1.27.2017

Trinitonian SGA Inauguration President Danny Anderson swears in new officers in first-of-its kind ceremony.

PAGE 4 NEWS

Volume 114 Issue 16

Trinity Market ends

Suzanne Weaver

After year-long run, studentled program comes to an indefinite close.

SAMA’s modern and contemporary curator talks with Jeff Sullivan.

PAGE 13 PULSE

PAGE 15 A&E

Serving Trinity University Since 1902

January 27, 2017

Lady Tigers move to 16-1 in most Counseling successful season start to date Services

BY JULIA ELMORE

increases walk-in hours

EDITOR IN CHIEF

BY KATHLEEN CREEDON

Women’s basketball on a roll, reaches No. 16 in national rank

NEWS REPORTER

WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY HALEY McFADDEN

SPORTS REPORTER While most Trinity students were enjoying time off during winter break, the women’s basketball team was hard at work, paving the way for their best start in program history. Since the start of the semester, the Lady Tigers have continued their streak of victories to reach a 16-1 record this season, setting themselves up for success in the conference tournament that will take place early in February.

Over the weekend, the girls competed in the SCAC Open Road Weekend, where they faced off against Colorado College and University of Dallas. Their first game against Colorado College was a knockout, and the Tigers walked away with a 75-43 victory. The second game against University of Dallas ended in victory, but by a narrower margin, at 76-61. Three of the players, Abby Holland, Micah Weaver and Monica Holguin scored in the double digits with 14, 15 and 17 points respectively. Weaver also scored 23 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists in the second game and was named SCAC Basketball Player of the Week.

“Micah is a huge contribution to the team.

She helps all around and can play various positions. She is a very talented player that has helped us in every single game. The team thrives with the entertainment she brings on the court,” said teammate Rachel Chavez, a sophomore guard.

Players say the chemistry on and off the court is what has set this season apart.

“It is a truly fun and supportive atmosphere,” said junior guard Rebecca Gordon. “I think that the coaching staff as well as each and every player on our roster has motivated and contributed to our success so far.”

In addition to the support and camaraderie between teammates, the pursuit of a common goal has unified the women and helped propel them forward this season.

“This run that we are in is great, it gives us confidence every time we step on the court,” said senior guard Monica Holguin.

“But we can’t take any games for granted because of it. Our mindset right now is taking one game at a time. We know TLU is coming and we can’t wait.”

That game against Texas Lutheran University will be a big one, as the only

TOP: First-year forward, ABBY HOLLAND goes for a layup in a home game.

BOTTOM: Junior guard MICAH WEAVER shoots from the elbow over an opponent.

Photos by OSVALDO VELOZ loss of the season was to the Bulldogs with a score of 78-85. The highly anticipated game against the big rivals will take place on Feb. 4.

“I think before we lost to TLU, there was so much pressure to continue winning.

Our loss brought us back to the basics,” Chavez said.

In addition to the TLU game, the Lady Tigers have their sights set on the SCAC Championship and even beyond.

“You go into every season with the goal of winning the SCAC tournament, because that gives you the automatic bid and leaves nothing to chance, so that’s always a goal of ours,” said assistant coach Joe Shotland.

“But I think with this group of seniors they really want to try and get out of the first week of NCAA Tournament and that’s a tough task. From there, anything can happen and if we can get to the sweet 16, it’s anybody’s ballgame.”

Because of the recent increase in clients, Counseling Services has increased their walk-in hours for students. For the first time in decades, first-time clients have an opportunity to visit the offices between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m., as opposed the original 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. time slot.

“Some days, we’d have five or six students come, and we couldn’t see them all in an hour and a half, but with three hours, we’re hoping not to have to say to anybody, ‘Come back tomorrow,’” said Richard Reams, associate director of Counseling Services.

Reams believes that the cause of the increase is the pressure on students by their family or their community to do more than they can handle.

“I think the great recession of 2008 was very stressing to parents, and they started to really worry about the future for their sons and daughters. I think that anxiety transferred to students to do really well. My theory is that there is an increasing pressure on students now given the economy, and there is a pressure from home that they got to do really well and that options for the future are narrowing,” Reams said.

Sheryl Tynes, vice president for Student Life, speculates that, along with pressure to do better, the increase in students is a national epidemic not specific to Trinity.

“I don’t think that Trinity is alone in that nationally, there is a greater demand for counseling services. There’s less stigma attached to seeking help for mental health than there was even 10 years ago,” Tynes said.

Counseling Services has also added a doctoral student in counseling psychology from Our Lady of the Lake University, Aisha Zarb-Cousin. Zarb-Cousin is a licensed professional working on her doctorate and will see roughly 12 students a week. The department has also requested an additional full-time counselor.

“It’s an adjustment for us. Every change brings improvements and complications.

We think it will work well,” Reams said.

Continued on page 2

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • JANUARY 27, 2017

BRIEFS SGA This week SGA initiated its new officers. They also discussed a new meal plan proposal and a proposed plan for breakfast in Skyline.

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Counseling Services

• NEWS

continued from Front “We do have busier times of the day, but our census is not up. We have a trending graph, and from year to year, it can go up or down a few students, but it’s generally pretty stable,” said Jackie Bevilacqua, coordinator of Health Services.

October and February tend to be busier times for the office, as well as around finals and midterms, but the staff is able to see students as they come. Health Services tends to around half of the student body — roughly 4,500 visits a year.

“A couple of years ago, we reconfigured our spaces, so when physicians are here, we can have another place to examine walk-in students. Over the years, we’ve added more physicians; we have 20 hours a week of physician time. We don’t have long waiting lists to see the doctor, and most of our clinics aren’t really too full,” Bevilacqua said.

Health Services provides gynecology exams, birth control, STD testing — which can be done without an appointment and at any time — and vaccinations, such as the flu vaccine or HPV vaccine.

“Health Services is not just a place to go when you are sick or when you’re injured,” Bevilacqua said.

Although Health Services hasn’t had a the same spike in clients as Counseling Services, both departments treat a large part of the Trinity community.

Both maintain walk-in hours as well as scheduled appointments and ensure complete confidentiality.

“I would like students to know that these are the two areas on campus where anything you share with them, they

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JACKIE BEVILACQUA welcomes students entering Health Services with a smile.

Photo by CLAUDIA GARCIA. cannot share with anyone else. It is 100 percent confidential when students share [information] with [Counseling Services and Health Services]. [Counseling Services and Health Services] can lose their license if they share, because counselors have a strict rule for confidentiality. If a student were to come to me, or another faculty member on campus, we’re mandatory reporters. We would have to report,” Tynes said.

By acknowledging the influence of academics on health and vice versa, both services are better equipped to handle the increase in students on campus.

“I think that it’s a good thing that we recognize Trinity students as whole

people. You have a physical health and a mental health. Things that happen academically impact both of those. Both of these offices are a way for us to treat you all as whole people. It’s a two-way street in terms of causation. We’re very mindful of that,” Tynes said.

Trinity supports students by promoting self-care and providing many opportunities to seek professional help. Tynes suggests that students put themselves first in order to have stronger academic and social careers.

“If you’re not functioning, you cannot help anybody else. You have to take care of yourself and sometimes drown out the world,” Tynes said.

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NEWS • JANUARY 27, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

3

Bee club starts up again after one year off

Monitoring the hives is part of the many new initiatives the organization pursues this spring

BY KATHLEEN CREEDON

NEWS REPORTER

Nearly 25,000 bees are being maintained in hives on the roof of the Center for the Sciences & Innovation building by the reinvigorated bee club. After a year of inactivity, the group wants to reach out to more eco-centered organizations and philanthropic works.

“For the longest time, we’ve just been checking bees, and no one really knows about the club. I’ve always really cared about environmental action and philanthropy, so I’m hoping that the club can raise money and donate it to a local organization that would help with the environment or that is sustainable for the San Antonio area,” said Abbi Bowen, president of the club.

The group tries to emphasize and help others understand the importance bees have on our community and environment by joining other groups on campus. So far, the group intends to unite with Eco Allies and the Gardening Club to support this mission.

“We’re going to plant bee-friendly plants in the community garden. We’re hoping we can do a bigger event where we can combine with bigger clubs. It’s in an early stage, but I think it’s good that we’ve started to think of ideas for the future of the club,” Bowen said.

The club plans on harvesting the honey from the hives in the coming weeks. Due to liability issues, they won’t be selling the honey on campus; however, they would like to be able to share it with people on campus.

“We’re also about to harvest honey from our hives, so we’re really excited about that. We aren’t going to harvest a lot; it’s just going to be a test to see how it is. We’re going to have a

Bee club begins buzzing again after a year of silence with honey making. photos by Kathleen Creedon

little party or something where people can taste the honey that we harvested,” Bowen said.

As the group looks forward, they see their message being spread with the help of the other groups on campus. Once they’ve spread the message to the whole of Trinity, they hope to spread it throughout the San Antonio community.

“I’m excited about getting other environmental groups on campus involved in our issues and generally working as a team in order to achieve more goals. In five years, I can see the Bee Alliance being integrated into the Trinity community by giving honey to on-campus groups and the broader San Antonio community,” said Phillip Trenthem, member of the group.

The group looks after the bees with the help of their advisor, Richard Reed, professor and chair of sociology and anthropology.

Because the responsibility of the bees is completely theirs, the group must be sure they check the bees often.

“They’re pretty healthy. I was worried over winter break, because I had to leave them for a month, so I fed them some sugar water to get them through it, and I came back and they

were fine. All break I was worried that they were dead. It’s the saddest thing. I see them as creatures I want to help and give them a place to stay where they can thrive,” Bowen said.

Bowen has been interested in bees since high school, even making sure the colleges she looked at had a beekeeping program available. However, Bowen cared for bees in South Carolina, where she says they act much differently.

“I’ve never worked with bees in such a warm climate, where it’s January and the bees are already pollinating. Usually at this time, they’re in their hive and they’re just chilling and surviving,” Bowen said.

As said before, the group wants to make sure the community understands the importance bees have on our lives. To gain more publicity, the group is creating buttons and shirts and wants to start doing more community events.

“There are a lot of projects on campus, and they’re all very important, but I feel like we don’t do a good job of environmental awareness. Trinity preaches a lot of wellness, but I feel like there’s not a lot of action that’s taking place for that, so I would hope that the Bee Alliance would not only increase that awareness of environmental protection, but also sustainable practices,” said Madelyn Gaharan, a first-year member of the group.

Gaharan didn’t intend to join the club when she started at Trinity but found out about it through an internship she was working on with Reed.

“It’s been really fun. I’m an environmental science major, but I want to concentrate on bugs. Bugs are important,” Gaharan said.

Overall, the group wants the Trinity community to be aware of the work they are doing with the bees and why it is important. The group will continue to take care of the bees but will do so with the added drive to incorporate their mission with the mission of other environmental groups on campus.

“As beekeepers, we really care about the environment and the way everything in the environment works together. In my mind, I see the world as one hive, and we’re all just in it, helping each other out,” Bowen said.

SGA initiative works towards free textbooks Senators and Trinity staff aim to introduce professors to openly licensed alternatives to costly books in coming years

BY DANIEL CONRAD

NEWS REPORTER

The Student Government Association (SGA) is working with librarians and faculty to provide free and low-cost textbooks and other class resources for students and professors.

The initiative is still in its infancy, but supporters hope to incorporate open educational resources (OER) in some lowerdivision courses over the next few years.

The idea was first proposed by the previous SGA president, Brenna Hill, and her vice president, Shivani Parmar. SGA’s Textbook Affordability Committee is now spearheading the initiative. Diane Graves, university librarian and professor, explains how OER materials could be incorporated in classes.

“From a student’s perspective, it would work a lot like what happens now. A faculty member would say ‘These are the readings for class,’ … but you would have access to an electronic, web-based textbook, or [a physical] one you could buy for very low price.”

Joseph Khalaf, junior and current vice president of SGA, explains further.

“Typically the online version of the book will be free or very low cost, and you can purchase a print version for about $30 — basically, what it cost to print the book,” Khalaf said. “The concept is, in an Intro to Economics class, you don’t need the latest edition because very little, if anything, changes. But maybe [this wouldn’t work for] an upper-division neuroscience class.”

Graves cites Rice University’s OpenStax, a non-profit organization that publishes openly licensed textbooks for students’ benefit, as one successful example of OER in action.

“Those books are written by faculty members at colleges and universities, just like the ones that you pay big bucks for,” Graves said. “They are vetted, meaning that they go through a peer-review process the same way as anything else, so the quality is fairly high.”

She cites foreign languages, economics, philosophy and intro-level science courses as a few examples of classes that could benefit from incorporating open educational resources in their syllabi.

“Mainstream publishers are for-profit entities; their goal is to provide those materials but also to make money, so there’s a pretty significant upcharge on those things,” Graves said.

“When textbooks start costing almost $300 or more, and they’re in a subject that doesn’t change often … [something] is wrong with the traditional textbook-publishing model.”

First-year Simone Washington, an SGA senator, urged the importance of lowering the costs of textbooks.

“Cost should not be a barrier,” Washington said. “Paying for education [through textbooks] on top of paying for education through tuition is too much of a burden for too many students.”

Graves agrees, lauding the fairness inherent to free and lowcost textbooks.

“There’s a leveling quality to it,” Graves said. “If you’ve got a very wealthy student who has no problem paying for those books, that’s great. If you’ve got a student on financial aid who’s really trying to figure out how to use their money as carefully as possible, they don’t have to buy that $300 book and still have access to the same content. That’s fair.”

Besides openly licensed textbooks, Graves notes that there exists another OER model. Many courses, especially in the social sciences and humanities, assign textbooks that are essentially compilations of excerpts, journal articles and essays that can be found elsewhere. Trinity librarians will be able to build lists of course readings for classes by using the resources already available to anyone searching the library’s catalogue online, which includes open access journals and database subscriptions.

The Textbook Affordability Committee worked with the Board of Visitors, a group of alumni and business leaders, to obtain administration approval for the push towards incorporating OER materials in classrooms. But now they need to convince faculty to adopt OER textbooks and readings in their syllabi. Khalaf explains the challenges ahead.

“Issue number one is that [some] faculty don’t really know about the high cost of textbooks,” Khalaf said. “The committee is compiling both quantitative and qualitative data to make faculty more aware of the rising textbook costs, how much these textbooks cost in the large scheme of things.”

Khalaf mentioned a forthcoming survey comparing students’ spending on textbooks over the years, examining the costs of the textbooks on classes’ syllabi, and interviewing students to hear about their experiences buying textbooks and receiving feedback from students’ perspective.

“This data is going to be pitched to faculty members,” Khalaf said. “We’re going to focus on convincing one professor from each department to adopt an [OER textbook] and, if it really works out for them, we’d have a success story to show other professors.”

In 2009, Trinity became the fifth U.S. university to adopt an Open Access policy that allows faculty to post their scholarly research on Trinity’s freely accessible digital repository, the Digital Commons. Typically, peer-reviewed journals retain all rights to a scholar’s work and usually keep research behind expensive paywalls; the Open Access policy democratizes access to scholarship authored by Trinity faculty. Graves hopes that the OER initiative will follow in the tradition of Open Access policies.

Trinity staff and faculty are invited to attend a workshop the morning of Feb. 24 in the Collaborative for Learning and Teaching; the workshop will be run by members of the Open Textbook Network, an alliance of higher-education institutions working together to create and share openly licensed textbooks.

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • JANUARY 27, 2017 •

NEWS

Student Government has first inauguration SGA swears in student President and Senators in new initiation hosted by President Anderson

BY MONTY McKEON

NEWS REPORTER

On Monday, January 23, Student Government Association hosted the inauguration of the 2017 student government.

This is the first year that SGA has held a formal inauguration ceremony. Jamie Thompson, advisor to SGA, believes it will set the tone for the work to come.

“I’ve been co-advising student government for five years now, and I haven’t been a part of something like this before, so it’s pretty exciting to see that the new group is interested in both promoting the work that they’re doing and kind of establishing some pomp and circumstance around it, which I think helps to set the tone for some of the work that they’ll be doing for the year,” Thompson said.

Nick Santulli, SGA president, decided to host an official inauguration ceremony as a means to inspire confidence in this year’s officers.

“I was hoping that having an official inauguration would provide some positive reinforcement to all the incoming officers by showing that SGA matters and that its role on campus matters and is valued by the campus community.

I think it really outlines what the role of SGA is, because I think a lot of people don’t really know what SGA is, why it exists or what its official function is. So I think it’s a good way of educating the public about the function SGA serves and how they can benefit from engaging with it,” Santulli said.

Sheryl Tynes, vice president for Student Life, opened the ceremony, and President Danny Anderson officiated the oaths of office.

“I think it lends some legitimacy to SGA, having the university president there. And I really appreciate him taking the time out

of his day to be there because he has a really chaotic schedule, so that meant a lot to everybody there,” Santulli said.

The inauguration ceremony provided an outlet to promote SGA’s credibility with the campus community.

“For the campus community, for those that aren’t senators or officers, it’s a way of establishing credibility, a way to say, we’re legitimate, we’re real, there are big things that are happening here and we take our roles seriously, so much so that we’re

President Danny Anderson swears in SGA President Nick Santulli. photo by Henry Pratt

going to have this swearing-in ceremony,” Thompson said.

Stephanie Ackerman, co-advisor for SGA and former SGA president herself, believes having senators’ peers present to witness their oath of office creates a sense of accountability.

“I do believe having a formal inauguration ceremony impacts the way student leaders view their role as an organization.

Not only does it provide a significant moment of pride for their organization, it also represents a commitment to the organization. It also aides to hold students accountable.

When students’ peers are witnessing them take an oath to responsibly represent the organization, I believe they’re more likely to uphold these said responsibilities. It is a declaration of the student’s intentions as a member chosen by their peers to advocate for the student body,” Ackerman said.

Juan Luevanos, first-year senator, feels that the inauguration helped to make the responsibilities of being a senator more tangible and authentic.

“It brings up accountability. It’s really having that responsibility placed on you and having that oath to emphasize the responsibility that we have to uphold. Having that formal setting emphasizes that responsibility of representing 600 different people with 600 views of where SGA should be going,” Luevanos said.

For anyone serving on SGA for the first time, this ceremony demonstrates the seriousness of the responsibilities they are expected to uphold.

“I think, if I were to put myself in the shoes of a first year senator, or really anyone who’s serving for the first time, I think it sends a message that this is serious. Dr. Anderson will be present, and I think that helps to set the tone of, ‘I’ve been elected by my peers to do something, and to do something pretty significant.’ So there is a certain level of responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the senators, and I think the swearing in ceremony kind of underscores that level of responsibility that they each hold,” Thompson said.

San Antonio Women’s March draws several thousand to City Hall in protest of Trump Grass-roots organizing draws out millions across the country in solidarity

BY MONTY McKEON

NEWS REPORTER

Last Saturday, the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, thousands of people, including Trinity students, marched in a demonstration against the new administration.

Grace Cline, first year, described the march as a way to bring like-minded people together in advocacy for minority groups.

“I think it’s just a gathering of people coming together to protest the president, to be forward, but also to advocate for women’s rights and for minority rights. It’s called the Women’s March, but it’s open to everyone, and it’s just a way to get people to come together that are like minded and believe in the same things and want what’s best for our country,” Cline said.

Many students feel particularly invested in policies the new administration has denounced. Ally Mackender, senior, says this is what pushed her and her friends to march.

“We were going to go to the one in Austin originally, because we were just completely dumbfounded when Trump won. I remember the night before being excited and saying, ‘Oh, it’s so cool that tomorrow we’ll have the first woman president in history.’ It just bothers me so much that we apparently weren’t ready for that and all these people went out to march, but how many of them actually voted? I guess we went mostly because we’re all invested in different parts of policy that Trump is threatening to overturn, and so we wanted to have our voices be heard,” Mackender said.

The march served both to advocate on behalf of minority groups and to directly protest the new president. Aileen Domann, senior, described her motivation for marching as opposition to Trump himself.

“I wanted to join the march because I don’t think that people should silently sit by as a racist, sexist and homophobic man takes office. I feel like we have an opportunity to make a difference and show Donald Trump that we will not idly sit by but instead we will fight for our rights,” Domann said.

While many attended marches in San Antonio or Austin, demonstrations occurred throughout the nation as a part of a greater collective.

“I think it’ll be really impactful to just be a part of history.

This isn’t just happening in Texas; it’s happening everywhere,

and I think it’s going to be talked about for years to come. I think it’ll be great to see people from all walks of life coming together, supporting each other, loving each other,” Cline said.

The San Antonio march began at City Hall and was introduced by speakers discussing why they were marching, both in English and Spanish.

“When we got there, everybody was standing outside of City Hall, and there were about 30 people actually on the stairs, and each of them spoke a little bit about what they were marching for. Some spoke about women’s rights themselves, women’s health and advocacy, there were a couple of people there from Muslim groups speaking against islamophobia, and there people talking about refugees and migrants and how we need to keep our borders open. I thought it was really cool that they talked in English, and someone was there to translate it into Spanish, which I just think is so cool about San Antonio. It’s such an inclusive place, and I think that’s really in the spirit of the march,” Mackender said.

Though the march took place without a permit and against city ordinances, police officers were present and encouraged those attending.

“What was interesting about this one was that they didn’t have a permit to march because it costs thousands of dollars to get a permit, and they said, ‘Oh, the streets are owned by taxpayers, and we’re taxpayers, so we can just march.’ So technically what they were doing was against city ordinance, but what was cool was that the police still came, were blocking the streets, and making sure everyone was safe, and they were part of it and were excited about what people were doing. I feel like the whole community really came together,” Mackender said.

After participating in the march, many claimed to have better connected with the community.

“One of the aspects that I enjoyed most about the march was the sense of community that it elicited. There were people there from all backgrounds, races, genders and ages. It was amazing to see so many different people unite under one cause. I hope that the march sent a message of unity. This election has been based on hateful rhetoric and the march was a way to show that this hateful speech will not divide us,” Domman said.

While the hope is that these demonstrations will affect future policy, the minimum goal is to raise awareness and understanding.

“I hope it promotes a deeper understanding of each other and the diverse beliefs people have around the country. I hope that it leads to some change in politics and policy, though that

may be a bit too far off. At the very least I hope it gets people thinking,” Cline said.

The march showed a sense of solidarity between groups fearing the marginalization of their rights by the coming administration.

“There were more people that marched than there were that went to his inauguration. I think that goes to show some solidarity because I think a lot people really feel isolated after what happened, and people are scared of having their rights stripped from them. People are scared of being deported, or registered or not have access to healthcare or an education, all these horrible things. People have to expect these things as rights, and they’re starting to be overturned, and it’s a pretty tenuous situation. What’s done is done, but at least we know that there’s a community of people with these values willing to stand up for one another. I don’t know that my going to the march is going to help change any policy, but at least I can show people immigrating here, refugees or even people who just need access to birth control, that I’m here for them and I’m willing to help however I can,” Mackender said.

Marching served as an opportunity to join in a collective voice in a way that many would not have done on their own.

“It was really cool because I have pretty strong political opinions, I’m pretty steadfast in my beliefs and values, but I’m not one to really preach them to people. I don’t talk about them unless someone asks. I’ve never protested or marched or done that before, and there were people there who had been doing this since the 60s. It just helped to show that history is kind of repeating itself, and I guess what I got out of it was that there are ways to be an activist other than just being educated. Just reading about these things and staying up to date doesn’t really do anything if I don’t go out and make my voice heard. I feel like it inspired me to want to keep going to things like this,” Mackender said.

...

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.

Embracing the surreal

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear editor, We are sad that the first Trinitonian issue of spring 2017 didn’t have any mention of the women’s basketball team, which is currently 16-1 and ranked 16th in the country. The fact that a highly successful women’s sports team at Trinity wasn’t included in our campus newspaper reflects hegemonic masculinity that continues to exist in sports, and is highly disappointing to us. News media — from the national level all the way to local college campuses — have always played a vital role in shaping what their audience views as important.

That is why it is especially problematic that there was no coverage at all of the women’s basketball team in this issue.

Numerous studies conducted by scholars around the country have found that this exclusion from coverage marginalizes women’s sports and positions them as “other,” while presenting men’s sports as the norm or standard. This overall lack of coverage of women’s sports — not just found in this Trinitonian issue but in papers and news broadcasts around the country — presents a narrative to the public about which sports they should value, namely men’s sports, and continues to reinforce traditionally held gender roles and stereotypes associated with women’s sports. By not covering the women’s basketball team in this issue — especially since they had numerous wins over top-ranked teams during the winter break — it positions their accomplishments as less important than the men’s team, who received a full-page article. While we appreciated the detailed reporting about the men’s team, we hope the editorial staff will be cognizant of the impact that coverage has on readers’ perceptions, especially in the ways that coverage directly translates to the value and importance associated with a team.

Sincerely, Sarah Farrell, Hilary Hoffman, Juan Pablo Urrutia, Tyler Caldwell, Araceli Bremauntz, Haleigh Garza, Abigail Sheppard, Duncan Kraft, Elena Wilson, Adam Saunders, Sami Heffner, Meagan Moulton, Mikaylah Collins, Leah Wildman, Liza Southwick, Cheyenne Duncan, Sarah Thornton, David Hoffman, Daylon Gordon, Allison Staley, Austin Haas, Monica Holguin

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Opinion

Richard Nixon mocks Sean Spicer for dishonesty. The Pope’s hat pontiffically pontificates about Chicago police violence.

An angry man hawking two hams for $20 harasses Wendy’s for the preponderance of beef products on their menu. Am I going crazy?

No, I’m just on Twitter. I made a Twitter to create a personalized GABRIEL LEVINE aggregator of all the politics and OPINION COLUMNIST policy news that smart people thought important. It worked too well. I was rapidly drowning in a flow of depressing news and snark. I found life rafts in the form of @dick_nixon, @Popehat and @buy_2_hams, bursts of strange, surprising absurdity and surrealism amidsts a morass of political angst.

Much of life is a routine. Some people have good routines and some do not, but regardless of quality, a universal feature of routines is their predictability. One can reasonably predict how each day will go. More generally, we form expectations and predictions about the world and have notions about its normalcy.

But the world is a funny thing and so are the people in it.

All it takes to see and appreciate it is a sense for the absurd and the surreal: an old jar of iodine in a chemistry lab recommends mashed potatoes as the treatment for iodine ingestion. Someone has taken the cushions off the dorm couches and left them in front of every door in the hall.

You turn on the computer in the computer science major’s lounge only to find that the mouse is missing.

Some might find these occurrences as annoying or mildly humorous. I find a deeper meaning in them. Each occurrence is an example of the world being off in some way. One of the many conscious beings on the planet has done something thoroughly unexpected. A crack has been

w

placed in the windshield of routine through which we view the world.

Surreal and absurd events in our daily life mirror the glitches and programming conflicts of video games. In the post-nuclear Washington, D.C. of “Fallout 3,” it is not uncommon to return after clearing an area to find the bloody, obliterated bits of enemies reanimated and walking around. In other ways video games fail in their attempt to portray a convincing world. In “Bioshock Infinite,” people don’t react to guns aimed at their heads and apples heal bullet wounds.

In other ways, games traffic deliberately in the absurd to make a world seem real. Again in “Fallout 3,” skeletons are deliberately placed to tell a story. A skeleton lies before a locked door with a pack of bobby pins next to it. Another sits on a toilet with dozens of beer bottles around it. Behind a concealed door, one finds a room where plungers cover every conceivable surface and a garden gnome is surrounded by stimulants.

Absurdities and surreal occurrences like these are expected and appreciated in video games. It would be wise to take a page out of this approach to game worlds in an approach to the real world. Start with this sensitivity to the lunacy in the world and let one’s mind imitate it. Note how surreal and absurd one’s own thoughts often are, as the brain’s shifting chemical equilibrium leads to the free-associative connectivity of consciousness that is the heart of creativity.

Like cracking open the shell of a chocolate truffle to the rich flavor inside, embracing idiosyncrasy enables true appreciation of the deep, immense, abiding richness of the world that derives from its strangeness and unpredictability, in defiance of all attempts to normalize and order it. Consider

how delightful it is that, in a mockery of semantics, the world excels in both the absurd and surreal daily.

Gabriel Levine is a junior chemistry major.

EDITORIAL The votes were counted and the winner has been announced; are you happy with the results? No, we’re not talking about the presidential election (ever again), but we are excited to present the businesses and hangouts that our community has selected as the Best For Trinity.

Though being such a small school has numerous benefits, living in such a contained campus can have it’s drawbacks. The Trinity Bubble, as many call it, often leaves many longing for more to do during free time or on weekends. Fortunately, dozens of local restaurants and businesses are located within walking distance of campus in some of San Antonio’s most eclectic neighborhoods and offer visitors a chance to experience different aspects of the cultures that make up our beloved city.

Whether your favorites won their categories or you have never heard of the winners, each represents a place that students consider a memorable and valuable part of the Trinity experience. Exploring the city, trying new places and making memories both on and off campus balance out the daily grind of classes, homework and studying. Take advantage of living in such a unique city while you can and see why each of these businesses were voted Best For Trinity.

comic by MICHAEL MILLER

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • JANUARY 27, 2017 •

OPINION

Searching for truth in modern media

BY AARON DELWICHE

FACULTY CONTRIBUTOR

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump kicked off his “war with the media” by refusing to take a question from Jim Acosta during a press conference. “Your organization is terrible,” he shouted at the CNN reporter. “I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news.”

Let’s get one thing straight. For all of its problems, CNN is not fake news.

The phrase “fake news” refers to hoax websites which publish completely false, wildly provocative information in an attempt to generate advertising revenue.

Three days before the 2016 presidential election, a story about the murder-suicide of an FBI agent spread like wildfire through social media outlets. The story was particularly juicy, because the murdered agent was “believed to be responsible for the latest e-mail leaks pertinent to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.”

The story was shared over half a million times, and it generated more than 1.5 million unique page views for a publication known as the Denver Guardian. The website billed itself as “Denver’s oldest news source,” and — at first glance — it appeared to be real newspaper.

There was just one problem. It was all a lie.

There is no such FBI agent. There was no murder suicide. The Denver Guardian is not a real newspaper.

Last October, during Hurricane Matthew, the Boston Tribune claimed that 31 looters had been killed by police and store owners “during a deadly shootout.”

It was a lie. This did not happen. The Boston Tribune is not a real newspaper.

That same month, the Baltimore Gazette reported that Hillary Clinton and John Kerry had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.

It was a lie. This did not happen. The Baltimore Gazette is not a real newspaper.

In early January, the Seattle Tribune reported that six anti-Trump protesters were run over by a delivery truck on a busy freeway.

It was lie. This did not happen. The Seattle Tribune is not a real newspaper.

These are all examples of fake news websites.

According to some estimates, purveyors of fake news are able to generate anywhere between

$10,000 and $30,000 a month by distributing this dishonest clickbait.

We will never know if the epidemic of fake news sites affected the outcome of the 2016 election. It seems logical that something like this could have made a difference in such a close race, but the more important question is: why are people falling for such an obvious trick?

Fake news sites are successful because web designers use peripheral cues to convince people that they are reading an actual newspaper’s website.

Think about the sorts of things that you would find on legitimate news sites. Almost

Does it look like a newspaper?

Does it confirm my political beliefs?

Might as well share it with my friends. all newspaper sites include a masthead, a tagline, headlines, bylines, photographs, banner advertisements, social media links, links to other types of news (weather, sports, local news), a registration button and an RSS feed of breaking headlines. Fake news sites strategically deploy all of these things, and they also appropriate the stylistic tics of legitimate newspapers: sans-serif typefaces for headlines, serif typefaces for body copy, narrow columns and the clipped writing style we associate with nuts-and-bolts journalism.

It shouldn’t work, but it does. In a world characterized by information overload, we are forced to take short cuts. We don’t always take the time to look up every online source, so we rely on peripheral cues. Does it look like a newspaper? Does it confirm my political beliefs? Might as well share it with my friends.

The rise of fake news sites is just one of many troubling developments on our political landscape. Never in my lifetime have I seen

Americans so deeply divided. We desperately need to recover some sort of common ground.

Here at Trinity University, whether one leans to the right or to the left, most of us can agree that words matter. Logic matters.

So do verifiable facts. This belief is at the core of scholarship across disciplines. This belief is also at the core of journalistic practice.

In addition to promoting media literacy efforts, we can take a step toward common ground by educating ourselves about journalistic practices and by recognizing responsible journalism on all sides of the political spectrum.

CNN is not fake news. Nor are Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Cable news channels and national newspapers are far from perfect, but most of the journalists who work for these institutions are conscientious professionals. Whether they identify as conservative or liberal, they do their best to report the news in ways that conform with professional guidelines.

According to the Society of Professional Journalists, reporters seek and report the truth.

They understand that “ethical journalism should be accurate and fair.” They “support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.” They know that “the highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.”

Many wondered why the liberal-leaning CNN devoted so much airtime to Trump advocates such as Jeffrey Lord, Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks. Ratings and advertising revenue are part of the explanation, but the network’s commitment to balanced journalism is also a factor.

Others were shocked when the conservativeleaning Fox News host Megyn Kelly excoriated Carl Higbie’s claim that the internment of Japanese-American citizens provides an ethical and legal precedent for the creation of a Muslim registry. This, too, was an example of a journalist taking seriously her obligation to serve the public.

Two weeks ago, a particularly fine display of journalistic integrity was displayed when Fox News host Shep Smith passionately defended CNN against President Trump’s claim that the network was “fake news.”

“Though we at Fox News cannot confirm CNN’s reports,” he stated, “it is our observation

that its correspondents followed journalistic standards and that neither they nor any other journalists should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the president-elect of the United States,” he stated on air.

I never thought I would write an editorial praising two Fox News commentators, but these are strange times.

Is Fox News biased? Yes. Does it regularly slant the news and elevate my blood pressure?

Heck, yes. And I know that conservative Americans feel exactly the same way about CNN and the New York Times. But the fact that we disagree with something does not make it fake news.

Mainstream news outlets are far from perfect.

Journalists rely too much on official sources, and are far too quick to fall in line during times of war. As media critic Noam Chomsky regularly reminds us, mainstream media outlets typically operate within relatively narrow “boundaries of permissible thought.”

Neither Fox News nor CNN is likely to seriously consider the claim that capitalism is an intrinsically flawed economic system.

Similarly, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are unlikely to acknowledge that American military action overseas is often motivated by economic self-interest. For these perspectives, one must seek out alternative media.

Like all of us, mainstream media outlets are both free and flawed. But they matter.

Whether ferreting out corruption on Wall Street, documenting war crimes in My Lai and Abu Ghraib, exposing corrupt politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) or highlighting the widespread surveillance projects of the National Security Agency, mainstream journalists have risen to the challenge again and again.

In a world full of fake news, we need real journalists more than ever before. But we can’t place all of the responsibility on their shoulders. We need to educate ourselves about the ways that other people are attempting to persuade us. We should ask questions about everything we see. We need to look things up.

We, too, must seek the truth.

Aaron Delwiche is an associate professor of communication.

Last week according to Twitter It began with an incredible game of football and a Facebook livestream controversy and it ended with # Wo m e n s M a r c h .

Steve Carrell joked that “The Office” CALLUM SQUIRES was returning, before OPINION COLUMNIST stating that his “account had been hacked by Toby Flenderson” and that this was in fact a humorous hoax. We now know the two teams who will contest the Superbowl. Oh, and there was the small matter of an inauguration thrown in there, too. Last week was a newsheavy week! And it was made all the more enjoyable by my ever-trusty companion. No, I don’t have a dog. I have something better: a Twitter account.

Truth be told, social media genuinely makes things more enjoyable for me. Twitter’s coverage of Trump’s election win in November was the only thing keeping me sane, as the worst possible outcome reared its head.

Watching soccer is more fun with the jokes and analysis between fans and pundits alike.

Twitter has such a world of possibilities; I can’t help but love it. I understand criticisms of social media, but it gives me so much entertainment, I can’t accept it being seen as a negative influence on society.

So following the incredible Cowboys-Packers

game, came the slightly less fun Steelers victory over the Chiefs. Then, Steelers’ wide receiver and all-round entertainer Antonio Brown was fined for live streaming 17 minutes of his team’s post-match locker room meeting following their divisional playoff round victory.

As an athlete, I do think that certain elements of the locker room should remain sacred and between the team, but I did like that Brown was attempting to open up the locker room game day experience to the fans … until I heard that he may have been encouraged to do the stream by Facebook executives. That put a bit of a downer on it. But Brown, who famously said being fined $25,000 for twerking in the endzone was “nothing to a boss,” is naturally an entertainer and wasn’t trying to do any harm. But it was certainly a big sports social media story last week. Furthermore, if you’re a sports fan, especially NFL or NBA, and you’re not already following Shea Serrano, what are you doing with your life? Not only is he a superb writer — I’m currently reading “The Rap Yearbook” which is his masterpiece on the history of hip hop since 1979 — but he is hilarious with a capital H when tweeting about sports. Follow him.

And then came the inauguration, which gave me a weekend full of social media gems.

Melania Trump, pictured giving Michelle Obama a gift, with the tag line, “Here, have your speech back” was wonderfully put together, coupled with Michelle’s (accidental?)

face of bemusement at the whole situation.

George Takei pointed out that the White House had almost immediately removed its climate change, health care, civil rights and LGBT webpages. To me, that shows the kind of administration Trump and Pence are

We seem now to be jumping back 50 years in terms of civil liberties and tolerance. going to run. It’s a travesty for America that after the forward progress of the Obama administration, we seem now to be jumping back 50 years in terms of civil liberties and tolerance. The mirroring of Trump’s “give the power back to the people” segment of his inauguration speech with Bane’s saying the same line following his destruction of Gotham City in “The Dark Knight Rises” brought a chuckle to my life in amongst all the worry.

The Sean Spicer alternative facts and “Period.”

memes were also a real highlight to come out of the Republican’s party interesting first few days in power. My personal favourites were “The Death Star had no design flaws. Period.”, and “Harambe would still be alive if Trump had been president last May. Period.” Good honest humour.

An immediate reaction to Trump’s ascension to power, #WomensMarch drew deserved worldwide attention. I was immensely happy and proud of the global community that these protests were not exclusive to the U.S. It was a special display of human pride and unity.

My favourite images were of the signs being held up in the massive crowds. One relatively unenthusiastic protester’s sign said “Not usually a sign guy, but geez.” This to me just exemplified the frustration and disbelief that was being expressed by the masses that this could come to pass. Though I do think I should mention the young boy walking at the protest, standing up for what he believed in, with a sign that said “I <3 trains.” Good for you.

Stand up for what you believe in. And don’t bash social media. It gives birth to powerful movements and a vent for disgruntlement. We might need it over the next four years. Miss you already, Barack.

Callum Squires is a senior German studies major and sports management minor.

OPINION • JANUARY 27, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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Your opinions deserve critique Last semester, I discovered and was enthralled by the debates and writings of prominent New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and GABRIEL LEVINE Christopher OPINION COLUMNIST Hitchens. Jews are said to have a gene for atheism so this isn’t surprising. After a few weeks of gorging on arguments against religion, I attempted to engage in a realworld religious discussion with a person I’ve known and taken classes with for two years.

The discussion rapidly escalated (at least in part due to some needlessly aggressive questions from me) and rapidly ended with this person angrily calling me a “little Jew” and storming off.

I’d never experienced that kind of antiSemitic comment hurled in anger before. It was shocking. This person later apologized and I accepted. We’ve all been in situations where someone gets under our skin and we lash out with the lowest insults we can think up.

However, that experience, on a college campus with an intelligent person, got me thinking about the current state of ideological exchange and how difficult it has become to broach many sensitive issues.

The main problem seems to be an increasing tendency to become defensive and prioritize feelings and self-righteousness over scientific, thorough debate.

It is all the more unfortunate that people adopt these responses when questioned on their most deeply held beliefs. In many ways it is not surprising that one is most defensive about one’s deepest beliefs but it would seem all the more important to subject those core beliefs to thorough scrutiny to make sure that one isn’t basing one’s life on a bad set of ideas.

The “little Jew” comment seems to epitomize this problem, and religion is a prime example of defensiveness and the triumph of emotion over scientific reasoning.

From the (admittedly few) conversations I have had with people of faith, I’ve found that they have frequently failed to seek out arguments against their faith and, if they have, they offer defenses of dubious scientific value or invoke the emotional reassurance of faith as an ostensibly legitimate trump card.

This kind of motivated reasoning is not unique to adherents of organized religion.

I’ve heard it from non-religious friends who choose to believe in some amorphous “higher power” or people who flippantly say that “everything happens for a reason.”

This problem of motivated reasoning extends beyond religion. In the debate over abortion, I see all too many prochoicers respond to legitimate criticisms and questions over when and whether a fetus deserves protection with screams of “my body, my choice,” as if the body of the fetus isn’t in some way distinct from the mother.

On the other side, pro-lifers are all too ready to accuse those in favor of abortion of committing genocide.

These types of responses to legitimate criticism not only shut down any reasoned debate by invoking an emotional response but also shut down even the possibility of reasoned discussion. Topically, college campuses around the country right now are struggling with this issue. As a liberal, it is depressing to see ostensibly progressive students disrupting and shutting down the events of conservative speakers and mercilessly haranguing professors and students alike who in some way violate the current incarnation of progressive dogma.

Trinity is better about this, but we have not been immune.

How then can we vaccinate ourselves against this breakdown in the exchange of ideas?

There are several clear solutions. Initially, we must become accustomed to engagement with all ideas, even those that we find infuriating or offensive. From a willingness to engage can come discussion. Discussion should be a time of listening, of understanding where the person you disagree with is coming from and of hearing in their own words what they think and why they think it. Civil discussion builds the mutual respect necessary for the most important and hardest stage in the exchange of ideas: criticism.

Criticism is necessary to yield real progress. Discussion alone will yield mutual understanding without any progress towards the greater truth nestled between two opposing ideas. However, as the “little Jew” comment demonstrated, criticism is what people tend to have the hardest time with because criticism naturally makes us defensive. To get around this bug of our psychology, we should approach criticism not like lawyers or politicians but like scientists.

We should dispassionately consider all arguments and evidence and pursue each to its logical end. Like scientists, we should let our conclusions be determined by where our rational thought takes us, not whether we like the answer.

Through a scientific paradigm of criticism, we can approach all issues, even tricky ones like the verity (or lack thereof ) of religion or the biological versus social explanations of gender and racial disparities. Scientific thinking has been responsible for every great human leap forward and it can also resolve the issues and ideological divides that still hold humanity back.

Gabriel Levine is a junior chemistry major.

Radio heartbreak Have you ever heard your voice recorded?

It’s nauseating, isn’t it? “That’s me?” you question, and wonder how people even look at you JOY LAZARUS while their ears OPINION COLUMNIST bleed as you talk.

This feeling is surely never felt when listening to Delilah, as in, Del-li-lah, who airs on nationally syndicated radio. She customarily hosts a radio talk show in the evenings and sings her name in the intro. Delilah’s voice is something like magic stardust. It’s akin to the sensation of cutting butter. The smoothness and easiness of it is relaxing. Delilah’s voice is mature and also comforting, the perfect combination for a radio show centered on love. I imagine her as a classy mother who wears nice sweaters and drinks red wine.

It’s very calming to listen to when staring at taillights on a crowded highway. Listeners call in and request love songs dedicated to their significant other to be played on air. These acts are public declarations of love, heartbreak or something in between. I listened to her in my younger years, and it wasn’t until high school on a family trip to Florida that I heard her voice cooing from my cousin’s truck’s speakers.

When he saw the flash of amazement on my face, I was informed her show aired nationally.

Delilah asks for listeners to call in so she can attentively diagnose their woes and encourage them to share their innermost secrets. On a crowded highway in Houston, I listened to a man tell a tale of love, loss and the sense of uncertainty that accompany a breakup. Delilah neatly tied up the loose ends, speaking lightly of serious matters that would remain unanswered once the program ended. I guess that’s the deal with advice; it’s given

but never known to be considered.

In “Sleepless in Seattle,” Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks play characters who meet through the chance correspondence of a radio station. Meg Ryan listens to the same nationally syndicated radio station, modeled off of Delilah’s show, the night Tom Hank’s young son calls in asking for a new mom after his mother passes away. The son calls into the station a few more times and slowly Meg Ryan and Tom Hank’s lives intersect.

These are nice examples of Delilah’s impact on listeners, ranging from advice to inspiration for a Nora Ephron movie. I’d like to believe her callers are honest and not a scripted portion of the show. Delilah was on in my car the other day and there was a man who was searching for a childhood friend. Lo and behold, he was able to reconnect with her through a website. Delilah set up the story in a favorable way, and he seemed earnest from the other side of the phone, but it all turned out to be an advertisement for classmates.com, which is a social networking site geared towards reconnecting people. I felt a bit betrayed by this interaction because it seemed to be genuine until I heard the plug, and then its inauthenticity left a sour taste.

Some things are better left untouched, so I won’t google Delilah’s radio show, because I don’t want to know how much of her content is sponsored by advertisements. I like to think her voice emanates from my speakers as a natural occurrence, as if she’s a fairy godmother, and ultimately not a working woman paid to soothe my little ears. The spell might be broken if research is dug too deep. I don’t want reality to break the spell, and it does so often, so some mysteries should remain just as they are.

Joy Lazarus is a senior art and communication double major.

We are well known for our wood fired coffee beans and our house made moon milk that we use to sweeten our lattes! We have a spacious study area, we are one exit away from Trinity and Incarnate Word off of 281, and we have a drive thru.

Summermoon Coffee Bar 3233 N. St. Mary’s St. Monday-Friday 6:00 am-9:00 pm

Saturday-Sunday 8:00 am-6:00 pm

CONTEST

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Breakforthe Tie El Milagrito or Tomatillo's Break the tie on Best for Trinityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pick for Best Mexican food.

Vote in the Coates Center Friday or Monday from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. and be entered for a chance to win a gift card for the winning restaurant

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BEST FOR TRINITY

GOOD EATS 1. Tycoon Flats

Tycoon Flats has one of the best burgers in San Antonio, and it delivers it in an atmosphere that you crave as much as the food. On a warm sunny day, the outdoor seating encourages you and your friends to take that short walk from campus to fill the green benches and tables. If it’s a cooler day you can still bundle together around one of their tables inside and enjoy the coziness. A meat eater will relish in the warm juices that flow from their pure beef and tastefully cooked onions. Cheese is set to your preference, of course. Yet it may be the non-meat eaters who gain the most satisfaction from a trip to Tycoon Flats. Their black bean burger is one of the best I’ve ever had. I’d bet it’d be worth your dollars to go twice and try both.

2. Chris Madrid’s 3. Big Bob’s The Cove Order Up Best BBQ

1. Smoke Shack

Smoke Shack executes perfectly what it promises: simple, no-nonsense Southern food in a laidback environment. Located on Broadway a little over five minutes away from campus, the barbecue joint features classic Americana staples like ribs, coleslaw and fries served on baking pans and parchment paper for a note of playfulness. Smoke Shack also fills the key requirement of any Trinity student: affordability. I bought a plate of brisket with BBQ sauce, bread, fried okra and spicy cream corn for only $11.

The only drawback is that, unfortunately, a lot of residents know about this spot so parking is hard to come by.

2. Augie’s 3. Rudy’s

Best Food Truck

1. Tacos El Regio

The bright yellow truck of Tacos El Regio is a beacon of hope for the late-night wanderers of the North St. Mary’s strip. Illuminated by streetlamps and the neon-red “Hardbodies” sign, Trinity’s favorite food truck is the saving grace for those looking for proper mexican food by the time most restaurants have closed. Open from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., Tacos El Regio provides delicious tacos, tortas and quesadillas to the motley crowd that surfs the nearby bars, as well as anyone who makes the journey for a late-night urban delicacy — and it’s well worth it. The iconic, mustachioed superhero in El Regio’s logo holds their signature taco: a simple and effective creation made from beef, chicken, pork or veggies, and accompanied by onions, cilantro, avocado and lemon. The simplicity of the taco is deceiving in how textured the result is, at an affordable $7 dollars for three well-sized tacos. Be aware of the time you pick to visit, since a big crowd gathers soon after last call. Those who frequent St. Mary’s know that any night is best bookended by a visit to San Antonio’s most beloved food truck.

2. Bombay Salsa 3. Cheesy Jane’s

Cycle Hub is a state-of-the-art indoor cycling studio dedicated exclusively to indoor cycling classes.

- Schwinn® A.C. Performance with Carbon Blue bikes - Certified Schwinn® Indoor Cycling Instructors - Fun for all ages and fitness levels

First ride is always free Students $10 a class Teachers 15% off www.mycyclehub.com

SHOPPING 1. Target 2. Walmart 3. francesca’s

Best Thrift Store

1. Buffalo Outlet 2. Boysville 3. Goodwill

Best Place to Shop for Deals

1. Target 2. Walmart 3. Forever 21

Best Housing

1. CityVista 2. Rosemont 3. Tobin Lofts

BEST FOR TRINITY

SWEET SPOTS

Best Ice Cream/ Froyo

1. Amy’s Ice Cream

Amy’s Ice Cream is the perfect stop to get your sweet fix.

Located one exit away from Trinity at the Quarry Market, Amy’s provides a great atmosphere and delicious treats at a reasonable price. Options range from banana splits, soft serve and a variety of ice cream flavors that can have cookies, candy or other toppings crushed in. A chalk board behind the counter displays seasonal and traditional flavor that change according to what is available. If you want more than a one-time ice cream fix, you can get pint containers to take with you and keep the sugary fun going.

2. Lick 3. Menchie’s Best Cookies

1. Tiff’s Treats 2. Lily’s Cookies 3. Bird Bakery

Best Cake/Cupcakes

1. Bird Bakery 2. Nothing Bundt Cake 3. Annie’s Petite Treats

Best Hangout Spot

1. The Pearl 2. Brackenridge Park 3. Friendly Spot Best Pizza Local Coffee 1. Pizza Classics 2. Main Street 3. Barbaro Best Place To Go On A Date

1. Riverwalk 2. The Pearl 3. Alamo Drafthouse

Best Vegetarian

1. Green

If you’re ever in need of vegetarian cuisine, Green is the place to go. The menu is 100 percent vegetarian and offers vegan substitutes. From veggie burgers to bowls to burritos, the menu displays a variety of foods fit to serve any preference. The restaurant provides outside seating beside their small garden, warmly lit and filled with picnic tables, as well as seating inside beside the artfully chalked walls and eccentric décor. All the servers are friendly and wear shirts that say “VEGETARIANS ARE BETTER LOVERS” and other slogans that highlight the benefits of vegetarianism. The restaurant also offers a diverse selection of vegan cupcakes and serves vegan soft-serve for the perfect treat after your meal. Green is the go-to place in San Antonio for vegans, vegetarians and omnivores to feast.

2. Bok Choy 3. La Botanica Senor Veggie

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Best Off-Campus Study Spot

1. Local Coffee

Oh, Local. I’ve never been myself before this — though images of the signature logo pepper my friends’ Snapchat stories — and the first thing I notice when I walk into the Broadway location is all the Trinikids I recognize. I understand why we, the students of Trinity University, are drawn to this San Antonio establishment: the five locations, Bakery Lorraine-sourced pastries and dreamy indie-pop (not to mention the minimalist drink menu) make this a calming place away from campus to focus on schoolwork. So stash your laptop and textbooks in your Fjallraven Kanken, Trinity students, and make your way to the Pearl and Broadway locations. Local Coffee, filled with the scent of espresso in the air, is always going to be there to make us feel productive.

2. Rosella 3. Candlelight Best Place to Take a Visitor

1. The Riverwalk 2. The Pearl 3. The Alamo

Have an idea for a design you'd like to see built?

Consider pitching your idea as an Engineering Science senior design project.

Each team of 4 to 6 senior engineering students will work on a yearlong project proposed by industry, faculty, staff, or themselves. Each team is allocated a budget of $1200 to build and test a prototype.

If you are interested in proposing an idea, please submit a one to two paragraph abstract describing your idea by Feb 7th for preliminary review and feedback. If it meets the basic criteria, then guidance will be provided to you for creation of a more detailed one to two page proposal (due Mar 7) for final selection.

Junior engineering design students will bid on their favorite projects and be assigned to a design team at the end of this semester. Then during the 2017-2018 academic year each selected proposal will be transformed, by the senior engineering design students, from an idea into a design and prototype for test and evaluation.

Please submit your ideas to Farzan Aminian (faminian@trinity.edu)

BEST FOR TRINITY

12

Best Coffeehouse

1. Local Coffee

In the mornings, between hitting the snooze button on one’s alarm three times and scrambling to work out, shower and dress before class, many try to find time to drink green tea or coffee in a well-intended effort to calm one’s nerves about the responsibilities for the day. Getting your hands on caffeine can be hard, mainly because the line at Einstein’s is often intimidatingly long, and Java City is in the library, which brings up thoughts of the studying neglected the night before. However, for a “treat yourself ” day, Local Coffee is the place to go. The soy lattes with a pump of Mexican vanilla flavoring, served hot or iced, is a popular menu item. The sweet flavoring is subtle enough to not overwhelm the flavor of the coffee blend, which changes frequently. The staff is Michelle-from-Einstein’s friendly, always asking if customers are having a good day. In addition to various caffeinated beverages, they also serve pastries and parfaits that would make anyone’s sweet tooth tremble. While it is more of a time commitment and a bit of a trip, Local Coffee always promises a friendly barista to serve a carefully made drink that will kick green tea to the curb on any given morning.

2. Candlelight 3. Commonwealth

TREAT YOURSELF Best Salon 1. Olmos Park Barber Shop Best Nail Salon 1. Quarry Nails 2. Toxic Salon 2. Anne’s Nails

MAKE FRIENDS AND MAKE MONEY

LIQUOR LOCATIONS Best Happy Hour

1. Tomatillo’s

Located very close to campus, Tomatillo’s Café y Cantina boasts one of the area’s most generous happy hours. Between 3 and 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and all day long on Sunday “Fundays,” Tomatillo’s serves generously sized margaritas for $4, draft beer between $2.50 and $3.50 per bottle and $4 well drinks. They also offer a number of appetizers, including nachos, quesadillas and flautas, for prices ranging from $3 and $7. My recommendation? Prepare to be wowed by the queso flameado. Tomatillo’s is in the process of updating their menus, which will affect some of the happy-hour selections by the beginning of February, but the manager assured me that the drink specials are here to stay. Make sure to drop in on Karaoke nights every Wednesday from 7 to 11 p.m. — all are invited to sing your heart out while the ladies enjoy $2 draft beer, well drinks and margaritas.

2. Sonic 3. Brass Monkey Panchito’s

Best Margaritas

1. Tomatillo’s

There are many aspects of Tomatillo’s that make it a Trinity favorite. It’s close to campus, the atmosphere is fun and festive and the food is delicious. But perhaps the number one thing that draws us to that colorful restaurant on Broadway is the Tomatillos margarita. There are over 20 flavors to choose from, like lime, strawberry or mango, for those who like to play it safe, and jalapeño, chamango and x-rated for anyone looking for something out of the ordinary. Frozen or on the rocks, the generous portions are more than enough to help you unwind after a long day of studying or get you in the mood for some Wednesday-night karaoke. During happy hour, they fit into the budget of even the most frugal college student. With so many flavors at such a great price, Tomatillos is the obvious choice for the best margarita for Trinity

2. La Gloria 3. Panchito’s

Best Bar

1. Bombay Bicycle Club Bombay Bicycle Club, or Bays as Trinity students lovingly refer to it, is a bar located less than five minutes from campus. Like most college bars, Bays offers an array of drinks and foods ranging from an Old Fashioned with a BLT to frozen margaritas and nachos. Unlike other college bars in the area, Bays has established itself as a Trinity institution. It’s hard to go there any night and not run into at least one current student or alum. Take my advice and go for the drinks and stay for the atmosphere.

2. Brass Monkey 3. Pat O’Brien’s

Best Liquor Store

1. Don’s & Ben’s 2. Spec’s 3. WB Liquors

Best Movie Theater YOUR local neighborhood pub is now hiring servers for spring and summer Apply in person from 1 pm - 1 am at 3506 N. St. Mary’s San Antonio, TX 78212 *This message approved by Callum Squires*

1. The Quarry

The Regal Alamo Quarry Stadium 16, more commonly known as the Quarry Theater, provides a nearby escape into the world of cinema. With a steampunk-esque vibe, the Regal Alamo offers a balanced mix of blockbuster and indie movies within convenient range of campus. Whether for a nail-biting horror movie, a raucous comedy or romantic date night, this versatile theater fits the mood of anything showing within it.

Plus, the convenient shops and restaurants in the area make converting a visit to the Regal Alamo into a full evening of activity.

2. The Alamo Drafthouse

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT “Serving on Student Government Association (SGA) allows students to develop skills, which will benefit the university community today and in the future. Students also have the opportunity to represent and promote their own interests.

Finally, being involved in SGA sets the stage for learning life-long skills, such as prioritizing demands and taking collective action.

Keesha Middlemass, professor of political science

Pulse

JEANNA GULRICH BALREIRA, HAYLEY SAYRS and COURTNEY JUSTUS, center, observes the conditions of the Trinity Market during a rainy Saturday session last August Photo by HENRY PRATT.

Trinity Market shuts down for indefinite period of time to reorganize its approach The popular business opened up the university to the public and had been managed by Trinity students and staff.

BY COURTNEY JUSTUS PULSE REPORTER Over winter break, Jacob Tingle, co-director of the Center for Experiential Learning and Career Success, announced the closing of the Trinity Market, the university’s first farmers’ market, which thrived thanks to its student and staff volunteers, as well as the presence of vendors visiting from the San Antonio community.

“I think farmers’ markets are really important, and I liked that the Trinity Market introduced students to the concept in a way that was fun,” said Claire Burrus, a junior political science and environmental studies double major.

The Trinity Market prioritized its emphasis of healthy eating and getting exercise by providing its many attendees with the opportunities to purchase organic food from both food trucks and stands, as well as yoga and dance classes that were

available to participants of various skill levels.

“In terms of sustainability, I encourage people to turn to farmers’ markets as a grocery source. Often young people are unaware of these markets or think that they are out of their price range,” Burrus said.

Over the past few years, Trinity has been encouraging college students to eat healthier, more sustainable meals. It has already implemented a number of measures to do so, including opening Freshii and bringing low-calorie options, especially through PorVida, to the P.O.D. and Mabee Dining Hall.

“The Trinity Market emerged during a time where many markets around the city were sprouting up.

While having more farmers’ markets definitely gave our community an opportunity to purchase some local, sustainable produce and try new and flavorful foods, in addition to other handmade products, it also made it difficult for the vendors to travel, staff and stock their multiple markets,” said Hayley Sayrs, Trinity alumna and previous head of the Trinity Market.

While the market was able to host a wide variety of vendors, numerous factors affected their success when it came to selling their goods, such as weather conditions and the tendency of students to have smaller budgets.

“Many of these other markets have also closed their doors in response to a plethora of challenges and customer demands not being met.

Farmers’ markets are very ephemeral in design and are also logistically challenging due to weather, timing, product availability and price.

I think that even with funding, ensuring the sustainability of the market would definitely have been a challenge for anyone,” Sayrs said.

The Trinity Market originally started thanks to a grant written by professors Carolyn Becker and Luis Martinez prior to the start of the spring 2016 semester. The market immediately drew positive attention by providing the community with initiatives to have healthier lifestyles.

“What made the Trinity Market successful was the way it brought together stakeholders from all across campus. We all brought passion and excitement to the project. Overall, I think it was an educational and enriching experience for anyone who participated, making it more than just a market. Our core team worked together to bridge the gap between Trinity and the outside community,” Sayrs said.

Sayrs is currently working with the Food Policy Council of San Antonio (FPCSA), which is currently focusing on farm-to-school initiatives, which will ultimately allow students to

experience healthier lifestyles thanks to a better education.

“With the FPCSA, we are working to encourage and support school gardens, enhance nutrition and food-system education and pass legislation that allows schools to purchase more food locally from farmers and other outside vendors.

If Trinity can shift to sourcing more local and sustainable products in the dining halls, we can serve as a model for other universities and institutions seeking to implement farm-to-school initiatives on their campuses,” Sayrs said.

While the Trinity Market won’t be running every Saturday this semester, there is the possibility that it may be brought back in the future, but with a different approach.

Tingle believes that perhaps it might be better if the Trinity Market later operated on a once-a-month basis to lower costs and create a different marketing strategy in order to maximize attendance.

“A lot of the costs are variable, so if the Trinity Market is only running one Saturday a month, there’s a lot of cost savings,” Tingle said.

“I think there is a market for the Trinity Market and we should start thinking about how we are going to do it differently if it returns. There was that neat sense of community surrounding the market.”

For Tingle, working with the Trinity Market team was a valuable learning experience that gave him and the rest of the team a guidebook for implementing projects and events like the Trinity Market in the future.

Tingle witnessed collaborative efforts between multiple on-campus departments, including the business office and university marketing & communications, among others.

“It was neat for me to understand and get a much better sense of what happens at Trinity to make an event occur. I’ve been on campus for 16 years and didn’t have that knowledge of what goes on on at that side of Trinity and the awesome people that have been helping out the university,” Tingle said.

Students can learn more about sustainability and healthy options through the Food Matters First Year Experience, the gardening class and other classes in departments such as environmental studies, biology and geosciences. Through shared learning, better communication with the rest of the community and a greater incentive to increase sustainability, Trinity students, faculty and staff can increase food quality and well-being on campus.

If the Trinity Market returns to campus, all community members will be invited to attend and volunteer at its future sessions.

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • JANUARY 27, 2017 •

PULSE

Esther Kim receives exciting promotion The assistant director for orientation programs leads induction activities for new students

BY ROBIN BISSET

PULSE REPORTER

John Jacobs (JJ), the previous assistant director of Student Involvement, aspired to make Trinity feel like home for every student.

His departure from the position last fall saddened many, but his replacement has used his influence to begin her promising career.

“JJ’s a funny guy. He has woo in his strength.

He’s very creative, personable and able to make an impact. Our strengths worked well together,” said Esther Kim, assistant director for orientation programs.

When Jacobs first came to Trinity, Kim interned under him and was able to observe, and later work beside him in the job of creating a home for new and incoming students. Now, Kim is the primary face of the orientation team and executor of orientation activities.

She begins planning orientation and guiding student adjustment 10 months in advance.

“We just completed the process of spring transfer student orientation, which is a mini version of new student orientation. We are welcoming the students and helping them get acclimated to campus while introducing new traditions. We also started planning for new student orientation that will happen in August of 2017, and are just beginning applications for new members of the O-Team,” Kim said.

Kim noticed that she and Jacobs both expressed their care and dedication for making an easier transition for incoming students in different, but complimenting, strengths.

“I like to get things done. I love to watch the process of planning events and observe

ESTHER KIM poses in her office as she takes a break from planning the activities for the fall orientation team.

Applications to serve on the upcoming team were recently released, and will be due Friday, February 3rd. photo by MIGUEL WEBER

how events and activities eventually plan themselves out. I’m planning right now for the incoming orientation team by making sure they know how to greet new members, what the Pathways curriculum is, the demographics behind the incoming class. Overall, I’m trying to make sure the captains and interns work together to build a strong training team and gain some experience that will help them postgrad or in their next career,” Kim said.

Kim’s history of working with new student orientation and her greatest individual strengths were compelling reasons to hire her to replace her former boss.

“I hired her in June 2015. She had been a summer orientation intern for us. We had the benefit of seeing her work ethic and skills as an intern. She has a great love for working with students and is really passionate about the orientation team. When Jacobs left, plugging her into the orientation programs’ part of our office made a lot of sense, given her talents.

The opportunity to give her this experience was very exciting,” said Jamie Thompson, director of Student Involvement.

Kim has continued to impress her coworkers by maintaining a positive attitude as she takens on her new role.

“Esther is a great team member. She is always ready to give a helping hand. She works very hard and she is very detail-oriented,” Thompson said.

With Kim’s focus and talents, she has not only made a positive impression as a co-worker and employee, but also as an orientation team leader for students on her team.

“She’s very energetic and open to ideas, and good to be the new leader. As a leader, communication is key, and Esther has done a great job of that so far,” said Shane Bono, a sophomore business analytics and technologies major and orientation team member .

As Kim begins organizing her plans and establishing goals to fulfill in her new role, other coworkers have approached her in hopes of giving her advice to make her job a little smoother.

“I think the advice I would give to Esther is the same thing I would share with all members of our team, which is to be present as often as we can, to enjoy the highs that exist when working with students and the wonderful learning moments we get to see. Our work is student-centered, and that’s the beauty of our work. We stay student centered and missioncentered. Our department mission is to develop student leaders and facilitate programs that contribute to a vibrant campus life, and I think we do that every day,” Thompson said.

In the meantime, Kim’s presence has been enjoyed by her various coworkers, and the search has begun to find a replacement for her previous position.

“I am really proud of our team. We have a lot of synergy right now and work really hard to acknowledge each other’s talents and strengths we bring to the table each day. The reorganization has amplified that, as I’ve been able to put staff members in places where they really shine, and it has benefited the students.

We have just started a search committee for her old job, and we hope to fill the role this spring,” Thompson said.

Community preps for Lunar New Year

Trinity welcomes the spring transfers

The event is celebrated globally by residents and descendents of Chinesespeaking countries

Students adjust to a new university environment with help from peers and Student Involvement

BY JULIA WEIS PULSE REPORTER Saturday marks a holiday that over one billion people around the world will celebrate: Chinese New Year. Also known as the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, this holiday will celebrate the start of spring with food, family and small, red envelopes filled with money.

Grace Cheng is a junior accounting major, a first-generation American and the president of Chinese Culture Club. She’s lived in the United States her entire life but was raised by Chinese parents.

“As a kid, it was something that differentiated me from all of my white friends. Something that I can relate to with my other Asian friends.

It was just a part of the culture,” Cheng said.

The traditions of Chinese New Year differ from family to family, or country to country.

“I’m from the south of China and we don’t have such a strong tradition. Actually, it’s a festival where friends get together. My parents and some of their relatives talk about life. Plus many of them we only can see once a year, so this is the only chance we can be together,” said Dylan Yi, a first year from Guangzhou, China.

Yi, along with other international students from Chinese-speaking countries, will likely

get together and try to emulate the celebrations that their families have at home. Because the international students are from different areas, their traditions may conflict with each other.

“We used to put things in the dumplings, like a good charm. It used to be coins, but it was really dangerous, so we replaced it with something edible. There was one day before New Year’s where we would just go shopping.

We shop for all the posters with the Chinese characters on them,” said Haley Yi, sophomore.

Professors in the department of modern languages have also considered the rituals and traditions associated with the festival.

“Since age is counted from a baby’s conception, traditionally a child is considered one year old at birth, and thus is two when the next New Year passes,” said Stephen Field, professor of Chinese.

Jie Zhang, also a professor of Chinese, has a more personal tie to the holiday because she grew up in China.

“When I was young, I think my favorite part was eating the food. My dad used to cook a lot of specialty food, like meatballs and steamed buns with special fillings inside,” Zhang said.

For both the Chinese professors and Chinese students, the celebration of the New Year is vital to their culture. Whether or not they have the external celebrations, the holiday will still be significant internally.

“I would say that it’s part of the Chinese identity. It’s very important to everybody, wherever they live. It’s a celebration of family and food, but also hope. Hope for something new,” Zhang said.

BY COURTNEY JUSTUS PULSE REPORTER Over two dozen transfer and exchange students have decided to make Trinity their home this semester. They come from all over the country, and even across the globe.

“Everyone seems pretty open, welcoming and friendly,” said Joyce Palmer, a sophomore urban studies major.

Prior to coming to Trinity, Palmer attended the University of British Columbia. She is from San Antonio originally and thought of moving back in order to be closer to her family.

“I was nervous about the classes, but now I feel really good about them. [The professors] seem more interested in getting to know me and the other students,” Palmer said. “With orientation, I got to know people and was introduced to a lot of resources that would help me, so I wasn’t starting the year feeling like I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was a part of the community even before I started classes,” Palmer said.

During orientation, transfer and exchange students get to know more about San Antonio and how they can explore the city.

“I have always believed that communicating with the locals helps us to understand the city

and its unique culture as much as we can,” said John Wu, a first-year accounting major and exchange student from Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Lingnan University has an exchange program that allows a few students from the university to come study at Trinity each year. This semester, Wu will be taking several humanities courses along with a Spanish course.

“Trinity focuses more on academic and scholarly research, while Lingnan has a bigger focus on the knowledge itself,” Wu said.

This year, many of the transfer students have gotten involved with extracurricular activities and clubs here on campus.

“I did a lot of LGBT services back in Hong Kong and know that San Antonio is a very inclusive city. I am most interested in PRIDE right now and want to join in on LGBT activities here,” Wu said.

Many of Trinity’s transfer students have not lived in San Antonio before and are able to enjoy many unique experiences by exploring the city on their own or with friends.

“The cool thing about coming to a new area and not knowing anyone is that you have new things to encounter, so that’s a fun process,” said Joy Yauger, an undeclared junior.

While academics take up a large part of any Trinity student’s life, there is always time to attend many of the social events on campus and in the nearby San Antonio community.

“Trinity is a challenging school, but you should still definitely go to as many social events as you can. Try out new things that you haven’t done before,” Yauger said.

“Run the Jewels 3” sets politics and discrimination to a sick beat Released three weeks early as a holiday gift to everyone, I guess, most of the trap album’s tracks squeeze in as much commentary and as many complex rhyme schemes as possible. A third jewel for sure.

Trump on track to remove millions from Arts Endowment While he’s been busy making the dreams of old white men come true so far, Trump promises he’ll make deep cuts to the government agency dedicated to funding creativity and artistic innovation in young people. As soon as he finds a tiny pen.

AE &

Suzanne Weaver is on the cusp of change Suzanne We a ve r serves as the San Antonio Museum of Art’s Brown Foundation Curator of JEFF SULLIVAN Modern NEWS EDITOR a n d Contemporary Art. On Friday, January 20, she discussed select pieces of the museum’s contemporary collection during her On the Cusp of Change event.

On the Cusp of Change is a discussion series that allowing paying visitors an opportunity to be led through the museum’s various collections by their respective curators. The talks focus on changes in the collections such as the acquisition of new works of art or changes in artmaking — i.e., subject matter, techniques and materials. A Q&A followed a tour of the room with a wine and cheese reception closing the evening. The event marked exactly six months since Weaver began working at SAMA. Her touch has yet to leave an impression on the installation of the contemporary galleries. Because of various gallery closures and construction schedules, Weaver will have to wait until this coming fall before organizing a full reinstallation of the permanent collection. This time will allow her to bring focus and clarity to the collection. The Trinitonian sat down in Rosella’s for a conversation with Weaver to discuss the following weekend’s event, the changes she’d like to bring to the contemporary collection and the relationship between the SAMA and Trinity University.

Would you discuss your Cusp of Change experience?

The Cusp of Change was an idea to have the different curators speak about their collections. It shows where their thinking is on the collection and the exhibition programs. It’s an opportunity to have more of a conversational dialogue with people in a more casual atmosphere as opposed to standing in front of a lecture hall and doing slides. Hopefully it allowed more conversation while getting people in front of the works.

It ended up being very popular and successful having people there, present and thinking. The most important thing you can do is get people thinking about why a work exists. It’s got to get people to look at the work, not just think of it in terms of its categories.

What are some other influences you’re ready to bring in?

As an encyclopedic museum, SAMA has an opportunity to show work which can be looked at more critically. I’ve been looking at our collection and I’ve discovered some works by a number of self-taught

reinstallations, I’d love to start a series of art and dialogues. I want to have thinkers come in that are either writers, artists or curators working on a project and discuss the way they look and write.

It’s looking behind people’s thinking.

Patrons of the San Antonio Museum of Art listen to SUZANNE WEAVER as she explains changes and additions to different exhibits in the museum. Photo by MICHAEL MILLER

On Friday you addressed the irony of the inauguration date’s changing nature.

Yeah, but contemporary art is all about change and it definitely speaks to our time. It’s always about what’s going on either politically, socially, or technologically. Yet artists will still make work that you think is traditional like landscape and portrait. Artists still deal with those issues but with new technologies, or through a new way of doing it.

Political art goes in waves. There was real political art in the ‘90s when people started thinking about identity, and I think now there is going to be more political art. There will be major exhibitions dealing with political issues. There always is but now it’s going to be intensified.

Curators that are organizing the exhibitions are thinking that it can’t be relevant unless it deals with the politics, and this will reflect in the collection.

artists, or artists who weren’t formally trained. These artists have come up with a way to make art out of a real necessity. The French artist , Dubuffet, understood a similar style as the art of the insane, utilizing what he called a raw vision.

Some of these artists have been in mental institutions or living in the country throughout their lives, but they shouldn’t be misinterpreted as stupid. It’s not as if they don’t know culture because they’ve seen it through the magazines. Their art just hasn’t received the critical vision that it now can.

I want to put artists together that have been formally trained and have gone to universities to look at these artists that have taught themselves or figured out their own strategies in a new critical light. I want to reinstall so you can start seeing what my thinking is and where the museum might be able to go. But beyond just talking about the

Along with those unseen works are there any specific acquisitions you’re bringing in?

Yes, I’ve made some acquisitions that I’m very excited about. There will be some work by an incredibly important African-American artist named Rodney McMillian. He does video installations that bring his personal history and experience as a black male into some larger issues.

Others will be from Daniel Rios Rodriguez who is a young artist that just moved back to San Antonio.

He’s another artist that I’m interested in, in that if you look at his work you may think that he’s self-taught in ways that are reminiscent of that outsider type of art. However, he’s highly educated. He went to Yale and is really smart about painting.

His work is personal, although when you look at it there’s this whole abstract cosmology. He lives here along the river and walks along the

river almost every day twice a day collecting stuff. His paintings are very physical by the way he imbeds things in them. His frames are also his own. I think it’s a refreshing vision.

Is that a way to showcase more Hispanic influences in contemporary art?

Not exactly, San Antonio just has so much fabulous art enriched by its hispanic influences. In fact I am going to do a show for the city’s Tricentennial featuring artists of Mexico City: art, architecture and design. In terms of the instillation, it’s more complicated than just identifying and displaying the art.

There’s also presenting a context of Chicano art. For instance, there’s some more political radicalism and I do think we have a responsibility to show it. The research I’m doing right now is on how to approach this. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to show the more politically radical end of it yet. The museum with its history and its context has to thoughtfully think about how you present the story of Latin American Art. You don’t want to just play to it with a little bit of this and that, but in a very meaningful and lasting way.

Trinity University has a relationship with the SAMA, but would you like to see it grow more?

I’ve thought about this because I’ve worked in universities. I think we do have a really good relationship with Trinity through our partnership with the library (and free admittance with a Trinity ID). We could grow it by having students interact with lecturers and artists we have for exhibitions.

Maybe if they do a project with the museum the students could work with them for the project? Maybe there’s a residency that we can share? There’s so many ways of sharing resources and connections.

I think the university and the museum have an obligation to figure out what can make the city really great.

I’ve noticed there are so many pockets in San Antonio. There needs to be a new way to work together to create a new city. It’s about ideas, having a higher level of intellectual discussion and thinking that requires seeing the bigger picture, the city.

San Antonio Rodeo is chock full of bulls The rodeo fulfills all stereotypes about Texas.

Cowboys competing for prizes, NABEEHA VIRANI the plethora of deepA&E WRITER fried foods and the display of country music.

The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo has all these characteristics, with quirks of its own.

The first rodeo held in Texas was in 1883. Traditions are highly

regarded in this state, and currently twelve cities in Texas put on a rodeo during February and March. The Stock Show and Rodeo here in San Antonio is known to be one of the largest events of the year, with the city expecting around two million visitors.

Beginning in 1950, San Antonio put on its first rodeo and has continued to do so ever since.

Because it is such a large event, over 6,000 volunteers come together to make it happen. Rodeos not only display the hard work of the participants but also the larger community whose time and effort

make the stock show and rodeo an event to remember.

The rodeo itself is made up of seven events: bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle-bronc riding, tie-down roping, barrel racing and bull riding. There is also a youth rodeo, which first began in 2014 and includes pole bending, goat tying, barrel racing, tie-down roping, breakaway roping, ribbon roping and team roping. The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo is the “first major stock show to offer a comprehensive competition for youth contestants,” according to the

organization’s website.

Excluding the actual rodeo itself, other attractions include the food, carnival rides and shops. From turkey legs to deep-fried oreos and funnel cakes, the rodeo is the place to be when you want to indulge in some delicious recipes. On the other hand, carnival rides can be fun but a little dangerous. While there’s always a fear of dying on a roller coaster or ferris wheel at any amusement park or carnival, be careful in choosing which rides to go on. (Pro tip: make sure the rides don’t make weird noises while you’re waiting in line). There

are also over 250 retailers selling jewelry, cowboy boots, leather goods and much more.

Entertainers draw in many people as well. This year, headliners include Little Big Town, The Band Perry, Sam Hunt and Fifth Harmony. After spending the day watching events, eating, going on rides and shopping, there’s nothing better than closing out your experience with jamming to your favorite artists.

Continued on page 16

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Turn a broken heart into mended art Rodeo

Like many Americans I was heartbroken a b o u t this year’s presidential ALEXANDRA URI election. I MANAGING EDITOR was worried as a woman, a member of the LGBTQ community and simply as a general supporter of human decency. I worried about the message we were sending to minority groups in the United States and I worried about the message we were sending the rest of the world.

I worried about losing all of the progress we had made as a country in ensuring that every voice was heard. While I understand that as a white woman who can afford to go to a private university, I am extremely privileged and have significantly less to fear from the new president.

Nevertheless, I still worried.

As the inauguration quickly approached, I went into full-panic mode thinking about what I could do to, not only ease my anxiety about the future, but also to lessen the suffering of those around me.

I started thinking about possible careers that would put me in the best position to mitigate the effects of our president-elect. It started to get to the point that I would be kept up at night with horrific visions of the future.

To make matters worse, over winter break the world lost the tremendous Carrie Fisher. However, out of the tragedy came a reminder of her quote: “Take your broken heart and turn it into art.” As someone who had turned to art in troubling times before, the quote resonated with me. It helped me realize that I had an immediate solution to a problem that felt like it would take

TOP ALEXANDRA URI holds her sign as crowds gather for the Women’s March.

BOTTOM A protestor holds a sign high through the streets of San Antonio. photos provided by ALEXANDRA URI

years to fix.

It wasn’t until I made the decision to attend the Women’s March in San Antonio that I actually applied the quote to my life. I turned to art to express my frustration in the way my state and country treated me and others by making a sign to carry as I walked through the streets of San Antonio.

I took paint to poster board. I took the Texas flag and made it include women. I put in a quote that let the world know that no matter what is thrown our way, humanity is able to fight on.

Even though it seemed like such a simple task, through creating this poster I was able to find some cautious optimism that perhaps we as a country will make it through things.

It wasn’t until I made it to the protest that I saw the true power behind Fisher’s words. Hundreds upon hundreds of people turned to art to express their anger, their fear and most importantly, their resilience. People created signs with messages of hope.

They created signs welcoming refugees, immigrants and anyone the new administration painted as an enemy.

And it wasn’t just in San Antonio.

In cities in all 50 states and in all seven continents people took to the streets for women’s rights, for human rights and to leave a historical record that it is when things seem the darkest that the greatest good comes forth.

Women and men of all races, nationalities, genders, classes, religions and ages came together to use their collective voice to remind us all that in troubling times the easiest thing to do is take your broken heart and turn it into art.

continued from Front Not only is the rodeo a great place to spend the day and experience a little bit of Texan culture and history, it also generates a large pool of money towards education and scholarships.

According to the show’s website, the organization has given over $171.4 million to the youth through junior livestock auctions, art auctions, the calf scramble program and show premiums with the help of donors and volunteers.

As much as the show and rodeo are entertaining, the purpose of the event is larger and shows how much it positively impacts the local community.

The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo officially begins on Wednesday, February 8 and ends on Sunday, February 26. All events will be held at the AT&T Center.

Tickets are available for purchase on the show’s website at www. sarodeo.com.

Things to do at the San Antonio Rodeo

ods ied fo r f t a E

Ride th carn e ival r id

es

ic e mus v i l e Se Watch the livestock show graphic by ALEXANDRA URI

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • JANUARY 27, 2016 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

The slow death of the cinematic universe

BY NICK SMETZER COPY EDITOR American legend Mark Twain was born in the year 1835, shortly after a long-awaited visit from Halley’s Comet. Twain would later say that he believed that he would die with the comet’s next passing, and he was correct. In 1910, Twain left this mortal realm as he had entered it, beneath the tail of one of the most beautiful phenomena that our universe has to offer.

While by no means an American legend, I feel like my life might at least be book-ended in the same way. Except maybe with disappointing superhero movies instead of celestial bodies.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that cinematic universes are fun. It’s nice to be able to look forward to an upcoming movie that belongs to a beloved franchise, and it’s satisfying in an almost familial sense to watch the same set of characters interact and grow with each other, year after year. But for the love of God, is it really necessary to transform every single franchise that ever existed into a sprawling, never-ending web of films?

It would be one thing if the “cinematic universe” approach to movie making actually encouraged creative interpretations of the source franchise, but this is not the case. Take for example the Marvel movies — despite being made by myriad distinct

directors including Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branagh and Shane Black, the unique styles of these creators are suppressed in order to ensure that the tone and aesthetic of these films are interchangeable enough to allow for endless character cameos and spinoffs. While this works wonders for making a consistent and cohesive series of films, this is at the great cost of making each individual project much less interesting than it could otherwise be.

And hell, despite their monotony, at least Marvel movies are competently made. DC’s “Suicide Squad,” despite being widely regarded as a cinematic dumpster fire, made enough at the box office to ensure that studios won’t learn that massive amounts of

reshoots and blatantly going against the vision of the directors make for horrible, disjointed films.

I’m starting to suspect that even decent movies that come from these universes are less so because of their origins, and more in spite of them.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is one such film, initially a stand-alone script that was incorporated into the established “Cloverfield” franchise.

It shows — the film quickly dips from an engrossing look at paranoia into a muddled and much less interesting alien-takeover story the moment it’s forced to acknowledge its franchise obligations.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that some unique scripts see the light of day when they otherwise wouldn’t

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have, but there has to be a better way than to demand such massive and plot-changing compromises.

This is what scares me the most. It’s starting to look like the only way for small-scale, independent stories to be brought to the screen will be for them to awkwardly insert themselves into the flawed systems that produce big budget disasters.

It’s not the end of Hollywood as we know it — at least, not yet — but considering how safe these movies are to make from the point of view of the studios, I get the feeling that this is a problem that isn’t going to resolve itself anytime soon. At least, not without a dozen more “SpiderMan” reboots.

What I learned from postmodern posteriors The performance artist, Kembra Pfahler, uses sexual flair to remind audience of the artistic potential of body parts usually left covered up T h i s p a s t Saturday, I ended up in front of an oldMICHAEL MILLER houseA&E WRITER turnedgallery watching a woman painted completely red sing, get naked, and then make paintings with her butt.

Kembra Pfahler, a notorious New York City performance artist, made a short notice appearance at the Sala Diez Gallery in Southtown.

San Antonio’s art scene has started off the year hot with several gallery openings, from a strong First Friday to an outstanding show of art and attendance during Second Saturday. This weekend’s two main events were on polar opposites of the spectrum. Friday, fellow journalist Jeff Sullivan and I did press coverage of a talk given by the SAMA’s new contemporary arts curator Suzanne Weaver. Earlier that evening, was the opening of a retrospective of San Antonio native Julian Onderdonk’s works, known for his vividly striking late American Impressionist paintings of the Texan landscape. The crowd was older, most of them members and donors. There was an open bar with wine, cheese and sliced meats.

In contrast, the accommodations were incredibly informal at Sala Diaz compared to the starchy scene the night before. I was tipped off by my professor, Randy Wallace, in an email he forwarded me from the gallery. The building itself could easily be overlooked as another

house in the neighborhood if it weren’t for the large crowd out front. There were people of all sorts — a woman with blue hair and beret, another with a feathered hat and teal suit, a man in khaki pants with a plain white, two large poodles, everything from casual to extra. The yard was dimly lit with strung up lights, and filled with a couple makeshift benches and tables. There was an open bar (this time literally — an Igloo cooler propped up on cinder blocks with Lone Star and supplies for mixing your drink).

Having arrived half an hour early, I was able to see the ongoing installation Jive Town by Agosto Cuellar, that’s taken over the gallery space. It had the feel of a mix between a garage sale and a thrift shop. People inside were trying on clothing and jewelry, and thumbing through the curiosities.

Back outside, the performance started promptly at 9:00 p.m. when Mrs. Pfahler made her way down the front steps of the gallery before lighting a cigarette and asking, “Where are my smokers at?” She wore an enormous frazzled black wig, shades, a white-striped one piece, thigh-high black leather boots and was painted entirely red.

Known for her shocking nude and sexual performance art pieces done in the ‘80’s punk art scene, I was feeling apprehensive and out of place. She started things off by performing several songs, which some of the older members of the crowd sang along to while others just bumped and bobbed.

Afterword, she asked the DJ to, “Just play any music whatsoever to make people happy,” as she clumsily slipped out of her one-piece and asked the audience to assist her in setting up for the butt prints.

Having suspected the show to be pretentious, it was relieving when it proved to be unprepared and haphazard.

There were uncomfortable periods of silence between songs, occasional stumbling and slurring and many careless confessions. However, the crowd gave her unwavering support.

After half an hour of making prints, she nonchalantly announced

The performance artist, KEMBRA PFAHLER, begins her recent show at Sala Diez Gallery. The show began with PFAHLER undressing from a red and white striped one piece. The performance centered around her making prints of her butt.

Photo by MICHAEL MILLER

that she’d been hit by a car earlier that week and was feeling too dizzy to continue, but that anyone who still wanted a print could use the supplies themselves. And with that, the performance was over. People stuck around to to continue the festivities and enjoy the free booze.

Watching the crowd, I came to understand the existing camaraderie between everyone.

Groups morphed into one another.

Those who got them shared their butt prints with others in the crowd to appreciate.

I don’t know if I belonged, but no one seemed to be questioning it as much as me.

They were carefree, having a good time, happy to be out. It was an offbeat bunch at Sala Diaz, but everybody seemed to

have their place in it. If any of this sounds good to you, I was informed that this is a common weekend crowd at the Sala Diaz gallery.

You can almost always find something interesting going on there, or anywhere in San Antonio. All you’ve got to do is give them a call and ask for the scoop, they’ll be more than happy to have you over.

Sports

135 Points JAN.

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On Jan. 26, 1960, Danny Heater scored a world-record 135 points in a high school basketball game.

A 17-year-old senior at Burnsville High School in Braxton County, West Virginia, Heater’s teammates encouraged him before the game to break the West Virginia game record of 74 points. Heater scored 50 points in the first half and 85 in the second, but perhaps most impressive is the 50 points he scored in the final ten minutes of the game. Heater finished 53-70 from the field and 29-41 from the line. He also had 32 rebounds and seven assists.

Track and field at Trinity and in history

BY CHRIS GARCIA

SPORTS CONTRIBUTOR The second weekend of January marked the beginning of the Trinity track and field season. The team headed to the University of Houston to compete at the Leonard Hilton Memorial Invitational. The top performers were Cody Hall, who finished third in men’s long jump and the 60-meter hurdles event, Nkolika Nweke, who placed fourth in the women’s 200 meters, Raphael Martin, who was a third-place finisher in the men’s 200 meters and Abigail Schneebeck, who finished fourth in the women’s 400 meters.

It was a fine start to the season, and with track and field now in full swing, that brings to mind the history of the sport in this country.

The origin of track and field dates back to ancient Greek times, in the city of Olympia. It began in 776 B.C., and all started with a man named Koroibos. Koroibois was a cook from the nearby city of Elis, and won a 600-foot-long stadium race. That being said, there is some speculation that the first games were held even earlier than this date.

Regardless, the games quickly picked up steam and became a beacon of entertainment that helped to provide discipline and athleticism to the Greek citizens. From 776 B.C., the games were held in Olympia every four years for almost 12 centuries, and have continued into the present.

Track and field’s popularity never faltered during the Olympic games, as it provides sensational athletes

such as the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt. In fact, track and field is the second-most popular sport in the world, following soccer.

But in America, that is far from the case. We have stuck to our bread and butter: baseball, basketball and football. But why is it that track and field can’t make its way into the popular sport’s stratosphere? Could it be a lack of marketing?

Some say that track and field has not gained traction because there is not a superstar athlete to attach a brand to. Some feel that track and field is a niche market, and can only thrive in places like Eugene, Oregon and New York City. The reality is that track and field isn’t even the most popular Olympic sport.

That would be swimming, and it is no secret that there are multiple superstars on the U.S. swim team: Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte come to mind.

Track and field federations, such as the U.S.A. Track and Field Association, understand that they have to do more to market their athletes if they want to bring the sport to prominence in the U.S. Only time will tell if associations such as the USATF, and the fans of this sport can do something to raise the level of popularity past an Olympic afterthought.

There is no denying its popularity across the world, but like always, America has their own way of thinking about things. As for our Trinity track and field athletes, it’s not the popularity that motivates them. It’s the competition and enjoyment they derive from participating in the sport.

MATT LOVE launches the disc during the field team’s practice. photo by OZVALDO VELOZ

Trinity tennis set to begin matches

BY HALEY McFADDEN

SPORTS REPORTER

The tennis teams recently began practicing for the spring season. photo by

OZVALDO VELOZ

The Trinity spring tennis season is upon us, and both the men’s and women’s teams are hungry for success after falling short of their goals in the fall season championships. Both teams will open their season on Feb. 1 against Birmingham Southern, with ITA Indoor Nationals coming soon after on Feb. 24.

Last season the women’s team accepted a large first-year class.

While this makes them younger and less experienced, the team is hopeful that it will serve to make them more competitive at practices. Out of the 18 girls on the tennis team, nine are currently first-years. The men’s team is also relatively young, with under half of the players being upperclassmen. The men, however, are confident this will work to their advantage throughout the season, and plan on using the youthful team to make them stronger players.

“We are really excited for the season,” sophomore Wilson Lambeth said. “We have a lot of guys who can play and that makes everyone work even harder.

Hopefully our youth can carry us to a championship this season.”

A SCAC championship is the goal for both teams, not only for conference bragging rights, but to advance the team in post-season standings. A win in the SCAC conference will give either team an automatic bid to playoffs. Both the teams have a long history of performing extremely well at the SCAC championship games, and are planning on continuing that tradition this season. The men’s team has won their past seven SCAC tournaments, and the women’s team has won their last five.

“We are definitely looking forward to being back together and going further than in the past,” senior Liza Southwick said. “We will be focusing on being an even better team than we were in previous years, now that we have more experience and confidence. Everyone is looking forward to winning another SCAC championship, which is the plan.”

The teams have shown themselves to be successful beyond just the SCAC tournament in previous years. In their last spring season, the women had six players chosen for

the SCAC all-tournament team and made it to the second round of the NCAA Division III West Regional.

Furthermore, current senior Liza Southwick and current junior Marie Lutz played for the NCAA doubles championship. On the men’s side, six players were on the SCAC All-Tournament team and now-graduated all-american Paxton Deuel went to the second round of NCAA Singles. This tradition of success does not come without hard work and sacrifice, and both teams are looking forward to working towards more successes this season.

“The past season was great, and even if we did not reach all our goals, it was an awesome experience,” junior Matt Tyler said. “This season we’re going work on a lot, like keeping a positive attitude in matches.”

The teams have a while to work, as the SCAC tournament will take place in late April. Both the men’s and women’s teams will have their first home match on Feb. 1, with the following Saturday, Feb. 4, also being a home match.

SPORTS • JANUARY 27, 2017 • WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM

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How do professors and student-athletes get along?

Sports’ schedules often do not match up perfectly with classes, but is this actually a problem at Trinity?

BY CHRIS GARCIA

SPORTS REPORTER

As a Division III university, Trinity is the type of higher education institution that puts academics at a premium. While many larger universities are notorious for expecting less from their athletes — consider the recent scandal at the University of North Carolina, for example — at Trinity, that is far from the case. In fact, upon gathering opinions from multiple Trinity professors, student-athletes are not only held to standard identical to the average student; some are among the best students on campus.

Most professors view students missing class for athletic events as reasonable. As a representative of the university, studentathletes are responsible for upholding a part of Trinity’s image many non-athletes are not. However, there have been instances in which prospective student-athletes were admitted into the university without adequate credentials, which Nina Eckstein, a professor of modern languages, is opposed to.

“I support athletics. I really think that it pulls you in a positive direction, so therefore, the students that are athletes should be the strongest ones. I am opposed to the university accepting students who are very borderline academically. I have been working here for years, and it is the students who are strong in and out of the classroom who I am totally, totally behind. If

they have to miss class occasionally, that is okay,” Eckstein said.

Many professors on Trinity’s campus have high expectations of their student-athletes and refuse to accept their participation in sports as an excuse for poor work. Professors are not willing to make exceptions for students who dedicate upwards of 25 hours a week to the sport, because such exceptions stray from Trinity’s objective regarding its students. The objective is a topnotch education, according to David Crockett, chair of the political science department.

“We are a Division III school and we have scholar-athletes.

I like the fact that it is not Division I, where it seems to consume the student’s passion and leads to all sorts of corrupt practices when it comes to their education. It is a necessary and appropriate place, but not disproportionately emphasized, I don’t think. If they have athletic events to travel to, then that is fine. It is up to them to keep up with the course material. There is a good system in place for situation like this,” Crockett said.

The general consensus on the topic may be that it is the athlete’s choice to dedicate that much time to a sport, therefore, it cannot be used as an excuse for struggling in a class. Many professors feel little sympathy for students who have chosen to commit so much time to an extracurricular activity such as athletics. If you choose to be on the field or on the court, you had better make sure you are there in the library and the classroom as well. Eduardo Cabral Balreira, associate professor

in the department of mathematics, says this shouldn’t be too much of a problem for student athletes. He feels studentathletes are the ones with the best time-management skills, thus allowing for an easier reception of the demanding schedule that faces them at a school like Trinity.

“It is a valid excuse, and I can’t and don’t mind that athletes miss class as long as they understand the consequences. So if they are going to miss, they have to understand they will have to put in extra work. Every athlete has to be accountable. What I don’t like is when an athlete uses their sport as an excuse, because that is a choice they made,” Balreira said. “I understand the interplay. You have to focus on your sport when you are in the moment. Once they come back, they have to understand that they had their moment of play, and now it is time to get back to work. What I find with student-athletes is that because there is such a nice, jam-packed schedule they have great time management. There is a limited amount of time you can work, but because one is an athlete, they are better at managing time.

If anyone can do it, it is a student-athlete.”

Being a student-athlete at Trinity is, in many ways, fundamentally different than being a student-athlete at the University of Florida or the University of Southern California.

Most of our student-athletes likely understand the strain they will be put under, especially during their sport’s in-season. For those who don’t, a rude awakening may be in store.

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WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM • JANUARY 27, 2017 •

ADVERTISEMENT

The Arts, Letters, and Enterprise Program announces Summer 2017 paid internships!

Interested in working in San Antonio this summer?

Trying to figure out your career interests or develop new skills?

Trinity’s ALE program has formed partnerships with the following organizations to offer PAID INTERNSHIPS in Summer 2017.

ArtPace

Battered Women’s Shelter Dante Suarez

Trish Simonite (Art)

(Finance and Decision Sciences)

Blue Star Trish Simonite (Art)

Burnam/Gray Consulting Jacob Tingle (Business Administration)

Classic Theatre Stacey Connelly (Theatre)

Esperanza Peace & Justice Center Rosana Blanco-Cano (Spanish)

Gemini Ink Michael Soto (English)

Green Spaces Alliance Carl Leafstedt (Music)

Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Rosana Blanco-Cano (Spanish)

Lee + Associates Mike Bacon (Development)

Nature Conservancy James Shinkle (Biology)

Office of Texas Representative Diego Bernal Michael Soto (English)

Office of US Senator John Cornyn Jacob Tingle (Business Administration)

Opera San Antonio Carl Leafstedt (Music)

The Playhouse Stacey Connelly (Theatre)

RAICES Rosana Blanco-Cano (Spanish)

The Rivard Report Michael Soto (English)

San Anotnio River Authority James Shinkle (Biology)

San Antonio Symphony Diane Persellin (Music)

Trinity University Press Michael Soto (English)

TU Alumni Relations & Development Cynthia Uviedo (Development)

TU Marketing & Communications Jeanna Baleria (TU Marketing & Communications)

YOSA Carl Leafstedt (Music)

ALE Internships are full time, May 17-July 26, and are competitively awarded. $4,000 stipend paid through Trinity University directly to students.

On-campus housing is available upon request at no direct cost to students.

To Apply: 1) Contact ALE Co-Chair Carl Leafstedt (Carl.Leafstedt@trinity.edu) to request an application form and instructions 2) Contact the faculty members listed above for further information about a specific internship

Deadline to apply: Friday, Feb. 17, 6 p.m.