Trinitonian
Senior Dreams
Dr. Heather Haynes-Smith
Tigers devour ETBU
Trinity alumna returns to teach class about teaching children with exceptionalities.
Woman’s tennis team travels to Marshall, Texas for match against East Texas Baptist University
Senior Joy Lazarus wonders whether seniors can keep dreaming even after they graduate and enter working world. PAGE 8 OPINION
Volume 114 Issue 24
PAGE 12 PULSE
PAGE 20 SPORTS
Serving Trinity University Since 1902
Trinity goes tobacco free
APRIL 07, 2017
Sexual Assault: A closer look Policies have changed over time, what it means for students BY ALEXANDRA URI
MANAGING EDITOR BY EMILY ELLIOTT
PULSE EDITOR This story discusses the topic of rape and sexual assault. Please be advised that this material may be triggering. Reader discretion is advised.
New tobacco-free policy to take effect Aug. 1, 2017 BY PHILLIP McKEON
NEWS REPORTER Jackie Bavilacqua, coordinator of Health Services, explained that part of the reasoning behind the policy is to benefit student’s health in the long term.
Tobacco Free Trinity policy will begin in August before students return for fall 2017 semester. photo by CLAUDIA GARCIA “This is about protecting your lifelong health. When I think about our students, and my own daughter was a student at Trinity, and the kind of education they’re getting, and the potential they have in their life to contribute to the satisfaction of the world … those who are using tobacco are cutting that potential short. They are limiting what they can do with their lives, and we want to change that. We know from
information provided by the surgeon general that outlawing tobacco products reduces the number of people that smoke. So it’s not just about outlawing it on campus, it’s about reducing the number of people that smoke,” Bevilacqua said. Katherine Hewitt, coordinator of wellness services, said that the policy is not meant to target those who smoke regularly. continued on PAGE 5
Senior plans to attend Yale in the fall Nico Dwarica will pursue chemistry Ph.D. from prestigious university BY JULIA WEIS
PULSE REPORTER After four years of working hard in our department of chemistry, senior Nico Dwarica will enter Yale University’s Ph.D. program in chemistry in the fall. It has been a long journey for him to get to this point, so now he can sit back and reflect on what helped him get here. “I started thinking about going to grad school when I was a sophomore. I’m a
chemistry major, so I was like, ‘Alright, I need to have a plan for what I’m gonna do afterwards.’ Junior year, my advisor gave me some advice to look at top 50 schools in the U.S., and then the summer after my junior year, I wanted to narrow it down to 10 or less schools. The applications are a lot of work, so what I would do would be look up each school and program, see what kind of classes they offer, how long it takes and see what kind of work the professors are doing, because a Ph.D. program in chemistry is primarily
focused on research. So I looked around a lot, and then by the end of the summer, I decided to apply to Northwestern, Berkeley, Columbia, Rice, University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh,” Dwarica said. According to Dwarica, Yale wasn’t even on his post-graduation radar until he attended a seminar earlier in the year put on by Trinity’s department of chemistry. continued on PAGE 11
Almost 20 years ago Rachel Pineda, then a sophomore communication major from a small town in Texas, thought she was getting the internship of a lifetime with an independent filmmaker. She had always had a passion for acting and was involved with theater and the campus television station immediately after arriving to Trinity. What happened to Rachel after taking the internship is something that happens to too many students. It was during Valentine’s Day weekend in 1998 that Pineda’s mentor took her to a strip club, got her drunk, took her back to his house and raped her. “Somehow he ended up behind me, and I tried to crawl away, and I said, ‘Don’t! Stop!’ and he whispered in my ear, ‘Everything will be okay.’ And then he raped me. He had sex with me from behind and it was awful, I kept trying to crawl away, and I passed out. I don’t remember anything after that. I woke up periodically, and he was still having sex with me,” Pineda said. Pineda became trapped in the relationship with the significantly older man for about a year. She didn’t have the words to describe what was being done to her at the time, but it was like she was being forced to be with him. “I ended up dating him for a year and a half afterwards; looking back now, I was some sort of sex slave. He had me fly to places to go meet him, and we’d have dinner, alcohol, a massage in his bedroom and then we’re having sex. Every single time, it was like that, the same repetitive pattern. At the time, I wasn’t thinking; I was being groomed for him,” Pineda said. Rachel felt isolated; in addition to her advisor being on sabbatical and her roommate frequently being out of their room, no one on Trinity’s campus ever explained to her what rape or sexual assault was. continued on PAGE 3