15 minute read
NEWS
from The Mercury 05 03 21
by The Mercury
May 3, 2021 | The Mercury NEWS
Why are graduations still being held in the gym?
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Comets will soon be back on campus, and they’ll go back to graduating in the Activity Center as well
EMAAN BANGASH
Mercury Staff
Historically, commencement ceremonies have been held at UTD in the Activity Center, but why is that the case, and could it ever change?
The Activity Center holds a variety of facilities, one of which is the gymnasium, a 3,200-seat room that has been the home of commencement ceremonies at UTD since 1998, when the first phase of the Activity Center was built, said Director of University Events Judy Barnes.
For the last few years, students have been voicing their opinions against the Activity Center as a venue. The UTD subreddit has numerous posts, one of which dates back to 2013, from students proposing to change the location, or having students sign a petition to change it. In addition, members of Student Government voiced their concerns about the graduation location to administration and created a survey for students after the petition began circulating on Reddit, said biology senior Serena Bhadsavle.
In a survey conducted by The Mercury, out of 181 respondents, 146 answered that they were planning to attend their commencement ceremony. When asked how they felt about ceremonies being held in the AC on a scale from 1-5 (1 being “Very bad” and 5 being “Very good”), only four respondents answered “Good” or “Very good,” and of those who indicated they would not be attending commencement, about 60% ranked “Don’t like the chosen location” as their top reason for not attending.
On the UTD subreddit, ATEC senior Griffin Callahan posted a petition calling for commencement to be “held somewhere more respectable.” The petition currently has 581 signatures. He said his high school graduation was held in a basketball stadium, and other high schools nearby had done something similar. He said he decided to start the petition after noticing posts on the subreddit talking about the same issue for 6-7 years and nothing had changed.
“Some of these people are graduate students that are graduating in a gym when a high school can do better than that, and that just blows my mind,” Callahan said. “I feel like aesthetically there isn’t much of a difference between graduation and a basketball game, so I would just like to see something a little more grand like a lot of high schools in DFW do.”
Barnes chairs an ad-hoc Commencement Committee composed of other faculty and SG members that makes recommendations for commencement. Barnes said several factors are accounted for when deciding the location, including general costs, weather, faculty transportation, amount of seating and the importance of having commencement on-campus to students.
“It’s a little bit of art and a little bit of science and [the Activity Center] is our largest venue on campus. That’s why we have it in there. A lot of people say, ‘why don’t you go to ATEC?’ ATEC seats a third of what it seats [in] the Activity Center. Where would we seat our graduates? Event planning is just that – it’s creating the right environment, creating the right atmosphere, creating or utilizing the venues there,” Barnes said. “If we chose to go outside on soccer fields, on the mall, wherever, you have to bring in chairs, you have to bring in staging, you’d have to bring in seating, you have to worry about the elements and stuff.”
The University Events Team manages an operating events cost center assigned as “Commence-
SEE GRADUATION, PAGE 15
LOUISE NILLAS | MERCURY STAFF
ANNA PHENGSAKMUEANG | PHOTO EDITOR
University offers postponed alternative for virtual graduation
In-person ceremony to take place end of summer
CHRISTINE JACOB
Mercury Staff
By August 2021, five semesters’ worth of UTD graduates – about 15,000 students – will have finished college primarily in an online format, compelling the university to offer an in-person alternative later in the summer.
The university began exploring alternative spring graduation options in February with a survey sent out to graduating students. Judy Barnes, senior director of university events, said this year’s ceremony format will be based on the university’s pandemic response guidelines.
“Our typical cycle is to start looking at responses earlier in the semester,” Barnes said. “Come this spring, it looked like we were still in a virtual situation. Commencement committee met, and we put into motion another ceremony that would be virtual.”
There are about 4,600 students who have applied to graduate in the summer of 2021. Student Government surveyed graduating seniors to determine what students would like enhanced for the virtual graduation ceremony in May. Barnes said that there will be modifications from the past virtual ceremonies to make graduation more interactive this semester. “One of the things that people wanted was photographs, to kind of show off regalia, etc. We are offering a series of photographs with our flash vendor who is going to come on campus,” Barnes said. “We are going to have three opportunities. Graduates can take pictures walking the stage, in front of the spirit rocks that we are going to have painted and we are setting up the UTD letters so that students can take pictures.”
How to combat vaccine anxiety
Prepping for the COVID shot is both physical, mental
SMRITHI UPADHYAYULA
Mercury Staff
While approximately 51% percent of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, many who have received or are planning to receive the shot are experiencing vaccine anxiety, which can make the experience uncomfortable and even discourage them from getting their first or second dose.
Daily RX defines vaccine anxiety as a sense of unease around the COVID-19 vaccine due to a fear of extreme side effects, skepticism about how quickly it was released or other factors. If a reaction is severe enough, it can even lead to physical symptoms after vaccination such as sweaty palms, abdominal pain and heavy breathing. These symptoms can also mimic those of an allergic reaction, further propagating the anxiety.
University Emergency Medical Response (UEMR) has already responded to several vaccine anxiety-related calls at the UT Southwestern vaccination site on campus. UEMR is usually called for dizziness or a suspected allergic reaction, but upon arrival, EMTs find that the patient is doing much better after some water and reassurance from the nurses.
UEMR Captain Tess Helfrich said that vaccine anxiety is likely caused by a conjunction of generalized anxiety around COVID-19 itself and other factors such as misinformation, a fear of needles and the fact that the trip to the vaccination site is some people’s first time leaving their house in over a year. She said that this phenomenon isn’t unique to COVID-19, as she saw something similar while interning on the Ebola vaccine campaign in West Africa.
PSYCOM and Mental Health America recommend several measures that can help pre-
SEE ANXIETY, PAGE 15
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Practice cyber hygiene with your vaccine card
Scammers use data from COVID-19 vaccine cards that were posted online to mine sensitive information
FATIMAH AZEEM
Mercury Staff
As the number of Americans receiving COVID-19 vaccinations continues to climb, so is the number of people posting “vaccine selfies” on social media. However, by displaying their vaccination cards online, vaccine recipients are opening themselves up to a different kind of threat: identity theft.
The Federal Trade Commission and FBI released statements advising people to keep vaccine cards – which contain names, birthdays and vaccine providers – off the internet because of the increasing threat of vaccine scams. Executive Director of The Cyber Security Research and Education Institute Bhavani Thuraisingham said that though this information seems simple, it is enough for hackers to access a vaccine recipient’s address, credit card number and social security number and scammers to retail fake vaccine cards made from real information.
Thuraisingham said that a hacker knows which database they need to hack into to obtain a person’s sensitive information by knowing where a person got vaccinated. A hacker may only need to input a vaccine recipient’s name and birthday into their vaccine provider’s database to complete the “identity puzzle.” Even if a hacker can’t obtain a social security number, Thuraisingham said they would still have enough sensitive information by that point to find a social security number through other means.
“These aren’t typical people trying to scam you,” Thuraisingham said. “These are smart, cun-
May 3, 2021| The Mercury NEWS
Practice makes perfect
Ochem professors develop website, app that prepares students for exams
CHRISTINE JACOB
Mercury Staff
Ochemrank.com, a new organic chemistry webapp aimed at students taking organic chemistry (OChem) I and II, has revolutionized how students prepare for difficult exams.
The webapp, developed by chemistry professors Mihaela Stefan and Michael Biewer, as well as computer science professor Ovidiu Daescu and their team of graduate and undergraduate students, allows organic chemistry students to practice a variety of tricky ranking questions.
“I have always taught sophomore-level organic chemistry, and I would write these ranking questions, which would test the student’s understanding of different chemical properties like acidity or basicity in different molecules,” Biewer said. “So, the students rank molecules from most to least basic for example.”
The idea for the webapp was born when Stefan and Biewer found themselves accumulating a large number of ranking questions, which are a common way for students to show their understanding of organic chemistry concepts.
“Dr. Biewer actually wrote a book, but usually book publishers are usually looking for a way to make money, and then they want the students to be charged, which is something that we did not want to do,” Stefan said. “One of the most important things for us was that it was free, so we started to explore other ways of making the problems available. I started working with Dr. Daescu, and I am very grateful because he was the one who brought the project to the table on the computer science side, and luckily it was selected as a senior design project in 2020.”
The website currently has 120 problems covering topics from both OChem I and II. Sophomore neuroscience major Teja Devanaboyina took OChem I during the fall 2020 semester and used the website at the recommendation of her professor.
“It was a wonderful practice resource for me, especially for the first exam that we took,” said Devanaboyina. “It worked really well and was easy to use.”
The team said they are improving the tool based on feedback from students who took OChem I and II and used the webapp in fall 2020. Computer science seniors Zacharia Shoaib, Narayana Yenukonda, Raheel Ahmed, Umar Kazi and Saman Laleh are currently working on improving the app this semester.
“The website was primarily developed over the course of the fall 2020 semester. Sean Kennedy, who is a graduate student, worked on the original team and has been really helpful to us as we continue to develop the webapp. Our main goal this semester is to add more problems so that students can study better,” Shoaib said. “We are looking to add about 80 more problems this semester.”
Stefan and Biewer both said that the graduate and undergraduate students who worked on the website as a part of their senior design project were invaluable
MIHAELA STEFAN| Courtesy An interdisciplinary team of chemistry professors and computer science students created an OChem study aid.
to the success of the app. One of the most difficult aspects of the project was bridging the gap between chemistry and computer science.
“It was extremely helpful that one of the original students that worked on the project, Vishal Rajesh, had taken both computer science classes and organic chemistry classes which meant that he spoke both ‘languages’ so that the two departments could work together,” Stefan said. “Two of my graduate students, Justin Miller and Hanghang Wang, were also invaluable to me in order to make sure that all of the structures looked right.”
Stefan said that the website was a good aid to the virtual instruction format brought on by the pandemic.
“It was a lifesaving instruction aid for the fall of 2020, as I had to rely on a type of testing that was multiple choice that I usually don’t use,” Stefan said. “I used a lot of ranking-type problems on the quizzes. Students would play with the ranking app and they would train so when the time for the quiz or test came around, they did very well.”
May 3, 2021| The Mercury NEWS
Number of people receiving meningitis vaccination declines over past year
Recent survey data reports drop in meningitis immunization appointments due to lockdowns, fear of catching COVID-19
EMAAN BANGASH
Mercury Staff
Vaccinations for meningitis – a requirement for college students in the state of Texas – have decreased in the past year during COVID-19.
A study conducted by VaxCare found that among individuals aged 19-49 years old, there was a 60% drop in non-influenza vaccinations during COVID-19. Now, a recent study conducted through pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) across eight countries revealed that 50% of parents who had previously scheduled a meningitis vaccine appointment for their child delayed or canceled it. As a result, UTD – and other colleges, per state law – requires students to receive the MenACWY vaccine but not the meningitis B vaccine.
In an email intervieww with The Mercury, vaccine researcher and physician at GSK Len Friedland said that COVID-19 played a role in the delays and cancelations.
“The top reasons for delaying or cancelling meningitis vaccine appointments noted in the survey were stay-at-home regulations and country-wide lockdowns, concerns of catching COVID-19 in public places such as the doctor’s office, and the need to care for either themselves or a family member who had contracted COVID-19,” Friedland said. “Drops in immunization rates are concerning, and if less of a population is protected through vaccination, we could see a resurgence in vaccine-preventable diseases.”
Director of the Student Health Center Lea Aubrey said that the drop wasn’t surprising at all because in addition to health centers and hospitals limiting services to mitigate spreading COVID-19, the public is panicked about the pandemic and generally fearful of the unknown.
“You have some people that understand the precautions: they’re going to wear the mask and they think ‘if I go out, I’ll be okay,’” Aubrey said. “And then you have some people that have the thought ‘if I go into a medical facility, I may encounter someone that is positive or that has potentially been exposed. They could continue to potentially expose me.’”
The SHC did not see as many students coming in for vaccinations as normal because most of them went virtual. The center does provide a meningitis vaccination for admitted students, though Aubrey said most people receive it at 16 and no longer need to do so in college and as a result, most students ask if their documentation is valid enough.
The severity of meningitis lies in its symptoms: while it can often resemble the flu early on, complications survivors may face afterward include brain damage, hearing loss and amputations. About 20% of meningitis survivors experience these kinds of complications, and 10% of those afflicted with meningitis do not survive. There are
QUINN SHERER | MERCURY STAFF
five vaccine-preventable serogroups of meningitis (A, C, W, Y and B), Friedman said. But the meningitis B vaccine was only made available in 2014 and – according to the CDC – one out of five 17-year-olds in the US was vaccinated at least once for meningitis B.
Aubrey said the meningitis disease is crucial to focus on because of the nature of college living, including dorm life and shared close quarters leading to the increased likelihood of transmission.
“The vaccination definitely protects you from getting meningitis, but then you just think about how deadly it can be,” Aubrey said. “It impacts everybody differently, but I think you get to the point where you’re sharing your room with three or four other people, plus the friends to come visit, plus the shared community bathroom. You’re constantly in contact with other individuals. Knowing the risk of increased transmission of different diseases in that capacity, it is very necessary to have that vaccination in order to protect yourself from contracting the disease.”
According to the GSK survey, however, 77% of parents intended to reschedule their vaccination appointments, though 21% said they still wouldn’t in fear of catching COVID-19 in public spaces. Friedman said organizations such as the CDC are making efforts to catch people up on immunizations.
“Even before the pandemic, there was a need to increase vaccination rates for meningitis. 2019 data shows that while ~89% of 17-year-olds have received at least one dose of a MenACWY vaccine, only ~54% have received two doses, and only ~22% received even one dose of a MenB vaccine,” Friedman said. “Work to promote policy change at these schools and at the local, state and national level is ongoing, including by non-profit groups like the Meningitis B Action Project.”
Despite classes going online for many students this year, the university continues to require vaccination for meningitis, and students who haven’t submitted their vaccination documentation by May 14 will be withdrawn for the summer semester. Students interested in receiving a vaccine for meningitis from the SHC can make a virtual health appointment on the SHC website.
“The scary part about it is that there’s often no warnings, whether or not you have it, and (the symptoms) can progress very, very quickly,” Aubrey said. “We’re very fortunate that we’re able to continue offering the vaccine for those that have never had it. We’ll definitely keep making sure we share information in a capacity that’s understandable for our students. I’m just glad that we’re able to provide access to the vaccination.”
