April 14, 2020 - Utah Statesman - Utah State University

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Week of April 14, 2020 www.usustatesman.com (435) 797-1742 TSC Room 118 Free single copy NEWS | ‘An alternative to opioids’

STUDENT LIFE | Meet your senator

SPORTS | Tick, tock

Utah’s second cannabis pharmacy has opened in North Logan. How do the owners hope to serve Cache Valley?

Read how Alex Lyons isn’t only working toward a medical career, but also as the 2019-20 College of Science senator.

How are USU football players passing the time with a delayed spring season?

see PAGE 3

see PAGE 2

see PAGE 4

SILVER LINING?

How staying home is affecting the environment By Taylor Cripe NEWS STAFF WRITER

Local music festival to be streamed online

After weeks of isolation and

economic loss resulting from businesses shutting down to slow the spread of COVID-19 around Cache Valley, there

may be a silver lining in the form of decreasing air pollutants.

Awbrey Burgess, a senior at

Utah State University studying geography, said this sit-

uation shows air pollution can be mitigated through self-awareness.

“The earth is getting a break

right now,” Burgess said. “Moving forward, we should

This January 2018 photo shows the smog that frequents Cache Valley during the winter.

balance the economy with

for poor air quality.

ple things like walking more

mental engineering professor

where.”

in Jan. 2016, where he said

be thinking about how to the environment. Doing simand not driving a car every-

Northern Utah is notorious

throughout the last 15 years,

Randal Martin, an environ-

ly exceeded the 17 poor air

at USU, coauthored an article

STATESMAN FILE PHOTO

According to Martin, while

Cache Valley has general-

Cache Valley has been doing

quality days per year recom-

2016 because of regulation

mended by the Environmental Protection Agency.

better with pollution since on businesses, there is still a see “Air” PAGE 5

DeHarde and Merrill win top USU athlete honors

GRAPHIC COURTESY OF Aggie Radio Aggie Radio’s annual “Logan City Limits” will be livestreamed this year due to social distancing guidelines. By Maggie Mattinson STUDENT LIFE STAFF WRITER

For the past decade, the Logan City Limits music festival host-

ed by Aggie Radio has been a spring staple for Utah State Uni-

versity and Logan, Utah’s music scene. The 2020 festival to

commemorate the 10th anniversary of the annual weekend of music was set to be bigger and better than ever before.

Aggie Radio’s events team, led by sophomore Sierra Benson,

had planned to combine the festival with the Utah State Uni-

versity Student Association’s End of Year Bash to create a truly spectacular event.

But as the COVID-19 pandemic became more of a reality

for USU students, Aggie Radio’s leadership realized despite

months of planning, an insane passion for events and pouring their hearts and souls into this festival, 2020’s Logan City Limits would be canceled.

At the end of March, however, the team got the green light to

produce something never done before in all of USU history: an entire three-day music festival condensed into one livestream.

“The hardest part is that our events team, led by Sierra Ben-

son, has been preparing for what would have been the largest Logan City Limits festival since August,” said Aggie Radio’s station manager Brandon Ellis. “They’ve put a lot of time in or-

ganizing, finding bands and collaborating with a lot of campus and community entities. We’ve had to throw away most of that and completely switch gears to something brand new and dif-

ferent. That isn’t easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s Aggie Radio.” Sierra Benson, the events director for the station, said the

shift in format has been difficult emotionally as well as operationally.

“I had been planning this Logan City Limits for five months,

pulling out all the stops, since this was our 10 year anniversa-

ry,” Benson said. “Coming to the realization that I would never PHOTO COURTESY OF Wade Denniston/USU Athletics By Dalton Renshaw SPORTS CONTENT MANAGER

The 2020 Robins Awards — put on

by Utah State University’s student involvement department — winners were

announced on Saturday, with both the

men’s and women’s athletes of the year up for grabs.

For the second straight year, USU bas-

ketball’s Sam Merrill was the recipient of the men’s award, while Autumn De-

Harde won her first after a spectacular season for USU gymnastics.

Women’s athlete of the year

DeHarde’s 2020 season was filled with

individual accolades. The junior set mul-

tiple personal records and even a few Utah State records, including career

PHOTO BY Iain Laurence

beam titles, which she now holds with

back-to-back seasons, a first in the pro-

beam titles in 2020 in just nine meets.

guard became the first player in Moun-

12. DeHarde grabbed an incredible six

In the team’s final meet of the season, USU defeated No. 17 BYU and finished a

perfect 4-0 home season. Naturally, DeHarde was instrumental in the win. The

Wisconsin-native earned a pair of titles

in beam and floor, setting a career-high 9.950 in the floor event.

Utah State’s beam group rose to as high

as No. 18 in the nation this past season, with DeHarde being a large part of that revival. For her efforts, she was awarded the Gymnast of the Year honor in the Mountain Rim Gymnastics Conference. Men’s athlete of the year

Merrill led Utah State men’s basketball

to a Mountain West Tournament title in

gram’s history. In addition, the senior tain West history to win consecutive

tournament MVPs. The Bountiful-native finished his career at USU with 2,197 points — second in program and MW

history — and was the leader in two of

the Aggies’ most successful seasons. In addition to being a prolific scorer, Merrill

finished his career with the second-most

assists in USU history, a testament to his effectiveness in all areas of the court.

In the 2019-20 season, Utah State start-

ed the season No. 15 in the nation and ended the season — which was shortened to due the novel coronavirus — receiving votes in the top-25 and as Mountain West Tournament champions.

see “Robins” PAGE 5

see that hard work come to fruition was one of the hardest parts about turning to a livestream. Operationally, I had to

start over, making a small event lineup in the space of around four days so that we could get filming started the same week.”

Due to travel restrictions, several of the bands originally set

to play the festival can’t participate in the livestream. How-

ever, the Logan music scene pulled through to support Aggie Radio in this effort. The lineup is still tentative, but it includes

local favorites like SorryMom, Ugly Boys, Guava Tree and Iris Isadora.

This year, Aggie Radio has started a new project: the Blue

Light Media video team, led by Austin Roundy and Klaus VanZanten. Focusing on and developing this new division of Stu-

dent Media has been preparing them for the huge undertaking of a project like this.

“What we might not have realized is that we were practicing,

in a way, for a much larger project: the Logan City Limits livestream,” Ellis said.

Aggie Radio has never been faced with a challenge like this

before. But the students of the media group are facing it with

their characteristic optimism and drive, and are working to see “Streaming” PAGE 5


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