Volume 115 Issue 24
Trinitonian Serving Trinity University Since 1902
12 Former student withdraws and 15 Trinity senior talks about his becomes rockclimbing instructor A&E EPs “Quiet Hours” and “McLean”
PULSE
18 Women’s tennis wins SPORTS last home match 6-3
Trinity celebrates 150th Committee prepares to “Commemorate, Elevate, Create” for anniversary
Opinion: I’m not proud of Trinity Univ. Alumna responds to editorial, Trinity’s Parscale promotion, platform for D’Souza
NOELLE BARRERA | NEWS REPORTER nbarrera@trinity.edu The university has formed a committee to oversee and plan a yearlong celebration of Trinity’s 150th anniversary. Angela Breidenstein, professor of education, co-chairs the 150th Anniversary Steering Committee along with Jacob Tingle, director of Experiential Learning. According to Breidenstein, the committee maintains a community-based approach to planning events for the sesquicentennial celebration, which is based around the slogan, “Commemorate, Elevate, Create.” “Instead of our committee saying, ‘Here are all of the events of the 150th celebration,’ we’re asking the community to create or elevate events happening during 2019,” Breidenstein said. “So students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members are all coming together to create unique programs for 2019 or to look into an ongoing program that they already do and think how to elevate that event in the spirit of the anniversary year.” The committee has begun reaching out to departments and student organizations that have expressed interest in preparing for the university’s anniversary. TU Press is creating a book to capture some of Trinity’s most influential historical moments and tradition. Breidenstein spoke about what the book will contain. “The campuses will be recreated in the book,” Breidenstein said. “There’ll be a lot of history and a lot of bygone traditions that you don’t see today, like the freshman beanie caps that make up the background of Trinity and have contributed to its enduring community.” Students majoring in environmental studies are also incorporating their capstone projects into the 150th anniversary with help from
APRIL 13, 2018
DENISE BOEHM | GUEST COLUMNIST
Trinity cheerleaders pose for a team photo in 1978. Trinity plans to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2019, and a committee has been created to oversee the celebration. Angela breidenstein, professor of education, and Jacob Tingle, director of Experiential Learning, co-chair the committee. FILE PHOTO
George Hazleton, visiting assistant professor of English. Alumni have become involved. Marshall Hess, who graduated in 1988 and now serves on the Board of Trustees as well as the 150th anniversary committee, gave his perspective on the anniversary. “I think it speaks a lot to how great Trinity is that we are able to sit back and enjoy this time period,” Hess said. Current SGA members junior Amulya Deva, senior Nick Santulli and senior Monty McKeon are all on the committee. Santulli expressed the event’s importance as a way to reflect on Trinity’s past and future.
“150 years can seem like an arbitrary number, but this provides a great opportunity for us to look back at Trinity’s history and the values that have prevailed over different time periods,” Santulli said. “If we know what we’ve gone through and how we got to where we are now, we’ll understand where we should go in the future.” Deva, who is the current SGA president, explained how she helped to invent the slogan “Commemorate, Elevate, Create” along with other students on the committee. continued on PAGE 5
Esteemed Editor: Your April 4 Trinitonian editorial, “Don’t stop donating over Parscale” implies that Trinity only found out about the possibility of Parscale’s alleged malfeasance regarding Facebook data and Cambridge Analytics’ use of it on behalf of the Trump campaign two weeks after the university posted the video. Such bad timing, the editorial laments, asking alumni to keep on contributing because how could the Trinity administration and PR team have known? And it’s expensive to go to Trinity! As alumni, many of us sympathize with you on the cost of higher education, finishing up paying off our own student loans just as we send our kids who are about your age off to similar institutions. As to timing, while it’s true that the Cambridge Analytics’ whistleblower did indeed make his claims after the Trinity video posted, CNN reported in May 2017 that the campaign’s data analytics’ operation was already under investigation. Parscale denies involvement in Facebook and Cambridge Analytics’ actions, stating that he has done no wrong; however, his guilt or innocence in a court of law is not the point when trying to make Trinity look good. continued on PAGE 9
SGA wants free textbooks for students. Here’s how they plan to achieve that Resources to become more accessible with new, focused initiative
graphic by JULIA POAGE, staff illustrator
BOBBY WATSON | NEWS REPORTER rwatson@trinity.edu This semester, Student Government Association (SGA) has continued its open educational resources (OER) initiative through a committee dedicated to bringing more OER resources to Trinity. Sophomore SGA senator Ty Tinker has chaired the committee since early January. “OER is a national initiative that looks to reduce the price of textbooks and educational resources in general,” Tinker said. “As we know, not all learning has to be done through a book. There is different things we watch [and] read — articles, journals, etc. What OER seeks to do is to consolidate all of those resources into one place, including textbooks, too, and make them all free.”
OER was originally brought to SGA in 2016 by Trinity alumnus Nick Shockey, class of 2009, who worked the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) at the time. In a 2016 interview with the Trinitonian, Brenna Hill, SGA president at the time,
discussed how SGA was working mainly to make professors aware of cheaper textbooks that OER offered. “We really just want professors to, at first, just consider those books, to take a look at them and look at the quality, because they’re really high-quality textbooks,” Hill said.
OER has already been implemented in several universities across the nation, such as the University of North Dakota, the University of Connecticut and several other schools in California. Though OER has had difficulty getting its message out, Tinker believes that the rising cost of textbooks will pave the way for change nationally and here at Trinity. “One of our first and main goals is to start a campaign by the end of next semester, so, you know, have hashtags and groups coming together and looking to figure out what OER is and how it could help Trinity.” Tinker said. “It’s meant to be a supplement, especially where teachers are seeking to make their textbooks and information affordable.” The current SGA’s focus on OER is an extension of work done by the previous two administrations. Senior Nick Santulli, 2016 SGA president and current senator emeritus, explained how the previous administrations handled the topic. continued on PAGE 5