The Mercury 7/30/18

July 30, 2018

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Councilman under fire “I want to assure the citizens of Plano I am not xenophobic. I am not a bigot. I am not a racist.”

- Tom Harrison, Plano City Council

THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM

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Supreme Court protest UTD students protested President Trump’s supreme court nominee at a rally in Dallas on July 21.

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Opinion: Summer graduation UTD is doing a disservice to itself and summer graduates by not having a permanent and official graduation ceremony in place.

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UNIVERSITY REACHES FUNDING MILESTONE UTD completes nine-year initative to unlock additional state support for research efforts

MADELINE AMBROSE | MERCURY STAFF

Apogee, the new internet service provider in University Housing, requires users to register devices for internet access.

Housing switches internet provider CometNet, TemocNet phased out in favor of more reliable service DIEGO ALVAREZ Copy Editor

For the third time in two years, campus housing has changed internet providers.

The most recent transition, from UTD-sponsored internet – CometNet and TemocNet – to Apogee, began in May and ended June 15. Director of Housing Operations Kevin Kwiatkowski

MADELINE AMBROSE | MERCURY STAFF

The university’s qualification for the National Research University Fund is expected to expand the scope of existing research projects.

BHARGAV ARIMILLI Editor-in-Chief

U

TD recently reached what administration members say is a major step toward becoming a premier research university.

The university announced on Wednesday that it had qualified for funding from the National Research University Fund, concluding a nine-

year initiative to receive additional support from the state. UTD’s share of NRUF funding is valued at $7.5 million for the 2018 fiscal year.

To qualify, UTD had to meet criteria established by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for two consecutive years, including spending $45 million on restricted research, having at least a $400 million endowment, having a “high-achieving”

freshman class, hosting “high-quality” faculty and holding membership in a national honors organization.

Joseph Pancrazio, appointed vice president for research in June, said UTD’s qualification for the funding was a testament to the university’s growth over the past decade.

“It certainly demonstrates that we’ve been successful and that we have a tremendous foundation from

which we can continue to advance,” Pancrazio said.

Executive Vice President Hobson Wildenthal was among UTD administrators who led the university’s campaign toward NRUF funding since NRUF’s establishment in 2009.

Signed into law by the 81st Texas Legislature, House Bill 51 outlined

→ SEE FUNDING, PAGE 8

→ SEE INTERNET, PAGE 8

On-campus Papa John’s faces possible removal

Racist comments by chain’s former CEO prompts Dining Services to consider closure CINDY FOLEFACK Managing Editor

The Papa John’s Pizza location in Dining Hall West is facing removal after a report emerged alleging the company’s former CEO used a racial expletive during a conference call.

The chain’s founder, John Schnatter, was removed as chairman of the board, and his image was taken off of advertisements on July 11 following the publication of a Forbes article stating he used the n-word during a conference call in May. The company took steps to remove Schnatter after he admitted to using the racial slur while on a call with marketing agency Laundry Service. Director of Food and Retail Services Carrie ChutesCharley released a joint statement with resident district manager for Chartwells Higher Education Steven Goodwin concerning the Papa John’s location in Dining Hall West.

“UT Dallas Auxiliary Services and our food service partner, Chartwells Higher

Education, are exploring all options for removal of the Papa John’s franchise from campus in light of the highly offensive behavior,” Chutes-Charley and Goodwin said in the statement.

Chartwells representatives met with Auxiliary Services within a week of the Forbes article’s publication to discuss next steps in the wake of Schnatter’s removal. Chartwells is the food provider for the UTD campus and works with Auxiliary Services to provide dining options for students.

Chutes-Charley said while she hasn’t received any complaints from students, she encourages students to attend the Food Service Advisory meeting on Sept. 4 to share their opinions on whether or not the franchise should be removed as well as possible options to replace it. Goodwin added that the future of the on-campus location depends largely on students.

“Our program is very customizable, we really want to go after what students truly want and desire, so we don’t want

to make a knee-jerk reaction removing Papa John’s, and some of our students still want that brand, or replace it with something else and (students) are looking for something totally different,” Goodwin said. “I think there has to be a process like surveying students and stuff like that that we have to go through in deciding what our next steps look like.”

Papa John’s is Chartwells’ top brand among college campuses, with over 400 locations nationwide. Goodwin said while UTD is considering ending its partnership with the chain, each institution is given the choice to keep or replace its on-campus franchises, though Chartwells itself is legally obliged to continue its contract with Papa John’s. Goodwin declined to comment on his personal opinion pertaining to Schnatter’s comments.

“We’re still in the process of exploring whether we’ll continue the relationship with them or not,” Goodwin said. “At this

→ SEE PAPA JOHN’S, PAGE 8

CHRISTINA JIA | MERCURY STAFF

Grade distributions now accessible online UT Austin student expands existing platform at other Texas universities to include UTD BHARGAV ARIMILLI Editor-in-Chief

CAROLINA ALVAREZ | OUTREACH EDITOR

UTD students now have easier access to grade distributions for preceding semesters.

The website, UTDGrades.com, allows users to search for grade data by course number or professor. Jeffrey Wang, a business administration freshman at UT Austin from McKinney, launched the service for the UTD community on July 6. The website was modeled after a similar platform created in June for students at the University of North Texas. He said existing instructor review websites such as RateMyProfessor and ProfPicker, which also provide limited grade data for a handful of universities, offered outdated or expensive information.

“I never had any indisputable quantitative data behind the difficulty of

the classes I was going to be picking,” Wang said. “And because the data was so outdated, I just felt like something had to be done.”

The Texas Public Information Act of 1973 requires governmental bodies, including public universities, to respond to public information requests within ten business days. Wang said though he was able to get a quick response from UNT’s registrar’s office, he was surprised by the high cost of obtaining grade data.

“I originally requested the data in October of last year for the 20162017 school year,” he said. “They replied to me with a figure of $69.16.

I couldn’t pay for that all by myself.”

Wang said he then decided to close

→ SEE GRADES, PAGE 8

July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

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THE MERCURY UTDMERCURY.COM Volume XXXVIII No. 27

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Editor-in-Chief Bhargav Arimilli

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July 10 • An unaffiliated male reported his cell phone stolen from the basketball courts

by Lot J at 9 p.m.

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July 11 • A UTD student was arrested for drug possession at 11:30 p.m. at University Village Phase 8.

B

July 13 • Two UTD students reported a cell phone and wallet stolen from the volleyball fields near Lot J at 10:18 p.m.

July 16 • A UTD staff member reported damage to her bicycle during an incident in which another individual attempted to steal it from a bike rack at Green Hall at 2:59 p.m.

B

D

C

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Contributors Madeline Ambrose Sarah Besserer Bianca Del Rio Ambarina Hasta Christina Jia Samantha Lopez Chiamaka Mgboji Ian Seamans Michael Stout Sarah Streety Yang Xi

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July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

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NEWS

MICHAEL STOUT | MERCURY STAFF

Plano City Council voted 7 to 1 to censure Tom Harrison, a council member criticized for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, who is also up for recall in the upcoming Nov. 6 election. More than 4,400 signatures were collected on a recall petition for Harrison, which he is now challenging in court.

Plano councilman sues city over recall

Petition for recall election raises over 4,000 signatures in response to city council member’s social media posts calling for ban on Islam IAN SEAMANS Staff Writer

A Plano City Council member is suing the city and city secretary to stop a recall election to end his term early in November due to an Islamophobic Facebook post he shared in February.

Tom Harrison filed suit against the city on June 19 in the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas County, arguing that the city secretary, Lisa Henderson, violated the city charter by basing the number of signatures needed for a recall election off of Harrison’s election year, 2015, instead of the last election. The issue comes from ambiguity in the charter about whether the number of petition signatures required to trigger a recall election is based off the number of voters in the previous election or the election that

put the official in office. Harrison’s lawyer argued that the approximate 4,400 signatures that were submitted by the group Our Plano, One Plano is short of the 8,163 they believe is required when basing the number off the most recent election.

Taha Ahmed, the accommodations chair of UTD’s Muslim Students Association, said the news of Harrison’s post didn’t shock him.

“I wasn’t really surprised since we’ve seen again and again more people be comfortable with showing how they really feel about Muslims in particular,” Ahmed said. “It was a little sad to see that it was really close to home though.”

The post Harrison shared on Feb. 14 from the group titled “Joined Hands Across America For Trump” read, “Share if you think Trump should ban Islam in American schools,” and cycled through

various photos, including a young girl wearing a hijab. Harrison’s Facebook profile also contains several other controversial posts, including one saying that Democrats support Muslim slave owners. The day after Harrison shared the Islamophobic post, Mayor Harry LaRosiliere called for his removal and public censure by the city council. At a Feb. 18 meeting, the council voted 7-1 to censure Harrison.

At that same meeting, Harrison said he would not step down, provoking both boos and applause from the assembled crowd.

Ahmed said the best course of action would for Harrison to step down.

“I do believe he has to step down because it’s just not fair to show that sort of disrespect to a certain group of individuals, especially if you’re serving that large segment of the community,” Ahmed said.

Harrison posted an apology and explanation on Facebook, saying he is not “anti-Muslim,” and that the post was meant to show that Christianity is not the only religion targeted for exclusion in public schools. At the Feb. 18 city council meeting, he defended himself after every other council member admonished him for his actions.

“I want to assure the citizens of Plano I am not xenophobic. I am not a bigot. I am not a racist,” Harrison said.

Later in an interview with The Mercury, Harrison gave several reasons for the Islamophobic post. Harrison said the post was meant to be in the context of a conversation with a friend about religious liberties, and not realizing the post would be public. He also said that his Facebook account was hacked, and equated his situation with that of con-

servative commentator Steven Crowder, accused in March by a UT Arlington professor of being a neo-Nazi.

Harrison also offered explanations for several other Facebook posts that were inflammatory. He initially said all of the controversial posts, with the exception of the one about Islam in schools, were accidental, but later said that some posts were placed there by other individuals.

“There’s one page she (his media consultant) said, ‘this cannot physically be on a (Facebook) page because it is larger than an 8”1/2 by 11” piece of paper.’ So they cut it off and they cut it across a seam and they pasted it on there and they made a copy of it,” Harrison said to show that he could not have shared one of the inflammatory posts.

→ SEE PLANO, PAGE 5

UTD phases out Comet Careers for new platform Career Center officially adopts Handshake as new job search platform to provide user-friendly experience for students, potential employers EMAAN BANGASH News Editor

The website formerly known as Comet Careers has been revamped and is now called Handshake, a new career services platform that provides the ability to book Career Center appointments, view personalized job listings and register for career fairs.

Clint McClain, the Career Center’s technology and marketing coordinator, said Handshake is similar to the former Comet Careers platform but is more user-friendly and easier to navigate for both employers and students.

All students have access to Handshake with their NetID and password and can create a profile that includes course listings, work experience and external social media networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Students have the option to make their profile public or private depending on their needs.

“It’s like a one-stop shop for all their career services needs and it’s a really intuitive platform that makes it a lot easier for them,” McClain said.

Students can now schedule appointments and consultations with career counselors through Handshake instead of having to call the Career Center front desk or arrange the appointment through both email and Comet Careers. Listed jobs are now catered to students according to their major, school and location preference rather than displaying a list of all the current jobs offered at once.

McClain said the staff at the Career Center received multiple complaints about Comet Careers from students such as slow internship application processing

CAROLINA ALVAREZ | OUTREACH EDITOR

Dallas becomes hub for esports

City’s tech-rich history leads UTD to join surrounding universities in hosting competitive gaming teams EMAAN BANGASH News Editor

CAREER CENTER | COURTESY

Handshake aims to improve links between students and employers.

and job offers that were irrelevant to students. He said this was likely due to the jobs mostly being catered towards students in larger schools such as the School of Engineering and Computer Science or the School of Management.

“That was probably the biggest downfall. We saw a lot of students that either didn’t know about the Career Center or just wouldn’t come to the Career Center because they felt we didn’t have anything to offer them,” McClain said. “But as I mention with more employers coming to the system because it’s easier, we’re seeing that there’s more types of jobs in there focusing on these other majors.”

Additionally, Handshake enables employers to post new job offers across multiple schools instead of posting a

new job offer individually in each school, which made employee recruitment efforts time consuming and costly. McClain said the ease Handshake provides employers in posting jobs is causing a large influx of employers to begin using the system.

The system became available to employers on April 7 and later to students on May 9 to resolve any issues with the program while most students were off for the summer. The student employment modules of Handshake will be available to students on Aug. 1. Career Center Coordinator for Student Employment Cameron Woods said staff training is going well because of how user-friendly and self-explanatory the

→ SEE HANDSHAKE, PAGE 5

Michael Sherman was already playing Riot Games’ “League of Legends” before he went to UTD in 2009. Though he said he didn’t consider himself a professional, he and a group of students played the game as a team competitively against other Texas universities such as UT Arlington and Texas A&M. “We wanted to play on the ‘League of Legends’ team and kind of play with some of the really early college tournaments,” Sherman said. “Then I moved off the team eventually because I was not very good…we were just students who wanted to game.”

A decade ago, Sherman could only dream of being registered as a legitimate team or playing in large-scale tournaments. Esports in Dallas were restricted to college students playing within club teams in small tournaments. At UTD, esports involved friends in dorm rooms playing competitively along with clubs

dedicated to games like “League of Legends” and Blizzard Entertainment’s “Overwatch.” Sherman and his friends tried to register themselves as a club sport but were not successful because they didn’t receive enough administrative support.

“We were the whole time just a group of students and were kind of registered as a club,” Sherman said. “We hardly knew what we were talking about and we didn’t really know what we wanted at the time, I think back then it was very, ‘we really like this, and we want the school to support it as much as they can.’”

Today, Dallas has become one of the biggest esports hubs in the country, second only to Los Angeles. Arlington officials announced the construction of a 100,000 square-foot esports stadium within the city’s convention center, set to open in the fall of 2018. Local “Overwatch” team Dallas Fuel now competes worldwide and has won multiple tournaments across the country.

Although it took time for esports to

→ SEE ESPORTS, PAGE 5

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LIFE&ARTS

July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

Graduate helps Alum creates 3D sensors create nonprofit

‘Electronic whiskers’ change shape in response to heat, capture more stimuli CINDY FOLEFACK Managing Editor

Organization established to advance gender equality MADELEINE KEITH Opinion Editor

At 18 years old, Brooke Lopez was the youngest individual ever to run for Wylie City Council. Inspired to run by the murder of her high school friend and a desire to affect change in her community, she balanced her freshman year of college at UTD with her first political campaign.

“When I was 15, I had a friend who was murdered by two other students that we went to school with and I sort of got thrown into politics. It felt less like a choice and more like something I had to do,” Lopez said. “I started working on some bills related to juvenile laws, gun control laws- really trying to focus on making sure that that would never happen again.”

Lopez lost the election. But now, as she prepares to step into law school, she has invested her time into a series of organizations she hopes can help women achieve a louder voice on Texas’s political stage. While bedridden after a gallbladder surgery last year, Lopez began writing a thesis paper on the demographics of women running for office across the United States. She discovered, however, a large gap in any usable data below the State Legislature level. Together with her friend Adrianna Maberry, Lopez founded the Lone Star Parity Project, a non-profit organization aiming to provide women with the tools and data they need to push Texas towards gender equality throughout all levels of government.

“What Adrianna and I hope to do is really start to separate Texas into the different geographic locations because, for example, if you’re a woman running for office in El Paso, you’re going to have a whole different set of issues and policies than if you were running in the Permian Basin,” Lopez explained. “So what (we) want to do is really start looking at all 245 counties across the state of Texas and… start to connect the dots for women running across the state.”

YANG XI | MERCURY STAFF

UTD alumna Brooke Lopez founded the nonprofit Lone Star Parity Project to help give women resources relevant to succeding in Texas government.

Lopez emphasized that the Lone Star Parity Project is not only building a dataset of electoral numbers and demographic information but also developing a network of politicallyinvolved women who could possibly contribute their support and advice to others hoping to become leaders within their own communities.

“We interview everyone from student activists in their local communities to local congresswomen, and by getting their perspective, we’re essentially gathering data from what they’re sharing and what they’re saying and adding that to what we already have in terms of numbers,” Lopez said.

Co-founding her own nonprofit is not the only way in which Lopez has remained engaged in her community. She was awarded both the 2017 and 2018 Presidential Volunteer Service Award for completing over 250 certified community service hours. Lopez also works

→ SEE LOPEZ, PAGE 5

Researchers at UTD are looking to nature to advance sensory technology through electronic whiskers.

UTD alumnus Jonathan Reeder began working on the project in 2013 while completing his doctorate in materials science and engineering. The sensors, which resemble whiskers, are made of shape-memory polymers and change shape in response to heat. Reeder said this response allows the sensors to adopt a 3D form and capture more stimuli, which could advance robotic and prosthetic technology.

“The basic function of the electronic whisker is to interrogate the surrounding that a robot or a prosthetic might be in and to obtain all types of information,” Reeder said. “That could be temperature, surface roughness, material stiffness and surface texture in order to give a computer… a rich understanding of the surrounding environment.”

Reeder said the innovation lies in defining the size of the whiskers as well as using heat to give them 3D properties. The initial goal of the project was to make brain probes that rely on neural sensors. The challenge was figuring out how to make the sensors move in 3D space.

“We tried a number of different avenues for moving in three-dimensional space,” Reeder said. “We tried magnetic materials, manual assembly, electrostatics, so using warm air to assemble was something that came along toward the end.”

3D electronic assembly is an emerging field in materials science. Reeder said the inspiration for this project came from reading papers by leaders in the field, and after switching the practical application of the sensors from neural interfaces to robotics and prosthetics, researchers now face another obstacle. The technological data gathered from sensors must be translated into biological data and understood by human prosthetics.

ERIK JONSSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE | COURTESY

UTD alumnus Jonathan Reeder plans to incorporate his sensors into prosthetics.

“I’m focused on the materials science side, which is developing the sensors which will have some quantifiable electrical response to a (stimulus). What happens with that data is a whole other field,” Reeder said. “You would use processing algorithms to filter the data, so that would be future work, and hopefully with other collaborators we can extend into that area.”

Reeder’s McDermott fellowship gave him the independence and funding to start the project and materials science and engineering professor Walter Voit served as Reeder’s doctoral advisor and provided guidance throughout the process.

Bioengineering senior Sarah Rains got involved with the project in February 2016 through Voit’s recruitment efforts, which involved sharing information about the project during one of her classes. Rains said the project helped her gain new skills as a freshman such as handling Class 4 lasers, which were used to cut the polymer.

“I had a really good mentor – Jonathan was so nice and helpful and everyone I encountered at the lab was helpful,” Rains said. “I was able to bounce ideas off of the other authors and they helped me to get my feet wet into research and also grow as a young researcher.”

As for the future, Reeder said he hopes to see real-world applications of these sensors in prosthetic devices to provide a positive change in the lives of the general public.

“Right now, it’s a new type of sensor and it works on a bench top, but can we ever take that from the bench top and make it to the real world and have a tangible impact on someone’s life?” Reeder said. “I think that would be the best goal that we can imagine.”

JONATHAN REEDER | COURTESY

The electronic “whiskers” are able to capture more stimuli than typically capable.

Students protest Supreme Court nominee A group of UTD students helped organize a protest at Sen. John Cornyn’s office on July 21 in Dallas to voice disapproval of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

We want to bring attention to the issues that are at hand with the new Supreme Court justice... there are different actions that people can take within their local communities to work on these issues that we care about nationally on a local level.

— Michelle Landry, historical studies senior

PHOTOS BY: AMBARINA HASTA | MERCURY STAFF GRAPHIC BY: CAROLINA ALVAREZ | OUTREACH EDITOR

July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

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NEWS

→ ESPORTS

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MICHAEL STOUT | MERCURY STAFF

Tom Harrison began his four-year term on Plano City Council in 2015.

→ PLANO

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Harrison accused LaRosiliere of targeting him with bad publicity because of his opposition to several apartment developments in the city, including Legacy West and Envision Oak Point. He said LaRosiliere’s opposition to these measures led to a perception that Plano is unfriendly to developers, leading LaRosiliere to bring the Facebook post to the public’s attention. Harrison blamed the controversy on Agenda 21, a con-

spiracy theory based around a set of guidelines adopted by the United Nations in 1992 for sustainable development in the 21st century.

Harrison’s suit against the city was further complicated when the city’s attorney, Paige Mims, found a second charter in the city’s archives. The copy dates from the same day in 1961 on which the original charter was ratified, and according to Mims, is equally valid. The difference between the two charters is minute but possibly important to the case. In the version of the charter that has

been in use for the last 57 years, the section regarding recall elections states that 30 percent of the number of votes “at the regular municipal election” is the minimum number of signatures required, while the newly found version says the “last regular municipal election.”

To determine which charter is legal, the city filed a lawsuit in the district court, but Harrison’s lawyer, Art Martinez de Vara, said it could just be a way to delay a resolution to Harrison’s lawsuit until after the recall election.

→ HANDSHAKE

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system is.

“I think people are intimidated a little bit when we say new system, but then they see it, they work with it, we demo it, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive,” Woods said.

McClain said he recommends students who don’t know about the Career Center to visit its website and learn more about obtaining access to Handshake and more information about what the center offers.

“The career journey starts as soon as you get into college. We can help you figure out what your skills are and what your interests are, and we’ll help you pick out a

→ LOPEZ

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

for Ignite, a national organization developed with the intent to help young women become more civically engaged and politically aware. Lopez helps to mentor Ignite groups in two different high schools across the DFW area, both of which have already begun to seek change in their community.

“One of my student groups that I work with hosted a rally for National Walk-Out Day that was

NOAH WHITEHEAD | PHOTO EDITOR

Handshake, a new job search platform, is set to replace Comet Careers and launches for students on Aug. 1.

major,” McClain said. “Once you get into your sophomore and junior year, you start looking for in-

ternships, and senior year you start looking for full-time jobs. We want to be part of your entire journey.”

school-wide. And the other student group created a Dallas ISD campaign where they were able to get free menstrual hygiene products, or at least the start of this program, in all of the middle schools and high schools in DISD,” she said. “Those are two badass things that those girls have done and I’m so honored to be able to get to be there to help guide them in that process.”

Lopez said her studies at UNT’s law school this fall will take precedence over her own political aspirations, for now. She said she is unsure when she will run again in the future,

or even what position she will vie for.

But with four extra years of experience behind her back, Lopez said she hopes to serve her home state of Texas better than ever before.

“I learned a lot of things from my first political campaign that I would go back and do again and there were a lot of different things that I wished I would have done differently,” Lopez said. “So next time when I run for office, I can run an even more impactful campaign and, whether or not I win, I want to do something that I am even more proud of than the one I ran when I was 18.”

become popular in Dallas, the city had already been a hub for technology and innovation for decades.

UTD founders Eugene McDermott, Cecil Green and J. Erik Jonsson established Texas Instruments in 1951. According to The Texas State Historical Association, the company set the foundation for Dallas to heavily influence technological innovation when it developed the first transistor radio, microchip and electronic pocket calculator.

“Dallas is really forward thinking,” Sherman said. “I always regarded Dallas as the Silicon Valley of the south, so to see technology and sports kind of merge in Dallas feels like a no-brainer and feels like something Dallas has been trying to do for a long time.”

In the gaming world, Dallasbased company id Software pioneered first-person shooter video games with the release of “Doom” in 1991, according to PC Gamer.

Gearbox Software, another game developer based in Plano, has developed popular first-person shooter games such as “Borderlands” and “Half-Life.”

Dallas saw a spike in esports involvement when “Overwatch” was released for beta testing in 2015.

Dot Esports reported that Team EnVyUs was one of the first American “Overwatch” teams to win a tournament during the Overwatch Apex Tournament Series in South Korea in 2016. After rebranding as Dallas Fuel under the esports organization Team Envy last October, the team now works on interacting with its fan base directly through viewing parties, meet-and-greets and other events. Envy Gam-

ing Public Relations Team Leader Greg Miller said both having an esports team to cheer for and the rising popularity of these games prompted gaming organizations to sponsor teams.

"If you add up every kid that plays baseball or softball in the metroplex, that’s only like 20-30,000 people so there’s 10 times as many people playing video games,” Miller said. “I think Dallas is a city that loves winners in its sports teams. We’re very proud of the accomplishments, and we’re proud of having great seasons.”

Sherman said that during his time at UTD he tended to focus more on organizing tournaments, competitions and viewing parties instead of playing. Sherman, who now works at Riot Games as its college esports manager, said he spoke to athletics director Bill Petitt last December about creating an esports program on campus.

“They were already really interested in esports, and so it’s just kind of a huge sign of the change and games in universities,” Sherman said. “I told him…(he) should do this is (since) UTD has a huge engineering school in Texas, it has this amazing technology program, which has the game design function in it. We’re not known for big sports in Texas, so let’s do something really cool and exciting.”

Petitt said he and his team in the athletics department were not familiar with esports until they attended the NCAA convention in 2017. It wasn’t until they discussed esports with students and faculty and witnessed the university’s “League of Legends” team enter the national championships that they decided to run esports under the athletics department rather than

as a club or under a constituent school of the university.

“This is the first event I can think of where everybody on campus is so excited. I mean, this is something that’s the natural thing for campus and everybody knows it and sees it,” Petitt said. “I just think it’s such a great way to bond the whole university together which is kind of what athletics is for and this is a great way to do it.”

The Gemini and Pegasus rooms in the SU are under construction to become a smallscale, 24-seat arena for future UTD esports teams to train and play. Petitt said the athletics department will propose a part of the budget to be devoted to creating a 3,500-seat esports arena in the coming academic year.

“I’d love to see 3,500 people come for a tournament. We’d like to do it just like any other big event — you know, dim the lights, have an announcer, introduce the teams on the stage and do it on television,” Petitt said. “I mean, we just want to do it big time.”

Sherman said he hopes to see Texas become a large hub for esports and to see teams from the cities he grew up in to compete with teams across the country.

He said his experiences with esports and gaming in college was different from the perception of a typical gamer, and that esports is changing the cultural norms around gaming.

“When I was in college, it was my social group.” Sherman said “We played a lot of video games, but it was a really cool part of my college experience.

Seeing that be adapted and transformed in a city like Dallas is really exciting.”

6

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July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

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Pretty cool, right?

How do you feel about politicians using inflammatory words like “animals” and “illegals” to describe people?

Comets and Craters Alumni win global IT contest

"Personally, when talking about rights and other people and humans, we should never treat someone like that. No matter where they’re from or what they’re doing, it’s not the right way to describe someone. It’s very immoral, according to me."

"I think that’s very unfortunate.

Also, I’m not really that into politics, and I don’t follow it a lot. But we expect politicians to be really well educated people, and it’s not nice—I think it’s really unfortunate."

"I think politicians are people who should be the role model of a society. So, even if they are trying to express negative things about someone... they should keep that in mind and use some kind of language that isn’t inflammatory or very poor of choice."

Dyuthi Arella Healthcare Studies Sophomore

Anvitha Sagireddy Computer Science and Cognitive Science Senior

Tangin Amin Electrical Engineering Graduate

Vishal Kamble and Aman Mulkalwar won third place in the Atos IT Challenge in Paris for their product Electra for the Utilities, a cloud-based customer service chatbot designed for use in the utilities sector.

Rutford Avenue closed Rutford Avenue is partially closed due to construction and will only remain open to southbound pedestrian and golf cart traffic.

Students win scholarship Undergraduates Rachel Meade and Sydney Sherman received recognition from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program.

OPINION

7

July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

No cause for celebration Summer graduates deserve better recognition CAITLYN WENNER CONTRIBUTOR

A

graduation ceremony is the pinnacle of collegiate success. It is the opportunity to gather together friends and family to commemorate years of hard work and the end of an important chapter in life. It is the first official return on the investment of time, money and willpower put into earning a degree.

And yet, some Comets are unable to take part in such a commencement celebration.

UTD holds fall and spring commencements in December and May respectively but roughly 800 students every year that will finish their studies in July, when no commencement ceremony is offered.

While UTD did hold a summer ceremony once, the Commencement Planning Team — which comprises staff from the Office of the President and the Registrar’s Office — reported that the practice was discontinued because of the small number of graduates in relation to the high cost of the ceremonies. Instead, the university has offered a few different, but ultimately inferior, solutions.

Initially, summer graduates could choose to walk in the May ceremony preceding their final semester or in the fall ceremony following their graduation. Walking in the preceding spring ceremony was a convenient option for many but was ended after a number of students failed to complete their summer coursework after crossing the stage.

The remaining option to return and take part in the December commencement is a suitable alternative for some graduates, but for others, it proves an impractical

choice. Students who leave Dallas following the end of their studies are faced with the tough decision to take valuable vacation time off during the holiday season to travel back for the ceremony.

Many students also feel that a great deal of the excitement would be gone when they consider the idea of returning five months later to walk with a class that they do not even know. But this is the only choice many students have — to attend a commencement ceremony months after the fact or forego a formal graduation celebration entirely.

There is a third option, though when I spoke with recent and past summer graduates, none were aware of it. When the university stopped summer commencements, individual schools were offered the alternative of hosting a summer celebration or presentation they found appropriate. Based on my conversation with a member of the Commencemenet Planning Team, however, only one program within the School of Management provides an official ceremony. Some students graduating this summer from the School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences in the Masters of Communication Disorders program took matters into their own hands. It was important to them to commemorate their time at UTD with their peers and families, so the graduates pitched in to create their own celebration. They did all the legwork — from booking a room and creating programs to hanging decorations and donating food — and took it upon themselves to pay tribute to their time at UTD and all they had accomplished in the past two years.

What if these students didn’t have to do it all on their own? What if there were something more official in place?

Prospective graduates can contact their school dean to request a summer cere-

mony, such as the one put on by the School of Management, but even that does not guarantee that a program will happen. Fall and spring graduates do not have to petition for or plan their own commencement, and the approximately 800 students that graduate each summer should not have to either.

As a Comet alum who has walked the stage at two UTD graduations, I cannot imagine my collegiate experience ending on any other note. UTD is doing a disservice to itself and summer graduates by not having a permanent and official graduation celebration in place. I understand that a state-run university has to adhere to a certain budget, but it feels wrong that a commencement ceremony has ended up on the cutting room floor.

To me, it makes sense that a university would want to celebrate every student that successfully completes their studies — whether that be in a university-held commencement ceremony or a schoolsponsored program. As a young university, we should be doing everything in our power to encourage an engaged alumni network. Even if it costs more in the short term, the long-term benefits of sending students off with one last warm memory of their alma mater seem clear.

Budgets and bottom lines are important, but when weighed against the triumph of walking across the stage to receive the degree you earned from a school you are proud to have been a part of, there is no competition. At the end of the day, the inherent value of honoring the sacrifices, hard work, and achievements of each student will always outweigh the costs.

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July 30, 2018 | The Mercury

8 → INTERNET

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

said the move was a joint decision

by University Housing, the Office of Information Technology and Student Affairs to provide speedier and more reliable internet to students living on campus.

The decision by University Housing to change internet providers in such a short period of time was the result of an initiative from the beginning of 2018 to provide better internet to on-campus residents. Kwiatkowski said while campus internet had been an improvement from Spectrum, the previous internet provider, he wanted to find a provider that would provide better services to students without adding costs to either the school or students.

“We felt that the Apogee service was going to be a better solution for all of our residents, one that would provide faster service, more connectivity to more devices and met some of the needs and feedbacks we had received,” Kwiatkowski said.

“Ultimately we were able to do that in a way that met our needs within the financial part of our job and obviously then met the needs of our residents.”

The base plan offered to residents claims internet speeds of up to 100 MB per second and includes internet access for seven registered devices.

Residents can pay an additional $100 for speeds up to 200 MB per second and access for 14 devices.

Kwiatkowski said University

NEWS

Housing will gather resident feedback on the service provider transition through a series of surveys.

ATEC junior Kirsten Baker has been living in Phase 3 of University Village for nearly a year after having spent her freshman year in Residence Hall South. As one of the several community assistants who accompanied Apogee vendors in installing the new modems during the start of the summer, she also had the opportunity to discuss the internet changes with the vendors themselves. However, when she compared her internet before and after the change, she said she does not believe the transition has made a difference.

“I was with the Apogee people when they were installing it, so I talked to them a little bit, and they told me it would be faster, and from my experience so far, I don’t feel that it has. I feel that it has been slower,” Baker said “Our internet, I feel like, was pretty good… I feel like it was fairly fast for everybody.”

Baker said she also ran into issues with the new method for registering devices in order to use the internet. To connect to the new Wi-Fi service, named “ResNet,” residents must connect their devices – limited to seven under the base plan – directly through the Apogee website. Baker said the difficulty in registering guests, as well as the registration limit, does not bode well for residents.

“I don’t know how guests are supposed to use the internet now… I don’t know how they’re supposed to actually hook up to it, if they don’t

already have a ResNet account,” Baker said. “We didn’t have to register anything before… so I feel like this is a little bit of a scam and I really don’t understand why they needed to change the internet because I thought it was doing just fine before and I am very worried about this upcoming year.”

Sandra Mihail, a biology junior, agreed with Baker’s sentiments.

As well as finding difficulties connecting guests to the internet, she said she feels the change has not been an improvement.

“I’ve definitely had more problems with (the internet) now. First of all, the signup process is extremely annoying, because you can only have seven devices… I still cannot figure out how to get my printer on the Wi-Fi,” Mihail said. “For having people over, it really sucks. I’ve actually had more problems with the new internet than I’ve had with CometNet. I think it’s slower and it also is very spotty.”

Kwiatkowski said he believes the new service provider will last, as there is a three-year contract in place with Apogee. He said that not only is the school achieving all of its intended goals in terms of internet speed, but students seem to be happy with the change as well.

“The university housing office is pleased with the transition and with the services that are being provided right now and with the feedback we have received,” Kwiatkowski said.

“We have solicited and listened for feedback from residents and aside from a few minor issues … no general concerns from residents.”

CHRISTINA JIA | MERCURY STAFF

→ FUNDING

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

NRUF’s incentives to increase research activity at public universities across the state. The legislation initially recognized the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University as already qualified for additional funding. Other public universities, including UTD, competed with each other to receive NRUF support.

“In any case, these criteria were size criteria,” Wildenthal said. “In other words, the bigger the university, the more of all these things you had, and we were quite a bit smaller than the other universities put into the competition.”

UTD had previously attained “Tier One” status — a looselydefined designation — from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in February 2016. Carnegie confers “Tier One” status — which is separate from NRUF support — to the top 115 universities in the nation based on research output. The Carnegie recognition is considered a prereq-

→ PAPA JOHN'S

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

time, we’re contractually bound with Papa John’s, as we are with other brands as well, so we’re still looking into it.”

Schnatter initially stepped down as CEO in January after criticizing NFL players who knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality, which resulted in the brand losing its spot as the “official pizza of the NFL,” according to Yahoo Finance. Since the new allegations came to light, several major league baseball teams such as the

uisite for another “Tier One” status given by the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group that includes UT Austin and Texas A&M among public Texas universities. UTD is not a member of the AAU. “‘Tier One’ is just an adjective that was picked out to try and describe what people are talking about,” Wildenthal said.

“But it really means that we’ve got a good faculty and a good student body who are doing enough research that we satisfy these markers.”

David Daniel served as president of UTD when NRUF was established and oversaw the creation of a university fundraising campaign called “Realize the Vision: The Campaign for Tier One and Beyond” in 2009. By 2012, the university raised $270 million in endowed funds toward its goal of a $400 million endowment to meet the NRUF requirement. The campaign concluded in 2014 with a $387 million endowment.

“The success we’ve achieved is because we stand on the shoulders of those that went before

Miami Marlins have cut ties with the chain. Schnatter is now suing the company to access records pertaining to his resignation.

The on-campus Papa John’s location will remain open as usual once the school year begins, pending a decision from the student body to decide on its possible removal.

Chutes-Charley said this is partially due to the fact that the campus franchise is a shared space.

“We operate a convenience store out of that space too, so that’s one reason why it will be open,” Chutes-Charley said.

“We don’t want to penalize the students living in the residen-

us,” Pancrazio said. “We’ve been working on it since the (NRUF) initiative became available at the state level, and it was championed by Dr. Daniel.”

Since the end of the campaign in 2014, the university has also increased its restricted research expenditures, reaching an average of $51 million for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years, beyond the $45 million NRUF requirement. Wildenthal said the funding unlocked as a result of NRUF qualification will be used to attract new faculty members, employ more research assistants and expand existing research initiatives. Pancrazio added that NRUF funding opens the possibility of future research collaborations with other institutions such as UT Southwestern.

“This is a reward for the students and for the faculty, but it’s not the end of the road,” Wildenthal said. “It’s another step on the climb to being a bigger and better university, and we’ll continue climbing.”

→ GRADES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

his request and considered abandoning the project. However, after conversations with Reddit users, including on whether to charge others to access the data on his website, he changed his mind.

“I decided there was a cost behind this, but there was no other way to get it,” he said. “I decided it’s probably better to just take donations because it would probably diminish everyone’s interest in it. There’s just a lot of people who don’t want to pay the money upfront.”

Wang said publishing public grade data provides transparency for students and allows them to make better decisions about choosing courses.

“If a professor is failing

a lot of people, that’s probably not a good sign. If there’s not enough people passing, it probably means the professor is not conveying information really well,” Wang said. “I feel like it’s important for people to know what they’re going into.”

Wang’s decision to expand the platform’s reach to UTD came after a conservation with incoming ITS freshman Cedric Hatol.

“I was curious to see if UTD had one because I knew that other universities like UT Austin and A&M had their own grade distributions, I believe, for free and publicly available,” Hatol said.

Hatol said he and Wang were unable to find an existing repository of UTD grade data, prompting Wang to consider

creating a similar platform for the UTD community. Wang created a GoFundMe page to cover the $48.50 fee from UTD’s registrar’s office and the cost of website maintenance.

“It gives more context and insight into the other information you can find about professors that you’re going to take,” Hatol said.

“I also still understand these grade distributions should be taken with a grain of salt because it’s just one part of an overall picture.”

Wang said he does not have plans to expand to other Texas universities at this time.

“I’m really doing this as a service both to the UTD and UNT communities because I have a personal connection to them,” he said.

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tial area to not have the convenience store items too, so it’s important that we look at the big picture there.”

According to the university’s fall 2017 class profile, African-Americans accounted for 5 percent of the total student population, or about 1,400 students. In response to possible concerns from these students, Chutes-Charley stressed the university’s position of prioritizing an inclusive campus.

“We take pride in creating a campus dining program that embraces diversity, inclusion and respect and is committed to working with partners who share the same values,” she said.

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