The Mercury 12/2/19

Dec. 2, 2019

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UTD lab unveils saliva-based THC test

Title IX law undergoes state, federal changes University officials don't anticipate major changes in UTD policy

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR

PAVAN TAUH | MERCURY STAFF

Researchers in professor Shalini Prasad's (pictured) lab developed the sensor.

RUHMA KHAN Mercury Staff

A team of UTD researchers has developed a sensor to test tetrahydrocannabinol levels in saliva. THC is the main psychoactive compound in marijuana that induces a “high” in users.

Researchers in bioengineering professor Shalini Prasad’s lab developed the biosensor as an accurate measuring tool to measure cannabis consumption. “(It) can be used for primarily the ability to accurately quantify the amount of THC that's present, which then correlates the amount of cannabis that was consumed by an individual, so that is the entire idea of building an objective measurement method,” Prasad said.

In addition to its measuring capabilities, Prasad said the device will have a wide range of uses.

“From our perspective, we want to use it in the context of clinical studies where (marijuana) is prescribed for a number of conditions, whether it's in cancer research or other forms of managing conditions. That would be the way we see this, as a tool to understand how much is getting consumed by the patient and whether it is within a therapeutic index or not,” Prasad said.

“It can also then be leveraged and used in places such as in law enforcement, but we cannot set the standard on that. That has to be done by governments and by organizations outside. We're just building a measurement test.”

Prasad said the sensor detects the THC molecule in a person’s saliva to measure the concentration consumed.

“You have a little swab and you swab your saliva, get the saliva on to the sensor, and you stick that sensor into a reader, which is kind of like a USB port. Then that reader then looks for the molecule,” Prasad said. “Because the surface of the sensor is engineered with receptors for the metabolite THC,

→ SEE THC,

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR

All in the family Inside one professor's life as a musician alongside his wife, son CALIS LIM

Mercury Staff

One look at Michael Farmer’s office door is all you need to discern that he is a professor in Chinese studies. With a Mao Ze Dong meme displayed prominently at eye-level, it’s clear to see that he is a man with a sense of fun too. Scanning among the other amusing signs, however, one might miss the small picture of a graphic panda skeleton with the words “The Prof.Fuzz 63.”

The Prof.Fuzz 63 is his lo-fi rock band composed of his wife on the organ and vocals, his son on drums, and Farmer himself on guitar and vocals. With album names such as “Bang Me Hard!

(To Get Inside)” and songs such as “S***water TX Blues,” which is self-described as a song “about the sad feeling one gets when plumbing goes bad,” this might not be the type of music one would expect from the professor.

Farmer said the band formed and came up with their unique name in fall 2014.

“Professor Fuzz is a nickname that was given to me about 20 years ago because I was already a professor at that point, and I like fuzz pedals for the guitar— things that make distortion noises — so

they started calling me Professor Fuzz,” Farmer said.

As for the “63” part of the name, it’s ambiguous on purpose.

“When we put this band together, we wanted to have that as part of the name and I like the Miles Davis quintet, so we wanted to be the Professor Fuzz Sextet, but that needed 6 people,” Farmer said. “We only had three people, so we put them together and it became 6 and 3. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people think it’s my birth year, but it’s not. Other people don’t have any idea. So, we just tell them it gives us room to expand. We can add 60 more people without having to change the name.”

To date, they have played 187 shows while Farmer has simultaneously pieced together soundbites to form songs and created characters and stories based off of experiences to give the lyrics a life of their own. Although he has been active musically, Farmer has progressed academically as well.

He has been editing a journal for 10 years and has been working on a translation project for the better part of a decade. He has published articles and book chapters. He has won awards and fellowships, and all the while man-

aged to keep up an active role in the band. As Farmer said, his academic career allows for flexibility of time, allowing him to pursue other passions as well.

“Everything on my professional resume seems to be going in the right direction and the band is my mental health hobby,” Farmer said. “It gives me something to do that’s not exactly related to my job but helps keep me happy. It gives me some kind of release, a time to be concentrating on something else, be doing other things.”

Although his music is a source of joy for himself, writing songs reveals the potentially unusual thoughts that are in his head, which Farmer said is the scariest part about making music with The Prof.Fuzz 63.

“As a professor, I’m supposed to be logical and rational and all these kinds of things, but inside my head I’ve got this voice that’s yelling ‘Panda attack, panda attack, panda attack’ or something else,” he said. “It’s a different side of me.”

Although it may seem that sitting in his office to engage in academia and going on stage to slam some chords have no overlap, Farmer said the opposite.

→ SEE PROF.FUZZ,

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MERCURY ARCHIVES

New federal guidelines for Title IX will be released in January.

BEN NGUYEN Mercury Staff

Potential changes are coming to Title IX enforcement, from both the federal and state levels, including new federal guidelines from the Department of Education and state-mandated public reports on cases undertaken by a university’s Title IX office.

Title IX guidelines are traditionally set by the Department of Education in “Dear Colleague” letters, which are letters laying out new or modified guidelines. Previous guidelines in the 2011 and 2014 “Dear Colleague” letters were rescinded in the 2017 “Dear Colleague” letter, with differences including a choice between the “preponderance of evidence” standard and the “clear and convincing evidence” standard, as well as providing an informal voluntary mediation process. The preponderance of evidence standard means that whoever is judging must be reasonably sure there is a 50% likelihood in either side’s favor, while the clear and convincing standard is stricter, requiring that evidence be “highly more probable” and that the judge must have a firm conviction in it.

There isn’t an exact definition for “highly more probable,” because it varies on a case-by-case basis.

At UTD, these changes were of little impact to the general running of the Title IX office, Title IX Coordinator Marco Mendoza said.

“We use the preponderance of evidence,” Mendoza said. “We do have the

→ SEE TITLE IX,

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Freshman, sophomore gather students to communicate with spirits MRUNMAYI SATHAYE Mercury Staff

Curiosity and boredom propelled them to open a box that had not been opened in years. The box — a game of summoning spirits — was something that intrigued them, and in a dorm room, two students called spirits using their Ouija board.

Computer science freshman Jarod Shelton and sophomore Rishi Chandna began using the Ouija board in October and later began taking willing people into the Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in the middle of the night to summon spirits. The group sit around the board with their hands on a planchette — a pointer — that a “spirit” can move after a person asks that spirit questions.

Chandna bought the board in Austin in 2014 at Barnes and Noble and brought it to campus. He said he took

it out of the plastic wrap as soon as he got home, but he hadn’t removed the lid until last month.

“I didn’t really have plans for it, and I was just trying to (figure) out who might be interested, and I felt like Jarod was, so I talked to him about it, and he was open and willing,” Chandna said.

“Then, we started doing a lot of research on how to use it safely, take the proper precautions. They can be pretty dangerous. After that, we were in so deep already, we tried it and got hooked.”

Until Chandna brought the board to UTD, both Shelton and Chandna had not worked with the board, and neither person had any family history in dealing with the board.

“I’ve always been interested in doing such things, but actually having the Ouija board made it possible,” Shelton said.

“I didn’t know we had it until we did.”

Shelton said they researched how to

use the board with random Blogger and forum posts. They learned what attracts spirits and how to know if something is wrong. For example, Shelton said it is a bad sign if it starts to draw symbols on the board, makes random movements, goes to the four corners or it is counting down with the planchette because that indicates the spirit testing its limits in the board. “(Through the research), we learned the steps,” Shelton said. “We learned that we should probably get candles.

The candles are for the warmth to attract them. You just want to be hospitable and warmth attracts them. For a bit, we used coat hangers to make a circle. We’ve since got string for that.

The circle in general confines whatever is in the board to the circle, so it is interacting with us and nothing from the outside. The rituals are a mix of actually working and a mix of convincing

BHAVAN MEHTA | MERCURY STAFF

Computer science freshman Jarod Shelton (left) and sophomore Rishi Chandna (right) began using the Ouija board out of curiosity before getting other students involved.

everybody that this thing is a real thing that is about to happen.”

Typically, one person is picked to lead

the questioning, because that person is

→ SEE OUIJA,

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Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

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THE MERCURY UTDMERCURY.COM Volume XXXIX No. 44

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Nov. 12 •An officer discovered a UTD state vehicle had been burglarized while helping a semi-truck at the Research and Operations Center, and reported at 11:54 p.m.

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Nov. 12 • A microwave was reported stolen from Residence Hall Northwest at 3:16 p.m.

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Nov. 19 • A resident was reported and arrested for possession of marijuana in UV Phase 4 at 10:48 a.m.

Nov. 21 • A student was reported for assaulting a TA by throwing hot coffee on his neck and chest at the Research and Operations Center at 2:01 p.m.

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Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

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NEWS

Survey explores how students consume news

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR

15 percent of respondants indicated that they pay for news subscriptions and over 80 percent indicated that they believed reading the news to be important.

Findings indicate that digital articles constitute largest source of current events information for polled students ahead of Reddit PATRICIA MATHU Mercury Staff

There are many ways to engage with news, from reading physical newspapers to informal conversations with friends. A new Mercury survey revealed the ways in which UTD students consume and interact with the news.

The 79 respondents made it clear that they care about the news: over 80% of respondents said they found reading the news is important, but less than 65% of students “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that the news directly impacted them. The relationship between the importance of news and the relevance of news to students is more complex than the data shows.

Angela Lee, an assistant professor of Arts Technology and Emerging Communication

at UTD, studies news interaction and media management. In her research, she has isolated four main reasons the general public cares about the news: information seeking, opinion forming, social status and entertainment.

Information, Lee said, can be found in the news, and students can have a genuine curiosity.

“They want to know what is happening in the world; they want to keep up to date with what is happening,” Lee said.

In addition to information, Lee also said students may read the news for entertainment, to form opinions, or to have something to talk about with their peers.

Naela Elmore, a political science graduate student, said she started reading the news when she wanted to contribute to the conver-

sations in her classes.

“I think the turning point for me was when I was an undergrad and I was taking a political behavior class,” Elmore said. “I would sit in a classroom and have people talk about things that I didn’t know anything about, especially from the region that I was from.”

Elmore said hearing students talk about voter turnout from Egypt made her turn to the news for information, to form opinions and to contribute to the conversations in her classes.

Today, she has multiple newspaper and journal subscriptions and makes news consumption a conscious habit, she said.

According to the survey, 15% of respondents pay for news subscriptions, including The New York Times, Washington Post and The Daily Wire. Lee said her research found that

young people who subscribe to news outlets have an intense loyalty to the product, despite recent price hikes.

“I think it could be just habit,” Lee said.

“They’ve seen their parents reading the paper growing up, and now that they’re becoming their parents’ age, they look into that. It just becomes a part of who you are.”

Across the survey, the most popular way students interacted with the news was through digital articles, with over 55% participants ranking that as their first choice.

Less than 5% of students did not rank digital articles somewhere within their top third of preferences for news.

Beyond digital articles, the next most common answers for news consumption was through online videos and talking to friends.

What do UTD students think about social life?

Majority of respondents listed meeting people in class as most common way of making friends

Behind that was browsing Reddit and talking to family.

Students are also turning to social media for news. Students ranked Twitter as the most popular social media site for news, followed by Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

“When people talk about consuming news from social media or online, they’re assuming that it is a different source, but it is not. A lot of the news we see on Facebook or Twitter, for example, are from news organizations,” Lee said.

“For me, when I ask if people consume The New York Times, I think it is the same thing as if there is an app or on the website.”

Elmore said she changed her social media habits to reflect her new interest in the news.

→ SEE NEWS,

PAGE 6

BRIEF Starship food delivery robots come to UTD

SAMANTHA LOPEZ | MERCURY STAFF

BEN NGUYEN Mercury Staff

Social life at UTD is a varied experience, affected by student workloads and the way people socialize in the age of the internet and social media.

On the UTD subreddit, there are a myriad of posts from students asking for friendships, new clubs or to meet up. Biology junior Sana Salam made a Reddit post asking for friends after running into various difficulties in consistently meeting new friends. Other students always seemed to be busy with schoolwork or otherwise.

“I mean, there’s a lot of people, but I feel like it’s really hard to meet up with our schedules,” Salam said. “I guess you can meet some people, but it’s hard to actually keep meeting them and actually be friends with them, you know?

For Salam, her post was successful. She met various people, including a fellow classmate that she is now good friends with. Reddit provided another avenue of meeting new people, and even though she shared a class with someone, it was through Reddit that they became friends.

“One of the people I met, I’m really good friends with now, because I realized she was in my calculus class,” Salam said. “And if I didn’t make that profile, if I didn’t text her and meet her in person, I wouldn’t have known that she was in my class.”

Salam is part of 6.9% of people surveyed

by The Mercury that mainly met new people through social media. The survey of 131 people found that other ways people met others was through classes for 32.8% of respondents and in student organizations or clubs for 27.5%. However, the way people hear about the certain clubs and organizations or even meet people in their own class vary. For Salam, it was Reddit. For students like computer science freshman Jan Morgenstern, it was Discord and word of mouth.

“Most of the clubs I’ve found that I’ve been interested in have been through Discord and through talking to people,” Morgenstern said.

“If I want to know about something someone has or whatever, I just strike up a conversation.

It’s not hard for me. I guess it’s just hard talking to them again, finding them again, first of all.

And then recognizing them.”

How do these different methods of finding

people compare? Senior Arts and Humanities lecturer Allison Templeton said that social media has helped certain people find a voice in an online platform.

“There’s a lot of pros and cons,” Templeton said. “There’s a lot of research that talks about being an introvert really can help people in an online platform, because it gives them a chance to speak still and give a voice.”

Templeton also agrees with Salam’s earlier sentiments that today’s students tend to keep a busy schedule, making it difficult to organize social activities. Students tend to follow a set schedule of eat, sleep, study and repeat. Social media tends to align with this lifestyle better.

“It’s become more of an ability to be quick.

Quick messages, look at pictures quickly so I can be present but then get back to my life or back into my world … The case is, you go, you have your schedule, you go to class, you’re ready to leave, you go get something to eat, you go do this, we’re busy,” Templeton said. “We live in a fast-paced world … and we sometimes don’t stop to think, to actually look at the person next to me and just small talk.”

Social media is just a more comfortable tool to use for the current generation of

students, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Shelly Lane said. It helps reduce social anxiety by providing a familiar barrier, because the current generation of students grew up with technology.

“You have grown up with technology, and you’re much more familiar with that,” Lane said. “It’s much easier … to text or to post something than it is to go up to a person and say, ‘Hi, my name is so and so, I want to be a part of the club.’”

Clubs are still a very popular method of meeting new people, as evidenced by the 27.5% surveyed that use them, and finding the right club instantly connects people with other like-minded individuals with similar interests or majors. There are pros and cons with this approach as well. While posters seem to be effective, Morgenstern said that resources like the website Presence — an online database of all on-campus organizations and clubs — can be outdated.

“It was hard for me to find (clubs) that I liked,” Morgenstern said. “I know that there are a lot … but if you go on the Presence web-

→ SEE SOCIAL,

PAGE 6

On Dec. 3, food delivery robots will be available for use on campus through a partnership between UTD Dining Services and company Starship. For the last month, these robots on wheels have been testing and mapping the campus, but they will now be available for students to order food and beverages through the Starship-Deliveries app. The delivery fee at the moment is about $1-2 and these are used to fund the robots. The service will be able to deliver orders from the following restaurants on campus: Panda Express, Smoothie King, Smash’d, The Pub, Einstein’s Bro Bagels, Papa Johns, Halal Shack, Firehouse Subs, Market SU and Market DHW. In addition, the robots are equipped with ten cameras for security and can only be opened by the user through the app. The robots are able to deliver within a three-mile radius, travel at a speed of up to four miles per hour, can drive in rain and snow and go up curbs. If necessary, the robot can call a remote human operator for help when it has been standing at a crosswalk for too long or has fallen at an angle that it can’t get out of.

Students have expressed excitement about the robots’ arrival on campus on social media and have taken photos of the robots, applied stickers with cute faces on them and named the robots “Tobor.”

BRIEF

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LIFE&ARTS

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

Photos portray ‘echoes of history’

Dance team earns national recognition Bollywood dance group continues national competition streak

Photographers explore changes of American landscape in 1800s

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

AMINA HUSSAIN | MERCURY STAFF

The collection was curated by Jessica Ingle, research assistant and Ph.D. student in Humanities-Aesthetic Studies.

AYESHA ASAD Mercury Staff

Tucked into the second floor of the McDermott Library, amidst the bustle of a library during finals season, is a contemplative place. The Nebula Gallery’s current exhibit, “Echoes of History,” is a collection of photographs meditating on places at the heart of American history.

As a piece of the Comer Collection, a UTD teaching collection, the gallery has a focus on Civil Rights, the American West and the American landscape. Jessica Ingle, a research assistant and Ph.D. student in Humanities-Aesthetic Studies, curated the collection to explore how landscapes and physical places impact people’s collective memory.

“I titled it ‘Echoes of History’ because they really delve into the idea of the land and how it absorbs what we do on it,” Ingle said. “It also speaks to our memories as a nation. Space and place are really important to our memories as a society.”

→ SEE ECHOES,

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UTD Laksh was formed when two former dance teams, Chalak and Sharara, merged together and it won third place at its first competition of the school year.

ANN JITCHO Mercury Staff

A UTD Bollywood dance team won third place at their first national competition of the 2019-2020 season.

UTD Laksh competed in Jhalak, a national Bollywood fusion dance competition at UT Austin on Nov. 23. The annual competition is hosted by the Indian Cultural Association and features eight teams from around the nation competing to gain points towards Legends, the national championship, which takes place the following spring.

The team was formed two years ago by merging two former UTD dance teams, Chalak and Sharara, said neuroscience sophomore Jevin James, co-captain of Laksh. Since its creation, Laksh members have competed in state and regional competitions and the team was selected to compete in Jhalak for the first time in 2019.

“I saw Jhalak as an exciting opportunity to get out there and get competition experience,” said computer science freshman and dancer Solomon Mathew. “I’m so proud of our team for placing third and for all the hard work that we’ve done this season.”

Laksh is currently composed of 31 men and women, a majority of whom are freshmen. The team is led by captains James and marketing senior Shruthika Kamat. The Bollywood dance team practices a wide variety of styles including bharatanatyam, bhangra, hip-hop and contemporary.

With the majority of the team being freshmen, there are challenges with getting used to the rigorous demands of the dance team, James said. The team holds at least three practices a week that are each three hours long.

"As a freshman, you're learning how to balance being in college. Being on a dance team takes a lot of time and effort inside and outside of practice. It is also very taxing on your body, due to all the physical strain you put on it," James said.

The dance team is organized into different committees of students with a variety of roles. There are managers who attend practices and observe the team and make critiques. The team also has a committee of executives which includes a finance committee, a production committee and a choreography committee.

“Our officers put in a lot of effort and dedication,” Mathew said, “The commit-

tees work together really well to help the team run like a well-oiled machine.”

As the team approaches competition season, hours of practice and rehearsal increase, James said, making it even more difficult for students to balance coursework with the busy schedule. In practices for upcoming competitions, the team is mainly focusing on improving the skill of retaining critiques and revisions, said dancer Vismaya Joseph, a computer science freshman.

"It's really important whenever we get critiques that we apply them in the next run instead of forgetting about them," Joseph said. "It is important to carry corrections from practice to practice, even ones that were made three days or even a week ago. We want to get better with each run."

UTD's all-male bollywood dance team, Raftaar also competed in Jhalak this season. They competed in Jhalak in 2018 and won second place, and placed second in Jhalak 2019 as well.

"Raftaar definitely supports us, and we support them,” Joseph said, "I think both teams competing and winning shows just how talented our student body is here at UTD.” James said that while having the other

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

UTD team compete in the competition was added pressure, it was still an exciting opportunity.

"They're like our fellow brothers on campus," James said. “Yeah, there's always competition, but it was also really exciting to see what both teams put out there.

At the end of the day, we just wanted to make the school proud."

Fashion at UTD CALIS LIM

Mercury Staff

CHIAMAKA MGBOJI | MERCURY STAFF

Take a look around any class and you are bound to see students in various attires. In the front of the room, you could see a male with a wool overcoat and shining leather shoes. In the back, a female could be in trendy sweatshirt and ripped jeans. A couple seats down, you might see someone with a baggy holiday-themed pajama pants and slides.

These are all equally valid ways to dress, and it’s common to see a large range of styles all throughout campus. That being said, these styles are vastly different than students’ attire decades ago, which begs the question of how it has affected students’ perceptions of themselves and their peers, as well as the professors’ perceptions of them.

Something seemingly so simple as what you wear in the morning can be an aspect that others use to represent you as a person. Joanna Gentsch, a developmental psychologist and senior lecturer of Behavioral and Brain Sciences who always looks fashionably put together,

said that she dresses up because it’s the professional thing to do. By putting in some effort, one can end up feeling better. Additionally, one’s outward appearance can be a reflection of one’s mood or state of mind, which others pick up on.

“Social psychologists talk about first impressions, and there’s a lot of work to support it,” Gentsch said. “People definitely make instant judgements that consequently lead them to other ideas about others.”

This is a concept that students in previous generations seemed to take to heart, but has shifted throughout the decades. Public affairs senior Aspen Wilkins, president of UTD’s fashion club, said fashion reflects culture, and whatever is going on at the time.

In the early 1900s, people showed that they were rich by wearing complex clothes because it meant that they had servants to help them get dressed, Wilkins said. With the Great Depression through the 20s and 30s, attire became more casual. In the 50s and 60s,

→ SEE FASHION,

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Former students showcase ‘inter-play’ of art, technology SP/N gallery feature alumni artworks in celebration of UTD's 50th birthday AYESHA ASAD Mercury Staff

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

Pieces featured in the collection rely heavily on technology and digital trends.

Perhaps the most striking sight when one enters the “Alumni_2: Inter-play” art exhibition is a haphazard array of burnt tree trunks and sticks arranged in a wheelbarrow, all splashed with streaks of colorful paint. Upon closer inspection, one notices a framed picture of an old woman hung on the wall above.

This is UTD alumna Jennifer Jones’s artwork, a memorable piece document-

ing her grandmother’s journey with dementia, and it sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition: a modern collection that deeply explores the human psyche.

Jones said that her piece came from a “dark recess” in her mind and blossomed when she figured out what to do. It represents her grandma.

“Back in her days … she was raised not to share a whole lot of drama or anything.

We're kind of piecing things together, but we can't find out anything from her anymore, because she doesn't remem-

ber anything,” Jones said. “I just wanted something bright that stuck out — really colorful, because that's kind of how I perceived my grandma before everything took over her mind.”

The exhibit ran from Oct. 25 to Nov. 23 in the Synergy Park North 2 building.

Curated by John Pomora, a professor of Visual Arts, the exhibition featured artwork from 20 UTD undergraduates and graduates. Various mediums included

→ SEE SP/N,

PAGE 6

SPORTS

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

VICTORY AMIDST ADVERSITY

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Comets win first game of season against Redlands University after player collapses on court PRANATI CHITTA Mercury Staff

The men’s basketball team had a rocky start to their season with a loss to UT-Arlington followed by a player collapsing on the court during a game. The team, which has a 2-1 overall record, is still recovering from the loss.

Junior guard Curtis Allen was injured ten minutes into the team’s game against Redlands University on Nov. 8. Allen had to be hospitalized, men’s basketball head coach Terry Butterfield said.

“I think that weighed heavily on our team. I'm not sure how to quantify his loss and the effect that it had on the team,” Butterfield said. “He’s probably never going to be able to play again, so that's difficult. We’ll be missing him for the rest of the season and then the adjustments are that when you lose a key person, somebody who's waiting in the wings has to step up and has to show themselves worthy of taking over those minutes in that position.”

Senior guard Xavier Ferrell said Allen collapsed on the court during the game against Redlands due to heart problems which resulted in cardiac arrest.

“At first it was kind of hard because Curtis is my best friend on and off the court,” Ferrell said. “It was very emotional and sad to see him go down like that. But at the same time, it helped our team come together. We all want to perform and succeed and do well for him.

So looking forward, we’re going to try and dedicate the season to him and use this situation as motivation.”

Allen, who has been with the team since his freshman year, made an online statement after the event. In the state-

ment, Allen said that without an automated external defibrillator, he would’ve had a 9% chance of survival. He said he will be undergoing a procedure to place a defibrillator by his heart.

“This past weekend during the first game of my senior year, I almost lost my life. I went into ventricular fibrillation, which is a life-threatening heart rhythm that resulted in me going into cardiac arrest on the court during the game,” the statement reads. “Heartbreaking to say that I will not be able to finish out my career at UTD and I don’t know when I can play basketball again. Something I’ve poured my heart and soul into over the years. It’s not going to be easy to put the ball down, however this will only make me stronger and I’m blessed to even be able to write this message to y’all.”

Allen scored 51 points and played 755 minutes for the Comets in his career. Last season, he hit a season high at a Feb. 7 game against the Ozarks, scoring 20 points and seven field goals in the same game.

The team won the game against Redlands after Allen’s collapse 74-71 in overtime and later won their Homecoming game against Trinity 78-62. The Comets have 2 losses so far this season, 84-50 against UT-Arlington in an exhibition match and 91-86 against Whittier.

Butterfield said he is counting on senior Hans Burwitz, Weber and Ferrell to lead the team this season.

“I am counting on them heavily for high quality leadership and if they can give us the sort of guidance and direction that we need from them, we can move forward,” Butterfield said. “They happen to be three of our best players.”

It’s not going to be easy to put the ball down, however this will only make me stronger and I’m blessed to even be able to write this message to y’all.

CURTIS ALLEN

— Curtis Allen

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

Kelden Pruitt (34) scored nine rebounds in the Comets’ first game of the season against Redlands University in Redlands, California.

Forward by day, DJ by night Sophomore student athlete cites love for competitive sports, music since childhood MARCO SALINAS News Editor

Men’s soccer forward Jovi Munoz helped lead UTD to ASC gold with two game-winning goals in the ASC semifinals and finals. From the field to the booth, Munoz is a multihyphenate student and recent conference MVP. Munoz, a supply chain junior said he has been playing competitive sports since the fifth grade. In all four years of high school he played both soccer and football.

For Munoz, school started at 7:25 a.m. in Mansfield, Texas. His afternoons and evenings were spent at soccer practice, and he was usually home by 10 p.m.

“Since fifth grade until now I've had sports and school together. And I think it actually helps me become a better student,” Munoz said. “It allows me to time manage more and get my stuff done. But yeah … sports has been very important to me.”

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

In his senior year, Munoz had offers from UT, UTD, the University of Dallas, California State, Bakersfield, Chico, San Dominguez, California Lutheran, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Rutgers for soccer and football. He accepted an offer to play football as a kicker at Oklahoma State.

Eventually, he decided to transfer to UTD, a school that had been trying to recruit him since his junior year of high school.

“I liked football,” Munoz said. “It was just super hard for me to study and do that. (At Oklahoma State) it's way more time playing football. It's 5:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. every day and then you only get one month off the whole year. I just couldn't really study and I wanted to get good grades.”

At Oklahoma State, Munoz said, he missed the city environment of the DFW area and wanted to focus on his academics.

“It was still always a great college town, but it just didn't fit me,” Munoz said.

Munoz said UTD is a great school academically, and is growing. He said he

wanted to be able to say he went to UTD and played soccer.

In his three semesters at UTD, he has joined the Meteor Theater, the Center for US-Latin American Initiatives, Radio UTD and soccer. Munoz, who doesn’t drink coffee, said he gets all his energy from six hours of sleep.

He uses time spent on the bus traveling to games to listen to music and create his sets for Radio UTD. He said he’s listened to 265 albums in 2019, but programming a three-hour set, especially while travelling, is still difficult.

“Sports definitely made me more competitive in the classroom. But other stuff is more relaxed, so that's why I also like to do Radio because it gets my mind off of soccer,” Munoz said.

Munoz’s music for his programming is mostly ambient, electronic music. Frank Ocean is his favorite artist, but he said he’s

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Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

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“These artists are all exploring how the land can be affected by us, but also affect us and affect our cultural consciousness.”

The exhibit’s focus on geography, identity and aesthetics is not new to Ingle. Her dissertation, she said, is wrestling with similar themes.

“Recently, I’ve been exploring Texas contemporary art. I’m working with female contemporary Texas artists, but also the history of Texas and Texas identity and how that affects art,” Ingle said.

“The southern identity, the impact of Texas, where we live — this affects things. I am still dealing with space and place in a way. There’s something unexplainable about the feeling we get in a space that we don’t necessarily account for.”

Ingle weaves together three photographers in this exhibition: Jeanine Michna-Bales, Noel Clark and Kim Stringfellow. All three negotiate landscape and history.

Michna-Bales’s collection, “Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad,” traces the physical locations of runaway slaves. The photographs follow a geographic and temporal arc — each photo’s location moves further north and becomes better lit over time. Ingle arranged the photos into groups of three.

“They’re darker. You really have to get up close to see a lot of the detail and to engage with them better,” Ingle said. “So, I broke them up in that regard.”

Most of the pieces are taken

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people started pushing limits by wearing shorter skirts. Over time, society has become more casual, which is especially true in the modern day with factories making clothes for cheap prices. “(Student fashion has) become so much more casual. It kind of makes me a little sad in terms of how casual it’s become,” Wilkins said. “I look back at my parents in college, and my dad was in polos and chinos and Sperrys and my mom was in a little dress. There was a general spirit of ‘I’m in school; I’m here to learn and respect you, professor’ and I think we’ve kind of lost that.”

According to a survey of 131 respondents by The Mercury, 70.1% of students believe that they dress well. This, consequently, could allow them to feel better too. Choosing what we wear can provide creative joy and can affect our mood, especially if we feel good in what we’re wearing, Gentsch said.

“I do think, from a positive psychology standpoint, that how we dress and happiness are correlated,” Gentsch said.

Dressed neatly in a striped turtleneck and skirt, Wilkins said it feels really nice to wake up and feel like you’re dressed the way that you feel. When people are dressed well, they feel more prepared to take on the day.

“It’s proven that when you dress up, you feel better,” Wilkins said. “That’s why you’re encouraged to dress up in a business environment. It elicits respect from the person that you may be working for, the person you are meeting with or talking to, and they will respect you more. You will feel happier if you are dressed up and you’re not in the same clothes you slept in.”

Although 70.1% of students believe they dress well, the survey also found that only 27.1% of students wear upgraded casual or professional clothes —

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“I just scrubbed (my Twitter) and started following all the news outlets that I could find, all the academic accounts that I could find.

Anything that would give me a hint of what's going on,” Elmore said. “I speak Arabic and French

NEWS

at night, when the poor lighting gives them a deep, rich flavor.

They demand closeness. The final piece, however, has the sun high above the horizon. It is well lit and obviously set apart from the other pieces.

“The last image is actually titled ‘Freedom’ and it’s on Canadian soil. It’s symbolic of that moment of ‘We’ve made it’ and ‘Here’s the light and the power of the moment,” Ingle said.

Michna-Bales’s collection juxtaposes with Clark’s “Civil War, VA.” Trained as a photojournalist for publications like Time and Vogue, Ingle said she was initially hesitant to include the work.

“When I first started looking at these, I initially thought, ‘Oh, this is just a photojournalist perspective. It’s not that interesting. It’s not that artistic,’” Ingle said. “But when I really started to look at the way he shot these photographs, it’s very different from a photojournalist perspective.”

His pieces frame black and white photos of battle sites from the Civil War, but Ingle said they are not shot traditionally. For example, he photographs the sites of less important battles and viewers are placed in the center of the action.

“Matthew’s House” includes the house’s fence posts in the shot.

The framing seems almost haphazard, like someone quickly turning around for a final glance.

“If you were just shooting a house, you wouldn’t include that, right? You would just shoot it in the traditional way,” Ingle said.

“But instead he’s put it as if you are peeking through the fence posts to see that house. And to me, that really makes it more powerful.”

“Jackrabbit Homestead” by Stringfellow consists of photos of shacks in the middle of the American West as fossils of the Homestead Act, which encouraged eastern settlers to occupy the west and develop on the land. The homesteads bloom in beautiful, vibrant colors that juxtapose with the washed-out, natural horizon of landscape.

“I think that the nice thing, especially about Kim Stringfellow's work, is that objectively, these are just beautiful photographs,” Ingle said. “You don't need to have the background of knowing about the Homestead Acts to appreciate how beautiful they are.”

With the historical background, however, they are even more potent. One of the works in the collection is a framed land grant. Unlike the light, colorful photos of homesteads, it is black and white.

It’s text-heavy and severe. Here photography carries this severity, but in a lighter visual context.

“The way she’s shown these shacks plunked down in the middle of the arid desert landscape points out this idea of wanting to own and dominate the land.

That is so core to our American values,” Ingle said. “It’s part of the American dream to own a bit of land and that is really important to who we are as a country.”

“Echoes of History” is on display until Dec. 20, 2019 in the Nebula Gallery.

“It’s a great little space and they’re doing exciting things,” Ingle said. “People should keep an eye on what’s up here. It’s easy to be in the fog of studies and finals. But it’s also very easy to pop in here.”

ranging from nice jeans and casual dresses to full suits — on most days. This discrepancy, however, can be explained by students’ modern definition of dressing well. Instead of using limited criteria for style choices, students choose to express themselves.

Marketing and global business junior Patricia DiFrancesco, vice president of UTD’s fashion club, said that if someone wants to look nice, their version of looking nice is different than someone else’s.

DiFrancesco, dressed in a sweater and sporty outerwear combination, exemplified the stylish athleisure trend and said she enjoys the fact that people dress the way they want.

“In America, we prefer to be more comfortable since we’re more individualistic,” DiFrancesco said. “When people dress more comfortably, I feel like it’s almost saying that it’s okay to let your personality, your thoughts and what you want to be heard more than what you're wearing.”

Although fashion allows students to have more agency over themselves, how they dress can affect professors’ perceptions of them. Klyne Smith, professor of ECS cleanly dressed in matching sports coat and slacks, said that jeans, tennis shoes and a tee shirt is a common dress code for corporate engineers who are making $150,000 a year. Simply put, they’re dressing to the culture.

“It could be a stereotype that they dress because they don’t care,” Smith said. “But it’s more of that’s how our industry dresses, and we’re comfortable with this. For me, at least, (the way students dress) doesn’t shift anything. It’s when you open your mouth and speak; it’s when you submit your assignments and homework.”

Given that industry dress code sets a precedent for student attire, as shown with ECS students, it seems clearer as to why JSOM majors typically look sharp. Royce Jones, a Career Development Spe-

cialist within JSOM, said that students are in training during this time in college, and dressing well demonstrates that they are a serious student.

“I do think they take things more seriously here, and one of the reasons is because, at least in our school, you could be showing up for your BCOM class and there’s an employer there,” Jones said. “You’ll want to be able to meet that employer after class, and feel comfortable doing so. Typically whenever there’s an event with employers, we will always say at least business casual. I think that’s where that stems from.”

Jones said that although business-casual wear is expected, it may not be feasible for all students.

“I think there’s another issue that’s underlying this, that you just can’t ignore,” Jones said. “When you’re in college, especially people who have come from different places, their lifestyle is almost at the poverty line. When you think about trying to eat and support yourself, clothes are going to be down on that list. That’s why there are some safety nets, with the Comet Closet and things like that to help people with professional dress. You can’t ignore that does play into how students dress.”

Even though in each school, students had largely different perceptions of how others dressed — notably 14.3% of ECS majors and 75% of JSOM majors believed that their peers in their respective schools were dressed well — the survey also showed that approximately 66% of students across the board in A&H, BBS, ECS, JSOM and NSM believe that they dress well on average. This vast contrast between student’s perceptions of themselves versus others dressing well can be taken as a reminder that people’s definitions of dressing up vary immensely.

“Wear what you feel on the inside — express it— and you’ll feel so much better,” Wilkins said.

as well, so I try to follow French media sources, Egyptian, Arabic media sources. I’m trying to get different points of view of the same topic by seeing how it is covered in different media outlets.”

Over 70% of respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that reading the news made them feel exhausted about the world. Elmore

said that if students were trying to make news reading a habit, social media is a great way to start.

“Especially if they’re a college student, I would say pick whatever social network you spend the most time on and see if there are any media accounts that you can follow.

Just start with one or two and then you can work your way up.”

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videos, collages, paintings and digital sculptural installations.

Each medium was transformed to fit the artist’s narrative: digital artworks toed the line between artifice and humanity, paintings printed with digitally-fabricated surfaces distorted the idea of imperfect creation, and 3-D artworks dangling from the ceiling explored individualism through collages.

Upon entering the main room of the gallery, the viewer was immediately greeted by a collage of multicolored technological frames.

“Fragments of Technological Expression” by Denise Lion delves into the rapid, ever-shifting nature of technology and its relationship with humans. Each metallic frame appears to oscillate between varying shades of blues, greens, pinks and reds, with many frames’ outlines crisscrossing to form pictures.

Pomora said that the former dean of the School of Arts and Humanities Dennis Kratz asked three of the Arts and Humanities faculty members to curate alumni shows in celebration of UTD’s 50th birthday.

“I've decided to include a broader range of people, but more focused with painting and video, as well as some digital photos,” Pomora said. “I'm a big believer in video art, so I wanted to showcase as much of that as I possibly could. I also wanted to include some of the painters that weren't included in the first show, as well as some of the digital imaging people that were also more recent graduates.”

The exhibition relied heavily on technology. In “Hashtags,” craft-

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Although Munoz likes music, he said he likes movies even more.

He said he likes talking with friends about movies at Meteor Theater and can talk about films for hours. This year, his top picks are “Parasite,” “The Lighthouse” and “The Irishman.”

Munoz was named tournament MVP for his performances at the ASC championship. In the postseason, Munoz said, he has more energy on the field. The games are more fun, he said, because more people go to watch and the games count toward the NCAA Tournament.

Munoz said the overtime, game-winning goal that was followed by a front flip and sent the Comets to the ASC finals is one of his favorite memories on the field along with the game-winning goal

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site, you don’t find a lot of information about them, current information. And you don’t find a lot of chats they’re on.”

Ultimately, Salam was able to

ROSHAN KHICHI | MERCURY STAFF

ed by Heather Charlet, multiple digital installations were arranged side-by-side, their flat screens switching rapidly between multiple Instagram hashtags. One, labeled #pranked, featured posts of prank videos and how-to’s. Another food related hashtag yielded photos of trendy cafes, tropical fruit smoothies and people gorging themselves with snacks. One set of photos depicted the aesthetic of a lonely, antisocial individual, including a selfie of a sullen, pale youngster looking down at the camera.

Other digital pieces included Hillary Holsonback’s chilling short videos of a young, heavily madeup woman, Tan, who stares into space, occasionally glitching out of frame. The vivid coral colors that the woman wears distinguish her against the muted backgrounds, so that all attention is focused on her.

When her figure flashes and disappears from the frame, the viewer is jarred — it is almost akin to watching a horror movie.

Pomora said that though he had run out of room when curating the exhibition, he thought that the ex-

hibition had a cohesiveness to it.

“We had to consider … what really looks good next to something. That's something that's really important: when you put a painting and then a video next to it, you have to think also about the sound. Is this sound going to affect the paintings that are right next to it?” Pomora said. “We thought very much about where things were hung and how they related to the pieces next to them, so we tried to hang things that looked good next to each other that could have a conversation with each other.”

Pomora said that the show included both international and regional students and that it was healthy in its diversity.

“Creative art is about expressing yourself in the way you see the world,” Pomora said. “It just shows, I think, a really interesting mixture of diverseness and how diverse creativity really is, and how it reflects students from different cultures and their ideas about the world and how they see it.”

in the finals.

“We scored an early goal in the first minute and I was like, ‘Hey, we're going to win this game easy,’” Munoz said. “And then they get a cheap call penalty kick two minutes after us that they scored and then it was just 1-1 for the next 90 minutes.”

Munoz said the Comets were dominating the game but couldn’t break the tie with The Ozarks.

Mentally, Munoz said, he was preparing for the game to go to the penalty kick shootout.

“But then … it was a through ball and then my teammate headed it down for me and then I was like, ‘Wow, look where I'm at. I'm so close to the goal.’ I could win it right here and then I just — I mean to be honest, I didn't even aim on the shot,” Munoz said. “I looked up, I'm like, ‘Hey, it went in.’ I was just so happy.”

Munoz said he was nervous going into the finals against Concordia because of the Comets’ 2018 loss in the finals.

“We just had a lot of pressure that we had to win game so I felt a lot of pressure for that and I'm like, yeah, we need to win this,” Munoz said.

The game was tied at 0-0 until 70 minutes into the match. Munoz said as a center forward he always looks for rebounds coming off the goalie because it leaves a free goal.

“The whole season I've been doing that and none of them bounced back to me. And in this one … I was hoping, ‘Please don't catch it.’ And he pushed it out,” Munoz said. “I'm like, ‘Maybe I could score it right here.’ And then again, I didn't even aim. I just knew the goal is right there and I was going to get a touch on it and I did it and it went in.”

find connections over Reddit. In the modern age, people are using the variety of tools given to them to socialize and connect with people, whether it be through social media, clubs or just talking to interesting people on the street. For Salam, finding people on Reddit

was ultimately comforting.

“That is very nice, knowing that a lot of people kind of struggle making friends just as you, and a lot of people are in the same boat and a lot of people have busy schedules and still want to meet people,” Salam said.

COMICS I'M NOT A SNITCH

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

7

PEACE OUT, GIRL SCOUTS

BIANCA DEL RIO | MERCURY STAFF

GOTTA MAKE ROOM FOR DISNEY+

QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF

KEATON NATIONS | MERCURY STAFF

#1 PROFESSOR

BALLIN' ON A (BRAND NEW) BUDGET

LOUISE NILLAS | MERCURY STAFF

O&B: MEOWY CHRISTMAS

SARAH STREETY | MERCURY STAFF

SANTA'S LIST

ELIZABETH NGUYEN | MERCURY STAFF

RED RUM

AREN'T YOU TOO OLD TO SIT HERE?

KEATON NATIONS | MERCURY STAFF

CECILIA ROMERO | MERCURY STAFF

JENNA CHERREY | MERCURY STAFF

8

OPINION

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

Be not afraid

Why fear can be helpful in boosting one's physical, mental performance BREANNA SHEN Mercury Staff People put up dreamcatchers to escape nightmares, close their eyes during scary movies and label topics as taboo to avoid talking about things they fear. In almost every aspect of our lives, we perpetually insulate ourselves against situations where we might be frightened, and we wish for idyllic lives of peace away from all our stressors and potential sources of fear.

Fear, we have been conditioned to think, can only be negative. Yet, in light of new scientific evidence and old-fashioned wisdom, this conditioning may be fallacious.

Not only can fear be physically beneficial, but it can be the most powerful factor for success. In fact — and, perhaps, ironically — short bursts of acute fear can boost both mental and physical performance.

Associate professor of behavioral and brain sciences and neurobiologist Christa McIntyre said that acute stress can catalyze neurogenesis, which is the production of neurons. It also

enhances memory — a useful perk when we’re in a time crunch before an exam. By giving the mind a break from the daily tasks of reality, acute episodes of fear allow us to return back to the present energized and confident. Additionally, the immune system receives a jumpstart with an increased number of immune cells, a swifter wound healing process and an enhanced ability to detect tumors.

Moreover, social benefits can be associated with acute fear.

Surviving a scary experience releases dopamine and oxytocin, mood-enhancing neurotransmitters that also encourage us to connect with those around us. We can thus build deeper connections more readily in the context of fear. It might be why soldiers form such profound friendships with comrades in the military with whom they endure near-death experiences. It may also explain how survivors of natural disasters or violence form similarly powerful bonds.

Facing fear is the first step to overcoming it. In fact, psychotherapists treat phobias with exposure therapy, regimens of repeated, controlled contact with

the fear-inducing stimuli. Instead of avoiding the source of fear, the Mayo Clinic recommends that patients frequently practice encountering their fears. At the same time, patients conquer their fears by positive thinking and building confidence as they take on their fears.

Taking a cue from the successes of exposure therapy, we can apply the principle of confronting our fears to our own lives. Encounters with fear can make us more resilient and build our emotional strength. Understanding our individual fear responses and finding unique coping strategies can lighten our burden in the future when we deal with fear in highstakes situations.

Granted, research has long proven that chronic stress can take a negative toll on our physical and mental health. It can lead to conditions such as anxiety, depression and hypertension. Flood the body with cortisol and adrenaline day in and day out, and you get burnout.

The key, however, is to turn fear into motivation and action without making it a chronic source of anxiety. While this may not work in cases of serious harm such as sexual assault and abuse, which may re-

quire professional psychiatric care, it can work in other instances. As students, many of us face the fear of failing tests, losing jobs or defaulting on credit card payments. Yet, by studying to avoid academic failure, practicing stellar work ethic to avoid being fired and budgeting to evade financial instability, we are all turning fears into a positive force.

Similar to many of us, there are numerous successful immigrants who have experienced the challenges and financial fears of starting out at square one. They credit their success to turning their fears into motivation. Andrew Cherng, the founder of Panda Express, said in an interview with Forbes, “‘I didn’t have any personal possessions when I came … My drive came from being poor.’” Instead of breaking him, his financial worries galvanized him to action and hard work.

While we complain about our worries and daydream about a carefree world, we owe gratitude to our fears for making us stronger. I get it: there is a lot to fear, and fear is natural. As a freshman new to the scary college experience, I have a lot to fear, from roommate issues to making good grades. Yet, I’ve found, fear is not so scary.

SARAH BESSERER | MERCURY STAFF

'Ok Boomer' The powerful proclamation sweeping the nation EMILY GAO Mercury Staff

RYAN MAGEE | MERCURY STAFF

In the face of growing generational gaps between the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z, the youth have rallied around a response that has inspired a social movement, creating new channels of discourse and, inevitably, backlash. The devastatingly effective phrase of choice? “Ok boomer.”

The phrase originates from an online response to a TikTok video of a man with a new phrasing for an old stereotype: that younger generations are too immature to be taken seriously. Donning his battle armor — a baseball hat and a polo shirt — he declared, “The millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome, they don’t ever want to grow up.”

Gen Zers shot back — on TikTok, Twitter, and other social media platforms — with a beautifully simple sentiment, equivalent to a verbal or virtual eye-roll to the boomer mindset. “Ok boomer” became a

widely used phrase to poke fun of anything from ruining the housing market to a tendency to take minor inconveniences as extreme personal offenses. It’s become so mainstream that a song fittingly titled “ok boomer” written by Jonathan Williams and Peter Kuli and popularized on TikTok has become Gen Z’s unofficial anthem.

A fire erupted as boomers rushed to accuse “ok boomer” as being a “generational slur”, “ageist” and even went so far as to compare it to the n-word. Comedian John Mulaney’s guideline, “If you’re comparing the badness of two words and you won’t even say one of them, that’s the worse word,” is certainly applicable here.

Even more ironically, “ok boomer” is just a glib response to boomers’ attacks on millennials and Gen Zers, with none of the bite. “Ok boomer” is the socially powerful version of “I know you are, but what am I?” to boomers calling members of younger generations “snowflakes” — even “millennial” was used in a derogatory way almost immediately after the nickname came into existence.

There has been no shortage of boomers labeling millennials as financially

illiterate industry murderers or Gen Zers as too young to understand the world. The punchline is that those generalizations were laughed off by their younger targets, but boomers blew up when the most shallow reflection of that rhetoric was detected.

What “ok boomer” doesn’t get enough credit for is that it did more than just respond to one man’s rant.

The phrase has created a new avenue of social discourse that is accessible on an unprecedented level, and has led to even more intergenerational solidarity between millennials and Gen Zers. Before “ok boomer,” there was no widely accepted comeback to the boomer mindset. Past responses to boomers’ downward generational jabs were either humorous, or educated and formal. The former made the comebacks easier to connect with but was brushed away as just another sign of immaturity, whereas the latter took some effort to engage with and would likely be dismissed as naivete.

“Ok boomer” is the current intersection of the two: it’s a funny and purposeful statement that combines both Gen Z’s characteristically flippant attitude towards anything derivable, and its zeal for finding solu-

tions to boomer-inherited problems.

It’s more than just bitterness towards unfortunate inheritances — it’s a generational symbol. The phrase has received criticism for acting as a swift rejection of engagement and dooming the possibility of some universe without intergenerational differences. However, the sparking of such outrage among those who represent the boomer mindset proves that the phrase is relevant. It’s the first of many messages that the younger generations demand a legitimate change.

Gen Z’s generationally-defining war isn’t going to be fought in trenches or with militaries: it’s already here in the form of climate change, economic crises and outdated institutions. It’s this war that “ok boomer” is a rallying cry for, not the “generational war” that boomers are trying to will into existence. Gen Z is too young to remember an America before 9/11 and was born into problems that the older generations created — yet, it has the audacity to demand change and equality. That sheer dedication to ideology in the face of a dismissive boomer generation and disadvantages out of our control is the true power behind “ok boomer.”

unsafe custody Medical negligence by law enforcement is unacceptable MANSI CHAUHAN Mercury Staff When you are arrested, your life is in a stranger’s hands. But what happens when that stranger, a trained authority figure, doesn’t care whether you live or die?

Police officers and other authority figures have constantly been found to be negligent about medical care, starting from the time of initial arrest and throughout a prisoner’s sentence. Health care is a basic fundamental right that currently is not always taken seriously within our justice system.

In the fall of 2018, Dallas police’s internal affairs unit found that officers William Ortega and Larry Moody provided improper transport to a prisoner and failed to provide medical care. The prisoner was 34-year-old Diamond Ross, who died of an accidental drug overdose in Aug. 2018. Officers’ body cam videos were released just this month, in which Ross can be seen repeatedly asking for water and help but to no avail.

When police responded to the initial call about a disturbance, they had already noticed that she appeared to be under the influence of something, which later turned out to be PCP. Medical attention should have already been on standby at this point.

A sergeant at the detention center eventually decided an unconscious Ross needed an ambulance after a previous officer had unsuccessfully tried to revive her with CPR. However, even then Officer Moody insisted that Ross had already been cleared by the Dallas Fire Rescue and didn’t need an ambulance. She fell unconscious after being cleared; an ambulance was clearly warranted at this point.

According to their statement, the Dallas Police Department just released the videos in an effort to be transparent. Body cam videos can be released at any time after an incident.

Transparency would have been much more prudent if the department did not wait for the family to heal before reopening their wounds.

Ortega resigned during the investigation, while Moody was

only issued a written warning that had no effect on his career. Police brutality is already a heightened issue in this country, especially when it comes to people of color like Ross. When officers are not even held accountable, where will the inhumane treatment end?

A bill passed by the Texas senate in 2015 has resulted in many large police departments using body cams. However, releasing the footage is still entirely up to their discretion. Police officers would be more accountable if footage from incidents, such as a prisoner’s death due to negligence, was required to be publicly released within a short timeframe. The law should be amended, but even before that happens, we must be aware that human lives are not always valued when they become state property.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that the eighth Amendment guarantees a prisoner’s right to medical care. It is up to an officer’s discretion whether to provide medical care or not, and often that results in fatal mistakes. Diamond Ross is hardly an isolated case of someone dying in

custody due to sheer negligence.

Lamekia Dockery died in February 2019 of sepsis, after she complained of severe stomach pain for two days while in an Indiana jail for shoplifting.

She hadn’t eaten and kept vomiting, yet she was ignored. The response? Guards weren’t at fault because they didn’t think stomachaches would result in death.

It is difficult for a prisoner or a prisoner’s family to prove that law enforcement can be held responsible for denial of medical care. They have to prove deliberate indifference, which requires officers to know about and ignore a medical condition. However in cases such as Ross’, that is next to impossible because she didn’t have a chronic condition and officers weren’t completely aware of her overdose.

There is an abundance of issues surrounding the overall inhumane treatment of those arrested and in custody, medical negligence is just one of them. These problems are solvable, but they require law enforcement to be held accountable and be trained in a way that emphasizes rehabilitation, not punishment.

RYAN MAGEE | MERCURY STAFF

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

9

OPINION

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Publishing truth On Nov. 19, 2019, members of the World Mission Society Church of God stood at the Plinth with petitions asking for student support against coverage from The Mercury. They claimed that The Mercury was defaming the reputation of Elohim Bible Study club, an on-campus religious organization and chapter of the WMSCOG. This was all in response to a recent article we published, “They ruined their life by doing this,” which contained testimonies from five different people, including a student who came forward after the original article was published, regarding

their experiences with chapters of the WMSCOG. The definition of defamation involves publishing or saying false things to ruin someone or something’s good reputation. The evidence we were working with were all testimonies, mostly from UTD students, and all corroborated with one another, so they cannot be considered false until demonstrated otherwise.

The problem doesn’t stop there. We were told by one of the members at the Plinth that their off-campus advisor told them The Mercury did interviews with church members but did not use

their quotes for the story. This is completely false.

The Mercury is not a tabloid, nor is it a gossip column. When we receive tips from sources, we investigate them as much as possible and try to find as sources with common experiences. We then approach the other side — in this case members of WMSCOG or Elohim Bible Study club — and give them an opportunity to respond and be quoted in order for the story to be balanced.

This is standard practice and what we do for every story we write.

Over the course of approximately three weeks, we made repeated attempts to contact seven

different WMSCOG representatives including club members, their off-campus advisor Brianna Redick, the president of the club and a media representative for the national organization. We received little to no response and zero on-the-record interviews from them. Redick sent us an email statement, which was the only response we had from the other side that was included in the article. Redick then told us to refrain from contacting club members for interviews.

After the article was published, we were asked by one of the club members to retract the article

and issue an apology. We have yet to receive concrete evidence from church or club members to refute the evidence we have.

We’re forced to report what we have when we don’t get evidence or comment from the other side.

As journalists, it’s incredibly unfortunate to have only one side of the story. We want to know the other side and be able to tell it. It’s our duty to provide all perspectives and create balanced stories. When we’re unable to get comment from someone, and then receive demands for apologies and retractions from the same people after publishing what we have, it’s frus-

trating. In this case, we tried multiple times to contact club members and church representatives, but to no avail. It isn’t our responsibility to depict a source favorably, but it is to depict them truthfully based on what evidence we have.

We may be met with more unfounded claims that we’re defaming and slandering. We will continue to publish truth based on evidence we are given. We will continue to craft stories that represent UTD students and their experiences. We will continue to investigate what students struggle with and showcase voices that need to be heard.

GHOST TOWN

RYAN MAGEE | MERCURY STAFF

COMET COMMENTS

What did you do over Fall break?

Comets and Craters Inclement weather affects holiday travel

“Mainly I hung out with my friends since I don’t have any family here, and also did some volunteering downtown, and just had a chill time I guess.”

Zeyad Elhabbab Computer Engineering Senior

“We went shopping and went to see some lights.”

“I went to Austin and San Antonio to visit friends.”

Jaraj Dave Info Technology and Management Graduate

Dat Van Vo Quoc Computer Science Senior

Two winter storms covered most of the U.S. with rain and snow on Nov. 27. Wind gusts reached over 35 miles per hour, making Thanksgiving travel difficult.

Professors elected to science organization Natural Science and Mathematics professors Ray Baughman and Julia Chan joined 443 new fellows in the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Nov. 26.

Dec. 2, 2019 | The Mercury

10 → PROF.FUZZ

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“They’re not completely exclusive processes,” Farmer said.

“There is very much a creative element in researching and writing history. And there is a disciplined element to songwriting.

It’s just that in songwriting I can make up stories that don’t have to have evidence that I can’t do if I’m writing an article or a book.”

The songs and articles he writes share subject matter as well. There are many threads of Asian influence throughout the music, as shown by their album “Chinese Folk Songs,” the song “Panda Attack,” and their band logo of a panda skeleton. This crossover is organic, Farmer said.

“I’ve spoken Chinese in more years than I have not spoken Chinese,” Farmer said. “I started learning Chinese when I was 21 years old. I’ve been going back and forth between Taiwan and the mainland for over 35

→ TITLE IX

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

informal process, but we do not use that process when it comes to sexual assault or the more serious violations, that is not something that we even bring up because that’s just not good practice.”

Mendoza also brought up the upcoming changes to guidelines coming from the Department of Education, which Mendoza said is one of the two areas of oversight, the other being the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

“The Department of Education is actually right now preparing to release new guidance that we’re suspecting will be released in January,” Mendoza said. “They did a long comment period, got a lot of feedback, so we’re not sure what the final version of the guidance is going to look like.”

Along with upcoming Department of Education guidelines, in the last legislative session, the Texas legislature passed SB 212 on June 14, 2019, which has two main provisions. First, it requires

NEWS

years. That is very much part of who I am. Asian stories and themes occasionally pop up in my songs. It’s simply because those things are always in my life.”

To find inspiration for his songs, he looks around, hears stories and picks up snippets of words and phrases, Farmer said.

For the song “Panda Attack,” which was written in 2015, Farmer was in Taiwan for six months on a grant working on a translation project.

“It was kind of cold, kind of rainy, February, March-ish, I’m walking down the street in Taipei, holding an umbrella, the song comes into my mind, I’m holding up this phone up to my mouth and going ‘we went to the zoo to see Gu Gu, da da da da,’ starting to fill out the words and the guitar riffs,” he said. “I got back to the apartment, later that day — I bought a guitar that trip because I knew I was going to be there for 6 months — sat down, started figuring it out. Over the

course of the next couple days, the song happened.”

With a three-day Christmas tour coming up, a new record that they are working on in January and multiple shows booked in the coming year, the band is staying busy and making money. In terms of the band’s future, while Farmer suspects he and his wife will continue to make music together, Brooks, his son, has a shelf life, Farmer said.

“We joke he beats on stuff for room and board and his college tuition,” Farmer said. “At some point, he will longer need us for everyday survival things. He can go beat on stuff for somebody else if he wants.

Even if the band makes some alterations, it appears that the band will keep going.

“We have a new record we’re working towards, we’re always writing songs, and we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing until circumstances demand that we make a change,” Farmer said.

→ OUIJA

all employees at public or private institutions to report sexual harassment, assault and other violations to the Title IX coordinator if they witness or receive information of such an incident, however, there can be designated employees that can report such incidents confidentially.

“Right now, we have designated employees that are responsible employees,” Mendoza said. “The new law changes that slightly in making every employee that works for any institutions of higher, whether it’s public or private in the state of Texas, all those employees are now responsible employees.”

Responsible employees are required to report all sexual misconduct. The law also requires Title IX coordinators to report to the chief executive officer of a higher education institution with all of the reports of incidents once a semester, which afterwards is also distributed online. This requirement is currently undergoing a rules-making process by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating board.

“The rules are actually up for public opinion on the Texas Register,” Mendoza said. “I believe they’re going to be up there maybe for a couple more weeks. But once we have those rules finalized, I would be able to give a more definite date of business when we are mandated by the state to have these reports on the website.”

While these changes are currently ongoing, the guidance from the Department of Education is expected to be released in January of next year. The 2017 guidelines were sued over various provisions, however there were no recent relevant rulings applicable to UTD. Mendoza said to expect more potential lawsuits in regards to Title IX. “I think you’ll continue to see a lot of that,” Mendoza said. “A lot of court battles over new guidance depending on what the Department of Education releases because a lot of the things that were in the preliminary guidance was very disturbing to a lot of individuals and especially the victims or the complainants.”

→ THC

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

going to have the strongest connection with the spirits, Shelton said.

“You’ll build your connection with the board and you’ll send out your message — who you are, why you want to communicate, what you’re looking for,” Chandna said. “You invite it to come talk and wait for it. You can repeat your message a couple of times. It will typically take up to five minutes for something to come down and start moving the planchette, and once it does, you can just sort of talk with it.

Again, this is where some of the research comes in — the types of questions you don’t want to ask and the types of things you want to watch out for.”

After engaging the Ouija board in their dorm rooms, they began taking interested people with them to the Arbor Hill Nature Preserve in the middle of the night because, Shelton said, the atmosphere of night is more ef-

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

(it) pulls it, captures it and there's a current that ends up getting produced because of this capture.

This current is then converted into a concentration, and that concentration is then reported in an objective manner.”

The sensor was developed over a period of five years. Electrical engineering Ph.D. student Devang Sankhala, who helped develop the device, said the sensor was de-

fective. Chandna said that because the sky is so open, it’s a lot freer for things to come and go from out of this realm, and doing it in the building limits what they talk to. The pair have taken eight people so far.

“It really works when we go through all the trouble of waiting until late at night and going out to the woods and doing all our little rituals,” Shelton said. “The spirits channel energy through us and the more people there are, the more energy they have to move the planchette. It’s also better to do these things with other people. Part of it is there is more energy to work and the other part of it is that it very much is a group experience. It’s not really the same with just me and him.

Our main recruitment tactic is hanging out in the lobby and being like, ‘Hey, do you want to talk to ghosts?’ It’s a little sketch but it works really well.”

Chandna said the people who come with him and Shelton enjoy the experience and feel fulfillment.

“There’s certainly a lot of amazement,” Shelton said. “A part of it too is the type of person willing to come with the random people they met into the woods are generally more open to experiences. Some people have a lot of apprehension, especially once it starts moving.

They’ve seen the movies. It’s a scary experience for them, but everyone we’ve taken thought it was a memorable experience.”

Shelton said the reason they go back to the board is for the interesting experience and the adventure. He said although there is a spiritual component to it, the Ouija board is for entertainment.

“It’s an interesting way to spend the night. We want to have a fun time and go out with friends,” Shelton said. “My interaction with the board is less about belief and more so about experiencing it, so I don’t think it’s changed my mind about the world but it’s helped me discover things about myself or things about being with other people. I’m just there to suspend my disbelief.”

signed by former UTD graduate student Hunter Stevenson.

“Before we took over the project, we had another Ph.D. student (who) started off with designing this sensor,” he said.

Sankhala said one of the challenges in developing the sensor was perfecting a way to accurately test for the THC. “If we talk about challenges, after really getting the analog at hand, the second one would be, trying to get it right. Trying to get that right takes around six to eight

months easily,” Sankhala said. “After that, I think we started off with a study where we procured human samples. We asked volunteers to provide the saliva sample.”

Another of the challenges Prasad said, was using saliva as a medium.

“Saliva is a bunch of other things, right? Saliva pH changes based on what we eat,” Prasad said. “Both of these will impact whether your measure is accurate, as well as whether its sensitive enough.”

ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR