03.31.2017

Trinitonian

Cultural Speed dating

Health Services

Health services office responds to complaints

TDC and BSU host event for students to learn about different cultures PAGE 4 NEWS

Volume 114 Issue 23

National Champs Baseball team receives championship rings

PAGE 13 PULSE

PAGE 19 SPORTS

Serving Trinity University Since 1902

MARCH 31, 2017

All natural Trinity honey debuts

Bee Alliance hosts students to sample honey collected from the Trinity bees

BY JULIA WEIS

PULSE REPORTER The smell of a rustic, earthy honey wafts through the air. The community garden is lit up with string lights, alternative music is playing from a speaker hidden in a plant and Trinity students are mingling and tasting the honey made from Trinity’s very own bees.

Trinity Bee Alliance hosts students at the community garden for their first honey-tasting event. photo by HENRY PRATT The Trinity Bee Alliance had their first honey tasting event last Friday, to share the honey that they have collected from their bees over this past year with the community.

Bee Alliance president Abbi Bowen, a first -year English and Russian double major, coordinated with her fellow Bee Alliance members to put on this event.

“Bee Club hasn’t really done much, so I’m happy that people are actually really excited to come together and taste our Trinity honey.

I just want it to be a very ambient setting; I just really hope people enjoy it. No one really comes together for the bees a lot; Usually we’re just working separately checking, on

the bees at different times, so it’s nice when we get to celebrate together,” Bowen said.

The Bee Alliance is organized differently from a traditional club. Instead of regular meetings, Bowen holds “drop in hours,” where she encourages anyone to come talk to her about anything bee-related. The organization also operates through a Google spreadsheet, where members can go in and schedule a time on Sundays that they want to keep the bees. Bowen adds that anyone interested in helping out with the bees in any way should feel free to email her at abowen@ trinity.edu.

Students who attended the honey tasting event, whether they were regular members or not, all found the event to be a success.

First-year economics and environmental studies double major Ethan Courtman helped set up the event.

“A lot of students were there, and some prospective students as well. It looked like everyone was having fun. I didn’t know if there was going to be like five people or 40, but it looks like we have a good number,” Courtman said.

Diego Fernandez is not a regular member, but enjoyed getting more involved with the Bee Alliance.

“I had been interested in helping out with the bees and I like honey. It’s interesting that we have a beekeeping group to kind of just help the bees have honey. I come every once in a while if I can and have time,” Fernandez said, a first-year biochemistry and molecular biology major.

Fernandez thought that the honey and snacks tasted good, but admits he doesn’t keep up to date with the bee situation worldwide.

The endangerment of bees falling into extinction has come more into public view over the past few years, but Trinity’s Bee Alliance is doing their part to protect pollinators.

“It is really nice and refreshing to know that a lot of people do care about the bees, and they do know that they are dying and we need pollinators, but I just want to encourage people to email me and sign up to keep the bees, because we do need people to help out with that. Worldwide, the problem with the bees is well-known, but it’s not really being handled. And yeah, I can’t really do much because I don’t have a high position in government or anything, but I’m just trying my best here, helping out on our campus,” Bowen said.

Now that Trinity’s Bee Alliance has gotten all of the city permits needed to sell and let people eat their honey, the organization is considering selling some of what they’ve harvested to give back to the bees.

“If we sell it, all the money we’ll make is going to go to nonprofits in San Antonio for pollinators. I mean, we don’t really need money for much, we’re just helping the bees out, so if we do sell it, we might as well give it back to the bees somehow. I would also encourage people to buy local honey and to buy pure honey,” Bowen said.

Trinity staff and athlete respond to bathroom ban Five members of the community sign Athlete Ally open letter speaking against SB6

BY DANIEL CONRAD

NEWS REPORTER Four Trinity staff and a senior athlete signed an open letter in opposition to Texas’ Senate Bill 6 (SB6). Nicknamed the “bathroom bill,” the legislation would penalize public universities and other government buildings for permitting citizens to use bathroom and

changing facilities besides those designated for the biological sex indicated on their birth certificate.

“SB6 would require transgender people to use bathrooms based on ‘biological sex,’ and would preempt local nondiscrimination ordinances that allow transgender Texans and visitors to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity,”

the letter reads. “As long as bills like these remain a possibility, Texas is sending a clear signal that LGBT players, fans, coaches and administrators are not welcomed or respected, both on and off the field. This should worry Texas, as the athletic community has clearly stood by its LGBT constituents and against discriminatory legislation. We have seen this story unfold in North Carolina, and we do

not want it to be repeated in Texas.”

The letter was authored by Athlete Ally, a nonprofit organization that facilitates allyship efforts among collegiate, professional and Olympic athletes in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. In 2014, Athlete Ally founder Hudson Taylor visited Trinity University to speak to an audience of over 350 student-athletes and others. continued on PAGE 5

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NEWS • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Budget briefing outlines Trinity’s finances President Anderson discusses future of the university’s expenses, changes and goals

BY DANIEL CONRAD

NEWS REPORTER

Last Thursday, Trinity University president Danny Anderson presented the annual budget briefing to faculty and staff in Stieren Theater.

He addressed tuition increases, annual revenues, the potential acquisition of the Oblate property west of campus and updates to the Trinity master plan.

Trinity traditionally maintains a conservative budget, aiming to minimize deferred maintenance and saving a budget contingency equal to four percent of total revenues in order to account for unexpected expenses.

Balancing the university’s budget depends on admissions as well as annual donations and giving campaigns.

7,515 students applied to Trinity University this year, compared to the 5,435 applicants for the 2014–2015 academic year; 2,869 were admitted this year, compared to the 2,556 of 2014–2015. The university’s acceptance rate has subsequently dropped from 47 percent to 38.2 percent.

Anderson reports that the pool of students accepted this year have higher grade point averages and test scores than students accepted just two years ago. This means the university has to work harder to yield a higher percentage of students admitted, as those students likely have the opportunity to choose from a range of high-quality universities to attend. Admissions officials hope to bring in between 620 and 660 students, about 10 students for every faculty member.

Trinity’s endowment faces some sustainability concerns. Ideally, the university would see returns to the endowment at 7.5 percent or higher. But this year will see returns of only 2.7 percent, while similar universities receive a median of 2.9 percent.

“We want to spend 4.5 percent out of our endowment every year and we want it to grow at least at a rate of inflation [about 2.7 percent],” Anderson said. “That would be a number where you could say there is real stress.” The national median for endowment growth is a meager 2.1 percent.

Further, expenses have increased to 4.8 percent, significantly higher than the planning threshold of 2 percent. The median for

Trinity’s peer institutions was also 4.8 percent.

“Everybody else is struggling with this,” Anderson said.

One major expense was a large, unavoidable increase in medical insurance costs. This price hike caused the merit pool goal to move from the 3 percent of the last few years to 2 percent.

The merit pool is the amount of money allocated for increases in employee salaries.

Completion of the goal is contingent on meeting the aforementioned enrollment and tuition targets.

The City Vista acquisition was likely another source of expense, though numbers were not offered during the presentation.

Anderson noted that the university is looking into ways to reduce this stress, for instance by hiring a staff attorney to reduce legal fees.

The university is committing to focus on net tuition revenue growth, improve fundraising and manage expense growth. Admissions are to go a long way toward accomplishing these goals.

“Everything we’re doing in admissions shows that we’re getting more applicants, we’re getting higher quality applicants, we’re becoming more selective,” Anderson said. “It’s just a slow process to get to that point where more people say, ‘I don’t need as big of a merit aid to make me accept the decision to go to Trinity.’”

Admissions numbers aren’t the whole picture; Anderson explained that the tuition rate is being increased by 4.5 percent, while room and board rates will see a 3 percent increase. This puts tuition at $40,728, up

TRINITY UNIVERSITY

ACCEPTANCE STATISTICS (’14 & ‘17)

2014

2017

(for the 14-15 year)

(for the 17-18 year)

5,435

7,515

applied

applied

2,556

2,869

admitted

admitted

47%

38%

ACCEPTANCE RATE

ACCEPTANCE RATE graphic by Tyler Herron

from the current $38,974.

Meal plans will see higher prices, too. The 200-swipe plan will be $4,004, the 240-swipe plan will be $4,303, while the junior-senior “Flex” plan will run students $3,859. These rates do not include a 8.25 percent sales tax.

Anderson identified areas for campus improvement over the next year, including renovations for Myrtle McFarlin, Harold D. Herndon Hall and Albert Herff-Bezehall as well as new elevators in Bruce Thomas Hall. $1.1 million will be spent on campus network and Wi-Fi improvements, upgraded on-campus signage will be instituted and renovations for several Oakmont houses will take place as well.

Looking further into the future, Anderson updated attendees on the campus master plan. Designs are being drafted for a new campus “front door” entrance on Hildebrand to the north of campus, and there are plans to repurpose Coates University Center as the main dining facility on campus. Anderson suggested removing parking areas on the south of campus near McLean and converting them into green space to create new social spaces and facilitate water runoff.

The University is considering purchasing the 9.4-acre Oblate property to the west of campus, as well. When Anderson opened the floor to questions, they were about the Oblate purchase.

Paul Myers, professor of computer science, noted that it could add parking to campus, but asked how the university plans to parking stress in central campus.

“As we’re looking at the creation of selfdriving cars, as we’re looking at students who come to college renting ZipCars, and not necessarily coming with an identity linked to a car the way mine was when I was 17 years old, then maybe we do not need to be building as many parking spots for the future,” Anderson said. “Are we really going to need that many parking spaces five years from now? All the consultants that we work with say that [this] is the way to be thinking.”

Anderson closed by explaining that the Oblate acquisition will likely close by the middle of April, provided that environmental certifications clear within the next few weeks.

“It is really important for us as a community to understand all the little bits and pieces of the strategy that we’re using to try and move forward,” Anderson said. “You each play a part in making all of those different pieces work and I thank you because we could not achieve our goals if it were not for all of you working together.”

University sets up tiger bucks for Ubers Tiger Bucks are now compatible with the ride-sharing app

BY KATHLEEN CREEDON

NEWS REPORTER

At the beginning of last semester, the Tiger Card office finalized plans to connect the campus card with Uber. However, after Uber redesigned its app, the campus card connection was lost.

Luckily, this March the connection was reestablished, and Tiger Bucks can officially be used to pay for Uber. All students need to do is download the most recent version of the app, set up payment with a campus card, and find Trinity among the schools available.

“It’s set up to recognize your Tiger Card and Tiger Bucks. This program really started gelling last summer after it was brought to us by CBORD. We’re actually one of four schools in the country that they piloted it with,” said Paul Wright, director of business operations in the Tiger Card office.

CBORD, the campus’s operation software

for Tiger Bucks, worked with Uber on the technological aspects of the initiative before proposing the idea to the Tiger Card office.

The company used Trinity as an example when introducing the system at a conference with other schools.

“CBORD brought it to us because they’re the operating system for Tiger Bucks, and it was an opportunity for them to use another avenue to help pay for rides, which would be the campus card,” Wright said.

This option allows students who prefer not to carry a credit card to have an alternative.

So far, the Tiger Card office has had no complaints about the connection with the app.

“Feedback has been positive. If you base it on usage, particularly last semester, and specifically September and October, it was used heavily, and for the most part, it’s been used fairly well so far this month,” Wright said.

Despite the interruption of the system last semester, Tiger Bucks will now always work with Uber, as long as a student has money on their card.

“It’s a continuous program, even in the summer. And it doesn’t have to be here. If you travel, you can use it. It goes with you wherever you go,” Wright said.

The connection between the Tiger Card and Uber is profitless; the office decided to do this to benefit the community and offer students options.

“It’s a service, and it’s a good option for students if they want to go somewhere and not use other forms of transportation. It’s technology-driven, so easily adaptable to the student; they know how to use it,” Wright said.

As for why CBORD chose Trinity to be one of the pilot schools, the Tiger Card office believes it is because of the community’s willingness to try new things.

“We started with CBORD in 2002, and we’ve always seemed to be on their beta list.

There are a handful of schools that are willing to try these new things, and we get a lot of schools that don’t have the programs to come visit. I think we’ve sold a lot of their products that way,” said Oralia Carrillo, system administrator for the Tiger card office.

The app will also tell you how much money is left on your Tiger Card before you request a ride, so there’s no chance you won’t have enough to pay for it.

“I didn’t know that we could pay for Uber with our cards, but I’m sure it’s really useful.

It’s annoying sometimes to have to log into the website to see my Tiger Bucks, and being able to use them with Uber is pretty great.

You can use them just like you would for Chipotle,” said first-year Lamonte Brooks.

The Tiger Card office is always looking for suggestions for ways to expand their list of places that accept Tiger Bucks.

“We’re looking for suggestions for our restaurants. There was a point when we had 24 or 25, and now we’re down to 10.

For some places, it’s not worth having the system because students aren’t going to their locations. We want to find places where students and young people will take advantage of it,” Carrillo said.

If you have any suggestions, the Tiger Card office can be reached at tcrd@trinity.edu or on their Facebook page.

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NEWS

TDC and BSU host cultural speed dating

Groups lead discussion on learning to learn about others’ cultures

BY KATHLEEN CREEDON

NEWS REPORTER

Trinity Diversity Connection (TDC) and the Black Student Union (BSU) held a cultural speed dating event that welcomed anyone curious about cultures to listen to the stories of minorities on campus. Participants had roughly a minute a half to listen to each dater’s story, and then were able to ask questions before advancing.

Inspired by the Race Card Project, this event allowed 29 daters to tell their stories about being a minority. Many of the stories revolved around religion, sexuality, ethnicity, race or a combination of those qualities.

“I think TDC does a great job of trying to communicate the small diversity that we have.

It’s interesting, and this is in no way shade towards Trinity, but we stress the factor that we are diverse, and we aren’t that diverse, but the small organizations we have are trying to bring awareness about what it’s like to be X, Y and Z,” said Oumoul Setamou, one of the daters that told her story at the event.

Setamou’s father is from Benin, a country in West Africa near Nigeria, and her mother, who was born in Ethiopia, migrated to Benin with her family. Setamou was born there and moved to the United States when she was around four.

“Growing up was really interesting because I had my own African identity at home because my parents upheld that, but I grew up in a town that was predominately Hispanic, so dealing with racism was interesting. It wasn’t until I went to high school that I realized there were different communities among the black community,” Setamou said.

Setamou expressed the frustration she dealt with from being grouped with all black Americans because she is black, despite the differences in the cultures that exist.

“My parents always made the distinction that we are immigrants, that we were not from this country. We’re African; we’re not black American. We have our own culture,” Setamou said.

Setamou expressed that, although she was raised with the understanding that her culture is distinct from other cultures, many people ignored that because of her skin color. Often people wouldn’t realize that she is African until they heard her name. Setamou rejects the idea of being black American because she understands the culture behind it, as she hopes people will do with hers.

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“It’s disrespectful to call myself AfricanAmerican because there are a lot of social attributes to what it means to be an AfricanAmerican, and that’s not who I am. I’m not black American; I’m African, I consider myself black; I am black, but I’m also African,” Setamou said.

Other students had similar experiences with the rejection of their culture for a more convenient one. Ariel Del Vecchio is Guaraní, an indigenous tribe of Paraguay.

“I’m Guaraní; you can’t tell, but I am. I’m here to represent what it’s like to be a modern indigenous person, and what it means to be a modern indigenous Latina in the United States,” Del Vecchio said.

Del Vecchio focused her story on her struggle with maintaining her indigenous identity, despite the pressure to conform to North American culture.

“I was raised by my grandmother, who is a proud Guaraní woman who brought me up with the culture, the food and the language. It was hard growing up when I had to really shed a lot of that identity; growing up with a lot of white people was like an exercise in pretending that a part of me doesn’t exist,” Del Vecchio said.

Del Vecchio explained how, when she was younger, she was often told that she was speaking Spanish incorrectly, when really she was speaking an entirely different language, Jopara, a mix of Guaraní and Spanish.

“It’s not really the fault of the community, but there just isn’t really any Amerindian communities on campus or anywhere that

I’ve ever been that I can really relate to, so constructing my identity as an indigenous person has been sort of like an extended metaphor of decolonization of my own self,” Del Vecchio said.

Erika Salarda is Asian-American. She explained how she came to accept the way she looks after realizing that beauty standards differ radically all over the world.

“I grew up in a predominately Hispanic community, and it was comforting being in a crowd where I didn’t stand out. Fast forward to my freshman year of highschool, I had to move to Connecticut,” Salarda said.

She described a time when she was hanging out with friends, and they mentioned that they needed to go to a tanning salon. Salarda asked if they thought she should go, too.

“They said, ‘Erika, no. You have beautiful mocha skin,’ and I thought, ‘I do have beautiful mocha skin.’ It set the American standard of beauty,” Salarda said.

Then, she went to the Philippines to meet a few of her family members for the first time.

Salarda emphasized their appreciation and focus on fashion and beauty.

“One of the first things they tell me is, ‘Erika, you’re a lot lighter in your pictures,’ and asked me if I wanted to take pills to lighten my skin,” Salarda said.

After rejecting the supplements, Salarda began to realize the difference in the cultures’ standards of beauty.

“There’s an eastern side that promotes being lighter, and a western side that promotes being

Lutfi Sun was one of the daters at the event, and spoke about his ambitions as a student from Turkey. photo by HENRY PRATT

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darker, so being Asian-American, it’s like, which side should I choose? In reality, you shouldn’t follow the beauty standards at all because we all have differences that make us stand out, and it’s those differences we should celebrate; that’s what makes us beautiful,” Salarda said.

Another student, Connor Halbert, discussed his experience with being transgender. He decided to tell this part of his story because he wanted to make sure it was represented in the discussion about diversity.

Halbert came out to his parents when he was 14 and began socially transitioning throughout high school. Once he turned 18, he began medically transitioning.

“Being trans in general is not easy. One of the things that has been affecting me most lately is definitely the lack of medical care available for trans people. In Texas, doctors can refuse to treat you if you’re trans, for any reason. I’ve heard of people who went to the emergency room with a broken arm, and they were denied treatment because they are trans,” Halbert said.

He also noted that his experience with being transgender may have been entirely different if he came out earlier or if he was from another part of Texas.

“My parents are very accepting. Most of my family has been great. I have encountered some people who are more difficult, but that’s kind of inevitable, unless you’re extremely lucky, and you live in an area like San Francisco or something. But I’m a small kid from Texas, so it was a bit more difficult. Had I been born in a smaller town, I think I would’ve turned out a lot different,” Halbert said.

Keesha Middlemass, an assistant professor in the political science department, explained her background as a black Canadian, and how often people suggest she is not truly Canadian or black because she is both.

“My comeback is that no one has ever confused me for being white. I identify this way, and this is who I am,” Middlemass said.

Middlemass also discussed the distinctions between the way Canada and the United States deal with race.

“Canada probably has more subtle racism, so it’s not as overt. More importantly, Canada doesn’t have the hangover of slavery. The whole idea is that when you look at races differently from the start and the founding of the country, that then gets ingrained into the policies and politics,” Middlemass said.

Many other cultures were represented at the speed dating event, and although participants weren’t able to meet with every date, lists of names and emails were handed out to extend the conversation beyond the Fiesta Room.

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Trinity debaters compete nationally

Austen Yorko, Drew Sposeep, Ansh Khullar, and Ian Dill competed at National Debate Tournament

BY PHILLIP McKEON

NEWS REPORTER

The Trinity debate team members Austen Yorko, Drew Sposeep, Ansh Khullar, and Ian Dill competed at the National Debate Tournament this past week.

The tournament has been in existence for over 60 years according to Will Mosley Jensen, communications professor and debate coach, and was hosted by the University of Kansas.

“The tournament has been in existence since 1946, and it was originally hosted by the US Military Academy the idea was that they would essentially invite all the best debate teams from around the country to compete in one central, national tournament, and crown one team as the top team in the country. In 1969 though, they decided not to fund the tournament and now it’s hosted by a different university each year. This year it was hosted by the University of Kansas,” Mosley said.

78 teams from around the country debate

for four days in the National Debate Tournament.

“So this year we went to Kansas City, and it takes four days, so it’s a long, strenuous competition with multiple debates each day. They invite the top 78 teams from around the country. So we qualify through a district, which are various geographic regions throughout the country. So we’re in District Three, pretty much the most difficult district to get out of, with the most teams competing,” Mosley said.

Sophomore Emily Peter described her understanding of how impressive it is to be part of such an intense competition.

“I did debate in high school, and it was a ton of work then. Doing it in college is a whole different level, so I’m really impressed that those guys made it so far, especially the first years. It’s just really cool to hear about those sorts of things and know that I go, we all go, to a school where people are doing great things like that,” Peter said.

Mosley said that the debates centered around the restriction of greenhouse gas emissions, and were informed by current events.

“This year’s resolution was about restricting greenhouse gas emissions, which was very interesting in the context of the Trump administration. Our research changed a lot after the election, obviously there were a lot

of changes with that. So teams around the country come prepared to defend their side of the issue,” Mosley said.

First year Ian Dill, who advanced with his partner to the elimination rounds, described how debate, to him, is the process of finding the truth.

“This year’s topic was on emissions restrictions, so how to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, and how best to solve climate change. So the whole thing about debate is it’s not necessarily black and white. The way that the truth is sought is by switching sides and defending both sides of the issue.

So sometimes that means defending some extremist stuff and stuff that isn’t necessarily closest to the truth. Debate is the process of evaluating those claims, and the judge’s decision is deciding what was the closest to the truth, or what was best argued. So sometimes that decision comes at the expense of the truth in favor of argument. In the end, by virtue of switching sides so often, I think you do end up getting closer to the truth yourself,” Dill said.

Preparation for the debates begins months in advance, and culminates with the debate team having full practices over spring break.

“Preparation is a pretty long process.

Pretty much from the Wednesday before the tournament to the Wednesday we

5

arrived at the tournament, we were working pretty much non-stop, practicing speeches, researching. It was about eight to nine hours a day on those seven days, but a couple hours a day leading up to that. So that’s what our spring break looked like, but it was definitely worth it,” Dill said.

Dill describes the drive it took to make it to the NDT and be successful.

“I just really enjoy debate, it’s been one of my favorite things since doing it in high school.

Even now that I’m here and on scholarship for debate, I think it’s still just the love of the activity and being in debates, and even just the community that debate is. They’re good people to be around, it’s enjoyable, and it’s just great to be able to succeed in that space.

Not to mention the competitive drive in me that just makes me want to win,” Dill said.

This is the first time trinity had ever had a first year team make it to the elimination rounds at the NDT, a historic achievement.

“Trinity, in it’s history, has never qualified a first year team before, so we were really excited about that. This is the fourth or fifth time we’ve participated in the elimination rounds, so that’s a pretty historic thing. Of all the first year teams, Trinity had the best, and they ranked the best out all them, ranking 18 over the next first year team from Kentucky that ranked 22nd,” Mosley said.

Study abroad forum talks policy changes

Recent changes to study abroad policies aim to improve inclusiveness, simplify process.

BY HANA KRUEGER

NEWS INTERPRETER

SGA hosted a panel of representatives from the Center for International Engagement, Student Financial Services and the Study Abroad Office on Tuesday to discuss the recent changes in Trinity’s study abroad policies.

Recent changes include a revamped financial aid system, creating new and expanding current programs and incorporating study abroad into the Pathways curriculum.

“One of the things we had heard quite a bit was that the previous process was confusing,” said Glendi Gaddis, assistant vice president of Student Financial Services. “Students and families were working with the program providers, but their aid was at Trinity and we had to send part of it to Trinity. It then had to be routed through the university and it was just confusing. We wanted to simplify that.”

A common problem with the previous financial aid system was that students weren’t being charged tuition and fees in the state of Texas. This system rendered the 70 percent of

Petition continued from page 1 Aly Lilley ‘09, assistant volleyball coach, was contacted by an Athlete Ally representative who asked her to sign and send it to other Trinity athletes.

“Even though Trinity wouldn’t be [affected by] the SB6 bill, because it’s a private institution … I really feel like [Trinity is] a university that really tries to welcome and accept people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, religions and races,” Lilley said.

Lilley is the adviser to the student-athlete advisory committee (SAAC), a group of representatives from Trinity’s athletic teams that works to improve the student-athlete

students attending Trinity from Texas unable to receive in-state funding.

“The state of Texas, the funding they have available for students or that we can award to students can only be used if you are actually being charged tuition here in the state of Texas,” Gaddis said. “So when a student would go on a study abroad program, just by virtue of the way our system was set up, because they weren’t actually being charged tuition here at Trinity for that semester they went abroad, we couldn’t give them any state funding.”

“Another area this affected was any students who were receiving Veteran’s Administration benefits. Those dollars could not be facilitated for students who were not being charged tuition here,” Gaddis said. “This new model opens up all of those funding opportunities.

We talked about us wanting to make it accessible. By moving to this model, it helps us do that.”

The new financial aid process is based on a program many other schools are implementing, called the Home School Tuition Model.

“You pay Trinity tuition, room and board and then we go to the companies or the universities we work with abroad and we pay them directly,” said Katsuo Nishikawa, director for the Center for International Engagement and associate professor of political science at Trinity. “When you go abroad, it will be financially the same as if you were coming to Trinity; you’ll pay the same amount for the

same things.”

The only cost not guaranteed to be covered is the price of airfare.

“Some of the faculty-led programs have airfare included and others do not,” said Nancy Ericksen, assistant director for the Study Abroad Office. “We have been working with a travel company that specializes in student travel and will let you buy the ticket when the best price is out there and you can pay it off as long as it is paid off completely two weeks before your flight.”

Under Trinity’s former financial aid plan, lack of financial assistance in the summer was a concern for students.

“One of the issues that we had previously when we started this, was that the way we funded study abroad limited what we could do,” Nishikawa said. “There was no funding for summer study abroad under the previous model.”

The new model supports all programs and seeks to expand beyond the 159 currently offered at Trinity.

“We want to create and are in the process of creating Trinity programs that are going to be both during the summer, in the middle of the semester and semester-long,” Nishikawa said.

“Over the summer we are going to do some exercises with other faculty and start figuring out what are the best places that we can develop programs — what’s the best use of our resources so that, one: students are prepared in the way we think they should be, and two:

they’re going to places they’re invested in.”

Another change for students seeking to go abroad is the incorporation of study abroad experiences into the recently implemented Pathways curriculum.

“We want to have programs that are tied to the Trinity Pathways curriculum,” Nishikawa said. “Imagine, for example, a cluster that takes you abroad, or a First Year Experience that you’re taking for a year on campus. We want to launch a pilot where we take the students for eight days to Mexico City during fall break as part of the ‘Inventing Mexico’ course.”

The recent changes, while geared toward Pathways, also can include students under the Common Curriculum plan.

The combination of changes to financial aid and expanding Trinity-led programs is part of a plan to have a more inclusive and meaningful study abroad environment.

“There can’t be a type of experience that is behind a velvet rope where if you can pay, you’re welcomed in, but if you can’t, you stay here on campus. The previous model incentivized students to find the cheapest program possible and not the best academic fit for them. We don’t want you to think about price. We want you to think about what’s the best experience for you, where are you going to get the most out of your time abroad,” Nishikawa said.

For more information, the panel advises starting at Trinity’s “Study Abroad” webpage to schedule a First Steps Presentation.

experience on campus. Callum Squires, senior striker for the men’s soccer team and president of SAAC, also signed the letter.

“We as a committee have strived to make the athletic realm as accessible for student athletes of all gender identities [as possible]. … The more we can cultivate a positive culture on our campus, the better,” Squires said.

Jacob Tingle ‘95, director of experiential learning and sport management chair, offered his own criticism of SB6.

“It indicates, to me, that it’s part of a broader initiative to roll back hard-earned rights for Texas citizens,” Tingle said. Clearly there’s a concerted national effort that whoever is funding these kinds of initiatives has a clear agenda, and it’s not to protect people in bathrooms, or whatever this bill is ostensibly

about. Rolling back equal marriage rights, potentially allowing for discrimination in education and healthcare settings and other human services sector….”

Tingle noted that San Antonio updated its non-discrimination ordinance in 2013 to include new protected classes concerning gender identity, sexual orientation and veteran status.

“For a group of people who talk a whole lot about local control and local rights, it’s just ironic to me that they want to roll back and take away local control for an issue that they find, for whatever reasons, problematic or worrisome,” Tingle said.

Tingle detailed the economic harm that passing SB6 could bring to San Antonio, though he laments the necessity of relating the issue to economics. The concern is that

professional sports associations will refrain from bringing business to Texas cities if the bill is passed, just as North Carolina’s own bathroom bill led the NCAA to move the 2017 championship tournament elsewhere.

“Equal rights is what we should all be about, but I also know that some people are moved by more base-level needs,” Tingle said. “The projected impact of the 2018 Men’s Final Four is a $135 million to the city of San Antonio.

Over the course of that week, 71 thousand out-of-town, mostly out-of-state visitors to the city spending money in our hotels, in our restaurants — that’s a ton of money and a ton of exposure to the city of San Antonio and, as a result, to the state of Texas. … If that’s the thing that impacts someone’s decision when he or she is at the state house, voting, then we absolutely have to push that number.”

Opinion

...

COMMENTARY Have an opinion? Want others to hear it? For a chance to be featured as a guest columnist, please submit your article to trinitonian@trinity.edu by Monday night to be in Thursday’s issue of the paper.

What tangled, partisan knots we tie In light of increasing political polarization, facts may not be enough : understand others before debate Regardless of whether one views modern American society as a shameful proto-fascist era or a long-awaited return to our founding greatness, the one thing we all seem to be able to agree upon is the unfortunate reality that compromise, consensus and common ground are harder to come SARAH HALEY OPINION COLUMNIST across. We can agree that it is tough to find agreement.

This perceived intensified political polarization, it turns out, is not simply a construction of the mind or a convenient excuse for the times. Interdisciplinary research in PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), statistically modeled partisanship in the U.S. House of Representatives by analyzing roll call votes. The findings of the paper, titled “The Rise of Partisanship and SuperCooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives,” confirm our layman observations: political partisanship in this decade is the most extreme it has been in over 50 years, and it appears to be worsening at an increasing rate. The statistical analysis of roll call votes also revealed a positive correlation between partisanship and a failure to pass legislation. This makes intuitive sense, as compromise has been central to passing legislation throughout U.S. history.

This study and its findings are not unique. Pew Research Center political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal go as far as to claim that polarization in Congress is now the worst it has been since the end of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction ended in the 1870s.

A whole host of research across disciplines reveals similar conclusions. Americans are segregating themselves politically and it is bringing the operations of our democracy to a grinding halt. At this point hopefully most of us can accept this reality. It’s not fake news. Without needing to necessarily argue about the causes, I hope we can all say this: we have a problem.

While investigating the causes of this polarization is essential to understanding how we got here, I don’t actually think attempting to attribute fault in daily conversation brings us any closer to a solution. What I do think is that we each have a responsibility to desegregate ourselves politically and re-engage in the civil discourse we have largely disengaged from.

Often advice for effectively fostering civil discourse emphasizes the importance of havings facts-based viewpoints and arguments. On March 23 of this year, Trinity’s own partisan organizations, Tigers for Liberty (TFL) and Trinity Progressives (TProg), co-hosted Political Discourse 101, a dialogue on how to foster “civil discussions in the age of political partisanship.” The session began with six tips to help attendees have constructive conversations presented by TFL’s Jonah Wendt and TProg’s Maddie Kennedy. The first was “Know your facts.”

Yet there’s substantial evidence that facts are not effective at persuading individuals to change their beliefs. Research from political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at the University of Michigan casts the “know your facts” approach in a particularly grim light. They found that facts were failing to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. Worse yet, facts refuting misinformed beliefs often functioned to make people within the group more certain their misinformed beliefs were correct. This phenomenon is known as the Backfire Effect. As it turns out, the Backfire Effect is especially potent when it comes to shaping beliefs on highly partisan issues, like immigration or gun control. Political scientist Emily Thorson of Boston College has arrived at similar findings: exposure to negative political information about a candidate continues to shape individuals’ attitudes about that candidate even after the information has been discredited, even when the misinformation is immediately discredited. She calls these effects “belief echoes.” It’s concerning that things we might think are effective methods of correcting ignorance or misinformation, like fact-checking, might actually have the opposite effect.

Well-meaning “know your facts” civil dialogue might

actually increase polarization. Holy threat-to-a-healthyfunctioning-democracy, Batman.

I’ve devised an analogy drawing from my childhood time spent learning and studying knots at summer camp to try and visualize how this might be happening. Imagine someone’s belief system, everything from their favorite flavor of ice cream to their perspective on Obama’s birthplace, as a knot tied in rope. For some this knot is tied loosely. Imagine that this type of belief system is open to change — being untied and re-tied in a new way. For some, this knot is multiple knots on top of one another, held rigid for decades. Imagine that this type of belief system is resistant to change — it’s hard to untie in the first place, much less retie it due to the kinks from being held in place for so long. For some, their knot is somewhere in between.

If you know anything about knots, you realize that in order to untie them you need to first examine the knot.

Identify what type it is and if it’s unfamiliar to you, take time to observe its loops and twists before pulling on it.

Find the parts of it that are familiar to you, and start there.

Beginning by wildly yanking on it with no respect for its present form will often result in the opposite effect: the knot will become tighter, harder to change. Perhaps it is the case that hurling facts that fly in the face of someone’s entire world view equates to this willy-nilly rope yanking. In attempting to change someone’s belief system, you’ve simply solidified it more by failing to first understand it, by failing to find common ground first and work outwards from there.

To a certain extent, I believe this is part of our nationwide problem. Instead of taking the time to deeply listen to one another and understand both what we believe and why we believe it, we jump straight to trying to change each other’s minds. The result? We come away from it more sure that we’ll never agree. All we’ve done is tighten each other’s opposing belief system, lessening our chances at compromise. Whether you accomplish this by trying to “know your facts” rather than implement more well-rounded persuasive tools or by being too tightly tied yourself, you’re contributing to the problem. We all are.

Here’s part of my knot: undoing the heightened polarization of contemporary American political discourse

graphic by TYLER HERRON

begins with taking the time to accurately understand one another’s beliefs. This is why I attended Milo Yiannopoulos and sat through the whole thing. This is why I attended Dinesh D’Souza and sat through the whole thing. I am trying to spend the time and listen so that I can understand the particular ways in which these conservative thinkers are tying up the knots of the people around me. Before I can convince my neighbor that immigrants aren’t all criminals, I need to understand what arguments have persuaded them into that belief.

This is why I support Trinity in allowing for conservative speakers, however controversial and non-intellectual in the traditional sense they may be. There is education to be had in even witnessing arguments that seem to be based in a reality separate from your own. How can we expect to “resist” the far-right agenda if we don’t understand the methods in which it is motivated and propagated? Even if those methods frustrate you, anger you or upset you, it is your duty as an informed citizen of this democracy to do your best to understand them so you may do your best to change them through civil dialogue and lawful political action.

So what can you do? Moving forward, research and knots aside, I offer three suggestions. First, become aware of your belief system as not universally default. Second, routinely expose yourself to opposing belief systems. Third, be aware that facts are not always the ultimate tools of persuasion (i.e. finding common ground and making someone feel heard matter too). While we live in intensely divided times, it is not inevitable that we continue on this path indefinitely.

The route back to a compromising Congress and a healthy civil discourse is possible, but we must recognize it requires virtually all of us to make significant changes in the ways we engage and don’t engage with one another as well as the ways in which we consume and disseminate information. I can’t promise that it’s going to be comfortable or easy, but I wholeheartedly believe it’s absolutely necessary.

Sarah Haley is a senior theoretical economics and environmental policy double major with a minor in mathematics.

OPINION • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

7

False propositions Look out for lipids

BY DAVID RANDO

FACULTY CONTRIBUTOR The philosopher Ernst Bloch writes that some false propositions “are not totally finished with regard to the truth.” This strange formulation insists that factually untrue philosophical propositions are not doomed to remain untrue forever. He gives the example of Socrates’ proposition that nobody voluntarily does wrong. This, of course, is wildly untrue. Last summer someone stole my identity, and I’m sure the thief knew it was wrong to buy all those iPads on the Sam’s Club credit card fraudulently opened in my name. But Socrates tries to make this point: lack of virtue comes from ignorance, but because virtue comes from knowledge, it can be taught and acquired. If one acquires virtue, one would not voluntarily (i.e. knowingly) do wrong. How sanguine should this make us about the future?

Good progressive ideas have a certain staying power and are capable of changing the basic terms with which we understand ourselves.

The way we respond to the idea that false propositions might have business with the truth in the future has a lot to do with how we view human nature. If human nature is static, universal virtue seems beyond us. An English professor’s social security number will always be too great a temptation for some potential malefactors to resist exploiting it.

But what if, like Bloch, we were to imagine that human nature is not yet determined, that humans are still living in prehistory?

What if human nature is still totally up for grabs? This view sees the future as open to possibility.

Some things argue in favor of this counterintuitive view. The Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” As with Socrates’ proposition, counterfactual examples abound. When Thomas Jefferson wrote this famous phrase, slavery, patriarchy and class hierarchy belied its truth. Contemporary forms of discrimination show that we still do not all believe that everyone deserves equal treatment and opportunity. If human nature is fixed, we must conclude that it is our nature to enslave, discriminate against or subordinate the less powerful.

But I think this discounts the transformative power of a good progressive idea. The changes that progressive ideas can provoke give some respectability to the view that human nature is still up for grabs. American history (or prehistory) has substantially made the Declaration of Independence’s proposition incrementally more, if still imperfectly, true. I believe that ideas can change human nature and that progressive ideas can improve it.

I’m not so optimistic as to say that the right ideas will necessarily change us.

Progress is tenuous — wars and other

catastrophes can destroy it, bad ideas can roll it back — but good progressive ideas are also more tenacious than we sometimes think. In daily politics, progressive ideas seem fragile, and when it comes to everyday human experience and quality of life, they are. However, progressive ideas also spread on a longer timeline. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said, “I may not get there with you.” In fact, none of us may be there when it happens, but this is merely the cruelty that comes from the slow advancement of progressive ideas relative to the brevity of individual lives.

It ought to provoke sobriety and resolve rather than despair.

Take vegetarianism. Last semester there was debate in these pages about whether or not we should be vegetarians or vegans.

We might look at history (or pre-history) and conclude that it is natural to eat nonhuman animals. But it took until the 19th and 20th centuries for the modern idea of vegetarianism to emerge in the west. It is still a relatively infant idea, and it was hardly inevitable that the concept would ever have emerged as it has. Now that it has caught on with many people, for varied reasons (health, ethics, religious discipline and so on), it puts pressure on the idea that people naturally eat animals or that we can justifiably continue to view animals as instrumental means to human ends.

The next thing we have to think about is possibility. Bloch insists that our picture of reality is incomplete if it excludes anything that could conceivably happen, however unlikely. It may have been unlikely that slavery would have been abolished, or that women would achieve many (but not yet all) forms of equality, or that all Americans would enjoy marriage equality. Yet these things were perfectly possible and they did happen.

So let’s continue our thought experiment about vegetarianism and animal equality. It might be unlikely, but it is perfectly possible that humans will stop killing animals and begin to view the value of animal life as equal in worth and dignity to human life.

It is possible that in 200 years, as we now regard the barbarities of slavery, humans will look back at meat-eaters as barbarians, and they might understand factory farming as institutionalized murder on an almost inconceivable scale. Because this is perfectly possible, we must recognize that this real possibility is part of our current reality.

Such recognition generates the wish images that give life to our hopes and struggles.

Things get nudged ahead or retarded by executive orders in the short term, but good progressive ideas have a certain staying power and are capable of changing the basic terms with which we understand ourselves. Outcomes are never assured, so people continue to fight, protest and resist, but currently false propositions sometimes have dates with truth in the future. We should also recognize that many of our existing progressive ideas are imperfect, and that this might be part of their relative failure to date. We need to look forward to the new and better progressive ideas yet to be discovered in the work of future artists, philosophers, scientists and others. If the right ideas can change human nature for the better, then openness to progressive ideas may be a step toward Socratic virtue and may simultaneously make Socrates more truthful than he is today.

David Rando is an associate professor in the English department.

BY ROBERT BLYSTONE

FACULTY CONTRIBUTOR

PCSK9 inhibitor is the new molecule in town. Why should anyone want to remember PCSK9, much less an inhibitor of PCSK9? The answer begins with cardiovascular disease and statins.

One out of three Americans die of cardiovascular disease. A major contributor to these deaths is the accumulation of lipids in coronary blood vessels. Central to this accumulation is the presence of cholesterol. The medical paradigm is by lowering cholesterol in the blood, there will be less accumulation of lipids along key blood vessels and said lowering leads to a decreased incidence of cardiovascular disease. For more than 20 years, the principal medicine used to lower the production of cholesterol in the body was some form of a statin.

In 1971, the Japanese biochemist Akira Endo discovered that the fungus Penicillium could interfere with the cholesterol synthesis molecule HMGCoA reductase. With additional research, several forms of statins were developed: atorvastatin (Lipitor), lovastatin (Mevacor), rosuvastatin (Crestor) and simvastatin (Zocor). Today, more than 20 million Americans take daily an oral dose of one of the statins (about ten percent of the adult population). It is estimated that 56 million Americans over the age of 40 would benefit from the interruption of their cholesterol synthesis. In the first decade of this century, nearly 20 billion dollars a year were spent on statins in the United States.

One estimate is the cost of a PCSK9 inhibitor to the healthcare system of the United States is potentiall five percent of all healthcare costs per year.

Fast forward 30 years. Nabil Seidah in Canada, Catherine Boileau in France and Helen Hobbs and Jonathan Cohen at UT-Southwestern in Texas had research that all came together involving ultimately a molecule known as Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, or more simply, PCSK9. Now things get interesting.

The earth is a water-based planet.

Human body chemistry is water-based; yet, we have lipids. Lipids require special transport within the watery environment of the body. Lipoproteins accomplish this task. One of the five major categories of lipoproteins is LDL (lowdensity lipoprotein). LDL can combine with cholesterol, triglycerides, fats and phospholipids. The LDL-cholesterol transport system can do something undesirable; it can glob fats onto artery walls over time leading to atherosclerosis.

This possible action leads to the term “bad cholesterol.”

Fortunately, the hepatocytes of the liver

have LDL receptor proteins that can pull the LDL-cholesterol particles out of the body fluids and reduce the levels.

Unfortunately, some people have a gene mutation known as hypercholesterolemia where the LDL receptor is compromised.

The LDL-cholesterol levels go up and coronary arteries become blocked, and heart attacks at age 40 can result.

Hidden inside this bad-cholesterol story is PCSK9. PCSK9 can bind to LDL receptors. If too much PCSK9 is made and too few LDL receptors work, too much LDL-cholesterol accumulates.

This sad story is what pharmaceutical opportunities are made of.

How can PCSK9 be blocked? The gene for it has been found on human chromosome one. The gene could be silenced, but that is tricky stuff to do.

Or the protein itself could be tied up.

Why not make an antibody to it? Enter PCSK9 inhibitor.

Pfizer Pharmaceutical developed a candidate known as bococizumab.

However, after spending a couple of billion dollars on research and development, they pulled the drug from further development in November 2016 because over time antidrug antibodies developed. Regeneron Pharmaceutical of New York and Sanofi of Paris developed a monoclonal candidate called alirocumab (brand name Praluent). This drug does not have the antidrug antibody problem and was approved by the FDA in July 2015 for hypercholesterolemia use.

A second drug known as evolocumab (brand name Repatha) developed by Amgen of California was approved by the FDA in the same month for the same purpose (hypercholesterolemia). There is a vital piece of information not yet mentioned. Whereas a statin is taken as a daily oral pill, a PCSK9 inhibitor is taken as an injection every two weeks.

Now is the time for the prelaw types and the business majors to perk up.

Neither Praluent or Repatha are currently authorized as general replacements for statins. The large population clinical tests (level three) are still ongoing. Last year two key patents were approved for Repatha, and Praluent was found infringing on those patents. In January, an injunction was granted to Repatha for Praluent to be removed from the market.

Praluent has stayed the injunction for appeal. Why the fuss? Money.

A month’s supply of generic Lipitor (statin) is about $36.00. A month’s supply of Repatha (PCSK9 inhibitor) is about $1,200. Even when Lipitor was still under patent protection, the monthly cost was less than $300. What is an insurance company to do? Assume that the annual cost for a PCSK9 inhibitor is $14,000 and 20 million people use the product. The cash flow is well over $200 billion a year. One estimate is that the cost of a PCSK9 inhibitor to the healthcare system of the United States is potentially five percent of ALL healthcare costs per year. Well, pardner, there is a new molecule in town.

Oh, by the way, have you heard of inclisiran? It uses RNA interference technology to inhibit the synthesis of PCSK9. It is in clinical stage two trials and it goes right at the DNA with an injection every six months. Eat your vegetables and skip the chips and pizza.

Robert Blystone is a professor in the biology department.

8

Talk politics

TYLER BOELTS

judged me without getting to know me first. So I decided to practice what I was preaching, and do my absolute best to get to know those who didn’t align with me politically.

There are students on this campus who I would have passed off as ignorant and insignificant, purely because they voted a certain way.

In doing so I was adding to the hostility of the campus.

Now, Trinity isn’t full of angry, hostile people who refuse to acknowledge another presence. But I don’t think we have all been doing everything we can to understand one another. To my Democratic friends — it’s time for us to start working towards the values we talk about. Equality is not exclusive to the LGBTQ community, or for women or for the ostracized muslim communities in the United States.

Equality is literally for everyone.

We can be better, we have to be better, we have to stand strong for what we believe in but also display kindness and do our best to understand without immediately judging. Discrimination is said to be the “unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things.” If we don’t take the time to at least try and understand those who voted for Trump or do not align with us, how can we expect the same? To my Republican friends: please understand that this is a time when all of us have to work on this together. “Winning” an election does not mean that it will all be cake and ice cream. At times it is more difficult to be the winner. But a willingness to hear out differing opinions, and actively engage in open and honest discussions can make all the difference.

While I understand this may seem like a bunch of crazy B.S. coming from a political science student, know that the only thing we can do to mend what is going on is arguably the hardest thing to do. Which is to listen, and try to understand without immediately giving up on our peers. We must learn to listen, and listen to learn.

GUEST COLUMNIST So I suppose there are some ruffled feathers coming my way by writing this. But I would like to take a moment to discuss the election. I know, I know. Literally everybody hates that one guy who can’t get over it. Donald Trump did win the election. The democratic system works (although the argument could be made that more of us should have voted, but whatever).

I want to take a second of your day and talk just a little bit about your friends who did vote or who worked on a political campaign.

I think it is safe to assume that there are some readers here who voted for Donald, and some voted for Hillary. Both were polarizing, and many of us didn’t like either of them. There were plenty of Rubio and Bernie fans out there.

So how do we tackle this? How do we move forward as a campus? I mean, is Trinity really going to be one of those places where we don’t tell others who we voted for? To be honest that just kind of seems like a load of shit. If ever there were a time to engage in a conversation about beliefs and understandings, it would be now.

Now I come from a liberal bubble known as Boulder. Many of you may know it as the place where 4/20 takes place publicly all throughout the University of Colorado campus and downtown Boulder. I know it as the home where I cultivated my political understandings about life.

So coming down here to Texas, there was a pretty big shock. I mean there are people here who own guns ... I had never met anybody who owned a gun before coming to school here. But before you start to pass judgment on me about being a delicate little flower who doesn’t eat meat and only practices yoga, hear me out. (Also, I do eat meat and yoga actually isn’t all that bad.)

In the wake of the election, I felt confused, scared, uncomfortable and unsure about where to go.

What the hell was I supposed to do? How do I begin to understand those who voted for Trump? Well, I didn’t. And I realized that I was no better than the next person who

Tyler Boelts is a senior politicial science major with a minor in human communication.

WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • MARCH 31, 2017 •

Get into the ring of things

graphic by TYLER HERRON

The great lyricist Beyoncé Knowles once said, “If you liked it, then you ALEXANDRA URI shoulda put GUEST COLUMNIST a ring on it.” I agree with Beyoncé on most things, but especially on her thoughts on rings. If you liked your time at Trinity and want a class ring and can afford it, then by all means, go for it.

One of the main reasons I decided to get a class ring was because I’ve actually really enjoyed my time at Trinity. The university has provided me with so many wonderful experiences and friendships. Through Greek life, classes and the Trinitonian I have met and worked with so many wonderful people.

To me, getting a class ring is a physical way to keep those memories with me. Not only does it signify reaching a milestone of credit hours, it signifies the hours I’ve put into things I’m passionate outside of class. Instead of taking a trinket from my time as a Chi Beta, my time working for the Trinitonian, my time studying abroad in The Hague and Cuba and the conversations I’ve had with my professors and classmates, I decided to just get a class ring. I know that whenever I look at it I’ll be able to think about my time at Trinity.

I understand that a class ring isn’t for everyone. However, for me it’s a way to take Trinity, and all that it means to me, with me no matter where I go.

Alexandra Uri is a junior political science major with a minor in philosophy.

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I left my high school without a class ring, and I’m going to graduate in May JEFFREY SULLIVAN w i t h o u t GUEST COLUMNIST one from Tr i n i t y .

The idea of encapsulating four years of experience and character formation in, at the cheapest, a Balfour Premium Silver metal band is compelling without being convincing. I know some students who accept class rings because of the pride they have in their university and the energy they invested into it. Putting effort into course work, extracurriculars, sports teams or research all increase the glimmer of Trinity’s luster. Moreover, a collection of valuable memories are made from those sorts of contributions.

I cherish trinkets I’ve picked up throughout my time as a Trinity student. Most of mine are sitting on the bookshelf I have in my bedroom. One is a framed picture I received after working with Dr. Peter O’Brien and a group of visiting German fulbright students. Some others are tickets, museum brochures and other scraps of paper I collected studying abroad in Strasbourg. Most of those get turned into bookmarks.

Each scattered item has a glimpse of a memory whose nuance I may not remember without them.

I don’t think a glitzy ring would bring back any fond memories or worthwhile nostalgia. The process of buying a ring is simple.

Should I ever want one, at this point, I can find one in Balfour’s online catalogue. It would take a few minutes to order, a few days for shipping and a lifetime to lay around to remind me of the time that I went shopping. Or when my parents did.

Jeffrey Sullivan is a senior political science major with a minor in English.

OPINION • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM w

9

EDITORIAL

Welcome, parents Welcome, parents! We are glad to have you here for spring family weekend. It seems a bit odd to be showing our families around our home and introducing you to our closest friends — and realizing that the two groups of people we are closest with have never met each other.

Our staff came to this realization earlier in the week; we know so much about each other — favorite music, most embarrassing moments, class schedules and first kisses — yet the only thing we know about each other’s parents is what we see in Facebook comments and hear about in stories. Nonetheless, our families still play a huge role in our lives, even from miles away. We won’t lie, we enjoyed breaking most, if not all, of our high school rules as soon as your cars were out of sight on move-in day.

But rest assured, your years of teaching, shaping and leading us were not for loss; even though we don’t see you every day, the lessons you taught us still surround our campus through everyday life.

We remember that we should be eating our vegetables. We remember that we should say “please” and “thank you.” We even remember to do our homework before the deadline (or at least we think about it). Even if your Trinity student doesn’t call you every weekend like they promised, know that everything you taught us still guides our decisions.

Spring Family Weekend gives us a

chance to experience the best of both worlds; to demonstrate our appreciation for those who raised us, as well as demonstrate our newfound, stillforming adult identities, the ones we came here to create for ourselves in the first place. While you, as parents, might still see the small child you first dropped off on move-in day, we ask you to look further. We may not be finished growing, but we’re proud of how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time. Some of us have just learned how to do laundry without staining our clothes pink, and others have landed their first full-time job. Some of this may come as a shock — after all, we all have a tendency to regress a bit when we head home for the breaks.

But keep your eyes peeled on campus, and you’ll see us trying our best to make that transition from young adulthood to actual, unadulterated adulthood.

Alexandra Uri, our very own managing editor, wants to share her gratitude to her parents for teaching her to always speak her mind, especially on Facebook.

If you know her dad, you know he really believes in letting his opinions be known.

Julia Elmore, the editor-in-chief of our paper, is grateful for her parents for inspiring her to appreciate every opportunity she’s been given, and to work hard to at everything she does.

Where is the line?

If one pays any attention to the news emanating constantly from Washington D.C., it may have become a bit confusing and overwhelming in the past week. At least ALEX PERKOWSKI GUEST COLUMNIST for me, someone who tries to stay reasonably informed, it has taken a large amount of effort to understand the basic facts of the situation.

One may have noticed that Donald Trump’s approval rating has sunk even lower, hovering now at around 36 percent. One may have also noticed the complete failure that was the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Turns out the party of “No” cannot quite figure out how to become the party of “Yes, if.” Finally, Democrats of all sorts are calling on Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to recuse himself from any investigations regarding White House ties to Russia. Now if you read any of that and still think, “Things are going fine for Donald Trump,” maybe you should reconsider.

Thirty-six percent is no joke. But it displays something. There is a base to Donald Trump, and that base has been reached and developed.

Despite the 36 percent applying to the country as a whole, Donald Trump’s approval rating among Republicans remains around 80 percent. That is a large difference. So at what point do Republicans throw Trump under the bus to make amends with their constituents?

We know that many elections in competitive districts rely on the swing voters, who change their vote based on real indicators and ability, and not so much on partisan allegiance.

And we have seen some Republicans begin

to buck the trend of paying homage to the Freedom Caucus (which does not publish its membership), and move closer to center.

Ted Poe in Texas is one such figure. Other members, including San Antonio’s west side’s Will Hurd, is another who has to toe the line between right of center and center. And we are seeing more and more Republicans from states Hillary Clinton won, such as Virginia and Washington, distance themselves from Trump.

Republicans seem to be having a governing problem. The one main agenda item they had from the past seven years, the repeal and/ or replacement of Obamacare, has failed dramatically. Many thought that the fight would take place in the Senate, but the measure failed to even come to a vote in the House of Representatives. That is not a good look for anyone, but especially not for Donald Trump, who blamed House Democrats for the failure.

The party of “No” has finally caught the car, and the car is still moving. Republicans have the votes, they have the majority in both chambers of Congress, yet they are still unable to pass any major legislation. The next fight seems to be tax reform, but with such a clear division present in the Republican party, with members who have to seek reelection and a seemingly ineffectual Speaker of the House, it remains to be seen whether or not it will pass.

It remains to be seen when the levee will burst, or if it will burst at all. But if it does, there will be a lot of cleanup to be done. And Donald Trump does not seem like a great fit for rebuilding, however much he may talk about his business.

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Alex Perkowski is a junior political science major.

Pulse

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Students with parent professors lecture on going to school with family members Having a parent who also teaches at the university their child attends has been beneficial for many

BY CLAIRE NAKAYAMA

PULSE REPORTER

TOP: ASMARA LEHRMANN and DANIEL LEHRMANN point out an intriguing piece of foundation they discovered while exploring and studying a nearby environment.

BOTTOM: WILLIAM BURKE, center, poses with his wife and son, MATTHEW BURKE, after a church service; the father and son enjoy getting to spend time with each other off campus as much as possible. photos provided by ASMARA LEHRMANN and WILLIAM BURKE

For some, the thought of running into your parents on campus may be frightening; they could hear about your activities from the weekend before, or maybe check up on your grades more frequently than you’d prefer. This is a foreign concept, however, for students whose parents work at Trinity.

The two daughters of Daniel Lehrmann, Pyron professor of geology, currently attend Trinity and believe that having their father be so easily accessible is an advantage to their education.

“I don’t actually see my dad unless I am actively seeking him out for something, but it’s kind of nice to have him here because if I need anything from home, he can bring me whatever I need,” said Dinda Lehrmann, a first-year art and psychology double major. “It’s especially nice because this is my first year in college and I get homesick sometimes, but I always know that I have support if I need it.”

Asmara Lehrmann, a sophomore geology major, has had a different experience interacting with her father at Trinity, as he is a professor in the department of her major.

“My dad and I are really close so he can give me advice about anything in my field or also in life,” Asmara Lehrmann said.

Asmara is also planning on getting closer with her father and learning more about her major by taking one of her father’s geology classes in the upcoming fall semester.

“I am excited to take his paleontology class next semester. I think it is always really cool to see a parent on the job, doing what they are passionate about,” Asmara Lehrmann said. “I am excited to not only learn all about fossils but to also get a new kind of mentorship experience with my dad.”

Annelise DeJong, who graduated in 2016 with degrees in urban studies and business analytics and technology, enjoyed the advantages of having an extra place to visit during stressful times.

“My freshman year was actually really hard for me, so having my dad there in his office all day long was just like having a place that I could go to for comfort. College was the first time where we spent a lot of time with each other, and we got to

know each other as friends rather than just a father and a daughter,” Annelise DeJong said.

Her father is James DeJong, who taught Spanish and French courses at Trinity. His daughter had even taken the opportunity to enroll in one of his classes during his ten-year teaching period.

“My father was literally my very first professor on the first day of school of my freshman year, right at 10:30 a.m. How crazy is that?”

Annelise DeJong said.

Other students have avoided taking classes taught by their parents, but still enjoy the opportunity to see them on campus.

“I would prefer not to take one of my dad’s business law classes, but it’s still nice having him around on campus,” said Matthew Burke, a junior biology major.

William Burke, associate professor of business administration, is still close with his son, despite a pursuit of different interests.

“Me and my dad are best friends, so whenever I walk by it’s like I’m just seeing my homie in the hallway,” Matthew Burke said.

Despite some misconceptions, students whose parents teach while they attend Trinity believe they’re still getting the best experience and education possible.

“Sometimes I worry that other students think I get perks that I do not deserve, but I think my peers know that I work very hard for my accomplishments,” Asmara Lehrmann said.

Matthew Burke, whose father has been teaching at Trinity for most of his life, has enjoyed seeing how the university has changed and improved over the years by visiting his dad and two older brothers, who also attended Trinity.

I got to experience Trinity before all the new buildings were built and it was not nearly as extravagant as it is now. I’ve been able to see and visit Trinity for 20 years of my life, it has been really cool to see how it has changed,” said Matthew Burke.

Annelise DeJoung got the chance to work alongside her father while she attended Trinity, as she previously worked in the foreign languages department. While this opporunity, in addition to taking one of her dad’s classes, allowed her to see her dad in action, she’s been directly exposed to her father’s teaching before.

“My dad is also a pastor, so I always heard him preaching with such conviction. Since he was my pastor growing up, I’ve always been taught by my dad,” Annelise DeJoung said.

Even if their parents teach classes that may not appeal to them, students have found comfort in knowing that members of their family are close and accesible while they pursue their education.

PULSE • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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New editorial staff of Trinitonian and Mirage are hired for the 2017-2018 year The publications will be directed by both students who are new to positions and returning to their roles EMILY ELLIOTT PULSE EDITOR

Every week, two groups of students gather to produce pages, edit photos and conduct interviews to include in the Mirage, Trinity’s official yearbook, and the Trinitonian, the student-run newspaper. Recently, the Campus Board of Publications hired students to lead these groups by filling the positions of editorin-chief and managing editor for the Mirage and the Trinitonian. Some of these chosen applicants have already held their position.

“This is my third year serving as a Mirage editor, and I’m excited to return to the position,” said Shelby DeVore, a junior communication major and editor-in-chief of the Mirage for the upcoming school year.

Despite having experience as one of the Mirage editors, DeVore is looking forward to improving the yearbook with her new managing editor.

“I’m most excited to work with Jenna Flexner; she has a lot of talent and experience in design, so she’ll bring a fresh perspective to the yearbook,” DeVore said.

Jenna Flexner, a first-year mathematical finance and accounting double major and rising Mirage managing editor, is excited for the chance to express her creativity.

“As a STEM major I don’t really have the opportunity to be creative in any of my course work, so getting to just sit down and design pages is extremely relaxing,” Flexner said.

“When I came to Trinity and realized I could get paid for what I had always considered a hobby, it was like a dream come true. I have never been happier to work in my entire life.”

Flexner has already begun considering various ways to improve the yearbook next year.

“We are also changing up the positions this year and trying to hire more writers, who are exclusively writers, for stronger copy. I believe this is going to have a great impact on the publication as a whole. We’ve found that students are usually primarily only interested in writing or designing, so by allowing them to only take on one job, a happier, more dedicated, staff will be created and a happier staff equals a better publication,” Flexner said.

While the Mirage staff doesn’t regularly work with the Trinitonian staff, the chance to learn from the other publication is an opportunity both editors are excited to take.

“I know that the Trinitonian editors will do a really good job continuing to uphold the standards of the Trinitonian. I’m looking forward to working with them more and learning how to improve our respective publications,” said DeVore.

Alexandra Uri, the current managing editor of the Trinitonian, will be returning in the fall to work in the same position. Uri also anticipates making changes to the paper and using the skills and thoughts of the Mirage editors to improve the Trinitonian.

“I’m really excited to be working with the other editors of Campus Publications. We have a lot of really exciting changes coming up for Trinitonian specifically. We’re working to make the Trinitonian digital-first in January and we would like to work with Mirage to improve the photo quality in both of our publications,” said Alexandra Uri, a junior political science major.

Uri will be working alongside Daniel Conrad, a junior philosophy major and rising editor-in-chief.

“This is my second year working for the newspaper and I’ve loved every minute of it so far. I’m really excited to see how we can make the Trinitonian an even more valuable aspect of campus life and have fun while we’re doing it,” Conrad said.

The Trinitonian editors will be working alongside the advertising department to continue producing their publication. Rebecca Derby, a sophomore marketing major, was recently appointed as advertising director.

“On top of working next to some of the greatest editorial staff I have ever met, I am looking forward to seeing how advertising sales can help the Trinitonian prosper into becoming a more well-known campus publication. Obviously, we want to continue towards our annual sales goal, but the journey of reaching out to potential advertisers is by far the most frustrating, fun and rewarding part of the process,” Derby said.

Derby hopes to increase the amount of advertising employees in the next year to help the Trinitonian.

“I would like to see less staff turnover. For a little while, I joked how we were turning ad sales into the waiter industry because of fast employee turnover,” Derby said.

Meanwhile, departing editors, such as Lauren Harris, senior human communication major and the current advertising director, has some advice for students approaching their new positions.

“Don’t be ashamed if you make any mistakes, that is the only way that you can grow. No one knows everything, especially when it’s right off the bat,” Harris said.

KEEP YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE.

Get on the inside of campus life. Dive deep into the campus climate and cultures that make up the day to day lives of Trinity students.

Paid positions open at the Trinitonian.

Contact trinitonian@trinity.edu for more information.

TOP: DANIEL CONRAD and ALEXANDRA URI go over applications for potential employees; students interested in applying for a position with the Trinitonian can email dconrad@trinity.edu and auri@trinity.edu BOTTOM: LAUREN HARRIS arranges for advertisements to be placed in certain pages of the upcoming issue; she meets with businesses each week to discuss adveritsing with the Trinitonian. photos taken by CLAUDIA GARCIA and MIGUEL WEBBER.

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PULSE • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Health Services addresses complaints about their services Despite accusations from students, the staff has worked to have nurses and doctors at accessible hours.

BY JULIA WEIS PULSE REPORTER Sniffles, sore throats and coughs — the sounds of spring are here. Now that the semester is winding down and students are feeling more stressed out than ever before, it becomes more and more likely they’ll be needing a trip to Health Services.

“We’re staffed by registered nurses and we have doctors four days a week. Students can walk in and see a nurse for any problem that they’re having any time we’re open,” said Jackie Bevilacqua, coordinator of Health Services.

Some students find the hours of availability to be limited, especially on the weekend.

However, Bevilacqua says their hours have to do with their most popular visiting times.

“We used to be open on Saturdays and we discovered that nobody came in. Census was really low and it just didn’t make sense to pay for a nurse to be here on Saturdays when nobody came in. Additionally, there are more urgent care locations available on Saturday than there are on Sunday.” Bevilacqua said.

While some students feel like the office’s open hours are limited, others don’t see it as a problem and value the helpfulness of staff.

“I once got pink eye, so I went in because I wasn’t sure if I needed bacterial antibiotics.

They were really helpful and told me all I needed to do in regards to cleaning it out with saline solution around four times a day,” said Galen Curtis, a first-year engineering major.

For those with recurring health issues, Health Services may not be the best place to go.

“They can only do so much for you [if you have a recurring health problem]. But they do always call and check how you are doing after an appointment, which is really sweet. It just kind of sucks when you have to pay and then they can’t really help you,” said Danielle Couch, sophomore business analytics and technology major.

Other students have found the adjustment to Health Services from a doctor at home to be somewhat tricky.

“My trips have gotten increasingly better.

The first time was really scary. I was just going to get blood drawn for cross country, but the lady couldn’t get the right vein and I actually passed out, so that was pretty bad,” said Amanda Gerlach, an undeclared first year.

“Now if I go, it’s a lot easier. And every time I’ve been there’s someone there who can help me pretty quickly.”

Although some students may have their problems with Health Services, it’s important to have a resource like them on our campus.

“I think that there’s a misconception that we aren’t real health care providers in Health Services. We have real doctors who did real medical school, internships and residencies.

They are all experienced physicians. So if you need a doctor, this is a great place to come see one. It’s very inexpensive, usually less than your co-pay if you were to use your insurance and go off campus somewhere for help,” Bevilacqua said.

Health Services is located in Myrtle McFarlin Residence Hall for easy access by students seeking medical assistance for a variety of concerns. photo by HENRY PRATT.

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“The Bald Maverick Music Festival brings indie, alternative to Tobin Center Soprano” Maverick M u s i c Festival will be held on April 7th and 8th. It’s a display of NABEEHA VIRANI alternative and indie A&E WRITER music put on for the city of San Antonio and attracts thousands of visitors each year.

This is the fifth year this festival is being held. Previous headlining acts included Gary Clark Jr., Run the Jewels and Public Enemy. In 2016, Blayne Tucker, the founder and promoter of the festival, had to make a decision to end the annual festival or continue to expand it. Tucker decided to continue it with the help and partnership of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.

The Tobin Center has been the prime spot for music in San Antonio, and this partnership has brought out its biggest headliners in this festival’s history.

On Friday, performers include Young the Giant, De La Soul, Book of Love and Generationals.

The performers for Saturday are Bastille, The Naked and Famous, Minus the Bear, Carla Morrison, Small Black and Honeyhoney.

Maverick Music Festival is known for its indie and alternative display of music, but a couple of artists in this year’s lineup aren’t categorized or self-proclaimed as indie artists. De la Soul is a hip hop group, Honeyhoney is an Americana band and Young the Giant is a rock band. However, this inclusion of other genres in a predominantly indie lineup is a way to attract people who enjoy different types of music. Indie

music itself ranges from pop to electronic to rock. This festival groups a variety of indie music, along with those that fall in the alternative genre to display a celebration of music.

Some artists in this lineup are more well-known than others, but that doesn’t mean that these artists haven’t been successful. Morrison has won two Latin Grammys and De la Soul has been nominated for five Grammys and has won one award.

Compared to other music festivals such as ACL, SXSW and Mala Luna, Maverick Music Festival is cheaper. Though there are a limited number of artists, this gives people the chance to enjoy the music that’s being performed and appreciate the lack of distractions that might be present at other festivals.

Furthermore, this festival is

one that contributes to how San Antonio is becoming a popular city for other reasons besides its history.

The musicalization of this city is prevalent with its various and successful festivals, but San Antonio also stays true to its roots, which makes this city special and attractive to visitors.

Tickets are available online and are being sold at the Tobin Center.

General admission day passes are $59 and two-day passes are $99.

VIP one-day passes are $99. Meet and greet tickets for The Naked and Famous and Book of Love are $100. Tickets to meet Carla Morrison are $75.

Maverick Music Festival will be held at La Villita Maverick Plaza.

Gates open at 5p.m. on Friday and 2p.m. on Saturday.

Food trucks and vendors are available at the site.

Music notes: department chair discusses art, education A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview professor D a v i d DYLAN WAGNER Heller.

He l l e r, A&E EDITOR a m o n g other things, is a renowned organist and head of the music department here at Trinity and kindly agreed to an interview.

In this first interview I discussed everything from the evolution of hip-hop to musical education in a college campus to his unique musical problems stemming from how much music he listens to (and plays) every day.

sitting in an office for the rest of their lives or behind a desk, but I find it interesting that law schools, for instance, love music majors because they have to think logically. So they can apply those skills they learn in a music theory class to practicing law. There’s also a strong tie between a musicians and the study of medicine for the same reason.

Frankly, from a practical standpoint, I think that being involved in music at some level creates an appreciation for the future, so that these are the individuals who will be sitting out in our audiences, going to our converts, hopefully helping to fund things like a symphony or a city-wide chorus.

What do you think the role of musical education is on a college campus like this, for students who may never pursue a major in it?

Can you tell me a little bit about the current status of music, curriculum-wise, for first-years?

Pathways, creative genius, those sorts of things? The first year of college seems like a major area where students are, maybe for the last time, exposed to music in an academic setting.

I think it plays an integral role in a liberal arts education. Even if an individual doesn’t major or minor in music or even continue on with the study of music after they leave Trinity, music does a number of things for that person.

For one thing, it’s a thinking process, a creative process, that’s correlated to an individual’s ability to discern, to use logic, to hopefully enhance their lives.

An individual doesn’t want to be

That very well could be, of course in Pathways we have a number of our courses that fit into the different components. So it isn’t actually within the first year, necessarily, but actually they can experience a course such as Music Cultures of the World, or the Foundations of Comm through

Music, a theory class, or the Intro to Music History. They’re able to take those classes at any point in their curriculum.

These are things that fit into the Pathways curriculum and are quite flexible.

Within the first year, of course, anyone who wants to major or minor is encouraged to get involved into music theory or ensembles. And remember, the ensembles are like the classes, they carry through the entire time at college.

With regard to the FYEs, there are two that are involved in music. In the one I am involved in, Creative Genius, we look specifically at the idea of genius in different facets of culture, for instance Hemingway as a writer, Beethoven as composer. Because Beethoven was clearly a genius at what he was doing at the end of the 18th, early 19th century, so it seemed like a natural inclusion for someone like Beethoven who has somewhat of a cross-cultural attraction, people have heard about him.

That was a natural choice to include him. We showcase two very popular pieces of his during the course.

I was wondering about that choice of composer. There is a reaction by a lot of people to art music, “classical music” to most people, they hear a

couple of bars of Beethoven’s 5th and choose not to listen to that type of music. How would you respond to that choice by, I would guess, most people, to not listen to art music?

You can compare music to reading literature. If all you are going to do is immerse yourself or allow yourself to read a certain type of literature, that doesn’t give you a well-rounded education.

It certainly, with regards to literature, the more you read the better your vocabulary, the better your sentence structure, the better your syntax, is. I’m a firm believer in “you are what you read.”

Well, the same is true in music.

If all you want to do is marry yourself to one specific type of music, your ears are going to be very narrow.

Sometimes I find with novice listeners that the visuals help them, they see the orchestra, they see the musicians there, they see a pianist, how they’re working at the keyboard, they are fascinated by it. It’s sort of like what we say to you with regards to a liberal arts education: broaden your horizons. While you’re in college you have a great opportunity to go to these concerts, to broaden your horizons.

I personally don’t listen to classical music all the time. continued on PAGE 16

premiers

BY JACOB ROSSITTER A&E WRITER

Be sure to set your calendars for the week of April 6 through April 13 for the showing of “The Bald Soprano”, directed by Roberto Prestigiacomo and starring Nicholas Champion, Mindy Tran, Jackson Beach, Julia Palmer, Alexander Bradley, Kerry Madden and Casey Deal. Prestigiacomo’s production is an update to the original play which premiered on May 11 of 1950. Prestigiacomo explained why putting on such a show makes particular sense today.

“The Bald Soprano is a play of the absurd,” Prestigiacomo said. “The situation you see does not make any sense.”

When Eugène Ionesco originally conceived the play following World War II, he looked out at a world which no longer made sense to him. In response, he set out to craft a play which reflected that sense of bewilderment. Prestigiacomo’s version of the play takes place in the oval office, three years into Trump’s presidency. Like it’s predecessor, this production features six characters. In the original 1950 play, the cast consisted of two sets of couples (the Smiths and the Martins), the maid, and the fire chief. The template for these characters is the same this time around, with the two couples being the Trumps (Nicholas Champion and Mindy Tran) and the Pences (Jackson Beach and Julia Palmer), with the maid and firechief characters played by Kellyanne Conway (Kerry Madden) and Sean Spicer (Alex Bradley).

“The idea [for this play] came to me when I [imagined the changes Trump] might make to the Oval Office.”

Although set in the midst of the current divisive sociopolitical atmosphere of the country, Prestigiacomo made a point to dispel any speculations that this production pushes a certain political agenda.

“We are not making fun of this presidency. We are simply using theater to show what we see,” Prestigiacomo said.

According to Prestigiacomo, one of the most exciting aspects of putting on such a play was the challenge that both he and the actors whom he is tasked with directing faced when trying to portray these characters, and to do so within the context of absurdity but without portraying some outlandish version of these characters.

“I think (the actors) really embraced this challenge,” Prestigiacomo said.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Looking for “Love” in all the right places: on Netflix

We’re all familiar with romantic comedies. It’s fun to indulge in the hopeful world of romALEJANDRO CARDONA coms, where stories are A&E WRITER simple and happy endings are guaranteed.

“Love,” the hardly-new-anymore series produced by Judd Apatow is technically a romantic comedy, but is unlike all its predecessors.

The show is an experiment in form, made possible by the fact that it is not a movie nor a conventional television show, but a Netflix show.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Many reviewers have praised “Love” as an anti rom-com, since the show seems set on rewriting almost every stereotype and narrative trope of the genre. Instead of casting a nice guy and a manic pixie dream girl, “Love” tells the story of Mickey, a cool girl with a history of impulsive and addictive behavior, and Gus, an sweet midwesterner with a penchant for neediness and codependency.

The series refuses to glamorize the characters’ lives, giving them mid-level jobs and apartments that match their means. The arc of the relationship is similarly messy, opting to let Mickey and Gus meander through a clumsy first dates and ambiguous feelings.

It’s funny, subversive, and it feels real. But Netflix’s “Love” is not a regular television show or a feature film. It is not merely subverting the rom-com: it’s reinventing the genre.

There’s an old communication axiom:“the medium is the message.”

The vehicle for a message has an impact on the message itself. In other words, if a creator tried to tell a story in movie form, the result would be vastly different from a television series. The impact is such that the rom-com is structurally distinct depending on whether it is packaged as a film or television series.

The cinematic rom-com is trope-avaganza. In a movie rom-com, lovers meet, fall in love, become estranged, and rejoin happily. The arc is neat and driven towards finality.

Romantic TV comedies struggle with telling stories centered around romantic leads. Serialization is the law of the land, which means writers have to constantly avoid absolute resolution, unlike romcom movies. Instead, we get are protracted character arcs that develop over dozens of episodes, with lots of twists and backtracking.

Where relationships are concerned, they must live in a constant state of turmoil to keep viewers guessing.

Think, for example, of “Sam and Diane” in the classic NBC sitcom “Cheers.” Sam is a blue-collar sports bar owner, and Diane is a blue-blood, overeducated barmaid.

Their will-they-won’t-they dynamic became equivalent with unresolved sexual tension, and for some, a synonym for a forced romance without a speck of believability.

Another, more recent show made the necessary withholding of romantic conclusion its entire gimmick. “How I Met Your Mother” is framed as a father telling his kids

a drawn-out story of romantic misadventures, which will conclude with how he met their mother. It is a series that understands that medium’s inability to end.

The standalone nature of movies makes rom-coms predictable and formulaic. TV’s serialization makes their version of the rom-com a noncommittal affair. Neither feature film nor sitcom, “Love” is somewhere in between, which lets writers pick from the best of both worlds.

“Love” has the decisiveness of a movie: it sets up two lovers and clearly works towards a narrative conclusion. Thanks to multi-season storytelling, it can make stops along the way, prodding subplots that lend nuance to what would otherwise be a predictable progression.

This patience allows the series to truly honor its dual-protagonist structure. “Love” seems interested in how two people can live through the same sequence of events, but experience entirely unique, even opposite emotional moments.

In most protagonist-driven narratives, story beats tend to align for the characters. The lows are low for everyone, and so are the highs.

Not so with “Love.” If you were to chart the emotional peaks and valleys for Gus and Mickey in any given episode, you’d find that they’re often in completely different places.

While on a date at a magic show, Gus delights in the performances while Mickey is unimpressed, even uncomfortable.

During a poolside exchange, Gus feels connected when Mickey gossips with him meanwhile, Mickey feels

intimate only once Gus lets her pop a zit on his back.

Many stories achieve this contrast by having one character knowing some secret that their counterpart doesn’t. “Love” simply allows personal experiences to inform how each person processes events, and how they find their intimacy.

“Love” has hybridized the different

forms of rom-com to tell a story about the tangled mess that is intimacy and the confusion that comes when we try to bring others into our circle. It shows how we each see the world through impossibly different lenses, only at times overlapping, gaining little glimpses into each other’s lives. And those little moments - maybe that’s love.

Paid Summer Internships in San Antonio You can be any major at Trinity. All you have to do is be interested in working at top local organizations for 10 weeks this summer.

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Application requests no longer accepted after Thursday, Feb. 16 at 12 noon.

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • MARCH 31, 2017 •

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

MUSIC Continued from page 14

I can’t, because my brain analyzes what I hear.

I cannot turn the analytical part of my brain off, I have perfect pitch. Therefore I can actually see the score in front of me. So I have other types of music I listen to, so that I can kind of escape from it, I have to. I do want to have a good melody, I want to have a good set of lyrics.

I wasn’t alive when rap and hip-hop grew into maturity as dominant popular music forms. Do you have any thoughts on that evolution?

Well, some of those genres are very textoriented, because they’re really telling a story, they’re saying something. A lot of hiphop and rap, which was, yes, coming out long before

you were born, started in the 1980s, is social commentary.

When I taught FYS, I did a unit on censorship in the arts. I used a number of samples of NWA, groups like that, to talk about how these things were sort of shut down. That type of music has a strong presence in our culture, and i think we can acknowledge that, but there many types of music in our culture and you shouldn’t focus on one dominating the other. Risque/sexual innuendos that are made, that’s not anything new, you see that all over the 18th and 19th centuries. The rap artists have not opened up something completely new, it has been around in different guises for centuries.

You said you have to take breaks from classical music. What kind of music do you listen to otherwise?

Oh, I’m a big James Taylor fan, always have been since the 1970s. Eagles, big fan. Glen fry, may he rest in peace. Garth brooks. Trisha Yearwood.

If you could have one instrument besides the organ, of course, survive a nuclear apocalypse, what would it be?

What? My instrument, the organ.

You got me there. Besides the organ?

Oh then, the piano. There’s so much you can you do with the piano, and there is so much music for the piano. Easy answer.

Philosophy professor discusses aesthetic values of television While my interview with Dr. Heller was more focused on the role of music on college students both on campus and after graduation, my DYLAN WAGNER discussion with A&E EDITOR Dr. Kania turned to complex, abstract philosophical discussion almost immediately.

What did you think of Breaking Bad, with Bryan Cranston?

I enjoyed it, though I must say as someone who tends not to watch a lot of TV I probably went into it with a lot of high expectations because people would tell me “well, if you’re going to watch one television series it should be Breaking Bad,” so there’s that. On the other hand, there seems to be a fairly wide spread of evaluations, IN TERMS OF what people agree on, that this is one of the best TV shows in recent years. It seems like going in with high expectations shouldn’t have led to disappointment. But I did feel like the basic sort of objection for my preference for films over Television shows is that if you watch the whole thing, it demands so much of a time commitment that it needs to pay that off.

It needs to be at least as good as, at least as rewarding as, watching the same number of films that take up the same time.

Now, that’s extremely reductive, there’s all sorts of ways you could actually complicate them . Something like that is underlying my preference for films over television shows I don’t think there’s some essential reason that television shows can’t be as good as films. For example, i think “the Wire” could pass this test, possibly. Could be better than watching a collection of films of somewhat relatively equal quality, would take up the same amount of time. I must say, having said that, I actually only watched half of The Wire.

I don’t remember why, but for some reason we couldn’t make it through the 3rd season. Not sure what was going on in my life or what. Up until that point, it seemed so rich and unified and balanced well the demands of the episode versus the season versus the entire series. For instance, one of the things I was disappointed with, when I watched the first episode of Breaking Bad, then when I continued to watch season after season, was that, it didn’t do anything, didn’t do very much, with the large canvas that the season and series format

allows.

For instance, I was looking for this very slow development, a transition of a person from a kind of decent, average person to a kind of amoral psychopath or something like that.

And it seemed that this transition happened almost completely in the first episode. Of course you could give reasons, explanations for that, for the economics of television for why they had to do that. I could imagine ways that it could have happened halfway in the first episode, foreshadowed or something, but it didn’t happen that way. Constantly things were being introduced in Breaking Bad that seemed could be long-form arcs or symbols or machinery that was going to do something in a later episode, period. And then failed to make use of them. Some of them which did kind of get left hanging for a long time resolved in very uninteresting ways, they didn’t seem to pay off the wait. The one I remember, it’s been a while, is the death of Jesse’s first girlfriend.

Walt observes her die, it raises interesting ethical questions of watching someone die versus actively killing them versus passively letting them die, and it seemed like okay, you know it’s in the background, this is going to do some narrative work at some point. But it never does. All sorts of complicated plot happens and at the last episode he says to Jesse, “Oh, I watched your girlfriend die.” It’s like, what was the point of leaving it for that long, 10 minutes before Walt dies?

It seems to be evidence for my view, against the other view, that television provides a larger canvas to paint on.

In television though, like you said you wanted from Breaking Bad, you can potentially get characters who change very slowly over time, sometimes corrupting or morphing into someone bad, over time. Isn’t that doing more of what film can do, watching a character change over the course of a narrative?

Sure, I think they can, the question is whether you can justify all of those hours.

If you write a 1,000 page novel, it should probably be three times as good as the 300 page novel, a struggle writers and editors often have.

You can think of it like an assignment in a philosophy course. You’re not going to solve philosophical dilemmas in a 5-page paper.

You won’t solve them in a book, either!

(Laughs). The question is, what more can you do in a book? And the idea is, typically, is that you can do more with that kind of

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larger canvas, you can introduce a whole structure, address a bunch of objections, reply to them, in a kind of unified way.

Which of course you can’t do in what, 1/20 of that book. So the question is of course, complicated. But it’s something like that, like of course you can do something more, you can show a more gradual sort of change over nine seasons with twelve one-hour episodes, than you can in 90 minutes, a standard movie length.

But one question is, are they actually doing this? In Breaking Bad, I would suggest that they’re trying to do that but there’s a lot of incoherence, Walt is just going back and forth ethically the whole time. And you might say “well, isn’t that sort of like real life,” but you maybe don’t really need five seasons for that, do you?

Another question is, even if they are doing it, does it sort of meet that cost/benefit analysis we talked about. Is it worth all those hours?

Interesting. If we can get away from dramas for a minute, I wanted to get your general opinion on television comedies in terms of “artwork”-ness.

Well for one, Seinfeld might be a good example. A lot of people think Seinfeld is just the classic comedy example. It got better and better as it went along, really cleverly constructed plot despite the terrible acting, at least on the part of jerry Seinfeld. Well, you can’t really criticize Seinfeld for failing to deal with deep issues, because it never tried to do that. Now, it could be that that means a sitcom can never achieve the greatness of a drama, but yeah, it’s complicated.

The point about things that are designed to make people see themselves, something like that, it’s not obvious to me that something like The Wire isn’t like that. I mean, it’s likely that people who listen to NPR and share those political views are the ones most likely to enjoy The Wire, so it’s a complicated issue.

I was excited to interview both accomplished professors and get their opinions on a variety of topics. Of course, my own predilection for television and media may have diverted a lot of Dr. Kania’s time to those subjects, but he opened my mind on a lot of different issues related to media.

I hope to get great thoughts from other faculty on campus in the coming weeks.

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KRTU’s Spring Membership Drive KICK OFF Party & Concert Join KRTU for a special night of music and community at The Hoppy Monk, as we celebrate the start of the Spring Membership Drive! The party starts at 8 p.m., and we’ll be broadcasting live from 9 p.m. with host Jeannette Muniz of Indie Overnight’s Live & Local show on Thursday nights. Enjoy fusion-inspired music that appeals to both jazz and indie listeners.

The event is free and open to all 21 years of age and older.

EVENTS

The Psychedelic Furs April 1st, 8pm Paper Tiger 2410 N St Marys

Explosions in the Sky April 6th, 8pm Paper Tiger 2410 N St Marys

NEW MUSIC

Pissed Jeans - Why Love Now Pissed Jeans’ gutter-scraped amalgamation of sludge, punk, noise, and bracing wit make the bandKorvette, Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums)-a release valve for a world where absurdity seems in a constant battle trying to outdo itself. Why Love Now picks at the bursting seams that are barely holding 21st-century life together.

- John Morgan, KRTU Indie Music Director

4/4 @ 5:00pm: Studio 21 4/5 @ 5:00pm: EndZone 4/6 @ 5:00pm: The Not-So-Late Show 4/7 @ 3:00pm: Newswave KRTU Beat sponsored by...

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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The Trinity University Alumni Association wishes to congratulate our 2017 Trinity Ring recipients who will receive their Trinity Ring at the Ring Ceremony held on April 1. #TigerPride Camille Alexander ’18 Grace Anthony ’17 Marissa Battle ’18 Tyler Boelts ’17 Hannah Booher ’18 Elizabeth Broussard ’17 Jose Burgos ’18 Craig Burton ’18 Allyssa Butemeyer ’18 Clarissa Castaneda ’18 Noah Davidson ’18 Torre Davis ’17 Faith Deckard ’18

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Tahlar Rowe ’18

Matthew Hager ’17

Joseph Khalaf ’18

Jorge Mestre ’17

Anthony Sanchez ’17

Madeline Hanes ’18

Kendall Kotara ’17

Chase Miller ’17

Abigail Sheppard ’17

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Phillip Lopez ’17

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Victoria Tolar ’18 Julia Torres ’17 Alexandra Uri ’18 Parker Voit ’18 Charles Wendt ’19 Manfred Wendt ’19 Taylor West ’17 Cheyenne Whitman ’18 Michaela Zapata ’18

Sports

More March Madness MAR.

31

One of the best parts of March Madness is that it keeps on going even after the shine has worn off. The chaos dwindles as there are less games, and the quality of basketball typically improves.

Last weekend’s thrillers included common favorite Kansas’s loss to Oregon, Lonzo Ball’s loss to Kentuckty and subsequent declaration for the NBA draft, South Carolina shelacking Baylor and Arizona falling to Xavier in a classic ‘former assitant defeats former boss on the biggest stage.’ This tournament has not lacked surprises nor disappointments. Fortunately, there’s one weekend left.

Senior TREVOR GRIFFIN pitched 6.1 innings of no hit ball to lead Trinity baseball to a victory over Division I Our Lady of the Lake University this past Tuesday.

photo by OZVALDO VELOZ

Tigers rally late to triumph over Saints Team receives national championship rings over the weekend; looks forward to remainder of conference

BY ELISE HESTER

SPORTS REPORTER Last Tuesday, Trinity faced Our Lady of the Lake (OLLU) Saints in a single-game series between the two local schools.

The game started slow for the Tigers, with one hit and no runs throughout the first six innings.

“Through the first six-seven innings, their pitcher did a good job keeping us off balance. He had a pretty good splitter and was able to throw it for a strike in any count,” said junior designated hitter Joey Pecoraro. “The second time through the lineup, he worked in a slider that he rarely showed us the first time through the lineup.”

Meanwhile, defensively, senior right-handed starter Dylan McGee allowed OLLU to score three runs, two in the second inning and one in the third. McGee was relieved by senior right-handed pitcher Trevor Griffin in the bottom of the third.

“I was just trying to get the last out of the inning to prevent any more runs from scoring and to keep the game close.

Looking back, I feel like that was the hardest out for me to get,” Griffin said.

The game saw a strong performance from Griffin, as the senior shut down OLLU offense, allowing the Tiger offense to truly shine later in the night.

“I took on the mentality of a starting pitcher and ultimately did my best to shut down the opposing team in order to give our team a shot to win,” Griffin said. “Going back out to pitch for the fourth inning and ultimately the rest of the game everyone was on the same page with the game plan, including

the pitches that were being called, along with the execution of those pitches.”

The first score of the night came in the sixth inning, when junior outfielder Blake Frampton scored an unearned run on a wild pitch after a series of errors on the part of OLLU’s defense.

“Scoring that first run really woke us up offensively,” Frampton said. “The pitcher we were facing wasn’t necessarily a dominant pitcher, but after we scored, it woke up our bats and allowed us to dominate the rest of the game.”

“A lot of it had to do with momentum,” Pecoraro said. “We definitely didn’t have much through those first seven innings offensively. When we did start putting runs up, our mindset changed and we realized we were still in the game. That just led to more runs.”

Going into the top of the seventh, the Saints starter Caleb Mireles was relieved by Oigres Garcia.

“After their starter came out it seemed as though our hitters started to relax a bit more and put together some great innings,” Griffin said.

The Saints would look to the bullpen several more times throughout the inning, using three pitchers in an inning which brought the Tigers four runs. The inning began with junior catcher Parker Cormack walked, advancing to third on a single from senior second baseman George Haaland.

“It is a mindset of sticking to your approach and trusting that will lead to success,” Haaland said. “If our lineup sticks with a simple, aggressive, confident approach our offense could be dangerous.”

With a double into left field gap, junior designated hitter Joey Pecoraro allowed for junior catcher Parker Cormack and Haaland both to score, bringing the score to a 3-3 tie. Haaland attributes the rise of Tiger momentum to the way in which the hitters began relying on one another throughout the inning.

“We started taking at bats as a team,” Haaland said. “Early in the game we weren’t relying on the entire lineup to build offensive innings. In the seventh and after we started getting deeper into counts and sticking with our approach and controlling the strike zone with the bat.”

The inning continued with a triple from Frampton, allowing Pecoraro to score, putting the Tigers ahead for the first time of the night. With another run from Frampton, the Tigers went into the bottom of the seventh 5-3 over the OLLU Saints.

“As a pitcher, nothing boosts your confidence more than to go out the next inning after being down by three runs and then all of a sudden your team is only down by a small margin or even winning as was the case for our team,” Griffin said.

Energized by that momentum, Griffin brought forth another great inning and the Tigers soon returned to bat. The eighth inning brought a triple from Haaland that batted in Cormack and first-year outfielder Rafe Chaumette. Haaland also scored that inning on a single from sophomore pinch hitter Dalys Binder. This inning saw a fifth switch in Saints pitching.

“When you’re causing a team to go to the bullpen it’s always a big momentum gain, because as a team you know the opponent is on their heels,” Frampton said. continued on page 19

SPORTS • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

19

Top left: Senior pitcher KEVIN FLORES flaunting his ring. Top right: Graduated senior receives his ring. Bottom: Team celebrates with the championship trophy.

Baseball continued on from page 18 In the bottom of the eighth, Griffin continued to shut down the Saints offense, as he did in the ninth. The game saw Griffin taking a win for the Tigers with a score of 8-3 against the Division I team.

“Before the game Coach Scannell called the team up and gave us one objective: ‘find a way to win,’” Haaland said. “OLLU is always a good ball club with good players. It was great to see Trevor Griffin go out there and pitch the way he did. He was locked in, didn’t over do anything, and most importantly trusted his game.”

This 11-3 victory over OLLU was Griffin’s first victory of the season. Griffin, who was named SCAC pitcher of the week and made D3baseball.com’s Team of the Week, retired 19 straight batters in the span of the game. He attributes his defensive success in this game to his teammates and to pitching coach Dave Smith.

“I was happy that I was given an opportunity that I was able to take advantage of and help our team get a much-needed win. The support I received from my teammates throughout the game and after the game was incredible and I’m extremely

grateful to be apart of a team that has such awesome teammates and coaches,” Griffin said. “You could say that pitching is one of the more individually based efforts you’ll see in the game of baseball but the fact of the matter is that a pitcher would be nothing without their teammates playing around them.”

“It was exciting to see the team that we are capable of being, with Trevor dominating on the mound and the defense playing well behind him as well as the offense putting up crooked numbers in the last few innings,” Pecoraro said.

This past weekend also marked a celebratory event for the Tigers, as the team was awarded their rings for last season’s victory at the Division III Men’s College World Series. It was a weekend that allowed the defending champions to truly celebrate their victory together for the first time.

“Getting our rings this weekend was incredible,” Haaland said. “The entire team came back for the ceremony. Obviously winning the National Championship is great and it is an honor to bring Trinity its first baseball championship. We never really had an opportunity to celebrate winning because guys go off for summer ball or jobs, so it was great getting everyone back together to celebrate as a team.”

“President Danny Anderson helped ensure that the entire team was presented a championship ring not just the fraction of guys who ended up traveling during the championship run, which is an incredible gesture that I know the whole team is grateful for,” Griffin said. “It was great to see all of the guys

photos by OZVALDO VELOZ

together from last year’s entire team and with their families back at the field. The reason I emphasize ‘entire’ is because it really took the entire team to work together and achieve the level of success that we all ultimately saw with the championship.”

Despite the past week’s success OLLU and the celebration of the World Series title, the Tigers have their work cut out for them. In a team full of talented players stooped with high expectations, the primarily young team has faced challenges regarding consistency throughout the start of the season.

“We have a young team,” Haaland said. “Baseball is a game that rewards you when you can take care of the small details.

This team is young so consistency is our biggest challenge, but the talent level is there. We can get things turned around if we can continue to be in the moment, focus on a consistent approach to the game, and operate as a unit.”

The older members of the team see the potential among the team and are eager to play up to their ability.

“As a ‘younger and more inexperienced’ team compared to the previous years seen with Trinity baseball, we have grown an exponential amount thus far this season and now we need to continue to grow and build on what we saw and how we played in this last game against OLLU,” Griffin said. “At this point I think our biggest challenge as a team will be to keep playing to our full potential. There is no doubt in my mind that our team is extremely talented and capable of doing anything we put our minds to.”

20

WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • MARCH 31, 2017 •

SPORTS

Spotlighting Rebecca Barreth Golf preps for Georgetown

BY ELISE HESTER

SPORTS REPORTER Growing up in the Houston suburb of Pearland, a young Rebecca Berreth liked to keep active. Like many young girls, she loved being outside and playing sports. However, she played a few more sports than many other little kids. It seems there were few games she would not try, few teams she would not join.

“I played volleyball. I did gymnastics for a long time. I played basketball. I ran track in junior high,” said junior shortstop Rebecca Berreth. “I played soccer.”

No matter how many teams she was on and how many different sports she tried, Rebecca always had a clear favorite, one sport that came most naturally to the six-year-old slugger.

“Ever since I was little softball was always my favorite,” Berreth said. “My mom especially liked me to play other sports because it kept me well rounded, but I always knew that I would always end up playing just softball at some point.”

For the Trinity shortstop, there was no doubt.

It was always softball to which her heart and future were irresistibly stitched. It was always softball, but it was not always shortstop. By the time she reached high school, Berreth had chosen her sole sport, casting the others aside for the only one that really mattered to her. It was as a player at the 5A Pearland High School, where she settled into the role of second baseman. It was at second that Berreth felt most at home, confident in her own game and comfortable about her place in the larger one. Yet when Berreth arrived at Trinity, the coaches took advantage of Berreth’s lifetime of middle infield experience, having her replace a graduated shortstop. The new position and its responsibilities managed to throw Berreth off of the consistent rhythm she had built in her years on the diamond.

“There’s a huge difference even though it’s still middle infield. It’s a lot different, you’re kind of the captain of the infield. You definitely get a lot more balls hit to you and a lot harder hits so it was a huge adjustment,” Berreth said.

“The shortstop that came before was a talented player and team leader,” Berreth said. The shoes left by the previous infielder for Berreth fill felt even bigger for a first-year with no experience in the particular position.

Berreth’s first season as a Tiger was one that challenged and pushed the player both physically, mentally and emotionally.

“I had some games where I really struggled where I was like ‘I’m just not really good enough,’” Berreth said. “A couple times when I cried to my assistant coach. Typically I would never do that but it was just really emotional.

For someone who was always like felt very comfortable in their position and knew that they could do well to go from that to feeling like you’re not good enough and you just aren’t even almost capable of playing that position.”

It is sometimes the times that push you the hardest that make you the strongest, but only if you learn to push back. Rebecca pushed through.

“Mentally telling yourself: I’m gonna make mistakes, but I’m gonna get better. I just need to keep working,” Berreth said.

Flash forward to present day. Berreth, a junior, has proven herself a capable shortstop, who has become a valuable asset to Trinity softball. Last year she was twice awarded SCAC offensive player of the week, earning a position on the SCAC All-Tournament team, All-SCAC 2nd team, and NFCA All-West Region Third Team. Berreth has a batting average of .372 and over the course of her three years at Trinity, has learned to love the position she never thought she’d play.

“Once you become more comfortable [at shortstop], it is very rewarding kind of feeling. You are the captain of the infield and you know that your teammates look to you,” Berreth said. “I thought I would never like it as much as second base, but I think I was wrong.”

photo by Osvaldo Veloz

BY HALEY McFADDEN

SPORTS CONTRIBUTOR

The spring golfing season has begun, and both the men’s and women’s teams are off to strong starts. Both teams have been able to get a handful of tournaments in, and are getting warmed up and ready to go into the larger championship season.

The women’s team recently competed in Arizona, where they finished in sixth place at the George Fox Westbrook Invitational. The team finished with a score of 633 over the the two-day tournament, with the girl’s shooting a 313 final round. The team had a handful of standout performances, such as sophomore Emilee Strausburg’s fifth place finish, earning the All-Tournament honor. Strausburg shot a plus one on a par-72 in the final round, successfully bringing herself up from 8th place.

Strausburg was followed closed by teammates Hanna Niner, who received 27th place individually, and Shelby DeVore, who received 13th overall. The women’s team is coming into the season with high expectations, after winning SCAC in the 2016 season. After losing seniors, the girls are focused on competing and building the team as much as possible.

“In regards to the team it’s really exciting to be a part of such a group. Having a team makes practices more fun with all of the different personalities. Everyone’s really supportive of each other as well, no matter each other’s skill level,” Strausburg said.

On the men’s side, the team is likewise showing promise for competition season. The men finished the 2015-16 season with an extremely close second place finish at SCAC, finishing only one stroke behind Southwestern University. Going into this season with an increased focus and a large number of seniors, the men’s team is focused on making this season a success for the seniors.

“The team changes so much each year based on the people on the team, freshmen come in and seniors graduate. This team has an incredible passion for the sport. We are a relatively old team year this year, and everyone on the team has an enthusiasm that creates a really great atmosphere,” said Trevor Warner.

In the Schriener Shootout three weeks ago, the men’s team made great strides both individually and as a team. The team as a whole managed to improve on their first-round score by 37 strokes, finishing the two rounds with 591. Redmond Lyons came away as the team’s highest scorer, with a minus six on a par-66 in second round, helping him make the jump from 19th place to fourth. Lyons received SCAC golfer of the week accolades for his performance. His teammates Trevor Warner, who finished plus four for 11th, and Max Mitchell, who finished at 14th, came in close behind him. William Street helped round out the team with the best jump, managing to go from 42nd place to 17th in the second round.

The men are coming off a successful tournament at the West Cup in La Verne, California this past weekend, where they ended third of the 16 teams, the men are now looking forward to the West Region Tournament in Georgetown, Texas.

The team started the tournament strong, finishing off on Monday with a 299, which placed them in second place behind the University of the Redlands. Senior Travis Hindle finished the day in fourth out of 80 players with a plus two on a par 73 course, placing him one stroke behind the leader. His teammate senior Redmond Lyons began in fifth, shooting a plus seven.

The following day, the golf team came back strong, with Lyons rising to third place in the tournament with a par-71, and a 7-over 220 in the field, which placed him only three strokes behind the winner of the tournament. Hindle continued in fourth, shooting 77. Their teammates also finished strong, with first-year Max Mitchell coming in 35th, and senior Will Street and junior Corbin Cormier tying for 46th place. Overall the team finished with a 906 total, shooting 308 on Tuesday, which earned them third place out of sixteen teams, many of whom are nationally ranked. The team is looking forward to future competitions, where they look to bring down their team and individual strokes.

“Personally, I just want to focus on being patient of the course and shooting as low a score as I can,” Lyons said. “I think our biggest team goal is to finished the year with some strong showings, and ultimately go and win conference at the end of the year.”

The women’s golf team has also been successful this season, and is looking forward to the West Regional Invitational in Georgetown this upcoming monday and Tuesday. The team has scored many SCAC players of the week, with sophomore Emilee Strausburg receiving the most recent award after her sixth place finish at the Westbrook Invitational. Previous to her was senior Hanna Niner, who as a senior is currently working on both finishing her final season as strong as possible, while enjoying all the opportunities afforded to her through golf.

“For me personally I just have to focus on hitting more greens this season to take some pressure off my short game. Our team’s major goal right now is to win conference this coming April,” Niner said. “I always like flying to tournaments and getting a little travel in.

There are a couple of girls on the team who I have become really close to, so it is nice to remain friends with certain people through college and think back on the fun times we’ve had in the past.”

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SPORTS • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Going D3 versus D1

BY SHELBY DeVORE

SPORTS CONTRIBUTOR

Sophomore LIAM CRAWLEY and first-year JORDAN PITTS during match. photo by OZVALDO VELOZ

Men’s tennis sweeps weekend’s matches

Tigers rolling following spring season’s hesitant start, defeat Gustavus Adolphus College, Linfield College

BY HALEY McFADDEN

SPORTS REPORTER

The No. 16 ranked Trinity men’s tennis team recently concluded a very successful home weekend, bring in two wins for the team.

The men played Gustavus Adolphus College and Linfield College, winning 5-4 and 8-1 respectively.

The Sunday started off with the men squaring off against Gustavus. Losing the first doubles match of the day, the team fought to make a comeback, with the doubles team of senior Chas Mayer and senior Clayton Niess winning round two.

The Tiger’s singles matches were especially successful, with sophomore Wilson Lambeth, sophomore Liam Crawley, first year Jordan Pitts, and first year McKenna Fujitani all winning their matches. The team finished the first half of their day with a 5-4 victory against the No. 19 ranked school, showing their ability to compete against strong competition.

“The other teams we have played have all been very strong teams that have challenged us,” Pitts said. “One thing that we have been struggling with is that our senior captains have not been healthy to play. As a team, we just need to continue training hard and working together if we want to be successful. We have the potential.”

The team then went into playing Linfield College and immediately took the first two doubles points, almost getting a doubles sweep but were narrowly edged out of such with a 9-8 win for the Wildcats. However, the Tigers came back extremely strong, sweeping all six

doubles matches. Lambeth had an exceptional performance, managing to go 6-0 in both of his matches, giving him and the team confidence going forward.

“Looking forward we really just need to play as a team, playing with a lot of fire and grit.

There are plenty of tough teams out there ,but we believe we have the depth of all of them,” Lambeth said. “For myself I just need to have confidence in my ability to compete and beat the top players. So far we have great team chemistry that needs to continue going forward. We may not be regarded as a top five team, but we have a deep team and we expect to go far in the NCAA tournament. I know our guys will compete hard.”

The team is looking forward to the rest of the season, where they expect themselves to be competitive at the national level and fight for a championship. Despite losing two key players to graduation, they are looking strong and are working on stepping up to the plate.

“I want to start by saying we have a surprisingly capable team this year. We lost two major players over the summer to graduation — Adam Krull and Paxton Deuel — but everyone has stepped up and made a point to improve in response. Thoughts are positive and attitudes are focused,” Crawley said. “I believe each and every one of us has something to improve on, and individual focus on defects should be central in our approach going forward. The goal is to win a National Championship, that’s how we will know we’ve maximized our potential.”

A common sentiment I’ve heard is that Trinity athletes are Division I wannabes. I’ve also heard many athletes argue otherwise.

Some of our athletes had the opportunity to go to a Division I or II school but they chose to play at Trinity for several reasons.

“I came to Trinity knowing that I would be a part of a great baseball program with a good shot to keep playing baseball, while also having family and friends that I already knew where at the school, and I would come away with a great degree from a great school,” said Trevor Griffin, senior baseball player.

What exactly makes Division III schools different than Division I or II? One big difference is that Division III athletes do not get athletic scholarships. They are not playing for the money they receive to pay for their education. Another difference for not choosing to go to a Division I school is because they want to make sure school comes before their sport. As an athlete, I know that I am a student before I am an athlete. Coaches understand when something with school comes up because that is our first priority. They understand that our schedules revolve around school and that sports come second “You really are a student-athlete at the Division III level as opposed to an athletestudent at the Division I level,” said Micah Weaver, junior basketball player. “Your education is priority and you’re getting prepared for life after basketball.”

Something else is that sometimes athletes are burned out from the pressure and stress that come with the sport. They want to compete but they are exhausted of having the entire school counting on them. Texas high school football is a great example. Most high schools in Texas put pressure on their team to win and

go to state. The entire school and even people in the town will show up to watch their school win. The light is shining on them and if they mess up, then they have just let everyone down. Some athletes get burned out from this and just want to play because they are good at the sport and love it. Trinity is very successful with their athletics, but what is so unique about it is that there is very little pressure to be the very best. Most athletes here want to be the best they can be and for some this is the first time the only pressure they have is what they put on themselves.

“I remember Coach Jenkins speaking to me after a club tournament that I played horribly at,” said Erika Edrington, senior volleyball player. “After getting yelled at by my coach at the time and even some of my teammates, Coach Jenkins came up to me and spoke to me about what I did well that game. I knew I would go into a program where I would be encouraged and cared for as a player rather than seen as a tool for my coach’s glory and image.”

What the last major difference is that Division III athletes are playing because they simply love the sport. They have a passion for competing and playing. Most know they will not play after college so they want the chance to play before it is too late. They are not ready to give a huge part of their life up. They are willing to work hard and push through the challenges so they can proudly represent Trinity.

“The difference looking at Division I and Division III athletics is that playing Division III allows you to enjoy sports for the pure love of playing them,” said Justin Ventura, sophomore football player. “I am not on scholarship and in some cases that is looked upon badly. At the Division I level athletes eat, sleep and breathe their sport without little room to enjoy life.”

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SPORTS • MARCH 31, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Tigers struggle against Centenary College Women fail to win in four-game series versus Cyclones, but demonstrate improvements over the weekend

BY SHELBY DeVORE

SPORTS REPORTER

This past Saturday and Sunday, the softball team hit the field and played two doubleheaders against Centenary College. After severe humidity and questionable calls by the umpires, the Tigers were defeated both days by the Louisiana college. The second day, they lost 7-4 and 3-2 with ten hits, five errors in the first game and nine hits, one error in the second.

“I think we played decent this weekend,” sophomore second baseman Hailey Wilson said. “I’m proud of how well we fought through the adversity we faced. We had a few players get hurt over the past week, and I believe that set us back a bit. Despite these challenges, we played well.”

After losing the first day, the Tigers used their defeat to push them to play better the next day. Although there was improvement, they were still unable to take home a win. In the third game, Centenary started off with two runs in the first inning.

In the bottom of second inning, senior second baseman Hillary Hoffman made it to first on an error and then moved to second base off of first-year Cameron Lavergne’s bunt. Sophomore first baseman Emily Reed hit a single down the right side, sending Hoffman home to score their first run of the day.

In the bottom of the third inning, sophomore third baseman Rylie Goldwait and junior shortstop Rebecca Berreth scored a pair of runs. Goldwait reached first base on a fielding error and then stole second. Berreth hit a double, allowing Goldwait to score. Berreth advanced to third off of sophomore catcher Siera Spurlock’s ground ball and then crossed home plate after sophomore outfielder Devon Potter’s single. Centenary scored one run in the fifth and two in the sixth. The Tigers were unable to come back. The game ended 5-3 with Centenary having eleven hits, four errors and Trinity with six hits, two errors.

“Even though the games didn’t end like how we would’ve liked, our team still played with high intensity and that’s all you can ask for, “ junior outfielder Sara McCarty said. “We are still continuing to work hard in practice to prepare us for our next series. We play a non-conference game next, so that will be the time to utilize what we have been working on to piece it all

The Tigers practice during the past week in preparation to comeback from losses against Centenary College. photo by OZVALDO VELOZ

together for our next conference series.”

To start off the fourth game, both teams kept each other from scoring until the top of the third inning. Centenary scored three runs off of senior Katie Glomb. The Tigers finally scored a run in the bottom of the fifth inning. Wilson hit a double and later advanced to third base off of first-year third baseman Adrienne Edwards hit. Senior outfielder Mackenzie Hill hit a single to the left side, allowing Wilson to cross home plate.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, they were still down by two runs. Sophomore catcher Stephanie Crumrine lead off the

inning with a groundout. Wilson walked, moving to third base off of Lavergne’s hit, plus an error by the right fielder. Reed then knocked Wilson in with a single. Unfortunately, the next two batters were outs, and the game ended 3-2 with both teams having six hits and one error.

“I think a major thing we learned this weekend was that we have it in us,” Glomb said. “We have it in us to win. We just need to start early and be in attack mode all game and never let up our intensity.”for them to take other classes that they may struggle creating the time for due to being in season.”

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