The Mercury 6/11/18

June 11, 2018

facebook.com/theutdmercury | @utdmercury

'LEAGUE' TEAM ADVANCES TO NATIONALS Comets defeat regional rivals to qualify for national championships for the first time in team history

THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

UTD labs launch green initiative Efforts to focus on reducing waste, conserving energy

RIOT GAMES | COURTESY

Finance junior Karlin Oei (center) was one of five students who represented UTD at the annual League of Legends College Championships, held in Los Angeles June 7-10.

BHARGAV ARIMILLI Editor-in-Chief

UTD OFFICE OF RESEARCH | COURTESY

The Green Labs initiative was introduced to students at the Earth Fair on April 19.

NEIL BHAMOO Mercury Staff

A new on-campus initiative could make laboratories more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

The Office of Research Lab Safety introduced the Green Labs initiative on April 19 at the 2018 Earth Fair during UTD Earth Week. The initiative will bring sustainability to both teaching and research laboratories on campus including the Bioengineering Science Building through measures such as waste management and energy conservation. Lab safety director Shane Solis said UT Austin has a similar program and UTD could benefit from bringing it to campus.

“It helps us operate better and be better stewards of the environment,” Solis said.

“We want to be competitive — a university that looks to the future.”

The Green Labs initiative will be a combination of implementing new procedures in labs and educating faculty and students on environmentally friendly lab practices. Gary Cocke, UTD’s director for sustainability and energy conservation, joined the Office of Sustainability in February and saw the Green Labs initiative presentation at the fair, which led to a partnership between the two offices for the initiative.

“For now, we are targeting the teaching labs, and the first deliverable we are working towards is education and outreach such as website materials, posters and flyers,” Cocke said. “The topics I anticipate we will be dealing with are waste management, energy conservation and using the best practices related to green chemistry.”

Cocke added that students can get involved with the project by becoming eco-reps in the Office of Sustainability, where they can help gather research and educate their peers about ongoing green initiatives.

“I really see students as the driving force to make UTD sustainable,” Cocke said. “I really take pride in working with students to make our efforts reflect what

→ SEE GREEN LABS, PAGE 5

UTD’s “League of Legends” team — now recognized by the athletics department as a varsity sport — qualified for and competed at the annual national championships held in Los Angeles last week.

“We went into the championship not expecting much,” said Karlin Oei, a finance junior who was one of the five members of the team. “We knew who we were playing against and we knew how challenging it would be.”

“League of Legends,” a multiplayer online arena game developed by Riot

Games, combines steampunk and fantasy elements into a game where players have to destroy the opposing team’s “nexus,” a defensive base. Since its initial release in 2009, the game has garnered a large following, particularly on college campuses. William Nguyen, a mathematics senior who serves as the UTD team’s manager, started playing “League of Legends” five years ago.

Each match is discrete — something which Nguyen said adds to the thrill of the game.

“There’s always new people you’re playing against,” he said. “There’s always different situations you have to adapt to. It’s always a new experience.”

Riot Games organizes teams at college campuses nationwide and provides a platform for intercollegiate competition. The season begins during the spring semester and involves college teams competing against each other in regional groups. UTD competed against over 60 teams within the South region and went on to win the regional playoffs, automatically qualifying the team to advance to the national championships in Los Angeles, held from June 7 to June 10 at the NA LCS Arena. This year’s national competition featured a total of eight collegiate teams from across the United States and Canada. The Comets faced off against

Columbia College in the first quarterfinal round, but ultimately lost.

“We unfortunately didn’t have much preparation going into it because a lot of our players were on vacation,” Oei said. “We tried our hardest to get back into form for the championship, but it didn’t pan out.”

Oei said in spite of the loss, his team remains optimistic. For Oei, the fact that the team had qualified for the national championship changed his family’s attitudes towards “League of Legends.”

“For the majority of us, our parents didn’t support what we were doing.

→ SEE LEAGUE, PAGE 5

Professor helps patients regain voices Cancer patients suffering from loss of laryngeal function to benefit from adaptable hardware, machine learning EMAAN BANGASH News Editor

A UTD professor developed a portable speech processor allowing people who have suffered the loss of their larynx the ability to speak again.

Assistant professor of bioengineering Jun Wang developed a speech processor designed to read the movements of a person’s tongue and lips and register them into words. His research is primarily targeted towards patients who have undergone laryngectomies — the surgical removal of a larynx — due to cancer.

These patients typically have unintelligible or hoarse voices and use devices such as an electrolarynx or a voice prosthesis.

The devices sound vastly different from a human voice and often sound robotic.

Wang said he hopes to help improve the patients’ communication skills and speech quality and reduce social difficulty with his technology.

“When we speak, your larynx vibrates to generate the frequency, the source of the sound, then you move your tongue and lips to make the shape of the sound into speech,” Wang said. “Some patients can still communicate in life, but some don’t so it impacts their social life. They cannot talk to their friends and family members, but they’re still healthy, they still walk, the brain is normal and the body is normal.”

Wang developed the software of the device and is currently looking to create

MADELINE AMBROSE | MERCURY STAFF

Bioengineering professor Jun Wang (left) attaches biosensors to research assistant Beiming Cao to track the movement of his speech.

hardware that could be adaptable and easily worn like a Bluetooth earpiece. The device would be placed in the patient’s ear and would have a speaker and sensors to track tongue and lip movements in real time. He partnered with Georgia Tech’s college of engineering to develop

the hardware further and plans to patent the device in the future.

“Ideally, we’d like to have a device like a Bluetooth headphone that will have a sensor that can track the tongue movements in real time and can actually be embedded with a small computer chip with my soft-

ware, and it’ll also have a speaker,” Wang said. “When the speech is converted into sound, it’ll play on the speaker.”

The lab tested 25 people total, five of whom were laryngectomy patients from

→ SEE SPEECH, PAGE 5

2

THE MERCURY UTDMERCURY.COM Volume XXXVIII No. 25

NEWS

THE MERCURY | JUNE 11, 2018

UTDMERCURY.COM

UTDPD Blotter

Editor-in-Chief Bhargav Arimilli

editor@utdmercury.com (972) 883-2294

Managing Editor Cindy Folefack managingeditor @utdmercury.com (972) 883-2287

Copy Editor Diego Alvarez

copyeditor@utdmercury.com

Graphics Editor Matt Strack

graphics@utdmercury.com

Photo Editor Noah Whitehead

photo@utdmercury.com

News Editor Emaan Bangash

news@utdmercury.com

Sports Editor William Legrone

sports@utdmercury.com

Life & Arts Editor Ayoung Jo life@utdmercury.com

Web Editor Bharat Arimilli

web@utdmercury.com

Contributors Carolina Alvarez Madeline Ambrose Sarah Besserer Neil Bhamoo Travis Dickerson Christi Lazutkin Sam Lopez Chiamaka Mgboji Izzy Morano Bianca Del Rio Ian Seamans Michael Stout

C

June 4 • An unaffiliated female’s money was stolen from her wallet at Founder’s at 10:57 a.m.

A

June 6 •An unaffiliated male was arrested for driving while intoxicated and unlawful carrying of a licensed gun on Waterview Parkway at 3:36 a.m.

B

June 6 • A leaf blower was stolen from a Nova Landscaping Group vehicle at 12:36 p.m.

June 7 •An unknown person used their vehicle to evade an officer who attempted to pull them over on West Campbell Road at 12:31 a.m.

June 7 •An unaffiliated female’s wallet was stolen from her purse at the Activity Center at 5:24 p.m.

B

C

D

A

C

E

E

D A LEGEND VEHICULAR INCIDENT

THEFT

DRUGS & ALCOHOL OTHER MAP: UTD | COURTESY

Media Adviser Chad Thomas

chadthomas@utdallas.edu (972) 883-2286

Mailing Address 800 West Campbell Road, SU 24 Richardson, TX 75080-0688 Newsroom Student Union, Student Media Suite SU 1.601

The Mercury is published on Mondays, at two-week intervals during the long term of The University of Texas at Dallas, except holidays and exam periods, and once every four weeks during the summer term.

Advertising is accepted by The Mercury on the basis that there is no discrimination by the advertiser in the offering of goods or services to any person, on any basis prohibited by applicable law.

The publication of advertising in The Mercury does not constitute an endorsement of products or services by the newspaper, or the UTD administration.

Opinions expressed in The Mercury are those of the editor, the editorial board or the writer of the article. They are not necessarily the view of the UTD administration, the Board of Regents or the Student Media Operating Board.

The Mercury’s editors retain the right to refuse or edit any submission based on libel, malice, spelling, grammar and style, and violations of Section 54.23 (f ) (1-6) of UTD policy.

Copyright © 2017, The University of Texas at Dallas. All articles, photographs and graphic assets, whether in print or online, may not be reproduced or republished in part or in whole without express written permission.

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

D

LIFE&ARTS

JUNE 11, 2018 | THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

3

EM B RAC I NG ODDIT IES T H R O U GH ART Students showcase selection of works as commentary on social media, public obsession with technology in modern-day society EMAAN BANGASH News Editor

As part of his last art show of the semester at UTD, Master of Fine Arts candidate Clayton Harper created the piece “NextGen10” as a criticism of society’s idea of the future. His work incorporated stock videos of smiling people testing VR sets juxtaposed with images of litter in the ocean, all displayed on large TV screens resting on full trash bags.

“I found these beautiful, if taken out of context, videos of trash in the ocean, but there’s something really sinister and sad about those images so I liked pairing those two images together,” Harper said. “So now they’re immersed in this environment that’s much more real and tangible of the future and visually stunning but also hinting at something really disgusting and sad. I liked the idea of a virtual reality that kind of immerses people in that reality.”

Harper was one of six Masters of Fine Arts candidates who displayed their work in an art exhibit in the SP/N gallery this semester. The exhibit, titled “Oddities MFA 2018,” was on display May 18-June 9 and featured a selection of the six artists’ creations. The works comprised various forms of digital art, sculpture, videography, audio, oil and acrylic paint and fragments of electronics. Arts and humanities professor John Pomara said the show was the first time the artists did an installation of art on their own and could choose what art to display and how.

“They’re all oddly unique but they fit together as a group really well,” Pomara said. “We spent two days in the space talking and moving around, talking about how they would install their work and make it so it would feel comfortable going from one area to the next.”

While differing in media and installation, the works share a common goal of serving as social commentaries on feminism, internet privacy and social media addiction.

Heather Valcik, one of the six artists featured in the exhibit, said their similar creative outlooks helped the project come to fruition.

“Luckily, we were all pretty like-minded so we got to do 80 percent of it in the dark because most artists want light,” Valcik said. “It was cool that everyone was pretty similar in aesthetic.”

Valcik’s pieces — including “Wiped,” “#hashtag” and “Virtually Infatuated” — employ both video and audio footage, as well as sculpture-like elements such as makeup wipes and dolls. To create “Virtually Infatuated,” Valcik made an online

PHOTOS BY: MICHAEL STOUT | MERCURY STAFF

Carion Jackson’s “PixeLife” (top), along with Clayton Harper’s “NextGen10” (bottom left) and Denise Lion’s “The Mechanism Effect” were some of the works featured at the Oddities MFA 2018 exhibit on display May 18-June 9.

dating profile and posted photos of herself. She incorporated the audio messages that men sent her into the exhibition, allowing the viewer to listen. She said she hopes her pieces will start a conversation about technology and how people choose what they post.

Carion Jackson, another artist, employed the concept of social media and internet obsession in several of her digital prints. Each of her pieces made use of vibrant color and bold, dark lines, except for “Presence,” which was monochromatic and combined both video and digital print.

“Some of my pieces were created before others, but all of them have a common theme of commentary on society and social media, and we’re not necessarily present in things at times,” Jackson said. “We live through these social media devices as opposed to kind of living life and talking to other people and experiencing life as it is.”

One of her pieces, “PixeLife,” incorporated paint swatches to emulate pixels in photos of a palm tree. The piece was inspired by a trip to Disneyland, where she constantly saw parents have their children take photos of them for their social media

accounts rather than enjoying their time with their kids.

“We live through these pixels instead of living our life, and it really disturbed me. I mean, you’re sitting there with your husband and the kid wasn’t in any of the pictures—the kid was basically their photographer,” Jackson said.

John Pomara said art has become less of what is called “traditional art,” as traditional art no longer connects to the current generation in the context of their current experiences in the world. Instead, artists are reacting to changes in society and making

statements about them in pieces such as the ones in the Oddities exhibit.

“Our world is becoming more and more urban, and people live on the internet and they’re experiencing that vernacular language. These are young artists reacting to that and what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing,” Pomara said. “Heather went to those dating sites and her friends went on those dating sites and she wanted to investigate that because it’s a daily reality for a lot of her friends. That’s pretty traditional, that’s the new tradition. So, maybe what we call traditional is changing.”

Professor raises awareness of bacterial disease in South Instructor uses social media to increase knowledge, visibility of Lyme disease after personal experience CINDY FOLEFACK Managing Editor

After years of misdiagnoses from various health professionals, one UTD professor set out to raise awareness for her daughters’ disease and ensure no one would have to share their experiences.

Sarah Maxwell, an associate professor of economic and political policy, launched the Texans & Ticks Facebook campaign in December 2017 after her daughters spent two years with undiagnosed Lyme disease, an infection caused by tick bites. Left untreated, the disease can spread to other parts of the body, causing complications such as arthritis and nervous system problems. Maxwell said her daughters, previously competitive athletes, became bedridden for months on end and required homebound instruction for school as a result of the disease.

“We started the campaign because they were sick for so long, and our experience is that primary care doctors in Texas are skeptical that Lyme exists in Texas, even with a tick bite,” Maxwell said. “We started the campaign to reach out and let people know that it does exist in Texas and it can cause severe illness. My younger daughter is still recovering.”

Maxwell runs the campaign on Facebook alongside her younger daughter, Claire. According to Maxwell, their Facebook page re-

ceives 30,000 unique visitors every month.

The page is used to disseminate information from official sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since launching the social media campaign, Maxwell said she’s heard stories from others who had or may currently have undiagnosed Lyme disease.

“Every month I receive multiple calls, emails, private messages asking for help, asking for doctors,” Maxwell said.

While Maxwell can’t provide medical help, she does refer those asking for advice to the Texas Lyme Disease Association.

Maxwell teamed up with Dohyeong Kim, an associate professor of public policy and political economy, for the research component of the initiative. Maxwell and Kim are tracking potential cases of Lyme disease in the South, where she said doctors are reluctant to believe Lyme is common.

Maxwell said Lyme’s non-specific symptoms make it harder to track through Google search trends.

“What we’re doing is we’re actually tracking people’s searches for unconventional labs like blood tests, because the tests are so inconclusive, you can’t count on them,” Maxwell said. “Patients who have probably been tested for Lyme, maybe didn’t come up CDC-positive because the CDC criteria are so strict, and they start searching for these other lab tests in desperation that are a little more sensitive.”

UTD NEWS CENTER | COURTESY

Sarah Maxwell runs the Texans and Ticks Facebook campaign with her younger daughter Claire to raise awareness for Lyme disease. Maxwell started the project in December 2017 after both her daughters contracted the disease.

Funding for the project comes from the Lyme Disease Association, a nonprofit that advocates for greater acceptance of the disease. Kim said the Facebook page offers a survey to help him combine the Google search data with the thought process behind the searches.

“To be able to better understand how they get the information, why they got the information and what are the experiences

people have before they seek out information or care, we decided to create a survey and collect more detailed data,” Kim said.

“Once we get the results from that survey, I think we’ll be able to combine the information from Google search and the survey to understand a full picture of what’s going on and probably write an interesting paper.”

The costs of medical care have increased the family’s insurance rates and they have

to cover the costs of homebound schooling, time taken off work and lasting complications of Lyme disease. Maxwell said these hurdles could have been avoided with an earlier diagnosis.

“Early treatment and early awareness are our key goals,” Maxwell said. “I think my daughter said it best, ‘I don’t want other kids to lose their childhood over a tick bite.’”

SPORTS Varsity esports coming to UTD 74

JUNE 11, 2018 | THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

Director of Intercollegiate Athletics confirms new tech-based team will be ready for upcoming 2018-2019 competition season WILLIAM LEGRONE Sports Editor

UTD Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Bill Petitt announced the addition of esports as the university’s 14th varsity sport. The newest addition to the Comets is the first since the inclusion of volleyball in 2004 nearly 14 years ago and will be the university’s first sponsored coed team.

The initial focus of the sport will be competing in Riot Games’ “League of Legends” and Blizzard Entertainment’s “Overwatch.”

The program is expected to launch before the start of the 2018-2019 school year. “(Esports) is the big craze right now,” Petitt said. “We had talked about it over a year ago, and when we brought it up again in late January with some students, you could tell the buzz was there. We thought it was a perfect fit for our campus.”

When deciding on which games to debut with the sport, Pettit and Esports Coordinator Rob Bogardus considered UTD’s existing connections with each game, advice from people in the industry and the current focus of the DFW esports community.

“There’s a current ‘League of Legends’ team that represents UT Dallas informally that’s very good,” Petitt said. “That helped ease the decision to have ‘League of Legends’ when you already have a top-notch team on campus, and none of them are seniors.

I think we’re going to jump into it and be pretty good right away.”

The decision to select “Overwatch” as the second focus of the program was influenced by the university’s recent collaboration with The Dallas Fuel, a professional “Overwatch” team. On May 16, UTD hosted a watch party for the team and invited Dallas Fuel CEO Michael Rufail and Dallas Fuel Vice President of Content Justin Rojas to deliver

SARAH BESSERER | MERCURY STAFF

The varsity Esports team is the first sport added to the athletics department since 2004. It will also be the first sponsored coed sport.

a keynote at its Innovation and Technology Summit. While there is no official partnership between the UTD team and The Dallas Fuel, Petitt said he is open to further collaborations with the team.

The most immediate concern for the athletics department is finding a head coach to take over the program, a decision the department intends to finalize before the end of July. Without a head coach to consult, large elements of putting the esports teams together, such as team kits and sponsorships, have largely been left on hold until

later this summer.

To accommodate training, a plan to build a 1000-square-foot “esports arena” has already been proposed. If the current plan is approved, the Student Union’s Gemini and Pegasus rooms will be renovated to create a larger area with 24 PC gaming centers and an office for the head coach.

Though there are currently no plans to add other esports, Petitt and Bogardus are not opposed to eventually adding more games. Early talks about choosing Psyonix’s “Rocket League” and Blizzard’s “Hearth-

stone” indicate they could be potential candidates in the future. Bogardus said the pursuits of the local esports scene heavily influences whether or not a game gets added to the roster.

“The Texas schools kind of get together and say ‘Hey, we’re looking at adding this game or that game,’ and they start regionally at first,” Bogardus said. “We found this out when we were talking to the other schools that have (esports).”

Future plans for the esports program include hosting streams on the popular live-

streaming video platform Twitch and offering students official merchandise such as themed peripherals and clothing.

“The biggest thing is that we think it’s just a great fit for the entire student body,” Petitt said. “I’ve been here 10 years and I don’t think there’s been an activity added that’s had as much of a buzz, not just from the students, but from the staff and especially the people in IT. It will be a great chance for people, that normally don’t, to get involved on campus.”

Men’s basketball travels to Italy

Team plays three games against European clubs

UTD MEN’S BASKETBALL | COURTESY

UTD BASEBALL | COURTESY

The men’s basketball team stands in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

The baseball team poses after becoming the 2018 ASC champions for the first time in UTD history. The team’s performance led to a final record of 32-17 for the season.

TRAVIS DICKERSON Mercury Staff

The men’s basketball team returned from an international trip to Italy, where it secured two victories in the process.

During the two-week trip, the team visited Rome, Florence and Venice. In Rome and Florence, the team played against Cantini Lorano and Santa Maria, two experienced European club teams, winning both games. The trip resulted from the hard work done by Director of Intercollegiate Athletics William Petitt and John Barden, a clinical professor at the School of Management, who pitched for the team’s trip to Italy.

“It was my eighteenth season here and it was something I always wanted to do,” said Terry Butterfield, the head coach of the men’s basketball team. “It seems surreal to do something like that, then next thing you know you’re on a plane bound for Italy.”

The NCAA allows international trips in every division every four years, allowing teams to experience the international ruleset. The international rules change the sport for the team in almost every way, including the type of ball that is used.

Notable changes include how physically the game was played, as well as the relaxed attitudes the referees had towards fouls.

“It’s very physical, you can be driven to the ground with no call,” Butterfield said.

“For the most part they managed to not get frustrated, and things we would get called on over here didn’t over there, so we powered through it.”

The team first faced off against Santa Maria in Rome, in which the team managed an early lead of 12 by halftime de-

spite the use of international rules. Every player on the team scored once, and seven finished with nine or more points.

The high points came from sophomore forward Michael Forester and junior guard Xavier Ferrell, who both had scoring averages above 2.0 in this season, managing to score 12 points each. The team managed to knock the lead up to 23 mid-way through the third quarter, winning 84-57 in their Italian debut.

“It was fun to get acclimated to the European way of things, especially since it gave us a win,” Ferrell said. “It’s interesting playing against a team that wasn’t even speaking the same language.”

The team started off slow in their final game against Cantini Lorano in Florence. Notable performances include junior guard Curtis Allen who had a game-high of 16 points after scoring four from downtown. Other players, including Ferrell, junior forward Hans Burwitz and junior guard Dimitrius Underwood, who had a scoring average of 19.0 this season, also managed to score in the double digits. The team came back in the fourth quarter after being down by seven to win 67-56. “(I) think the team came in a little sluggish from the trip,” Allen said.

“Physically they were rough games. At one point one of our guys got pushed straight down to the floor.”

The team came back to the United States on May 21 and will not meet again until the season starts in the fall.

“It’s an incredible cultural and bonding experience,” said Jared Fleming, the team’s assistant coach. “For most of these guys, it’s a once in a lifetime.”

Baseball season in review

Consistent, strong performance results in first ASC Tournament victory IAN SEAMANS Mercury Staff

The Comets baseball team won the American Southwest Conference for the first time in the program’s history, making it to the Division III Regional Tournament and ending their year with a 3217 record.

While the Comets have gone to the ASC tournament playoffs 15 out of their 17 years and into the finals six times, this season marks their first victory. As a result of their performance, several players garnered regional and national awards, but many of those players are also graduating seniors.

“This year’s team was the team that lost in the conference tournament the year before and most of those guys were back, so they were hungry and they wanted a chance to go out and win it,” the head coach Shane Shewmake said.

The Comets’ season started out with four straight losses, but the team rallied with a long winning streak. The rest of the season followed that formula, with the Comets winning several games in a row, losing a couple, and then getting back to their winning streak. Their consistent wins led them to the championship tournament, where they won every game.

This was the Comet’s second time breaking out of the ASC, having pre-

viously been chosen as a wildcard, but their sophomore run was cut short after tying at the Spokane tournament and losing two out of three games to Texas Lutheran University. “(Texas Lutheran University) ended up winning our regional and actually playing for the national championship so we were right there close and you know if we got a couple breaks here and there we could’ve ended up winning that tournament,” Shewmake said. “We competed really well and I was really proud of them. They never quit and played it all the way through to the end.”

This year, five players received All-Region honors from the American Baseball Coaches Association. The All-Region honors such as the All-American distinction create a hypothetical all-star team that includes the season’s best players.

Senior first baseman Barry Casey received both an All-Region honor as well as his second All-American honor, having received the first in 2017. He ended the season with a .435 RBI and scored 48 runs over the year’s 49 games.

The majority of the team’s starters will be departing this summer as 16 players are graduating seniors, including three of the five honors winners. The Comets’ ability to replace this seasoned team will determine their fate in 2019. Shewmake said new players and current juniors and sophomores will step into the vacancies.

“Obviously you’re recruiting every year, and you have some guys who were on the roster that were playing behind those seniors that are going to get their opportunity to step up and make a difference next year,” Shewmake said. “Our goal as a coaching staff is always to keep playing at a high level so our hope is that we don’t miss a beat, and we’re competing for a championship again next year.”

Next year, the team may face betterfunded and higher-skilled teams if UTD moves into NCAA Division II. The university announced its intent in March to consider moving to Division II, but has not yet made a decision. A division change would not only mean competing against higher rated teams with existing sports scholarships, but would also ban all UTD teams from championship tournaments during a three-year probationary period.

Shewmake said that although he’s pleased with the championship win, he finds it most rewarding to see the players’ hard work pay off.

“We’ve had some good teams along the way that have fell just one game short in the past, we’ve been close, and we’ve had some really good teams, and this team was able to find a way to win that last one and get the championship,” he said. “Maintaining all of (their schoolwork) and to have them have the success…the rewarding part is seeing all the hard work pay off for those guys.”

UTDMERCURY.COM → GREEN LABS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

they want sustainability at UTD to be.”

Solis said the program is still in the early stages. So far, the Department of Research Safety and the Department of Sustainability have had preliminary meetings to create a timeline of operation for the program.

“We’re hoping, at the very least, to have some information available for the fall semester,” Solis said. “I hope that with the fall semester we can at least have something about what the program entails and how we’d like for the UTD campus to participate, primarily with the students.”

Cocke said while the initiative

→ SPEECH

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

UT Southwestern. Each patient records between 100 and 1000 phrases as the device senses the motions simultaneously. To collect the data of the tongue and lip movements, two sensors are glued to the interior of the patient’s mouth, and an electromagnetic field generator is placed next to the patient’s head. When the patient speaks, the device records the motions to be translated into speech in post-processing. The algorithm makes use of machine learning to map movements to different phrases.

Research assistant Beiming Cao joined Wang’s project in January 2016 and helped develop the algorithm for the speech processor.

Cao, a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering,

NEWS

aims to improve sustainability, learning and research in the labs are the team’s priorities. He added that the difficulty is with implementing measures that help sustainability without getting the way of teaching assistants and professors who teach the labs.

“What we need to do is make sure that the solutions we’re coming up with make sense to the people that are working in those settings, and make sure that we’re never sacrificing the learning or the research for sustainability,” Cocke said. “We need to complement what they’re doing, not hinder it.”

Solis said the Green Labs initiative will not only make UTD more sustainable, it will also make the university more competitive and attractive for incoming stu-

dents. Cocke added that since UTD is a young university and constantly expanding by building news labs, the administration can surpass other schools by making their buildings environmentally friendly from the beginning rather than revamping existing structures.

“I think we’re setting ourselves up to be a leader in sustainability in the state of Texas. We are a young school, we are an innovative school, we have a student body that clearly is engaged with sustainability,” Cocke said. “I think we have the opportunity to really weave it into the culture of what we’re doing here, and as a young school, we have the benefit of doing things right the first time through.”

said the team has had to collect a substantial amount of data from healthy patients to teach the machine to map tongue and lip movements accurately.

“Our main technology, which is not very popular, is the deep learning technology which enables the software to learn from the examples like the articulation, and they will map each voice,” Cao said.

“In order to let the model learn, we need a large amount of data.

That’s why we’re doing so much (data collection) from healthy people, laryngectomy patients and ALS patients as well.”

In addition to recording English phrases, Wang said his team is looking into mapping other languages. The lab has tested on patients who speak Korean, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

UTD alumnus Kristin Teplanski,

a doctoral candidate in communication sciences and disorders, joined the lab in August 2016 and has helped with data collection in the lab. She said her clinical background has given her first-hand experience of the patients’ struggles with communication.

“The patients, they’re very excited about it,” Teplanski said. “I went to a laryngectomy conference and they were all very interested in the research and they didn’t think this would ever be possible.”

Wang said that patients typically prefer to use one device only and not use other methods of communication, such as sign language or typing.

“I think it’s going to dramatically change their lives,” Teplanski said “We’re going to give them a voice.

Prior to this they had no idea that this was even a possibility.”

→ LEAGUE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

They didn’t realize how big it was and how passionate we were about it,” he said. “We basically changed all of our parents’ minds.

They went from telling us to go to sleep or study to, ‘Hey, you should play more. You can do something with this.’”

The team’s qualification for the national championships came after the recent announcement from the UTD athletics department that esports would be recognized as the university’s 14th varsity sport.

Michael Sherman, an alumnus who graduated in 2014 with a degree in computer science, organized the first League of Legends

THE MERCURY | JUNE 11, 2018 team at UTD during his freshman year in 2011. He said watching the team’s progression from an informal gathering of people to a universityrecognized sport at a national competition felt surreal. Sherman now works for Riot Games as its college esports manager.

“It’s a weird dream come true,” he said. “In 2012, we tried having meetings with the school to get them to adopt esports into the (athletics) department. There was definitely a bunch of people who didn’t take us seriously at the time.”

The athletics department is in the process of hiring a coach for the League of Legends team under the provisions of the new varsity esports initiative. Oei said the inclusion will benefit the team at future competitions,

5

providing more structured practice time and guidance.

“When we were out on the stage, two of our players were really feeling the pressure. We didn’t have (a coach) to calm us down,” he said. “I think that’s something that the coach is really going to have to be able to do.”

The team will continue to practice during the summer and fall semesters in preparation for next year’s competition season. Oei said despite their loss, he and his team members are ready to compete again.

“After the game, we watched the other quarterfinals in the audience,” he said. “It gave us a thirst for next year — a renewed drive to perform a lot better and make a statement.”

6 7

JUNE 11, 2018 | THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

WEEKLY COMIC

HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND

COMICS

BIANCA DEL RIO | MERCURY STAFF

THAT'S COLD

IZZY MORANO | MERCURY STAFF

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ON YOUR BURGER?

CHIAMAKA MGBOJI | MERCURY STAFF

THE BEST PETS

SARAH BESSERER | MERCURY STAFF

CAROLINA ALVAREZ | MERCURY STAFF

MATT STRACK | GRAPHICS EDITOR

OPINION

7

JUNE 11, 2018 | THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

Sensationalism of child actors causes long-term damage Modern-day internet culture causes public to feed into machine of unnecessary public scrutiny, mass media exploitation EMAAN BANGASH COMMENTARY

Child actors and influencers are subject to public scrutiny as a result of media sensationalism and social media networks. While seeing child actors all over news articles and videos is nothing new, our increased attention on them is giving rise to a new problematic phenomenon – children who rise to fame through social media.

It has become exceedingly easy to become famous on social media because of how available it is. Whether it’s through a hilarious set of six-second “punny” videos, aesthetic-looking shots of beautiful people, endless memes or funny video blogs, gaining fame is now so easy even a child can do it. However, because of the internet’s tendency to sensationalize almost everything, some people have found a way to exploit these children’s newfound fame.

The former Instagram star Lil Tay — only 9 years old — was known for using expletives on camera such as the n-word and bragging about her expensive mansions and luxurious cars that she didn’t actually own. Her mother, Angela Tian, a suburban real estate agent, lost her job after her boss’s car was featured in one of Lil Tay’s clips along with five of the homes she was selling. INSIDER confirmed that both her mother and brother pushed Lil Tay to act the way she did in the videos, though many internet users thought she was performing of her own will.

Then, on June 4, several of her social media accounts — including Instagram — were wiped clean.

It’s easy to think that Lil Tay brought this on herself. However, in giving these kids so much attention, we imply that being explicit is permissible to parents such as Angela Tian, who thought her daughter was doing a good job because of all the views she garnered. Because things go viral overnight and instant fame is now more accessible than ever, people are starting to think it’s okay to film and post “cute” videos of their children or siblings. While it seems relatively harmless at first glance, we promote the mentality that children can do or say anything on camera to get rich and famous, regardless of any talent or skills.

These famous Instagram stars may not even own half the things they’re bragging about in their videos, but because we feed into their online personas, these stars actually do end up owning expensive clothes, homes and cars.

Danielle Bregoli, commonly known as her Instagram username “Bhad Bhabie,” gained infamy because of her controversial phrase “cash me outside, how bow dah” and her offensive behavior on television as featured on the talk show “Dr. Phil.” The public seemed to be entertained by the character she portrayed, and she quickly became a popular rapper with songs receiving millions of views. According to TMZ, Bregoli is even looking into acquiring her own reality TV show. However, it’s important to remember that Bregoli’s career advanced because of the attention she received for being aggressively offensive as a 13-year-old. This is not how we should run the entertainment industry.

It’s all part of a cycle. Now that Lil Tay has disappeared from the public eye, there’s only so little time before the next “Lil Tay” goes viral. Ironi-

SAM LOPEZ | MERCURY STAFF

cally, it is as if she and other influencers like her have become role models for Generation Z. Sensationalizing the online behavior of child stars and the incredibly tactless things they can do to get attention, fame and money is part of an increasingly dangerous media culture we’re promoting. We’re

rewarding offensive behavior with the attention they crave, and although we love to hate these kids, we continue to encourage their antics. We constantly reward these kids with views, likes and shares to the point where it seems viable to perform outlandishly and obnoxiously on social media as a career.

What’s the next thing that will go viral?

How far will this generation go to get those views, and later, wealth and fame?

The sooner we become aware of our influence and constant attention on these rising social media stars, the sooner we can end this dangerous exploitation of children in the future.

Comets and Craters Instructors receive honors Five UTD faculty members accepted the President's Teaching Excellence Award for their work mentoring and teaching students in a ceremony at the Center for Teaching and Learning in late May.

EV charger broken An electric vehicle charger in the Activity Center parking lot stopped working in early April, leaving one functioning charger in the area. The charger remains broken with an "Out of Order" sign placed over it.

Chess team members win titles Two members of the UTD chess team placed in the top two spots at the Texas State Chess Championship on May 28.

CHRISTI LAZUTKIN | MERCURY STAFF

COMET COMMENTS

What do you think of esports becoming an official UTD sport?

HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY? Students interested in writing opinions can email editor@utdmercury.com.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

“I’m not much into gaming and video games, but I think it’s more important to play outdoor games than video games. They are good for the relaxation of the brain, but if it is too much, I don’t think it’s a good thing to do. ”

“I think as long as people are watching it, it’s validated. It may not be an athletic sport, but as long as it’s getting views and making money, then society is going to value it. So, I think it deserves the recognition.”

“It’s not a real sport because sports are physical, and it’s not.”

Ashvini Ray Biological Sciences Ph.D. Candidate

Ryan Daneshjou Healthcare Studies Senior

Patience Ehiogu Biochemistry Junior

Letters must be 250 words or less. Students should include their full name, major and year. Faculty, staff and administrators should include their full name and title.

Email letters to editor@utdmercury. com. Although electronic copies are preferred, a hard copy can be dropped off at the reception desk of the Student Media suite (SU 1.601). Please include a headshot.

Authors may only have one letter printed per edition of The Mercury.

OP-EDS

Apart from your name and photo, personal info will not be published.

We reserve the right to reject submissions, and we cannot be responsible for their return. We reserve the right to edit for clarity, brevity, good taste, accuracy and to prevent libel.

8

THE MERCURY | JUNE 11, 2018

ADVERTISEMENT

UTDMERCURY.COM

YOU CAN CHOOSE CHOOSE

NOW LEASING

1, 2, 3 & 4-bedroom apartment homes.

RATES STARTING AS LOW AS $548!

LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE Enjoy prime retail, choice dining, and exciting entertainment right outside your door.

APPLY TODAY!

LiveAtNorthside.com / 972.800.5891