clinical teacher when it happened.”

A clinical teacher is a UTeach Dallas student who teaches full time, 40-hour weeks at a local school as a student-teacher for their last semester before graduation. Their teaching counts as a six-hour credit class. Because of the full-time work commitment, it is pushed to the last semester and students generally only take their last two UTeach classes during that period, the other of which is a weekly seminar.

“I was teaching at my school from 8 to 5 every day and then after spring break everything went virtual,” Jon said. “(UTeach students) were freaking out in our group chat, like, are we going to get credit?

Are we going to certified? What’s going to happen?”

Texas legislation states that clinical teachers must teach for 70 days and complete an additional 30

YEEUN JEON |COURTESY

Associate director of UTeach expects 30 – 40 percent decrease in enrollment in the program.

hours of in-field experience in order to be certified.

However, Katherine Donaldson, the associate director of UTeach Dallas, said the Texas Education Agency altered the requirement in light of the pandemic. Instead of the earlier requirements, clinical teachers had to teach for 35 days and the additional 30 hours could all be completed virtually. Since the program has students teaching 40-hour weeks starting from January, UTeach Dallas students were able to meet this requirement.

“A concern that our students — both seniors and rising seniors — had was if they were going to get the certification requirements, but even if they did, would anyone be hiring now or in the foreseeable future?” Donaldson said. “We did our best to stay in contact with ISDs and keep our students in the loop about hirings.”

With only half a semester remaining before graduation, Jon worried about securing a teaching

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SEE UTEACH, PAGE 13

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

7

NEWS

What does the fight for civil rights look like in 2020?

Professors discuss historical precedent in demands for police reform, social media effects on Black Lives Matter movement EMAAN BANGASH | Managing Editor

After the events surrounding George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests that erupted in nearly all states acrossthe nation, the Black Lives Matter movement has taken the world by storm. People have gathered to protest and express solidarity not only in the U.S., but in the U.K, Hong Kong and South Korea as well.

During this time, the words of famous figures of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are echoed in chants, on signs and on social media posts. So what does the movement look like today, over six decades later?

Several protests —calling for racial equality and defunding the police —have occurred locally in the past two weeks, including in Frisco, downtown Plano and downtown Dallas. The protests themselves were met with resistance, with police being deployed at the protests and using tear gas, rubber bullets and mass-arresting protestors. Senior sociology major Anjana Parashar attended a protest in Dallas two weeks ago, where she said she and other demonstrators were hit with tear gas by police during the protest.

“I was there for about two hours and we were all just walking together and the police were being very aggressive and I would just say rude, unnecessarily, so it was a very scary situation to be in. I got tear gassed and it’s not a fun thing to be tear gassed at all, it’s extremely painful,” she said.

“At the same time, it felt good to get tear gassed because at that point I understood what the front liners of these protests were going through and what they were feeling, and it felt good to know I was fighting alongside them.”

According to an article by the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Police Department publicly stated that they released tear gas, and local reporters cite the use of rubber bullets at protests. Recently, however, an injunction was signed off on to ban the use of “less lethal” weapons such as chemical agents to deter protestors, effective until Sept. 9.

But resistance against police brutality is nothing new, and neither is the demand for defunding the police —a demand which has existed for generations as a proposed solution from people concerned with police violence, said assistant Arts and Humanities professor Anne Fischer. In 1968, The Kerner Commission was established by the POTUS at the time to address the police and National Guard response to protests against institutionalized racismand poverty in cities such as Newark and Detroit, which also saw rioting and looting at the protests. She said this was in recognition of the impoverishment of black communities at

the time, and that the demands for defunding the police taps into this historical recognition.

Fischer said defunding the police is a demand to redistribute the disproportionate funding of law enforcement in comparison to institutions of community and vulnerable populations.

“What is radical about the history of law enforcement is how lavishly funded they have become. So defunding the police is really just a demand to reduce the amount of military grade equipment from police departments,” she said.

“And when we see how grossly disproportionate the funding for police is and how meager funding is to support lives and black care and communities, defunding then becomes a way to a demand to redistribute and shift our collective priorities.”

Fischer researches the effects of police enforcement of moral, or “public order” laws against women —particularly black women and black trans women —in the 20th century and how it relates to police power overall. Public order laws are laws which enforce against acts which are considered “harmful to society.” She said police are allowed to arrest thousands per year for public order laws, and this practice tends to target women and trans women of color who are considered sexually deviant or disorderly. She said her research investigates how this translates to criminalizing homelessness and poverty as away to make white people feel more comfortable on the streets.

“From about the 1920s to the 1990s, police had a really breathtaking amount of discretion in deciding how to enforce these really vague public order misdemeanors. A police officer could basically surveil a woman and arrest her for a prostitution-related misdemeanor just because she’s standing on the street, or walking on the street when there’s a sidewalk ... really innocuous everyday movements on public space that you and I do any time we take a walk.”

Fischer said in her research she argues that police power has expanded dramatically in the last 40 years, and that the battle over women’s bodies and how much power police have to target women for their presumed sexual practices was important for justifying and legalizing the expansion of discretionary police power.

“And using the enormous funding that backs this sort of public order policing, instead of funding this violent and harmful cycle of arresting and jailing the poor, that funding would go to unarmed social workers who would connect impoverished people with resources and care that they need, like housing, healthcare,

ANJANA PARASHAR| COURTESY

In a survey conducted by The Mercury, 58% of respondents said they have used their social media platform to post things related to Black Lives Matter such as donation funds, petition links, commentary posts and art/media.

mental health assistance and all of these resources that we can pay for because we know that hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars are already going to police.’’ Fischer said.

The 2017-2018 total adopted budget for Dallas Police Department was $465,522,805, and total planned budget for 2018-2019 was $482,419,093, which is about a $17 million increase. In comparison, the total planned budget for Human and Social Needs, which includes the Office for Community Care and the Office for Homeless Solutions, for 20182019 was $18,213,410. According to an article

by NBC DFW, Dallas City Council members recently denied a request to redirect funds to the DPD budget by $6.5 million, which would have paid for an increase in police hiring this year, in response to pressure from demonstrators.

Mental health calls are one example of something handled by police departments, which has been addressed in different ways. The Crisis Intervention Teamprogram was created in 1988 by the Memphis Tennessee Police Department in response to Memphis police officers shooting a suicidal person who approached them. This was implemented in 2009 by the Plano police

department. In addition, the Rapid Integrated Group Healthcare Team Care program was implemented in 2018 as a three-year pilot program by the DPD in south central Dallas to divert responses to mental health calls to intervention services rather than to the emergency room or jails. In response to a mental health call, a police officer, paramedic and behavioral specialist from Parkland Hospital are dispatched. This program is funded by a grant of $2.2 million by the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation at Communities Foundation of Texas, according to an article by NBC DFW. For Fischer, defunding could involve removing police from situations where they have to respond to homelessness or mental health crises, and instead redirecting this to unarmed and highly trained specialists who are committed to serving marginalized and vulnerable populations. “So it’s imagining different ways —different frontline workers —disarming them, and putting in place, instead of police, trained healthcare, mental healthcare professionals and social workers,” Fischer said.

“These are people who have dedicated their lives

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SEE BLM, PAGE 12

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

8

NEWS

“If those 90 days pass, they lose their status and they have to go home” International graduates risk losing immigration status amidst dwindling job opportunities, increased living expense PATRICIA MATHU Mercury Staff

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

Parth Supekar, UTD ‘20, took out $60,000 in student loans, and now is struggling to find employment.

International students who graduated in May 2020 face questions about their employment and residency status amidst a shifting market.

After completion of UTD’s graduate program, many international students choose to stay in the United States to pursue employment for up to a year past their graduation. This Optional Practical Training (OPT), designed to complement their academic education, is possible through their F-1 academic student visa.

After applying for and receiving their Employment Authorization Document (EAD), graduates have 90 days to find a job. COVID-19 has caused some companies to rollback hiring schemes and internship pro-

grams. For international students who have received an EAD, landing a job in this turbulent market is the difference between continuing their legal stay, returning home or changing their immigration status.

Parth Supekar graduated in May with a M.A. in supply chain management. Though the novel coronavirus sent his roommates home, he is still living at Northside, trying to find a job for his OPT instead of returning to his home in India.

“Our UTD campus used to be so full of life and now there is no one there,” Supekar said. “One year ago, there were a bunch of people playing there (on the soccer fields). Now it is completely empty.”

Supekar received his EAD in early June and has been actively applying to jobs since. He said that there

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SEE INTERNATIONAL, PAGE 12

KAREENA CHAWLA | COURTESY

COVID Check-In — care packages delivered to senior residents in assisted living homes — was created by UTD students Kareena Chawla, Shreena Bhatt, Anuj Gupta, Aritra Baidya and Charmi Modi.

A bright response to coronavirus Students develop sanitization, morale efforts to help during quarantine AYESHA ASAD

Life & Arts Editor

ALESANDRA BELL | MERCURY STAFF

Several UTD students have created projects throughout quarantine aimed at improving daily life during COVID-19. SaniScanner — developed by mechanical engineering junior Keyu Cao and physics senior Parker Watts — is one such project: a device that sterilizes infectious

pathogens using UV-C light. Cao and Watts plan to station SaniScanners at retail checkout counters in order for shoppers and staff to be protected from infectious diseases.

“Grocery and retail checkouts in general (are) obvious pinpoints of where it’s like a bottleneck where everyone in the store, in order to buy

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SEE STUDENT PROJECT, PAGE 13

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

9

NEWS

“I feel that I am not being seen or heard” Deaf student shares issues she faced with online classes PATRICIA MATHU Mercury Staff

When classes transitioned online, psychology junior Labiba Zarin Halim said she was not adequately accommodated and is concerned about how the OSA will function in the fall.

Halim is deaf, and the OSA typically provides her with accommodations including a Signed Exact English interpreter, extra time on her exams, preferential seating to view her interpreter and closed captions if there are videos in the class. In addition, she tries to make friends who will take notes as an additional resource. When COVID-19 procedures went into effect and classes shifted online, Halim said her usual accommodations were more challenging to come by.

“It was really up to me to pick up the extra time and learn and understand the material,” Halim said.

“It was very frustrating. There were days that I didn’t want to join my classes because at times I feel I’m learning nothing valuable out of it besides reading the material and taking tests for hours.”

Her interpreter could not log into her classes,

note-taking was nonexistent and the live-captioning option on Microsoft Teams was riddled with errors, delays and missing phrases. Instead, she had to FaceTime her interpreter during class. Information was often lost in the process of sharing audio over a secondary platform. In addition, it was challenging to balance paying attention to her interpreter and visual cues from the lecture.

“I’m left to my own devices to handle the classes on my own,” Halim said. “I would say universities are not keeping the disabled community in their minds. We’re the largest minority and it’s nothing new when we’re left behind with lack of access.”

UTD is planning on resuming classes in the fall with a hybrid of in-person and online classes. Halim said online classes may have the same problems that spring semester suffered from, whereas attending lectures in person would be pointless because wearing masks is mandatory.

“It would be useless for me,” Halim said. “I rely on body language, facial expressions and lip reading. I’m a visual person so I’ll be stuck doing my work remotely full-time.”

In a previous interview with The Mercury in

AASAV SUREJA | ARCHIVE

When classes shifted online in April, Labiba Halim said her usual accommodations were more challenging to come by.

April, OSA Director Kerry Tate acknowledged difficulties during the transition period to online classes, but committed to building accessible content.

The OSA has declined to comment on this story.

Halim said that the OSA did get better at managing interpreters throughout the spring and she acknowledges that the initial online transition was very difficult.

“So much has changed with COVID-19. I really don’t blame UTD for not stepping up as much as they could because it’s new to them,” Halim said.

“But at the same time, there’s not much they did to succeed because it happened halfway through the

semester.” The CDC estimates that over a quarter of the American adult population has some kind of disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates certain accommodations for people with disabilities, was last amended in 2008.

Halim said that it is particularly outdated in regard to new developments in technology.

“I want people to know that we’re paying for our education that isn’t always suitable for our needs. We’re trying to live our best life as much as we can while getting the education we certainly deserve,” Halim said. “I feel that I’m not being seen or heard.”

Rushing to online

Fraternities, sororities move to virtual recruitment methods NANDIKA MANSINGKA Mercury Staff

A warm welcome from their sorority sisters used to feel close and personal. Now, new recruits are welcomed to the sisterhood ten feet apart from one another Greek organizations have now had to adjust to recruiting people differently because of COVID-19. The recruitment process is not streamlined. Greek life is categorized into four Greek governing councils – the College Panhellenic Council (CPC), the Interfraternity Council (IFC), the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) and the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC), which oversee and make decisions for separate groups of Greek organizations. Each of the governing councils has their own plans and ideas for how to go about rushing, providing more leeway for creative ideas on how to make virtual recruitment effective.

“It depends on the organization,” said Fraternity and Sorority Life Office director Kevin Saberre. “Some are using Teams, some are using Zoom, some are using simply social media like Instagram Q&A or a Facebook group. Some groups have talked about using Twitch as a recruitment tool or are contracting with other third-party apps.”

Marketing senior and head of Tri Delta recruitment Nikita Tiffany said that CPC held three pre-recruitment events. The first, Meet the Greeks, was held at the Plinth, where all four organizations under CPC set up booths and interacted with possible new members. The second, Panhellenic Poolside, was a casual hangout by the pool for potential members. The third was a collective CPC pre-recruitment event.

“Now we are doing Meet the Greeks, plus four events per sorority,” Tiffany said. “So, there’s a total of seventeen events that girls can attend this year, which I think is phenomenal. This is the

DELTA KAPPA DELTA | COURTESY

The projected amount of new members has increased despite the transition to an on-line format.

first time we’re able to do our own individual events because now that recruitment is 100% virtual, we want to take advantage of every single opportunity that we have to talk to our sisters.”

At the end of recruitment, organizations do different things to celebrate and welcome their new members. Finance junior and MGC president Vaishnavi Danda said that previously, her sorority held new member presentations in-person, where all fraternities and sororities would

come out to meet the new members and they would have a dance. Now, they are having to adapt it to a virtual format, possibly filming a video or doing the presentation over Instagram live. Meanwhile, Tiffany’s sorority has a tentative plan to do a virtual and in-person bid day, depending on what people are comfortable with.

“Instead of six feet apart, you’d be 10 feet

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Comets play the Feud Athletes maintain camaraderie, teamwork through virtual game show

Season’s ceasing?

UTD Athletics created return-to-play template, phasing in practices

UTD COMETS | COURTESY

The public can view recorded episodes on the UTD Comet Sports YouTube page.

NANDIKA MANSINGKA Mercury Staff

The UTD Athletics department introduced a virtual tournament for student athletes called “Comets Feud” over the summer break, inspired by the Family Feud-style game show format.

To play, each UTD sport contributes a team of five players who compete against other teams in brackets, progressing from quarterfinals to semifinals to championships. Assistant Athletics Director Dave Wester said the tournament is a way to give student athletes a reason to be competitive with each other in a friendly way, even from home.

“We started it around a month ago,” Wester said. “We didn’t know where it would go. It was supposed to be just a fun game but student athletes loved it so much that we decided to turn it into a tournament. Our coaches loved it and students seemed to enjoy the competitive side of it.”

With the onslaught of the current pandemic in March, athletic seasons were cut short and student athletes were sent home on extended leave from their respective sports. Comets Feud was the brainchild of Associate Athletics Director Bruce Unrue, who created it with the intention of keeping the athletics community together in the midst of uncertain times, inspired by seeing a Facebook livestream of a church holding a similar contest.

“They weren’t seeing their teammates and we weren’t seeing them — so there was a big disconnect going on,” Unrue said. “I was trying to come up with something fun to do that could get the student athletes in front of each other again. Just to have them at least see each other’s faces and interact a little bit, because that’s a big part of being part of a team: being around your teammates and not only competing on the field but having time to spend together.”

Each episode of the tournament is recorded through Microsoft Teams and then uploaded to YouTube for the general public to view. Wester said it is a way to give the fans further insight and taste of what student athletes are up to. Initially, the game show was uploaded to YouTube and advertised through the Comet Sports Twitter account, but since posting on Instagram TV, viewership has greatly increased, with some episodes on YouTube reaching over 150 views, Unrue said.

The idea was first introduced to the Student Athletics Advisory Committee (SAAC) as a way to test the waters to see if there would be interest within the student body. SAAC President Christian Kondor said that the tournament was definitely something the committee wanted to do, fitting with their goal of fostering a sense of community within the athletics department and building camaraderie between the teams.

Kondor was also involved as a participant and said that the game show had an overwhelmingly positive response. Athletes were eager to play and it gained traction quickly.

“The prompts and responses were absolutely hilarious,” Kondor said. “We were super competitive, because that’s one of the things you can really count on with an athletics department event. If you make it competitive, we’re going to be invested and it’s all in good fun but people get really into it and this was no exception.”

Much of the logistical preparation for the tournament was handled by the athletics directors, with Unrue preparing graphics and sound effects as well as editing for each episode, while Wester prepared prompts and a script for each taping.

“We had a group meeting and I was asked if

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ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

Student athletes will be required to play or practice 114 days during the school year to maintain eligibility.

MADISON YORK Editor-in-Chief

Following the ASC’s announcement to postpone fall 2020 sports to spring, UTD also announced its intent to resume sports next semester.

Shortly after the ASC’s decision, on August 5 the NCAA announced that Division III fall championships were canceled. Part of this directive will allow member institutions — and sports programs within those institutions — to only have to play 50% of a typical yearly competition schedule to maintain eligibility. This could include scrimmages with National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics schools, non-Division III or even junior college schools, said director of athletics Bill Petitt. Some of these games can even be postponed to spring.

“It’ll be at the discretion of each institution and each program, how they want to do it. If they want to practice five days a week in the fall and very little in the spring — they can do it any way they want to,” Petitt said. “Now, the conference has said they would like to come back and play in the spring, so they’re going to play a reduced schedule. The conference is setting up a schedule that has yet to be determined.”

Another aspect of the NCAA proceedings, said Petitt, is a waiver allowing D-III student athletes to play or practice for 114 days (the length of a typical D-III season) during the school year to maintain eligibility. Practice includes individual skill development as well as strength and conditioning, which grants some flexibility in training regimens.

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COMICS BE KIND AND BE MINDFUL

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

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VIRTUAL WEEKS OF WELCOME

BIANCA DEL RIO | MERCURY STAFF

THEN VS. NOW

ELIZABETH NGUYEN | MERCURY STAFF

QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF

SEASON TWO HIATUS: COVID EDITION

CHARLIE CHANG | MERCURY STAFF

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

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to service and to helping people in need. If police even do get training to deal with mental health crises, those trainings can often just be a day, right? One day a year. And that will not help police deescalate a situation, particularly when they are the ones who are heavily armed and the people that they are engaging with are not.”

While the demand for reforming the police remained since the 1960s, assistant Arts and Humanities professor Ben Wright said the big difference between today’s movement and in years prior, such as during the Ferguson riots, was the vivid video depicting George Floyd’s death.

“I think that that certainly plays a role and that’s the kind of key distinguisher. The Ferguson situation, for those of us that really understand the problems of policing and racism, was clear.

But for folks that are inclined to see police as a benevolent institution, there were questions in their mind,” Wright said. “I think what’s striking is how many folks, including folks that normally wouldn’t be inclined to take action for racial justice, after seeing that video are fairly unequivocal about the injustice that took place.”

Coverage of the protests has varied on news and social media, and the focus on them has been either on the peaceful or violent aspects.

He said that there is an interest for white people and people in power to focus on the looting as a

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are limited job postings, and those that are available have a note that the hiring is frozen.

Job said he felt so overwhelmed that he called his mother, who is still living in India.

“I told her I’m trying too hard and expenses are shooting. I am not getting any interviews.

I had a couple of interviews and when they learned that I was an international student, they said that ‘we don’t hire internationals,’” Supekar said. “I asked my mom, ‘should I just quit and come back home?’” Though coronavirus became a more visible threat in the spring, no adjustments were made to the 90-day period for OPT. Dobrina Ustun, an employment-based immigration attorney in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has been working with international students and watching coronavirus’s impact unfold.

“We thought maybe for a short period of time, maybe a couple of months there could be some sort of relief. But given the current administration and the immigration policy they’re running, we were a little naive to think we would get some relief,” Ustun said.

“Normally, once you graduate, you have to apply for a work permit during your last se-

way of delegitimizing the cause of theprotest and as a resistance to acknowledging white privilege, which stems from a societal value of property.

“I think that there’s a real resistance to surrendering those privileges and even there’s a real resistance into acquiring the awareness that would give the kind of moral imperative of surrendering that privilege. So because it’s that kind of ideological interests, there are a lot of people that are constantly looking for ways to minimize the injustice that exists and to what in fact are overwhelmingly democratic expressions of discontent can be reinterpreted as you know, the violence, immoral actions of either outside agitators —we’ve heard that phrase kind of a lot which has a history in the sixties —or the violent destruction of property,” Wright said. “There’s certainly an excessive interest that’s being spent on the looting. But, there’s are kind of curious ways that folks are telling on themselves by the way that they talk about the looting, revealing our society’s veneration of property over lives.”

On social media, the movement circulated through hashtags such as #blacklivesmatter and #BLM, George Floyd’s video and other videos of the protests. A constantly updated link to a set of petitions, government official contact information, donation sites and other pieces of information in connection to the Black Lives Matter movement was shared across nearly all social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter,

Facebook and even TikTok. In a survey conducted by The Mercury with 118 respondents, 83% of respondents said they were using social media to keep up with the Black Lives Matter movement, and 43% said Twitter was their primary source of news about the protests.

Fischer said the use of social media accelerates the scale and speed of the networks of communication and mobilization of the movement and the protests. She said she is seeing a meaningful shift online in the ways people are being activated by the violence, with people posting and circulating reading lists and other forms of information.

“I mean, people on my social media feeds who were never political are all of a sudden posting, like to remember Brianna Taylor on her birthday, or more importantly, people are posting and circulating reading lists to educate themselves. That’s what I find most powerful and most exciting,” Fischer said. “I’ve had people in my family who were never political, or I never really talked about what I did with them, emailing me and asking for reading recommendations, ‘What do you assign in your class? I’d like to learn more.’ And that is powerful and, in my lifetime, unprecedented.”

In The Mercury survey, 58% of respondents said they have used their social media platform to post anything related to the Black Lives Matter movement, which consisted of commentary posts, petition links, donation/bail fund links and art/media.

Black Student Alliance Vice President and software engineering senior Gerry Bogonko said he noticed the strength of the movement now has helped open people’s hearts and perspectives to black people’s struggles. He showed his friends the video of George Floyd’s death and saw how they couldn’t finish watching. Now, he and his non-black friends are reading “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander.

“Never in a million years I thought I would be reading this with my white friends. So, to me (it is) a big plus,” Bogonko said. “I think people are more willing to listen right now. I just do.” He said one thing that has circulated among black student organizations on campus is the question of what to do about activist fatigue, which is a feeling of burnout in social justice and human rights activists.

He said they are trying to combat this by defining concrete plans for what happens next, whether at UTD in the form of demands for more black representation on campus or professors being hired, or in national policies such as police reform.

“It’s really important to start asking these questions about the policies. These kinds of things take sometimes months to put it in motion. It’s very important that we just strike while the iron is hot and that that’s what we’re trying to do,” Bogonko said. “There are multiculturaland diverse student organizations all around the country that are following suit...creating these demands. I think that we as students, that’s what we need to do and that’s what we are doing.”

mester of school. Once you officially graduate, you have 90 days to find a job and start with your employer. It is always hard to find a job that will take you as an international student. It wasn’t always easy, but people were managing.”

Now, students find themselves at the whim of their employers. As businesses scale-back programs, they have to find new employment before the 90-day limit.

“If those 90 days pass, they lose their status and they’ll have to go home,” Ustun said.

Vineet Job graduated with an M.A. in supply chain management in May. He already has a job offer, but coronavirus slowed the processing of his application. He applied for an EAD card in February. It was approved in mid-June, but he is still waiting for the physical EAD card to arrive.

“To be honest, I’ve been going through hell,” Job said. “I’ve been feeling really sad, but you have to move on. You can’t just keep being worried about what is going to happen.

There are some things that are completely out of my control. I can’t do anything to get my EAD card.”

He had a job lined up but cannot officially start until he receives his card. This is a process that can take a while. For example, Job said that

last year, during the government shutdown, people lost their jobs waiting almost half a year for their EAD cards. But it still appears to be taking longer in Job’s case.

Job, beyond checking the mail every day, has been directing his energy towards online courses and a virtual volunteering program.

“If I sit and do nothing, I just go more crazy,” Job said. “The only thing I can do is keep on applying, talk to people, prepare for my interview.”

Students unable to find employment by the deadline are faced with a handful of options.

They could pursue another graduate degree or further education, but that typically comes at a large cost.

Many students pay for their education with loans, just like many domestic students. International students cannot receive federal loans, so students unable to finance their education have to take loans out from their home country, Ustun said.

Supekar took out around $60,000 in student loans for his education. Now, though he cannot find a job, in addition to these loans, expenses like food and housing keep piling up.

Instead of pursuing another academic program, students can also change their status from F-1 to a visitor status. The danger here is that doing so prohibits them from legal

employment in the United States. Another option is to return to their home countries.

Job said he has seen other international students who are afraid to go to their home countries.

“I feel that people once they come here, they are so desperate. They spend a lot of money coming here. They have this thing that they have to find a job here or it is like you die or something,” Job said. “Personally, I think that they should go for the best option that goes to them.”

Supekar said the decision is not so clear-cut.

He is considering taking out more loans to continue his education if his 90 days run out.

“My parents dreamed about me coming to the United States,” Supekar said. “These times will pass. The job market in the whole world is down right now. It is in my home country, India, so I think staying would be the best active decision at this point.”

For the numerous international students with upended summer plans, it is a race against the clock to find a new way forward to maintain their legal status.

“If you talk to some other people, the story would pretty much be the same,” Supekar said. “Everyone is in a situation right now. It’s not just me: it’s everyone.”

Oct. 1, 2018 | The Mercury

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something, needs to go through,” Cao said. “And that’s a point of contact for dozens or hundreds of people each day, where there’s a potential for disease transmission from item to person or person to item.”

SaniScanner, Cao said, is a tunnel that goes over the checkout conveyor belt at stores and scans purchases with UV-C light to kill off bacteria and viruses on the surface.

“UV-C is basically a type of light that has genocidal properties against a wide variety of pathogens,” Cao said. “It works by damaging the DNA or the RNA of various bacteria and viruses and that neutralizes them and reduces infectivity rates of those diseases.”

This summer, Cao and Watts are prototyping SaniScanner and running quality assurance tests to gauge how effective it is at visualizing pathogens, as well as ensuring that their UV shielding is sufficient to protect users from potentially harmful exposure to UV light. Later, they plan to have their device installed at checkout counters.

“The ( long-term) i mpact w e’d l ike t o s ee i s a reduction in diseases contracted from items, like reducing the infection rates of foodborne illnesses like E. coli and salmonella, and especially now, like reduce the number of preventable hospital visits,” Cao said.

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job amidst all the changes taking place.

“We had online job fairs and the UTeach professors sent us links to apply to, but I kept applying and applying. We had one mock interview session before we closed, and I didn’t feel that prepared,” Jon said.

“Some schools were going through a hiring freeze.

I had to think about applying outside of the Dallas area, but I didn’t know if classes would be online or in-person in the fall. I could apply to a different city, but I wouldn’t know whether or not I would have to move there or if I could save money and stay in Dallas and teach remotely. And no one really knew at that time either.”

For fellow mathematics spring graduate Destiny Salcido, it was the lack of engagement with her Algebra II students at Berkner High School during her clinical teaching that initially worried her.

“I think math is a social subject — it’s very collaborative. I was thinking, like, how do I replicate that

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here even though we’re not physically on campus right now.”

Kim said JSOM has always emphasized networking as a great tool of getting an internship or a full-time position because you get to

Watts said that in a post-COVID world, SaniScanner could be beneficial for peace of mind.

“There’s a lot of anxiety that people are feeling now,” Watts said, “and I think we’re going to keep feeling it even after COVID.” Another project by a different group of students — COVID Check-In — aims to create and distribute mental health care packages filled with crossword and word search puzzles, adult coloring books, art supplies, snacks, handwritten cards and more to senior residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the Dallas area. COVID Check-In was created by UTD students Kareena Chawla, Shreena Bhatt, Anuj Gupta, Aritra Baidya and Charmi Modi.

“It was kind of an idea we collectively came together with,” Gupta, a neuroscience junior, said.

“We’ve seen on the news how people in hospice care and senior homes are being affected drastically — they don’t have enough donations coming towards them and they don’t have enough PPE (personal protective equipment) and things of that nature … So then we started this care package initiative to care homes and we found that was something they would really appreciate down the road.”

Chawla, a neuroscience junior, said that she felt for the seniors who couldn’t leave their own houses, especially the ones with no access to their families.

“We’re imagining if our own grandparents

can’t leave their house, they’re still living in a house, you know, with their families and extended families,” Chawla said. “Imagine the seniors who are in these facilities who have no access, have no contact with their family.”

Alongside the care packages, the team has also been donating books, magazines and board games to senior residents. Chawla said that one of the service coordinators called the team to tell them that she was touched by their acts of service towards the community.

“People don’t know what the situation is inside these in nursing homes and how it’s been so hard for everyone, the coordinators included,” Chawla said.

“Some facilities have mentioned the need for hair clips because their hairdressers haven’t been allowed to come inside and the seniors have a difficult time making their hair. They really need headbands, hair clips. And then another facility mentioned that they would really love magazine donations, because their seniors cut out pictures of people and things they like and make these little memory collages.”

Gupta said that the team encourages anybody who would like to volunteer for COVID Check-In to join them in making handwritten cards for their care packages, which adds a personal touch to them.

“We have a thing where it’s like if (the volunteers) make five or 10 cards, they get volunteering hours for it, because each card takes about

five to 10 minutes to make,” Gupta said. “We would also encourage people (…) to build their own care packages for different facilities around the region (…) if they want to basically raise donations from their own social groups and pull those donations and make their own care packages. And we can fund them a little bit with things that they might need and provide them the facilities that they may need to donate to.”

The team is giving volunteers different options to be accommodating said Bhatt, a healthcare management junior. For example, if people aren’t comfortable with leaving their house, Bhatt can organize pickups and drop offs.

“One of my friends, she wanted to make care packages at home, but she’s not allowed to leave her house,” Bhatt said. “So I dropped off the supplies on her doorstep and she’ll make them, and I’ll pick them up and have another volunteer who’s willing to deliver them.”

Chawla said that the pandemic has highlighted underserved areas that would need help regardless of whether there’s a pandemic.

“Our true goal is to just check in on our Dallas community,” Chawla said. “We’re definitely not going to stop after this pandemic. We want to keep on putting our volunteers out there and reaching them because these are groups that always need those acts of kindness.”

experience of students collaborating and asking me questions over online sessions?” Salcido said. “My school decided that we wouldn’t teach any new content after spring break, so we didn’t have any classes.

I had tutoring hours on Zoom where students could come in if they needed help, but I had like five students out of 60 reach out for more information.”

Donaldson is optimistic about recent graduates’ job prospects. As a former 15+ year teacher at Garland ISD, she said she is able to leverage her connections within school districts to help student find jobs and said almost all spring graduates have accepted teaching offers.

“I get emails during the spring time of year from principals and assistant principals asking, ‘Do you have a science teacher you can send over?

Do you have a geometry teacher you can send over?’” Donaldson said.

The program has produced over 200 teachers since its first graduating class in 2011, but Donaldson said they expect a decrease of 30-40% of normal enrollment for the upcoming year. Otherwise, the

staff has focused recruiting efforts on sending emails and maintaining an online presence, but their main source of recruitment in the past was the freshmen orientation, which is now virtual.

Salcido said she decided to be a math teacher in high school because of her positive experience with her calculus teacher. Armed with the skills she learned from UTeach, Salcido said she feels like she has a fresher perspective on the subject.

“Being a UTeach math major, I learned the people behind mathematics and how to engage with students so they can digest material. I learned how I want to make math more human. That’s something I don’t think most math majors have,” Salcido said.

“To anyone who’s interested in UTeach but not sure: if you don’t like the first semester, you can leave and they’ll be fine with it. What do you have to lose? You might figure out that you really like it and you want to do teaching as a career.”

Looking back at the previous semester, Salcido said she felt shifting to online learning came with new sets of challenges like cheating or truancy, but also some

others that might not initially come to mind.

“One of the things I’m nervous about is classroom management. It’s hard to (do) that as a new teacher, and it’s harder to do that online,” Salcido said.

“I want students to respect me but also see me as friendly. But we don’t know for sure whether classes will be online or in-person yet, so maybe they’ll be in person.”

The decision about public schools opening up or staying online in Texas is decided by the state government. Governor Abbott had previously called for reopening businesses and on June 18 stated that he wants to open schools in the fall. If that is still the course of action in August, Salcido will move five hours away to Amarillo and teach 7th and 8th grade math at Austin Middle School. To her, it’s her responsibility as a teacher to show up if classes are held at the school.

“The way I see it is that if the students are risking their lives for their education, the least I can do is come in and teach them,” Salcido said. “It’s my duty to them.”

be face-to-face with an employer.

“We’re actually teaching our students how to virtually network properly,” Kim said. “How do you make that initial introduction to somebody on LinkedIn? (…) What we’re doing is we’re teaching our JSOM students how to use the like button and how to comment. We’re changing to the market where we’re telling

students what else they can do. We’re actually going in and looking at companies that are hiring.”

Kim said researching companies and acquiring certifications can increase students’ chances of getting hired. Companies in the travel, cruise and airline industries will not be hiring, whereas companies like Walmart, Amazon,

SpaceX and Raytheon are still hiring.

“If you’re one of those students that maybe had their internship cut short or canceled, you should be looking at finding another internship, whether it’s remote, whether it’s nonpaid, whether it’s a leadership development program, you should still be looking,” Kim said. “There are still internships out there.”

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L&A

Boba-fide success ELIZABETH NGUYEN | MERCURY STAFF

How boba businesses have survived, thrived during COVID-19 BEN NGUYEN Opinion Editor

With most small businesses facing hard times due to the pandemic, boba shops have stood out from the crowd — surviving and thriving during the COVID-19 environment.

It was early March when COVID was starting to become more prominent in the U.S., and Terry Pham, Fat Straws founder and CEO, suggested starting a delivery service at a meeting.

“And they kind of laughed at me and they’re like, what are you worried about? I said, ‘Yeah,

I think this pandemic, this thing’s going to be pretty big,’” Pham said. “They didn’t really take it seriously.”

When local students had spring break extended on March 13, Pham’s sales took a large hit in the last two and a half weeks of March.

Meanwhile, My Lynn Nguyen — fellow boba businessperson and owner of Magic Cup Café — said that the majority of staff left early on in the pandemic.

“We were at like 15 employees and we went down to four employees within two weeks of the breakout at the beginning,” Nguyen said. ”A lot

Gone Phishing How to tell you’re reading a scam email ANDREW BARLASS Mercury Staff

Congratulations! You have been chosen to receive a free scholarship! Just confirm your identity by clicking this totally unsuspicious link: www.whatisyourcreditcardnumberandmothersmaidenname.com .

Some scam emails are obvious, but sometimes convincing ones can slip through the cracks of Microsoft’s email monitoring and get into your student inbox. These kinds of scams are crafted to trick students or faculty into giving the scammers information that can make them money, either through direct theft like using bank account information, or through convoluted blackmail, like posing as the IRS

or ICE, using your public student information to threaten you unless you pay them $160 in iTunes gift cards . Fret not! Here are some rules of thumb that will help you determine if a suspicious email is legitimate or dangerous.

1. Look for grammatical errors.

This is one of the most common themes in a lot of scam emails. If you see an email pretending to be from someone important, such as a government agency, the university or a potential employer for a million-dollar company, and there’s grammatical errors, don’t trust it. Legitimate businesses and agencies proofread their content before emailing it out to avoid looking unprofessional (or like a scam!), so it’s pretty safe to assume it’s not legitimate if it has several grammatical, capitalization or formatting

of employees, you know, they’re young, but they live with older parents or they live with their grandparents (…) and we can’t force them to go work.”

At the start, said both Pham and Nguyen, it was worrying to think about the future of running boba shops in a pandemic environment.

Yet, even as stay-at-home orders progressed, their businesses didn’t suffer. In fact, quite the contrary.

“The most crazy thing about my business is I don’t think that boba tea was one of the big essentials, that it was an item of comfort for people during this pandemic,” Nguyen said. “But my business revenue was actually going up for us.”

Both Pham’s and Nguyen’s businesses were able to maintain and even ramp up business during the pandemic. But where did the demand come from?

In a recent survey conducted by The Mercury, 69% of the 245 respondents reported buying boba sometime during the pandemic. A common thread among respondents pointed to the comfort provided by taste or by memories of a time without COVID-19.

Pham thinks that there’s a difference in boba tea that makes it more appealing than other foods.

“It’s not food; it’s kind of like a treat. It’s comfort, it’s refreshment and it’s something you can share with a lot of people.” Pham said. “Not necessarily everyone wants to order a $50-60 family meal, but they’ll get drinks and treats for everybody.”

Since both Pham’s and Nguyen’s businesses were counted as essential and permitted to re-

issues. This d oesn’t a lways a pply t o very s mall businesses, or individual people like a professor.

People make mistakes sometimes, especially if English isn’t their first language. The key here is if they claim they are a huge powerful organization, they shouldn’t have this problem.

2. Check the senders.

Scammers often will have email addresses from easy-to-register websites like Gmail and Yahoo, and from unheard of sites that have a lot of weird letters and numbers in them. If you get an email from pw7lpw4ix@d2in7odn.web, it’s probably not legitimate. Scammers sometimes go the extra mile to make their accounts look legit, often by using a recognizable name but messing up one of the letters and hoping you don’t notice. If you feel unsure, try googling the website they are claiming to be from and seeing if the addresses match up.

3. Check the recipients.

Scammers will often send out fraudulent emails to groups of people with similar or identical names. Someone sending you an email that says you were specifically chosen for some-

main open, both were quickly able to set up a delivery service and curbside pickup, as well as spread the word on social media about their adaptations to selling boba tea in quarantine.

Pham said that Fat Straws was accustomed to doing farmer’s markets and pop-up events in the past, and with good systems in place to do mass delivery and online sales, they were able to sell boba on a larger scale. The new pop-up events with online preorders helped Fat Straws turn the tide and prevented them from having to lay off any employees. As for Nguyen and Magic Cup Café, revenue during the pandemic also went up, despite having reduced operating hours and fewer employees.

Besides the obvious adaptations such as Plexiglas over the counter, new delivery and curbside services, and pop-up events, both businesses adapted their menus as well. Gallon and half-sizes were made available to reduce trips out to buy tea, and some items were removed to consolidate menus for both franchises.

“For us, during that time of March to May, that boosted a lot of — like 20 to 30 percent of my revenues, releasing whole item gallon sizes,” Nguyen said.

Overall, boba has proven to prevail in the pandemic, with its Google search term history showing a spike in searches over the last few months.

“We have one location take a pretty significant dip sales-wise, but the other three stores were able to maintain their sales,” Pham said.

“And in some cases we even beat sales from last year in the pandemic, which was quite a feat.”

CHARLIE CHANG| MERCURY STAFF

thing but has 20 other people in the recipients should be especially suspicious.

4. Look at what they are asking from you.

Scammers will ask for some pretty weird stuff, and it isn’t enough to list out what not to give them. Information that may sound

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SEE SCAM, PAGE 24

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

16

L&A

Dallas faces rise in domestic violence cases during shelter-in-place UTD faculty and staff discuss signs of abuse, resources of support for victims ELLIS BLAKE HIDALGO News Editor

Following the first wave of COVID-19 in the U.S. and the subsequent period of social distancing, an increase in cases of domestic violence has been observed across the country. In light of that, UTD faculty and staff shared their opinions on resources available through the university for students facing domestic violence.

In the three weeks after the Dallas County stay-at-home order, criminology professor Alex Piquero said that the area experienced a reported 12.5% increase in cases of domestic violence according to data from the Dallas Police Department. Piquero said the increase is an unfortunate consequence of the stay-at-home order and that UTD should prepare to help its students in the event of a second wave of infections.

“UT Dallas has a very good set of resources available with respect to mental health and sub-

stance abuse, like the Galerstein Gender Center,” Piquero said. “It’s good to remind students of support services, and not just with respect towards what could potentially happen with victimization, (but) also support services for employment and education if they’re having difficulties with their studies and so forth.”

To help secure assistance for domestic violence victims, Piquero said police departments across the nation should prepare for another surge in cases, and that victims should seek out help and services from domestic violence shelters and advocacy centers in the DFW area, such as Genesis Women’s Shelter and The Family Place. In addition to emergency shelter, victims are welcome to services including legal representation, childcare, job training and transitional housing.

“Victims who are in domestic abuse relationships sometimes find it very difficult to leave their relationship, and I’m not blaming them in any capacity,” Piquero said. “There are financial

Are you looking after yourself?

Advice from one student to another SOPHIE BOUTOUIS Copy Editor

Q: What are the ways I can help a friend who is having an anxiety/panic attack? -B Given that nearly 18% of Americans are affected by anxiety disorders, chances are you know someone who is at risk for a panic attack. If an attack strikes, stay by their side and lend them your undivided attention.

Feelings of anxiety and panic exist on a spectrum, and different people express them in different ways. Instead of just assuming how the other person is feeling, compare the common signs and symptoms of generalized anxiety with panic attacks to determine the best course of action.

Anxiety is typically an excessive and irrational worry or fear about an everyday life situation. This is not to be confused with

ASTRID HERNANDEZ| MERCURY STAFF

nervousness – an entirely normal response to a stressful event like giving a big speech or moving cities. While nervousness, anxiety and panic can all cause shortness of breath,

UTD MERCURY| ARCHIVE

The Student Counseling Center is still open remotely. Contact information is available on their website.

implications, there might be children involved, they might fear continued repercussions from the aggressor and so it’s a very sad victimization that happens in domestic cases.”

In dealing with what is commonly family-based violence, mental health professional Melanie Chung-Sherman said her work at the UTD Student Counseling Center, similar to other community outreach centers, has been

limited by remote workplace conditions. Despite their existing limitations to telehealth services, Chung-Sherman said off-campus counseling groups would be possible during the summer.

“Most of (UTD’s) services right now are offering group support or trauma-based support, and it would all be through telehealth. I think

rapid heart rate and trembling or shaking, panic attacks tend to be much more severe.

In fact, such feelings of stark terror often bring with them a significant loss of control or even a sense of imminent death. Whereas nervousness and anxiety gradually build up at the onset of an emotional trigger, panic attacks usually come completely unprovoked, with no rational explanation whatsoever.

Panic attacks can be incredibly terrifying experiences – both for the subject and the observer. While it’s easy to freak out upon seeing someone else gasp for air, sweat profusely or look nauseous, do your best to remain calm. Your composed and collected behavior will serve as a model for the other person to follow.

While your first instinct might be to try and alleviate your friend’s pain as quickly as possible, resolving their problems isn’t your responsibility. They know their situation best, so instead of trying to play doctor or assume control, ask them about what they need.

Some people (especially those with a history of panic attacks) have preferred coping mechanisms, but mental health professional Stacey Appiah-Opoku said they may have trouble

articulating this during an attack.

“If this is a person that you know pretty well or…maybe they’ve told you some of their strategies (before), then I think it can be helpful to say something like, ‘oh, I know (you) said that breathing helps so let’s take some deep breaths together,’ or ‘I’m going to go run and get you some water’,” Appiah-Opoku

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17

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

LIFE & ARTS

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

18

L&A

Ask Me Anything UTD student gains national attention for dedication to open discussion about racism ELLIS BLAKE HIDALGO Mercury Staff

Following a series of viral social media posts, UTD junior Nifa Kaniga’s activism as part of the Black Lives Matter movement has gained national attention. With over 30,000 followers on his Instagram, the literature major and Dripping Springs native’s encouragement of an open dialogue about social issues is now reaching a global audience.

Holding a sign reading “Ask Me Anything” and encouraging passersby to discuss Black Lives Matter and racism in the U.S., Kaniga first took to the streets of Dripping Springs in early June . Before eventually extended his platform to social media, he said he hoped to encourage an honest civility in his exchanges that anonymous online conversations lack.

Describing his hometown as “mostly conservative, Christian and White ,” Kaniga said he saw an opportunity to teach others about his experiences with racism. Standing outside for up to seven hours at a time, he said his interactions were with people driving or walking by him.

Despite the attention brought to the Black Lives Matter movement by George Floyd’s death, he said

there were still misconceptions he hoped to address.

“It’s not even Black Lives Matter, or any race related topic. It’s just life in general. We humans have a very hard time listening to other people because ego plays a big part of that,” Kaniga said. “You say something to somebody, they get defensive and they don’t want to listen. It’s very frustrating, you know, because it’s like you’re trying to have a genuine conversation with somebody.”

After prominent news organizations and celebrities including Kristen Bell and Rainn Wilson took notice and reposted stories of Kaniga’s activism, viral news stories and social media posts amplified his message. Since then, his follower count on Instagram has grown exponentially , now allowing him to hold live sessions with listeners tuning in from around the world.

Despite the mainstream attention he and his message have received, Kaniga said he hasn’t let it affect the way he interacts with others, saying he hopes to stay true to his own opinions. When publicly discussing Black Lives Matter, he said that he hopes others understand that Black people are not a monolith, emphasizing that neither he nor those destroying property speak for the movement as a whole.

RANGAM| COURTESY

Rangam, a classical Indian dance group, will continue having virtual practices and socials.

Kicking off the Sunday shoes Dance organizations prepare to swing into a new semester ANJALI VENNA News Editor

Pushing furniture to the side of a room and training on concrete are a couple of accommodations the Power Dancers made for virtual practice this summer ; but as the fall semester begins, plans remain uncertain for student dance organizations.

Speech-language pathology junior and captain of UTD’s drill team Kelsey Vong said they are looking into the possibility of in-person practice and live → SEE AMA, PAGE 23 streaming or recording video performances. In-person tryouts for the team were postponed, and auditions took place via video. Though Vong has not met the new dancers face-to-face, she interacted with them through Zoom during team bonding activities and practice. Since June, the dancers meet three times a week for virtual practice. Monday nights are for choreography and Tuesday and Thursdays are for technique.

“It’s been okay. The thing is that not everyone has room to do these crazy jumps and the flooring is not the same as what we perform on. It’s not very similar so it’s difficult for turning and some people don’t have room to turn so they try to do stuff on concrete, but friction is not the same,” Vong said. “In a way, (virtual practice) has helped not losing so much skill. But it has not been the same as meeting in person.”

The team begins preparing for the National Dance Alliance, their main competition, from October up until the actual event in April. Though NDA and its associated summer camp were canceled this year, Vong said, so far the team’s plan has not changed.

While many teams were unable to compete, this wasn’t the case for Rangam, a classical Indian dance troupe whose competition season ended prior to campus closing. Despite the new environment, the group was able to host a virtual banquet sending off NIFA KANIGA| COURTESY graduating dancers, said healthcare studies junior Literature junior Nifa Kaniga took to social media, sidewalks for respectful dialogue with passerby. Lakshmi Sekharan.

“For the fall we’re probably going to be doing the same. Have virtual practices, virtual meetups each week where we teach dances and then just have socials and game nights throughout the month and week,” Sekharan said.

While they don’t plan to do any in-person performances, virtual practice consists of officers choreographing dances and giving dancers a timeframe to learn them and film their performances. Then, Sekharan said, these videos are critiqued by the officers, spliced together and posted to the club’s social media pages to advertise the group. Potential new dancers will also try out via video. Since there is no in-person freshman orientation, the team is recruiting by reaching out to Class of ‘24 social media pages and direct messaging students interested in dance.

Social dance clubs on campus, such as Stop Pretending You Can’t Dance, are transitioning to a virtual format as well. In a typical semester, SPYCD hosts two lessons a week — the first featuring a Latin dance style and the other ballroom — with professional instructors. The club considered hosting in-person meetings with social distancing measures, said president and biochemistry senior Amber Ho, but decided against it as both styles require close contact with a dancing partner.

Instead, they are creating a Discord for members and hosting two virtual meetings each week: one focusing on footwork and styling, and the other prioritizing community engagement with game and movie nights. No professional instructors will be hired for the virtual meetings, so members don’t have to pay for lessons this semester.

“We do have a concern where people might not be willing to dance in front of the camera with everyone,” Ho said. “We are still trying to figure out if there’s anything we could add more to our lessons... and try to get as much feedback as possible so we know how we can best accommodate them.”

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OPINION

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

On Police Oversight Why the community needs to take more direct action in police reform

ELIZABETH NGUYEN| MERCURY STAFF

JUAN R. OLIVO Courtesy

In any true functioning democracy, community input shouldn’t be arduous. The coronavirus pandemic has been a catalyst to the evolving mediums we use to voice our concerns to our elected officials. Efforts such as petitions, retweets and calls-to-action to

flood social media timelines is a step in the right direction, but direct action is required.

The murder of George Floyd has led to an eruption of protests, and has brought us to a turning point in history. Now, more than ever, it is critical for representative bodies of government to be reactive and listen to what the communities they represent are saying.

A product of these collaborations has been establishing police oversight boards operated by civilians.

Police oversight in the city of Dallas is nothing new, neither is the friction between the police department and the community.

In 1973, Santos Rodriguez, a 12-year old resident of Little Mexico, was murdered in an impromptu interrogation of an investigation of a burglarized vending machine.

Community involvement led to the establishment of a police oversight board, among other reforms, to help ease this friction.

Luckily, we have had local elected officials and stakeholders that have pushed for police oversight throughout the years. Created in the late 1980s, the Citizens Police Review Board tasked each city councilmember and mayor to appoint a community member to it. It was a sign that times were changing in the city. However, this board that was birthed to essentially improve community and police relations was simply inadequate.

There was no money allocated for the board, leaving them on their own to investigate a complaint. Establishing the board was reactive in nature.

Dallasites were not satisfied with the fruitless outcomes and felt the need for improvement. As a result, a coalition of diverse organizations, known as the Community Police Oversight Coalition, were given the opportunity to help revamp the board.

Subsequently, the city council unanimously voted to vest more authority by creating a budget, established the Office of Community Police Oversight and furnished it with support staff, then renamed the board as the Community Police Oversight Board. At the center of it all is a Monitor, Tonya McClary, to assist in investigations, policy review, and community outreach efforts.

Since October of 2019, I’ve served as Mayor Eric Johnson’s at-large appointee to this board. At that time, I had no hesitation in accepting my appointment and wouldn’t now, even if I was told of the trying times Dallas is witnessing today. This year alone we have made more progress towards transparency and accountability since the board’s inception almost 40 years ago. For instance, our first official action after I joined was to hire a third party to conduct an investigation of the death of Diamond Ross, who died in police custody in August of 2018 after her pleas for water and appropriate aid were ig-

nored. Before, this board could only have dreamed of doing this.

Last month, the Mayor and Senator John Cornyn held a roundtable on police and community relations. Among the invitees were the top three law enforcement officials of the city and Dallas county, the president of a police union and clergy. We all shared the same goal, but differed in the manner in which we should achieve it. On one end of the spectrum, calls to defund the police department were made while the other end offered data to refute defunding while reinforcing the argument that the department is doing its best to combat police misconduct.

These types of conversations are critical to have, especially with our representatives. Reform has only occurred through the years because the community made sure their voice was heard.

You don’t need a special title to become involved in the process. You are obligated to hold your city council and mayor accountable for their actions or inactions. We must go beyond taking things up on social media.

Get informed on who represents you locally. Police departments are part of your local government. We elect the city council members and mayor that hires the city manager and police chief. Those unable to vote still have the right of free speech to volunteer on political campaigns that place these people in power.

Education is the guardian of society. As stewards of the University of Texas at Dallas, we are compelled to live up to our school’s motto. We need to have these discussions in class, with our loved ones and anywhere else you hold a presence that will lead to direct involvement. They are not easy talks to have, and we need to understand their importance. It has to start here and now; there is no better place than here and now.

Juan R. Olivo is a political science senior born and raised in the Old East Dallas neighborhood of Dallas, Texas.

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

20

OPINION

Social justice #ForYou TikTok enables users to spread awareness, research political issues KEERTHI SRILAKSHMIDARAN Mercury Staff

Though TikTok started off as a social media app for dancing teenagers and funny cat videos, it has recently become a favored platform for Gen-Z and millennials to facilitate social justice and address the inequity in our world today.

Many activists take to TikTok because of its viral nature. Unlike other social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok’s algorithm is designed in a way that users don’t necessarily need a huge following to amass views. As a result, TikTok is great for spreading awareness, with only a small interest in political videos being needed to show similar content in the future. Additionally, its For You page makes it more likely that a video about Black Lives Matter or the presidential election will garner attention, even if it is by a smaller creator.

Furthermore, TikTok allows for serious issues like politics to be conveyed to an audience in an engaging and personal way. Unlike YouTube, where users would first have to click a specific video and then watch it for ten minutes or so, TikTok features short, accessible videos that capture peoples’ attention and encourages them to learn more.

According to a study conducted by Reach3Insights, TikTok has “emerged as a catalyst for Gen Z to share their political views.” This same study stated that 77% of TikTok users used the app to learn more about social justice while 54% used it to engage in discussions about politics with friends and family.

The effects of this political movement on TikTok have been far-reaching. Brad Parscale, chairman of Trump’s re-election campaign, posted a tweet in June saying that the campaign had garnered over a million tickets for the Tulsa convention. However, attendance was much lower than expected: the Tulsa Fire Department only counted 6,200 scanned tickets. Behind this prank were thousands of TikTok users who registered for tickets and purposely didn’t show up in order to display their disapproval of Trump’s presidency.

In addition, striving for equality on TikTok has encouraged users on all social media platforms to amplify voices that support racial justice while blocking those that don’t.

When #WhiteoutWednesday began trending on social media to subdue the Black Lives Matter movement, TikTok users, especially

CHARLIE CHANG | MERCURY STAFF

K-Pop fans, worked together on many platforms to overwhelm #WhiteoutWednesday with videos of K-pop stars.

Though TikTok’s structure allows for most creators to garner attention on political videos, it is far from perfect. Shadow banning is a method through which TikTok limits the promotion of a certain video so that fewer people can see it, and many creators that talk about activist related causes claim they are primarily being targeted.

TikTok suspended Feroza Aziz’s account (@getmefamouspartthree) after she posted a viral video condemning the mass detention and treatment of Uighur Muslims in China.

TikTok claims that this suspension was due to one of her past deleted accounts, but Aziz refuses to believe this and encourages others to keep speaking about the issue. Iman (@theeemuse), another activist who has been disseminating protest information and speaking out about systemic racism, has been shadow banned multiple times. The reason why TikTok is shadow banning political content that doesn’t violate their community guidelines remains unclear.

TikTok depicts a diverse community of thousands of young people discovering the capabilities and limits of a platform to raise awareness for social injustices. TikTok’s new role as a form of collective political expression for youth should encourage us to have difficult conversations and spread awareness of the injustices around us.

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

OPINION

Pentakills can’t replace touchdowns Esports needs to find its own audience instead of filling in for other sports

QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF

BEN NGUYEN Opinion Editor

With a gap in traditional sports during quarantine, isn’t it time for esports to rise? After all, esports is still doing better than ever, and without the ability to broadcast traditional sports, esports have been acting to fill the content void. However, arguing that esports can be a replacement for traditional sports directly is foolish, because esports are different from traditional sports in ways that make their path to popularity entirely different.

First, esports has a diverse group of characters. There are games that simulate traditional sports a la “NBA 2k,” “Madden NFL” and “FIFA,” and there are games like “League of Legends,” “Overwatch” and “CS:GO” that are nothing like traditional sports. While statistics measure total audience for these games to compare to sports leagues like the NFL and the NBA, it’s really more accurate to measure views by the individual games. A viewer for “Overwatch” doesn’t make money for “League of Legends” or vice versa, and these individual games do not pull the millions that the NFL and NBA do on television. As an example, the opening weekend of the “League of

Legends” Championship Series (LCS) for the spring split had a peak viewership of 338,000 viewers, while the NFL’s opening weekend last year held an average of 17 million viewers. Any individual esport has a long way to go in competing with traditional sports, and ultimately, esports must develop their own audience.

While people can enjoy both esports and traditional sports, it’s going to be harder to get someone into a game that they’ve never heard of. As an example, how can one introduce a game like “Overwatch” to an avid football fan? “So, there’s six characters on each side, they’re all trying to kill each other in a bunch of different ways while trying to capture a point or push a cart.” If they have never played the game, that sentence will most likely sound entirely foreign. Same goes for “League of Legends:” you’d say something like, “Five people try to kill five other people through three lanes and destroy their nexus.

Oh, and there’s a jungle too.” If someone is trying to join the esports audience without any video game knowledge, it’s an unfamiliar concept. What’s a nexus? Why all the killing?

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Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

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TITLE IX

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“Our view is that the preponderance of the evidence treats both the complainant and the respondent equally (…) It simply says that whoever has the more persuasive evidence wins,” David Cole, ACLU legal director, wrote in an article . “That’s the standard used for all civil disputes between private parties, including sexual harassment lawsuits. The clear and convincing evidence standard, by contrast, improperly favors the respondent over the complainant, because it means that the accused will prevail even if the complainant offers stronger evidence than the respondent.”

Another request in the petition is to bar the use of informal resolution methods such as restorative justice and mediation, in which the Title IX office goes back and forth between the respondent and complainant for an agreement.

“Proponents of the new guidance see these informal processes as interventions that can help alleged perpetrators admit responsibility, truly understand the harm they have caused, and make amends without being expelled or suspended.

They also view these informal approaches as a way to reduce the number of investigations, save money and be fairer to the accused,” an article from the

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apart,” Tiffany said. “Everyone has to wear a mask and you’re in an open airflow, and you can basically jump up and down and welcome the sisters, just 10 feet apart. And we’ve had these ideas approved by our executive councils, CPC, everyone. So if you want to do in-per-

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“The department has already created a template for return to play,” Petitt said. “The first couple of weeks are going to be conditioning, and then, after that, we’ll let them have contact soccer. For example, we’ll probably use a single ball per person — they won’t do passing — and some of those type of drills that’ll be more skill-based, more than scrimmaging.”

The Sports Science Institute — the medical arm of the NCAA — set out guidelines recommend-

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I wanted to host,” Wester said. “I said ‘Sure, it sounds like a blast!’ I enjoy interacting with our student athletes and I feel like I have a good relationship with many of them. I also saw this as an

American Bar Association said. “Critics, however, worry that these informal processes will lessen the consequences and repercussions of misconduct, make complaint-handling less transparent and perhaps cause administrators who are concerned about liability to pressure students to bypass formal investigations and hearing procedures.”

The final three demands call on the university to continue to promptly respond and carry out existing investigations during this global health crisis; guarantee access to interim measures regardless of where or when the discrimination took place; and create sexual misconduct procedures for investigating off campus and study abroad violence, which is not covered under the new guidelines.

The petition was posted to various social media on June 5th, with the goal of reaching 2000 signatures. The total signatures reached was 2,111, and a report, consisting of the petition and signatures, was sent to staff members of the Title IX office. Political science sophomore and president of Deeds Not Words Paulina Hruskoci said the Title IX office has been very open to hearing student voices and listening to the demands of the petition. A meeting was set up to discuss this issue. The Title IX office did not respond for comment to The Mercury at this time.

“We did want to garner student support because we do think it’s important to show that students

obviously care about this and a wide variety of students do,” Hruskoci said. “So now that it’s clear that student support exists, we’re going to be continuing that conversation with the Title IX office and working with them to the best of our ability to do what’s in their power to try to implement the changes we suggested in our petition.”

Campus coordinator for the UTD chapter of Deeds Not Words and political science senior Carla Ramazan said once they created this petition, members from other chapters across Texas reached out to her for advice in doing similar things.

“I’ve been contacted by people outside of (Deeds Not Words) who saw what we were doing at UTD or heard about it and were impressed by it and were looking to start similar initiatives at their schools,” Ramazan said.

Since the report was sent out, the scope of their efforts has increased. Hruskoci said they learned that policies are usually implemented after the UT System drafts a model that is the framework for what other campuses should be doing.

“Once we found that out, we realized that it may be better to target the UT System as a whole rather than just UTD so that these changes can be implemented for all universities. We have a petition now at UT Tyler, UT El Paso, UT San Antonio, UT Rio

Grande, and UT Arlington that are currently gaining signatures,” Hruskoci said. “It’s really the UTD chapter (of Deeds) that is taking the lead and contacting and organizing these petitions.”

Deeds was able to reach out to other schools through Ramazan’s network with other chapters, by encouraging members to contact their friends and reaching out to sororities on other campuses. The goal for petitions at other schools is a couple hundred signatures, Hruskoci said.

“We’re kind of on two separate paths right now because even though it’s a UT System policy, UTD staff members have a say in what this policy will be, and we are hoping that our contacts and the Title IX office will be champions on this issue and will advocate for students,” Hruskoci said. “Another important thing to note is that none of our demands are an increased protection for survivors; they are all literally just preserving the current system we have in place. I also hope that in a more general sense a dialogue is created about administration and the Title IX office listening to students about what they want to see on their campus, how they envision a safe campus and an accessible process.”

The petition asked UTD to issue a statement committing to its demands by August 1. Devos’s rule will took effect on August 14.

son, you can. If you want to do it virtually, you can. No pressure. Both will be extremely fun and we’re just ready to welcome in our sisters.”

Additionally, Greek organizations have benefited financially, not just in terms of budget and spending, but also with respect to fees for potential new members.

“So we actually lowered our cost to go through recruitment because usually, it’s $40,

but now it’s $20 because we don’t have a lot of the expenses,” said CPC VP of recruitment and supply chain management senior Anna McCaffrey. “The chapters, I know that they cut down on decorations that they would usually spend over these three days. We cut down on food expenses for social events.”

Unexpectedly, the projected amount of potential new members has increased despite the

transition to a virtual recruitment process.

“I know that within the first couple of weeks, typically I think we only have 15 girls, whereas this time we had around 30 with two or three weeks,” McCaffrey said. “And then we came to the conclusion that people want to be in an organization. They want to do something after being stuck inside or without social interaction. They want to get involved.”

ing that programs test student-athletes 72 hours before competition, Petitt said. This would mean about one test per athlete per week. Financially, said Petitt, that isn’t feasible: and while it was not a mandated directive, Petitt said they would not have competed without following the recommendation.

Vice President of Student Affairs Gene Fitch said that a full return to sports in spring will be driven by a reduction, or at minimum a plateau, in the number of COVID-19 cases and that the eventual development of a vaccine could contribute to the decision-making.

“The testing could (also) contribute: how quickly can we test and get results back,” Fitch said. “If we’re having to wait two weeks before we get results, that’s difficult particularly given theguidance that (Petitt) had referenced previously from the NCAA about testing 72 hours before.

If you can’t even get results back for two weeks, it’s kind of a Catch-22—what do you do?”

The outdoor soccer fields, Fitch said, have been opened up for recreational use and are available for rental to outside organizations. These organizations are required to have insurance, sign a

contract and follow all COVID-19 guidelines in order to conduct sponsored activities.

With an anticipated 2,500 to 3,000 students on campus in the fall, Fitch said that the university wants to do the best they can to provide students with programs and services and give them access to things to do.

“It’s a tough situation and nobody could have a thought or guessed that we’d be in this kind of situation right now,” said men’s soccer Head Coach Jason Hirsch. “But life goes on. You don’t stop living just because you’re restricted in what you can and can’t do.

opportunity to get to know more of the student athletes better, so I jumped at the opportunity.”

Wester said they are still going through the learning phases of remote access to everything, but the sports teams have gotten stronger as a group just by seeing and talking with each other.

He said it’s great to be able to touch base with

students weekly and see how they’re doing given the circumstances.

“It’s like a wellness check,” Wester said.

“We care about their wellbeing and during the summertime we don’t always get to see them anyway, but this pandemic has actually prompted us to reach out to them more of-

ten to make sure everything is okay. There’s a flux right now about what’s going to happen.

Nobody knows and the more familiarity you have in your life, the easier it is to deal with it.

If they are going through a tough time, they have something to rely on that will be there for them, and that’s us.

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

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and tone deaf is because of the pandemic that’s going on right now. Most professors do this thing where they create lectures and they sort of recycle them over years. They are recorded using very basic software and technologies,” Chaturvedi said. “I (took) OPRE 6301. The professor use(d) handouts, which are roughly 10 to 15-page word documents. There (was) a screen recording of the word document and the professor made notes on the word document. A lot of times on these presentations, you can see the date when this presentation was made. This is 2020, and I have seen presentations dating as far back as 2014, 2015, 2016.”

Another fee that students are normally charged is supplemental designated tuition:

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Similarly, Kaniga said that his conversations with dissenters of Black Lives Matter had shown him the diversity of identity and opinion among conservative Americans.

“Just like the left is not a monolith, just like Black people are not a monolith, the right is also not a monolith,” Kaniga said. “Nothing is a monolith, but actually hearing those people talk and exchanging ideas, agreeing on some stuff,

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something, needs to go through,” Cao said. “And that’s a point of contact for dozens or hundreds of people each day, where there’s a potential for disease transmission from item to person or person to item.”

SaniScanner, Cao said, is a tunnel that goes over the checkout conveyor belt at stores and scans purchases with UV-C light to kill off bacteria and viruses on the surface.

“UV-C is basically a type of light that has genocidal properties against a wide variety of pathogens,” Cao said. “It works by damaging the DNA or the RNA of various bacteria and viruses and that neutralizes them and reduces infectivity rates of those diseases.”

This summer, Cao and Watts are prototyping SaniScanner and running quality assurance tests to gauge how effective it is at visualizing pathogens, as well as ensuring that their UV shielding is sufficient to protect users from potentially harmful exposure to UV light. Later, they plan to have their device installed at checkout counters.

“The (long-term) impact we’d like to see is a reduction in diseases contracted from items, like reducing the infection rates of foodborne illnesses like E. coli and salmonella, and especially now, like reduce the number of preventable hospital

a separate fee from distance learning. Supplemental designated tuition goes towards additional resources and services for each school.

The distance learning fee issue is not exclusive to UTD. A few weeks ago, there were similar situations at UT El Paso, University of Wyoming and University of North Florida. The general response has been similar to UTD, with universities stating that in-person classes moved online would not have distance learning fees.

Pirkul said that he understands students’ fears about being charged extra but that there were factual inaccuracies in the petition.

“I understand people are anxious. These are difficult times they go through. I am respectful of what they have to say,” Pirkul said. “I read through it. I disagree with some of the facts. I think that

if somebody read that and didn’t have the (right) numbers, it leaves the impression that we don’t care about our students.”

Over the past six months, more than 3.2 million Texans filed for unemployment relief. This summer, thousands of students have had paid internships canceled or altered. Chaturvedi said that in light of the financial hardship many are currently facing, the distance learning fee should be repealed.

“I’m aware that many students have started petitions asking their universities to give partial refunds given the ongoing pandemic, and I’d like to emphasize that (my) petition does not seek to do that,” Chaturvedi said. “The end goal and the most important thing for me right now is to actually repeal this distance learning fee, especially for this semester.”

Earlier this year, UTD distributed $6,467,161

to students affected by the pandemic through the CARES Act. This spring, the Student Emergency Fund and International Student Emergency Fund were created to help students affected by the pandemic. Students in general financial difficulty can also apply to the Student Emergency Financial Assistance Fund.

In an email statement, Associate Dean for External Relations and Communications at JSOM Diane McNulty acknowledged the financial strain on students in the fall 2020 semester.

“JSOM is very aware of the difficulty that students are incurring with tuition and fees this semester,” McNulty said. “We are doing all that we can to raise money to assist students in need.

Giving Day last week brought donors who are aware and have taken the initiative to give to university and JSOM emergency relief funding.”

disagreeing on a lot of stuff and telling them my experiences and having them listen, I think that just drove the point forward, that people are different, people have different opinions. Some people are going to understand and walk away with the perspective that I gave them and some people aren’t, and that’s okay.”

Part of the message Kaniga said he hopes to encourage is for viewers to have similar conversations in private. To that end, he said entering these dialogues with a sense of self-awareness and empathy is important for an effective ex-

change of ideas.

“Ask yourself on a conscious level, ‘Am I saying this to try to prove that person wrong? Or to make them look stupid? Or to make myself look good?’ People need to ask themselves those questions so we can have genuine conversations with each other,” said Kaniga.

In his own personal life, Kaniga said that he was grateful to have seen little change among his family and friends. Especially when discussing race, he said he was glad to still be perceived as a normal person representing his own views.

Upon completing his degree in literature, Kaniga said he hopes to transition into a career teaching high school students. With no interest in pursuing his platform professionally, he said he will continue to be an active voice for change.

“I’m a Black man in America. This stuff affects me, so I’m always going to keep talking about this stuff,” Kaniga said. “If people want to hear my opinions and my beliefs, then I’m an open book and an open resource.”

Nifa Kaniga can be reached online at his Instagram handle @nifakaniga.

visits,” Cao said.

Watts said that in a post-COVID world, SaniScanner could be beneficial for peace of mind.

“There’s a lot of anxiety that people are feeling now,” Watts said, “and I think we’re going to keep feeling it even after COVID.” Another project by a different group of students — COVID Check-In — aims to create and distribute mental health care packages filled with crossword and word search puzzles, adult coloring books, art supplies, snacks, handwritten cards and more to senior residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the Dallas area. COVID Check-In was created by UTD students Kareena Chawla, Shreena Bhatt, Anuj Gupta, Aritra Baidya and Charmi Modi.

“It was kind of an idea we collectively came together with,” Gupta, a neuroscience junior, said.

“We’ve seen on the news how people in hospice care and senior homes are being affected drastically — they don’t have enough donations coming towards them and they don’t have enough PPE (personal protective equipment) and things of that nature … So then we started this care package initiative to care homes and we found that was something they would really appreciate down the road.”

Chawla, a neuroscience junior, said that she felt for the seniors who couldn’t leave their own houses, especially the ones with no access to their families.

“We’re imagining if our own grandparents can’t leave their house, they’re still living in a house, you know, with their families and extended families,” Chawla said. “Imagine the seniors who are in these facilities who have no access, have no contact with their family.”

Alongside the care packages, the team has also been donating books, magazines and board games to senior residents. Chawla said that one of the service coordinators called the team to tell them that she was touched by their acts of service towards the community.

“People don’t know what the situation is inside these in nursing homes and how it’s been so hard for everyone, the coordinators included,” Chawla said.

“Some facilities have mentioned the need for hair clips because their hairdressers haven’t been allowed to come inside and the seniors have a difficult time making their hair. They really need headbands, hair clips. And then another facility mentioned that they would really love magazine donations, because their seniors cut out pictures of people and things they like and make these little memory collages.”

Gupta said that the team encourages anybody who would like to volunteer for COVID Check-In to join them in making handwritten cards for their care packages, which adds a personal touch to them.

“We have a thing where it’s like if (the volunteers) make five or 10 cards, they get volunteering

hours for it, because each card takes about five to 10 minutes to make,” Gupta said. “We would also encourage people (…) to build their own care packages for different facilities around the region (…) if they want to basically raise donations from their own social groups and pull those donations and make their own care packages. And we can fund them a little bit with things that they might need and provide them the facilities that they may need to donate to.”

The team is giving volunteers different options to be accommodating said Bhatt, a healthcare management junior. For example, if people aren’t comfortable with leaving their house, Bhatt can organize pickups and drop offs.

“One of my friends, she wanted to make care packages at home, but she’s not allowed to leave her house,” Bhatt said. “So I dropped off the supplies on her doorstep and she’ll make them, and I’ll pick them up and have another volunteer who’s willing to deliver them.”

Chawla said that the pandemic has highlighted underserved areas that would need help regardless of whether there’s a pandemic.

“Our true goal is to just check in on our Dallas community,” Chawla said. “We’re definitely not going to stop after this pandemic. We want to keep on putting our volunteers out there and reaching them because these are groups that always need those acts of kindness.”

Aug. 17, 2020 | The Mercury

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harmless, such as a personal phone number, address or name and date of birth is often sought after by these scammers for identity theft or made-up blackmail. Why would anyone who doesn’t know you need to know your date of birth? Some scammers simply have a request for you to email them back, and nothing else. Of course, in those instances they will probably ask for something later in the email replies, after they think they’ve tricked you into trusting them. It’s safe to assume that an email with no info other than “here’s a job offer, please email back” is a scam.

5. Look what they are offering you.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Since the emails that get past the screening into your inbox are usually those trying to trick students into giving the scammers mon-

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said. “But if it’s the first time that you’ve been with a friend (during a panic attack), then I think really just saying, ‘I’m here if you need me, but if you need space, that’s okay too,’ and then kind of leaving it open to them as far as what they want is one of the most helpful things.”

As you console the other person, try to focus on action, not words. A reassuring and comforting voice can be helpful, but

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that’s probably going to change, possibly in the summer, where they may do more distancing and form some (off-campus) groups,” Chung-Sherman said. “The concern is integrating them (back to campus) … there’s a limit in terms of the services provided but definitely not a limit of need.”

As the sexual assault and interpersonal vio-

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What’s a “gold lead” mean? And that’s not even mentioning all of the other little details that can come with a game, like all 134 potential kits you might have to explain once they do eventually get into watching the game. It can be difficult to explain all these mechanics to someone who has never played the game.

From here, esports has the potential to rise by

ey, a lot of them will be things that have to do with money such as jobs, internships, loans or “free cash” offers. If you get an email offer to apply for a job you actually want, but the email seems suspicious, don’t click on any of the links in the email; instead, go to the actual company’s website and apply through there.

6. Look at what they are threatening.

Besides sending copious amounts of fake job offers, scammers also make up blackmail to try to scare students — especially those unfamiliar with laws or software — into paying them directly and staying quiet about it. The typical made-up blackmail claims might be things like “your legal status in this country will be taken away unless you give us money” or “we will release an inappropriate webcam recording of you unless you give us money.” For claims that have to do with possibly legitimate things like unpaid student fees, use the aforementioned tech-

niques to verify if it is coming from the right people first, and then contact those people (such as the university or government) directly , not through replying to the email but by connecting with someone you know is a legitimate representative.

One other thing to watch out for is what kind of payment they are asking for. Scammers don’t want to be traced, so they will often ask for odd forms of payment like wiring money or sending iTunes gift cards. Actual blackmail (threatening to release specific information unless you pay them) is illegal and serious cases should be reported to the police (always use non-emergency methods such as filing a report online).

Still unsure if an email in your UTD inbox is a scam or not? Forward the email to infosecurity@utdallas.edu with an explanation of what the email is or might be, and they will be able to tell if the email is legitimate or not.

If it is a scam email, marking it as “junk” in the Microsoft Outlook screen can help Microsoft’s auto-spam filter prevent other students from getting similar emails.

Lastly, there are steps you can take if you do end up clicking on a link in a scam email or sent a scammer information you thought was harmless. The first step is to change any passwords you have, especially on any other websites where you use the same password. If you clicked on a link that turned out to be dangerous, download an anti-virus program that scans your computer and let it scan your entire computer for a potential virus. I recommend Malwarebytes because it has a robust free version (the free trial is for the premium real-time protection; the forever free version is just a scanner). If the information had something to do with the university, give infosecurity@utdallas.edu the details and they can determine if it is a threat.

refrain from repeating things like “calm down,” “don’t worry” or “just relax.” While you probably mean well, the last thing anyone with anxiety needs to hear is that they’re blowing things out of proportion.

It’s hard enough as it is to be vulnerable in front of others, so the least you can do is be empathetic and validate their distress.

To help bring a friend away from anxious thoughts, Appiah-Opoku said to try a grounding technique.

“A lot of times, when we’re having a panic attack or feeling very anxious, our minds

are racing, and it’s hard to just center in on one thing and be grounded,” Appiah-Opoku said. “A grounding technique could be like trying to notice how your hands feel on your desk...or counting how many desks are in the room – just something where you’re using any of your five senses.”

If your friend is willing, guide them through a grounding strategy or the 54321 method and engage them in light conversation. You could also ask them if they want to leave the room or go somewhere else; by no means do they have to stay where they are.

The same strategies apply to those helping from a distance or in a virtual setting, Appiah-Opoku said.

Most panic attacks reach their peak within 10 minutes. If a friend’s symptoms do not improve after 20 minutes, you may want to contact emergency services or the Student Counseling Center for support. You could also encourage them to visit a therapist or family doctor if they have been experiencing repeated attacks. As always, remember to take care of yourself. Your willingness to help a friend will not go unnoticed.

lence coordinator at the Student Counseling Center, Chung-Sherman is consulted for cases involving domestic violence. For many victims, she said the markers of abuse are invisible from their perspective, leading many to avoid seeking treatment despite regularly incurring trauma from their home environment.

In addition, Chung-Sherman said prior or current perpetrators of domestic violence often fail to recognize the abusive patterns in their behavior. Without recognition on either side, the

first step in counseling could be the realization of existing abuse. She also said physical violence was often recognized as the only form of domestic abuse and highlighted the importance of understanding all forms of abuse. And with most university students being reliant on their families throughout their academic careers, the financial burden of leaving forces many to stay in abusive environments.

“Part of this has been sharing with several clients a recognition of what power and con-

trol looks like in society,” Chung-Sherman said.

“Whether that is intimidation, threats of violence against pets or against themselves, ‘if you leave or if you do this, I’m going to hurt myself or I’m going to hurt you,’ financial intimidation, sexually-based violence, coercing somebody without consent, utilizing revenge graphics and revenge porn … and even the abuse of power related to, ‘I’m going to use your funds. I’m going to use your student loans to pay a compulsion or addiction or gambling.’”

developing their own viewership. Most of the viewing audience is aged 18-34, and there’s still more untapped potential audience to grab for any major esports game. On its recent 10th year anniversary, Riot stated that there were eight million daily players of “League of Legends.” Minus the 300,000 viewers at LCS, that’s about 7.7 million more people that know what “League of Legends” is, know how the game plays and can potentially be tapped to watch professional play. For example, most

of the people that watch UTD esports have played the game they’re watching the Comets play, as evident by the Twitch chat commentary. So esports isn’t a replacement for traditional sports, but it doesn’t have to be.

Esports’ path to growth lies within its own communities, and watchers of traditional sports can probably weather the storm as the NBA and MLB already have plans to return in a pandemic.

Can esports fill the void left in sports fans’

hearts with the pandemic cancelling sports events? Not particularly. But what esports can and should do is start to leverage their current and former player bases in order to grow a larger community and grow the industry. If you’re a fan of watching a pentakill or teamfight, you shouldn’t look to try and involve the hardcore football friend you know. The next fan of your favorite esport is probably the people you play with on Discord.