Daily Toreador The
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2013 VOLUME 87 ISSUE 104
Meat judging team places first in Houston TexasTech’s meat judging team finished its spring competition season with another win. The team received first place at the Houston Livestock Show’s Intercollegiate Meat Judging Contest on Sunday. According to a Tech news release, this was the team’s ninth consecutive time to win the contest. Tech’s black team placed first with a total of 4,199 points, and Tech’s red team placed second, according to the release. Eleven universities competed for first place. Individually, according to the release, AustinLangemeier,asophomorefromMarion,was the top high individual, followed by Colton Campbell, a sophomore from Artesia, N.M., in second; Kylan Carson, a sophomore from Olton, in third; Nick Hardcastle, a junior from Wheeler, in fourth; Calyton Krause, a junior from New Braunfels, in sixth; Greg Howard, a junior from Bremen, Kan., in seventh; Kassandra Ognoskie, a sophomore from Orting, Wash., in ninth and Bailey Joe Pennington, a sophomore from Sonora, in 10th. Tech also won several events while at the contest, including beef grading, beef judging and lamb judging, according to the release. Sunday’s contest was the team’s last competition for the spring, and four more contests will occur in the fall of 2013, according to the release. ➤➤egardner@dailytoreador.com
Textinganddrivingbilladvances AUSTIN (AP) — A proposal to ban texting behind the wheel is making progress in the Texas Capitol. The House Transportation Committee voted 6 to 1 in favor of the bill on Tuesday. It moves to the full House for consideration. Texas has already banned any use of mobile devices by drivers under age 18. Texting while driving is illegal in 39 states. Local ordinances ban the practice in cities including Austin, El Paso and San Antonio.
OPINIONS, Pg. 4
Hansen: Words hurt: Sarcasm leaves friends uncertain
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Larrabee prepares for retirement By ASHLYN TUBBS STAFF WRITER
Teaching a lesson about political awareness and counteracting stereotypes for the past 10 years, Linda Larrabee wants to do one key job. “If I could touch one life a semester,” she said, “my job is well worth it.” A student confronted Larrabee one day after class and confirmed she has accomplished this goal by telling her, “You know what? I’m still not good, but I’m better than I use to be, and I’m going to be better.” “I really believe my students go out, every one of them, and make the world better,” Larrabee said. “Maybe it’s just a tiny bit better, but I think they do, and so that would be my reminder message to my students, is go make it better. Go fix all that stuff we talked about, huge task ahead of you, but I believe they can do it.” After this semester, Larrabee, an instructor in the Texas Tech Department of Sociology, will no longer influence students directly in the classroom. She will retire May 31, along with her husband, and move to Florida to live on an island. “I’m very excited about it,” she said. “There’s a lot of work to do between now and then, but it’s a whole new phase of our lives.” Larrabee and her husband will move to Florida to live closer to their family, she said, and to do nothing, but walk on the beach. “We’re just going to see who we want to be in this next 20 years or so of our lives,” she said, “and we’ll make a new life.”
She will leave behind a legacy, though, as some of her previous and current students, state. “I can go back all the way to freshman year when I took her reading course,” said Kwayne Bryant, a previous nursing major from San Antonio in an email. “The first words that come out of her mouth, ‘Who’s pissed off?’ I thought she was not going to be such an easy teacher to get along with. Five years later, I view her as the most intelligent, warm and comforting woman on the Texas Tech campus. Ms. Linda Kaye is like candy. Everybody loves her.” Larrabee has loved working for Tech because of her students, she said. “I thoroughly enjoy teaching sociology,” she said. “It’s fun for me, and so it’s been a great chance to do something I really love to do and get paid for it.” Larrabee once received a note from a student saying she is the only professor who he ever felt was honest with him. She said many of her students feel this way partially because of her teaching style. “I sit on the table, I don’t use overheads and I teach very differently than other people do,” she said. “We do all lecture, but mostly discussion. Part of it is because I just really enjoy teaching it.” She learned her teaching style with experience, and even took a class once about teaching Millennials. “I just think no matter how old they are, people are still just people,” she said, “and appreciate being talked to honestly.” She has gained most of her knowledge from her students, though, whom she said teach her new information each
PHOTO BY ASHLYN TUBBS/The Daily Toreador
LINDA LARRABEE, A sociology instructor, plans to retire at the end of the school year. She is known by her students for having no filter and her unique teaching style.
semester. “Some of the things they teach me I don’t want to learn, but most of it is like it’s just not that hard to connect with other people, no matter the age difference or the race difference or the socioeconomic status difference,” she said. “If you like people and are open with them, most of them will be open with you and I believe that in my life completely, not just in school.” One way Larrabee stands out from other professors is because she does not have a filter, she said. “They say that as we age, the first part of our brain that goes is the social filter,” she said. “Maybe mine is already
By EMILY GARDNER STAFF WRITER
The U.S. Army is currently evaluating Fibertect, a Texas Tech professor’s invention and a Tech patent. Seshadri Ramkumar, associate professor and inventor of Fibertect, said the U.S. Army is looking for a product to replace M-291, a powder technology being used, and his product is one of many technologies being evaluated.
“Fibertect, basically as the name says, (is) the product of a fiber that protects,” Ramkumar said. The product, he said, is a wipe with a three-layer composite with cotton as the top and bottom layers and charcoal in the middle. The purpose of the product is to soak up chemicals involved in toxic spills, Ramkumar said. “The cotton can soak up the liquid instantaneously,” he said, “and the
liquid will change into vapor because we are talking about the little chemical that is (a) highly toxic chemical.” Once the liquid changes into vapor, Ramkumar said the charcoal takes away the vapor. “What we are doing,” he said, “is we are developing a technology which will not only take the liquid toxin, but if the liquid toxin becomes a vapor toxin, a little carbon will absolve the vapor.”
Texas Tech track and field set to compete in nationals -- SPORTS, Page 7
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PHOTO BY EMILY MCCARTHY/The Daily Toreador
JIGGA PATEL, A senior architecture major from Houston, measures, places, and glues strips of wood to build a site model Tuesday in the Architecture building.
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Ramkumar’s former doctoral student, Utkarsh Sata, performed the experiments, Ramkumar said. The research was published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, he said. The fabric form will last five times longer than the powder technology, which the U.S. Army currently is phasing out, Ramkumar said. PATENT continued on Page 2 ➤➤
MIT professor speaks at 13th annual Shine Lecture
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US Army considers using Tech professor’s patent
By EMILY GARDNER
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gone. I am very blunt in my classes, and I think students appreciate that or they are horribly offended by it.” In each class she has taught, Larrabee said she is sure some of her students have disliked her. “It’s just style,” she said, “and which style you prefer to work with.” What Larrabee is most proud of is the awards she had received from students, she said, which include being named one of the top three instructors at Tech three different years in The Daily Toreador, a Greek award for excellence in teaching and a Raiders Who Rock award.
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The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry hosted the 13th annual Henry J. Shine Lecture, coinciding with Shine’s 90th birthday celebration in the Chemistry building at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. The event started with an introduction by Carol Korzeniewski, chairwoman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and was followed by an introduction about Shine by Interim President Lawrence Schovanec. Guigen Li, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, gave the guest speaker introduction. “It’s an endowed lectureship,” Korzeniewski said. “It was endowed by the friends, and colleagues of Professor Shine, friends, colleagues and former students.” The reason for the continuation of the lecture series, she said, was because the series brings distinguished researchers from around the world to Tech to interact with students and discuss science. The event was open to the public, she said, but most of the people who attended were from the chemistry department along
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with science departments, engineering departments and the Tech Health Sciences Center. After the lecture, Korseniewski said a Q-and-A session occurred, followed by refreshments and a birthday cake to be presented to Shine in the foyer of the building. “He turned 90 in January,” she said. “That’s what makes this year’s lecture special.” A group of faculty specializing in organic chemistry selected the guest speaker with preparation taking place a year before the event happened, Korzeniewski said. “The speakers are very prominent, often members of the National Academy of Science,” she said. “We’ve had Nobel Laureates.” Li, Korzeniewski said, played an important role in getting the guest speaker to participate in the lecture series. The guest speaker at the event was Stephen Buchwald, member of the National Academy of Science and the Camille Dreyfus Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. LECTURE continued on Page 2 ➤➤
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