Anticipation and uncer- tainty about campus carry has increased, especially as UT prepares to release campus carry rules within the next few weeks, ahead of the Aug. 1 implementation date. How- ever, members from various groups involved in studying campus carry said they expect a relatively smooth rollout for the law’s implementation. Aſter studying other schools that have already implement- ed campus carry, Student Government President Xavier Rotnofsky said he expects the uncertainty about campus car - ry to gradually subside. “We also found that a lot of these schools that have cam- pus carry now haven’t neces- sarily seen an increase in gun- related violence and things like that,” said Rotnofsky, a Plan II senior who is on the UT cam- pus carry working group. “It’s sort of like a perception issue. It goes to the minds of people that campus carry is a thing. e environment around campus sort of stabilizes.” Matthew Valentine, a mem- ber of the faculty group Gun- Free UT, said most people who carry a concealed handgun on campus won’t have an acci- dent, but he said a prohibition on campus carry would most- ly eliminate the possibility gun accidents on campus. “Idaho implemented cam- pus carry not too long ago, and on the first week of classes aſter they implemented cam- pus carry, there was a profes- sor who had an accident in class and shot himself in the foot right in front of his stu- dents,” said Valentine, a Plan II lecturer. “Most of them won’t have an accident. Eventually, somebody will.” Texas became the eighth state to allow campus carry in June 2015 when Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 11, requiring Texas public univer- sities to allow concealed carry- ing of guns on campus. Every private university in Texas that has made a decision on cam- pus carry chose not to allow guns on campus. Erick Bruno, a member of Students for Concealed Carry, UT students will pay 25 cents more for bowling at the Texas Union Under - ground if the University ap- proves a rate increase later this month. e University Unions board met Jan. 29 and with a unanimous vote passed for a new 2016 rate struc- ture. e Texas Union Un- derground, which offers bowling and billiards, has not seen its prices increase since at least 2007, ac- cording to Union Under - ground data. e twelve- lane bowling alley, built in the 1960s, is in need of facility improvements, board members said. Jennifer Zamora, direc- tor of student programs at the University Unions, said she presented the proposal to streamline prices for bowling and help pay for lighting and electric features. “e way it was in the past, if you were bowl- ing during the day, then it was $1.50, and then if you bowled at night, it was $2.00,” Zamora said. “Well, that makes it hard some- times to communicate how much it is to come bowl.” Glow Bowl, the Texas Union Underground’s blacklight bowling experi- ence, will see prices increase 50 cents from $2.50 to $3.00 for UT students. “If you wanted to do Glow Bowl and shoes, you’re still going to be able to do it for under $5,” Zamora said. “For us, it’s really important for the Union Underground to be UT clinical professor Elissa Steglich has seen the despair and fear that resides in Texas detention centers firsthand. One woman she spoke to, a tailor from Central America, terrified by gang threats and the sound of gunshots down her street, fled to the United States with her daughter. Another made the journey with her 13-year-old son, who had not attended school in three years for fear of gang recruitment. Steglich, along with other members of the UT Immi - gration Clinic, is representing several families detained in the South Texas Family Resi - dential Center and the Karnes County Residential Center — two south Texas centers that hold only women and children immigrants. e families — migrating mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — are seeking asylum in the United States, fleeing gang violence in their home countries. UT Immigration Clinic founder Barbara Hines said because residents aren’t al- lowed to leave the premises, the detention centers are in violation of the Reno v. Flores decision of 1993. ey are also not licensed as child welfare facilities, although a decision is currently being made whether to grant the centers that license. “ese are not child- care centers,” Hines said. “e government says it’s a residential facility, but when you talk to any of these chil- dren or moms, they will tell you it’s a prison.” Lizzy*, a senior at UT, makes $300 a month, but she doesn’t work a traditional on-campus job or get the money from her parents. Instead, she charges guests to stay in a room in the bohe- mian-themed West Campus apartment she shares with three roommates through Airbnb, an online marketplace that match- es property owners with people looking for a place to stay. In- spirational quotes on the wall, maps and African-themed poles and totems line the walls of the apartment, which has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Airbnb. Aſter paying a 3 percent service fee to Airbnb from her earnings, she makes enough to purchase groceries and other necessities. She described host- ing through Airbnb as not only a way to make money but also meet interesting people from around the world. “It’s much more personal,” Lizzy said. ere’s only one problem: She’s breaking the law. Her apartment complex prohibits her from unofficially renting her apartment to guests, ac- cording to the lease she signed. e City of Austin requires her to obtain a type-one short-term rental license to host paying guests, which costs $285 for the first year and $235 every year aſterward. Lizzy, who asked to remain anonymous, said she already knew the apartment did not allow her to rent her place through Airbnb but said she did not know the City required her to obtain a license. “[I wouldn’t pay the City fee] Thursday, February 11, 2016 @thedailytexan facebook.com/dailytexan Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900 dailytexanonline.com bit.ly/dtvid SPORTS PAGE 6 LIFE & ARTS PAGE 8 COMICS PAGE 7 UT research links asthma to common cold. ONLINE City Council approves space for art community. ONLINE NEWS Point: Campaign spending limits foster diversity. PAGE 4 Counterpoint: Money does not win SG elections. PAGE 4 OPINION Longhorns take down Oklahoma State. PAGE 6 Softball prepares for season opener. PAGE 6 SPORTS “Deadpool” delivers action and comedy. PAGE 8 Professors recommend favorite literary works. PAGE 8 LIFE&ARTS Check out our Hug a vegan day video at dailytexanonline.com ONLINE REASON TO PARTY PAGE 7 CITY Naishtat reflects on 25-year tenure By Forrest Milburn @forrestmilburn CAMPUS Many expect smooth campus carry rollout By Caleb Wong @caleber96 Infographic by Kelly Smith | Daily Texan Staff CAMPUS CARRY page CITY STATE By Caleb Wong @caleber96 By Elizabeth Hlavinka @hlavinka_e CAMPUS Union to pin higher prices on bowling By Cassandra Jaramillo @cassandrajar BOWLING page 2 NAISHTAT page 2 AIRBNB page 2 DETENTION page 2 UT Immigration Clinic assists detainees Airbnb, City Council clash over regulations Illustration by Melanie Westfall | Daily Texan Staff Fewer than 1% of students have licenses to carry. At the time campus carry was passed in Texas, it became the 8th state to pass campus carry. 23 states allowed col- lege to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons on campus. Breakdown of Texas campus carry Source: UT-Austin campus working group, Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence No one expected the Jew- ish Democrat from New York City to win the 1990 race for Texas state House District 49, especially with the incumbent Republican running attack ads that asked Austin voters if they wanted Elliott Naishtat — “a liberal social worker from New York City” — as their next representative. “Until I was elected, it was written in the Texas Con- stitution that if you’re from New York City, you can’t serve in the Texas Legis- lature,” said Naishtat, jok- ingly. “When I ran, a lot of people said, ‘You don’t have a chance, you’re from New York City, you’re a Yankee, you’re a carpetbagger.’” Naishtat went on to defy expectations in November, defeating the incumbent Re- publican by more than 10 per- centage points. Since his 1990 win, he has not faced anything more than minimal opposi- tion in any of his primaries or November general elections. Aſter serving for more than two decades, Naishtat unex- pectedly decided in Decem- ber not to seek re-election for his seat in 2016, despite there being no possibility of a competitive challenger from either party. Aſter his decision — prompted by health con- cerns and a desire to pass the torch to the next generation — the number of candidates to replace him quickly grew as seven Democrats and no Republicans announced they would make a run for the seat. “ere are a few who stand out a little bit more than a cou- ple of the others, but I’m very pleased with the level of qual- ity and competence, the en- ergy, the passion, of everyone who is running,” Naishtat said. With HD 49 encompass- ing all of West Campus and UT, Naishtat said it has been an honor to have consistently fought for issues close to stu- dents, including the campus carry bill passed last session that allows concealed carry of firearms on campuses. Naishtat, a strong oppo- nent of guns on campuses,
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Anticipation and uncer-tainty about campus carry has increased, especially as UT prepares to release campus carry rules within the next few weeks, ahead of the Aug. 1 implementation date. How-ever, members from various groups involved in studying campus carry said they expect a relatively smooth rollout for the law’s implementation.
After studying other schools that have already implement-ed campus carry, Student Government President Xavier Rotnofsky said he expects the uncertainty about campus car-ry to gradually subside.
“We also found that a lot of these schools that have cam-pus carry now haven’t neces-sarily seen an increase in gun-related violence and things like that,” said Rotnofsky, a Plan II senior who is on the UT cam-pus carry working group. “It’s sort of like a perception issue. It goes to the minds of people that campus carry is a thing. The environment around campus sort of stabilizes.”
Matthew Valentine, a mem-ber of the faculty group Gun-Free UT, said most people who carry a concealed handgun on
campus won’t have an acci-dent, but he said a prohibition on campus carry would most-ly eliminate the possibility gun accidents on campus.
“Idaho implemented cam-pus carry not too long ago, and on the first week of classes
after they implemented cam-pus carry, there was a profes-sor who had an accident in class and shot himself in the foot right in front of his stu-dents,” said Valentine, a Plan II lecturer. “Most of them won’t have an accident. Eventually,
somebody will.” Texas became the eighth
state to allow campus carry in June 2015 when Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 11, requiring Texas public univer-sities to allow concealed carry-ing of guns on campus. Every
private university in Texas that has made a decision on cam-pus carry chose not to allow guns on campus.
Erick Bruno, a member of Students for Concealed Carry,
UT students will pay 25 cents more for bowling at the Texas Union Under-ground if the University ap-proves a rate increase later this month.
The University Unions board met Jan. 29 and with a unanimous vote passed for a new 2016 rate struc-ture. The Texas Union Un-derground, which offers bowling and billiards, has not seen its prices increase since at least 2007, ac-cording to Union Under-ground data. The twelve-lane bowling alley, built in the 1960s, is in need of facility improvements, board members said.
Jennifer Zamora, direc-tor of student programs at the University Unions, said she presented the proposal to streamline prices for bowling and help pay for lighting and electric features.
“The way it was in the past, if you were bowl-ing during the day, then it was $1.50, and then if you bowled at night, it was $2.00,” Zamora said. “Well, that makes it hard some-times to communicate how much it is to come bowl.”
Glow Bowl, the Texas Union Underground’s blacklight bowling experi-ence, will see prices increase 50 cents from $2.50 to $3.00 for UT students.
“If you wanted to do Glow Bowl and shoes, you’re still going to be able to do it for under $5,” Zamora said. “For us, it’s really important for the Union Underground to be
UT clinical professor Elissa Steglich has seen the despair and fear that resides in Texas detention centers firsthand. One woman she spoke to, a tailor from Central America, terrified by gang threats and the sound of gunshots down her street, fled to the United States with her daughter. Another made the journey with her 13-year-old son, who had not attended school in three years for fear of gang recruitment.
Steglich, along with other members of the UT Immi-gration Clinic, is representing several families detained in the South Texas Family Resi-dential Center and the Karnes County Residential Center — two south Texas centers that hold only women and children immigrants. The families — migrating mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — are seeking
asylum in the United States, fleeing gang violence in their home countries.
UT Immigration Clinic founder Barbara Hines said because residents aren’t al-lowed to leave the premises, the detention centers are in
violation of the Reno v. Flores decision of 1993. They are also not licensed as child welfare facilities, although a decision is currently being made whether to grant the centers that license.
“These are not child-care centers,” Hines said.
“The government says it’s a residential facility, but when you talk to any of these chil-dren or moms, they will tell you it’s a prison.”
Lizzy*, a senior at UT, makes $300 a month, but she doesn’t work a traditional on-campus job or get the money from her parents.
Instead, she charges guests to stay in a room in the bohe-mian-themed West Campus apartment she shares with three roommates through Airbnb, an online marketplace that match-es property owners with people looking for a place to stay. In-spirational quotes on the wall, maps and African-themed poles and totems line the walls of the apartment, which has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Airbnb.
After paying a 3 percent service fee to Airbnb from her earnings, she makes enough to purchase groceries and other necessities. She described host-ing through Airbnb as not only
a way to make money but also meet interesting people from around the world.
“It’s much more personal,” Lizzy said.
There’s only one problem: She’s breaking the law. Her apartment complex prohibits her from unofficially renting her apartment to guests, ac-cording to the lease she signed. The City of Austin requires her to obtain a type-one short-term rental license to host paying guests, which costs $285 for the first year and $235 every year afterward.
Lizzy, who asked to remain anonymous, said she already knew the apartment did not allow her to rent her place through Airbnb but said she did not know the City required her to obtain a license.
“[I wouldn’t pay the City fee]
1
Thursday, February 11, 2016@thedailytexan facebook.com/dailytexan
Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900
dailytexanonline.com bit.ly/dtvid
SPORTS PAGE 6 LIFE & ARTS PAGE 8 COMICS PAGE 7
UT research links asthma to common cold.
ONLINECity Council approves
space for art community.ONLINE
NEWSPoint: Campaign spending
limits foster diversity.PAGE 4
Counterpoint: Money does not win SG elections.
PAGE 4
OPINIONLonghorns take down
Oklahoma State.PAGE 6
Softball prepares for season opener.
PAGE 6
SPORTS“Deadpool” delivers action
and comedy.PAGE 8
Professors recommend favorite literary works.
PAGE 8
LIFE&ARTSCheck out our Hug a vegan day video at
dailytexanonline.com
ONLINE REASON TO PARTY
PAGE 7
CITY
Naishtat reflects on 25-year tenureBy Forrest Milburn
@forrestmilburn
CAMPUS
Many expect smooth campus carry rollout By Caleb Wong
@caleber96
Infographic by Kelly Smith | Daily Texan Staff
CAMPUS CARRY page
CITYSTATE
By Caleb Wong@caleber96
By Elizabeth Hlavinka @hlavinka_e
CAMPUS
Union to pin higher prices on bowling By Cassandra Jaramillo
@cassandrajar
BOWLING page 2
NAISHTAT page 2
AIRBNB page 2DETENTION page 2
UT Immigration Clinic assists detainees Airbnb, City Council clash over regulations
Illustration by Melanie Westfall | Daily Texan Staff
Fewer than 1% of students have
licenses to carry.
At the time campus carry was passed in Texas, it
became the 8th state to pass campus carry.
23 states allowed col-lege to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons on
campus.
Breakdown of Texas campus carry
Source: UT-Austin campus working group, Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
No one expected the Jew-ish Democrat from New York City to win the 1990 race for Texas state House District 49, especially with the incumbent Republican running attack ads that asked Austin voters if they wanted Elliott Naishtat — “a liberal social worker from New York City” — as their next representative.
“Until I was elected, it was written in the Texas Con-stitution that if you’re from New York City, you can’t serve in the Texas Legis-lature,” said Naishtat, jok-ingly. “When I ran, a lot of people said, ‘You don’t have a chance, you’re from New York City, you’re a Yankee, you’re a carpetbagger.’”
Naishtat went on to defy expectations in November, defeating the incumbent Re-
publican by more than 10 per-centage points. Since his 1990 win, he has not faced anything more than minimal opposi-tion in any of his primaries or November general elections.
After serving for more than two decades, Naishtat unex-pectedly decided in Decem-ber not to seek re-election for his seat in 2016, despite there being no possibility of a competitive challenger from either party. After his decision
— prompted by health con-cerns and a desire to pass the torch to the next generation — the number of candidates to replace him quickly grew as seven Democrats and no Republicans announced they would make a run for the seat.
“There are a few who stand out a little bit more than a cou-ple of the others, but I’m very pleased with the level of qual-ity and competence, the en-ergy, the passion, of everyone
who is running,” Naishtat said.With HD 49 encompass-
ing all of West Campus and UT, Naishtat said it has been an honor to have consistently fought for issues close to stu-dents, including the campus carry bill passed last session that allows concealed carry of firearms on campuses. Naishtat, a strong oppo-nent of guns on campuses,
helped pass a last-minute amendment to the cam-pus carry bill giving college presidents the power to enact gun-free zones.
“He’s kind of an institution in Austin,” said Kiefer O’Dell, Naishtat’s former intern and president emeritus of Uni-versity Democrats.
While serving in the leg-islature for so many years, Naishtat has had the unique opportunity to forge numer-ous, strong relationships with constituents of all ages throughout his district.
“One thing that is really impressed upon me as I talk to residents across the dis-trict is just how many people have a close, personal con-nection to Rep. Naishtat,” said Heather Way, one of the candidates running for HD49. “It’s really incredible how many lives he’s touched across the district in these 25 years.”
For Naishtat, it has grown
increasingly difficult to pass meaningful legislation and reforms without the help of some members of the Repub-lican Party who still try to take a bipartisan approach to governing, especially as the number of Democrats dwin-dle in the legislature because of redistricting and a growing conservative electorate.
“I’ve always found Elliott to be a very respectful per-son, willing to listen to both sides of the issue, obviously having his perspective on what would be best for the State of Texas but always doing it in a very respect-ful manner,” said Rep. John Zerwas (R-Katy). “Although Rep. Naishtat and I disagree on a number of issues, … we’ve never had our relation-ship suffer as a consequence of that.”
Naishtat, despite his bi-partisan approach to leg-islating, said he has always tried to be a “visionary” progressive, frequently fil-ing progressive pieces of legislation — like domestic
partnership benefits — that he knew wouldn’t get out of committee but would inevi-tably become law.
“Elliott Naishtat is my role model in the sense that he was an effective voice for Austin without compromis-ing his core liberal values,” said Huey Rey Fischer, one of the candidates running for HD 49.
While he won’t have the opportunity to serve in the legislature once members
reconvene in January 2017, Naishtat said he has a few words of advice for whichev-er Democrat wins the prima-ry, which places him or her in the minority party in the House of Representatives.
“I’m not saying become best friends with every Re-publican, but you have to work across the aisle,” Na-ishtat said. “Be persistent, be nice, believe in incremental change, and always maintain your sense of humor.”
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NAISHTATcontinues from page 1
an affordable place.” Texas Tuesdays will still be
$1 for UT students. The larg-est increase to rate changes will apply to UT group res-ervation bowling, where groups of up to six people will pay $20 an hour instead of $17.
Mulugeta Ferede, execu-tive director of University Unions and member of the board, said UT’s newly pro-posed rates were among the lowest in a survey of compat-ible bowling charges around town and at peer institutions.
“In all categories [of the survey], we came into the low part of it,” Ferede said. “I think the board felt it was a minimal price adjustment.”
Maryse Rodriguez, health and society sophomore, said
as a fan of the Glow Bowling experience, she found the in-crease reasonable.
“I think the convenience of having a bowling alley on campus is nice,” Rodriguez said. “I would pay $3.00.”
From 2014–2015, the Tex-as Union Underground saw 12,728 unit sales for regular
bowling and 24,202 unit sales for Glow Bowl, Zamora said. Data on specific numbers of people who used the bowling alley was not available.
Samantha Grasso, a stu-dent voting member on the board and journalism senior, said there was no disagree-ment on whether the board
should vote to raise rates.“This 25 cent increase is
going to do a lot to help the Union and not hurt the stu-dents too much,” Grasso said.
The resolution still awaits final approval, but Zamora said she expects implemen-tation to begin no later than April 1 once passed.
BOWLINGcontinues from page 1
said he does not expect an uptick in criminal activity be-cause of campus carry because gun owners are the “most law-abiding citizens out here.”
“[Your gun is] concealed, so no one knows who’s car-rying,” said Bruno, a political science senior at UT-Dallas. “It will be one of those issues
which will slowly fade away, and nobody will worry about it after the law is implemented in August.”
However, the singular nature of campus carry in Texas still leaves linger-ing concerns about the law’s implementation.
“No other state has a cam-pus carry law like S.B. 11, and so the Working Group was unable to find significant
guidance in other states’ im-plementation schemes,” the UT-Austin working group report said, noting that while there was no evidence that campus carry was linked to increased rates of sexual as-sault or increased campus violence, there have been several incidents of campus shootings and accidental dis-charges on college campuses.
Ultimately, the effects
of campus carry will be determined by how indi-vidual campuses decide to phase in campus carry, Rotnofsky said.
“It really will come down to implementation,” Rotnof-sky said. “It’s a new frontier for Texas because that hasn’t been done before, so in that regard, Texas public uni-versities will be figuring out what that means.”
CAMPUS CARRYcontinues from page 1
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Juan Figueroa | Daily Texan StaffRepresentative Elliot Naishtat, New York City native, has held House District 49 seat for the past two decades.
for as little as I’m making,” Lizzy said.
Listings on Airbnb have come under scrutiny in re-cent years as many U.S. cit-ies, including Austin, have raised concerns over the le-gality of Airbnb listings. The Austin City Council dis-cussed stricter short-term rental regulations in 2015 to minimize “party house” disruptions and increased enforcement of existing reg-ulations, but no ordinances have been drafted.
Assistant architecture professor Jake Wegmann said, based on his research, there are more listings than authorized STR rentals, suggesting that most Airb-nb listings do not comply with the law.
“I think a lot of people putting an Airbnb listing on their property quite reason-ably make a calculation that there’s a pretty low chance that they’re going to suffer any consequences,” Weg-mann said.
When asked about the legal status of listings on Airbnb, the company said it provides links to appli-cable laws during the sign-up process. According to a 2014 Airbnb report, 67 per-cent of listings were rented in Austin for fewer than 30 days in 2014.
“We ask all of our hosts to comply with local law when they sign up for Airbnb,” Airbnb spokesper-son Alison Schumer said in an email.
Murray Cox, a self-de-scribed “community activ-ist” who tracks Airbnb data, said the company may in-form people about the law, but doesn’t take active steps to ensure its listings comply with the law.
“[Airbnb] always says it’s up to the host to obey the law, even though Airbnb is part of the transaction,” Murray said.
Even Lizzy said she “has a conscience” when it comes to renting from Airbnb. She said she has signifi-cantly cut back the days she rents out her room from last semester.
“If you’re making more money per month than your rent, I think it shouldn’t be allowed,” she said. “Anything more than that, you’re running a small business and profiting off your apartment building.”
Edward TorresDaily Texan Staff
Glow Bowl, the Texas Union Underground’s blacklight bowl-ing experience, will increase its prices by 50 cents from $2.50 to $3.00 if a rate increase is approved by the University later this month.
AIR BNBcontinues from page 1
Genomics. Transcrip-tomics. Proteomics. Re-searchers across campus need help with the advanced soft-ware necessary in a world of “-omics” technologies.
The Center for Computa-tional Biology and Bioinfor-matics (CCBB), under the leadership of Hans Hofmann, provides opportunities and support for investigators us-ing computational approaches to research questions in the life sciences. Since 2012, the CCBB has offered a bioinfor-matics consulting group to meet the growing demands on campus, according to Dhivya Arasappan, one of the origi-nal members of the consulting group. Arasappan said they provide high-level analysis to deal with the data advanced hardware can now collect.
Another member of the consulting group, Dennis Wylie, started his career in industrial bioinformatics with biotechnology compa-nies Seralogix and Asuragen, where he worked for seven years. He joined the CCBB in early 2015 to re-enter the academic world.
Hofmann handpicked the members of the consult-ing group, such as Wylie and his colleague Benni Goetz, to provide the highest level of expertise. From walk-in consultations to long-term projects, the team offers
varying levels of support for all inquiries.
“For some groups, we do routine stuff that they don’t have the expertise for,” Wylie said.
He said that in other situ-ations, the team gets deeply involved and contributes ideas in a more meaningful way.
Wylie contributes most to a lab on campus that centers around protein degradation, where he looks at different characteristics of amino acid sequences. Otherwise, he spe-cializes in statistics and ma-chine learning. Goetz focuses on transcriptome assembly.
The group heavily facilitates the use of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), a group of supercomputers commissioned by UT-Austin. TACC provides the world’s eighth fastest supercomputing cluster. According to TACC’s website, one of the super-computers can perform 10 quadrillion math operations a second.
“We have an incredible resource just available here with TACC,” Goetz said. “We are dealing with massive data sets, … huge sequence files and big programs that would be impractical to run on a single computer.”
The group would like to expand its reach. Many labs are heavily involved with the consulting group, but there are some labs on campus that could benefit from con-tacting the team, according
to Wylie.To take advantage of these
services, researchers can contact consultants on the CCBB website.
Goetz and Wylie, along with a large team at the CCBB, are working to bring life sciences research at UT up to speed in the growing world of computational biol-ogy and bioinformatics.
“Pretty sure we’re going to make them all billionaires.” Goetz said.
Even if this doesn’t happen, Wylie said that the CCBB is still making a significant im-pact on the field.
“Understanding basic principles of computing and statistical analysis is valuable and is growing in importance in research,” Wylie said. “I think that medicine also stands to change a lot as a result of molecular research, and bioinformatics has a huge role to play.”
Two new programs are working on providing much-needed public data that will clarify scientists’ shaky un-derstanding of the increas-ing frequency of earthquakes in Texas.
The TexNet Seismic Moni-toring Program, a network of planned and pre-existing earthquake detectors, and the Center for Integrated Seismic-ity Research are now in the initial stages of implementa-tion. They will observe the locations and geological con-ditions of earthquakes consis-tently and closely enough to understand what is causing them to occur more frequently in Texas.
The collaborative nature of the project and the publicly available data it will produce is paramount to its success.
Ellen Rathje, co-principal investigator of the CISR pro-gram, said she believes that the transparency of the project is beneficial to its success.
“By making [the data] pub-lically available, … other seis-mologists will have access to it for their research, and it’ll allow us, as well as the USGS — the U.S. Geological Sur-vey — to better locate these events, which is important,” Rathje said.
Rathje said that the pro-gram is aware that the link between the petroleum in-dustry and these earthquakes is particularly subject to the well-known phenomenon of communication difficulties
between scientists and the media, especially in relation to fracking.
“Our research is trying to look at those linkages between activities related to energy ex-ploration, but there is also the chance that there could be just natural cycles in seismic activ-ity that we could be observ-ing,” Rathje said.
In addition to research-ing seismic activity statewide, CISR plans to research how it can avoid public miscon-ceptions about its geological findings. However, reserva-tions about industry are not entirely unfounded.
“It’s been widely known for decades that there are many anthropomorphic sources of seismicity,” Peter Hennings, the other co-principal investigator of the CISR program, said.
These sources in-clude mining and the geothermal industry,
Water disposal, the practice of injecting waste water deep into the earth, has been impli-cated in several earthquakes statewide. This practice is used to dispose of waste water from many different petroleum industrial processes, includ-ing fracking. Fracking refers to the process in which fluid is injected into natural-gas rich rock formations to then extract gas, but people often use the word to refer to related processes such as the creation of wells and the disposal of waste water as well.
Hennings, who worked with ConocoPhillips for 13 years prior to starting on the
CISR project, understands that companies have to be cau-tious about their role in envi-ronmental disturbances. Hen-nings said companies need to think about their societal impact as well as government regulations and profit.
“Companies take these types of issues very seriously because there’s a need to main-tain their license to operate. … There’s a financial license to operate and a regulatory license to operate, and then there’s also a social license to operate,” Hennings said.
Petroleum companies often fund and conduct research of their own in order to prevent or minimize such hazards and maintain these licenses to op-erate, according to Hennings.
TexNet and CISR are both part of a $4.5 million legisla-tive fund authorized by Gov. Greg Abbott last summer. The two programs hope to ad-dress seismic issue as a middle ground, large-scale collabo-ration between government, academia and industry.
The Bureau of Economic Geology, UT’s oldest research center and one of its largest, manages both programs.
Supported by govern-ment, universities and indus-try, TexNet and CISR plan to work without interfering bias to benefit everyone in the struggle to understand, prevent and prepare for earthquakes statewide.
As Mark Blount, head of ex-ternal affairs at the Bureau, put it, “We’re going to go where the science leads us.”
A once-in-a-decade celes-tial show is marching across the sky every morning for a few weeks this winter. For those who don’t want to wake up before dawn, the spectacle will show up again later in the year.
This month, Mercury, Ve-nus, Saturn, Mars and Jupi-ter will be visible in the early morning sky. Viewers can see them lined up diagonally in the east around 6 a.m., ac-cording to Lara Eakins, as-tronomy education and out-reach coordinator.
On average, this type of alignment happens once ev-ery 10 years. The most recent line-up was in 2005, accord-ing to mathematics junior Victoria Dominguez.
“It’s not the rarest thing ever, but pretty rare,” she said.
The planets are all visible every 10 years because of the time it takes each planet to orbit the sun, according to Judit Ries, a research asso-ciate and lecturer in the de-partment of astronomy.
“If you try to find the small-est common number which can be divided by all of these numbers, that will tell you how often they will line up,” Ries said. “If you could see the plan-ets on the sky, then you would see that they are really always on this general big arc.”
The way the planets line up show astronomers how the solar system is arranged on a flat plane.
“What this basically tells us is that we can see these planets in a line because they’re going around that same path on the same level as the sun,” fifth-year astronomy student Alex Robles said. “That tells us a little about our own solar sys-tem and that the solar system’s in a disk.”
The view of this orbital plane also offers indirect proof that all of the planets revolve around the sun, ac-cording to Dominguez.
“Back in ancient times, something like this would have really thrown off the world view because it kind of veri-fies that we rotate around the sun instead of the sun rotating around us,” Dominguez said.
In addition to the
scientific background, Dominguez is excited about the alignment because it’s interesting to watch.
“It’s a pretty neat thing to see,” Dominguez said. “It’s always cool to be able to look with your own two eyes and see this magnificent stuff lining up.”
Dominguez and Robles run some of the “star parties,” or public telescope viewings, hosted by the astronomy de-partment. The alignment has been a popular topic at these events so far this semester.
“Everyone who has come in has asked to see it,” Domin-guez said. “Everyone’s really interested in it.”
Unfortunately, since the public viewings at the obser-vatory are only in the evening, people won’t get to see the planets line up this month at the star parties.
“They come out to the star party, and I have to be the bearer of bad news,” Robles said. “I unfortunately have to tell people that they can’t see it right then and there, and I have to show them other things.”
However, this fall, when
the planets are visible again in the evenings, Dominguez and Robles said they expect a lot of people will want to see the spectacle.
“It’s not every day you get to see a whole bunch of
planets, more than half of your solar system, in the night sky at once,” Robles said. “That’s something that’s definitely worth seeing.”
Events like the alignment make the general public inter-
ested in astronomy, according to Dominguez.
“I am really happy when stuff like this happens,” Dominguez said. “I like when people get excited about sci-ence, and that’s what this is.”
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STANDOUT.CACTUSYEARBOOK.COM
The Cactus Yearbook has recognized outstanding students across the universi ty s ince the 1930! Apply for recognit ion as “STANDOUT” student today.
The deadl ine for submiss ion is noon, Fr iday, March 4, 2016.
The committee wi l l consider: • Students’ interests and act iv i t ies• Part ic ipat ion in campus organizat ions• Leadership sk i l ls• Awards and honors received
ELLEN AIRHART, SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY EDITOR 3Thursday, February 11, 2016AIR BBcontinues from page 1
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Four planets to star in rare celestial showBy Julianne Hodges
@JayHodges2018
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
By Jonathan Vineyard@thedailytexan
UT-led study attempts to pinpoint seismic activity
Illustration by Jason Chen | Daily Texan Staff
Illustration by Albert Lee| Daily Texan Staff
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Biology program advances softwareBy Sachit Saksena
@sachitsaksena
We are dealing with massive data sets, … huge sequence files and big programs that would be imprac-tical to run on a single computer.”
—Benni Goetz, Member of the consulting gorup
The Daily Texan Forum this week focuses on Student Government elections and their costs. The University of Texas Student Gov-ernment passed AB 9 last week, authored by forum contributor Amber Magee, which cuts the amount of money that candidates are able to spend in SG elections roughly in half, beginning in the elections of 2017. Currently, SG spending limits allow can-didates for president to spend upwards of $1,000 dollars, with lesser amounts for those running to be SG representatives and first-year representatives.
The legislation intends to boost access to SG positions, thereby boosting diver-
sity as well. Its proponents believe it will enable scores of individuals to run for po-sitions that they were previously unable to participate in. This legislation comes during a time where SG continues to face obstacles in engaging the whole student body, even in the light of Xavier Rotnof-sky and Rohit Mandalapu’s victory in last year’s presidential election. Although the candidates — who made light of the SG electoral process — won the election, only around 9,000 students voted in the run-off out of a campus of 50,000, an amount viewed as high.
However, there is disagreement among some with the content and timing of the legislation. As Tanner Long, SG Speaker, writes, he believes that it was the right step to make this legislation take effect in the
next election cycle, especially as the races for SG seats begin to take shape this semes-ter. He also believes that money does not play as big of a role in SG elections as be-lieved by the author of the legislation.
As SG looks to boost voter turnout and increase student engagement with the in-stitution, perhaps this will be the right step. But SG should make a more concert-ed effort to broaden its base by encourag-ing those outside of traditional areas of SG to run for office and engaging them for policy ideas. Time in SG breeds expertise, but new voices are just as crucial in advo-cating for students to the administration, city and state. Whether this legislation will truly improve student engagement remains to be seen, but Student Government’s rec-ognition that these issues are inherent to
the system and do not seem to be going away is a strong step. For now, those run-ning for SG office in two weeks will face their spending limit unchanged, but next year, the process will include lower spend-ing limits, and possibly, more diversity.
Fountain is a government senior from Pelham Manor, New York.
No one is against increasing diversity in Student Government. I’ll also say that a vote against AB 9 — Amending Stu-dent Government Campaign Finance Limits in the Election Code — was not a vote against increasing diversity. In fact, so many representatives supported this bill that it passed through our Assembly with overwhelming support. The differ-ences with this bill simply surrounded the timing.
As a vocal proponent for postponing the bill until after this election, I believed that we, as representatives, should not be chang-ing the rules of the game two weeks into the
election process. We should be making it as smooth as possible to file for campus-wide elections, and issuing conflicting documents
in the middle of an election season is not the definition of smooth. It would’ve resulted in confusion and demonstrat-
ed shortsightedness within our organization. In fact, following student body approval in March, the SG Constitution will prohibit
any Election Code changes to take place during the
eight weeks leading up to the election.
The Assem-bly unani-
m o u s l y approved this up-
date to our gov-e r n i n g
document, and I hope the student body will also see the need to close this loophole. We ultimately agreed that amending the Elec-tion Code during the election season was not advantageous and unanimously ap-proved an amendment to AB 9 that allows the proposed changes to take effect for the elections in the fall.
The authors of AB 9 found an apparent issue with our structure, and I was glad to have supported the idea of AB 9 from the beginning. It’s a positive sign that we as an organization are constantly looking at all options to increase involvement. However, SG has not solved the problem of increas-ing diversity in our organization by simple passage of this bill, and unfortunately, no legislative action we take will result in this shared goal. I wish we could encompass all voices on campus in our 41-member assembly by a simple stroke of a pen, but that is not the case.
AB 9 is a very good start to encourag-ing participation, and I want to dispel the myth that you need a significant amount of money to win an elected position in Student Government. Nearly 29 percent of the winning candidates last year spent $0.00. The current college representatives spent an average of $19, and our president and vice president spent only $38. When
I first came to UT, I had a passion for wanting to get involved, and I let that motivate me to file for the election. Vis-iting student groups and interacting on
a one-on-one level is the most important aspect. A good portion of this Assem-
bly, along with our president and vice president, can attest to the im-portance of wanting to get involved and not letting the perceived notion
that money is a sure victory influence our actions.
Long is a government senior from Aledo.
4 OPINION
WALKER FOUNTAIN, FORUM EDITOR | @TexanEditorialThursday, February 11, 2016
4A WEEKLY PUBLICATION OF THE DAILY TEXAN EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
LEGALESE | Opinions expressed in The Daily Texan are those of the editor, the Editorial Board or the writer of the article. They are not necessarily those of the UT administration, the Board of Regents or the Texas Student Media Board of Operating Trustees.
SUBMIT A FIRING LINE | E-mail your Firing Lines to [email protected]. Letters must be more than 100 and fewer than 300 words. The Texan reserves the right to edit all submissions for brevity, clarity and liability.
RECYCLE | Please recycle this copy of The Daily Texan. Place the paper in one of the recycling bins on campus or back in the burnt-orange newsstand where you found it.EDITORIAL TWITTER | Follow The Daily Texan Editorial Board on Twitter (@TexanEditorial) and receive updates on our latest editorials and columns.
FORUM
By Walker FountainDaily Texan Forum Editor
@wf_atx
Campaign spending debate occupies SG
POINT COUNTERPOINT
Spending limits will foster greater diversity in SG
By Amber MageeDaily Texan Forum Contributor
@NewReginaGeorge
Money does not ensure victory in SG elections
By Tanner LongDaily Texan Forum Contributor
@TannerLLongWe should be making it as smooth as possible to file for campus-wide elections, and issuing conflicting documents in the middle of an election season is not the defini-tion of smooth.
Illustration by Albert Lee | Daily Texan Staff
MULTIMEDIAEditor-in-Chief Claire Smith and Fo-rum Editor Walker Fountain discuss campaign spending limits in Student Government elections in this week’s Texan Talks podcast. Check out our podcast at dailytexanonline.com.
AB 9: Campaign Finance Reform passed the Assembly on Feb. 2 and will be implemented starting fall 2016. AB 9 reduced Student Gov-ernment campaign spending limits by up to 60 percent for representative elections and stu-dent body president and vice president elec-tions. Student Government frequently omits the viewpoints of students who lack a dispos-able income to spend on student organizations, and AB 9 was written in hope of encouraging these students to pursue office.
Student Government stands as the official voice of students at UT-Austin to adminis-trators, the UT System, the Texas legislature and even Congress. As such, Student Govern-ment should make good efforts to speak in the best interests of the 50,000 students on the 40 Acres. While this is no easy feat, simply walk-ing into an SG meeting will be disconcerting, as the majority of students who sit in the leg-islative Assembly come from only a few spaces on campus. According to the UT Dean of Stu-dents website, as of 2013, there were 5,211 stu-dent members in Interfraternity Council and University Panhellenic Council. Of 35 current members in the 2015–2016 Assembly, at least 10 of those members are from IFC/UPC and another three or four representatives are cur-rently involved in a smaller community of spirit groups. While there is nothing inherent-ly negative about these student leaders being active members of Student Gov-ernment, one can imagine that with over 40 percent of the Assembly be-ing heavily involved in an area of campus that holds only 10 percent of students (Greek life plus spirit groups), we are often missing a large group of students. Some students on the 40 Acres strug-gle with the shuttle services from East Austin, while others struggle with the increasing costs associated with liv-ing in Austin. These two issues have been largely untouched by the Assembly in years past, and the only path for ad-vocacy is direct engagement with the students who live in these realities.
I have been involved in Student Government for three years now, and each year, elections come and go without a substantial difference in the groups of students who participate in and win
elections. Under the Rotnofsky-Mandalupu administration, increasing representation and student connection with SG has been a cen-tral theme. Last May, we identified the trend in SG elections to spend a significant portion of money, and it’s a well-known fact that not all students have access to a disposable income that can be used to finance a student cam-paign. Last semester, students were opposed to the tuition increase because an extra $150.00 really would be a large financial burden, so it’s unfathomable to imagine that these same students would be willing to spend that money in a student election. It is true that spend-ing excessive amounts of money in elections doesn’t always correlate to winning, but there exists a notion that you need to spend a certain amount of money in order to be competitive in SG elections. The heart of campaign finance reform was to dispel that notion and en-courage more students to run from backgrounds and vantage points that SG has not seen in large num-bers. As members of Student Gov-ernment, we love to say that we represent students and we voice their views, but that voice has been incongruous with the true needs of students for quite some time, and AB 9 seeks to harmonize student issues with the faces of student advocacy.
Magee is a public health senior from McComb, Mississippi.
Just like Christopher Reeve owned Superman and Robert Downey Jr. owns Iron Man, Ryan Reynolds owns Dead-pool, Marvel’s infamous Mer-cenary with a Mouth. This anti-hero commonly breaks the fourth wall in his comic appearances, engages in hy-per-violent action and isn’t appropriate for kids.
After a devastatingly bad adaptation of the character graced the silver screen in “X-Men Origins: Wolver-ine,” 20th Century Fox’s sec-ond try, “Deadpool,” carries over some elements from the comics and will please most moviegoers in spite of its weaknesses.
As Deadpool himself de-clares, this R-rated superhero flick is a love story. Deadpool was once Wade Wilson, an ex-military specialist suffering from, as he calls it, “el cancer.” When he is offered a cure by a mysterious man, he leaves his beloved girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), behind and subjects himself to a se-ries of torturous experiments run by Ajax (Ed Skrein), a mutant who is immune to pain. The process heavily scars his body and transforms him into a mutant with advanced regenerative capabilities.
Wade manages to escape from captivity and, with the help of his friend Weasel (T.J. Miller), sets out to ex-act revenge on Ajax — Wade takes to calling him by his real name, Francis, just to annoy
him. When Ajax kidnaps Van-essa, Wade must rescue her with the help of two X-Men, Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand).
“Deadpool” offers a heavy dose of meta-humor that pokes fun at Reynolds’ failed “Green Lantern,” superhero movie clichés and Hugh Jack-man’s manly beauty. Dead-pool occasionally turns to the camera and addresses the audience, much to the confu-sion of the characters around him, and his antics involve splattering his enemies, casu-ally lopping off heads, doling out catchphrases (“Maximum effort!”) and throwing tan-trums over his wounds. To top it off, director Tim Miller and writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Rheese plug in clever, though juvenile, innuendo whenever they can.
There are rarely moments when viewers will not laugh. “Deadpool” reliably sticks
the landing from its hilari-ous opening credits (the text on screen declares the movie stars “God’s Perfect Idiot” and is directed by “An Over-paid Tool”) to its perfect post-credits scene.
There are two big action sequences in the movie. The first is an inventively staged highway battle that gets the picture off to a rousing start, while the second is climactic showdown filled with funny quips and asides. The middle act features smaller yet blood-ier fights, where the focus leans more on humor than violence. Deadpool’s insane combat methods are more villainous than the average superhero’s, though Colos-sus suggests he might one day join the X-Men. Sequel bait, anyone?
Reynolds proves a ca-pable and charming action lead, and his comedic tim-ing is on point. Though his good looks aren’t on display
for most of the picture, his quick wit is. Even at his most despicable, Deadpool is thoroughly likable. Baccarin doesn’t get much to do other than play off Reynolds, but the chemistry is between them is strong.
Perhaps Fox thought “Deadpool” needed a familiar plot thread to get audiences on board with its unconven-tional character, but the origin story is a misstep. The revela-tion of how Deadpool came to be, the revenge plot and the dull Ajax prove the most uninteresting parts of such an irreverent and chaotic movie. It’s a little disappointing — why settle for the bouncy ball when the sandbox is filled with bigger, better toys?
Thankfully, the film mostly succeeds due to Reynolds’ tal-ent, the sharp dialogue and Miller’s direction. Though this Deadpool feature is flawed, it certainly feels like a maximum effort.
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MOVIE REVIEW | ‘DEADPOOL’
‘Deadpool’ breaks comic norm with ‘meta-humor’
LIFE&ARTS Thursday, February 11, 2016 5
By Charles Liu@CharlieInDaHaus
DETENTIONcontinues from page 1
FIREWATCHcontinues from page 8
in childcare and are not suit-able for children; metal de-tectors have been placed at the entrance. Inside, families sleep on bunk beds in cinder block rooms. Hines said of-ficers have prevented some mothers from letting their children walk or crawl on the floors, which can hinder their development.
The centers are located in remote areas, which make it difficult for many detained women to receive legal coun-sel. Those that fail to find le-gal representation are often deported, and those that do find a lawyer are eligible for expedited removal. In this process, women meet with an officer to discuss their im-migration in a threshold in-terview. If the woman’s case is deemed worthy of asylum, she will not immediately be deported.
Often, the interviews take place before the trauma the women have suffered has been realized. Some inter-views must be done over the phone and with the assistance of an interpreter. Steglich said the passing rate of these in-terviews has dropped signifi-cantly in the past few years. One woman she spoke to, who failed the interview, was desperate to avoid returning to her home country, terrified her daughter would be killed in gang violence.
“It should be that every-one [is] given access to the court in order to fully present and develop their facts and overall context,” Steglich said. “Instead, we see a good per-centage of women and chil-dren prohibited from going to court on their claims.”
Mothers who have estab-lished credible fear may be released from the detention centers, but are assigned an-kle bracelets. The bracelets are monitored by the Immigra-tion and Customs Enforce-ment office for anywhere from a few weeks to a year.
Steglich said the companies that run the detention centers also run the ankle monitor-ing companies and that the industry is highly for-profit. Senior government major Montse Alatorre’s brother was detained at the Rolling Plains Regional Jail detention center for several months. Phone calls, monetary transfers and food expenses cost her fam-ily about $100 per week. If detainees wish to work within the centers, they are paid no more than a few dollars per hour.
“This has been hap-pening for years,” Ala-torre said. “It’s very much a money-making business.”
Hines said it costs over $300 per day for each person detained in one of the South Texas centers. She suggests in-stead of spending the money on detention center, direct that money toward legal rep-resentation for the asylum-seeking families. Steglich said she believes the violence in Central America needs to be addressed on a larger scale to stop the inflow of immi-grants.
“[The United States] is not only doing irreparable harm to the women and children we’re detaining and deporting,” Steglich said. “It’s a black mark on [the country’s] reputation.”
In “Dead-pool,” Ryan Reynold plays an anti-hero with a potty mouth, delivering comedy and fast-paced action.
Courtesy of 20th Century Fox
ship between the two leads. Henry and Delilah’s con-nection develops organi-cally, letting the player ex-perience their relationship as it develops and display-
ing how volatile human interaction can be. Their conversations blend ten-sion, humor and emotion, creating a connection with the player — a feat that is rarely achieved.
Impeccable voice act-ing helps make this aspect
of the narrative feel real. Whether the characters are being funny, terrified or sad, their emotions are conveyed with genuine sincerity. When combined with the game’s adult sub-ject matter, “Firewatch” becomes highly immer-
sive, leading the player to envision the two leads not as fantastical fic-tional characters but as something human.
Due to the nature of “Firewatch,” the gameplay is little more than walk-ing around the beautiful
environment listening to Henry and Delilah joke around with the occasional environmental interaction. Fans of exploration will be delighted to explore a surprisingly diverse forest, but players with a more ac-tion centric game in mind
will be disappointed. “Firewatch” is an odd-
ity within gaming, play-ing out more like book than a video game. It’s a character piece about two broken people that strikes at the core of the human condition.
Texas found itself in a tight battle with a team that it dom-inated earlier in the season.
The Longhorns beat Okla-homa State by 30 points on the road over a month ago, but the team went into half-time Wednesday night hold-ing just a 31-27 advantage.
After the break, however, the Longhorns exerted their dominance over the Cowgirls, shooting 60 percent from the field in the second half en route to a 70-55 win.
“I’m really pleased with this win,” head coach Karen Aston said. “I thought Oklahoma State was playing terrific bas-ketball. They’re constantly putting pressure on you to defend.”
Oklahoma State, winners of six-straight heading into the game, led for much of the first half after hitting a couple of three-pointers in the game’s opening minutes, forcing As-ton to call an early timeout to wake her team up.
“It seemed like we were a lit-tle bit frozen to start the game,” Aston said. “I don’t know whether we were nervous be-cause we knew that this would be a challenging game or we just needed our motors to start going.”
Sophomore guards Ariel Atkins and Brooke McCarty were all over the court fol-lowing the timeout. Atkins lost her balance on one play
but managed to lob a pass to McCarty before falling out of bounds with just over six minutes left in the first half.
McCarty drove the length of the court and laid it in to give Texas a 23-21 lead. The lead was Texas’ first since it led 2-0 at the 9:23 mark of the first quarter.
McCarty finished with 18 points on 70 percent shoot-ing. She’s shot a team-high 41.6 percent from beyond
the arc this season but did not attempt a single three on Wednesday.
“We have an attacking mindset,” McCarty said. “Coach Travis [Mays] comes in every day and tells us that we have to be aggressive.”
The Cowgirls pulled to within one early in the third quarter, but the Longhorns answered with an 11-0 run to take a 44-32 lead midway through the quarter.
Oklahoma State tried to make multiple runs to get back into the game, but Texas had an answer every time.
The victory marked the second-consecutive game in which the Longhorns started slow against an opponent they previously beat. The Long-horns beat Iowa State by 21 on Jan. 6 but trailed by four in the rematch on Saturday before coming back to win 65-49.
Aston said the growth of
the team’s sophomores on her roster is the reason why her team pulls through late in games despite starting slowly.
“It’s a sign of maturity that we don’t get both-ered by great starts or bad starts,” Aston said. “For a while, we thought every game was going to be a blowout because of the way we were starting. We now understand it’s not going to be like that.”
Shaka Smart said it best. The morning after No. 24
Texas had its heart ripped out by Buddy Hield’s game win-ner for No. 3 Oklahoma in Norman, the head coach said moral victories aren’t what he’s looking for.
“I think a moral victory is more of a media thing, to be honest with you,” Smart said. “I’ve never really believed in that. I think whether you win or lose you want to learn from the game.”
Still, even after losing to Oklahoma and Hield — who Smart called an “assassin” — Texas has plenty to be happy about. The Longhorns are en-joying their first week in the AP Top 25 poll, have a few mar-quee wins on their resume and haven’t sunk in a tough Big 12 conference after losing senior center Cameron Ridley.
But the next three weeks will paint a vivid picture about where these Longhorns are heading into March.
A road date with No. 14 Iowa State is next on the docket, fol-lowed by a home game with No. 10 West Virginia. Okla-homa, No. 6 Kansas and No. 21 Baylor each visit the Frank Erwin Center in February. The Longhorns also have to travel to Oklahoma State and Kansas State — the Wildcats actually beat Oklahoma at home.
All of those games are win-nable, judging by what Texas has done in the past. But, in this league, anyone can beat anyone. Such is life in this year’s Big 12.
The Longhorns currently have sole possession of second place “fourth place, one game back of Kansas, Oklahoma and West Virginia in the conference and already have a solid NCAA Tournament resume with wins over North Carolina, Baylor, West Virginia and Iowa State. The key for Texas is building on that.
The Longhorns’ ceiling is probably a Sweet 16 team if they get on a roll heading into the tournament. Most projec-tions currently have Texas as a No. 4 or No. 5 seed, and, given how Texas has played lately, it’s possible to envision them win-ning two games to break into the Sweet 16.
But, the better the seed, the better the chance Texas has to advance in March. The Long-horns’ remaining schedule may look like a murderer’s row at first glance, but Smart views them as opportunities.
The opportunity Texas has is to improve its NCAA resume even further, and get hot going into the Big Dance. A realistic record for Texas in these fi-nal seven games is something along the lines of 4–3 — which would boost its resume and momentum going into the postseason.
Doing better than that is a huge plus, while faltering down the stretch would drop them drastically seeding-wise.
Losing a winnable game to Oklahoma certainly stings, but Texas has the chance to come out of February feeling as con-fident as anyone.
It’ll be wins, not moral victo-ries, that give them that boost.
Three years ago, the Longhorns made it to college softball’s spiritual home — Oklahoma City.
After six-straight years of falling short, Texas finally advanced to the Women’s Col-lege World Series be-fore failing to reach the championship series.
But that was 2013. The freshmen on that team are now seniors, and with the 2016 season starting Thursday night against Arkansas, they are look-ing to get back to the Sooner state.
“In previous years, we had people that said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to make it to the World Series,’ but they weren’t necessarily backing it up and actu-ally believing that,” senior outfielder Lindsey Ste-phens said. “Now, we have all 19 girls who know and believe that we deserve to be in the World Series, and we can do it.”
The Longhorns’ hopes of a return to the World Series are bolstered by the return of all but two play-ers from last year’s squad. Stephens led the team
with 15 home runs and 47 RBIs in 2015, while ju-nior third baseman Devon Tunning led the team in batting average.
Senior second baseman Stephanie Ceo — who finished last year with 22 RBIs — said that con-fidence will be key for the Longhorns.
“If you don’t start every year out as if you are go-ing to be the number one team at the end, the team mentality is very differ-ent,” Ceo said.
Texas’ path to Okla-homa City, however, has already hit a roadblock before the season has even begun. The team announced Tuesday that sophomore pitcher Erica Wright will be out in-definitely while nursing a rib injury.
Wright impressed on-lookers in 2015 with a stellar freshman cam-paign, leading the team with an 18–9 record, 2.42 ERA and 178 strikeouts.
Junior pitcher Tiarra Davis will likely step into the ace role. Davis had a strong freshman sea-son herself before fading back last year, appearing 20 times with a 3.60 ERA an injury. But Davis said
dealing with the injury gave her a new outlook on pitching.
“I think my mindset now is better than ever,” Davis said. “Coming back from an injury, you learn how to be a better teammate and student of the game.”
Texas’ matchup with Arkansas is the first of five games that will play this weekend. The Long-horns will also face North Carolina and North Da-kota State.
Arkansas enters this season after posting a 16–37 record last season, including just one win in the SEC. North Carolina and North Dakota State are coming off of seasons featuring an NCAA Tour-nament appearance.
But as the season gets under way, head coach Connie Clark said she’s focused more on how her own team performs rather than the name of the opponent.
“Quite honestly, it’s re-ally about us,” Clark said. “It’s about our execution, us attacking those seg-ment goals that we talked about, having quality at bats and having our pitch-ers make their pitch.”
6 SPTS
6JACOB MARTELLA, SPORTS EDITOR | @texansportsThursday, February 11, 2016
SIDELINENBA
SPURS
MAGIC
LAKERS
CAVALIERS
CLIPPERS
CELTICS
“Congrats to Texas Soccer on a great
recruiting class. They just keep getting better and better
each year!”
Mack Brown@ESPN_CoachMack
TOP TWEET
TODAY IN HISTORY
1990Unheralded boxer Buster Douglas knocks out Mike Tyson to win the heavyweight championship. Douglas’ knockout ranks as one of the greatest upsets in boxing history.
Bevo XV to be unveiled against Notre Dame
The search for Bevo XV is over, but fans will have to wait almost seven months before knowing the results.
Tuesday night, the Stu-dent Government Twitter account announced that the new live mascot for Texas will be revealed at the Texas football’s season opener against Notre Dame on Sept. 3.
The arrival of Bevo XV will come during the 100-year anniversary of the steer, who made his first appearance as a mascot in 1916 at the annual Thanks-giving game between Texas and Texas A&M.
The university has been without a mascot since Bevo XIV retired in late October after the 2,100-pound Longhorn was diagnosed with bovine leukemia virus. He passed away six days after Texas’ 24-17 win over Oklahoma.
“Bevo XIV has served the university and the Longhorns family ex-tremely well in his tenure,” men’s athletics director Mike Perrin said in a news release after the retire-ment was announced. “We are thrilled he heads into retirement with a victory over Oklahoma as his last game, and look forward to welcoming Bevo XV, who will be the same strong symbol his fourteen pre-decessors have been since 1916.”
The UT Silver Spurs Alumni Association will be the official caretaker for Bevo XV.
—Mark Skol
SPORTS BRIEFLY
Longhorns take down Oklahoma StateBy Tyler Horka
@TexasTy95
Joshua Guerra | Daily Texan StaffSophomore guard Brooke McCarty drives to the basket. McCarty ended the night with 18 points on 70 percent shooting in a 70-55 Texas win. The Longhorns advanced to 22—1 on the season with the victory. They will take on Oklahoma on Saturday.
Seniors look to lead team back to Oklahoma City
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
WOMEN’S SOFTBALL
Gabriel Lopez | Daily Texan file photoTexas softball looks to return to the Women’s College World Series after falling short the past two years. Opening night for the Longhorns is on Feb. 11 as they take on Arkansas.
MEN’S BASKETBALL | COLUMN
Longhorns must win marquee matchups
By Isabel Miller@thedailytexan
By Akshay Mirchandani @amirchandani41
Joshua Guerra | Daily Texan StaffHead coach Shaka Smart has led Texas to a 16–8 record in his first year as coach. Smart previously coached at VCU.
COMICS 7
COMICS Thursday, February 11, 2016 7
Today’s solution will appear here next issue
SUDOKUFORYOU3 8 5 4 6 5 1 6 4 2 5 8 1 7 5 2 9 8 3 5 3 2 4 6 2 1 4 4 5 3 2 6 8
7 9 2 4 3 8 6 1 51 8 6 5 2 7 3 4 95 3 4 1 6 9 7 8 22 4 7 3 8 1 5 9 63 1 9 6 7 5 4 2 86 5 8 9 4 2 1 3 78 6 1 7 9 3 2 5 44 2 3 8 5 6 9 7 19 7 5 2 1 4 8 6 3
8 L&A
CAT CARDENAS, LIFE&ARTS EDITOR | @thedailytexan 8Thursday, February 11, 2016
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Many wish that re-search on genes could help them fit into their skinny jeans, but scientists said more work still needs to be done before successful genetically-based weight loss programs can become a reality.
A group of research-ers led by nutritional sci-ences professor Molly Bray found initial evidence that weight loss efforts can be customized to specific ge-netic information in the body, as published in the journal Obesity.
In the review, scientists discussed links between body weight and certain genes, such as those for energy processing, ap-petite control and fat cell production. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop a way of designing personalized weight main-tenance plans that could be altered for each individ-ual based on their genetic codes. This is known as the precision method.
Co-author Ruth Loos, director of the Genetics of Obesity and Related Meta-bolic Traits Program and professor of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, said weight gain
and weight loss are influ-enced not only by environ-ment, but also by genetics.
“We discussed the cur-rent status of genetic body weight regulation — why some people gain and lose weight more easily than others,” Loos said. “Our main conclusion is that there is definitely some-thing innate to gaining weight and losing weight. There is an environmental component — some people eat more or are more phys-ically active — but that is not the only [factor].”
Loos said the research-ers looked into 60 genes that influence weight fac-tors such as the brain and fat storage.
“What we’ve learned, of the many genetic stud-ies, is that the genes we’ve identified seem to act pre-dominantly in the brain,” Loos said. “The brain con-trols our food intake and willpower — hunger and satiety. The brain is a cru-cial, critical organ that can make you susceptible.”
Loos said research in this area is still in its early stage, and thus needs more data before scientists can make recommendations for the public.
“Some people claim they can use genetics to pre-scribe your diet, but these
claims are overstated,” Loos said. “I don’t think at this point we can say, ‘This person has this and this features, so this person has to eat a certain way’ — there is no uniformed diet that works for everybody.”
Annie Mahon, a reg-istered dietitian at UHS, offers individual appoint-ments for customized meal plans. Mahon said gene-based weight loss methods are not yet widely used.
“The reason why some-one is overweight or obese is multigenetic,” Mahon said. “It’s more complex than [simply looking at a specific gene].”
Neurobiology senior Eve Sharifi said she had heard of the method from her classes. However, Sharifi said she would approach it with caution. Her cur-rent approach to main-taining a healthy weight includes cooking her own meals and participating in intramural swimming.
“It’s a lot related to me-tabolism and how differ-ent people have the same genes [which are] turned on and off for different metabolic activities,” Shar-ifi said. “I would be more interested in losing weight in more natural methods, like exercising.”
Biology freshman
Christopher Ha said he had never heard of the method, but would be interested in trying it.
Loos said a new initia-tive by President Obama will help scientists
better understand how genes interact in the body. Begin-ning this summer, researchers funded by the newly launched $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative will start collecting data aimed to
provide patient-specific ap-proaches for different treat-ments.
“This [initiative] is re-ally needed to understand innate processes [of genet-ics] better,” Loos said.
Illustration by Jasmin LeLauti | Daily Texan Staff
By Eunice Ali@euniceali
Scientists explore moving down a gene size
CAMPUS
UT professors suggest four literary favorites for studentsBy Cameron Osmond
@CameronOsmond
Illustration by Jason Cheon | Daily Texan Staff
GAMES
Review: ‘Firewatch’ brings unique, realistic experience to game world
By Brian O’Kelly@mildlyusedbrain
FIREWATCH page 5
Photo courtesy of Campo Santo| Daily Texan Staff“Firewatch” tells a gripping yet odd tale, closer to an im-merse movie then a traditional video game.
Students don’t think twice about asking professors for academic advice, but they rarely approach professors when they’re looking for book, movie or music rec-ommendations. This week, The Daily Texan asked pro-fessors to share their favorite literary work.
Chris Kirk, anthropology professor
A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for biography and autobiography, “Grant” tells the turbulent life sto-ry of President Ulysses S. Grant from his days as one of America’s greatest and most revolutionary generals to later receiving heavy criti-cism during his presidency.
“One of my favorite reads in recent years is ‘Grant,’” Kirk said. “It’s not just for Civil War buffs and presidential histori-ans — it’s a well-written account of an extraordi-nary life. It’s also a great reminder that hard times don’t necessarily last for-ever. A few years before the Civil War, [President] Grant sold firewood on a street corner in order to make ends meet. Less than a decade later, he was com-manding general of the U.S. Army.”
Greg Knapp, geography professor
The “Autobiographical Novel” by Kenneth Rexroth is exactly what it claims to be. Rexroth’s memories come alive with rich characters and a thought-provoking depiction of the “California literary renaissance,” a liter-ary movement that Rexroth fronted himself.
“Rexroth was a highly influential poet and essay-ist who helped found the California counterculture,” Knapp said. “He knew many artists and writers and was also an early environmental-ist who pursued backpack-ing in the mountains as a life-style. I had the good fortune to meet him. He remains an inspiration for those who wish to combine the goals of poverty reduction, envi-ronmental conservation and respect for global cultures. The book is a lightly fiction-alized look at a gallery of entertaining characters.”
Robert Jensen, journalism professor
“How to Be a Poet” is lay-ered within award-winning writer Wendell Berry’s col-lection, “Given: New Po-ems,” an assembly of works that explore various themes, including political musings and reflections on love.
“Berry’s poem has stuck with me the most,” Jensen
said. “It’s a reminder that life can be lived outside of screens. Screens bring in-formation and entertain us, but every year, every gen-eration, we are more teth-ered to screens. Wendell Berry’s poem is a reminder that life can be lived out-side of a screen. The poem has three lines that I can’t shake: ‘There are no un-sacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.’”
Rachel Wellhausen, government professor
Written in the years fol-lowing one of America’s greatest financial collapses, “13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Fi-nancial Meltdown” describes why the dire economic crisis occurred and explores what can be done to prevent a subsequent disaster.
“There are a lot of great — and infuriating — books about the causes and conse-quences of the Great Reces-sion,” Wellhausen said. “One superb option is ‘13 Bank-ers.’ Johnson and Kwak pin-point people in industry and government who shaped the inadequate response to the crisis. Their work inspired me to think more about the individuals behind what we sometimes assume are face-less, nameless forces in the global political economy.”
Unlike Herculean fig-ures that take the lead in most video games, Henry is a simple man who’s running from his past. Henry is a human, a seemingly random and self-evident fact that speaks to the power of the “Firewatch” narrative.
Henry finds refuge in Wyoming, where he vol-unteers to alienate himself from reality and serve as lookout for park services. His one tether to human-ity is his boss Delilah, a park ranger who instructs Henry throughout the game over a walkie talkie.
“Firewatch” is told ex-clusively through the dia-logue between Henry and Delilah, with the game-play used to immerse the player. The game’s ambi-ance plays a pivotal role in supporting the nar-rative with visually ap-propriate sceneries and gripping music directing the player’s state of mind
throughout the adventure.The game’s atmosphere
and story orchestrate a truly rich, thematic ex-perience. While the game begins as a pleasant na-ture walk away from the woes of the world, strange events involving two teen-age girls and an uniden-tified figure disrupt the tranquility, leaving the player unnerved. The mood of the environment changes fittingly with the story, as mystery creates a sense of paranoia which mars the landscapes
with watching eyes.Without spoiling any-
thing, the game’s ending is a weak point. While the conclusion hides a deep, mature message, it is cruelly anticlimactic and rushed. The tension the game so wonderfully builds up is resolved in a matter of minutes but leaves the player think-ing long after the screen goes dark.
The plot arc is over-shadowed by the relation-
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